Letters Against Loneliness

Letters Against Loneliness is a casual puzzle game about sending letters to all people on the map.

That’s it. It’s a relatively small game (especially for me), with a simple premise and a simple rule, and an equally simple pixel-art style. It’s just relaxing fun for 2-3 hours, wherever you are.

However, there are some interesting facts about the development journey …

What’s special?

When I just started making games, I invented a puzzle mechanic: “Each turn, click a square to place a tower. Once placed, it will shoot a line towards all previously placed towers. Anything the line hits, will be collected.”

I thought it was wonderful. I still do. But at the time, I was too inexperienced to make it into a proper game.

Fast forward ten years, and I dust off this old idea and decide to make it. For a few weeks, I make good progress, get 100 levels going, and have many more ideas.

Then life gets in the way. I need to pause development to finish my bachelor degree. And then … I forget the game ever existed.

A few years later, I dust off the old project again, but this time I’ve lost all my notes (to-do, original assets, etcetera). What to do? I decide to finish what I have now and publish that.

Here’s the most interesting part: it didn’t matter. People enjoyed it just the same, even though I know there were supposed to be at least 100 more levels, prettier drawings, and more. The lesson here is: just because you have ambition and tons of good ideas, doesn’t mean a project needs them to be good.

What does matter is seeing how I’ve grown over the years. This game didn’t even have an UNDO feature. A puzzle game without undo! Can you imagine? Similarly, it doesn’t have a main menu (also because it doesn’t need one) or settings or anything else I’d now consider “essential”.