Pushing out Deep Sea Claustrophobia into Early Access posted in Deep Sea Claustrophobia Published May 22, 2025 Advertisement It's been a while, almost a year since my last post. My last project was that de facto moment where I gave upon chasing publishers (or so I thought). Having spent years, 4-5ish to be a bit more precise, booting up, restarting to then booting up again, projects in varying sizes/complexity/budget, just made me lose all hope in this unsustainable business model that publishers practice these days (not just because of 2019). Truth is that they treat you like disposable items, unless you’re a hotshot or have connections. Even the smaller ones, where I thought I’d had my (better) chances with my many prototypes, especially seeking out those who were open to solo developers or smaller teams,  erected roadblocks way beyond what I’d consider reasonable. It’s one thing that the market is extremely competitive, and publishers really only care about returns on investments, which is perfectly fine, or how extremely important execution, design, etc. is, but never I thought in my wildest dreams that nobody out there would be willing to at least give me a listen, knowing that several people have told me already that my projects have potentials (because my goals and design philosophy is completely different from mainstream, which I think is my most valuable commodity); well technically it did happen recently with my current project, but that went nowhere as well (rather they wanted me to work on my previous one, that fantasy project that would’ve taken me a couple of years to complete). Have had to realize that it didn’t matter what the project was or how good it looked, was it fun, did it have potential or not (as in market), and so forth, because I was as nobody (no name person with no $$$ portfolio), from a country far away, nobody would give a damn; so I was filtered most of the time way before they began to judge my projects based on merit. Which is why I decided to venture on my probably last project, as a last hurrah. It wasn’t idyllic, as part of me chasing publishers had to do with the fact that my dev environment is seriously outdated (win7 era), and needed upgrades to be able to create a marketable game for modern standards.So after a brief inspiration of accidentally stumbling across a let’s play video of Iron Lung, the decision came to work on something simple that can be completed in less than a year. The plan was to complete it and somehow publish it on Steam. But due to my location and circumstances that was out of the question, so reluctantly I reached out to publishers once again (to act as a leverage above all, to make sure the project isn’t getting cancelled for personal reasons), this time only to have it published on Steam so there wasn’t any ask for funding; that’s when I came across that one publisher who was somewhat serious doing business with me (discussions took over a month). But in the end all of the leads went dry, it’s a long story with some pretty wild things in between (some were better than others), and because of the mounting pressure in my personal life, had to do something: So I released Deep Sea Claustrophobia on Itch.io. Which is quite the bitter sweet experience to be honest, because this wasn’t the plan (life is forcing my hand once again), let alone for the fact that it's an impossible platform to sell games on to my knowledge (“If it’s not on Steam, it’s dead Jim”), and that the game is like 2-3 months from completion (it’s only somewhat playable, but not in a “demo” or vertical slice of way). So while it’s rather polished, to what it is, given it was made with no tools in 6-7ish months (under extreme crunch), it’s still a bit far away from something that would catch others attention (although people started following the project already); which is why it’s technically impossible for me to market this game at this stage and thus grow the audience or perhaps rope in someone to purchase the game.Really wanted this game to be different. Didn’t want to release yet again an unfinished thing, further adding to the mountain of disgrace in the backyard. Wanted to break the cycle, desperately, which started with my first failed commercial release (it was stuck at around 90% when my tools broke and ran out of money to pay the voice actors) and lasted this long. But was reminded once again the reality of things, and the harshness of it all. Not sure where or how long this will go, but all can be done is to work on it as long as it’s “allowed”. Comments Nobody has left a comment. You can be the first! You must log in to join the conversation. Don't have a GameDev.net account? Sign up!