Post-Release Depression and POC in Game Industry

I'm going through a post-release depression atm after Spellbearers. I try not to use that term lightly, but a lot of symptoms are there. I'm tired, irritable, sad, lethargic, and have lacked the drive and motivation I usually do to keep things moving on over the past few weeks. 

Even with Spellbearers being successfully Kickstarted, we used a lot of personal funds to make sure the project kept going and didn't become another Kickstarter failure as well as keep as much of the team together as we could during uncertain COVID times.

The typical advice I've received should have me glad I released the game. "You're farther than the x% of devs who didn't finish. Good job!", but at the same time I feel like I've wanted out after seeing how poorly the game has turned out to be financially.

It has had me consider really just looking at it and stopping and exiting while I could. I think it's the burnout speaking, but I needed some time to focus on repairing the damage to my savings/bank account to save the Spellbearers project. Selatria also needs to be finished.

Seeing today's news about Yoshi-P and POC was a good wake-up call on why I need to keep trying to make games. Yoshida is my favorite game developer and idol and it's heartbreaking to see his words come off like a politician in regards to Final Fantasy XVI. I would have liked to see this as a template to create more people of color. They could implement a character randomizer using their own implemented tools for XVI characters instead of having the generical look.

I also want to say I'm very thankful for the \team at whimindie to keep things positive and moving along with our games while I've been mainly offline to collect my thoughts while I've been in this funk. Please give Spellbearers a play. Thanks for reading.