DevLog 001 — Why I started TriTail Studio
For the past few months I’ve been building Sudoku Fog — a Sudoku engine wrapped in fog-of-war mechanics and a global cuisine collection game. It’s nearly done. But somewhere along the way I hit a wall that has nothing to do with the code: I had no idea how to get anyone to actually find it.
As I got closer to shipping, I realized building the app was only half the job. Nobody was waiting for it.
My answer was probably the most boring one: build a website and write about it. If I document what I’m building and why, the decisions that didn’t work, the things that surprised me — maybe six months from now someone searching for Sudoku generation or puzzle design lands here instead of the Play Store. Maybe it becomes a place where feedback can happen before the app is even out.
I’ve had side projects before that quietly died. Usually two reasons: not enough personal time, and the goal was never clear enough to survive a slow period. I don’t want that to happen here. Putting the work in public, even the unglamorous parts, feels like one way to keep myself honest.
Today’s actual work was unglamorous: Astro static site, Markdown blog and DevLog, automatic deploys, sitemap. The homepage is one screen — studio name, current project, demo link, short About. I set a rule for myself: no more than a day on the website before getting back to the game.
If this works once, I don’t want to build another website for the next project.
Next up: finish the Sudoku Fog release. Then write the first real article — probably about generating Sudoku puzzles with a unique solution. It’s a harder problem than it sounds, and I want to write about it while the details are still fresh.