Day 24 & 25: I reworked Level_01 and Level_02, playtested it again and realized I missed something important. In Level_02, the player is challenged with jump mechanics but some of the difficulty was hard to see. It would be unfair for players to die so many times just to learn the layout without having a clear view of the obstacles and to balance this, I added camera swaps in certain areas of Level_02. In other areas where the player won’t die from making a wrong jump, I kept the original view so they actually have to learn the timing to reach next area.
I also wrote a story for the game, nothing too complicated. There will be two NPCs: first one is at the starting location to explain why the player is making this journey and what they need to do. Second NPC is at the end of the game. I want the ending to leave few questions unanswered, which gives me opportunity to create a series if the first game does well with players. I worked on customizing UI but it needs some work and I still have to playtest Level_01 and Level_02 few times. I think after finishing all these then I will move to designing Level_03.
I did die once to get this jump right 
Here’s the camera swap video:
Day 26: Updating the UI was a lot of work today. I looked all over the internet for free UI for commercial use and found plenty on Itch but nothing fit my vision. After many errors, I finally landed on the one you see in the video below for the pause menu and I used most of it from the project. I still have to work on main menu which I am going to mix and match from different sources.
One of the toughest challenges today was figuring out blueprints and tweaking them for exactly what I needed. I mean, a pro programmer probably could have figure this out faster than me 
and none of the online tutorials helped. I tried asking an AI for help but that didn’t work since it has no access to my project and I probably didn’t do a great job explaining it. I’m definitely not adding AI to my project unless I get paid a fortune to help train AI with my project and experience.
I like the feeling of figuring things out on my own and talking to my friends also makes it really nice but they aren’t available all the time for me. I need to do better in blueprints by experimenting and breaking codes I have in my test project.
Day 27 & 28: It took me almost two days to figure out how to customize this UI for my project. I started with the pause menu, then moved on to the button icons and main menu. I got most of the UI stuff from Itch page which was free for commercial use. I mean there are literally hundreds of UI, assets and more. Highly recommended to check them out if you haven’t.
The button sound is something I will be changing in the near future and the background music took me half a day to figure out with my guitar and effect pedals. It was recorded in my home studio. I am probably going to change the main menu music in the future too. Don’t ask me why, it’s one of those things we musicians like to do and we are never satisfied.
Day 29 update: This was probably the toughest thing I have done so far in terms of non-game dev stuff that is related to game dev at the same time. I spent pretty much the entire day figuring out how to file LLC in the state I live in and getting everything ready to set up my Steam page. I went into a lot of .gov website and filled out all the form, it wasn’t that hard to be honest doing this on my own but I had to read a lot of official documents from them including IRS for applying for EIN online, this was a hassle because you get only 15 min to complete and if you didn’t you start from the beginning.
I really wanted to get this done because having an official company behind the game makes everything feel a lot more real and professional to me. One of the craziest thing I encountered today was figuring out NAICS Code. They have pretty much nothing directly connecting to Game Development so I had to chose the computer software, does anyone here who have gone through this process feel weird and funny about that too 
I am going to focus on creating a small polished version of gameplay with different environments starting next week that I can use for the Steam page.
Full disclosure: My plan is to check out Steam page of all my favorite games and mimic what they have done into my steam page and I want to do everything to design and layout steam page because this will be my challenge and why not? I think for the next game I will save money to hire professional!
It takes few weeks for the LLC process to finish but I paid all the necessary fees and everything moving forward slowly but surely. I’m pretty excited about it
Have a good weekend.
Day 30 update: I made a custom design. This took all day and everything in the design was created using free commercial use arts with free online app.
All assets were placed by hand and used Niagara System to make the scene. I took too many high resolution shots and getting the right angle took some time but using bookmarks helped me capture the perfect shot for my project. All of these were done inside Unreal Engine except the letters and frame design.
For now the name is still called Project Mero. Once my LLC is approved, I will update with real project name (I double checked the name in steam and other platforms and it’s not taken, this is something I learned during my time in music industry and it’s very important) and make everything official 
This was really fun to make and surprisingly easy, especially since Photoshop or similar software isn’t part of my workflow and No AI was used either. Kitbashing is truly awesome and fun 
Day 31 update: Today marks the official past 30 days of my indie game dev journey for Project Mero. This has been awesome, my wife came up to me and said. ‘wow, your progress is coming along nicely and when can I make music’. That made me smile and I cannot wait to hear what she will create. Full disclosure: she is full time professional musician 
I worked on updating the Pause/Main Menu, Sound Effects and I am happy with the result. I uploaded this new commercial use font in my project by reading Unreal’s official document, it was pretty easy to change. I will probably update UI as I get new assets and music for Pause/Main Menu.
Day 31 update: I customized NPC and changed some blueprints to give Project Mero something simple that still feels unique. I also updated the storyline.
I want gameplay and level design to lead this experience, and some back story for what drives our hero to begin this journey and life doesn’t always follow the path we choose. Sometimes a twist of fate can change everything, pushing our hero toward a future that perhaps not so much wanted and has no choice but to follow this fate. No spiloers 
I want the ending to leave few questions unanswered, which gives me opportunity to create a series if the first game does well with players.
