In the past year or so, I’ve found that even though we love making games, and we love dedicating pretty crazy amounts of time into our labour of love, it’s really important to take breaks, for a couple of reasons:

When I’m fresh, calm and un-stressed, I find I’m much less prone to making mistakes, redoing things, and generally being inefficient. As much as my heart might want me to work seven days a week, I’ve found that for me to function really well in the hours that I do work, I’ve got to have about 7 hours of sleep, and one day a week when I do absolutely nothing to do with making game art. It helps me to stay focused and keeps resentment down.

I also believe that there are countless sources of inspiration outside of game dev that can help us grow as game developers. I used to feel guilty about taking breaks, going on hikes, going to the beach and hanging out with friends, because it meant time away from levelling up at my art skills. But when I thought about it as gathering reference, and as exposing myself to many other parts of life, things that could be sources of inspiration for another art style, or another game mechanic, I started to enjoy taking time off more, and seeing it as necessary.

When Rami came to visit for AMAZE, he said something along the lines of “Go sky-diving. It’ll teach you more about game design than months of game design courses, reading books or staring at a computer screen.” I believe it’s true.

Good luck!