Update

Making long story slightly less long, when last I posted Unity got rid of their low end networking, or kinda did, but not really, but did, but will, but did with nothing to replace it and no plan to replace it, it shot one of my other projects in the foot. Since I was going to use a lot of the same code between them, I just pulled up stakes and started looking at other engines. Specifically Unreal and Godot.

Unreal's visual scripting is like cheating. It's beautiful, and I could get into that, but the rest of the editor just isn't my jam. I gave it a few months of honest effort, made a little pinball game, learned the ropes, but it's not a good fit for what I want to do, or how I want to do it.

So I tried Godot. Which /should/ be more what I want. It's not ready for prime time yet. A lot of stuff is still in production and the instructions are 1/2 done. I could eventually make something happen there, but things are changing as fast as Unity and with less documentation. Couple that with I really don't like their object organization and I had only one choice:

Swallow my pride and work with Unity or try my own.

I looked into doing my own for about 2 weeks. Doable, but not worth it. Time to be an adult and just accept Unity for what it is, warts and all. So going forward I"m in it to win it with Unity.

Over the last 6 months I've been working with the new features Unity has for 2d games, and polishing some art and music for the game while doing all the main responsibilities of life.

What have I learned?

1. I bit off a big bite with this and my availability. I thought I'd be done by now, instead I"m practically starting again (not 100% true, I"m better at coding and have a good base of code to start with).
2. Commit to early choices and stick with them. Especially the engine. Unless you absolutely can't finish your project with the engine, stick it out. Doing this bounce around cost more time than I can reasonably defend.