Hi, so hey, so in amongst trying to survive I’m trying to get some of my cretive mojo back. Problem is, I have so many half-completed projects I hardly know where to start. I’ve got the Peach the Lobster remake discussed elsewhere; I’ve got Byron Solomon; I’ve got that weird fake text-mode game I started. Then I’ve got my horror novel, and articles, and music, and… it’s a little overwhelming.
So I’m hoping that actually showing some of what I’m doing may help to hold my feet to the fire, or help me to figure out what direction to head. I guess this will focus on game projects for the moment, as that’s where my head is.
Bubble & Squeak
Originally devised for my then-two-year old now-six-year-old gazelle bird daughter. I quickly, however, realized it was absurdly difficult, and in trying to fix that… it fizzled.
Old progress: One level and tutorial complete; two further levels roughly blocked out; whole game planned in theory.
New Progress: A title screen! (WIP, but.) Also, I made it so you can select to do the tutorial or not. Since that was starting to bug me, during testing. One of those rules that comes hard, even if it seems obvious: if something in your work annoys you, it’ll annoy the fuck out of people who aren’t you. So try to make your stuff not annoy you much.
And, some new music that I abandoned right away because it didn’t fit after all.
The Fantastic Adventures of Byron Solomon
My tribute to Goonilikes, begun… oh, what’s that date? In 2012. So, yeah, I think this was what I fiddled with in the sleepless fug following the birth of above gazelle-bird, whenever I wasn’t wandering in circles, singing her the two songs I could remember, on repeat. I like this. It just stalled for some reason.
Old Progress: Three levels; some basic blocking and concepts for a fourth; some grand ideas for further development and a narrative arc, that might involve tearing down everything I’d done and starting over. Oh yeah, that’s probably why I stopped.
New Progress: I started to toodle a bit with the fourth level again.
DOS and DON’Ts
I… don’t know.
Old Progress: Most of the sprites and background tiles; three screens that you could quickly complete.
New Progress: A whole labyrinth now blocked out, with a handful of new completed screens; some simple music, meant to adapt and evolve to narrative events; scripted narrative events in that oh-so-once-trendy metatextual game critique mode. Ha! The game is damning you for your instincts! You’re a horrible person!
Which is probably true.
Princess Game
A more Zelda-inflected follow-up to this previous co-authored work:
Old Progress: She drew up all the characters and monsters and items, and some maps, and wrote out some music.
I transcribed maybe a third of this, and worked with her on fleshing out the sprites and overworld map somewhat.
New Progress: Uh… I’ve thought about it, a little?
Peach the Lobster v1.5
Old version was terrible; last year, was trying to update it so it resembled my memories of it or what I thought I was doing back in 1994. I wanted it to be relatively subtle. Rather than just tearing everything up, I started off just tweaking things that bugged me. I ended up tweaking a hell of a lot.
Old Progress: The whole thing, aside from the final boss and lead-in cutscene; the ending; and a bunch of little tweaks to tie the whole thing together.
New Progress: After much digging, I just found my to-do list for how this is going to play out. I also took a quick glance at the monster set for Fang Duck and began to puzzle again how I’m going to pull off that encounter.
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There are of course many other projects. But… that’s all I can deal with at the moment. More to come, probably!
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