I've been working on Dreamons, slowly! My blood pressure measurements are very variable! And I did a test meant to suggest careers for my personality, which told me nothing new but was interesting nonetheless! READ MORE
A project I've hinted at for a while has finally manifested in some form! Though this is far from the first time I've made something like this... READ MORE
I've been working on character revisions and story stuff for Dreamons, I talked to a couple of friends but not the counsellor, and I'm finding Tomb Raider III more frustrating than fun! READ MORE
I got back to this side project last week! Now I'm planning to focus it around an 'evil' council not unlike MARDEK's Governance de Magi. Also, Unity bug and counselling-related awkwardness. READ MORE
I recently replayed this eccentric 'musical memory game' I actually finished and released in 2019. Despite some fears that I'd cringe over concerns about its content, I ended up feeling mostly impressed and in some cases surprisingly emotional! It's such a shame so few people got to experience the most moving moments though due to the gameplay barrier in the way... READ MORE
I did some stuff on this Belief Battles/Frayth thing this week: buildings and the interior areas they link to, and some concept designs for types of people you'd encounter. READ MORE
My hope for this week was to get this latest project to the point where I could show a video demo of the main mechanics, like the old Belief one... and that's exactly what I have to show here! Gasp! READ MORE
While waiting on mental health treatment to prepare myself for putting myself out into online communities to promote Atonal Dreams, I've been wondering whether to work on Dreamons as a single-player Pokemon clone you can start a game of and just play within minutes without investing into some grand story... READ MORE
I've written about porting my old Flash games several times in the past, but nothing ever comes of it. Will the intention actually bear fruit this time?? I've just got a port of AFC working, so...! READ MORE
I've spent this week doing work on this side project which I'm tentatively calling Dreamons. I also revisited its predecessor, Alora Fane: Creation, for inspiration; it's such a tragedy I never widely released that! Maybe I finally should?? READ MORE
I've been wondering whether to turn my recent side project into my main project for a while, to use it as practise for facing the promotion-related things I've been avoiding... READ MORE
How's your first week of 2023 been?? My mental state's improved a bit, but I've only touched Atonal Dreams briefly. I should post on Reddit about it soon; I altered ∞ its Steam page ∞ a bit for that. Also, some thoughts about a side project I've been working on, the game Child of Light, and are you worried about AI too? READ MORE
So how's your whole Christmas/end-of-year period been? I spent at least a week - starting from Christmas Day - alone, in bed, so depressed I could barely even move. So that was fun!! Have I ever mentioned that I'm mentally ill before? What, in most of the blog posts I've written this year, you say?? I've at least made stuff every month despite it, though slower than I'd like. READ MORE
My mind's been all over the place this week! Old games! Pokemon! Me-made new Pokemon clone?? CBC platformer sequel?? Random computer issues??? Nothing on Atonal Dreams though. READ MORE
Another busy week! Alpha Test 3 will start next week, if you're interested in volunteering to help with that! I also worked a little bit on the Belief side-project thing I started recently. READ MORE
Last week, I wrote about an idea I'd had for combining the elements and runes in Atonal Dreams, and how I'd been experimenting with a side project - essentially a remake of my old 'Belief' project from late 2019 - to get a feel for whether or not the change would work. I've spent this week working away at that project, so I want to talk about it a bit! READ MORE
I've been working on Mentales this week! I'll likely also spend the next week on that, and I've been wondering again whether to make official ports of my old Flash games... READ MORE
I'm at the point with Atonal Dreams now where I can almost start the next round of alpha testing. I know I've been saying that for probably months, but while then it was on the horizon, now I'm standing on the doorstep. I've got badly burned out getting here, though, so I've also been recovering a bit by working on a side project, Mentales! READ MORE
I wasn't able to focus on Atonal Dreams this week, but I did make some maybe interesting progress on this side project, Mentales! Also, I've probably got COVID now. READ MORE
Atonal Dreams was meant as a short standalone prequel to a longer reimagining of the MARDEK story - itself a reworking of another project I'd started on earlier - which I intended to finish within six months to a year. It's been either about a year and a half, two years, or two years and four months since I started - depending on where the start is considered to be - and the finish line still seems distant. In this obnoxiously long, image-heavy post, I want to look back over the entire development journey, to see how the game has evolved each month. READ MORE
I've been very bad mentally these past few days! I want to distract myself by writing out another possible side project idea: a remake of sorts of Alora Fane: Creation, in which you can build your own little quests for others to play... READ MORE
A long one this week! For Atonal Dreams, I made Savitr's flying figmon steed, and the beginnings of a world map you'd use for fast travel. I also want to talk about an idea I have for a potential smaller side project: a simple roguelike virtual pet thing... READ MORE
I did a lot this week! I made two new monsters, came up with an idea - mementomes - that solves some uncertainties, and improved the Lore section! READ MORE
I've almost finished the intro, but not quite! One thing I've yet to do is finalise a design for 'Splendid Savitr'. Also, I started playing Kingdom Hearts this week, which features more frustratingly aimless backtracking than I remember! READ MORE
I spent this week working on the dark dream intro, though it's not finished yet! I also spent about a day fiddling around with a side project based on Belief - a game I worked on briefly a while back - for the fun of it. READ MORE
A bit of a diary entry: I had another video call with a friend which was way less awkward than the last, which gave me some social confidence though I'm still paranoid of being noticed and judged, and I composed six short piano pieces this week - and have an album of 18 more from between 2012 and 2019 - but it's a shame that's not really a marketable thing that people would care about! READ MORE
Another productive week! I'm almost at the point where I can update the game for a new test run; I just need to tidy up a few bugs and things now. I have some questions related to MARDEK and games dev in general that I'd like to hear your thoughts about this time! READ MORE
Well, we survived 2020 somehow! Or at least some of us did, myself surprisingly included. I've also been quite productive this year, so - as is my tradition - I shall look back on all the stuff I've made here! READ MORE
I'm going to spend the end of the year focusing on things other than Atonal Dreams, to refresh my energy for it and my mind in general. There are three things I could work on: putting old games up somewhere (probably itch.io), releasing soundtracks of all the music I've ever composed, and maybe even starting work on a secondary game which combines Alora Fane: Creation and Belief, sort of! READ MORE
I've made models for these Atonal Dreams party members, and a short video scene thing of them interacting! I've also got a plan for when I might be able to finish Atonal Dreams by. READ MORE
I've spent this week doing more story planning for this now-actually-named thing, Atonal Dreams, which has included drawing final designs of all the major characters. This eccentric bunch are the four playable ones! READ MORE
I've made some good progress towards finalising a story for... this Divine Dreams prologue thing, which I've got some title ideas for but still haven't decided on one yet. I've attempted to write a hopefully-interesting summary here, though it's tough because I don't want to spoil too much! How would you explain a story in a blurb without spoiling anything? What would you include to make it actually compelling? To what extent do stories even matter in games? READ MORE
I've been thinking about it all week, and I've got an idea for a shorter, more concise version of Divine Dreams that I could conceivably finish by the end of the year... READ MORE
This week, I added the beginnings of long-planned mechanical feature: something called 'concords', which represent the connections between pairs of characters, and which grant various benefits when developed. Also, I redesigned Deugan's weapon. READ MORE
I've done quite a bit on the MARDEK Reimagining this past week! This time, I'll be talking about the title I've decided on, and a basic battle system I've planned and got working! READ MORE
As Old Father Time wraps his Chrono Dagger +4 rather roughly around 2019's frail and withered neck, breathing heavily behind its ear and savouring the sobs as he gets ready to lacerate its bulging jugular, I feel maniacally compelled to look back on how poorly I've managed to Live My Best Life during the preceding dozen months. I've made things! I released a thing even! It was not a success! I've started on something that'll be big, you guys, just you wait and see, for real, you gotta believe me, guys!! READ MORE
I played MARDEK recently, and it was much better than I expected! I'm now a fan of the series again! Here's how my new feelings about it have influenced what I want to do with a remake. READ MORE
Here's some revised concept stuff for my planned next game, Belief, in which a protagonist vaguely based on Mardek's mother is inseminated by an alien based on Rohoph. Fun for the whole family! READ MORE
I'm working on getting to the point with Belief where I can show a video of the gameplay. I'm not at that point yet, but here's what I've done so far. I'm wondering whether it might be best to make it a standalone game (rather than three chapters) at first, without connections to MARDEK, to see whether people are receptive to that before locking myself into something I might not finish, but there are still a lot of decisions to be made. READ MORE
I've FINALLY almost finished Sindrel Song! For real this time!! I'll probably start testing early next week, if I can get some final tweaks done over the weekend. Here's a video showing the game as it is now, plus some rambling about thoughts and concerns I've had while finishing it off. READ MORE
ANOTHER POST. I've made the new version of Memody I talked about in the previous post, and I feel like I've come up with a way that I could effectively explore the neurotic themes in a way that's entertaining rather than uncomfortable... but I'm wondering whether this is a bad time to be releasing this, if people are particularly busy! READ MORE
Despite constant, irritating fatigue, and woes about my present and my future, I've been slowly working my way through writing dialogue for Sindrel Song... READ MORE
I need to work on Sindrel Song, I need to upload my old games to my websites again, and I have plans for something MARDEK-related as well that I need to find the time to properly focus on. And I'm tired, still. Here's a vague plan for where I'm going from here. READ MORE
Some cathartic venting about fatigue, lack of motivation, mental barriers, Alora Fane, and MARDEK 4. And this thing from Sindrel Song, obviously. READ MORE
Here's quite a bit of stuff I've been doing on Sindrel Song, including a couple of videos showing improved gameplay and the sheet music structure of playable songs I've been composing for it. READ MORE
Radiotherapy's almost over, and I'm currently tired and ill. I got a Mac and can test games on my phone now! But I haven't made much progress beyond that due to feeling so lousy. Still, 'not much' progress is not none! READ MORE
So, now that the 2018th year since our Lord Jesus Christ hatched from his egg is gasping out its final breaths, I feel the compulsion to have a look at exactly how I've wasted this period of my life that I'll never get back. I graduated from university (and made it through alive, to my surprise), I had brain surgery for a cancerous tumour (and made it through alive, to my surprise), and I did a bunch of creative stuff but never actually finished or released anything (and made it through alive, to the absolute shock of everyone). That's... something? READ MORE
I've been wondering whether to set several short games in a shared world, with these 'sindrel' creatures as characters. I've set a new short game idea in this world, which I conceived of then started building a couple of days ago, and it's almost done already. I like playing it again and again, too, so that's good! Maybe I'm getting somewhere... READ MORE
Radiotherapy's getting easier, though it's still leaving me tired. And I've been trying to work on this associative memory game idea, but I'm unsure how to go about it; there are some fairly severe barriers in the way! READ MORE
I feel terrible still, but here's some disjointed rambling about my upcoming radiotherapy, the previous post's comments, Toby Fox, and ideas for a game I might make about a consciousness researcher exploring the afterlife. READ MORE
Here's a video of Zaffre and Cerise talking, showing the kind of format I've been intending to use to tell the Taming Dreams story. I'm so unsure about whether it's worth doing, though... Am I naive? Is this childish? Would it only lead to my destruction even if it did one day work out? READ MORE
I made a website a few months ago which was intended as a spiritual community, the primary aim of which would be to collaboratively sketch out the 'big picture' of the nature of life and the universe using diverse sources of objective and subjective evidence. I never got around to finishing it or making it public, but I want to show it here before my surgery in case the ~description of the universe~ that I've already written on it is of any interest to anyone. READ MORE
I'll be having brain surgery a week from now, and it's been difficult to focus with that weighing on my mind. Here's a bit about that, my plans for what I'll post over these next few days, and a bit about the manosphere stuff to follow the previous post. READ MORE
After doing a whole lot of reflecting about the creative journey that I've been on over the years (which I briefly summarise here), I'm planning to return to Taming Dreams, but as a regularly-updating story told through 3D conversations rather than as a game. READ MORE
Are women oppressed by a patriarchal society, as feminism would have us believe? Or is it women who are privileged and men who are oppressed, as those who've taken the 'red pill' claim? Here's some ramblings about all that which have brought me a kind of peace, as well as a game concept that gender relations have inspired, based around the idea that the two sexes are playing different but overlapping games with dissimilar challenges, rather than one being absolutely more or less fortunate than the other in everything. READ MORE
I've spent the last few days writing a long, long post where I go over my old art, music, and games, originally as an attempt to explain why I won't be making MARDEK IV, but I've been getting carried away. I'm wondering if it would be of any interest to anyone. READ MORE
I saw the neurosurgeon again on Wednesday, and I decided to have surgery at the start of September, in about six weeks. Here's what I want to try to achieve in that limited time... READ MORE
Based on comments on the previous post and my internal reactions to them, I've decided that I'm going to spend my time working on a sort of interactive story rather than a game! READ MORE
Since the previous post, I've completely revised most of the primary gameplay of Embracing Eternity! The new mechanics focus on exploring the subjective nature of the world, and what it's like to see from someone else's eyes. READ MORE
I intend to return to ∞ a project I started a while ago called Embracing Eternity ∞, and I've been playing around with some ideas for a 'battle' system that'd be more in line with the concepts I want to explore. While I like it conceptually, I don't think it'd work as a fun game, unfortunately. I thought it might be interesting to share anyway though. READ MORE
Over the past week or so, I've been working on the prototype for a game - my first in 3D - which will eventually be about suicide (sort of)!! Here's a version of it you can already play!!!! READ MORE
I find myself making creative things quite often as a distraction from unappealing university work and my broken mind. What I've been making recently is all over the place, but here are a few recent examples for the curious. READ MORE
I've added two more episodes/conversations/whatever to the Divine Dreams thing I mentioned in the previous post, and would again like to hear what you think! READ MORE
I've been working some more on the project I mentioned in my previous post. I've written the first two scenes, and composed music for them too! I'd be interested to hear what you make of it. READ MORE
As a break from the usual self-pitying melodrama, I'd like to write about the creative project I'm currently working on, which I've been intending to do for ages. READ MORE
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