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
I've been unable to work for the past few days due to dogsitting, though I've been unusually social via phone calls with friends. Also: canine social networking, R-CPD as a possible explanation for my lifelong inability to burp and recent chest pain, an intriguing game called Cocoon, a film called Marcel the Shell with Shoes On, and Patreon porn profits. READ MORE
I’ve actually done a lot of work on Dreamons this week, gasp! Though instead of going into detail about that, here's some rambling about popular creations being most obsessively consumed by the young and impressionable. Also, did you know there's a mobile JRPG made by some of the creators of Chrono Trigger? Plus a brief bit about the loneliness epidemic. READ MORE
I spent this week trying to tackle some things I'd been avoiding, including posting my music on YouTube, which I've finally started doing after talking about that for years!! I also spent a lot of time both on and waiting for phone calls. READ MORE
This week, I've seen the light at the end of the long tunnel I've been frustratingly stuck in for the past several weeks, and have been preparing to face the promotion stuff I've been avoiding. READ MORE
I announced the start of the third alpha test of Atonal Dreams on Monday... but so far only one person has provided feedback. It's discouraging, but I blame myself! READ MORE
Typically, RPG spells create flashy particle effects when used, and I've been putting off adding proper ones to the skills in Atonal Dreams. So I finally got around to that this week! READ MORE
Gasp! I'm ready to start the next Atonal Dreams alpha test next week! Also I've maybe revised Alora Fane's logo and cosmology a bit? And a brief look at another 'solo' dev's Kickstarter, which evoked very mixed feelings in me... 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
I turned 34 today. I've been assuming I'd be writing a moody post reflecting on how my life's hardly where I expected it to be at this unpleasantly ancient age, but I didn't expect I'd be talking about the threat of nuclear war! What a gift all THAT news has been!! READ MORE
A long one this week! I've been thinking I should trim out some vestigial features to focus more on the monster-skills mechanic, plus some replies to things people said in comments on last week's post (since I can't reply to them all individually!). READ MORE
I want to talk a bit about money again: how much I'm earning each month, and how the amount that other indie games raise on Kickstarter does convince me to give that a go. READ MORE
I've set myself the goal to finish off preparing the Steam page for Atonal Dreams today, but uncertainty's quite a barrier again so I'm writing a bit about it! READ MORE
I've started putting Atonal Dreams on Steam so then I can start accumulating wishlists and run an alpha test before moving forward, but it's tough knowing how to present it, especially without feedback... READ MORE
A bunch of stuff got in the way this week, but I'm probably ready to start the alpha test phase of Atonal Dreams. Here's what I need to do next week to get to that point. READ MORE
I was hoping to have Atonal Dreams ready for some kind of alpha test by the end of this week, but frustratingly that's not happened yet because there's so much to do! Also, this week's Music Album contains music from Deliverance (and Fig Hunter and some old stuff)!!!1 READ MORE
I've mostly been doing cleanup/tweaks this week, polishing, trying to get the game to a point where I can show the early section to some alpha testers, but everything takes a long time! While tidying up some gameplay mechanics, I made a change to how the 'arousal' stat works, which I want to talk about here. Also, another music album! READ MORE
I saw this video the other day, in which a just-starting indie dev interviews another who claims to be earning six figures a year from what started as solo games dev, and felt it was worth a post of its own! READ MORE
2021's got off to a decent start, productivity-wise! I composed three pieces of music for Atonal Dreams! I've also added an additional album of my old music to the Bandcamp page I set up recently, which is something I intend to make a weekly habit of. READ MORE
I should play more indie games, so I've decided to try a new one each week! This week, I played ∞ Timelie ∞, an interesting time-based stealth puzzle with a mechanic based around manipulating a media-player-like timeline to redo the past or glimpse the future. I've never played anything like it before, and was quite impressed by how well it worked and how intuitive it felt to play! READ MORE
Did you know that Toby Fox composed a music track for Pokemon Sword & Shield? Because I didn't, and when I found out, I felt so weirdly envious about it! But why?? READ MORE
After putting it off for years, I finally played an obscure game called UNDERTALE that you've probably never heard of. Here's my 13,000 word dissertation about that experience. I hope I get an A. That is not the grade I would use to describe my personal experience of this game. (I'm assuming everyone and their little annoying dog have already played it and/or are intimately familiar with it, so this is full of spoilers.) READ MORE
I've spent the past couple of weeks looking into what the most sensible next steps might be, but it's still annoyingly unclear. Here's what I'm going to do next anyway, though. READ MORE
My intention today was to read a bunch of articles about how and when I should release a demo. I ended up getting through a single r/gamedev post-mortem and some of the comments before running out of steam! READ MORE
I started this post wondering how best to build my Twitter audience so as to help my game's sales, but I've come out feeling that the best use of Twitter is to network with other creators rather than to appeal to potential customers. READ MORE
Here's a look at some sales stats for my games so far, as well as a couple of articles about the financial suicide of trying to make a living from indie games!! READ MORE
I don't know enough about marketing an indie game, so Atonal Dreams is unlikely to succeed financially unless I learn more. I've written out a list of questions I don't know the answers to, which I'll spend the next week or two researching. Seems more directed than just fumbling around watching videos in the general area! READ MORE
Have you ever heard of a game called Among Us? Probably not. It's really obscure. I mean, it only has 104,597 reviews on Steam. I feel sorry for the developers, honestly. READ MORE
I've been adding some final features and tweaks to Atonal Dreams' battle system, with the intention of having something playable that I can show off to get some opinions about before proceeding. I'm not actually sure where to release that, though; I've seen a few conflicting things! READ MORE
I'm really close now to the point where I can release a playable demo of Atonal Dreams... which should be exciting, but I've had a lot of days recently - today included - where I struggle to get to work due to worries about the waning interest in this blog and - presumably by extension - the game. READ MORE
Here's an interesting video by a dev who's been working on the same game (sort of) for five years (do you think I'm slow??), who gets a lot of attention on his well-made Youtube videos, though surprisingly that doesn't seem to translate to Twitter followers, which makes me wonder how well attention on any social media translates to actual sales in the end. READ MORE
I'm depressed and unmotivated. Again!! However, it's interesting seeing how much actually has changed for the better since another miserable post 3 months ago... READ MORE
I don't follow anyone on Twitter, but I should start following some other indie devs so I feel less alone in walking this path! Any suggestions? READ MORE
I'm doing research into how to make money from indie games! Here's a loooong look (a big chunk of which is quotes) at a couple of postmortems which help shed light on where money can come from, and how similar indie devs' stories often are. READ MORE
Yesterday's panic and despair transformed to creative excitement overnight, though I'm still not sure what to do next, if Divine Dreams as planned might not be financially viable. Here are some thoughts about some potential 'short' projects I could maybe release by the end of the year. READ MORE
I love my ideas for Divine Dreams, but making enough money from them is such a daunting prospect that maybe I should rethink what I'm trying to do. READ MORE
Here's another post about my continuing journey into the unfamiliar territory I need to explore if I'm to make anything of this games thing! In this one, I mainly talk about stuff from the comments on the last post. READ MORE
I've looked at a few other indie developers' Patreons to get ideas about how to structure mine. There have been disheartening things, some hopeful things; it's been a journey! READ MORE
I need to release Sindrel Song on Steam, and I'll be devoting this week to that exclusively rather than getting distracted with MARDEK or Belief or whatever like I have for the past few weeks. Since I don't have anyone to talk with during the process, but it helps to do so, I'm writing out my thoughts and observations in this post. Specifically, here are some observations and thoughts about a Reddit thread where an indie developer announced the completion of their new game... READ MORE
I've just been naively assuming that Sindrel Song will do okay without too much promotional effort on my part. I very much doubt that it'll make millions!!, but I thought $10k+ would just 'sort of happen somehow'. That if the game were out there, thousands of people would notice and buy it. I've been avoiding actually doing research about promotion and marketing though because it's stressful and unfamiliar to even think about, but now that release is upon me (or delayed, if anything), I've been looking into it and... well, experiencing the anxiety I'd been avoiding it to prevent. I'm planning to do more research and to keep updating this post with everything I learn, even if nobody reads it and it's all for my benefit! It'll be useful to have it all in one place. READ MORE
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