Friday Rambles 2025-11-21

It's the third Friday Ramble of November. Let's go.

Cool New Bag Stuff

I have recovered from my seasonal upper respiratory infection, and was able to take my cool new bag outside for a walk. I walk to the post office whenever I have orders to ship, and it's been nice having a cool new bag for carrying them. Unfortunately it also rained most days of the week so I couldn't take my cool new bag out as much as I would have liked. Oh well...

Not Game Dev Stuff

A pleasant surprise this week was that Hololive-EN vtuber Ouro Kronii finished playing Endless Monday: Dreams and Deadlines. Cool!

There wasn't that much game left, so after she finished she read super chats which is apparently a thing vtubers do, for the rest of the stream to the soothing bgm of Chance Thrash's soundtrack.

Anyway, I'm happy she played and finished my game and I sure hope everyone who liked the game buys the sequel! Whenever that's out. Or buys my cool new merch! Whenever that's out.

Honestly I still get a teensy bit nervous when my game's about to be played in front of thousands of people. I mean... it's only thousands of people looking at the thing you made and reacting to it in real time. Mostly because I'm afraid the game might glitch out or crash or something. But it didn't, whew. Put enough duct tape on your code, and it's solid as a rock, as they say.

Game Dev Stuff

Some game dev did actually happen this week. Mostly just writing a bunch of dialogue and outlines and stuff. I scripted some of the intro, but it keeps evolving and changing. I did a bunch of outlining of various routes and scenes, but I'm not 100% sure on how it will all be arranged, yet. Still, I would say I made more story progress than I have in a long time.

I'm trying to get the story outline mostly set in stone by the end of the year, with like most of the core dialogue also done, and all the ancillary stuff done in the first month or so of the new year. Once the plot's defined, writing the dialogue itself is the fun part (and generally doesn't take that long). As for the final art I can do that while the localization process happens. Working in parallel, baby.

I can't say I'm not feeling a certain amount of pressure about living up to expectations set by the first game, but at this point, I'm thinking like... let's just get something out and get the sophomore slump out of the way. The only way I'm going to be supporting myself doing this long term is by continuing to release new stories at a regular cadence, since it's not like I can (or want to) spend 5 years making a magnum opus or whatever. I think where I want to be is doing smaller games that sell less copies but appeal to a core audience who will always want to play every game in the series. That way I can have fun making the things I want to make, and the players can have fun playing the things they want to play, and I don't have to worry about getting a huge amount of sales just to break even.

Anyway. Here are some temp assets with some dialogue I wrote for various scenes.

I've been reading Children of Dune before bed, and have been thoroughly engrossed in the story. Spoiling myself for Denis Villeneuve's Dune: Part 4?

I feel a sort of resignation about how my work will never approach the grand scale or deep drama as the genre-redefining great works, but I'm glad that I can experience it anyway.

I'm not wanting to redefine any genres here with my own work. I'm happy just being sort of okay at my own thing, which is making funny stories about cute anime women making stupid faces, complaining about their jobs, and screaming a lot. And if other people find it interesting enough to want to play a game I made about that stuff, then that's all that matters, I say, totally not coping at all.

Of course, I'll continue to hopefully improve and evolve in my own way with each new entry in the Endless Monday Cinematic Gameplay Universe. Thank you for reading my journal.

The End

At this rate, maybe next week I'll have a solid idea of what the main plot and objectives will be! I'll probably have drawn more temp assets and written a lot more dialogue. And next Friday Ramble I will be full of turkey and stuffing and cranberries. If you're in the States, I hope you can have a good Thanksgiving holiday as well.

Thanks for your support, as always! See you next week.