Friday Rambles and Gamedev Update 2024-02-16

It's the Friday Rambles for February 16, 2024. And so on and so forth.

Blah blah blah.

Steam Next Fest is going on, apparently. I didn't sign up for it because I didn't have any Next Game to Fest. But there are a lot of cool games with demos available right now, so go check it out. I didn't have time to really browse around and try everything, but I heard good things about Balatro on the ol' social media timeline, so I took a look at that, because I do love a good roguelike deckbuilder, as everyone knows.

Above: I won the demo

Basically it's a roguelike deckbuilder, But With Poker. Your Jokers are the gear you pick up that dictate what kind of deck and synergies you're gonna run, and you can buy packs of consumable cards that buff/change the cards in your deck or level up the different categories of hands you can play (pair, 4-of-a-kind, flush, full house etc), which improves the score multiplier of the hand. Anyway, whatever, the demo's free, go play it. 

The goal is to defeat a certain number of "boss" blinds, but there's not really any story or narrative going on, which is I guess the only kind of possibly disappointing thing about it (who knows, there might be some kind of Inscryption-like thing that happens in the full version idk), but then again, I'm also not opposed to just pure gameplay without any story-based distractions.

It did scratch the roguelike deckbuilder itch though, and I'm kinda inspired again to prototype that Endless Monday typing game roguelike deckbuilder I keep talking about (it's not a joke I'm really gonna do it some day)

As far as gamedev stuff goes, it was all Endless Monday: Dreams and Deadlines Localization Update, all the time, baby. KR is all done with all final feedback items resolved, PTBR is all done pending final feedback. Finishing up the remaining languages and if everything goes well, they'll be ready for release by the end of the month so I can push it out at least a week before the Steam Spring Sale. Well, here's hoping.

I also (while staring into space and daydreaming) thought a bit about what kind of story I'd want to tell for the sequel and I kinda just want to do something fun and fantasylike, instead of work things and topical subjects that make me sad to think about. But I feel like that's kind of risky as far as keeping my audience goes. Maybe I'll put out some feelers with some comics, or start tiptoeing in that direction through the extra bonus chapter.

Ugh. Anyway

I also did some packing for the move next month. ...And that's about it, I guess. Life's busy, and not all that interesting. Sorry. 

To close, here's a collection of localized doors.

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