Friday Rambles and Game Dev Update 2023-12-08

Another week, another Rambles. Only a few more of these til we hit the big ol 2024. That year felt so far away, not that long ago...

It’s been a busy month of selling things, trying to pump up my numbers before the year ends. The Tiger-chan Plushie Sell-a-thon continues. We’re on the cusp of 400 sold! That was my goal for the campaign, and I’m pretty happy that we were able to get there with a week to spare.

Above: very cool. thank you

Did you watch the The Game Awards show yesterday? Well, it does seem more like an E3 sort of thing than an awards show, but I always like that it’s a big ol’ shared experience with friends and internet people. My favorite announcement of the night: The Rise of the Golden Idol, which I was not expecting at all. You might remember me talking about The Case of the Golden Idol, for which this game is the sequel, last week. I really liked the game, so it was a nice surprise. Anyway, congrats to the winners. Endless Monday: Dreams and Deadlines is still the GOTY in my heart, though. I will admit that I’m super biased and my heart’s votes are rigged.

INDIE Live Expo went pretty well, and they talked about my game for 10 seconds on the livestream. Yeah, I stayed up till 2 AM to watch it. The English stream commentators seemed to like it. They were concerned about Monday being Endless, though. Truly, is this a horror game? In terms of sales numbers, I saw a nice little bump in sales and wishlists (especially from Japan), but not like, Autumn Sale amounts. Still, I always appreciate an excuse to discount my game and spam links to it.

Above: look, Ma, it’s me i made it

More importantly, I found a few games I wouldn’t have looked at otherwise from the event, namely:

Above: Hookah Haze

Hookah Haze: A game with a cool pixel-art aesthetic, where the player-character runs a hookah lounge and talks to customers. On the surface it feels reminiscent of the style of talky games popularized by Va11-HallA or Coffee Talk, but judging from the game description it might be closer to a dating sim where you choose to deepen your relationship with a particular character. I guess we won’t know till it’s actually available to play.

Above: Pygmalion

Pygmalion: A puzzle game in Early Access with a cool pixel-art aesthetic where you have to clear stages by removing colored blocks (called “cores”) in a grid by sliding them into other cores of the same color. I got it because it was pretty cheap at $4.99, and playing through the demo it seemed pretty complete, minus a story chapter, I think. There’s a limited number of moves per stage, but you do get unlimited undos and retries, which I appreciated. The presentation is so good - the UI and controls have a deep level of polish that I haven’t found that often in other indie games. The story (which from what I’ve seen has been very “otaku” for better or worse lol) follows the main character, a lab assistant named “P” through his new job at a mysterious robotics company, and each little vignette between puzzles is just short enough that I found the pacing of the game flowed really well. Anyway, the puzzles have been really fun so far. Plus the title screen music is bangin’.

Above: Rhythm Doctor

Rhythm Doctor: An Early Access rhythm game featuring a fun story and a cool pixel-art aesthetic. From the Steam reviews, it seems like people really love it, and as a rhythm game enjoyer it looks right down my alley. I added it to my wishlist and I’ll probably grab it when it exits Early Access.

Above: Boyhood's End

Boyhood’s End: Coming soon. I think this is an RPGMaker game with lots of fancy UI and art and graphics overlaid on top of it, with creepy horror themes and personal crises of self what makes one human or not. I like the cool pixel-art aesthetic. Hmm, am I seeing a pattern here?

Above: Inscryption

Inscryption: What’s this doing on here? Well, apparently it was featured in INDIE Live Expo (maybe previously a couple years ago?) and it was in the main event page on Steam. It was also on sale. After seeing it in my periphery for a while I decided to get it since it was 50% off. I played through it, and it’s hard to discuss without getting into spoilers, so I’ll just say overall it was a real Experience. Highly recommended, if only for the narrative (although for me the gameplay was fun, too).

Above: look at all these cool showcased games

There are a whole bunch of other games that I haven’t had a chance to really look at yet, but I recommend that you scroll through the showcased games to see if anything catches your eye.

Speaking of catching eyes, I learned while scrolling the page myself that the Steam capsule image is so, so, so, so important as the first and possibly only chance your game will have to grab someone’s attention amidst a sea of other game capsule images when it is participating in some event like this or surfaced somewhere on Steam. Well, that and a catchy title. Like “Tales From My Ass: Slice of Death.” Since I can’t change my game’s title to “Endless Monday Xtreme: Air Fryer Mayhem” I might have to spiffy up my capsule image when I release the Extra Story Update.

Above: My capsule image, which is okay, I guess, but it was really supposed to be a temporary image I used for my initial steam page launch and then I never got the time to change it lol. It was from a comic I drew like 2 years ago

Segueing into the Extra Story Update.

I’ve made a breakthrough in terms of the story I want to be telling with the Extra Story Update, which in the past two months has morphed from direct sequel (“Halloween Update”) to a series of unconnected flashbacks (“Bonus Stories Update”) to a completely alternate timeline (“Whiskey Bar”). After not really feeling any of these after building them out a bit, I finally figured out a way to combine everything into another full chapter of Endless Monday: Dreams and Deadlines, which adds additional story and fun times as well as sets up hints for future installments. I’ve written out a solid outline for the story, and set up all my Trello boards and everything! I think the last time I was at this stage it took like 2-3 months to finish the rest of the game, but now that I already have a game built, I just need to write the dialogue and draw some additional sprites. I’m hoping to finish by the end of January so I can ship off the dialogue to the localization teams and have the update ready for launch by early March. This is another “drop dead” date for me, because I will be unavailable to do gamedev stuff for a couple months after that due to prior commitments. (how mysterious. okay, i’m just traveling to see family okay. i won’t have my gamedev computer)

Above: I don’t have a cool image so here’s the Whiskey Bar title screen again, which you might see in the Extra Story Update

So now that I have a solid goal and plan, I’m hoping to work heads down on this and get it out before the deadline. Please send me energy.

Okie Dokie, I think that’s it for the week. I'll probably have more gamedev stuff next week to share.

Also, I’m going to be shutting down the stickers shop tonight because I won’t have time to pack and ship orders due to the holiday season. If you want to order something this month, you’ll want to do it now! Use code: 122023SUPPORTER15 for 15% off.

Thanks for your support, as always! I’ll see you next week!