Friday Rambles and Game Dev Update 2023-08-18 (Patreon)

it's friday ramble

I'm busy writing a lot. I wrote a lot this week. It's all writing for video game. I've officially started the real work on adding the new Epilogues Update to Endless Monday Dreasm and dEdld.

The visual novel fest is over, and the game did about as well as i had hoped. i'm also hoping that it reaches the 500 review barrier by the autumn sale, so that it can have the nice "overwhelmingly positive" rating. in the meantime, i'm working on the game, still.

Since the game came out, I've been lurking streams of people playing my game, and a pattern I've noticed is that everyone gets really stuck trying to find the third project file inspiration on the first day. Except for a few who got it immediately. Since the Epilogues update will require people having seen the True Ending of the game, I want more people to actually see the True Ending of the game, and I had a problem with the difficulty spike with that one inspiration anyway, so I nerfed the difficulty of it significantly by adding a todo list item that shows up after a certain point (where it's obvious that you won't figure it out soon) that gives you a pretty big hint on the same level as the other ones.

Above: a Live! streamer not being able to find the third inspiration. sorry.

Anyway, i think my next game will be a bit more thought through in that regard.

Above: New menu item that appears after you beat the game

The update I'm working on, the "Epilogue", will be a series of 4 stories that take place after the events of Endless mo0nday dreamdne dlddd, and just continue the story a bit. as for how important they will be for the second game, idk. because i haven't decided on the story for the second game yet. haha. i definitely know what i'm doing.

maybe i should release each story piecemeal, every other week or so, so that people have to keep playing my game and be reminded that it exists every time they open steam >:)

I spent an evening doing all the technical stuff to add the "epilogue" new game mode, and now all i have to do is finish all the writing and the art. easy. should take no time at all.

I also updated my comic since last week. 

Just some good-natured ribbing of my former field (the one where I’ll have to beg for a job again once I run out of money making video games) :-)

I had a lot of fun drawing these comics. they're probably the stupidest thing i've ever made. but i like to embrace my stupid side. that's how we got the plot of endless mondyad dremd deadline.

"embrace your stupid side. and make video games." - hcnone, 2023

The tiger-chan plushie is coming along fine, and i'm pretty happy with what it looks like now that theyve addressed my giant list of requested revisions. hopefully you'll see it soon. i'm hoping many people will buy it so i can work on my game for another month without worrying about rent and insurance and food.

"buy my stuff so i can pay for rent and insurance and food" - hcnone, 2023

i'm so tired. my real life has been so tiring lately. how am i supposed to make game. 

you'll notice i stopped caring about capitalization or punctuation or properly formatted sentences. this is because after spending a bunch of time writing for game, i also wrote a very long EM Weekly Newsletter post that i ended up not sending because i want to have something to sell first. that means i need to make a bunch of stickers. i haven't done that yet. i'm going to make new stickers. but anyway, we're all cool here, and i've written worse so you're used to it by now, right?

Above: Spoilers, kini is in the epilogue. so is penny

i've also noticed that my game writing (for epilogues update) has a slightly gloomy undertone, like the person writing it is tired and cranky. well, maybe it's just me reading it back in a slightly gloomy undertone. well, all artists evolve with their work, i suppose.

thank you for reading and supporting and stuff. i hope i'll have lots of good news next week about how i'm all finished with the epilogues update, because i had a burst of productivity and inspiration all of a sudden. see you next week!