Remy's September Newsletter - 🍬⛵🐄👨‍🌾📉👢 (Patreon)

Hi everyone!

This month again I worked a bunch on SUGAR, and I did a gamejam with Pico-8!!

SUGAR development is going slower than I'd want, but then in truth I'd want it to be done instantly, so it makes sense I feel that way.

Still, this month I've mostly worked through the different gfx subsystems, and a few minor other subsystems. As I explained in the last newsletter, I'm looking at the existing API and making it tighter and better, and I'm also refactoring a lot of the code! So it's a lot of work, and interestingly, it's both a lot of programming work and a lot of design work. So really it's no wonder it's a slow process.

At this point I'm almost done with the gfx subsystems. After that, the biggest thing to do is the input subsystem which I've already thought about a bit, and it's going to be a lot of refactoring as well. But then after that it's only a few other subsystems to do, which should be pretty quick, and then I'll be done with this big development step!

I'm hoping to get this all done during october! No promise of course, but if I do get there, I should also be able to make a little thing with SUGAR and put it here on Patreon!

After all this, my next priorities are:

• Modifying the Lua interpreter to add new operators like in Pico-8
• Start documenting the new SUGAR API
• Rethinking the audio system, to make it more funky and interesting
• Adding a map system
• Making helpers: a few viewers/editors you can open and close at will as new windows while you're making a game with SUGAR.

I'm really excited about all of this and it's taking a lot of patience from me to work through it all, because honestly I just want to be at the point where I use SUGAR to make cool stuff. But still it is very interesting and gratifying work for me, so I feel ok!

This month I participated in Alakajam! A jam that has its own (very well made) website, with an organization similar to that of Ludum Dare, except better organized. But I didn't do this one from the comfort of my home, instead I went to join Benjamin Soule, one of the earliest Pico-8 gamedevs, where he lives, about an hour's drive from where I live, and I did the jam there along with Benjamin and two amateur gamedevs!

For its 10th edition, the Alakajam had not one but three themes! We had the liberty to either go for just one of the themes, or all three of them.

The themes were: Maps, Chaos, and Ships.

I tried to go for all three of them! With chaos in the mix, I knew I wanted to use procedural generation quite heavily, and the combination of maps and ships pointed straight to cartography in my mind.

So, a generated archipelage that you have to explore to draw a map of, and the map completion would be the goal of the game. But, you're not alone. Tying back into the 'chaos' theme, other explorers just like you are also roaming the islands randomly, keeping their own map of what they've explored.

But the goal isn't to fight them, or to neutralize them, I wanted to move away from this. Instead I wanted to have a sort of cooperation mechanic, where you and the other explorers would help each other. From there came two things: randomly generated faces for the other explorers, and haggling with found items for the other explorers to share their map with you!

In the end, I didn't get the time to actually make a proper goal that you have to complete, with a timer and a gameover screen, which is what I was intending at first. I managed my time... chaotically, and I had to make things simpler so that I could finish the game and put it online before the jam ended. So instead, you simply have your map percentage displayed at the top of the screen as an incentive to continue playing and that's it, you can just stop playing whenever you want to. And I'm actually fine with this, in the end I don't feel like a gameover would add much to this game, so I don't think this is a problem at all.

My biggest regret is not to have had the time to make sound effects. Sound can really make a game feel much more alive, and I just didn't get the time to add any at all. I also wished I could've tested some features more, and made the titlescreen more interesting... (I made the current titlescreen in about 10 minutes, just before the jam ended) And so after the jam I started working on a post-jam version!

A post-jam which I haven't finished yet, but I'm getting close to it. I've had to rewrite some of the code to save Pico-8 tokens, and I've been going back and forth on an additional feature I want to add to the game but which I've been undecided about how to do. Plus, my time is split between that and SUGAR at the moment.

I've renamed the game to Explorers, plural, because I felt this made a lot more sense since I wanted a big focus of the game to be the cooperation with other explorers. The new title also doesn't make you think of Internet Explorer or Windows Explorer as much.

While I finish this post-jam version, you can still play Explorer on the Pico-8 BBS! It's a little buggy but it plays well enough!

Also, the results just came in yesterday as I write this, and the game ended up 8th of the 18 ranked participants to the jam, with a 3rd place in the graphics category. Pretty cool, especially considering this was my first completed jam in a lonnnng time!

Also do check out Benjamin's entry, it ranked 1st!!

I've also been doing some more paid work for Castle! As I've mentionned in the last newsletters, they are working on a mobile platform where you can play and make games, with visual scripting! (I was told the app would be coming to the Android Play Store soon)

I made two games on the platform this month:

• Abduct: you control an UFO and your goal is to abduct cows without getting hit by on-going arrow fire. I think this game is the only one on the platform that plays in landscape mode, instead of portrait mode which is rather what the app is designed for.
• Remy's Jeweler Workshop: you can make appear gems and perls, and you string them on a necklace. I would have put goals where you'd have to use some gems rather than others, but the visual scripting is too limited for that at the moment, so I went with a relaxed creative experience instead.

You will be able to play these games from my profile on the app once it goes public, soon-ish!

That's all the work stuff for this month! My priorities are finishing up Explorers to finally release it, and continuing work on SUGAR so that I can make things with it.

Let's talk about video games not made by me now!

I've been playing Stardew Valley with my partner. It is a game I've played by myself before and I had found the experience very flawed and frustrating. However, playing it in a more relaxed manner with my partner has proved much more enjoyable, although we still both get frustrated with the game now and then. Let me explain.

This game has three very limiting mechanics that will be very intrusive for many decisions:

- In-game time, which limits your days to 14 real-life minutes, after which you will pass out and lose very precious in-game currency if you don't get back to your bed. On top of that, many important elements of the game are dependant on this daily timer, with shops being open only for a certain part of the day for example. Also worth noting that you don't move very fast in the game, and the map is kinda big, and you have to walk to the other extremeties of it, from and back to your house, for pretty mundane activities, and yes it's slow and takes in-game time, and yes it's anxiety-inducing.

- Your energy, which you consume when doing tasks. This one I can actually appreciate as a design decision because it sort of nudges you into doing both some things that consume energy and some that don't within your day, so as to vary your activity. However, because of the afore-mentioned in-game time, and also of the undermentionned mechanic, you are actually very likely to want to spend your days integrally to do one or another thing. Which will lead to in-game exhaustion, which you can avoid with items that you'd probably rather keep and sell, because here's the next limiting mechanic...

- MONEY. For quite a few hours, from the start of the game, you are poor. And just like in real life, poor people cannot afford fun things. They have to work, they have to do repetitive tasks and abstain from spending for unimportant things in order to finally get rich and have the luxury of enjoying themselves. I may be exagerating but money in this game really is very limiting!! Here's one very telling example: when you start the game, you have just 12 inventory spaces. That is annoyingly little, but luckily you can get 12 more and be less annoyed, for 2000 coins, and then you can again get 12 more for 10000 coins. But my problem is that there's no point in limiting the player's inventory besides making them want to buy the upgrade. And because of this, the upgrade doesn't even feel like a positive reward, it's just less annoyance.

And so here's the thing: my biggest and most fundamental issue with Stardew Valley is that its gameplay is very much centered on and limited by its capitalist mechanics, while a part of the very premise of the game is centered on this big bad capitalist corporation that wants to industrialize everything. It feels completely contradictory to me!

And I would like to say that "at least the game will not have you exploit other people for profit" but even that wouldn't be true, as one of the game's rarer objects is a tiny hut you can place in your farm, from which little beings will come out and help you harvest, without asking for anything in exchange.

It really disappoints me that a game which is supposedly about having a relaxed experience as a rural farmer is so plagued with the ideas of profit and productivity to the point of making it a pretty miserable experience if that's not what you were expecting. At least you can say that this is pretty close to the truth, in France at least, that farmers are in fact miserable and very much live under the pressure of economics. But damn it, can we not have nice things? Can we not have a positive experience with a positive message??

Anyway... I'll stop the ranting there. Obviously the game isn't all bad, it is quite popular after all. Overall the game is very cute, the different activities you can do are not always super well designed in my opinion, but they do make up a nice variety of gameplay. And the money-centered gameplay does serve a pretty satisfying progression line in the end.

I guess I'll just have to make my own farming game in a way that satisfies the potential I see in such a game! (that's what I want Gar's Den 2 to be when I finally get to making it)

On a more positive note, I've also been playing the recently released Going Under, and I'm loving it!

The graphics are really pretty and unique, the gameplay works well, the sound effects and tracks are awesome, and the narrative is, importantly, very critical of start-up culture! And you know I'm going to be all over that!

You play as an unpaid intern, supposed to work in marketing, and you get sent to beat up monsters in the underground, but the monsters are the remnants of start-ups which have... gone under.

It's funny and super clever. The mechanics really make sense with the central critic of tech start-ups. You can tell a lot of the dialogues and other narrative elements are inspired by real-life observations and stories, and really makes the game feel super relevant to our time. I love it, I think there's a lot of inspiration to take from it.

The game is essentially an action roguelite, where you go into randomly-generated dungeons, beat up enemies, get random upgrades, and beat the boss of the dungeon, or lose trying. It plays very well into the role of the exploited intern.

It's pretty rare to see a roguelite in this graphic style too, with very stylized 3D, but maybe with good reason. This style definitely makes the game less easy to parse as things happen in a fast-paced action game. I feel like they have tried to balance this by making the game fairly generous and easy... At least in the first half of the game, the half that I just finished. Where I am currently, there is a pretty big difficulty spike. I can't say too much about it since I have not played since getting there, but I definitely plan to.

Still the gameplay feels very satisfying, and the colorful graphics, while sometimes confusing, make for a really fun experience which is great!

Even though I haven't finished it yet, I can only recommend this game. It actually lives up to what I want to see more in games: it's contemporary, meaningful, and very solid by usual game standards.

Some music recommendation now!

Fancy's Kings of the World is a loud and queer glam-rock album, with such strong high-energy kickers like Inside of You (explicit) and What's Your Name Again. I might not have finished my Alakajam game without the energy boost this album gave me towards the end.

I've written about Look Mum No Computer in the June newsletter already, the mad tinkerer musician with a very unique style. Well he's released a new album, These Songs Are Obsolete, and I do not agree with that album title! A lot of the tracks on there point to just how pre-apocalyptic our world is right now, and I think that makes it important and very relatable music. The message also fits extremely well with the style of the music, which is great!

And that's it for this month! I hope you found this interesting and maybe even inspiring!

As usual, thank you all so much for your coninued support! I cannot wait to get SUGAR to a useable state so that I can make things with it and give those to you!

Have a very nice month of October!

Take care!

Rémy🍬