Remy's November Newsletter - 🏰👩‍🏫⛵🏝🗿🎵 (Patreon)

Hi everyone!

My month of October was fairly intense, with working on SUGAR and getting DISCTOP done with it. I intended to keep on working on SUGAR during November, but it turned out I was pretty much exhausted. So instead, I made a handful of small Castle games, and then spent a week teaching Pico-8 and Lua to a class of game-makers in the making! And I also worked a bit on Explorers and, more importantly made plans for it!

https://youtu.be/eIJjnOLM47E [3 minutes: a round of the games I made on Castle in November]

I made quite a few different things on the Castle app this month! The app received some game-changing updates with a new 'joystick' control system, a camera system, and more recently the ability to use variables and random numbers as parameters for objects!

It's a lot of fun!

I don't really have much I want to write about these. I'm mostly testing out the new features and trying to think of new things that can be done in the app. I think the app is now at a point where the limitations of the game engine are more fun than frustrating to work with, so it's pretty nice!

If you are interested, you should definitely check out Castle, you'll be able to play my games and make your own!

Last year, a person I had met at IndieCade Europe gave me the opprtunity to come to a school and teach Pico-8 and Lua to a class of game-makers during two days. It was a super interesting and fun experience, but also I really wanted to give the students the opportunity to make something of their own during the class, and so two days was pretty tight.

This person had me come back just last week to teach Pico-8 to a new group of students, during five days!

Of course, we are still in the middle of a pandemic, and so I did class from my computer in my home, which actually was great for me because I now live super far away from the school I was doing this for.

And it went... ok? Most of these students do not like code. Most of them are more interested in doing animations and other visual stuff from what I gathered. So with the distanced situation, it was really hard to have them focus on 3 days learning Lua followed by 2 days of solo creation. In the end, only a handful of them managed to make something original, while the rest... used an online tutorial to make their solo creation.

That was pretty disappointing, but at least I learned that my method was not the right one for this situation. We had a lot to cover before they could make something, so I did a lot of theory, explained a lot of things and then let them have a go at it, then explained a lot of things again, and then let them have the two days of creation while helping them out one by one throughout the two days.

And I think it was just too late when it dawned on me that these students just didn't know how to use code. I was told they had some little experience with Unity and Processing, but I really should have gone from the ground up. A lot of them didn't understand that the code executes linearily, line by line, a lot were confused with the very concept of variables, and they just had no idea how to turn their ideas into games. Of course, you slap the on-going lockdown on top of that and the result is... not easy to work with.

But the next time I'm doing this, it will be 75% exercises all the way, to make sure that I have everyone's focus, and to make everyone use what they learn instantly so that it sticks. My contact at the school actually ants me to come back later in the (school-)year so I should be able to test out the formula soon enough! I'll let you know how it goes!

https://youtu.be/kaRaJbiqylk [45 sec: the official teaser/trailer for Explorers]

I originally made this game back in September for the Alakajam, and after that I started working on a post-jam version, with a lot of bug fixing, some new things to see while exploring, and a bunch of procgen sound implementations!

It was a little difficult for me to draw the line of where the post-jam version should stop, but Pico-8's code constraints helped me with that.

But as I was also working on many other things in the meantime, getting it done did take me all this time. But it's done now. Or, you know, I'll probably drop into the code and try to tweak things until the very moment I release it. But it is finished and fully playable.

But it's not released yet! Because I am doing the thing I said I would do last month!

I actually got to talk with Lisa (@silversober) whose speciality is marketing and she gave me a lot of advice for this project, and she really got me motivated to do it, and to do it well.

So, the release will happen on December 11th! The complete version will be playable for free on Pico-8 and on the Pico-8 BBS, and there will be a Deluxe version on itch.io, which will include standalone executables for the game, an Explorers-themed desktop pet, and some digital wallpapers!

And there is a trailer! And the game's itch page is up already!

I have to admit that everything is not quite ready for the release just yet, but it's ok, I still have an entire week to get it all done! Let's say it's part of the fun!

As you can imagine, this is both very exciting and terrifying at the same time. Thankfully, the support I got on releasing the trailer was already very uplifting, so I'm feeling confident! (or trying to)

Some music now! And it's going to be another round of frenchies!

Parrad released a new EP! The hiphop-influenced electro duo had already blown my mind last year with their previous EP, and especially with its eponymous single So Cold. And this time is no different, the front track on the EP Hurricane is an absolute killer. Must listen.

UTO is a very recent discovery for me. Another electro duo, this time more in the floaty/psychedelic vibes. My favorite track from them is That Itch, with its hypnotic chords, but I also recommend listening to Myd's remix of their song The Beast.

I've actually been rediscovering the french indie pop scene these last few weeks and I've been really amazed with some of the stuff I found. And so here's a recent single from La Femme: Cool Colorado. The lyrics are in french but I don't think the language barrier will be much of a problem to appreciate the track.

And that's pretty much it for this month! I didn't play too much videogames this month, apart from some more Age of Empires 2. Devolver Digital actually offered me its whole game collection as reward for DISCTOP in the Disc Room Game Jam, and I have been testing out a few of their titles I hadn't already tried, but I can't say I've spent enough time on any of them to actually write about it.

Obviously, half of my month of December is to be eaten up by the completion and release of Explorers Complete & Deluxe editions. After that, I'm not sure what I'll be doing exactly. Sugar is an obvious choice I guess, but also it might be a good time to step back and simply make plans, before the new year starts.

You'll know how it all goes down in the next newsletter!

As always, thank you so very much for the continued support!

Have a very nice month of December and some very nice holidays!

Take care!

Rémy 🍬