Playing a lot of games (Patreon)

Hello! 

At this point I just love to hate January. It's so dingy and wet and cold, I can't wait for it to be over. I've been sleepy and reflective, but I am making meaningful progress on Lethal Company.

This is a low phase

I remember working on the third and final chapter of Silent Dark, desperate to avoid leaving the game without its last chapter and disappointing people, and how grueling that was to finish. At the time Silent Dark was unimaginably huge for me, and I was pushing myself up to my absolute limit. I made sacrifices just to inch the game past the finish line, and I remember feeling as if I was physically suffering. 

Literally like this

I've thought a lot about what the limiting factor is there, what makes working on the project feel like pushing an old wagon as its wheels dig into the mud. I think the death knell is when I begin to feel like I've seen through all the challenges this project had to offer me and achieved all its goals. So one of the ways to keep a project "alive" is accepting new challenges and goals, which I tend to subconsciously push aside in an effort to finish things up and tie it all in a neat bow. Doing this requires expanding the scope of your project, which feels destructive when you thought you had it all figured out. This might be bad advice for you, but my projects tend to start very small and then grow, and I haven't been hit by scope creep quite as much.

It feels like Lethal Company has lived three different lives. I hope we will see another huge explosion of progress on Lethal Company this year. (Summer tends to be a good time for me.) But if so, I'm not taking it for granted. That will probably be the home stretch. Then again, maybe I'm wrong, because so many times Lethal Company has revved up again when I almost thought it was reaching the end of its course.

What progress?

For Version 47 I began some interior map additions (shown up above), which started strong with this weird tile on the right called Diagonal. (The other tile hasn't been finished.) The red lines represent where a wall can be placed instead of a connecting doorway; since there can be anywhere from 2 to 7 connections from this tile and many possible combinations of walls and doorways, it feels completely different to walk through than it does to look at the blueprint. I was amazed at how well it seems to work. This tile really happened out of luck. But it helps that I have learned to allow as many possible connections to a tile as possible and to make the connections different types (like hallways and door frames). The result is that some people thought I added 6 or 7 new hallway types into the game!!

I also did some testing of the weekly challenge moon feature. At first they were set up so you could only make one attempt at all. Then I made it so you can do more attempts, but those attempts would not overwrite your rank. Then I realized it could be really fun to retry the same challenge over and over, so I made it so you can overwrite your rank as an encouragement. I realized this when I tested a challenge moon with my friends and we happily tried it at least six times over. But whether challenge moons are really fun or not will depend on the week, so hopefully we get good luck.

A couple of days ago I rigged and textured a new enemy for Version 50. The experience for players in endgame is going to change dramatically with this update. Over the past week I have dreamed up an ambitious vision for Version 50. I have plenty of good concept art to show, some of which is already in the game. But it will have to wait for next time.

Playing stuff!

I've been playing lots of games. Let's go through them and my brief thoughts.

* I tried Teardown. I love the physics, but I really just wish that exact engine and visuals could be used for something else like a PVP or a worthy Minecraft successor. I don't like Teardown's gameplay.

* I played Homebody. This game actually surprised me with its quality. The puzzles and world were genuinely fun to unravel, and the story started to interest me in the middle portion. Then the ending fell flat in my opinion, and the monster never scared me after the first fifteen minutes. But the time loop Resident Evil gameplay made it worth it. At its peak it reminded me of Signalis, which is a good thing. But I think Signalis will continue to stick in my mind rather than this game.

* I played Home Safety Hotline. If literally no other game comes out in 2024, this will be my favorite game of the year.

• Spoilers for the game: Recently I was thinking about the travel brochure video in which the person recording brings an iron sword and unsheathes it in a cave as something roars. I was thinking about why it's not a gun or something. Then I realized it's because it's all a fairy tale. Maybe the monster living in the cave is literally a dragon. The idea of some tourist expecting to take an easy, fenced, well-paved hike which actually takes them up a mountain to fight a dragon--that is hilarious but also meaningful. I feel like there's a strong theme in this game of modern people wanting safety and security above all else, despite reality allowing us no guarantee. (But in the moment it was just funny.)
• Also this game had to be inspired by Look Around You

* I played BOKURA with a friend. This game is an obvious example of multiplayer games giving a different experience for each player. It must have been a nightmare to test and playtest. The story actively bored me, but the gameplay was surprisingly fun (despite the awkwardly slow walking speed) and sometimes reminded me of Abe's Odyssey for some reason. 

* I went back in time once again and thought a lot about the Myst games and especially Riven, and I watched a quick playthrough of it. I was not prepared to fully enjoy this game when I played it maybe seven years ago, and I feel like most people aren't sadly. This game is a case study for how to integrate your game's world into your puzzles in a way that makes it feel like both are the same thing. It's also a great example of a sequel growing into a more mature version of the first game (unlike Myst 3 which is more of an ordinary sequel in design). I hope I'll get another chance to play a puzzle game that challenges me like Riven did, with notebook paper required and all. I also never stop thinking about how I might make a sequel for The Upturned that transcends the original game and makes it look small, like Riven did for Myst or Portal 2 did for Portal 1.