2023

Oh, hello, I didn't see you there! Pull up a chair and I'll pour you a glass of Khamsin red wine or giant snail milk.

...

You're not thirsty, then? All the more for me.

So I've been struggling a bit for the past few years, but I'm trying to get back into the swing of Making Things, at least as much as the Universe will let me. What have I been trying to make? Well, there's a few things that are on the boil:

Static Choice-Based Thing

I'm excited to have submitted a piece to the zine Endure, My Heart: A Video Game Journey. It's a CYOA-style story with 40+ short passages and some very light inventory/note taking. There's one other choice-based piece being submitted, as well as some cool art and fun short stories.

The zine's being developed at a stress-free pace, but you might be able to find out more come (Northern Hemisphere) summer.

Small Parser-Based Thing

I've more or less finished a small parser game in Linus Åkesson's Dialog language. It's pretty weird and probably the least accessible interactive fiction I've made since Rogue of the Multiverse. I'll probably be trying to pass this in front of some other people soon-ish, although life keeps getting in the way.

As for Dialog: do I feel confident writing in it? No. Do I like that it makes small game files and doesn't insert extra linebreaks everywhere (unlike certain other IF languages)? Yeah, I would say so.

Secret New Thing

Throughout 2021 I worked on a text game of sorts in vanilla JavaScript. I completed the design and writing, but when the thing itself neared completion I decided that the basic mode of interaction was just not very good.

This project languished on my hard drive until this year, when I found myself looking at everything I did for it and feeling a bit sad about it. And then I got the idea to try reimplementing it in Ren'py. So far I have nothing to show for this, but once I get my parser game out of the door, I'm eager to get started.

 

Well, that's everything.

"Catch you on the flip side, dudemeisters."