Friday Rambles 2026-01-16

Good afternoon, Fridaynauts. I hope your new year is going well. A really busy week, but I will still always write the Friday Rambles for you, my dear patron of the arts.

Not Game Dev Stuff

I attempted to draw some of the 100 OCs I promised I'd draw, but it took a long time and I had other things to do, so I posted this Medibang screenshot on Bluesky to kinda let people know I'm making an honest effort and didn't forget about the whole thing, and I'm not a dirty liar who just wanted a lot of replies on a post for "engagement" or whatever.

surprisingly difficult. i'm so rusty and old

This should buy me some time. I'll do it eventually because I have principles. Not any time soon though lol

Game Dev Stuff

Before we get to the big news... Endless Monday: Dreams and Deadlines is in a Humble Bundle!

Look, Gary. There I am. Right next to the famously visual novel, Gal Gun Returns.

This is the thing that came up last week I was talking about. Pretty darn impressive turnaround, honestly. Maybe some other game dropped out at the last minute and I was the fallback. Regardless, I think this is a really good way to get my game in front of a new audience of people who haven't heard of Endless Monday, which judging by discussions online, nobody who is getting this bundle has. Plus get some pocket change dropped from Needy Streamer Overdose's table. Not to mention raising money for charity. Win Win Win!

Of course, this is also what got me rush to finish the Steam page for Game 2, so that the theoretical "new audience of people who haven't heard of Endless Monday" would also see that I'm working on a new game and maybe wishlist it, idk.

After impatiently waiting for most of the week, the store page was approved yesterday morning!

So yes! That's right! I announced Game 2 yesterday morning!

tada!

Endless Monday: In Progress. Coming 2026, hopefully, if my best laid plans and schedule holds. Also the trailer is there on the store page, you can see that too, finally!

I spent most of yesterday doing announcements and social media work. While also refreshing lots of pages to see how much the numbers are going up and stuff. Whew! It's hard work. But so far, so good. It's very cool to see that a lot of people are pretty excited about it.

While I was waiting for the Steam store page to get approval, I made new key art for the game! It's shown above. And I was able to get it done before launching the coming soon page, so I'm not using temp art. I drew it in 2 days, so it was pretty rushed and there are things to change and fix, but still, I think I like it. I'll probably spend more time on it closer to launch when the game's story is all set in stone and I have more material from the game to add.

The sketch took like 30 minutes. Maybe I could have just used this instead and saved a couple days of work. I could have just said the key art is "In Progress." Ha! Ha!

This is the temporary art, btw. It's closer to the Steam capsules for Dreams and Deadlines, so maybe there was a case for using this instead, but whatever.

Of course there are also other marketing hacks that we all do in the indie world, because we need all the visibility we can get, like this:

That's right, I added a link to the next game in Dreams and Deadlines, v2.0.6D. It's only in the settings menu on the title screen so as to be less obtrusive, but I think it works for letting people know that, hey, this thing exists if you care. And a lot of new people are playing because of the Humble Bundle. I think I'll try to do another Steam Daily Deal a little bit before In Progress releases, too. If Steam will have me, of course.

(Also I built the new version with a new Gamemaker runtime and everything and I feel like it fixed a few Steam Deck and Mac version annoyances I had but idk maybe not maybe it broke something else idk)

Juicing up numbers. This is stuff I have to plan for and care about. But if In Progress does anywhere near as well as Dreams and Deadlines, I should be good to go to make another game. I like being in the kind of liminal space that exists between "can survive off making video game" and "well-known indie success", because it's like, the audience is made of all people who really care, while I can just do my job in peace in relative obscurity.

This sort of thing warms my heart and gives me hope that hey, maybe I'll be able to do this. Oh no! I can feel my ego inflating!

Oh, and the old game is on sale. This is so that people who visit my store page from the wishlist notification see the new announcement so they can also know that a new game is coming out soon. More Marketing stuff. Whatever.

Really phoning it in

The End

Okay, now that Game 2 announcement and wishlist collection page is out of the way, I'm going to be busy actually making Game 2. I have a big ol pile of notes and writing and design documentation I have to organize into game form. So maybe I'll have more updates on that front next week! Cool! Air Frye with Skye!

Thanks for your support, as always! See you next week!