Friday Rambles and Gamedev Update 2023-12-22

It’s the penultimate Weekly Rambles for 2023. Only one more after this, friends. Just a couple of weeks till the New Year, and a New Me. 

Above: I used to draw things like this

It’s the time of the year when we start looking back at everything we did and feel good or bad about ourselves. For the past few years I’ve been doing the “Art Summary” thing where you take one pic you made each month and put it in a nice lil grid. Here’s the one I made for this year.

Above: i thought i would have big gaps where i didn’t draw anything at all because i was busy with game dev stuff, but it turns out i still drew a lot. because drawing art for games is part of gamedev. duh. This was also the year I truly stopped caring about Twitter engagement numbers, because 1. twitter is circling the drain anyway, and 2. it turns out the number of likes on your posts has no correlation to how many people will buy your game/plushie/whatever, and 3. caring about secret steam numbers instead is my thing now

And for laughs, here are the previous years.

Above: 2022: As far as my art goes, I mostly just did what I’d developed til now. I played around more with digital painting and lighting. In June I quit my job that i hated to take a break and figure out what I wanted to do with my life. After drawing a bunch, making zines, and starting a newsletter, I finally started doing some gamedev at the end of november. and then we just flash forwarded into the end of 2023? idk where 2023 went.

Above: 2021: I was doing much more involved artworks this year with hopefully more interesting composition, and getting more confident with my art. I experimented with non-pixelly style digital painting work, and I also drew penny for the first time. i was also hating my job and dreaming of quitting.

Above: 2020: the pandemic/work from home gave me a lot more time to draw (while i was supposed to be working) and i experimented around with different styles and media (and did some animations for the first time). proto whiskey’s first appearance too.

Above: 2019: I had started drawing regularly and posting art online midway through 2018, so this was the first full year I’ve been able to do this. i was pretty proud of myself. each of these took multiple days to draw. if nothing else, at least i’m faster at drawing nowadays. this was also the year i first drew skye (as well as hana and blythe), and i quickly gained a pretty sizable following just by regulary posting a bunch of portraits of skye making funny faces. hrm.

Whoa, I’ve been doing this for 5 years, huh. You know in job interviews, where they ask you where you see yourself in 5 years? I don’t think December 2018 me would have been like, “Oh, yeah, the random blue-haired anime character eating a burger I draw next month. You will draw her 300 more times and thousands of people will like that. Then you will make a game with a bunch of your characters in it and release it on Steam.” (TMI: Did you know Skye originally had green hair? Then I paint bucketed it blue and it looked better so I kept it.)

So, as a thought exercise, I’m going to think about where I see myself in 5 years from now, in December 2028. It will be ridiculous and unrealistic. Whatever! 5 years is a long time and everyone will have forgotten about this by then anyway. I’m sure there will be more important things to be distracted by.

Let’s see. The Endless Monday Trilogy has completed. Good Smile Company has finally noticed me and made a Skye Nendoroid. Then, having satisfied all my earthly desires, I will have no more want. Maybe I’d have started a sort of game dev studio and hired more people to help me make games faster. Maybe I move on from Endless Monday main cast and do something completely different for once. Maybe my dream crumbles and I go back to working for a company I hate. Maybe I run away into the mountains and become a hermit. Maybe I dig a big hole in the ground and find a large mystical glowing rock that I trade to a band of bearded travelers in exchange for one fourteenth of their gold and treasure. The possibilities are endless! Man, imagine a Skye Nendoroid…

Above: until then, jill nendo will save her spot on my desk

I think for the next and final newsletter of the year I’m going to do another look-back focused more on individual meaningful moments and lessons learned, with resolutions and predictions for 2024.

Okay okay, moving on to why we’re all really here. The Selling Stuff!

Above: i’m getting a lot of mileage out of this sales pic

The holiday extravaganza of video games, the Steam Winter Sale, has started!

And of course, Endless Monday: Dreams and Deadlines is on sale for cheaper than usual!

And along with the beginning of the Steam Winter Sale, the voting for The Steam Awards 2023 has begun! Congrats to the nominees. Also congrats to Endless Monday: Dreams and Deadlines, which was not selected as a finalist for any The Steam Awards, but is still GOTY in my heart. And also, please, check out the soundtrack of the year, by the ever amazing Chance Thrash.

Above: steam awards. i had not played any of the nominees for any category, but they give out free chat stickers for voting, so i voted for whatever had the best capsule art vibes. which again, goes to show how important those capsule images are on steam. i guess.

For me, I think maybe as a solo dev it’s better to just quietly stay in my own little corner of the games world making games for people who really care. I don’t need awards when I have this:

Above: This inspires me so much I want to make games and stories for you forever

Again, I can’t really say it enough, the fact that anything I made got this kind of reception, let alone my first game, is pretty crazy and unbelievable. I’ll try to keep it going for all the people who love my works and care. Thank you. Thank you.

Anyway, good job, me, you survived a year making one game. Let’s see you do that again for the next year. And the next.

While we’re on the topic of Steam, the Steam 2023 “Year in Review” is out! Let’s take a look at the stats:

Above: Seems about right

In other selling-stuff news: The Tiger-chan Plush Doll Sell-a-thon is still happening! Get it while you can. Thanks to everyone who bought one so far. Love you.

Above: Having already sold more than the Blythe plushie, I’m satisfied with the numbers. but maybe we could even reach 600…

And to finish off the triumvirate of selling stuff, my shop will be back next week. I’ll probably have a nice New Year Discount, so stay tuned if you want a bunch of Endless Monday stickers for cheaper than usual.

Switching gears to non-selling-related stuff:

I’ve been catching up on my anime shows. My timeline was all atwitter about Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End, so I caved in and watched that. And it turns out I really love the show. I think it’s a total masterclass in storytelling and pacing - it never lingers on a single plot point longer than it needs to, but is also full of quiet moments and subtle pauses and details that add so much characterization and meaning to the events happening on screen. The narrative switches seamlessly between flashbacks and present day to provide context and motivations for each character’s actions, and emphasize how other people have impact on our characters’ lives, even after they’re long gone. The cast of characters all have a unique but interconnected backstory, all have their own abilities and motivations that add something important to the narrative. The little moments and interactions between characters say just enough and are never overdone. And I always love it when the main characters are completely overpowered (which can be difficult to make a good story out of, but Frieren pulls it off). I love this anime so much. I love the characters and the art and the music and the story. It’s so well done. You can bet I’ll be tearing it apart to devour its innards to absorb its storytelling ways into my own wretched being. Anyway, I guess the season’s about halfway over now, so I hope it maintains its quality til the end.

Above: also features scenes of eating a gigantic burger

I also watched Spy X Family. I had completely forgotten the second cour was out, so I’m going through that now. It’s more Spy X Family. What more could you want? I’m happy we’re getting more Yor’s-job-focused episodes this time around. She’s so cool…

Above: skye can only hope to approach yor’s range of facial expressions

And this one’s old(ish) but I finally got around to starting Keep Your Hands Off Eizouken. It’s cute and inspiring. The theme (or at least one of them) seems to be about how important every aspect of a creative team is to deliver a quality product, but it was really interesting to see the emphasis on the key role the producer plays for actually finishing the damn thing and getting it out the door. You see it all the time in gamedev, too, and I imagine every other creative industry out there. Just a bunch of creative people working on a thing, the budget balloons out of control, scope creep and focusing on things that don’t really matter in the big picture delaying the schedule, and it flounders around in development hell and eventually dies. Unless you’ve got a Kanamori keeping you grounded, forcing tough decisions, and getting on track, of course. As a solo dev I’ve been having to juggle all roles in one, but one thing I know the importance of is enforcing deadlines, keeping the scope focused and limited, and prioritizing the important things and making compromises, otherwise the game will never be done and I won’t be able to sustain a living making games.

Above: kanamori squishing dreams of skye nendo

Segueing into gamedev news, kr/cn translation work for EMDND continues, and hopefully it’ll all be done by next month so I can do playtesting/editing and all the necessary sprite localization work by February, as scheduled. We might also have another language I didn’t initially plan on for this round, but it’s a bit early so I’ll talk about that more when it’s closer to being final.

Above: every pixel font i’ve found for kr looks weird in my game, so i’m breaking pixel-art law and using a non-pixel font at higher res than the art (which i already do in other parts of the game so whatever). the alternative is handwriting my own font like i did for english/latin alphabet languages. kr fonts have 11,172 glyphs, so i probably won’t actually be doing that.

I’m also busy working on the Big Extra Story update, which I’m probably going to name “Extra Project Update” or “Overtime Update” or something like that. I made good progress on that, but it’s still very much in flux. I’ve been doing a lot of cutting and editing and moving events around. One challenge is how much to assume the player remembers from the previous chapter, whether to do recaps in the intro and remind people who and what things are, or to just continue as if it were another chapter in the original game. I’ve decided towards the latter (because I found myself being bored with a long intro going through stuff I already know), but with small reminders in Penny’s thoughts, like “yeah, this and this happened…” referring to some plot point from earlier, just to provide a little bit of context as to what’s going on. I mean, I’ve already done that before in the original game itself, to refer to things that happened like an hour ago.

Above: dialogue script for extra story chapter so far. it’s shaping up to be pretty beefy, but we’ll see what cuts and compromises i need to make once i do more writing

Well, since this is an extra chapter for people who already enjoyed the original game, maybe I’ll just go wild with it.

Above: “temporary” art and dialogue where content has not yet been implemented

I’m also wrapping up a Secret Santa gift for a thing we’re doing in one of my artist friend discord servers, which I’m also planning on just adding to the Extra Chapter too. Two birds with one stone, as they say. This is what happened with my last Secret Santa gift as well - I made a silly vignette with Kini, the space android (and Sooya’s character), which kind of set the tone of the eventual final product (Dreams and Deadlines) and evolved into a major plot point. Not bad for a completely randomly assigned character to draw.

Above: and as with kini, i’m making up my own lore as i need it

Although, this time around it won’t be as pivotal because the game already kind of has a structure and story and I’m fitting the cameo within that, not the other way around. I’ll share it here once I’ve shared it with my gift recipient.

I drew the sprites for the character in a day, which impressed me, myself. Which bodes well for my remaining work with the extra chapter, which calls for like 4 more characters needing sprites. Realistically, I have about a month of working time left, before I have to prepare for a big move. Man, why does real life have to happen. Why can’t I just make game and draw.

Above: yeah yeah

Anyway, I’ve got some work to finish by a deadline tonight, so I’ll let you go. I probably won’t get much work done this week, because of family stuff. But we’ll see. Thanks for your support, as always. Okay, see you next week!