status

so far sold 600 units of ossuary expansion which is around what i expected (~10% of people who bought the game in the first place), but it means this isn't a practical approach for me. but hey i'm going to do what i want you can't stop me, so i guess i'm still fiddling with imbroglio and trying ideas for more stuff. there's still a chance it might go bigger, selling things on the internet is just so volatile - 868-hack would probably have sold less than half as much if not for that one review by Leigh Alexander.

need to do a pc release too, it's a bit of faff because the current design is for a portrait-oriented screen and a lot of the ui is hard-coded and bad, planning to spend some of december sorting that out. not looking forward to it. has to be done so it's not stuck just in the apple forever but i don't have high hope for it because even more than 868-hack it is something "pc gamers" might assume is shallow because the map is small and maybe it could be played on a telephone.

started a new notebook of game designs. i hadn't been writing down new ideas for a while, kind of got stuck in a loop of thinking about "the next project" and projecting too much into it, feeling like it has to be a financial success and also a great work of art and also Do New Things With The Medium and als
and i'd sort of converged on maybe three basic concepts that i had to choose between and each of them would be a big commitment project and then each of them starts growing by accretion, like whenever i have a new idea it doesn't get to stand on its own because it has to be a big thing so it gets glommed onto one of the existing ideas and they get ever more impractical.
so it's quite freeing to just plan out some designs that aren't connected to the glommy things, and then not feel any particular pressure to make one of them. i keep thinking "wow this idea is actually great i should definitely make this" and then i remember i thought that about the previous three as well and i'm not going to make all of them and then that's okay, and hopefully now the gloms just fall back to being drops in ocean and. well i'll still have to pick something and make it but i think i'm recovering a mindset good for that. not jamming but it'll do.

also there's a strand here of a thing, i wrote before about not wanting to just make another roguelike and get typecast as The Man Who Makes Roguelikes, this is part of a broader attitude i have of aversion to conformity and repetition. it is not a bad attitude in principle but i am recognising that there are times when it makes me feel pressure to perform and that creates an unnecessary stress. maybe i don't need to push myself to do Different And New Thing, if i just go ahead and do a thing at all it probably will be its own thing anyway. thinking about folk songs and stories passed through generations, everyone's version ends up different even when clearly recognisable as same thing. things only look the same when you abstract them, look at them from a distance; go close up and there is all the detail and everything is unique; abstraction is powerful mental tool but risk missing everything important. thinking about dancing, always feel like i should do something different to keep it interesting but even if you try to do exactly the same thing again you can't even, hundreds of tiny forces shift balance somewhere slightly different, spine alone has 24 bones articulating - you think a step is simple because there are just two legs but transform it to spine domain and suddenly there is intricate detail and variation.

starting to feel properly settled in Lisbon. don't know if we'll get to stay here but i think i would if so? just got a stamp in my passport a few days ago saying i can keep being here for now and the people at the loja do cidadão were just really decent. like UK immigration officals ask with big frown "and once your contract is over you'll definitely leave right? you don't plan on staying? no more applying for jobs here?" and you have to be all obsequious, whereas here they're like "oh but after that you will still want to stay yes please?". it is surprisingly far from central europe but still we have been able to see europe friends a bit, even had one america friend visit. continues to be a good city for just going out and stumbling across something interesting. started learning forró, nice group of people, the dance has a bit much of flashy fast turns for my taste but it's a good challenge to follow. some people were a bit confused at first that i wanted to follow but they accepted it pretty quickly; it is far from the ideal of anyone can dance with anyone but it is at least not a hostile environment. (unfortunately the term they're using for following is "faço dama", hey at least it's not "princesa" like i heard in kizomba omg.) might start leading soon too but i'm kind of appreciating not knowing how to, usually i'm indifferent about roles and end up leading more because other people are not indifferent, now i can maybe balance that ratio out a little.

been sleeping on the floor a lot, shoulders are happier if i can manage to sleep on my back and the bed here sinks in a bit so i can't keep straight. but i'm used to sleeping on my side so sometimes i do that and then left subscapularis gets twisted again and tugs on my neck and i'm not quite sure what is going on, but i had a massage yesterday and while working on that something on the right of neck that had been compensating let go and now stuff in there is shifting around trying to find a new equilibrium. adventure!