prayer for the wealthy

for those whose possessions exceed their needs
i pray that they would be unburdened
that they be freed of the fearful drive for more
that what they have could reach where it can help
so they may experience the rewards of charity

for those whose responsibility surpasses their maturity
i pray that they would have the space to grow
that the weight of decision-making be shared amongst those the decisions touch
so the few need not bear it alone

for the inheritors of the guilt of the past
fortunes cursed by ancestral deeds
i pray that they would find a way to give back enough
to in their deepest heart be atoned

for those who nurture hate
i pray that they will receive love
for the pure child they once were
and the shining light they may yet become

for myself
i ask openness to wish good to all
even these i find easier to bear ill will

The Secret Lives podcast is up to "become a great artist in just 10 seconds" in their year-long series on my work, and I noticed that in the show notes they linked this old blog post of mine. I have not listened to the episode yet, so I don't know the context in which the post is referenced, but looking back at it got me thinking so I wanted to write up how I see this now. (I'm curious to see how this will relate to what's said in the episode - whether it's a constructive response, if I've said things that agree or disagree with them, or if it's just a completely different track.)

A theme that was in my thinking around that time, which I don't think I ever wrote down publicly (maybe because it seemed too ambitious, or too woo), was something like "the soul of mobile games".

People had convinced me to try selling my games on telephones, and the fit was mixed. Certainly some design concepts I was exploring were appropriate for small-screen gaming, but culturally I was nowhere near. I am not an early tech adopter - I've never been able to afford to be, but also I will be quite happily still enjoying the tech that I do have. At the time I did not personally use a mobile telephone. Someone had lent me one for a while a few years earlier and I wasn't into it. I didn't like having people expecting that they could get in touch with me at any random time, when normally they would just have not been bothered. I do use one now, and I appreciate the convenience of being able to navigate in a foreign land without having to ask for help. If I was asking for help I would be forging stronger connections with the people around me. My attention span is reduced just by having it on me.

Selling my games on telephones put them in unpleasant company. Already then "mobile games" were synonymous with gambling, race-to-the-bottom pricing, advertising, operant conditioning, and exploitation of vulnerable people. Someone set me up once with a call with someone from Apple to try to get my games better promotion and it was all this kind of shit. It was clear that they were not taking their work seriously.

So to put that post in context: I was working on Imbroglio. As I said I don't think I've written this publicly, but the initial concept was to destroy all of this evil in mobile games. I wanted to play with all of the unpleasantness that was happening in the medium, and by bringing those things into the play (rather than wielding them against the players) break the power that they have over us. A vaccine against cognitive exploits. OK, that's a wild ambitious concept, and we should be wild and ambitious. I tried to find the structure for a game that would let me play with these ideas, and the exploration found me something. As you work on a game it starts to speak for itself, telling you the shape it wants to take. The shape that it eventually resolved itself into was a lovely little game that didn't bear any obvious mark of these initial concepts. I had set about the important task of exorcising evil and healing souls, and instead I got something that looked very much like the last couple of games I'd made. It felt like a failure. Of course I wasn't going to throw away the thing that I'd made because it was really a delightful game, but it wasn't what I'd hoped for.

From the perspective I have now, I'm not even sure now I did fail. Okay it didn't slay all those demons, but still it's a game that does something interesting with attention span - I talked about play as meditation in my imbroglio notes - maybe it did some good. And young Michael, you are being very hard on yourself describing that game as generic traditional "collect magic gem for high score". It did so much that was very novel. You reached into the void and pulled forth a seed, gave it the care it needed to grow, patiently took the time for it to find a coherent form, released it into the world, and inspired many others. And some of the other concepts I was exploring eventually came home to roost in 868-BACK. Nothing is lost.

In that post I contrasted my more conventionally "game design" games with the ones that felt more like pieces of art. Back then there was a lot of talk about the relationship of games and art. A lot of us found ourselves called to be artists, in the medium of games, but we lacked a clear model of how to do that. Many of the games that had inspired us were made as products, by large teams, and trying to follow those was unhelpful. A couple of overthought and underfelt sketches by famous game-industry men were being paraded as though they were something important. Someone who mostly wrote about movies claimed that games could never be art (feeling insecure in their own medium's tenuous recognition as 'proper' art?). But there we were, doing the thing that is art and what we were making was games. We were doing it, but got confused when we tried to talk about it. Probably best talk less do more.

Looking back, I could say that I was trying to fish in two ponds, and one turned out to be much shallower and one much deeper than I was expecting. Having made several abstract art games, I felt like I was onto something interesting - but I didn't keep finding more to make there that I hadn't already covered. Meanwhile the roguelikes kept revealing more and more.

Creative expression needs a frame to support it. Droqen can declare "death of gameplay" but he's still making platformers. Tale of Tales were doing the same ten years earlier. Try to take out all the "gameplay" to just have it somehow be pure art, and you've just dug down to whatever your default assumptions of gameplay are. Platformer jumping or first person 3d wandering isn't any less "game mechanics" than grid puzzling or tech trees, it's just that person's comfortable default. Which is fine! These gameplay models provide the structure for the art to happen in. It's just very not dead. And what I've found for my own work is that more structure gives more space for expression. Gameplay and "art" aren't in conflict: with more of both they can each support the other. If - as always - it's done with taste and sensitivity. Feels like a good direction for me. Other people have to find their own directions sorry.

I was worried about being typecast. I was right to worry! It straight away went and happened. I made a 3rd similar-ish game and suddenly "broughlike" is a genre? Everyone forgets I made anything else. Nobody even knows I made multiplayer games, when it's what I've done the most of. Certainly nobody knows I used to think abstract interactive art like Knot-Pharmacard Subcondition J might be my whole direction. It's ok I'll just make whatever I make.

advice on how to write about indie games

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Instead of "this game is niche"
try saying "i like this game because..."

Look, "niche" is not a property of a game. It's a recess in a wall to put decoration in. (Some games do have niches in them.) I guess you're using it in some metaphorical way to mean that the group of people playing the game is small enough to fit into a niche? This is not very interesting, and it is not even a fact about the game. You're telling us about the game because you like it! What do you like about it? That's way more interesting.

You're not as weird as you think you are. I'm sorry, but you're actually not. You're holding onto this idea of yourself being such an atypical person and your tastes being so niche as a way to feel a bit special. And by god you are special. You are so special. You are this beautiful unique incredible configuration of stardust and we love you. You're great. But you're not unusual. If you like a thing, there's going to be a ton of other people who would like it, for the same reasons you do. Maybe they haven't heard of it yet. Maybe you can tell them.

---

Instead of "this game is underrated"
Try saying "i think this game is great"

I get it: you think the rating is too low. The injustice of it!

But when you say this to someone, you're first of all telling them "THE RATING IS LOW". That's what they're gonna hear. Yeah sure you're also saying "and I disagree" but look: communication is hard. You can get ideas across more reliably if you stick to one at a time. Start with the main one. Here, that's what you think of the game. Someone else out there thinks something different? Man, you're not obliged to speak for them.

---

Instead of "too bad this game didn't sell"
try saying "check out this cool game"

We're not at the end of the story!

If someone's trying to get rich through investment fraud, maybe all they care about is all-or-nothing instant hits. But everywhere else, a slow burn still makes a difference. And good work doesn't stop being good just because time has passed.

All my games still sell. They kept selling through the years I was too ill to work. They spike when I release something new or when there's a nice article about me. It's not a lot, but it makes a difference for us. Heck, I hadn't released a game in ages and then suddenly a podcast series started up about my work and people are exploring games from up to 15 years ago. It happens.

---

Instead of "this has only X many wishlists / reviews / numbers"
try saying "here's something i really like about this game!"

These kinds of numbers are for sad people in suits who don't trust their own sense of what is good. You know what's good.

Personally, when I see this kind of comment about my games I tend to stress out a little. "Oh no, the numbers!" I think that's the most likely outcome if you post something like this: the person who made it feels bad and nobody else cares. Probably that wasn't your intention! (Don't worry, I don't stress for long - I know that juicy long tail is coming for me.)

---

Instead of "looks bad"
try saying "wow there’s something about it that catches my attention but i don’t feel like i know what’s going on yet, can someone explain what the deal is?"

Why has this person shown up in this thread to post this meaningless trash about something they claim not to even care about? What's going through their brain?

I'll tell you: it's because they are curious. They wouldn't have posted if they weren't actually interested. They're trying to articulate their interest but can't find the words. Surprising but true.
If you catch yourself doing this, feel free to use my wording above.
If you see someone else doing this, you can respond 100% as if they had asked this question and it’ll be a positive exchange.

---

Instead of "this game is fundamentally flawed"
try saying "this game is worthy of deep study"

If you're writing on the internet about something new or indie, your post might constitute a substantial fraction of the available literature on the topic. It's not a drop in the ocean. There's a good chance that this will even be the first someone has heard about it. Maybe you think you're only writing to a very specific audience, but now it's one of the top search results. You're ahead of the curve.

Many years back, someone wrote a thoughtful essay about a high-level aspect of one of my games that they felt wasn’t working as intended. They weren't even wrong! Unfortunately, they used this kind of language. In the context they were writing to, they assumed that everyone already knew about the game, and already knew that it was interesting and deep, and that's why it was worth writing about. To an academic, “fundamentally flawed” means “there are some long-term challenges that might require changes to the fundamentals to improve on”. To a layperson it just sounds really very bad: it means "broken in a way that can’t be fixed, ever". And so it came about that years later - long after I’d addressed the issue in question - I kept seeing this post resurfacing. Someone would ask on a random forum thread “i heard of this game, is it worth checking out?” and get a reply “nah apparently it’s fundamentally flawed”. Dude. Pretty sure that cost me some sales. Would have been easy to word it in a way that avoided this negative.

---

Instead of "if only this game was made with a higher budget"
try saying "check out this game"

How the fuck do you think we'll get a higher budget bro.
You're posting about it because you're into it: say so.

One time a big name account posted about one of my games. They could have just said something nice, their followers would buy it on their recommendation, it could have made a real difference. But they chose to dunk on it, specifically to be critical of how little money was spent on it, in a way that encouraged their followers to do the same. I was relatively unknown at the time, so for a while way more people had heard this person's negative opinions about it than anything good. It can really stick - this was well over a decade ago and i literally saw one of their fans repeating the exact same thing this week. Guys.

Look I get it: if someone's doing cool work you want to see what they could accomplish with more resources. So get them there. Support them. Focus on the things you like about what they're already doing and you'll get to see more.

---

Instead of "mobile when" (or android when, switch when, etc.)
try buying the game

This is a special case of the previous point. Sure, making art is a soulful devotional practice etc., but anyone who's doing it in a sustained commercial way at any level also spends some time thinking about it as a business. When it comes to ports, it's all business. We have some numbers to estimate sales, we have some costs, we decide when it's worth it. If we lose money on ports we can't make the next thing. Get those numbers up.

---

Instead of "outsider artist"
try saying "member of the [place/website] scene"

An outsider artist has no ties to an established scene. If you heard about someone through games media, they're not an outsider. Talk about the connections they have: knowing which more established figures a creator is linked with will help people to understand where their work comes from.

---

Instead of "game designer's game designer"
try saying "up-and-coming designer" or "respected and influential designer"

See, this always feels like a backhanded compliment. Sure your games are "good", but in a particular way that nobody wants to pay for.

Nah. Think about it, what's more likely?

• There's a weird category of art which can only appeal to practitioners of that artform, and certain unfortunate individuals are cursed to only ever produce work of that type.
• People working in a medium are likely to hear about someone new doing good work before they break through to the general public.

---

Instead of "your favourite game designer's favourite game designer"
try saying "Terry Cavanagh recommends this"

You've tried harder to make this positive! We appreciate that! But look: this still fails to get across what you hoped to say. Who even has a favourite game designer? Passing on a recommendation works better if you say who it comes from. Hey you could even recommend it yourself, rather than a vague "lots of people smarter than you or me are into it I guess".

---

Instead of "whoaaa were they ON DRUGS"
try saying "whoaaa"

So tired of this. So offensive to look at someone's creative work and say "I bet you needed some chemical assistance to think of that". Man, some people are taking drugs, some people aren't, it's not a big deal, don't be such a cop. Some have substance abuse problems and making up a story that you can't do art sober probably doesn't help them.

You can make art.

---

Instead of "this big-budget game sucks"
try writing about an indie game instead

If you don’t like a thing, don’t waste energy talking about it.

You convinced yourself you need to "be part of the conversation" but you're just adding noise. Nobody cares. Stop chasing clicks. If you'd instead written something positive about something you liked that the reader hadn’t heard of and might like too, in a small way you’d have made the world a better place.

---

868-BACK: quit

quick note: I used to document quite a bit of my game dev process here on this blog. I started doing videos instead in the pandemic (patreon, youtube) because I was finding that drained less energy from me than writing a post. I haven't done either very much recently because I felt so much of what I wanted to talk about would just make more sense once the game was out so you'd know what I was referring to. Now it's out! I'll hopefully be doing some of those posts. I'm not sure yet what the balance of videos to writing will be, but this one's writing!

---

868-HACK is structured as a series of servers you hack one after another, with increasing difficulty as you go. Quite a few people never even saw the difficulty increase because you had to win a couple of rounds in a row to get there. When I did an expansion for it a few years later (PLAN.B) I wanted to put the difficulty modifiers up front - both so that everyone would see them, and because those of us who'd been playing a bit started to find the game a bit too easy without them. But sometimes a stack of them could just be unfair though so I wanted a way to skip the really bad combinations, and came up with the .QUIT prog. This is just a basic ability you can pick up and use like any other, and what it does is instantly win the round. Actually amazing. This would be blatantly S-tier if not for the opportunity cost: you don't want to take the free win if you could use that siphon to get more points instead.

.QUIT is one of my favourite progs because it's something that computers do but games don't. Coming to the sequel I really wanted to push as far as I could in that direction; try everything I could think of that felt like a "computer" ability and would fit naturally here and not in a typical fantasy game. So .QUIT and .UNDO were at the top of my list for returning progs. (Puzzle games should generally allow undo, strategy games don't because it creates a very boring play pattern around any random or hidden element; putting a cost on it that isn't undone solved that well enough for 868-HACK, but unfortunately wasn't enough to make it work in BACK.) .QUIT fit quite nicely into BACK overall, but the new scrip system made it fairly easy to minimise the opportunity cost.

One of my early ideas for a bonus powerup in 868-BACK was called Local area network!, which I) protected a server from being hacked unless you'd hacked one of its neighbours the day before, and II) forced you to hack one of its neighbors the next day. I really liked having a "map-only" powerup, making a server more difficult to hack not because the levels and enemies were any harder but simply because it was inconvenient to get and out of. I really liked the spatial element this gave to the server map: these little sequences where you had to move step-by-step across it rather than just picking from it like a menu. There were many problems with this. Does nothing on the last day. You could get stuck and lose the game with no options if you weren't careful - and that tended to feel unfair rather than like you'd excitingly hacked yourself into a corner. Didn't interact well with the "reveal powerups by gathering data in adjacent servers" mechanic. So eventually it went away.

Thinking about limitations that could be applied to QUIT to make it slightly less dominant - what about an effect on the server map? I thought of folding in Isolated workstation!: if you quit a server you don't get to explore the ones next to it. Jake suggested folding in Local area network! instead: if you quit a server you have to go to one next to it tomorrow. This was really good! We kept Isolated as the map-only powerup (its device restriction was added much later at Leon's suggestion to prevent it doing less the more of the map is explored). When Linkcubes were added I let it go along those links as well. It seemed like the problem was solved.

Since the game's been released and a lot more people have been playing it, a few rare bugs showed up involving QUIT. This is going to happen - different people have different skills and approaches, so they'll try something in a different situation - or else just the dice get rolled a lot more times so an arrangement comes up that you never saw before. I'd added certain types of server that couldn't be accessed unless specific conditions were met - the megacorp x6s and the shops. In particular this restriction on the shops came very late in development (to stop new players from having a disappointing experience of going to a shop where they can't afford to buy anything). So a few people had been able to quit with only a shop in range but then weren't able to get into the shop! When I dug in to fix this I realised that QUIT was getting quite complicated. We'd already had a few players being confused about when they could or couldn't quit, and this was making it more confusing by adding situations where your ability to quit depended on the status of servers you haven't even explored yet. So rather than add all those complications I gutted it and made the whole thing much simpler: you can always quit, and tomorrow you can go wherever is nearest that you can get into. If you're surrounded by locked shops and corporate headquarters, instead of being sad and stuck you just get to go slightly further. It should play pretty similarly in most cases, but be clearer to understand, less prone to bugs, and maybe even occasionally exploitable in clever ways.

patch is up now!

868-BACK: the sponsors

After I crowdfunded 868-BACK, a couple of people got in touch to see if there was a way they could give a bit of extra financial support. We figured out that the right way to structure that was as a sponsorship. These are people whose work I admire and respect and I'm very happy to shine some light back at them.

Slice and Dice is a wonderful game that takes the combat system of a party-based RPG, infuses it with chaos by leaving the action choices up to a roll of the dice, and builds a whole magnificent structure around a series of these battles with escalating blessings and curses modifying the rules. It's author tann is rather reclusive, but seems like a very lovely person from the interactions we've had. The game has a lot in common with my games - tann has cited Cinco Paus as an inspiration - so I unreservedly recommend that anyone who likes my work check it out.

Puzzmo is a project with a lot of people involved and a lot going on, but a big part of it is the work of Zach Gage. I've known Zach for a long time, and he's had an influence on my work - in fact the core inspiration for Cinco Paus came from a conversation with him. He's a firm believer that the goals of creating interesting artistic games and reaching a broad audience don't need to be incompatible, and Puzzmo is a very serious attempt at bringing those together.

I'm very grateful for their contributions.

868-BACK: the crew

So first up, the game is out: get it on steam or itch.io.

I just wanted to talk a bit about who made the game! I'm going to go through in more-or-less chronological order of when people joined the project.

Obviously there's me. I started in mid-2024 and worked by myself for a few months before even showing it to anyone else, and I've done SO MUCH.

Jake and Leon were the first people I wanted to show it to. They had both playtested some of my games years ago, and Leon did some writing for 868-HACK (the "with that data you stole..." lines on the victory screen). For several months it was just us three playing - I'd expected to invite more testers in sooner, but they were already finding as much as I could keep up with. They've both contributed a ton of suggestions for all parts of the game - not just the rules and mechanics but writing and aesthetics - and the final design owes a ton to both of them.

Tara (YAKFOX) joined the project somewhere in late-2024. She then started a music production course so it was a while before she was available to actively produce music for the game, but she was part of it, and the discussions we had about the music helped define where the game was going. (And then the music turned out great!)

Then we did the crowdfunding! As well as contributing money, I offered a "name a server" reward and people contributed a variety of names - some cute, some funny, some on-theme, some really weird. This might seem like a little thing but as soon as those names were in there, the world felt more lived-in. Like magic! And a few of those names ended up inspiring strands of the design, folding back in to become very significant elements of the game.

Eventually I felt it really was time to expand the pool of testers a bit more, and Justin (manbearcar) posted an impressive Cinco Paus high score so I invited him in. Again I'd really expected to need more, but just one more person playing it was a valuable flood of information. (He's made a ton of cool games too and recently released Horsey Game.)

Then Finji came on board! Their whole QA and marketing teams contributed a lot. They've done a wonderful job of tuning into the game and making suggestions that will make it easier for people to get into it without breaking what it fundamentally is. They also recognised that I'd bitten off quite a lot with this game, and we set about figuring out what would be helpful to get it over the finish line, so it came about that a few other artists joined in towards the end.

AJ is one of my favourite artists, and his glitchy pixel scenes have been an inspiration for what I want to do in my own visual art. So when we talked about getting in someone else to do some graphics for the scenes that I was struggling with, he was at the top of my list. And he was up for it! He's done some fantastic art for the game - including a scene you will no doubt see quite often.

I asked Adam (from Finji) to also do one of the scenes - see if you can spot which is his. He also suggested adjustments to my font in a way that improved readability without losing the style I was going for, and he brought on Sven Ruthner and together they worked on the title logo, scaling up my font and adding glitchy detail.

Finally, we were missing sound effects. These usually show up quite late in my games, because I have to get into a quite different mindset from design and programming. But they hadn't shown up yet and we'd announced a release date, and I had my hands quite full with everything else, so Adam suggested Josie Brechner as someone to collaborate with on these. She came in and did a fantastic job, some of her sounds are so delightful in a way that you can tell she must have really had fun making them. (.row, wow!)

So that's the crew! It's my biggest game yet, and the one that's most a team effort. It's still very much "me" - I felt that my time working on the game by myself had established a strong voice for it, and when new people came on they were able to get into the flow of what was already happening and do great work that fit into it. And having other people supporting helped me to do my best. And now you all can play it!

Year Of Me

I find it pretty hard to explain when asked what my work is. What should I say?

I'll go simple and direct: "I make videogames" - but it turns out people have a huge variety of preconceptions about what that might mean. Which company do I work for? No. Have you made anything I might have heard of? No. That's so awesome, you get paid to play games? No, neither of those. Why are you such a terrible person, responsible for the brain-rotting drivel that's destroying children's lives? No. Couldn't you do something more natural? Yes and no. So you work in tech, you're rich then? No and no.

Clearly that word gives the wrong idea, I'll try: "I'm an artist". This isn't bad! People get the right overall idea; we all like art as a general concept; you don't expect me to pay for things. Until they dig a little bit further and want to know what kind of art? What medium? UHhh [frantically trying to avoid the v word] interactive digital something vi art, let's stick with art. Eventually they find out that it was games all along and are a little disgusted at my deception.

Often I go with "I work in games". I don't quite know what people take from it, but it's somehow vague enough to usually avoid these confusing discussions and we can move onto something more interesting (like the other person).

But okay, someone's found out I work in games: what kind of games? All the kinds. Any kind. Every game. Okay I didn't make every single game that exists, but it was enough of them that this isn't easy to answer. "I've worked in a variety of genres". Ugh. I have though! I'll try to gauge how literate the person asking might be - but even then, my main genre they literally named after me. What am I supposed to say?

"Oh like mobile games?" Yes. Some of my games run on mobile devices, that's not the most interesting thing about them but sure, that'll do. "That must be pretty.. ching ching! (*rubbing fingers together*)". THIS AGAIN.

Wait so if it doesn't make money, why are you doing it? Do you even have a job? (No.)

Once when I was interrogated by border police (not for the first or last time) they really wanted to know what I did and who I worked for. I gave as clear and straightforward answers as I could, and they kept asking again and again, obviously not believing me. Until one of them finally did a google search and shamefacedly told the other "let him go, everything he's said is true".

The Secret Lives of Games (formerly Eggplant, formerly the Spelunky Showlike) have started a year-long series talking about my work. So far the first introductory episode is up, and I think it's the best explanation so far of WHAT DOES MICHAEL EVEN DO. It's on the long side (two hours) but if you've ever wondered, here's an answer. I'm just going to link this next time someone asks me. Take that, border control.

I really appreciate that they're doing this - aside from it being personally about me, which is nice for sure - but from the perspective of taking games seriously as an artform. In any other medium, it's not unusual to have a show looking back across an artist's work; a Yuri Norstein retrospective or whatever; but even in games hardly anyone takes games seriously. This is something distinctly countercultural: the claim that play is not merely something a multi-million dollar industry can be built around, but something culturally important and worth talking about.

868-BACK trailer: UNIFIED

Hey hey!

I am still busily working on 868-BACK. I'm very happy with how it's coming along.

It has grown! When I was crowdfunding it at the end of last year, I described it as being 'on par with the biggest games I've made before'. Now I would describe it as definitely my biggest game yet. Nobody ever expected a big 868-HACK. It still has that tight focus; it's big in a way that honours its smallness, I can't think of much like it.

I also said 'I'm aiming for a release mid-2025'. That would be around now, wouldn't it? Well, there is still a lot to do! I would like to very clearly update that to late-2025.

This is a good thing. I am giving the game the time it needs to be what it wants to be. It's become very clear to me how important it is to my work to be able to take that time when I need to. Some of my games I've made very quickly, some have gradually come together over a few years, but in both cases it's been a matter of allowing the organic process to grow to completion. I have to not rush things.

In this case, a couple of ideas arrived that really blossom the game into something extra strange and special - the kind of "blow your mind" recontextualisation that we all love - but the technicalities of making sure they work right with every other piece has added some time. There's still some uncertainty ahead. There's a small chance it ends up being "early-2026". I'm going to try to avoid that, since A) it's been way too long since I've released a game and those of you who've supported me through this time really deserve something, and B) we'll run out of money. But, if it ends up that's just the best thing for the game, I'll do it somehow. Still, there's a lot of 2025 left!

Meanwhile, we've made a trailer!


The folk from thinkygames.com asked if I could share a trailer, and I had a think. One the one hand, probably I shouldn't take on extra work - my plate is already so full. But on the other hand I am trying to do everything the best I can, to finish and promote this game above and beyond what I've done before, to get the marketing and money side right not just the making. Well, by the time I'd spent a while pondering those two hands then I had an idea for a trailer I wanted to make so I just went for it. It ended up fitting well because it gave a focus for working on audiovisual design for one of the corporations, which we needed to do anyway.
(p.s. they also had trailers for a bunch of other games that look neat, and a big discount on Steam ongoing.)

The trailer introduces UNIFIED MEGACORP, one of the three megacorporations in the game. What makes them "mega" is that they control more than one connected server, so hacking them is a multi-step process. Unified are - well I hope the video gives you a feel for them. We'll reveal the other two along the way. It's also a first taste of the game's music, which Tara is collaborating on.

I've also put up a Steam page. You can wishlist it if you want to!

As I said above, it's not clear at this point whether the budget we have will last until the game feels definitively done. I don't want a publisher messing it up, so I'd prefer not to go there without really good reasons. I'll make it work somehow. Maybe I take a few weeks off to make a smaller game to support development of the bigger one - just six months ago that would have been impossible but my health is getting better all the time and now I do have some side-project energy, which is a really good sign. We'll see what happens! But simply, I would really appreciate it if any of you do want to support my ongoing work. I would appreciate if you buy my other games (ios link, itch.io link) - I've made a lot of them and they are still good! I would appreciate it if you support my Patreon. I would appreciate it if you just want to throw large amounts of money at me (please contact me directly).

That said, THANK YOU SO MUCH TO EVERYONE WHO HAS SUPPORTED ME TO THIS POINT. I am thriving. I have gone from being absolutely smitten with covid in 2020 and not being able to work at all, to now doing my best work so far (and with better yet to come). It means so much to me that a lot of you really still appreciate all the work I've done before, and you've helped me through such a hard time and I am - still not at full strength, but definitely - BACK.

making choices on server map - part 2

The server map is kind of a second game, where one move in the map (hacking a server) comprises an entire round of the core game. In my last post wrote about how I was trying to make the decision of "which server do I have next?" rich and interesting; while that's a big decision in relation to the core game it's a very zoomed-in perspective on the metagame. Today I'm thinking through the wider question of what the player is trying to achieve across multiple hacks.

My first thought was to simply reflect the core roguelike gameplay: each server is made up of sectors, the goal of each sector is "get to the exit", and the goal of the entire server is "get to the final exit". The goal on the map could be "get to the final server". There would be a lovely symmetry, "as above, so below". I spent a while prototyping this version.

A big problem I ran onto early on is that the whole map is way too much information — thirty-odd servers each with their own tools and defenses. I was never planning on making you choose between all of these at once, you'd be stepping through them one at a time, but it turns out to also be too much to look at and think about to plan a route through. That's okay, I just add "fog of war": you can only see where you've explored. This felt really good. You start with a very simple set of options, then gradually add a few at a time (ruling some out as you go) and by the time the screen is full of information you've already digested most of it. It gives a nice Matrix moment: if a friend sees you playing they'll be impressed by the impenetrable wall of symbols, but you "don't even see the code anymore".

Putting these two concepts together: you're trying to get to the exit but you need to explore to find it. Remember from the previous post that there's a limited number of rounds, so you're trying to get to the exit before you run out of time (and pick up as many points as you can along the way). This more-or-less worked, it's a game. But there ended up being a fairly optimal search pattern you could follow to have the maximum chance of finding the exit, and this tends to feel unsatisfactory no matter the outcome: if you find it that's unexciting because it's to be expected, and if you don't find it that's unfair because you did the best possible with the information you had. And if you're trying to get a high score, then that's determined by whether the map randomly lines up the highest scoring opportunities with the correct search pattern. If not, you'd have to keep restarting until it does (which some players are going to do to eke out an advantage no matter what but I try to avoid privileging too much).

I started experimenting with other goals. I tried having multiple options, whereby you could win the game by completing any one of them. This has several advantages over a single goal. It suggests different categories players can choose to compete in to extend the longevity of the game - completing a specific goal, or getting bonus endings by completing more than one simultaneously. As a designer I can try to balance the goals such that when you're failing one of them you're likely to be close to succeeding at another - e.g. if you've searched the map and not found the exit then at least you might know where all the megacorps' territories are, or if you've completely failed at exploring then you've likely had many opportunities to [redacted] the [redacted].

Even with these balancing factors I kept running into the situation where one mistake or unlucky roll can prevent you from achieve your goals no matter how cleverly you've played up to that point. Weirdly this felt both really bad and really good. These situations made great exciting moments that fit the mood of the game, they weren't a rough edge I wanted to smooth off. But if it went badly, then the gameplay was telling you to quit and restart, which at that point stopped fitting the mood. At 868-HACK's scale it flowed really well to crash and restart, and I would have liked it to work similarly, but with the game being a bit bigger and having a few different elements in play it just.. wasn't.

So I stepped back to think about what makes sense in the story of the game. You've returned to the life of crime you left behind, risking everything on one last hack to save everything you value the most.. you took your best chance.. it didn't work out. You got so close but you realised you couldn't make it. What do you do now? You could try anyway, going out in glory like some kind of hero. But no, you want to make them pay. You want to do as much damage as you can on your way down.

Game design is about making the thing that's coolest to do line up with the strategically optimal move. (Or most exciting, narratively appropriate, etc., you get it.) I had been thinking the goals were absolute: this is what you must do to win the game. I had thought that was narratively appropriate: this is what the hacker values more than anything, enough to bring them back. But it's more interesting to be dynamically evaluating - if you've had a bad run and now there's only one option that gives a 1/16 chance of making it.. if the goals are absolute then there's no choice, you just take that chance.. but maybe you take the option that has no chance BUT hacks them up good / gets a cool item / etc.

Brief historical diversion: when I made 86856527 (which became 868-HACK), I'd been playing a lot of roguelikes (Rogue, ADOM, Nethack, Crawl..) and I thought high scores are a waste of time, a distraction from what's cool about games: exploring a world and having adventures. I'd also been playing a lot of board and card games (Race for the Galaxy, Dominion, euros) and I thought scores are a great mechanism, a clever abstraction that can enable what's cool about games: deep subtle competition. Basically I believed that scores were a good thing for boardgames but somehow a bad thing for videogames so I was resistant to putting them in mine. It's probably fair to say that the videogames I was playing just didn't have very good scoring (despite their strengths in other areas). Fortunately I got through my resistance, and with 868-HACK found the maybe-novel idea of putting something like a board-game-style scoring mechanism into a roguelike.

(These days people even call Balatro a roguelike. Not my fault ok.)

Back to the topic: I have a game with a scoring system, and narrative goals. I've been resisting assigning scores to the goals, because they're the thing that you really value, more than mere score! But maybe I have to learn the same lesson again twelve years later, and put some numbers on them. That's what makes the formal program-mechanical perspective of the game match up to the cool story in those 1/16 risk situations — the character is thinking about whether their chance of success is worth it versus just smashing things, the computer program is evaluating whether the number is bigger than the other number, the player is thinking about whether their chance of success is worth it versus just smashing things.

making choices on server map - part 1

Hey, not sure I'm managing to fit in a video this month so you get a design blog instead!
(Which is interesting, have I reached a point in recovery where this is less effort again?)

Okay, game structure. I discussed the basic idea of 868-BACK's server map in a previous post (on Patreon), to summarise:

• In 868-HACK after you hack a server, there's another random one after it, with difficulty increasing until you lose.
• For 868-BACK I've introduced a choice, selecting servers on a grid.
• Why would you ever choose a harder server? Because their data is more valuable (because there's a score multiplier).
• Servers also house devices, letting you gain additional powers as you progress in the game. (Unlike HACK where the only progression is increasing difficulty.)

Now, the idea of a score multiplier is sound, but still: why would you choose a harder server? As far as I've described, the optimal play for a high score might still be to always pick the easiest server, to minimise your chance of losing and get more points in the long run. HACK had this lovely tension between survival and score - your score is "points per round" times "number of rounds" so you can do better by increasing either of those values, and the ideal maximum is some incalculable midpoint between safety and foolhardiness. But making that work well relied on the danger increasing fast enough that you can't take "number of rounds" to infinity. If in BACK I'm putting this danger curve in the player's control, where does the pressure come from?

So: I've limited the number of rounds! This loses that beautiful multiplication by the number of rounds - but I've decided to be very comfortable with losing specific elements: the sequel is a new game finding its own way, and the original isn't going away. With a limited number of rounds, you get a high score by maximising your per-round score, so there's an incentive to attempt difficult servers.

We also don't want the optimal strategy to always be "pick the server with the highest mult". I'm not too worried about that because it's a multiplier: you still need to get the points to multiply. Probably there will be a sweet spot in the middle, and probably finding it will be tricky and depend on all the details. (And the details are interesting! I'm discussing this here at a very abstract level by just looking at difficulty as number of powerups, but it's really about getting to know the specific powerups and thinking about the complex ways they can interact.)

Next point: what should the multipliers be? My first thought was multiplier = number of powerups. (Yes the difficulty modifiers are still called "bonus powerups", deal.) But I probably still want some servers with no powerups because the game is complex enough to get started with anyway, so to not give zero for those my second thought was multiplier = number of powerups + 1. Generally start with the simplest idea: if it works out then it'll also be easier on players, and if it doesn't well you haven't spent too much time going in the wrong direction.

Obviously these numbers are "wrong": e.g. a server with one powerup isn't twice as hard as one with none, it's maybe 1.25x, so giving it a 2x multiplier isn't accurately giving a reward commensurate with the difficulty. But it doesn't have to be! I don't really mind if the gradient here is quite steep giving players strong encouragement to play with powerups: that's where the game gets really interesting, and it's more important for a scoring system to encourage doing interesting things than to measure of how well you played.

As I mentioned above, the scoring isn't the only reward for hacking a server: we're also collecting devices. Intuitively, the more powerful devices would be accessed through the more well-defended servers. But wait: if we keep the dead simple rule of "+1 powerup = +1 mult", those servers are already offering the best reward! Should I put the best devices on easier servers so there will be a choice of better scoring vs. better abilities? Or should I make the rule more complicated, e.g. "+1 powerup = +1 mult OR +1 device tier"? In the end what we've found playing it is that each additional powerup tends to increase the danger level superlinearly, as you increase the risk of nasty interactions between the different powerups. So a mere linear increase in multiplier doesn't cut it by itself, and it works out perfectly to give something like "+1 powerup = +1 mult AND +1 device tier".

(Okay, this is really long, I had two more main points to make but I'm tired and it's gotten long. So my conclusion is: writing is still more tiring for me than video, but this was too big a topic to get through in one go no matter what the medium and that is probably why I wasn't getting around to doing the video.)

archive - patreon "about"

I've updated my "about" page on Patreon to reflect my current situation. I just wanted to keep a record of what I wrote at the time (July 2022) so I've copied it here:

Hi, I'm Michael and I make videogames.

I used to make really a lot of games. I did jams and made small games really quickly, and I spent a long time making bigger games. You can find my work on smestorp.com; there are several available for free and some bigger ones for sale. There's also a discord where people talk about my games - I don't run it, some lovely people set it up. There's even been a jam where people made games inspired by my games (this writeup about it is really nice).

In 2020, like a lot of people, I got very sick and couldn't work much for a long time. It's bad. Making a living from my work has always been precarious, but it had felt like I was getting there and I had been confident of making something bigger again soon, and this illness has completely disrupted that. Since then I've done some small updates on my previous games, made a few small prototypes, but I'm not anywhere near releasing something new.

My health has improved since then. I'm not back to where I was, I still experience fatigue, but the shadow has passed and I'm getting better. I have more energy and more ability to concentrate, and I'm itching to use that to MAKE STUFF again.

I have two children - one three years old and another being born soon. It's chaos. I'm definitely not going to be on track to release anything with a newborn around so here I'm asking for support to get through. I've been learning how to manage myself to be able to do creative work with less focused time and less energy, but simply having money would do more to help free me up to make things.

I've started making videos to talk about my work, games, and other things that interest me. The first is linked above. It's rambling but honest. I'm planning to do these on a regular schedule. This will be my main public output for now. When I have a game to preview I'll make it available to subscribers; that will take time.

There's also a lot of my games that need attention to keep them working on new operating systems, or have rare bugs that would be nice to have fixed, or it would be nice to release on another platform so more people can play them. I've been very dedicated to supporting my games after release but I've fallen behind on that. This is work that doesn't pay very well because mostly it's for people who've already paid! Supporting me here will also help to do this. But my main focus with my limited time and energy will be to make something new.

Thanks to anyone who wants to give anything, and equally much thanks to anyone who takes time to read, listen, to play my games! 💚

CROW FUN

I'm responding to this thread (bluesky link, also twitter link) by Jake Eakle / personman:

these ideas got /inside me/, man!! i don't know exactly how to explain it but it really feels like engaging with this game taught me The Truth.

like, you gotta let things be how they are. sometimes that means stepping back and letting things settle into their natural shapes. sometimes it means stepping UP and putting in the hard work to get them where they're going. both are good! both are true! do you see??

and you gotta meet people where they're at. with complete respect and without hiding the truth from them! without sectioning them off into a little fuckin zone! but still you must PROVIDE.

this game has deeply important ethics lessons for you, if you listen.

(Yeah read the whole thread it's good.)

So on one level like it even seems absurd to say the game teaches ethics, on the surface there's not much that looks like that! It's not telling a story with characters and morals and quotes. You could say that the ideas that Jake's talking about aren't in the game at all, and entirely in his head - but I believe him. It's meaningfully something he got out of it, that emerged from the Jake+HACK system as he spent time with it, not just thoughts he would have had on his own without the game as an - inspiration? object of meditation? friend?

Man, this what making art is all about!

I don't know how much of these ideas I "put in there". I definitely didn't make the game as an allegory to communicate a specific message. But I tried thoughtfully to make good art.

It's this alchemy that happens when thoughtful, heartfelt work comes together with an earnest audience (cocreator?) and it unwinds in them and something new comes out. Different people will get different things out, because it's the interaction between.. some people might not get anything - or might not like what they get - but what I mean by a thing being "art" is essentially this quality of revealing new depths through engaging with it. (Does "better" art mean art that can alchemise with more different souls? Is that a thing?)

Ok that's that thought! One of the really nice things about doing this crowdfunding is seeing lots of different people saying stuff about what my work has meant to them! Thank you everyone!

crowfunding: 868-BACK

Hey! It's been a while since I've written here. I have, though, been fairly consistent about doing a monthly post on Patreon with videos (which are also mostly on youtube). It's been a good process for developing my voice, as always just consistently doing a thing you get better at it and now I'm a more confident speaker! I know video isn't the most efficient medium for everyone - I myself would still much prefer to read text than watch a video, and e.g. when I search for the answer to a problem and all the answers are in the form of video tutorials I'm pretty upset. And my videos are definitely often longer than they would need to be to communicate the information because I'm taking time to think, rambling a bit, and then not editing. But the vibe is good!

Anyway, I'll skip ahead to the present (my last video covers the gap pretty well if you want to check that out) and: I am announcing my next game!

It's called 868-BACK and it's.. well you can guess what it is. What? Michael's making a sequel? I really thought for a long time that was something I would never do, like that sequels are kind of crass. Like - beneath me, I guess? I'd look at these monolithic franchises and just be so bored seeing the same thing being made over and over again. But I'm *_*-CreAtive*^-^, I wouldn't do that! Hah.

Creative work has something in common with therapy, maybe it's a kind of therapy. If you want to keep making new things and pushing boundaries, you have to really look inside yourself and witness what's there. It takes personal growth. Or it gives personal growth maybe? It's all mixed in together, it's just part of being a person. You look at the things that you're cringing away from, the triggers you avoid, and at some point you just have to gird up and go after them.

And it feels sometimes ridiculous when I say things like this because I'm very aware that the things I make don't look "deep" and "serious" because they're full of wizards and robots. Which is just another knot to push past.

Last year I announced I was making a sequel to Cinco Paus! I wasn't very far along with it, and I was trying to figure out what I really wanted to do with it and how I could afford that.. anyway the point is, I was able to convince myself to do a (ugh) seeequel because the original game never really reached an audience, the idea was really to make a version that could (and I'd get to add fancy cool new stuff too, which would be fun to make, but that wasn't why I was doing it). Well, that hasn't gone anywhere yet (see that video I linked earlier for a fuller story but, don't worry it's all good, plans change with the winds but we go places).

Anyway, this year I was reorienting, trying to figure out how to bring in some money, asking myself what I really wanted to make yet. And, a mime wrote to me asking, for the Nth time, if I could add a portrait mode to 868-HACK. Now, 868-HACK started as a jam game made in a week, and then just sort of accreted from there with no good software engineering design at all. It's embarrassing, but to rework it for a portrait display I'd have to go through and change lots of hard-coded numbers because the gameplay code constantly refers to specific screen coordinates. (Okay the thing is, what matters is what gets the job done. I had tried several times to make videogames doing everything "properly" and those projects never got off the ground. I've seen so many other people's projects also go nowhere because they try to do it "right" too. I found an approach that was quick and dirty and let me get out the games I was yearning to make, and it worked(ish). Now I've done a few I'm much better at finding the middle ground between getting it done and making it extensible, but the only way I got that was the real experience of doing it wrong - my CS degree taught me lots of "right" ways but never met them with the reality of messy explorative creative expression.) So I always say no! No portrait mode for you! But it got me thinking, I'd been working in Godot engine, and ported Zaga-33 (a smaller simpler game) to it so I could release it on Android.. how much work would it be to port 868-HACK, maybe a portrait mode and a new platform release would be worth something together?

(Yes he's actually a mime, and he's bloody good too, check this out.)

At some point in there I got out my notebook of "things to try if I ever come back to 868-HACK". There was some damn good stuff in there! What had I been sitting on this for? A bunch of new ideas started flowing too. Before I knew it, I had several more notebook pages tentatively titled "868-HACK sequel??? 869hack?".

Well. Turns out sequels are totally fine! I got past that discomfort with the idea of a Cinco Paus sequel (which is still on the cards!) but that's opened up a whole new vista. It had been really important to me to be being original and constantly doing new work, and all my so-called "broughlikes" are determinedly avoiding each other. Seriously, 868-HACK / Imbroglio / Cinco Paus are about as far apart as games can possibly be while being in the same niche subgenre and interested in all the same things. Sometimes I'd see comments about how my games are all kinda the same and I'd really bristle! No! They are definitely different! (Even ignoring Helix etc. in totally different genres, but people do.) And I'm proud of how different they are, I'm not going to turn around and say that's not a good thing. That drive for difference really pushed me to discover some great ideas. Here's where the "therapy" comes in: sometimes we discover that we have a belief that's limiting us from doing what is there for us to do, and we feel like we're blocked because we're not letting ourselves just do the thing that we could do, that we want to do, and would be good for us to do. But - those limitations we put on ourselves aren't intrinsically bad things! To get past them, we have to recognise that they were something that served us at the time, but their time is past and now we can move past them. Step by step, I'm past the idea that I should avoid things that are too close to what I've done before, and I've allowed myself to consider the (to other people bleedingly obvious) idea of making a sequel to my most successful work.

And a vista opens up. I had been treating everything I'd made before as an obstacle, and so the possibilities of what I could make were gradually closing smaller and smaller every step. But I own everything I've made, I can do whatever the heck I want with it, it's all just resources. I watch my daughter painstakingly drawing a perfect picture one day, and the next day she cuts it up with scissors to stick pieces on something else. Yesterday's meal is today's ingredients.

I'll be posting more details about the design direction and where it's at soon! But, mostly being busy just working on it.

Also (importantly) I have run out of money, so I am inviting crowdfunding support so I can finish the game: 868-BACK on backerkit. Please share, support, etc. I hope you're excited about seeing what I do with the freedom to take the original and twist it into wild new shapes, and I hope for some of you that excitement translates into a willingness to donate up-front. Thanks!

Zaga-33 reborn

(This is the same as I just posted on Patreon but I'll put it here too.)

This took way longer than I expected!

In early March I decided to just spend a week rewriting an old game in Godot to help learn the engine while at the same time making it work on iOS again since I hadn't kept up with updates, and finally releasing on Android. Of course that week I got a bad case of covid. I still got the game largely working that week, but then needed a lot of recovery. I'm feeling great now though: not gonna have any bad long-term effects because I really did take the rest I needed at the time.

And then yeah just the details of getting it working on everything dragged on. It's not what I'm best at. There's still issues with the "google play store" - they cancelled me because I didn't update Glitch Tank often enough and now won't verify me because I live in a different country. Hopefully that gets sorted eventually, but thankfully you at least can distribute software on Android without official approval, so I've released it already on itch.io.

So! Here it is on android platform, eleven years late. And here it is back on iOS, four years after being taken down for not being updated sufficiently frequently.

Incidentally I did add a new mode! I thought about making it secret but that doesn't really make sense after such time, so all you have to do is complete the game once and then tap the moon.

itch.io link for android, windows, macos
appstore link for ios

patreon / videos

I started this blog 13 years ago (not quite to the day) with an exercise of writing a post about each power in the game I was working on at the time. I got about half-way through the exercise and it served its purpose of opening the channel for me, getting me habituated to writing here. I've written a bunch of different things here: little diary entries, reviews of games I like, game design theory, assorted nonsense don't even know what. Most consistently I've posted when I release games, usually with some analysis of the development process.

There's a part of me here, a voice I'm comfortable speaking in at certain times about certain things. For a few years there I was coming to that voice quite often, this was a fruitful channel for the ideas I was thinking through at the time. Other ideas haven't fit as much. Maybe because I assume a certain audience; I restrict myself based on what I expect people who might read this to be interested in. Maybe because I developed the habit of writing here at a certain time when I had particular interests. Writing right now feels a little like channeling my past self rather than being the same person currently I am day to day.

Similarly my twitter was somewhere I posted a lot for a while, dropped off for a bunch of reasons, but still sometimes I have a thought that feels like a tweet to me so maybe I post it. When I look at what I've posted there recently I see "feels like a tweet" means a limited style and set of topics. I'm filtering through the lens of who I was 8-10 years ago when that was more part of my life. Not intentionally it just happens. Cognitive archaeology. We're built of accumulated layers of self and the older ones are still there but less active and less important to where we are now. I wasn't filtering myself then, and perhaps if I'd consistently kept posting there unrestrictedly it would be full of thoughts about massage, foraging, homebrew, childbirth. Topics that until one sentence ago you had no idea I'd taken an interest in.

So how do I communicate now? My voice of the moment, to speak my present thoughts, unfiltered by assumptions of past selves. I saw some tweets from @visakanv about how he was finding it good to just video himself talking and it unexpectedly resonated. People had suggested videos to me before and I'd never felt any impulse to do it but this time I just thought: okay. (I haven't watched any of his videos yet so I don't know if the direction I've taken has any relation to what he was actually talking about but it's not important.) Video has all the complexities of voice and body language, deep subconscious embodied communication, so much less controlled than text where you can write and rewrite until it's exact. So I've started making videos where I talk spontaneously to simply see where it goes. I'll do it as an exercise until it feels comfortable. I intend to talk about various topics not exclusively games, to aim for this sense of not feeling restricted by my idea of who I'm talking to. Maybe I'll try that here too.

I've done a few talks here and there, conferences and stuff, and I have varying satisfaction with them. Public speaking: it's a skill worth getting better at. The talk that felt best to me wasn't recorded and was about a game I didn't actually release yet (Smesport); I just spoke passionately from right in the middle of thinking about it rather than trying to distill lessons afterward for an audience. I want more like that. People have told me through the years that I should promote my games better, talk them up. I've always been reluctant to, preferring to let the work speak for itself. Well, sometimes it can, but it really deserves the best I can give it. The specific ways that people suggest talking about them don't gel with me, but that doesn't mean they're not right at the root, I just have to develop a way that's authentic to me.

I haven't released a game for a long time, I've been sick for a long time, I was about to have another child, and I was really worrying what to do about money. So I've started a patreon. If you want to and can afford to donate money to support me keeping going I really appreciate it. It's been really nice to feel that people value what I've done. I wish I had a new game to sell but I don't; when I do I'll show you but it's really slow right now. I wish some of the games I already made had sold more. Anyway I'm promising to make a video at least every two weeks. There might be other things too, maybe I'll write more or post some drawings or something.

(About my illness: when I posted here previously I'd had some improvement and was feeling cautiously optimistic that it would continue. It's similar now, maybe a little better overall but it fluctuates and some days are still pretty hard. When I do too much one day I take several days to recover, so I have to keep being careful. But I'm way way better than I was through 2020.)

So in typical Michael fashion I'm trying to kill multiple birds with fewer than the usual number of stones. A creative outlet, a source of income, a self-improvement practice, a quiet forest time. Here are the videos: michael in the forest. They're not much but there will be more. From my experience with games I know well that it's very effective to first just make things. I'm not trying to make the best video or the best talk, I'm just doing it and then doing it again and eventually some of them will be quite good.

plague

I haven't posted here for a long time.

In 2020 I got sick. I noticed in May that I'd been very tired for a while and it was getting worse rather than better, and by June I had severe fatigue, needing naps every afternoon - sometimes just falling asleep in the middle of the floor, muscle pain, mind unclear, difficulty concentrating. I think it was most likely the Long Covid; I had a friend in my house in March who was sick with an unidentified disease that could plausibly have been COVID-19 (though at the time we believed it wasn't based on the information currently available), and after that we had mild cold symptoms - of course this was before testing was widely available.

The doctor wasn't much help. He ordered a bunch of tests and told me I did amazing on all of them. Blood, ECG, chest X-ray, apparently everything showed that I was in very good shape. Which is like, kind of nice; as someone who used to just do computer and books all the time I've worked hard on turning that around and getting fit and it's nice to have that measured. But it didn't do anything to solve the problem.

My symptoms fluctuated over time and I more or less learnt to live with them. Learnt not to suddenly try to catch up on everything when I had a good day, because then I'd just collapse again the next day. The one thing that did help, weirdly, was the COVID-19 vaccine. I say weirdly because it's not what it was designed for, but there's anecodotal evidence of other people experiencing this, I don't claim to know what's up. Even if it's just the good old placebo effect I'll take it.

Whatever the reason, I've been feeling a lot better for a few months now. I'm getting my strength back: I can lift things again now that I could lift three years ago but I couldn't lift last year. I don't want a relapse so I'm still being careful and trying not to overdo it. I'm tentatively working again. I still find it hard to make games without the long focused periods of time I used to have pre-parenting, but I feel there's no rush. I guess one lesson I've taken from this enforced break is to stress less about trying to keep up with the indie games scene and trying to make the right thing to make money out of it, or to live up to some fake expectation of being a "genius" game designer. I'll just make something I want to make, when I can manage to. Meanwhile I've been also learning new things and looking into work I can hopefully do in a flexible way around potential fatigue spikes and also still making some games and stuff. I reckon it's good for me as an artist to not just do games games games all the time anyway.

Even though I haven't been releasing new games, people still buy the ones I've made before. It's consistently been a few hundred euros every month which, while it doesn't cover the rent it's not bad for not being able to work at all. It's unfortunate that a couple of the older ones have dropped off from my not having managed to keep up with system updates, and it feels bad how that kind of ties me down - if I just went to work on something completely different for ten years everything I've done would be lost. Or if I got permanently sick. So ephemeral. But anyway, thank you everyone who's bought my games and kept supporting me in these times.

definite plan

Imbroglio: Mizzenmast is now unambiguously released and working. This was a stressful few days. Yesterday I completely crashed and spent the day in bed with sore throat, I guess my body recognised that it was time to take a break. Need to be more careful about keeping the immune system up. Difficult balance to get priorities right, some amount of productive creative work is good to have in there for overall well-being but I can overdo it.

I started making Imbroglio in late 2014, maybe earlier depending how much you count different prototypes that led in its direction, released in 2016 but kept working on it as a minor side project with expansions in 2016, 2018, 2020, so it's been a long ride to being complete. Feels good, I took the time and accomplished my vision for the game, especially with Draft Mode it really gets the chaotic combo-building feeling I was looking for. For personal satisfaction I'm glad I saw it through rather than just releasing an initial version and moving on. Probably I would have more money if I'd put that work towards more new games instead, but it's never clear.

But it's not quite done yet since it's still only on iOS! Of course I've always planned to release it on PC but I decided a while back to simplify things for myself by delaying that until I'd finished expanding it. Making the choices that simplify things is a critical part of managing to work as an independent artist. I also intended to release it on Android, I even developed it in a cross-platform framework to simplify that, but then when I tried it didn't work and didn't seem worth the effort for 31 sales. Maybe I'll try again sometime. No promises.

I wrote last year that for the moment with a wild baby I was finding it worked better to be building on old things rather than trying to muster the attention to make something new. Well I'd hoped that would have shifted by now but then this whole pandemic went down so we've all had a lot on our shoulders. It's hard to plan a new project that might take years at a time where the future is so blatantly uncertain. So I'll keep fixing up old things.

TOTALLY LIKELY PLAN OF THINGS TO HAPPEN
Imbroglio: ports
Cinco Paus: update/mini-expansion
(redacted): finish up and release
868-HACK: fix the few bugs that have come in over years
Zaga-33: get it working again on iOS haha
Smesport: it's not the time to release it now but I can fix the bug that was holding it up
Quinzena: it's still not a baby phase where I can work with it but this will come

If I can't work on anything new maybe I can at least get a clean slate and not have random crap I mean to get around to someday hanging over me since years. Or maybe inspiration will strike and I just make something new anyway, it tends to have a way of doing that when I make other plans.

imbroglio - expansion & crash

The update to Imbroglio with new expansion went live. It's crashing the game on launch. This didn't come up at all during testing, sometimes things work differently with Game Center (the API for high scores on iOS) when applications are released, it's annoying but I'm working on it and will figure it out. Sorry everyone!

For now you can just not download the update, but if want to play on an updated copy you can by disabling Game Center (Settings, scroll down to Game Center, slide the green bar in top right to off) and the game doesn't crash, but can't access leaderboards. (If you're running an old version of iOS you might not be able to access IAPs without Game Center active, but on current ones you can.)

Okay thanks for your patience and keep looking after yourselves!

preview for Imbroglio: Mizzenmast

Imbroglio: Mizzenmast, the third expansion for Imbroglio, has been submitted to the appstore and will be released in a few days. It takes the epic adventure to the high seas! But still in a tiny dungeon. Just with sea-ey things. Don't worry games don't have to make sense. Sea-dungeon. Something.

It's a jumbo sized expansion. I was originally planning four expansions each with two heroes for a final 4x4 character-select grid. In the end I didn't feel I had enough good weapon cards for two more sets; it's better to keep a higher density of interesting stuff. So there's 16 new weapons, same as the other two expansions, but all 4 new heroes because they're all good. It's mostly a jumble of effects that interact in novel ways with what's already in there, not really a common theme apart from mostly being things you might find on a pirate ship. And then there's Draft Mode, which is a new way to play the game with a more "roguelike" scoring system that encourages playing out every game (instead of restarting 10x to try for the perfect opening) and using a variety of weapons.

So now of course it's time for EXCLUSIVE PREVIEW CONTENT:


You might never have thought about it, but weirdly all the other heroes have the ability to see through walls. Or at least, when controlled by the player they act as though they had this ability. I guess maybe the walls are just chest-height? Anyway, for maximum realism meet: Cruel Pirate Rodney, a powerful villain with the ability to throw his weapons about. To play him evokes something of the classical dungeon crawl feeling, exploring a dark place not knowing where you will find monsters or treasure, honestly it surprises me that even this works on a 4x4 grid.


The Lightkeeper's Candle gives something different to everyone who holds it. Harry restores an extra hit point, Susannah and Masina do double damage, etc. And then it gives a couple of extra runes to help to use that ability, but also to help survive the first few turns of the game before you've built anything else up - especially important in Draft where restarting isn't free.

small progress update

The Imbroglio expansion is coming together well, it's become my main work focus for now.
Draft mode (maybe I need a cooler name for it) is working great, it's more "roguelike" than the other modes in that you're trying to make the best of what you find rather than execute a perfectly planned combo. Using similar ideas to what I've been developing in 868-HACK, Cinco Paus, P1 SELECT to make every game count, moving away from this way of playing by restarting a dozen times to try to get a good start. It's fun, I'm just enjoying playing it for fun again which is quite neat after what, five years? I hope others will find it to be a big enough new thing.
One of the new heroes is an absolute mess to program, requires a whole bunch of special cases, but in a way there's something nice about having built up all this complexity and then just being free to trample all over it because it's not important anymore to keep it organised. Anyway you'll see.
New weapons are coming together well. Thought about doing a "new mechanic" like charging to theme several weapons around but it's turned out more individual weird things. There's a lot can be done just by recombining what's already there, the basic framework of event triggers "when X occurs, do Y" is so flexible, most combinations aren't interesting or fun to play with but it's easy to try out lots of them. But some ideas still require quite a bit of code and I'm finding it harder to throw them away when I've spent more time on them, something can be clever and take work but not actually be good. Limiting myself to 16 weapons in the set is good practice for throwing away the ideas that aren't good.
I'm also revising some previous weapons that were less useful, I had hoped to "fix" them by adding things that combined well with them, but that hasn't happened so here we go. Not sure exactly how far I want to go with this, it's good to apply what I've learnt from having more time and having it out there but also maybe some things are just part of the game's texture now and should just be left to be.

Cinco Paus update comes slower. Playing with new artifacts I decided most of them weren't good, I think I have two good ones, that's probably a nice number to not overcomplexify anyway (of course I was aiming for five for numerological reasons). Trying also some weirder ideas, probably won't stick but you never know.

Quinzena, I haven't found a good version of the new idea I was trying out so maybe I drop it. Working on testing some changes to the deck but baby has become very mobile and is no longer content to quietly watch, gone are the days of playtesting while breastfeeding, so it will take time.