Friday Rambles 2026-01-09

Good afternoon, Fridaynauts. It was the first full work week of the new year. Keeping busy, I hope. In a good way, of course.

Not Game Dev Stuff

My new Hobonichi Techo has been getting a lot of use, both because I had many things to do and because I'm feeling kinda creative. At the end of the day I doodle a small ink doodle on the page to sort of sum it up. It's a fun thing to do.

The photos look terrible because of the tiny size and I have to crop out a bunch of personal items and stuff so I just redrew them on my tablet to share here.

Doing this has made me realize I should have just opened the photos in an image editor and adjusted it so only the ink is visible. Like we used to do. Oh well, next time.

Now that the holidays are over, I reopened the sticker store. I wonder if some people were refreshing the site because like, the day I reopened I got a few orders, even though I did it all stealthy-like. Anyway, I also restocked a few items, but didn't have time to make a new design or anything.

Speaking of merch, the cool thing I'm excited about finally has a solid date for launch, and I saw the production samples of the cool things and they're so much cooler than I thought they were gonna be (and I already was thinking they'd be pretty darn cool). Anyway. I probably should temper your expectations so it's a cooler reveal when it's actually announced. I won't talk about it anymore (until I can).

Game Dev Stuff

Okay, so I was planning on finishing the trailer for Game 2 by the end of this month, but...

//(imagine a picture of a cool Steam store page here. I'm waiting for it to be approved)

Yes, that's right! I just straight up finished the new Steam store page. Trailer, title, and all. But since it's gonna be a big announcement and everything I can't really post about it yet. Sorry. But I'm hoping it'll be live by Monday. Stay tuned!! But... don't get too excited because a lot of it you've already seen in the Rambles. lol

Okay here's a new screenshot

But why? Why rush out the trailer and store page now, when I'm not even close to finishing anything yet? Okay, that's another thing I can't share yet, but it was decided this week, and I was like, oh no. I need a store page up as soon as possible so people know I'm making a sequel and can wishlist it. So I had to finish and animate all the sprites and record footage and edit the trailer and finish the store page and make all the capsule art and stuff in like, 3 days.

Nothing like a drop-dead date to light a fire under my butt. Just like the old times!

Of course, I had to make some compromises, like in particular reusing old art for the capsules, but they're temporary until I finish the story and can make something that better represents the actual content of the game.

Fun fact, the capsule images for Dreams and Deadlines also used old art that was supposed to be temporary, but I never got around to changing them. I was more concerned with like, finishing the game itself (you can read about that whole deal in the April/May 2023 Friday Rambles), and I was writing dialogue up to the last day before release so I never got a chance. So it goes. But the Nintendo Switch edition has the cool new key art I drew for the one year anniversary (and used as a banner for TGS 2024).

This one. I should update the Steam page with this, too. Maybe not. It's a huge hassle.

Oh no, the temp art for Game 2 is going to be the permanent art, isn't it...

The End

Well, I said a lot without actually saying anything, but what I can say is, I was very busy and productive and if everything goes well, you'll see the stuff I talked about next week. I think next week is going to be a marketing week, so it'll be a different kind of busy than this week was, but it'll be a nice change of pace from being hunched over my drawing tablet and swearing at iMovie.

Okay, thanks for your support and for sticking around, as always! See you next week.