Friday Rambles and Game Dev Update 2025-06-20

It's already Friday. Time flies when you're not really doing anything. Welcome to the Friday Ramble for June 20, 2025.

Merch Stuff

The Penny Plushie campaign is successful! We got 200 sold, everynyan. And only took a week! Penny can now buy a Nintendo Switch 2 and play Donkey Kong Bananananza when it's out. Thank you for your support!!

Of course, the "real" secret goal is 400, so I can get more than a tiny sliver of a cut from Makeship for this whole thing. I get like, a significant amount more. So that means Penny's trials are not quite over...

I need to make another comic about this but I haven't gotten around to it yet. I'm tired of drawing so I'm doing coding work now to recover. Speaking of coding:

Gamedev Stuff

This week I wrote most of the VN dialogue code for Game 2. It's rebuilt from the ground up, so I don't have to deal with 100 different combinations of softlocks caused by various UI elements affecting the game state in a bad way. Things just work and now I can get to writing the actual dialogue. I think it was easy(ish)er because of 1. I've already done it before wrongly, and 2. I know what the game is going to look like and what features I need to implement ahead of time. I basically reimplemented what we already have, so you probably won't notice anything different, but for me the code is actually maintainable.

Also I made some new menu icons for testing the prototype, but I probably won't be using them. I think they look cute, but they're not thematically related to anything at all lol. But Game 2 will have new icons so it looks like a sequel and not the same game or whatever.

Oh yeah, did you know: Bunny-chan was in the Overtime chapter at one point in development? I drew her sprite and everything, and she was a big part of the TGS demo. But I removed her storyline because the chapter was already too big and the things I wanted to use her for increased the scope and complexity of the game, like, exponentially, so it was an easy decision to cut her stuff out (since I hadn't implemented it anyway). You can see the remains of her part in the game in the RPG segment (the big hole in the ground) and the title screen background image.

I'm hoping to bring her back for Game 2, though. Maybe. Who knows? I like the character and the sprite too much.

And no one saw this so maybe it'll still be a surprise when it happens.

Nintendo approved 1.0.5-NS, so it's now pushed out for the Nintendo Switch. It finally brings the Switch version up to date with the Steam version (basically just the shortened time for traveling between locations). I don't have any more updates planned, at least until I'm allowed to do make a Switch 2 optimized version so I can add support for higher resolution and mouse control. I hope that's soon! Not counting on it, though!

And... The Steam Daily Deal sale is over! Dreams and Deadlines was only on the Steam front page for 24 hours, but it was on sale for a week. It was a good week. I wish Dreams and Deadlines could be a Daily Deal every week. Alas, I am but a small fish in a big pond. I celebrated with a burger. Oh. I just remembered the Steam Summer Sale is next week. Wow, it's like a Daily Deal every week! Dreams do come true.

Now that I'm writing dialogue for prototyping, it feels super foreign to me. I gotta shake the rust off and get back into it. I watched a few streams of people playing the Overtime chapter, and I'm impressed again at how I did it... It feels like so much work... (because it was...)

Yeah, real heavy dialogue here...

As I'm outlining the story, I'm hesitant at having to sort of ruin the nice little bow I put on the end of Dreams and Deadlines, by having Penny and friends encounter more problems again instead of achieving their dreams or whatever. But hey, thinking about it, that's life!! And making games is hard! Wow this is gonna be easy!

Plus I did it for Overtime and I'm glad I did it.

Other Stuff

I bought a Nintendo Switch 2 Pro Controller 2. It rules. I'm using it to play Tears of the Kingdom, which I had bought when it released a week after Dreams and Deadlines, but wasn't able to play because it released a week after Dreams and Deadlines. And stuff came up and I was never able to play it, but now that the Nintendo Switch 2 Edition upgrade is out, it's the perfect new launch title for me. What a good game. The pro controller 2 grip buttons are perfect for this game, too, I can't imagine playing without em.

I like this art so I made a sticker out of it. It'll be on the Sticker Shop next week.

The End

Okay, well, that's it for the week, I guess.

Next week I'm going to continue working on Game 2. Now that the dialogue framework is mostly done, I think I can start plotting out the story and start writing out small parts of the dialogue. A good chance to use my laptop again for work. Too bad I canceled my coworking membership! ha! ha! And also I guess I should market the Penny plushie some more so we can hit 400 before the campaign ends. idk. I'm so tired of marketing plushies, I wish some cool merch partner would do that for me. ;-)

Thank you to all the new supporters who joined this week, and I hope you stick around :) - and of course, thank you to all the long-timers who have been around forever too. As always. Anyway, see you next week!