Friday Rambles and Game Dev Update 2025-05-02

It's the Friday Rambles, the first one of May, in fact. What? The year's 1/3 over? What?

You might be here from Substack, which I disabled paid subscriptions for, so I can just maintain one subscriber platform thing (Patreon). Welcome! I am glad you're here.

Gamedev Stuff

This week was spent on finalizing things for the Switch launch of Endless Monday game, and then the big release yesterday, May 1! Yes! The game is now live everywhere on the Nintendo Switch! And I drew a cute Penny real quick (like, 30 min, maybe? Less?) for the announcement post.

Here are the store links:

• JP: https://store-jp.nintendo.com/item/software/D70010000095900

• KR: https://store.nintendo.co.kr/70010000095901

• EU: https://www.nintendo.com/en-gb/Games/Nintendo-Switch-download-software/Endless-Monday-Dreams-and-Deadlines-2814318.html

• Americas: ???? ?? (please look up directly on your Switch's eShop... 🥺)

Yes, that's right, I still don't have the Americas store link to send people so they can buy my game. I have to say "please look up directly on your Switch eShop... 🥺" like an idiot. I sent a message to who I think are the people in charge of this stuff, but worst case the shop page will still not be up till next Thursday, which will be pretty awesome. But it's kind of my fault, because I rushed out the thing to coincide with the 2 Year Anniversary Extravaganza, instead of setting everything up a month ahead of time and setting up a coming soon page or whatever. To be fair to me, the game was delayed like a month due to "external factors." Anyway, lessons learned for next time...

Game looks pretty cool on the JP store, though.

I had also set the time for the US launch discount wrong (entirely my fault), so while the game was available on the eshop at midnight, the discount didn't take effect til 9am. Thus ensuring the most devoted fans got to pay 1 USD more than everyone else! Wow, cool! Good job!

Also, I submitted a bugfix patch because the game doesn't automatically start with the system language (if supported) if the system language is set to something other than English, because I messed up the code that does that on first start (also entirely my fault). So Japanese and Korean players launching the game for the first time will see the English version instead of the Japanese or Korean versions. I fixed it like a day before launch, but I have to wait for it to go through the patch approval process. Oh well! Another lesson learned for next time.

Lots of lessons learned this time around, to put a positive spin on this mess. I'll be making a big ol' checklist or Standard Operating Procedure as they say, for my next Nintendo launch, which I'll have to plan for like 2 months ahead of time.

But, despite it all, people are actually buying the game, so I'm pretty happy. People have been posting pictures of the game running on their Switch and it was pretty rad. A Japanese streamer even streamed the Switch version. Very cool.

And people are buying the game again, even though they already have it.

What a cool guy.

I was planning on other stuff like comics and whatnot, but I didn't have time or energy to do that. I have one more comic idea that I might be able to use after the dust settles a bit to remind people I'm still trying to sell the Switch version. Maybe after the language setting fix patch goes live.

I posted some arts instead. I drew angry Skyes and posted a previously unused Penny drawing (sprite? idk).

Low effort things like that, and more people see them than the comics. They were fun to draw to let off steam, too.

Also!! (wow it's a long ramble today) People were hitting the cap in Lumber Lass Fever (which I don't think anyone should actually do, but whatever), and getting mad about it, so I added a new prestige system that resets the counter at the max (level 99999), turns the level counter into a "star level" counter, and removes Skye shops. The log counter will be consumed to increment the star level if the player reaches the max again. So that number will go up forever, and I only coded in support for 3 digits for the star level, so if you somehow loop through getting the max number 999 times (without Skye shops), which I expect to take around 2 years of continuous play, it will still roll over to 1000, but the number will look a little out of alignment. I don't care, though, I put too much time into that already.

Also, she goes into space because she chopped down every tree on earth.

Of course, this patch will not hit the Switch until it goes through approval. I hope no one hits the cap before then.

The people are clamoring for a physical release of the game. I don't know how to do that without having to beg Fangamer (I am not above doing this if it comes down to it) or get a publisher (which I don't want to do). Fangamer sempai. Please notice me.

Last but not least!! It's Bandcamp Friday!! Buy your favorite musical artists' albums, and also get the luxurious Endless Monday: Dreams and Deadlines OST by the esteemed Chance Thrash!!

Other Stuff

Penny plush is still in progress, and I put in more feedback for the revision. I also got an email from Makeship about how they're having to add fees because of economic conditions (ie. tariffs). That's gonna be great when it comes time to sell the Penny plushies and I have to convince people to pay an extra whatever% on top of an already expensive thing. Oh well! At least I can still sell video games. For now.

Jogged every other day, as usual, but I think I should increase the frequency. I like jogging.

I had to take my car to the mechanic's this week to to replace a bad alternator. My car's getting up there in years, like me.

The End

This week was pretty packed! I drew more than I have since I was working on the game. I should do that more often. I want to draw more quick and easy posts like the Thank You Penny above, so maybe I'll do that for this next week's comic I'll post to remind people that I still want them to buy the game on Switch. Next week is the second anniversary (5/4) but I don't think I'll be able to do any fun events or anything in addition to the Switch launch. It'll just be more marketing stuff (hopefully I'll have a link for the Americas store page soon so I can send out a newsletter blast), drawing more pictures, releasing the bugfix patch and submitting the next patch to Nintendo. I also want to update my website to showcase my game(s) better, now that I'm a published Nintendo game developer :). It's time to put on my care pants, the pants I wear when I try hard and care about things.

Okay, thank you for your support, as always! See you next week!