hcnone

Friday Rambles and Gamedev Update 2023-12-15

Added 2023-12-15 18:15:37 +0000 UTC

It’s the Friday Rambles. We're halfway through the last month of 2023. Let's pump up those numbers. Whatever that means.

Having closed the sticker shop for the holidays, I’ve also stopped having to pack orders every day. Consequently my working days have been way more productive. Ignoring the fact that with my usual amount of sales, packing orders does not actually take that much time…

Above: I miss you...

I made another comic for the last few days of the Tiger-chan Plushie Sell-a-thon.

Above: a well known business model for collectors

This took forever to draw. The colored lines I stubbornly use for my “art style” is frustratingly tedious to do on a deadline and I was also tired at this point of drawing comics for selling plushies. But rejoice, we sold more than Blythe Plushie (thank you thank you), and the campaign is finally over!

… Except Makeship approached me yesterday asking if I wanted an extension, so I said yes. Why not? More time, more sales. And the dates now nicely coincide with the Steam Winter Sale, which is cool because I still have a big ol’ news post about the Tiger-chan Doll on my Steam store page. But now I look like a fool (or worse, some kind of lying jerk) for telling everyone to hurry up and buy the plushie because today was the last day. Sorry to anyone who was inadvertently tricked into buying it earlier than they had to. I didn’t know this would happen. Really! It’s never happened to any of my previous campaigns.

Anyway, I rushed out a comic about it in a couple hours, because I had next to no notice about this.

Above: i actually like it though. penny’s so darn cute here. and the jaggy thick outline art style kinda reminds me of like, indie comics from the early 2000s.

Note the change in art style, which allowed me to finish this so much faster. I probably could have done it at a higher resolution. Well, lessons learned for next time. Anyway, I think that’s the last comic I’m making for this, and it’ll just be passive marketing from now on, because I have other things planned for the rest of the month and we’re in bonus overtime anyway. By the way, if you haven’t gotten a cool and exclusive Tiger-chan plushie yet…

Above: it’s like we just started our campaign!

In between drawing comics for a plushie campaign, I started doing major work on the dialogue scripts for the Big Extra Story Update for Endless Monday: Dreams and Deadlines, based on the outline I completed last week. The first draft is so far pretty rough. After having played through the final version of the main game a bunch of times, which has gone through like a million micro-revisions, it’s been a bit overwhelming looking at such an unfinished, terrible thing and all the stuff I need to do. And I think my grumpiness from the past 2 months of doing nothing but marketing events has been seeping into the tone of the dialogue lol. But I’m liking the novelty of the new story and situations. In any case, I’m familiar enough with my own process to know that with enough time and effort I’ll fix everything and it’ll eventually turn out just fine. I hope.

Above: here we go again

I think this is what my game dev schedule is gonna look like for the next year:

Jan 2024: CN and KR localizations for EMDND wrapping up, LQA, playtests
o Make significant progress with Big Extra Story Update
Feb 2024: CN and KR localizations released for EMDND
o Nearing end of Big Extra Story Update along with slowly starting the hype machine on the socials
Mar 2024: Finish initial complete build of Big Extra Story Update
o Start localization process for Big Extra Story Update
Mar-May 2024: (Busy with moving and travel to visit family)
o Hopefully all localizations for the Big Extra Story Update finishing here in the meantime
o Do LQA, playtests, and extra polish during this time too
Jun 2024: Big Extra Story Update release (for 1 year anniversary)
o A month late for exactly 1 year anniversary, but oh well
Jun 2024 - Dec 2024: Super focus on Game 2
Early 2025: Game 2 release? Hopefully within Q1?

Man, gamedev takes so much time. Well, looks like I’ve got my work cut out for me. Hope everything goes well.

Changing topics: while browsing Twitter feeling bad about retweeting yet another one of my own plushie marketing posts I saw a funny art meme on my TL, so I quickly drew my own contribution to it.

Above: also accidentally my first Jill fanart in like 2 years.

It took almost no time at all, but in the process I accidentally found a quick and easy middle ground for drawing pictures with color that doesn’t take a billion years but still looks okay. And yeah, I immediately applied my learnings to that Tiger-chan Plushie comic above.

I should do that more often. Shitpost, that is. It was fun to draw something completely stupid for no particular reason, and especially not to sell something for once. While also experimenting and stuff!

On another note, the Nintendo Switch 2023 Recap thing is out. Let’s take a look at my stats…

Above: Oh...

To be fair, I did buy Tears of the Kingdom and Pikmin 4 this year and thought really hard about playing them. Yeah, most of my year was spent on making my own game, and playing indie games from Steam. On my Steam Deck. I’m actually pretty excited about the Steam 2023 Recap thingie, whenever that’s out. I wonder what number 1 is gonna be lol

Above: Spoilers

I do agree with many that 2023 was the best year for gaming, but not for the reasons they say (because I haven’t played any of the “best games” released this year (not because i’m too cool or anything but i literally didn’t have the time or spare change to invest in the big AAA stuff)). But for me personally, I have never played so many indie games than I have since becoming an indie game dev myself this year, and becoming more involved and interested in the indie game universe. There’s a gigantic world out there and I’ve not even begun to scratch the surface. Oh, and making and releasing my own game was a big deal too.

That being said I asked for Super Mario Wonder or Super Mario RPG Remake for Christmas this year, and pending judgement from Santa Claus, I’ll probably play one of those while I’m at the ol’ family home in the country as my AAA game for the year.

Next up for me is finishing Secret Santa stuff I’m doing for some artist discord servers (lots of work), and preparing for Steam Winter Sale (updating the sales pic), and working on the Big Extra Story Update whenever possible.

Above: The sales pic

Whew. It’s been a busy couple of months. I’ll be resting during the holiday, though, so at least that’s coming up. I hope I can get some real work done this next week and have something interesting to show.

I’ve been finding that writing out all the stuff I did for the week and my future plans has been really helpful for organizing my thoughts. Writing out the timeline/game updates schedule in particular has been a real load off my mind, now that I know how and when things need to happen. Blah blah blah