What's Up?
Boy howdy it has been a spell since I've stopped by with an update. You'd figure with treading my ADHD stuff that I'd be on the blog update grind even more, but I think what has actually happened is that I've bumped it off my list of priorities for what I'm doing on a day to day basis.
So before I dive into another full day of various tasks on Super Meat Boy Forever let's do a quick recap of the past chunk of time!
Hey the game has a new trailer and release date announcement! We also announced that we're going to be debuting on the Epic Games Store for our launch on PC. This is pretty exciting and I'm pretty pumped to be part of a movement that hopes to disrupt the power monopoly that Steam currently holds over a lot of developers. It is also exciting slash terrifying to see a light at the end of the tunnel for this project!
The card game that I worked on for the Super Meat Boy Cinematic Universe got another round of printing, and is now available on The Yetee! Rival Rush was a project we started for a PAX promo and it spiraled out of control and turned into an actual one on one card game. Each player builds a deck of 20 cards and races through a level as a character from Super Meat Boy. This was a ton of fun to make, and it turned out to be a pretty awesome game to play in my humble opinion.
I sat down with my dear friends Jon and Rob to talk about a bunch of game design stuff, but in particular "Finding your Game's Identity." We talk for over an hour about the process of game design and honing in on the core essence of a game including examples from the design processes of both Rival Rush and Super Meat Boy Forever.
Tommy and I sat down with the dudes from the Handsome Phantom Podcast and had a lot of fun talking about the recent developments of Super Meat Boy and Rival Rush, as well as what the future holds for Team Meat. This one gets a little bit more wacky than the Pretentious Game Ideas cast. I blame Tommy.
I've still been sneaking in drawings and doodles whenever I can find the time, but I haven't been posting them anywhere. I guess tumblr ended up turning into a big pile of poop by banning any content they deemed to be inappropriate, and that was where I went for all of my artwork and drawing needs but I guess I should find a different outlet if I want to get back to posting stuff. I could always post more stuff here but I think I'd want to maybe separate out my text posts and my art posts into two different channels and/or websites even. I don't know. For some reason I usually don't like posting a lot of my art stuff and I want to hide it away on some corner of the internet that people can find only if they're looking really hard for it.
A lot of folk have been asking me what I'm up to for my personal projects outside of pledging my blood to the ranks of Team Meat. For the most part, working on both Rival Rush and Super Meat Boy Forever feel very personal to me. There is a lot of me in both of these games, and I think people that have played my games over the years will be able to tell that very easily.
Aside that, I have not continued work on Super Sky Sisters since I've started on Meat Boy. The game just doesn't feel "right." I aim to release it at some point after I'm done with Forever, but I think it will just end up being a free game on itch.io or something like that.
Work on Otter has stopped while I have no time to dedicate to it, but we do have a small discord of people that are using it or interested in it at least. I also migrated the source code to Github so that people could contribute to it easier. I actually don't know why I didn't have it on Github from the beginning. I think I just didn't want to learn how to use it.
In a completely different realm of things, I'm currently playing in a tabletop rpg that has been going on for over three years now, and I also began acting as game master for another campaign. I play Pathfinder 1e, and I'm game master for a Pathfinder 2e/Playtest game. For the 2e/Playtest game, I'm transforming the game a lot with a ton of rules modifications. I'm super interested in developing my own tabletop rpg system that takes a lot of what my particular play group likes and turns it into a new set of rules and content. I realize how wild that sounds, but I think since turning my brain around with my ADHD medication I've discovered how fun it is to design things outside of the video game space. The prospect of pure design has become incredibly fun for me, and I've been learning a lot about systems and math and spreadsheets and so much cool stuff along the way!
I've been digging into this thing called TiddlyWiki which is strangely named but beyond that a really cool brain and information organization software package. For those of you that follow me closely, you might know that I am always on the search for better ways to organize my brain. I gave TiddlyWiki a shot awhile back, but ultimately couldn't figure it out and then tried OneNote. Well, I eventually went back to TiddlyWiki and looked at it through a different lens. I feel like the "Wiki" part in the name is a little deceiving and it made me think that I should just treat it as information storage and organization only, but when I started looking at it as a super hackable programming intensive data driven kinda thing instead it all started to make sense. I might share some of my findings down the road as future posts. At this rate though those posts will be years from now. Whoops.
I still pretty much only play Rocket League and the occasional platformer that comes across my feed. I did get into Smash Ultimate a little bit. Typically I am very very bad at Smash games, and I do not enjoy them, but there is something about this game that is clicking for me. I've been playing a little bit with some friends and I'm doing a lot better in this Smash than I ever have. Why that is I have yet to find out. I think a lot of habits that I thought were "good" in Smash actually turned out to be bad, and I've spent a lot of brain power trying to dismantle all of those bad habits (like dodge rolling everywhere.) I've been having a lot of fun with Pikachu, Peach, and Pokemon Trainer. The three Ps, apparently.
Work continues on Forever until it's done. When that's finished and over with, I'm excited to start on the next project that is probably going to be housed under Team Meat. When I'm not working on Forever, I'm chipping away at my tabletop rpg system, and my homebrew rules for the Pathfinder Playtest.
Probably don't expect the pace of blog posts to improve any time soon. I think the phase of keeping a super active blog is kind of behind me now. I think it was useful back when I needed several things to keep myself on track, but now that I have medications to help my brain this has kind of fallen to the wayside. For more moment to moment updates from me, my Twitter and Instagram are good places to keep an eye on.
Thanks for readin'!
So before I dive into another full day of various tasks on Super Meat Boy Forever let's do a quick recap of the past chunk of time!
Super Meat Boy Forever
Hey the game has a new trailer and release date announcement! We also announced that we're going to be debuting on the Epic Games Store for our launch on PC. This is pretty exciting and I'm pretty pumped to be part of a movement that hopes to disrupt the power monopoly that Steam currently holds over a lot of developers. It is also exciting slash terrifying to see a light at the end of the tunnel for this project!
Rival Rush
The card game that I worked on for the Super Meat Boy Cinematic Universe got another round of printing, and is now available on The Yetee! Rival Rush was a project we started for a PAX promo and it spiraled out of control and turned into an actual one on one card game. Each player builds a deck of 20 cards and races through a level as a character from Super Meat Boy. This was a ton of fun to make, and it turned out to be a pretty awesome game to play in my humble opinion.
Pretentious Game Ideas
I sat down with my dear friends Jon and Rob to talk about a bunch of game design stuff, but in particular "Finding your Game's Identity." We talk for over an hour about the process of game design and honing in on the core essence of a game including examples from the design processes of both Rival Rush and Super Meat Boy Forever.
Handsome Phantom
Tommy and I sat down with the dudes from the Handsome Phantom Podcast and had a lot of fun talking about the recent developments of Super Meat Boy and Rival Rush, as well as what the future holds for Team Meat. This one gets a little bit more wacky than the Pretentious Game Ideas cast. I blame Tommy.
Drawings and Doodles
I've still been sneaking in drawings and doodles whenever I can find the time, but I haven't been posting them anywhere. I guess tumblr ended up turning into a big pile of poop by banning any content they deemed to be inappropriate, and that was where I went for all of my artwork and drawing needs but I guess I should find a different outlet if I want to get back to posting stuff. I could always post more stuff here but I think I'd want to maybe separate out my text posts and my art posts into two different channels and/or websites even. I don't know. For some reason I usually don't like posting a lot of my art stuff and I want to hide it away on some corner of the internet that people can find only if they're looking really hard for it.
Personal Projects
A lot of folk have been asking me what I'm up to for my personal projects outside of pledging my blood to the ranks of Team Meat. For the most part, working on both Rival Rush and Super Meat Boy Forever feel very personal to me. There is a lot of me in both of these games, and I think people that have played my games over the years will be able to tell that very easily.
Aside that, I have not continued work on Super Sky Sisters since I've started on Meat Boy. The game just doesn't feel "right." I aim to release it at some point after I'm done with Forever, but I think it will just end up being a free game on itch.io or something like that.
Work on Otter has stopped while I have no time to dedicate to it, but we do have a small discord of people that are using it or interested in it at least. I also migrated the source code to Github so that people could contribute to it easier. I actually don't know why I didn't have it on Github from the beginning. I think I just didn't want to learn how to use it.
In a completely different realm of things, I'm currently playing in a tabletop rpg that has been going on for over three years now, and I also began acting as game master for another campaign. I play Pathfinder 1e, and I'm game master for a Pathfinder 2e/Playtest game. For the 2e/Playtest game, I'm transforming the game a lot with a ton of rules modifications. I'm super interested in developing my own tabletop rpg system that takes a lot of what my particular play group likes and turns it into a new set of rules and content. I realize how wild that sounds, but I think since turning my brain around with my ADHD medication I've discovered how fun it is to design things outside of the video game space. The prospect of pure design has become incredibly fun for me, and I've been learning a lot about systems and math and spreadsheets and so much cool stuff along the way!
I've been digging into this thing called TiddlyWiki which is strangely named but beyond that a really cool brain and information organization software package. For those of you that follow me closely, you might know that I am always on the search for better ways to organize my brain. I gave TiddlyWiki a shot awhile back, but ultimately couldn't figure it out and then tried OneNote. Well, I eventually went back to TiddlyWiki and looked at it through a different lens. I feel like the "Wiki" part in the name is a little deceiving and it made me think that I should just treat it as information storage and organization only, but when I started looking at it as a super hackable programming intensive data driven kinda thing instead it all started to make sense. I might share some of my findings down the road as future posts. At this rate though those posts will be years from now. Whoops.
Playin' Games
I still pretty much only play Rocket League and the occasional platformer that comes across my feed. I did get into Smash Ultimate a little bit. Typically I am very very bad at Smash games, and I do not enjoy them, but there is something about this game that is clicking for me. I've been playing a little bit with some friends and I'm doing a lot better in this Smash than I ever have. Why that is I have yet to find out. I think a lot of habits that I thought were "good" in Smash actually turned out to be bad, and I've spent a lot of brain power trying to dismantle all of those bad habits (like dodge rolling everywhere.) I've been having a lot of fun with Pikachu, Peach, and Pokemon Trainer. The three Ps, apparently.
Looking Ahead
Work continues on Forever until it's done. When that's finished and over with, I'm excited to start on the next project that is probably going to be housed under Team Meat. When I'm not working on Forever, I'm chipping away at my tabletop rpg system, and my homebrew rules for the Pathfinder Playtest.
Probably don't expect the pace of blog posts to improve any time soon. I think the phase of keeping a super active blog is kind of behind me now. I think it was useful back when I needed several things to keep myself on track, but now that I have medications to help my brain this has kind of fallen to the wayside. For more moment to moment updates from me, my Twitter and Instagram are good places to keep an eye on.
Thanks for readin'!
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