What I’m Up To – August 2024
I’ve found myself in a bit of a lull between busy periods, so it’s a good time to write about what I’ve been doing recently and what is coming in the future for me. It’s also been almost a year since the last time I did a post like this, which tracks for me: my life is uneventful enough that just like a lame family Christmas newsletter, I only need to write about it once a year.
I’ll start with what I’m doing right now. I’ve had time to jump back into developing the arcade mining game, which now has a name: Quazar’s Claim. Sounds pretty cool right? Here’s the logo that I made for it.
It’s actually very close to done — it has a gameplay loop, it has graphics, it’s kinda fun. I’m just waiting on a couple things and then I plan on putting it out on Itch or something.
I have time keep adding more content to it if I wanted to, but I’ve had this thing sitting on my machine for far too long and I just want to call it done and put it out there for people to play. Will be interesting to see if it gets any traction at all, I honestly don’t know if people still play tiny free games anymore in a world where Fortnite and Roblox exists.
Maybe after it’s out I can write up a little post mortem about all the things I did badly and all the lessons learned along the way (this was a very good learning exercise to put myself through).
So anyway the reason why I first had to put any development on hold for the past couple months was that I was working hard on putting together a funding application for a much bigger game I want to make. I’ve already mentioned and shown bits and pieces of adventure game prototyping I’ve done in the past, so it’s not much of a secret that it will be an adventure game but that’s all I can say about it.
The application process was a pretty huge task for me, never had to do anything like it before and I had to do a lot of research and reading up on game production and business practices. In June I was in Fiji for a week of relaxation except I’m bad at relaxation so I would take books with me and read about budgeting by the pool. Everything all came together in the end and I got my application submitted, so it’s out of my hands and hopefully soon enough I’ll hear back about it.
If I got funding it would be massive for me, I’d be able to jump into full-time development and get a vertical slice together. If I don’t get funding I’m still undecided what I’ll do next. I’ve built enough of a foundation and love the idea enough that it would suck to shelve it, but like I also need some rubles to survive a multi-year development project. Regardless of what happens, don’t expect to hear or see anything about this prospective game this year.