TLDR: I joined a game jam and you can find the game on my itch page: https://ladykurai.itch.io/

________________

Longer story:

At the end of december I was looking into game jams a little bit and found one that piqued my interest. At first I figured hey maybe I'll join next year, but then I thought why not do it now?
So I did!

After a lot of internal conflict I reached out to someone who had a team that might fit and he added me to the teams discord. We did a small project to figure out if we can work together and everything went quite well! The project itself never got finished, but it was good to see that everyone could do their part.

When the real game jam started we got together to discuss the theme and settled on an idea.
We would be making a puzzle game in which you play as a lab experiment/creature having to solve puzzles to reach the end. We also wanted to have multiple endings and a fun movement mechanic so we made sure the creature could roll :)

After that the other artist and I split up the art tasks, our programmers split their programming and our sound artist got to work on their tasks.
I ended up doing all the cutscenes as well as background assets while the other artist did the characters, animations and UI.
(Judging by the experiences my teammates shared I got incredibly lucky with my team, nobody quit early, ghosted us or had a bad attitude :P)

I'm gonna be honest, I was incredibly stressed throughout those two weeks, often working three times as much as I normally would just to get everything done in time. It made me realize that I might not be cut out to work on games for studios after all.
That being said, I am very glad I decided to do this overall! I learned a ton about unity and how to make a useful asset and this might even have given me enough encouragement to start my own little game project with no deadline or pressure :)

Have a wonderful week everyone and if you made it to here, thank you for reading!

I normally don't really post about stuff going on around here but oh boy, was this "fun".
TLDR at the end.

So last night my partner had finally managed to fall asleep at a somewhat normal time for a change (around 11pm) and I was about to head to bed myself when the fire alarm started going off.
It happens quite frequently so I ignored the first few beeps until I realised it wasn't stopping and went to check it out. Opened the balcony door and could immediately smell burnt food coming up from below us. My partner was already up and getting dressed so I grabbed the cat transport box and my go bag I keep nearby (for exactly this situation, the downstairs neighbours are.. special) and went to get our cats while my partner went outside to check if the neighbours are home and call emergency services.
First of our cats was just chilling so I could grab her easily and put her in the box but the second one likes sleeping under the bed so I had to get her out somehow. Took way longer than I wanted and I honestly started panicking a bit but kept at it and got her after a few attempts as well.

So we went outside and saw police was already there. When the officer saw me coming out she assured me there was no fire, just smoke and that they had it handled so we could safely go back inside.
I wanted to wait for my partner to come back around at first but she opened the door to the neighbours apartment and the fire alarm was deafening so I wanted to save our cats some stress and took them back inside. Apologised to them and gave them a treat for good measure :')

Later I found out that the police had actually just pulled into our street as my partner went outside because they had been receiving calls all day about the fighting going on downstairs and wanted to check it out. The neighbours in that apartment constantly fight or play music so loud i can hear it like it is my own two floors above them. At first we did report it, but it happens so often we gave up on that since it would basically be a full time job and apparently you almost cant get rid of a tenant in the Netherlands so there's no real point to it.

Anyway police went in and as suspected no one was home. They put some food on the stove, turned it on and left the house with all lights and the TV on, doors closed to make sure it would seem like they are present. Here's a pic of their kitchen my partner took when he went around back to see if they were home: link

Now why do I think this was on purpose? Because they did this exact thing once already a couple months ago.
Except then it was an iPhone in a pan on the stove.
Yeah.
An iPhone.
I'm so glad we are moving soon I just don't feel save here with these unhinged people living below us.

TL;DR: Downstairs neighbours (likely purposely) put food on the stove, left the house with all lights and the TV on and we evacuated with the cats when the fire alarm started blaring until police arrived to see it was luckily just heavy smoke.

Whoa guys, I just noticed I reached 5000 watchers on here and I just have to say THANK YOU

I don't have much time on my hands at the moment, but I still want to do a little something to show my appreciation, so I will be doing a couple sketches for you guys!
These will NOT be random, I will be choosing my favourite/ the most interesting characters and sketch those.
Depending on how many people enter I will pick 5-10 characters to draw so get in there!




Rules:
-must be a watcher (new ones welcome)
-References must be SFW (or censored)
-ANY species welcome (including humans/taur)
-one Character per entry

There are two ways to enter:
1. post your reference under this Journal
2. Retweet this Tweet and post your character on there (bonus incentive for 200 RTs)

You can pick a different character for the journal and Tweet, so the chance I'll chose one will be better!


The giveaway will be open until Saturday, 07.09. 6pm CEST
Winners will not be announced, I will just upload the finished sketches as a surprise.


Thank you guys so so much for your continued support and best of luck!



Winners:
part1 MommaMooElsey, raylldo for Teebs13, Mr-Oz and rajita
part2 Magarnan, Morkep and Xeshaire

I wanted to write this for a while, so here goes ~
May take it down later though, dunno yet.

Tl:dr: we got two kitties in october and one of em is gonna have knee surgery next week
_________________________

Long version:
Some of you may remember that we were thinking about adopting a kitten back in october and I wasn't sure if it was the right thing for us to do.
We had a choice of three and once we decided we were gonna get two my partner instantly knew which one he wanted and I was hung up on two. One lovely shy grey and white kitten and one energetic grey one.

I don't want to go into too much detail here, but unfortunately after much back and forth debating what would be best the final choice way taken from me. They informed us on the day we were gonna pick them up that the grey kitten had passed away due to malnourishment.
This may seem silly, but even though I had decided to let her live a happy outdoor kitten life with someone else I cried the entire way there. (I am a very indecisive person, but deep down I knew I couldn't keep her indoors seeing as she was so full of adventure. One of our aquaintances who showed the kittens to us came with us and was gonna take her to live on her farm)
I still think about her sometimes and even though I haven't quite gotten over it, I thanked the cat for the lesson in letting go many times since.
(tearing up while writing this again, sheesh >.>)

So that day we took home only two fluffy jellybeans, the spaced out black and white long hair Marble and the loving grey and white short hair Chester.
They were both shy at first and we kept them to the living room. We didn't want to expose them to the entire house yet and get them used to us slowly. I also did a little "ritual" we do back in austria where you pick up a new pet and "weave" it around a table leg three times to bind it to your home. (If you don't believe it thats fine, but its a nice little thing to do and it cant hurt right)

Chester was quite skittish at first but she got comfortable really fast and now takes all the attention she can get. She even likes belly rubs :P
Marble on the other hand not so much. She didn't like getting petted at all or only on her sides until very recently. But she is finally warming up to me and it is so extremely rewarding for all the patience to pay off. I love them both to bits <3 (and I'm probably a bit overly protective haha)
They once managed to get onto the balcony because our door is a bit faulty and opened itself when neither of us were home. My partner found them before they could climb to the bottom from out neighbors balcony thankfully, but ever since I've been watching over them like a hawk. No more escaping, no fun allowed :[

In the Netherlands you can get insurance for your pet and we calculated the cost of getting them neutered, wormed etc etc to decide whether or not to get it. Costs were approximately the same so we decided against it. Neutering went without a problem and I even took out the last bit of the dissolving thread with no problem. (Though I was freaked cause one of them had a much longer thread still intact than the other where there was literally just the know left)
Unfortunately shortly after that we ran into some troubles. We had the vet check Marbles leg during the last neutering check because she had been walking very stiff. The vet said we should keep an eye on it for another week and see if it goes away, hoping it was just a strained muscle.
One week came and went and it hadn't really gotten better so we scheduled x-rays. Good new were there was no fracture, her bones were all fine.
Bad news... Well she has patellar luxation. It basically means that the kneecap doesn't have enough space and pops out of where its supposed to be, being painful for the cat.
Our vet referred us to a special clinic for further examination to determine how bad it was and we got an appointment there aswell.
When we were there the specialist there confirmed our suspicions and told us it was tage 3 of 4, meaning it is out more often than in but it can still go back by itself. (worst case would be it goes out and doesn't return by itself).Her other leg also has it but only ins tage one and the vet said it will probably sort itself out. She explained to us how the surgery would be done and informed us about the total cost of the surgery itself, pre- and aftercare, which is around €1200. *oh shiet*
I can only say I am very glad she ended up with us, because while it is expensive, we definitely want what is best for her and scheduled the surgery for next week.

It's gonna be alright I hope.
She's gonna have to be there sober, get another set of xrays and then the surgery. I'm gonna admit I am a bit scared, seeing as she is my little fuzzball and I'll have to trust someone else to make her better, but I know once this is over with she will lead a happy healthy and long cat life. *fingers crossed*


Anyway, that's pretty much a summary of stuff up till now and I will give an update on how the surgery went (this time maybe not months late)
I'm not much for sharing my personal life on here, but I did want to soeak about this.
I apologize if this is tmi, but if you read all of this, thank you for your attention and remember to cuddle your pets ~


_________________________

update:
The surgery went well and our little bean is doing much better already!
While she is a bit angry about having to wear a cone of shame and having to stay in the kennel, I'm sure she knows its gonna be worth it in the long run ;)