Some games/design-related thoughts/questions, dunno if anyone’s got input:

I’ve been thinking about dabbling in RPG Maker or something. Even though time is at a premium and the vast majority of my focus has to be on commissions, I’d be lying if I said that was the source of all my original content woes. Money’s the driving factor for sure, but I’m also at a bit of an impasse creatively. Over the years I’ve been doing this I have a pretty good feel for the look and vibe of Mira’s planet, but not so much her life. To go deeper there I’ve been thinking more about worldbuilding, both lorewise and just literally. I’ve sketched out stuff like Mira’s giant arcade or her house and stuff, but would like to make something a bit more tangible. I’ve been mulling over what the best way would be to quickly visualize interior/town designs… there’s Minecraft I guess, or putting time I don’t have into learning 3D software like Blender or something… I did watch Vinny play a truly bizarre random assortment of homebrew games including stuff like Yoshi Goes To Tesco, which reminded me game dev needn’t be about making a work of genius and elevating the medium or whatever, it can also be a shitpost or pretty much whatever you want. So yeah I dunno, maybe I’ll look into something like RPG Maker to help me map out areas of Makara and start helping me iron out some stuff that’s kinda needed it for years! Dunno if anyone can vouch for its ease of use for a total newbie, or if it’d even be effective at the kinda thing I’m describing.

Unrelated tangent of stuff I’ve been playing the last few months (which all started with H for some reason):

Heretic/Hexen-

It was pretty wild seeing this get rereleased, though with the tear Nightdive’s been on I was always crossing my fingers. Heretic is real primordial memory shit for me; a pretty decent chunk of my formative years was spent watching my brother play various DOS sharewares, and playing/accidentally deleting them when he’d be fool enough to let me on the computer. But yeah, Heretic rules. It’s basically Doom with a fantasy theme, and it’s one of a handful of games I’d describe as like… ASMR-ish? xD Similar to Super Metroid, the soundscape of Heretic is crunchy in a really ear-pleasing way. Definitely been fun dipping into this one again.

Hades II-

This is a good-ass video game! It doesn’t quite hit as hard as the original did for me, but that’s not even really a critique. Hades I was the first Supergiant game I’d played, and getting hit all at once with the sheer artistic and vocal talents they’d been refining for a decade was pretty intense! As a result I played that shit to death, but I don’t see myself hammering the sequel quite so hard anytime soon (I was also single during a pandemic year, there was some time for Hades >w>;). On top of that, I do *slightly* prefer the cast of the original… I think Zidane from FF9 just gave me a predisposition for smartass protagonists.
I’ve had some fun with roguelikes over the years but I got that curse–which happens with some genres I think with a lot of people–where I played my favorite one first, and no matter which you try after it doesn’t quite measure up in some way. In this case, pretty much every game with this kind of structure is competing for 2nd place to Enter the Gungeon. That said, for now Hades II takes that spot soundly. It’s gorgeous in motion and you can bring a big ol’ pet frog that gives you extra lives.

Hollow Knight: Silksong-

It’s kinda hilarious in retrospect that my thought process went “Oh, I finished Hollow Knight, everyone’s saying Silksong’s a nightmare but idk beating the first one should give me a leg up” when (a.) that was in 2017 and (b.) I never 100%’d Hollow Knight… I peaced after I hit credits and didn’t really get into the optional extreme sections that might’ve hinted at what was to come. It’d be a bit like beating the original 3 episodes of Doom on Hurt Me Plenty & hopping right into The Plutonia Experiment… 8 years later. Maybe in Plutonia you quicksaved right in front of a Revenant’s rocket, maybe in Silksong you take enough damage during the boss runback that it’s not even worth the attempt, and it’s these moments that you decide what kind of gamer you are today! In my case I tapped out shortly after Act 1. I had the piss and vinegar during college to beat Timesplitters 2 Hard Mode and Cave Story’s Ballos fight and that kinda thing, but I don’t think that’s where I’m at right now! This game is mean. It’s good–probably even great–but I don’t feel capable of meeting it where it’s at right now xD I bring up Plutonia because it kinda reminds me of that expansion in terms of using enemy combinations to masterfully mess with player psychology. Maybe it’ll change in the future after a few drinks or something, but yeah, Silksong’s won this round >w>;;