Hey friends! Let me walk you through how I’m recuperating from a social few weeks by talking about some games I’ve been playing. Also there’s a small Bibidi update inside as well as an announcement about an interview I’m doing!
How Am I Doing?
I’m good! After a week of chilling at home, sport, and only going out with people I’m comfortable with, I think my social battery has recharged a bit. How exactly does recharging look like for me? For one, I went on lots of walks since the sun was out. I also essentially spent my whole Saturday napping.
Other than that, I finally finished playing Prey (2017). I just want to say, damn, that’s a good video game. I would have been completely OK if it was just an immersive sandbox game where most of the story is told via static notes and logs and such, but in the back half of the game they actually ramp up the cinematic aspects of it to a pretty satisfying conclusion.
The only gripe I had with it was that at some point, I had so many resources I could just shoot all the problems away. The game shines when you’re trying to solve obstacles in various ways: stealth, setting traps, using the environment, etc. But after a while, even though I played on Hard difficulty, I could just use a shotgun and laser beam to destroy everything in my path. There’s a survival mode, in which I reckon this issue gets addressed a little better, but I can’t be arsed to do another run right away.
In fact, I started up the DLC, but bounced off pretty much immediately. Instead, I went to the next thing on my backlog: Grunn. Grunn is a weird, silly, horror gardening game made by one of the Dutch fellas from Sokpop. Their games always have a distinct style, atmosphere and really good game feel. This one is no exception, and somehow perfectly manages to nail everything that it claims to be on the tin.
It kind of has the hallmarks of oldskool point ‘n click puzzles: a hobo asks you for an “eggbal“, which you can buy at a food truck that’s only open at a certain time, but you need coins to buy it, so you go around smashing stuff to find coins and in return the hobo gives you a… triangle? The instrument. Then on a certain day, there’s 3 kids in the park that are missing their instruments, so you give it to them. I guess you have to find the other instruments too? Meanwhile, you’re watering plants and cutting grass as secret portals appear in hedges and garden gnomes start to follow you around.
What Am I Doing?
And how’s work coming along? Pretty decently! We’re still working on that Bibidi Bibidi! update on synergies. We postponed the deadline a couple of times, because it’s really important to get this one right. We did a bunch of experiments and found something that’s agreeable, but requires many little changes on the game to make it feel like the right direction.
Essentially, we’re adding two new mechanics: Magnetize and Shrink. Shrinking enemies reduces their attack damage temporarily and Magnetize will help you to spread debuffs like Poison and Shrink around faster. They’re quite different from what we had so far, and since there already was a lot of confusion about different mechanics and abilities, we need to streamline many aspects of the game to make it easier to understand.
Other than that, I got interviewed yesterday night by Nathan from Eddy Games, the guys behind Hippy Skate. It’s for a series they call Indie Neighbor, where they interview anyone with a game on itch.io. We’ve not focused on itch.io at all, but we did launch or prototype there and have been steadily updating the game there alongside Steam. In that sense, I guess we have some interesting insight to put the two next to each other when it comes to playtesting. I don’t actually know how the interview went and when it comes out, because I’m writing this newsletter on Monday 13:00, and it gets send out tomorrow (today) around 8:00, but the interview is Monday night at 23:00, so I probably won’t have the time to edit this.
Why Am I Doing? (this)
I’m in a curious mood. The game I’ve played recently, as well as my creative peers’ projects, have really inspired me. I don’t exactly know where to focus that spark, but I feel like I’m able to kind of harness it inside of me somehow. Usually, this would mean an explosive start to a new game project that would fizzle out just as fast, but I’ve managed to refrain from doing that for a while now. It’s hard to describe exactly what I mean, but it feels good.
I think maybe it just means I’ve become better at managing my energy levels and channeling it into directions that don’t distract me too much! That being said, there’s definitely some kind of new project coming to a boil soon, I can feel it in my bones. A particular epistolary Metroidbrania detective game has been on my mind lately.