Hey friends! Today we’ll be talking about frequencies in multiple aspects of the word. First off, a little update on the frequency I publish this newsletter on. Then we check the frequencies of Bibidi Bibidi! We’ve got a lot of visuals to share today, so strap in!
How Am I Doing?
I’m good! I had a few low energy days, but feel well-rested once again. I started writing this newsletter last week, but kind of lost motivation. Picked it up again today with more news to share. I think writing it once every two weeks feels like a more realistic pace now, so from today on, we’ll be a biweekly newsletter! Biweekly in once every two weeks, not the twice a week one. I never understood how we allowed that confusion to happen.
What Am I Doing?
The Bibidi Bibidi playtest is chugging along nicely. It’s been very rewarding to see the number of players and average playtime slowly increase. It has by no means exploded, but it feels like the community is slowly growing.
We’ve been working hard on many aspects of the game, but the two big changes stand out. We’ve now got audio! A lot of it is still placeholder and desperately needs another pass, but for now it passes muster. 🔊 Sound on! 🔊
The idea that the wizard shouts each card’s incantation has been around since the very first pen & paper prototype I made Jonas play, all the way back in March. It’s great that it finally came to fruition. Is it perfect? Absolutely not. But it’s very goofy, and I hope it’ll get a laugh or two out of you. You can finally here him say Bibidi Bibidi.
The other thing we’re chipping away at is a user interface rework. We’ve been slugging with the layout as well as the style for a while now, but Jonas finally settled on something like this. Also, you get a free shop preview, as a treat!
What’s this little guys name? Why is he in a crack in the wall? Join our Discord server if you have any suggestions! So while I’m working on implementing all that jazz by creating shaders and whatnot, Jonas is reworking some of the card art into something more palpable and varied.
Each card will have a unique, though abstract illustration for the top part. Then the middle part will have special paneling to indicate the School of the card. Then for the bottom part we’re trying to make it so that the higher the Force of the card is, the more it stands out. All of this effort is essentially for two reasons: to make cards easily recognizable, and to make your hand feel less monotonous when its full of cards.
Why Am I Doing? (this)
Here’s something funny I noticed about winding down the frequency of writing this newsletter. I have these week-long hyperfixations, right? I got heavily into this puzzle game called Opus Magnum. For a couple of days straight, I couldn’t wait to get to building some machines in it. It’s super satisfying and feels very rewarding, to make an optimized solution for a problem. Let’s take this example:
When I started writing this newsletter last week, I was knees deep in this game. I wanted to rant about it and share all the machines I made. A couple of days in however, I completely lost interest. I couldn’t even look at the next level anymore.
A lot of editions of this newsletter have been about these tiny obsessions. I get super excited about something I will never touch again after a week. That’s not neccesarily a bad thing, of course, I’m always happy to share my excitement about something. But I’m interested to see how my perception of these things change if I only write once every two weeks. We’ll find out, I guess!