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Monthly update: February 2024

Another month, another… month. Things have progressed mostly in quite a similar manner as before, but there have been some changes as well. A major thing is that I managed to finally restart my weekly streams, after failing to do so for the entirety of January due to Cat Reasons (and various others). At the moment Planet Keke has the main Tuesday development slot, while ESA2 stays as the Thursday game.

In other streaming news, MelonyPepon‘s crew of mostly-vtuber streamers kindly invited me to play games on stream with them on the weekends, and for the past three or so weeks we’ve had a good time playing Among Us, Jackbox & Gartic Phone. I haven’t really done this kind of social streaming before so it’s been a fun change of pace.

The covemountlike series has also continued, and I’ve now released 9 of these in total this year. The ones released after the previous monthly update are:

In non-computer news, the cats have been getting along really nicely. Fondue still needs a bunch of time to be comfortable around guests, but Vilma’s and Fondue’s playing now ends in hisses much more rarely and there was even a recent instance of Vilma climbing onto the sofa and the cats sleeping there together!

Monthly update: January 2024

The year has started with a lot going on. Games-wise, the important thing is that I’ve released 6 little browser-based block-pushing puzzle games. It all started with being inspired by a discussion about movement counters in puzzle games in the Thinky Puzzles Discord server, and at this point I’ve actually managed to get out a couple longer-time puzzle ideas that have occupied my brain but not felt inspiring enough to implement. I’ve some more ideas for tiny browser puzzlers, so look forward to that, I guess. Here’re the current ones, in order of release:

In other news, I adopted a second cat, Fondue! A lot of January was spent on getting her more used to the house, me, and Vilma, and while there’s still ways to go especially when it comes to playing with Vilma, she’s progressed amazingly!

I also recorded a series of videos on Youtube about her process of getting used to her new home. You can watch them from the start here!

Due to me being ill, having some worries, and taking care of Fondue-Vilma relations, I failed to start my weekly streaming. I’m currently trying to get that sorted out but my daily schedule has been even more chaotic than usual due to the cats so it’s a work-in-progress.

2023 in review

So! Another year has passed. After 2022’s productivity, 2023 followed more on the footsteps of 2020 and 2021 in that I got very very few games released. However, this comparison feels somewhat unfair because I was still working on multiple projects throughout the year, and Mobile Suit Baba was the fruit of those efforts, ending up being quite a bit more ambitious than I initially planned. I also worked on Noita again, adding some more content. Thanks to Petri & Olli for letting me do that!

2023 also saw me getting into boardgame development more seriously. I’ve been dabbling with trying to make my own boardgames/cardgames since childhood (I have about 5 different imitations of Magic: the Gathering & the Pokémon Trading Card Game I made back then stashed in a cupboard), and Petri Purho (from the Nolla Games team) and Erik Svedäng (developer of Blueberry Garden & Else Heart.break()) inspired me further by making boardgames at various game jams. However, during adulthood I’ve never really gotten past the initial stages of design due to impatience, lack of skill, and other factors. Me and Petri developed 2 boardgames together somewhere around 2013, but the first time I got close to actually releasing something was with Piiri in 2020, although that too went unfinished at the time.

Considering the above, me being able to develop so many boardgames to a state where I felt confident enough to put them available online last year felt really nice! Mostly the boardgame design motivation came from procrastination regarding videogame development, but I can’t complain too much about that since the end result was still creative work being done on something I was happy with. The impatience and lack of skill are still present, though, and as such my boardgames have stayed very carefully in the land of 2-player abstracts. Maybe this year I’ll go further?

2023 was also the year of books for me. I started trying to read more in 2022, and once the habit was formed, it was great to get through a lot of new stuff after years and years of re-reading the sam books over and over. In total I read 24 titles last year, although some were very short affairs.

Anyway, here’s the total list of stuff I released last year:

  • Baba Files Taxes
  • Cylinders of the Wise
  • Obsidian Sentinels
  • Malsymmetric (technically unfinished because I wasn’t happy with the design)
  • Equal measures (paper puzzle)
  • Piiri (mostly designed in 2020)
  • Kepi
  • Elder Dance (technically unfinished because the rules were broken)
  • Kurote
  • Gnome Thicket
  • DIAGORT
  • Flatdog Scuffle
  • Mobile Suit Baba
  • LITSilly (paper puzzle)

Last but not least, 2023 was also the year I finally got a pet, although a better term might be that a pet was got-ed at me. Vilma has been getting more used to me and my apartment, and lately I seem to have figured out what kind of scratching she likes, and she has also started to spend more time lying next to me while I sleep. It’s funny how years-long plans to get a dog turned out like this. Oh well!

For 2024, I have plans to try to release more tiny games like in 2022. However, ESA 2 and Planet Keke are on the table still and especially ESA 2 needs all the attention I can give, so I’ll have to be mindful of that when I decide to dedicate time to sideprojects. I’m sure something’ll work out, though.

Off to a new year we go!

Website & paper puzzle collection update

I added A Solitaire Mystery, boardgames and Mobile Suit Baba to the games lists. I also added a separate page for listing the various social media sites I’m currently active on.

I also added LITSilly to the paper puzzle collection.

Another dose of LITSilly

LITSilly

Ooh, a new paper puzzle type to close off the year! Yay!

Puzzles:

Monthly update: December 2023

Hey look! I didn’t miss the timing!

Anyway, big news first: Mobile Suit Baba is out! Really glad it didn’t take a year, but it got close. I want to add a bit more in terms of modding support and such, but after that it’ll be time to return to Planet Keke.

You can find the game here!

I also finished Flatdog Scuffle, another 2-player abstract boardgame! The rulebook will need some clarifications and illustrations, but the game seems to work pretty nicely.

See the rules here!

Monthly update: Sectovember 2023

Sectovember! Gotta love that month!!

To be honest, not too much has happened over the past three months. Mobile Suit Baba trudges ever onwards, Planet Keke has been on hold to give more time for the former, blah blah. The most significant change over here has been Vilma’s introducton to the ecosystem. This has gone mostly fine, I’d say.

I ran playtests of two more-than-2-player boardgames; one is a more eurogamey deal, while the other is a roll-and-write. Unsurprisingly the eurogame design didn’t work very well on the first playtest, while the RnW showed more promise. I’ve been excited abour LedergamesRoot again, and pondered about something inspired by it and My City.

I removed Elder Dance from Itch.io since it turned out that the design had some very glaring issues. I have an idea for how to address them now, but said ideas need more testing.

ESA 2 has also progressed at a ponderous but nonetheless existent pace. I’ll need to refactor the moving platform code sometime soon, and this prospect isn’t one I look forward to.

I decided to finally record a playthrough of the old 2006 demo of Spud’s Quest by Chris Davis. It’s a klik-based game that’s close to my heart and virtually impossible to find online anymore, and as such showcasing it to a larger crowd seemed like a fun idea. I’ll do a playthrough of the full game as well at some point.

Watch the Spud’s Quest demo playthrough here!

Kompleksi 3/2023

I made one more cover & comic for our student organization’s magazine! Technically there’s still one more issue coming out before the end of the year, but I doubt I’ll be participating in it due to the whole “I’ve graduated now” thing.

You can read the comic here, but do note that it’s all in Finnish!

Cat

Her name is Vilma, and I adopted her because her previous owner had to spend a lot of time away from home and we thought it’d be better for her to be somewhere with a person around. She’s a very chill cat, which is great because I mostly have experience with dogs.

A couple days ago she wasn’t anywhere to be seen, and I assumed I had either missed her being under the bed, or that she was in some new place to hang out in. Later on I saw her emerge from my wardrobe in the bedroom, and realized that she had made herself a nest among my pants! Very wholesome.

She sometimes lets me scratch her belly and climbs on top of my work chair on occasion, both of which are very fun details. I think we’ll be friends.