Monthly update: April 2025
Posted on 2025-04-27 17:34
I was at Nordic Game Jam 2025 at the beginning of April and had a good time apart from some anxiety troubles. In fact as far as social interaction goes, I think this was one of the nicer NGJs for me in several years! I even managed to make a small game thing, seen above: Feast Thine Eyes on Flowers! It's a simple gardening toy where you can plant seeds and watch them grow into randomized plants, then pick a specific plant and plant its seeds to get slightly-mutated versions of it.
Ludum Dare 57 happened to be on the same weekend, which was a bit of a bummer, but after NGJ I spent some time in my hotel room updating FTEoF and then submitted it to LD as well. The Ludum Dare version adds slots in which you can store flowers, the ability to splice two flowers together, and a little secret you can find to "win" the game. Still very simple but pretty nice to look at, I'd say!
This blogpost is coming in late enough that we already got the results, too. Only 363 Compo submissions, which explains the semi-high placement in several categories, but I'm still quite happy! Hopefully next time I'll have time & energy to make something more substantial.
Check the game out on Itch.io (Windows only)
And then for something less nice. Hostmonster, the company which I've used both as a webhost & domain provider since the beginning of this website, recently merged with Bluehost, and now that the services have been transferred over to the latter, I've immediately noticed issues that make me want to switch over to a different company (preferably a non-US one, considering everything). I'm still evaluating options, but once I'm done with that, I'll start the process of transferring both the domain & the webhosting services elsewhere. This feels extra nasty because I haven't done it before and there's a *lot* of stuff on here; also I think my Hostmonster account was old enough that it had some benefits not available for newer accounts, and I'm not looking forward to finding out if this is true. Oh well, I guess it was inevitable.
To end on a happier note, a longtime gamedev friend, FrankiePixelShow, released a body horror RPG game called Look Outside! Frankie has made a lot of cool stuff over the years, and Look Outside has seemed to strike a chord with players and it's been really cool to see the game garner positive attention!
Watch the trailer here
Check Look Outside out on Steam
I've had some motivation problems lately, but hopefully some stuff will pick up soon. Planet Keke and ESA2 have continued their slow but steady pace forward, which is nice even if progress has otherwise been scarce.
Tags: Games, Other, Plans, Happenings, Nordic Game Jam, Ludum Dare, ESA 2, Small games, Regular updates, Planet Keke