I’m Back! / Travel Log(?)

Hello everyone! I’m… Jetlagged… But I’m back! Honestly, I’m feeling a bit rusty writing this up and don’t have too much to say regarding work as this is mostly just a general announcement of my return. I have not read any posts or responded to any messages for a while now. I plan on going through and reading messages and responding to all that I can. I apologize for the wait in that area.

For everyone who is not interested in what happened the past few weeks, I’ve been on holiday abroad and now I am back. I will get back to work on game dev after another week or so, as my birthday is coming up and I have some plans with family.

For people who are interested in a more detailed breakdown, let’s chat.

At the beginning of this month, I did something I don’t do… well at all, really. Normally when I take a break, it’s usually lined with other creative ventures. I can rarely just sit down and not do anything as I’d end up feeling restless.

This time, however, the break was a complete creative break, with no way of doing much of anything outside of walk around. And there are far worse places to walk around than Japan – a country well-known for safety and convenience.

I’ve been to Japan before and did all the typical tourist stuff on that last trip (10 years ago), but this time I really wanted to immerse myself in anime and gaming spaces, which are plentiful. Granted, you have your central hubs in places like Akihabara, but the cool thing about Japan is that there’s always something interesting somewhere. At least that’s how I typically view it. Not to mention, bars are also plentiful and (currently) drinks are cheap.

Some people might scoff at the fact that I paid for a ticket, got on a plane, and didn’t go see Shibuya Crossing or look at geishas in Kyoto or whatever it is tourists are meant to do. I stuck to my areas and bought a lot of figures and merchandise from franchises that I both love and ones I don’t really know that well but had cool-looking stuff.

It was quite fun to wander around and randomly find myself in adult sections of shops which, ultimately, weren’t dedicated adult stores. Just go on one floor – bunch of cool stuff but nothing outlandish – next floor: Porn. No, I didn’t buy anything from these places, but it was interesting to see a lot of games I know from the H-Game space actually on shelves. As to avoid the taste police coming after me, I won’t actually mention what I saw.

There was definitely a bigger influx of out-of-place tourists in these areas, however. People bringing their children into stores that have figures of naked women fully spreading behind glass cases, as well as people pointing and laughing anytime they saw a boob or risqué outfit in the more regular shops. I won’t lie, this frustrated the hell out of me.

While it was more of a problem on this visit, it didn’t ruin the experience and I still liked being around people who enjoyed these things rather than mocking them. I still had a great time and had a lot of great food. I do think I stayed a bit too long, though, and was very much looking forward to coming back home and getting back to work.

So, as mentioned in my last post, I switched my plans around a bit with what I wanted to work on after Sin Spire. I basically said that I wasn’t in a rush to lock myself into another long dev cycle, so I would be doing a smaller project first. That smaller project obviously hasn’t had any work done on it yet, but I was able to slowly piece together what I wanted to do with it while I was on vacation.

I’ll keep details sparse for now, as my plan after this month is to quietly work on the project and then come back with a big announcement post with pictures and gameplay details – much like Sin Spire's announcement.

My general goals with this project are to try and make a tighter and punchier experience than what Sin Spire offers – something with more moment-to-moment replay value. I want to make it faster-paced and less “frustrating” to put it bluntly.

I’ll likely still stick with the retro style for this game. For my next big project, I wanted to switch things up, but for this smaller one, due to my intended turnaround/timeframe, I’ll probably stick with the low-poly style. That said, I’ll probably give myself a bit more flexibility with it and experiment.

I also want to make something that isn’t too dark in tone. The next big project I had planned is intended to have a dark story, so rather than jumping straight from Sin Spire into that, I figured I’d do something a bit lighter first.

So, I’m not bringing this up to call attention to getting a year older, but more to point out that my break isn’t quite over. My birthday is coming up, and I’ll be away from my workstation again as a result. So my work schedule is realistically looking like April+ without much news or information for the rest of March.

In regards to what this means for the small project… I don’t know yet. I’m still thinking things through and won’t be able to provide timeframes until later. In regards to the next Sin Spire update, well...

As I said at the beginning of this post, I have not read any messages since I’ve been away. I plan on doing that soon-ish, but there are a lot of messages, and I apologize in advance for either delayed responses or missed ones. It’s easy to overlook things or simply not see them.

I mention messages because I’m assuming a lot of posts will be about Sin Spire and where the next update is. As of right now, there is no timeframe on the update. It is definitely still coming, as it’s partially complete, but I need to verify my fixes, make sure there are no new issues introduced, and not rush any big changes while I’m still not fully back in the zone.

Anyway, that’s all for today. I’ll try to get back to my usual schedule soon, but with no current active project outside of updates, I can’t promise that posts going forward will have much substance.

I hope you're all doing well and I'll see you all next time.