May 6th, 2023

Recently Completed Work

Spearfishing Leviathan

Platformer game made in 5 days for a jam. I took a few more notes on what I thought about it than usual.

Ongoing

Music

I’ve been studying music theory and writing small pieces, averaging one every two days or so. It was more frequent when I was not working! The pieces are mostly sketches and not public right now, but I might share them at some point. Don’t expect it, though.

Learning Japanese

For no good reason! I’ve memorized hiragana and katakana and have gotten pretty stuck from there. So far I’ve been using some of the decks from https://animecards.site/ankicards/ and trying to learn the basic grammar patterns.

Magician / K

Formerly known as ‘K’, this is a long story I wrote 5 years ago and am now trying to finish – I was working on it the last time I updated the now page, and I still am.

I’ve made a lot of progress, and have the engine both for the novel portions as well as a simple minigame for using magic. My current goal is to finish setting the first act.

Life

I took a monthlong break from work at the end of March, and spent my time making a short platformer and contemplating the future. I also still work at Meta, still on Oculus – though it’s been pretty unstable at work lately. Meta performed layoffs at the end of April, and the state of the team and wider direction is still uncertain. Which is to say, work has been very distracting.

I also came to the somewhat terrifying realization that I’ve never actually finished one of my more ambitious projects. I’ve made a lot of game jam games at this point, all of which have taken up to a week or two to make. But once the timeline gets to months? There’s a lot of half-completed work, but nothing totally polished.

So I’m thinking about what I can do to get better at that slightly bigger ambition of games. There’s merit to small games, of course, (and this is an essay that I enjoyed reading arguing for that) – but I think I am not satisfied making games a week at a time. I think I’d need more time to make a game that I’d personally find satisfying.

Anyway, a lot of thinking has happened over the past month.