Howdy and hello, friends!
A short update this month. I haven’t gotten much internet-facing work done for a number of reasons, the most pleasant of which being my new-found obsession with Blue Prince. Highly recommended if you enjoy a puzzle game and don’t mind being confounded for hours on end, along with a bit of a tussle with some random number generation.
Having published a novel and finished two webcomics, along with dozens of theatrical performances and countless other artistic tidbits, it fascinates me how quickly various forms can reach “Not Too Bad” status. Not quite the “Good Enough” status, where you can share it with the public and feel proud of it, but where you can look at it for yourself and say, “Hey, this is not too bad.” Even within a given medium, there can be a lot of variety; a story might reach that point after its first draft or its twentieth. But of all of the forms I’ve tried, video games take the longest to reach that point. I’ve made a game that’s functional and can be played, but I’m still not at the “Not Too Bad” stage. There’s a certain volume of story and art and sound design, along with general je ne sais quoi (almost spelled it right on my first try!) that it still needs before I can look at it and feel good about it.
This isn’t to say that I’m not proud of the work I’ve done on it so far! I’ve grown a lot throughout this process, and I’ve developed a lot of skills I wouldn’t have any portion of otherwise. I’ve also grown a lot more forgiving of some things I see in games, and less forgiving of some others. Specific examples aren’t coming to mind, but perhaps some will arrive as I think on it over the course of this month.
All of this to say: I haven’t worked much on the game-making in the past month, but I have plans to get back onto that particular horse in the one ahead. And if you ask me if I’ll have a game that I consider Not Too Bad at the end of this month, I’d have to say that I…
May.
Get it? Get it???
Love,
Josh
Josh Closs Comics and Stories 