Ahoy ahoy humans! I hope you well. It has been little over a month since my big indie jump, and I wanted to a general update.

I actually post detailed updates every week for my $5 patron tier, but I want to still do less frequent but still regular updates for curious non-patrons as well, though they won’t be as in-depth. These will probably happen once a month or so.

SO much stuff has happened in the past month! Here’s a run-down of my adventures so far

1. I completed a game jam entry for AI-Jam, a collaboration with Will White called Cat Trick. It’s a very silly game, and I may revisit it to scope it down and see how it feels in touch (the first cat is really the most fun, so I’d focus on that)
2. I participated in several adventures with Richard Lemarchand’s Experimental Play class at USC and went to one of their wonderful Playthink sessions, which I intend to try and do regularly.
3. I picked work back up on my lightning bug game, figured out some good direction, and moved ahead with Denae Wilkowski for art on the project, which I’m very excited about.
4. I began prototypes for another ridiculous Eyetracker game in Unreal 4
5. I am doing some contract work to help out with level design on Hyper Light Drifter, which I’m super pumped about because it’s a really interesting project with nice, brain-stretching work
6. I made my first ever Twine game for Ludum Dare 32, called Lisa vs the Tornado
7. Slow Down, Bull launched on Steam! I’m incredibly proud of this game, please give it a look and if you like it, spread the word about it!
8. I spoke at EPXCon at the University of Iowa (video to come eventually)
9. On my travels, I had design sit-down sessions with Mattie “Mint” Richards and Greg Wohlwend for super fun and useful feedback and design-problem-solving times. Got great feedback on my prototypes as well. I’m doing some email feedback sessions with a couple of other devs.
10. I have been streaming up a storm! Dev streams, class streams, and feedback streams abound, most with really cool special guests!

I’ll close this update with a lesson-learned since going indie. You read advice for indies all over the place, and often they have similar things to say. One is a warning about working every minute of every day, which I never thought would be an issue, since I’ve traditionally been quite good at work-life balance.

However, I have realized that while I was at Insomniac, all this stuff was leisure to me (game jams, streaming, side projects). Now all of a sudden what used to be leisure is now “work,” and I understand how you can dangerously slip into non-stop work mode.

This is still something that I’m wrestling with, and finding balance may be trickier than I anticipated. Fortunately I have friends who have been through all this and who are keeping an eye on me in this regard. I guess I just need a new hobby, or something.

Looking forward to adventures in May!

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