Hello! I saw that my last newspost on here was me announcing that Picayune Dreams had released, nearly two years go. It's kind of unreal, me posting that and that gap in time doesn't seem to add up in my head, but I guess it must be true! Here I am, writing something new for people to read. It really feels like the past few years have gone so incredibly fast, while at the same time, they've been the most important and best years I've spent on Earth.

Picayune Dreams went on to do way better than I could've expected when I wrote that previous newspost. It did extremely well, and has been my main source of income since it released. It has allowed me to continue doing what I love, making things! It won a Game Of The Year award from Gamemaker, the software I used to create the game. Afterwards, we released a content update labelled "Contamination" which basically tripled the games initial reach. I'm so so so thankful to the fans of the game, but also all of you. If it wasn't for Newgrounds and the people who use it, I would not have met those I met that put me on the path but also just giving me a creative outlet that enabled me to have the skills to take on such a big project. It's easy to learn things if you're already having fun! Working on Picayune was the hardest thing I have ever done in my entire life. It still gets fanart and is hovering at around 60+ peak players per day, which is sort of unreal to think about. It's like throwing a pebble into a lake and you come back two years later, and it's still causing ripples.

Undeniably, Picayune also left me feeling very burnt out. When I was making games for Newgrounds, I was banging those out in just a few days/weeks sometimes, so there was this constant feedback loop of hard work, to audience response. As well as getting to work with a large variety of people. When there was a time when development wasn't fun or something got difficult, it was okay because it was only for a day or two; the fun stuff would resume shortly after. With long term development, there are periods where the 'not fun stuff' can stretch for over a month or two. And the worst thing is, you can show the game off to playtesters before and after and the changes are imperceivable, its all about laying groundwork and making future development easier, or optimizing the experience in ways that make the game not 'annoying'. It's in that moment that it feels like the game will never truly be finished, and if you have to put this much work into the game for it to not be annoying and lame, then your game must SUCK because only games that SUCK are annoying and lame! In reality, every second you spend chiseling away matters and games that suck are usually the ones made by developers who simply don't bother doing that laborious de-SUCKification process or simply aren't given the development time for it. Your hard work WILL shine through, and even if the project isn't perfect, just by putting all of your effort into something means someone out there will really really like it, and that's why we bother creating anything.

After we got the content update out (then the following month of bugfixes and QoL) I felt very good about the work I had done, but the idea of delving back into game dev felt impossible. I had just survived that onslaught, it didn't seem sane to want to go back. It was really hard making patches for the game in the following weeks, and even trying to work on new things felt like going back to sticks and stones after spending so long on my isolated cyberpunk utopia I had just spent an eternity assembling. What I actually did was the opposite, I went OUTSIDE.

I have spent most of my life indoors, and although I have a pretty awesome group of friends, I mostly just prefer spending time on my PC in the comfort of my home. But working on Picayune, I had spent such a long time indoors for such a long period, I actually was sick of it. I was suddenly taking any excuse to get outside, go places, meet people, just whatever. I went to a Fat Boy Slim concert early in the year, and it basically changed life. It was exactly what I needed in that moment, where I had absorbed nothing but introverted energy my whole life and then I was getting this mega shotgun blast of the most extroverted experience I had ever endured. It was the highest amount of people I had seen in one place like, ever. It wasn't like being at school or buying groceries or work where people HAD to be there and all interactions were obstacles between now and the end of the day - No, it was a unified gathering of people who wanted to see other people, who wanted to dance, who wanted things to be loud and abrasive and crazy. People were coming up to me and despite being total strangers, they would try and dance with me, we'd take photos, talk a bit about ourselves. It was the kind of experience I wasn't even aware existed prior. There was this old guy with long hair who was so sweaty he looked like was made out of metal (Metal Mario 64 typeshit), with all the stage lights and screens reflecting off him perfectly like, who bumped into me once, and the rest of the night whenever he walked past me, he raised his thumb and gave me a thumb and a smile to acknowledge our tiny interaction. I would do the same back to him. In a way, it was as if all social barriers formed out of fear and frustration were dissolved, replaced with primitive fun and enthusiasm for a pinch of controllable chaos.

I'm definitely not an extrovert, and I still prefer staying indoors and on my PC. But it's nice to know that if I want an explosive sudden extrovert experience, its there waiting for me. I went to a rave Mall Grab performed at half way through the year, and just recently I went to Meredith, a 3 day music festival here in Victoria. And I've loved every time, and each time I've learned a lot about myself and I always come back feeling refreshed and enthusiastic about the comforts that await me at home with my PC.

These are some of the pics I took at Meredith, and I took the Izu plush we're doing with Makeship with me. that blurry one with the plush wizard was so funny to me i couldn't hold my phone steady.

I've basically just been LIVING life and now bouncing between being a hermit in my bedroom and then finding excuses to get out and do stuff. I'm going to continue making games with 2LeftThumbs, the publisher I worked with on Picayune. Andy is in the final stages of Endacopia, and I think it's going to be a big deal - I can't wait for people to get their hands on that. The new game I'm working on is called Cardaver, I'm making it with two of the people who made secret bosses for Picayune as well as ConnorGrail, who's made tons of music for tons of awesome games on here. I'd really appreciate it if you could give us a wishlist!

I love working on games, I definitely needed that break - but it's given me so much confidence, perspective and inspiration that will hopefully reflect in my work. I'd love to come back and pump out a few games for Newgrounds again, after I'm done with this next big project! Who knows what the future has in store. <3