Hello! I just found out you can make non-project-specific posts and wanted to go ahead and make an introductory post to give you a hazy idea of who this strange person is who keeps making games about mowing.

I spawned into existence as an 18 year old and went straight into university majoring in computer science with little to no knowledge of how to write code because I knew I wanted to make video games. While there, I started dabbling in GameMaker because I was interested in going to a game jam. After learning a lot more at said game jam, I started a new GameMaker project called VEIL. This was in late 2016.

I worked on VEIL in my spare time for about two years. It was (of course) a JRPG-inspired game. Yes, partially inspired by Earthbound, but mostly by a game called Trails in the Sky. After all that time working on it, all I had was the introductory scene and a few battles featuring an incomplete battle system. The battle system was on a grid and turn-based and there were still so many things to work on, largely art, that it overwhelmed me. I'm still proud of what I was able to accomplish, but this is kind of why everyone always says to start small. Like REALLY small.

So I started on a new game. I'd be using the Unity engine, which I was learning for a game development class I was taking. I didn't mention this before, but I was really proud of the story and characters I came up with for VEIL and wanted to explore them a bit more.  So this game would take place in the same universe, before the events of VEIL.

I called this project LIVE (pronounced like the verb, not the adjective). Unlike VEIL, which had multiple cities and locations that would be explored and a long story arc focusing on the development of multiple characters, LIVE would take place at just one location and only focus its story on one character. Maybe two. Okay, three. Four.

LIVE ended much the same way as VEIL.

New project. VILE. Also in the VEIL universe. Strictly limited to one character this time. Unity again. Quick game where you have to escape a procedurally generated labyrinth filled with enemies. You can turn into a lighting bolt and shoot lightning bolts and overall it's just really rad. People who saw me working on this at school often commented on how cool it looked. Development was proceeding smoothly.

Let's just say VILE taught me about the importance of source control.

By the time I stopped working on VILE, I had graduated and was looking for jobs. As a socially anxious introvert, The Job Hunt was extremely mentally taxing. I really just hate speaking up and advertising myself; I'm a lurker by nature. On top of that, I knew that I'd probably end up in a job I didn't care about. I have a degree in computer science, so people expect me to write code, but I don't necessarily want to spend 8 hours programming every day. I started getting really depressed and didn't want to do much of anything.

In order to feel a bit better about things, I wanted to prove to myself that I could finish a project, so I decided to take no more and no less than 3 days to develop a game for April Fools of 2019. This would be my first project unrelated to the VEIL universe. It would be called MOWING. You simply mow down a series of giant blades of grass as they grow in a path that leads you to the end of the game where you get abducted by a UFO. You also have a machine gun and can shoot down robot ducks that will try to drop nukes on you.

You can download it here.

Yes, that's right. I actually finished a project. Technically I had made other tiny little games that I haven't mentioned, but this was the first one I was proud enough of to post it online for anyone to play. Is it fun? Not really, but it's kind of funny and it works.

New project! Back to the VEIL universe! The only anagram left was EVIL and the game didn't really thematically fit that, so I came up with an actual title: Dead Pursuit. Once again, one character, one location, and takes place before the main story. The game would be about following clues to make sure you're in the right place at the right time to observe certain events. Behind your back, an intruder is moving things around, but little do they know, you can detect every little change they make! Any changed objects would be highlighted in red, while the rest of the environment was green.

I started out super motivated to work on this project. There wasn't even that much left to do. Basically all the code was in place and one of the four environments (pictured) was done (thanks in no small part to stock assets) with another in progress. But I still stopped working on it, which may have been because of burnout. Making games alone is a lot of work. I spent a while recharging by just playing games, and eventually started working on my next VEIL universe project: MOWING 2.

That's right, MOWING 2 is a VEIL universe game. (All of the characters mentioned in the endings of MOWING 2 (minus F) are in the pictures in this post! Who's who? Who knows?) Now, as I mentioned before, MOWING 1 did not take place in the VEIL universe... at the time it was released. MOWING 2 retcons it into the universe, essentially. Why did I decide to put MOWING 2 in the VEIL universe? Mostly because I thought it would be funny. And maybe out of a little bit of spite; I wanted to prove to myself that VEIL projects weren't doomed to unfinished project hell from the moment they were conceived. 

MOWING 2 was a much bigger project than MOWING 1. I was once again doing all the art, music, story, and programming by myself because I wanted to demonstrate everything I was capable of. It took me about 8 months. Once I was finished, I realized I needed to put effort into marketing it if I wanted anyone to play it. Otherwise, I might have just wasted 8 months. So I made a trailer and made posts on various social media to announce its release, and that it would be free for a limited time.

It is still free to download here.

It got a little more attention than MOWING 1, but I still haven't really discovered how to get people to notice my tiny little specks in the vast expanse of the internet.

At this point I had to stop working on personal projects because I finally got a job. I was hired by some people at a local company who really didn't know how project management worked and wanted me to develop their mobile app. Alone.

It was not pretty. I'm really sensitive to disappointment, so I ended up working most of the time on most days. I worked from home, so I was able to, say, put in 14 hours and just say I worked 8 so they wouldn't think I was overcharging. I did not leave on good terms with them, unfortunately.

Thankfully, I'm now in a much better place, working on games professionally! I haven't really been working on personal projects much, as I've had some other life things going on, but I have been solidifying the story of the first non-MOWING game I want to make and working on another unrelated project in Unity.

I've missed working on things, so I'll be doing my best to put out something new as soon as I can.

Until then!