Happy late new year! Hoping all your goals and dreams manifest this year, next year or whenever they're ready to fully bloom and blossom. I'm taking a long break right now and the new year is a nice way to reflect on the past and future year. I have a lot of plans for 2024.
This started as a small art project based on a photo-scanned asset but has evolved heavily into a detailed environmental narrative game. TO:RI is a contemplative, quiet, atmospheric visual audio poetic experience. It's really wild how much this project grew from a fun little weekend prototype to a complete, multiple-ending experience. It's a culmination of everything I've learned over the last 5 years making games. I'm confident that this year I'll be able to release a fully complete experience, as I've reigned in the scope. I'm hoping in 2024 I can secure some funding or a small publisher to really allow me to add some extra layers of polish. Below is an early trailer for TO:RI.
I'll be making a room for the soup project organized by Kite Line. Soup is an interactive room exploration game inspired by the original cult classic Japanese indie game SOUP from 2007. You'll get to explore 100 all-new ROOMS made by cool and talented indie devs from around the world. I'm excited about this project since it's inline with the more surreal experimental work I already make with Unity, but with much welcomed constraints. It'll be a nice change of pace and a fun collaborative, creative project.
Solastalgia will be getting a Japanese translation, along with some performance updates. This is the first project I've had professionally translated. Poem translation is interesting. There's a lot of ways a poem can be interpreted and ultimately the meaning may differ slightly as it crosses from one language and cultural context to another. I'm confident that the final translation will be an equally impactful experience thanks to the talented EN-JP game translator nicolith and I can't wait to share the game with a wider audience.
Another very special project I've slowly been working on. This is heavily inspired by the writings and works of sound artist Pauline Oliveros and The Deep Listening Band. It's an interactive sound art experience broken up into three acts. I have the first act complete and will be adding 3 exhibition style experiences to the first release sometime in 2024. The full experience will consist of three "sound walks" and 9 sound art exhibitions.
More news soon. I can't wait to talk about this more. In the meantime, here's an early preview of something I'm cooking up.
I'm blown away by the response to city::ephemera. People have wrote about how this experience brought them to tears and triggered old memories and dreams. Comments like this are why I started to pursue an artistic approach to game development. I wanted to make people feel. It's been so motivating and inspiring to see these responses. I will be continuing the ::ephemera series with a few more projects that all play into the same aesthetics while also having their own voices and atmospheres.
A collective I started with a few people is one of my biggest long term projects. INFINITE TEARS is many things. Right now it's just a loose group of artists making things together. In the near future I want to organize game jams, run workshops, pay writers to highlight hidden gems in the itch.io community, make collaborative hyper experimental works and curate/exhibit a wide range of unique experiences. This will be similar to the amazing work that INDIEPOCALYPSE does for the community. I want to create a space to support, inspire and promote alternative and experimental interactive works.
Game dev is a brutal hobby at times. I'm writing another blog post about why I love and hate game dev. What it all boils down to is that it is such a massive mental effort and I'm still working on setting boundaries for myself when it comes to rest and play. I enjoy game dev, but it is such a time commitment that I start neglecting all the other parts of life I enjoy. Right now I'm on a long break, connecting with family across the world. I can enjoy long quiet walks and not constantly think about game development. I want this to be a regular feeling in 2024. More play. More rest. More doing nothing.
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Exciting stuff! Looking forward to all of these but especially Japanese Solastagia, more ::ephemera, and TO:RI! Here's to another great year of making cool art!!