To whom it may concern,

Welcome to my post regarding the future of Helter Skelter Games and the state of my last project. If you follow me on Itch.io then you would know that I usually don't write blog posts however the elephant in the room needs to be addressed and hopefully from this post, I can give further insight and reflection on current works.

Recently I entered another game jam, Historically Accurate Jam 9. In this jam, I was tasked with making a game about 19th-century espionage and I submitted The British Are Coming. I have gone into greater details of development elsewhere so I will keep it brief. I am not proud of the final product with the issues cited:  it was buggy, glitchy, impossible, and hard to understand. I accept this as a fault of my own doing. I want to write about my experience with the jam, as a result, I came 10th/12th which shocked me mainly because I expected the worst but got a little higher, I came last in one category in particular, Gameplay. To say I shot myself in the foot is a great understatement, from the very start of development I set out to create the game with the mechanics now where you look at a screen and wait. I did it to be historically accurate but in hindsight, I realise that it was really foolhardy to go guns blazing. I have entered many jams before and received very low positions but none really have woken me up or stung. Once I published the game even those I sent a copy to all came back with a 'meh' or 'lackluster' opinion, even my other games like The Quest For Sweetener (once believed to be my worst project) never got feedback that was awful, a few chuckles at its expense perhaps but that is what I wanted and now this game eclipses that of The Quest For Sweetener as my greatest abomination. For days after submission to the jam I contemplated deleting it but instead, I have decided to keep it as a pillar of what not to do when creating any game, I will adapt and learn and move forward as the title suggests. Will I update the game? maybe, maybe not. I am glad that I made the mistake of learning from it but not happy I made The British Are Coming, it was my first 2.5/3D game and I made this. I thank all the game developers on the review board for their constructive criticism, if it weren't for your kind supportive words I would not have developed and thanks to the jam's hosts, while the game wasn't good seeing everyone else's contributions made it all the more worth it.

Moving forward, during the creation of The British Are Coming I had my eyes set on another project I was envisioning a game set during the 1920s Mafia/Mobster period and mixing said theme with a genre akin to management/tycoons and simulators like Tropico 6 or Cities Skylines but blend with mobster films like The Gentlemen, Snatch, Godfather, Reservoir Dogs. I feel a lot of optimism for the project and I believe we could start seeing the page on Itch.io very soon. Furthermore, another project weeks from completion is an App for the Google Play Store. This App has no current name (usually the last thing I do with projects) and is for the Bedford community, it is an app that tracks bin days and shows you information regarding said bin day. It is made in Godot 4.2 & 4.3 with a fully functioning calendar. This project is something I feel particularly proud of and hope to share soon. Regarding the future, I will have more time to create and develop with exam season coming to a bitter-sweet close. I will be more active on social platforms and might stream the development of certain projects. There may be some asset pack releases from unused projects and more mods like my Assetto Corsa car skin mods which you can get exclusively from my website in bio.

I want to thank you all for your continued support and kind words and I wish you the best of days. Hope to see you soon,

- Max