After a year of conceptualizing and planning, I announced and began to start publishing the A.D.A.P.T. Entries, a space thriller about Judiasm, the building and falling of communities, the necessity of resisting dehumanization, and how even the best of intentions can be twisted in the face of systemic corruption and unaddressed prejudices. Now three months into this project, it feels like the perfect time to reflect on what I’ve done and reassess our trajectory!

The Good

Okay, so let's start off with some positives, yeah?

This game, by far, is the largest and most fleshed out project I have attempted as a game designer. Even before I started posting about it publicly, there was more than a year of planning, research (many thanks to be given to the American Jewish Archives and the Jewish Historical Society of Western Canada on that front), and general preproduction. That's not to mention many attempts at getting funding– all that to say, it's been a long path to even get to this moment.

It’s also pushed me to try my hand at a lot of new things, from new languages and engines, to attempting digital art for the first time– and I'm very proud to be able to say that every art asset you've seen so far for this game has been made by me!

This story means a hell of a lot to me, if that's not already obvious. I can think of maybe three explicitly Jewish video game characters, and I think it's important to show sides of our communities people might not know. Even though we're still in the early days of it, one day this will grow into a gloriously jewish, crip, queer story for the ages.

The bad

When I originally made the plan to post this game episodically, it was going to be my primary focus outside of job hunting and caretaking, but my life has ended up changing drastically since the beginning of the year. The day before I posted Entry 0.1, my grandmother (for whom I had been caretaking on and off for the past five years) died, and that ended up being a catalyst for a huge host of shifts in my life, which i’ll go further into in the next section, but needless to say, I’m about to have far less time on my hands than I do right now.

Grief is a funny, fickle beast. In the past, writing and developing games has been one of the major ways I’ve processed mine– in fact, two of my favourite things I’ve ever made (Ablaze with all the things you’ve been and lungs to burn) have come out of exactly that. This time around, however… I’m finding it much, much harder. I’m struggling to write and make stuff, and I think I know better than to force myself to right now.

Part of the frustration with that, though, is that I haven’t been able to experiment technologically nearly as much as I would like. Like I’ve said more than a few time, this game is ( or, at least set out to be) equal parts interactive fiction and narrative adventure and so far, has just about entirely been interactive fiction. I wanted to try out different game engines and such, and I just have not ultimately had the bandwidth to do so, which is disappointing! Hopefully I’ll have the chance to do so at some point soon, but for now I feel better about putting a pause on things until I have the time and energy to do so.

The plan

Ok, so what’s next? Where do we go from here?

Well, first off, let’s talk about the things stealing my time. I’m about to go back to school to finish my B.A. after five years out of academics. That, as you can imagine, is about to eat up the majority of my time, but I’m hopeful and excited for where it could take me! In the long run, I’m hoping it’ll allow me to more fully pursue my dream of utilizing interactive media to make immersive experiences; not just in games but also with cultural institutions (aka I hope to help make stuff like interactive museum exhibits one day!) I’m also getting married in the fall!!! Which is another very exciting but time-consuming thing.

So, with all of that in mind, here’s what that means for this project: we will be on hiatus for at least the months of April and May. There will be a release in either June or July and then beyond that… we’ll play it by ear. Hopefully by then I will have a better idea of my workload and how to keep things moving forward by then.

(A sneak preview, though: the release this summer will shoot us some 250 years in the future, and introduce us to the other half of this whole story. It’s very cool and very queer and I’m very excited to share it and you should be too.)

In the meantime, if you’ve enjoyed this project so far, please consider checking out my kofi or buying some of my games!!! Especially with me going back to school, it’s my main source of income at the moment, and I could really use the help, frankly. All my games are pay what you can, and on my kofi, you can support me monthly at several different tiers and commission me for several different things, ranging from art and writing, to your own bespoke poem game. I truly can’t underscore how helpful that monetary support can be; I’m a disabled (now mature) student who is lucky enough to be housed but this is still one of the few ways I can make money to cover the rest of my needs.

Thanks again for all the support and interest so far!