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Aether! So good to finally hear from you, and meet you, now, at the end of all things.

Very much agreed on the writing. I'm a writing person first, drawing has come slow and difficult to me. But it's been my experience that it's much easier to draw people in with visuals than text, so I've forced myself, and I have enjoyed finally getting to the point where I can do basic visuals at least. I don't do as much full-delve into actual hypnosis in my stuff as you do, just for pacing reasons, it's a little more cartoony. But I do still take SOME time to establish exactly what you're talking about that sensation, that shift. Because that's the fun part after all.

And of course I called Iana cute, it's important to be accurate.

Glad to hear more in terms of playing with the subs is potentially planned. I don't want to overshare my own thoughts in terms of possibilities there though, for fear of overriding your own plans. You've had good instincts so far. May offer a little bit later though; I'm also quite a bit pressed for time this week, as you might imagine.

And good to hear there's a possibility of expansion/continuation on the story. Big project like I said, but definitely still a lot of potential there if you want to explore it.

Glad you enjoyed my goofy Myst idea. I actually researched the idea briefly when I proposed it, and there are engines out there that would make it fairly doable, but again I'll save that for another post or FA note if you want to get into it. Even Renpy supports region click-linking on images for example, a big part of Myst-style navigation (Renpy would probably be a pain to work with in this case though, as it is in most cases).

Oh, and in terms of me: I've had the visuals in the games from the beginning. Again, very deliberate decision. Aphantasia doesn't matter in this case. I don't suffer from it, but plenty of artist, including famous Disney animators have. For the most part, even for a "normal" person, drawing doesn't really work the way most people imagine, where you picture what you want to draw and then copy that mental image. For me, and I think probably for most folks, it's more like playing with some kind of kids toy, lego or knex or whatever. You have a general non-visual idea of what you want to make, and you start snapping pieces together to build it. The vast majority of the time I'm drawing I'm not bouncing back and forth between some image in my mind and THE image trying to copy it. And when I AM doing that, it's usually not an image in my mind, it's a ref, which is just as accessible to you as me. The one possible exception is expressions: like every artist, I tend to make those why drawing new or extreme ones and "copy", somewhat out of feel but also out of mental represenation of my own face. But that's also easy to fix for you: just get a mirror.

I actually think this is interesting from another angle: how the hell do you WRITE with that? Because for me, unlike art, I very much just imagine and play out scenes, over and over, and then write them down as I "watch" them. It's a like a dress rehearsal in my mind. I guess technically you could still do that dress rehearsal...in the dark, with no visuals, but that seems difficult. I will say, now that I think about it, that maybe the one slight weakness to your writing is that it IS a little non-visual. There's not a huge sense of space and spacial relationships, to the point where I would occasionally get a little lost in terms of orientation. Things just kind of appear in the immediate perception: stuff near you exists, stuff a little farther out may as well not. Almost a little like I imagine a blind person would think about the world: a world of whatever's RIGHT THERE, where you can touch it, and everything else just drops out of perception or pops into it when in reaches that range.

And of course, what I said earlier is for drawing. By definition a classic Myst style thing would be made out of deliberately somewhat hokey and low-poly (for now, super high poly for the 90s) 3d renders, which is a whole 'nother art style. But again, 3d is even more a case of lego brick play. Classic modeling is often about starting with a cube and just subdividing extruding twisting etc until you have a very complex model. It's almost like making a balloon animal. Start with cube, end with mansion. There are many other ways of course, especially now, but that's a classic, and a good way to do very low poly stuff.

If you did do the Myst thing, of course you'd have to be smart, plan things out ahead of time, have a setup and more or less stick with it so you didn't get nailed with scope creep. But even if you farmed out some of the asset creation to others, I don't think it would be SUPER crazy expensive, certainly within the realm of feasible. But again, I would certainly recommend doing it as a commercial product though, if nothing else to make up for the investment. Let me know if you ever decide to take the plunge, glad to help where I can.

And aw, thank you for the kind words overall. I just make weird niche games that for some reason a lot of people enjoy. One of my best and worst attributes is that I do a lot with language: lotta talking, lotta reading, lotta writing. That can easily become a lot of nonsense people don't care about, but if I'm a little careful and target stuff that actually matters, it works out fairly well most of the time.

But again, the one thing I will say to you, will IMPLORE you, is the thing I say to everyone: make money. Be capitalist. That's...kind of tough at the moment for obvious reasons, but opportunities are still out there. If you're independently wealthy and already live in a mansion of course, ignore this. But otherwise: you make good stuff. Don't just give it ALL away. Think a little about how you can make it a product. I know that makes people uncomfortable sometimes, but it's not morally wrong to work hard and make something and get paid for it. Quite the opposite. And more than that...there's a weird trick of psychology. If you sell a high-quality watch that's usually about $200 FOR $200, people go "Oh yes, that makes sense." If you sell it for $150, people go "Holy shit, what a bargain, I should grab that!" If you sell it for $50, even if it's great and you're still making a healthy profit, people see it and go "Oh. Oooh, what's wrong with that? It must be shit I'm not going to buy it."

Just charging money for something immediately makes it seem higher quality and more desirable. It's weird and dumb, but that's how human brains work. So being commercial isn't JUST about making money so you can swim in it Scrooge McDuck style. It's about being able to CONTINUE making things. It's about being able to re-invest in what you make, and scale it up over time. And it's also about bringing in more fans, and getting people more excited.

If you can stick with and crank out something like Shepherd's Flock, you can absolutely see other projects through, and get paid, and use that money to stay alive, with less stress, so you can reinvest in the next thing and make it even better.

Something to consider at least. But glad we were finally able to connect, and by all means reach out if you have questions or want to brainstorm on something. Furaffinty's probably the best option, I THINK I saw you follow earlier (there have been a LOT of new follows recently, for obvious reasons.) Look forward to seeing more (especially of Iana getting what he deserves).