itch.io

so cool!!!! excited to review this  🤩

This was a pitch for a $21k grant from https://www.social-connection.org/

This has a lot of "fluff", but we were trying to make it legible to big institution language. The TL;DR is that it's asking for funds to maintain something we already have going, a kind of "onboarding meta community" in Ithaca NY, that helps you find your place in the community (if you're new, or if you've been here forever, helps you find new social circles outside your bubble, or you create a funnel for new people to find you/grow your community).

This was the proposal that got rejected (I was working on it with a local org that acted as a "fiscal host" since I don't myself have a non-profit): https://docs.google.com/document/d/1LxgWX8IZyGmqPZAr330pbraf6Wtl7Wh4j2LOab-uZGY/...

TODO: document the "initial pitch" / tweets I made, the initial prototype with AbstractFairy, the "what if twitter could show you spikes in the overton window" tweet that got a bunch of funders to DM me.  

This one is an example of something where I did NOT make money (directly) from the pitch - I pitched it "to the world" and then found people who were a better fit to create & lead this thing (xiq & team), and they did it. 

This was a pitch I made in January 2025. It started with this twitter thread Nov 2024 where I described the idea: https://x.com/DefenderOfBasic/status/1859754827737333937

I need something in between the Russian troll farms benn jordan described, and like, a public research lab. An "open culture institute" that A/B tests people and publishes the result, for the general public

It got a lot of attention, then I got a DM from an investor asking "do you think you can pull this off if we funded you? Can you send us a short proposal to this email"

I didn't expect that, I kind of panicked. I said sure and then DMed everyone I knew who had touched this kind of money before to ask for advice. I had worked in big companies but I'd never "pitched" anything, and this was like a research grant, not a product. It was even weirder because it wasn't research in a well established field, it was trying to define a new category ("open, white hat, culture hacking"). Slime Mold Time Mold's advice was particularly helpful, because they had a background in academic/applying for grants, but also in this new world of "open citizen science on twitter". 

This was the final proposal I made: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Zy8BAXlIdvgYaQaODngzQh2R0w1Lf1zi2s1ZwARFnV8/...

In retrospect I think what I did correctly there was:

• State the goal concisely & in plain language - I wanted to do "white hat culture hacking", I wanted to start a community/industry around it
• Explained why this was necessary & urgent (it affects our ability to find truth & make decisions as a society)
• Showed the work I've already done that built momentum / proved that this was possible, and what I am capable of doing 

After they looked at my $70k ask, they asked me, "but for real though, how much do you actually need, what parts of this budget are critical/what parts are optional?", and I answered honestly:

My immediate bottleneck / priority is giving myself ~6 months of runway to focus full-time on this work. At my current living expenses this would be $24k ($4k a month)

Without this grant I would still be trying to pursue this research work, but I will be shifting more time to pursuing commercial work, trying to find ways to monetize my audience, youtube videos, etc. 

Then they came back with the approved $50k (so I guess they decided to fund me for a year and see what happens).

POST MORTEM 

So, it's a year later now. How did it go? 

I'm still due for a report back to them, which I haven't yet done. I'm not sure yet whether they consider this a success or failure. I did do a lot of R&D work, in a lot of different directions. I wrote a lot, I made many prototypes. A big chunk of my work was contributing to Community Archive, attracting a community around that and using the tools to teach people how they work. I think something they were looking for, that I haven't yet delivered on is "next steps", there's a lot of big visions I write about, but how do we take this stuff from big vision to more successful, concrete, delivered projects? The outcome that I promised (a white hat culture hacking culture) hasn't quite cohered yet.

I think one thing that would have helped ME a lot is if I had a bit more oversight / a collaborator / a manager of some kind that I reported weekly/monthly to.  This would have helped me focus & prioritize which prototypes were worth taking to completion. Or possibly I just needed to work on a team with others who complemented my skills.

This is why all my pitches from now on include a general "what resources do I need", not just money.  

Oh excellent, everything makes a lot more sense now. Thank you so much! (and thank you for organizing this really interesting jam!)

(maybe a dumb question but I can't figure it out 😅)

This is very fun to play with! I particularly love the aesthetic around it too. It's fun to keep hitting V and see the eyebrows go up and down 😅

There are 5 endings and 0 good ones 😅

So glad to hear you enjoyed it!

Thank you so much! I agree it's really interesting to see how different teams started out with similar ideas "two snakes" and how we all had different takes on it.

Haha, I'm feeling inspired to create another mode easter egg that's just "rain dragon tears" (but the ending would be that the village was flooded...and still no plants grew because the water was salty!)

Woah, I just discovered there are people who will ask to take a selfie with you! And you can pose while they take the picture!!! I can't believe I didn't notice that before. 

This is just such a beautiful game. Revisiting this after all this time, and realizing there were more secrets lying undiscovered, just makes the game feel so alive. Like these characters have always been there, doing their thing, having fun on the train, whether or not I was there to notice.

I almost teared up a bit at the last station. Knowing this was it. The end of Hikari's tale. Knowing I had to leave eventually. I had to re-enter the real world. The game acknowledges that. Everyone else has gone home. You have to, too. But it doesn't make you do it. You don't have to do it if you're not ready. You can stay there, linger in this moment. Sit down for a second, think about the good times you've had. Your favorite moments. The adorable kittens on the subway (or all the grumpy businessmen!) 

This is your moment, stay in it as you like. And when you're ready, and only then, you can step off and go back to your world. 

Such a beautiful game Jon. I hope to experience more of your work someday.

Don't worry, they're all bad endings! Thanks for playing!

One thing I found a little confusing at first, even though I was shooting bullets through enemies, they weren't getting hit. I think it's because I was clicking past them. I thought I just needed to shoot in the right direction, but it looks like you also need to shoot in the right spot.

Once I figured that out it was fun! I love the art style and aesthetic.

I really love this game, and I agree that the art aesthetic here is one of my favorite!

I really like the combination of puzzle solving, adventure and exploring, and fighting.

A lot of times I kept forgetting one player or the other and confused like "why can't I move?" and then I imagined the other guy going "Hey, I'm right here buddy! Did you forget about me??"

I also loved that you could go on running water and have one on land that can kind of help you stay put.

I definitely spent the longest playing this game over any other I've tried so far. You should consider submitting this to Newgrounds especially if you're doing any more work on it! This is totally front page material right here.

My only real complaint is I wish the key to attack wasn't shift since attacking a bunch of times on Windows means I get the "Do you want to enable sticky keys" popup...

I actually really love that you can kill each other! Definitely has very strong Dark Souls vibe, where you can kill the blacksmith, or other critical NPC's....and you're kinda screwed. Makes the game feel more real, like it reacts to dumb things you might do.

This is super fun! First of all, I love the cute aesthetic and relaxing atmosphere. I'm not normally so great with puzzle games, but I really like that you relax the constraints here, that you're allowed to finish the level with slightly less than all the blobs, and you can "shed" some in drains.

Every level kind of surprised me with how much more depth there was to what I thought was a simple concept. Like when I realized I didn't need to be one blob, I could split myself in two by having a drain in the middle and become two separate characters in a way.

Great work!

Thank you so much for the kind words and thoughtful review!

I think I know what you mean by "sometimes the clouds didn't go where I wanted and I didn't know why". I think that happens when you intersect yourself and so if you started pushing the clouds with your head, they might get stuck to your tail accidentally. 

Initially we thought this was part of the challenge, but it's not clear when that happens. I wonder if making it so that if it's already stuck to one part of your body it can't stick to another would help.

Thanks again!

There is not! No matter what you do, the village gets destroyed.

Maybe it's some profound social commentary about the futility of life?

Maybe we were just very tired by the end... 😅

The hardest sad ending to come up with was what should happen if you deliver rain to only the "atheist" farms. People stop believing..but so what? well, I won't spoil it!

This is a really fun idea! Took me a second to get it, wish there was a tutorial in the game, but basically you don't win by shooting each other...you win by shooting each other's health bars!! 

I realized a good strategy was to catch all the enemy's bullets, and then give myself time to think and aim and shoot past them.

Definitely fun, and I can see a lot of potential here!

This is such a cool concept!! I absolutely love how you can throw your limbs and bring them back and use them as projectiles and weights and so on. I definitely see a lot of potential for this game. Would definitely play more. I got stuck at the level, I think it's 3rd or 4th, where you have the black door top right and 3 red switches. I was able to open the first two, and thought I could let go of my leg for that 3rd red button, but I guess I can't let go of a leg if I already let go of two arms?

Love the idea, the art, and the music and sfx!! Absolutely adorable!

I think one big thing that would help is if the level restarted automatically when one duck died, since there's no point continuing then.

I also wish there was a second or so of invincibility when you got another duck since that changes how your flock is arranged and hard to predict how to avoid the bullets in that second or two. I wish there were a few more levels when it was a bit easy before it started getting hard so I can spend more time with my little duck friends!

I love this game so much!! At first I was totally expecting something cute to happen when you run into another cat and that was totally not what I expected!!

And then I thought maybe it gives me great power and kept getting all the cats and it just kept getting more gruesome...

It's a fun mechanic, I made it all the way to the end! Would definitely love to see more levels to play more.

Love the interactive menu! I got a bit stuck at that 3rd level with the red cylinder. How do you pull it towards you?

This is a super cool idea! I think my mind was just blown at that level where I realized you can turn the slime feet inward and change the properties of the blob like that!

Feels like this has a lot of potential. I unfortunately did not make it past that level. I kind of managed to jump through once, and was almost at the flag but slipped right back down! 

Really cool concept! I kind of wish they would join together automatically when you touched. That felt a bit sluggish when I was sticking together but not "joined" until I hit right click.

It would also be nice if they moved apart automatically when you first split. A few times I split I couldn't move away because I was still kind of stuck to the original blob.

I accidentally enabled some kind of free cam and walked around the world, that was really cool 😅

I love the idea of the game and the animation/graphics are awesome! It was a bit confusing at first because the phone was hiding the instructions, or at least looked like it was.

Cool idea, I like the art! I kind of wish the controls were arrow keys. Having to remember to use spacebar to go up was a bit difficult. And also the same key to move up moves back? 

The sound when it was flying was a bit annoying since that little loop kept playing rather loudly over and over most of the time. 

Congrats on finishing your game!

Cool game idea! I think we started in a pretty similar place with our game, and it was really hard to control two snakes separately...

It would probably be a lot easier as a 2 player game. I think one thing that made it really hard for me was that WASD controlled the snake that started on the right, and arrow keys controlled the left snake...which is the reverse of how it is on a QWERTY keyboard, so I kept mixing those up.

I love the aesthetic/glow of the game!

Pretty fun game idea! I learned pretty recently that some planes used to refuel like this so it's cool to play that!

I think a good general tip is to always show the tutorial/how to play before the player starts for the first time. I skipped the "how to play" and didn't realize I needed to use the mouse so that was confusing. 

It also doesn't seem like there's any real incentive to try and avoid the obstacles. I guess the score is lowered at the end, but it might be more fun if hitting an obstacle while refueling meant fuel decreased (because it leaks out), so you had to stop refueling if you thought you were about to hit something. Would make it a fun strategy.

Congrats on finishing your game!

Cute game idea! I definitely wish there was more! Is there nothing after the second person showed up, the doctor-looking person? I couldn't seem to get past that regardless of what I picked, and it always showed "hands held: 0". Not sure why.

You need to upload all those individual files as one zip folder. I had to download the 5 downloads here independently and unzip the two zip files to get it to run.

As for the game itself, it's kind of fun! I liked the level where I had to push a block to block off the connection to the purple ball. I think it crashed after 4-5 levels. I got to a point where hitting "again" or "next level" didn't work.

cool, thanks for confirming! And sorry this game is unplayable without tracking...it violates everything I hold sacred about the open web...

This is super fun! I love how polished it is, and how great of a job it does introducing the concepts one at a time and ramping up the difficulty. 

I also love the little details like how the squares rotate like that when you're sitting in the portal to be like "hey don't forget about me!"

Yeah this is unfortunately the game analytics failing to load, and the game failing to start because of it. 

I'm not sure why the analytics are failing to load for you, but the network tab may have more info on why that request is failing. I see here it's "ERR_BLOCKED_BY_CLIENT" which implies it's the ad blocker (is your ad blocker still running in incognito?)

At first I thought this game was super hard because I had to avoid every bomb with every character...but then I figured it out and it was really fun!

I wish it was a bit easier to replay. Like once it saves my name the first time I wanted to get back right in there and try again right away.

Thank you! 

The goal is a little open ended. There are 5 end scenarios, so I would say you win if you found any of them 😄

This is odd, I can't reproduce. Are you able to share a screenshot of the error in the browser console you're getting? You can also email me if it's easier (omar.sameh.shehata@gmail.com) or Discord (OmarShehata#1019).

Only thing I can think of is...I tried adding game analytics here. Maybe your browser is blocking that? Which is still a bug on our end because the game should still work without the analytics...

EDIT: does running in incognito work?

Thank you! And thanks for reporting that, i wasn't aware.

What browser are you using?

This is so cute! I played this with my partner and we both burst out laughing when we got our result (disaster - divorce immediately...) 

It was really fun to try and figure out a strategy. At first we were just kind of each chasing the pucks independently and hitting them with the players instead of with the rope.

Not sure if it's a glitch or not but sometimes the puck would go through the rope. I was hoping to try and like trap it against a wall and then slide it over to the goal.