June 2025

About a month ago, my publisher mentioned I should write dev logs. For publicity, y’know? I don’t know how to do that. I’m going to try anyways. I tried before, last year (and I think the year before?) — but I wasn’t very good at it. I was doing it in a weird style, on the blog I made for strange lantern productions, and it just didn’t feel right. I didn’t keep up with it, no one read them, so I just… stopped. Now I’m starting again, and I hope someone reads. I’ll post them on my personal Tumblr, and on my Itch, and we’ll see where this goes. This one’s going to be extra weird and retrospective-y because this month is a very special anniversary for me: it’s the two year anniversary of me becoming a game dev, for real.

I realized I wanted to make games in the spring of 2020, but it wasn’t until 2023 that I felt like I was allowed to call myself a game developer. I was a year out of college, working two jobs, and I played my first RPG maker game. I played the remaster of Ib, and I fell in love with it. Then I played Mad Father, and started watching video essays on the genre, and realized I could use RPG Maker. I could make games all by myself. I’d already been told I should by every industry professional I reached out to for advice after graduation. So I bought RPG Maker MV and went through all its tutorials, and then I realized I should really get RPG Maker MZ. It was a real rocky start, to stay the least. I spent all my disposable income on assets to play around with in the engine, I tried to make sprites of a fankid my friend and I had come up with.
Then I lost my job. Because of government stuff. So, I had a lot of time on my hands. During May and June of 2023 I holed up in my apartment and made a game. It wasn’t very good. I was flying by the seat of my pants, learning what I could do with the engine, how to use plugins, and how to just… tell a story in a game. It was a mess. The Lighthouse wasn’t good, by my own standards, but it was mine. I’d made it. And, I could make it better. Over a decade of writing experience had taught me that all first drafts have to do is exist.
To learn more, I entered a week long game jam and made another, shorter game called Terminated. This game was better, if only in an organizational sense. I learned a lot from making it! Now, I don’t think it was very good, but it was yet another first draft to be proud of. It existed, and could be made better. Of course, soon after this victory my life was put on hold.
I got a new job, I moved to a different city and was living alone for the first time in my life. My longterm partner was in Ireland, making the (what I now realize was abusive) relationship long distance. What followed was the toughest year of my adult life. It’s not easy to live alone, hours away from family and friends. The one friend I had in the city was my life line, and I am still so grateful to her. Shout out to you, Hannah. You’re the realest and I’m so lucky to have you in my life.
During this tumultuous time, I worked on revising The Lighthouse — now called Frey Nel — and figuring out what the story I was trying to tell was even about. On top of that, I was working to find a composer and an artist to work with, since my own skills in those artistic categories are… not the best. I actually found BibiXP on accident, as I originally commissioned her for some additional sprite work when my original guy disappeared from Etsy for a time. My original sprite guy, Larkison, brought Youfoundnico on board to take over for him. And eventually, I asked my brother Lyon to do the rest of the art — portraits/busts, CGs, promotional art.
Which brings us to now.
I’m no longer in an abusive relationship, I’m living with my friends, and I’m on the precipice of releasing DelirIAM, a stand alone prequel to Frey Nel and the final form of Terminated. As of now, I’m planning on releasing it on June 30th , but should my brother’s ADHD win it’ll be delayed to the 7th of July. After that, it’ll be full steam ahead on revamping Frey Nel’s demo in time for its crowdfunding campaign in August/September. Thanks for joining me on this journey, here’s to the next two years!