ncase
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Progress + Process!
🕑 Added 2019-05-24 18:30:21 +0000 UTC(reading time: 3 min)
Two weeks ago, I launched the demo for Adventures with Anxiety... and I'm elated it resonated with so many folks! I hope it helps others with anxiety feel less alone – and, maybe, learn how to better live with scary emotions.
And of course, it's all thanks to your support! I couldn't make these weird experimental games without y'all paying my food and rent.
Though, I feel guilty that my Patreon post schedule's so irregular. Thus, starting today, I'd like to try something new:
🎉 Every other Friday (once per 2 weeks), I'll post a Progress Update!
Not only will this make my process more transparent, it'll also motivate me more! It's pretty miserable to work alone & not show anyone anything for months. So, these updates will let me show & tell more regularly.
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As you can see in the pic above (can't see it? imgur mirror) I think we're roughly 40% done. Diagram's not to scale.
In the last two weeks, I:
🇨🇦 1) Moved COUNTRIES. Yup. Put my life in two bags & Marie Kondo'd the rest of my crap into a funeral pyre. Said bye to Boston friends, said bonjour to Canadian friends. Cried a bit. Good stuff.
💬 2) Wrote all(!) of the first-draft dialogue for Act II (2200 words), Act III (1000 words), and Act IV (2600 words). Total: 5800 words! Of course, since it's branching dialogue, you'd only see ⅓ of the words per playthrough. Which is good! That means each player sees something different, tailored to their expressed fears.
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Back to the "moving country" thing. That's a big, neon sign screaming New Chapter In Life™, right?
Well, turns out life changes don't automatically happen, I still gotta work for it. So here's two big life changes I'm resolving to make:
👭 1) Schedule time for friends.
In-person or videochat. There's just something about synchronous face-to-face that hits an evolutionarily deeper part of you that text messages can't.
Since I work alone, it's too easy for my only daily conversation to be "hi, I'm fine, paper bag please, debit, thank you". So I already knew I want to spend life with friends more. But since I'm busy, and they're busy, we can't count on randomly bumping into each other – we need to schedule it.
I actually already started doing this while I was in Boston, and it's been a huge boost to my mental health! Friendship! I recommend it!
🎨 2) Make time for side projects.
I keep ping-ponging between "ahhh I'm not learning new things, I have to do smaller experiments" and "ahhh these small things are so scattered, I gotta focus my efforts on something bigger". For years I never figured a way out of this trap, until – as with all great epiphanies – I found something while procrastinating on Twitter:
Fun fact: Coming Out Simulator and Parable of the Polygons were side projects. (I was trying to distract myself from my sinking ship of a main project, Nothing To Hide) So, I think it'd be creatively healthy for me to schedule time for both Adventures with Anxiety and other small side-projects. It'll mean "slower" progress on AwA, but marathon not sprint etc etc
(What might my small side-projects be? I'll say more in the next update! This one's gone on long enough...)
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Et voilà, that's my Progress Update! Question:
Do you want a Progress Update every two weeks? Is that too often? Should the updates be shorter? What else do you want to know about my process, like tools & habits? Would you like a thoughtdump of things I'm curious about, reading, watching, playing?
Tell me! I want to make these update as interesting & helpful as I can. 😸Again, from the bottom of mon cœur, thank you all so, so much. <3
À prochaine,
~ Nicky Case
Comments
Lohith
playtester for me too!
Benoit Doidic
These progress updates always contain some interesting links and graphics, so if only for that, YES to updates every two weeks.
Kevin Talarico
I've been following and sharing your work for a while now, and I'll super love to help with the 2nd playtest round if possible! Also, I'm a game designer and (sort-of) developer, so I've been thinking: if there's anything else I (or we, as the community) could do to help, please shout it out!
Nicky Case
Thank you! I hope showing my process helps others with their process. :)
Cassandra Xia
Sending lots of love to Canada! Would love progress updates! It's so cool to see your artistic process : )
Nicky Case
Thanks Kelly! Yeah maybe a much shorter update would be better! Also I'm glad you found the thought process helpful, especially the "breathe in breathe out" insight – I know I found that helpful!
Nicky Case
Hm, you raise a fair concern. This post did take 3 hours from beginning to end – but it was a bit anomalous, since so much happened since the demo launched (i.e. moved countries) Maybe I'll try a much much shorter update for next-next-week?
Kelly Reed
I love this! I was going to say YES to "every two weeks," but I see Eric (above) has a point. OTOH, you could just opt to send super short ones every two weeks. I like these because it inspires me to stop and consider my own progress (maybe I need a 2-week review and update myself...) and I love the twitter-sourced creative insight you shared. Keep it coming!
Eric Oaks
IMO, every couple weeks is too much. The hours you probably take to write posts like this could be better spent developing your projects. Once a month should be fine.
