The Angst Affairs #10: Angst of Legend

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from: Pippin
October 3, 2014
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Hey Teddy,

Wow, I’m pretty confused by now in terms of any numbering systems. Maybe we should just come up with hilarious subtitles instead…

Anyway, I totally fell apart again and didn’t write for a while. I don’t actually have a good reason for this – or at least not a suitably gory or angsty reason. I’ve just been super busy lately – teaching is kicking off again at the Institute of Digital Games where I work and I’m teaching two courses simultaneously this semester, including one brand new one on game design.

There’s also been a pretty decent stack of travel and giving talks and so on. And for better or worse I’ve deprioritized Jostle Parent and, by way of consequence, these emails. Lame but true, it’s mostly laziness and apathy.

That said…I did make a game over last weekend called Manifest, which I was quite happy with. And I mostly made it so that I could remember that fresh and lovely sensation of actually finishing a game (followed by the sour sensation of “why didn’t many people play my game?”, but that’s another story). So I am reminded that I can finish projects and that makes me feel like getting back into Jostle Parent and knocking it off.

There’s really nothing standing in my way. I have a perfectly good to do list of (admittedly boring) tasks like getting some UI elements in and so on, and then I’ll be ticking along pretty nicely. I just need to start. Well, restart. Or maybe by now it’s more of a re-restart…

Anyway, I will. This weekend. It’ll be a game-jammy kind of a weekend like I did with Manifest and really try to make some progress, then send it to you on Monday.

And that’s the story of the angst.

How are you?

Pippin

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from: Teddy
October 4, 2014
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Hey Pippin!

I like the subtitle idea.  Let’s roll with that.

WOW, Manifest is fascinating. At first I was put off because for some reason I went to “Train” before “Truth”. After reading truth, I think I get the intention behind the experiment better. I’m glad for the aspect ratio you chose. Is it safe to assume this is designed to be, or feel like a training-style phone game? I see the spirit of the game as very ironic, but perhaps I’m a cynic. Is it uncouth to ask you to talk about the intention here?

Need is still sitting around unloved. IndieCade is coming up next weekend, and we just released the Hyper Light Drifter preview build on Steam for about 10,000 players, so it’s been busy. I’m hosting a stage-pitch-performance event at IndieCade called the Game Slam, and am moderating microtalks on community building at the conference. Many things to do! For now, I need to do many things before Need. It still pulls at me though…

Teddy