and we are back

Well, it’s been quite a long time since I last posted. Over a full year. Just thought I would give some brief updates, presented in no particular order…

• I was lucky enough to do a talk at Freeplay this year with Brendan Keogh. In How To Build A Games Community For Everyone Else, we discussed the evolution of Squiggly River and looked at it’s importance in the local games scene. I feel like this talk was a massive improvement over my previous one and I really enjoyed getting to talk about the work we have done on Squiggly River.

• Speaking of Squiggly, it’s been going really well this year! Everyone was very excited to return to IRL meetups and we’ve had a consistently good turn out. In fact, we’ve outgrown our last location and are currently in the process of finding somewhere bigger and better. We’re been planning some things but updates on that will have to wait…

• At the beginning of the year there were some major changes to the modules that I teach. This forced me to learn Blender and get back into 3D modelling in a very short span of time. While this was (incredibly) stressful it pushed me back into just messing around in a game engine. I forgot how fun it is to just create spaces.

• I very recently got a new laptop. This is the first computer I have bought since 2016 and it is wonderful. I’m hoping this portable (and much more powerful) computer will help me do more regular game development. Being forced to work from my desk for all of 2020 has definitely made me less inclined to use it, so it’s lovely to be able to work from the couch.

• With that in mind, I’ve recently started a new personal project. Not much to say on it yet but it’s a photography game and it’s going to involve cryptids.

• Tinkerbell (pictured in the cover image) recently turned 23!

• I’ve completely changed my time management system again¹. I moved from my analogue system to using Todoist back to a traditional bullet journal and now to Notion. I’m still following the categorising, prioritising and scheduling system that I outlined in my previous post. But now it’s in digital form. I’m really enjoying Notion because it gives me all of the customisation and flexibility of a bullet journal AND I don’t have to carry a notebook around.

That’s it for now, but I hope to be posting more soon. Again, being able to type and post this from the couch is incredible.