July was a month during which I took a step back and reflected on what I’ve been doing and what the next steps will be.
Antwerp and Brussels
In the last newsletter, I mentioned having to catch a train as the reason for the post being a little shorter than usual. That train ride marked the start of a short vacation with my partner. We stayed at a nice place in Antwerp for a few days and explored the city a bit before moving on to Brussels where we did much the same. Having been to both cities before, it was very nice to just walk around, grab something to eat, and talk, instead of having to do a lot of “mandatory” sightseeing. We’ve both been very busy with our own work and other projects, so it was nice to have a moment to just hang out and chat over cocktails and good food.
During the train ride to and from Belgium I read through Spelunky by Derek Yu. I feel like that book, being a post-mortem of Derek’s fantastic video game Spelunky, was perfect for the reflective mindset I was finding myself in. It has taught me some new lessons about the creative process that I’m still mulling over, and reading about his process and struggles has renewed some of my creative energy to work on my own projects.
The Electrum Archive
Speaking of my own projects, work on The Electrum Archive Issue 02 is still steadily progressing. The reflective mood I was in this month has helped me make some decisions about the project and ask for help in areas in which I didn’t feel confident. I decided to cut the third adventure I had planned for the print version and make it a digital PDF. This will give the other two adventures a lot more breathing room and gives me and Ava time to focus on making those two as good as we can. You can read more details about this in my latest Kickstarter update.
I also commissioned the first pieces of art for the first adventure.
I’ve also started releasing some new TEA-related bits on my Patreon. The first of these is an basic overview of the Sunless Princedoms, the large subterranean regions of Orn where the insectlike Irr and the myconids live. These bits will be about parts of Orn that haven’t been explored in the zines yet and will often be first drafts of things I’m playing around with. So if that sounds interesting, consider taking a look at my Patreon :)
Shrine Warden
Last month, I talked a bit about a video game I was working on, called Shrine Warden. This has now become a little more serious than I initially anticipated. Developing this little roguelike has been incredibly creatively fulfilling and some of that new creative energy has been rubbing off on my other projects, so I thought it would be a good idea to keep working on it for a while longer to see where it will go :)
Over the last weeks, whenever I found time between other projects, I’ve been tinkering with the game; cleaning up some of the janky code I wrote for the original game jam version, adding a new enemy, some new power-ups, and creating some requested features like a mini map. I’m excited to see where this will go over the next few months.
Odds and Ends
We bought a pet snail! Their name is Banjo and all they do is sleep and eat vegetables :)
My little Post-OSR RPG DURF is now also available in Polish!
I’ve been reading through the Game Engine Black Book: Wolfenstein 3D by Fabien Sanglard which has been fascinating. I don’t fully grasp everything covered by it, but Fabien does a great job of providing the historical context and explaining the hardware limitations the id Software team had to work around when making the first 3D first-person shooter back in 1992.
I watched Barbie last week, which was great. Movie of the year.
That’s all for now, thank you for reading!
Talk soon!
- Emiel
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Aww... Hello Banjo!! My girlfriend is a very avid snail-keeper, ours is called Couscous. Couscous says hello to Banjo!