Monthly update: April 2025 (but mostly talking about Blue Prince)
So yeah, Blue Prince happened, and there was no dev progress to speak of. I guess I'll put further thoughts behind the cut in case you don't want to know what kind of game it is, but I won't be discussing specific puzzles.
It's convenient timing for a game with very puzzlehunt-ish metapuzzles to come out right after I wrote a bunch of blog posts about that style of metapuzzle. I could do a whole post about how to apply the concepts I talk about in those blog posts to what it's doing, but I'm not quite done with it myself. (And it's a little soon to be posting that many spoilers this soon after the game launches until I figure out how to get spoiler tagging to work.)
But it's maybe not a total coincidence- there has been something of a trend of games with more accessible metapuzzles getting more critical and popular attention in the last few years, probably starting with Tunic. I was thinking of pitching a ThinkyCon talk basically just rehashing the info I already posted, but that angle could maybe be its whole own talk.
As for my thoughts on the game, I can't possibly give an unbiased opinion because its influences cover so many of my formative experiences that it's laser targeted at my nostalgia. I never owned Maze, but I remember leafing through it in bookstores and finding it fascinating. Blue Prince certainly reminded me of other puzzlebooks of the time, both physical ones and digital ones like The Fool's Errand and Planetarium.
(In my opinion, part what led to some of the mixed reception on launch is reviewers and people going "Oh, a puzzle game, like Outer Wilds", when there are more interesting comparisons to be made with Maze, or Riven, or Betrayal at House on the Hill, or Tunic, or The Fool's Errand, or Void Stranger, or Seafall, or Abdec, or Mystery Hunt....)
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Monthly update: March 2025
The theme this month was to close out some loose ends: posting the rest of the metapuzzle blog series, as well as publishing the post-jam update for Meticulous Microbes. (10 new puzzles, save functionality, and some other QoL stuff)
No idea what the next month or two's going to look like dev-wise since I'm busy with other stuff. Ludum Dare this weekend's tempting, but it's a long shot whether I'll have time for it.
Continue reading...Monthly update: February 2025
Offline project stuff was the big progress this month. The main thing I can share publicly is the metapuzzle blog post series. I'll probably post about that more broadly once I've done part 3, so if you're keeping up with this blog you've been getting a free preview. :)
I've had "try doing something in PICO-8" in the back of my mind for a while, but seeing Adam Saltsman's games lately have reawakened that itch. Maybe I'll give that a shot next time I have some gamedev cycles?
On the gameplay side, King Hesper's still looming large. I'm approaching the end of chapter 7, but the levels have gotten very difficult. I could maybe do a post about Nextfest demos too- the short version is Gentoo Rescue and Art of Reflection were puzzle highlights, and Angeline Era was intriguing even though I haven't played the games that inspired it.
Continue reading...Monthly update: January 2025
Not a lot to talk about on the dev front. Made a tiny amount of progress on the Meticulous Microbes update, including implementing a fourth mechanic that I think works nicely with the other three, but I haven't had a chance to do much more with it. This time of year is when some other projects with people offline that I don't/can't really talk about here spin up, so that's going to be taking up more of my creative energy in the next few months. Plus there's *gestures at state of the US*.
Not related to something I did this month but still cool, puzzle YouTuber Icely did a bit on Boarding Zone in a recent video. It's nice to see some more people finding it that way!
On a playing side, the behemoth taking up my time has been the new DROD fan levelset, The Descent of King Hesper. It's conceived as something that could be an introduction to the series, with a level introducing every mechanic the system supports. The catch is DROD has so many mechanics that the overall project took over a decade and is bigger than the five commercial releases put together. I'm making decent progress, I think- chapter six out of seven or eight, but only around half of the total number of puzzle rooms. That scares me a bit for just how much secret/optional content is in this. (And I haven't been ignoring that stuff either, just not prioritizing it)
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