Monthly update: March 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.

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)

Trying something new, a little post at the end of the month about what I've been working on. Maybe some months I'll say I didn't get anything done gamedev wise and just talk about some games I played or whatever.

The big project for this month is the Confounding Calendar entry, due at the end of the month. It's not quite done yet, but I sent it out for playtesting on Monday and got some interesting thoughts for tweaking. That'll be out at some point in December, so hopefully you won't have to wait too long to see it... but here's a tiny preview:

I was hoping to go back to Meticulous Microbes update once that was done, but between current events sapping my creative will for a bit and a local windstorm knocking out power for a few days, I didn't get there. I do have a list of what I want to do before I'd ship that, though.