Omori, Axiom Verge, etc.

Right, okay. 

Life has been going alright, I guess.  There's some ups, some downs, some longer-term, some shorter-term.

Omori

I finished playing Omori.  I quite enjoyed it overall, though it felt like it was more of a time sink than I might have liked.  I think the game does a good job with some of the darker elements, and the story development, so it can maybe feel a bit disappointing that I had to trudge through a bunch of combat and other stuff to get to all that.  Sort of like watching a really good anime but then every other episode is average-quality filler, or something.  It felt a bit rough around the edges at times, and sometimes you can sort of feel the RPGMaker / RPG genre in general come through in perhaps not the most helpful way, but overall it's quite impressive as an RPGMaker game and something that really did interest me.  I only played through the game once and went through the more or less "normal" route, so there is a significant amount more interesting stuff to see, but at the moment I honestly don't feel like having to engage with the experience of having to replay games and manage multiple save points and all that in order to see the rest of the content.  Maybe some other time, or maybe not.

Axiom Verge

On a whim (and mostly because it went on a sale) I decided to pull the trigger and buy Axiom Verge, an indie metroidvania title from 2015.  Axiom Verge was...fine.  It does some pretty cool things, it does other things less well...overall it's fine.  Some of the upgrades are pretty unique and the way that they influence your movement is nice.  One of the cool parts of these styles of games is their ability to present you with the same room later in the game and have it be recontextualized based on your expanded abilities.  A higher jump means that you see platforms differently...being able to grapple to ceilings means you're paying more attention to those...things like that.  I think that was done pretty well here.  The map design is sort of forgettable, less evocative and all that, and some of the secrets are arguably too hidden, but it's fine overall.  Surprisingly, the audio was something that stood out to me as not being up to snuff with the rest of the game.  Like most of the rest of the game, the music is......okay.  It's not =bad= per se, but it tends to be quite heavy on the bass, which got a bit fatiguing for me, and overall the soundtrack (like the level design) lacked memorability due to not having strong melodies.  The sound design is chiptune/8-bit, but in sort of a cheap "sfxr"-like way.  I really don't know why so many game devs use the same sfxr-like sound effects, it's a pet peeve of mine when I hear some of those really basic/dry coin/menu sounds that for whatever reason show up again and again.

Playing through Axiom Verge really drilled two things into my head.  One is how awesome of a game Super Metroid was (maybe Metroid Fusion as well, perhaps even Zero Mission?).  I look at Super Metroid from 1994 and compare it to Axiom Verge and honestly, Super Metroid hits way higher on almost every single axis.  The visual design is better -- Samus's sprite reads better, is more distinct and colorful, and the suit upgrades changing the color of your sprite is a nice touch.  The level design is better -- the "hub and spokes" system that Super Metroid uses is a great way of organizing rooms, and there are a lot of spaces that are just really memorable.  The music is so much more memorable and pleasing...heck, even the story is something I enjoy more in Super Metroid.  The movement, too...just being able to dash/run in Super Metroid (even sans Speed Booster), it feels so damn good.  None of this is intended to poke at Axiom Verge, more just to highlight how great I think Super Metroid is...

The other thing is how lucky I am to have expertise in such a diverse set of gamedev skills.  Granted, there's plenty of things that I'm not so strong in (and lots of stuff in Rhythm Quest that needs work, I'm sure...), but being able to put this game together as a one-man team and avoiding the sense of, for example, being primarily a programmer and only mildly proficient in visual art and design, or having the visuals look great but the audio sound uninspired...it's something I probably take for granted from time to time since it's just the norm for me, but if I stop and think about all of the Ludum Dare entries I've seen, other indie games, etc. it's clear that this is definitely =not= the norm, and something I should be thankful for.  I guess "lucky" is perhaps really not the right word as it's not like I was born with all of these skills -- I worked steadily and continuously over many years at each of them...

Rhythm Quest

Rhythm Quest has been going well!  I was approved for switch dev access, so I'm going to be trying to handle a Switch port (exciting!).  I've been working on adding more levels, more good stuff to the game, which has been fun.  I also have a demo or two to put together, so I'll probably be trying to transition to a round of polish and wrapping everything together in a complete package for that.  I'm getting the feeling that the game release is going to be pushed back again from where I originally anticipated, but not because I haven't been on track; simply because now that I'm really getting into it, I feel like I have something great on my hands and I want to make sure that I go some extra distance to make it the best thing that it can be.  But we'll see how that all works out...

Life

I said life has been going ok and that's not really a lie.  If I zoom in or out I can tell you different things; I could tell you that I've been having a really good time and looking forward to a lot of things.  Or, I could tell you that I feel depressed, having a very low sense of self-worth because I'm convinced that I am not -- was not -- good enough to be loved.  I could tell you that I'm happy to be done with dental work for the time being, or I could tell you that I'm -_- at receiving my jury duty summons.  I think in the end everything just sort of comes out in the wash.

I feel like I am starting to lose more and more of my old self, but I suppose that is inevitable.  I can only take solace in the fact that the ghost of my past will come back to haunt me and remind me of what it is that is important.  Even if I've already lost it, there is still more that I can do.  Just because I gave up doesn't mean I can stop.  I can feel perhaps more strongly than ever, the temptation to just stop caring anymore.  I've even started to give into that temptation.  But I feel like I'll still come back to it.  If I stop to remember who I really am, it seems obvious that I have to come back to it.