This is post #3 documenting the progress…
Before I talk more about it. I’ve been posting tiny projects on my itch page. More little things are planned, so you can follow me there for further silliness. I’ve also gotten into making good (probably), but completely unusable things on github. You might get a laugh by looking at the source.
“Everything Is Going To Be OK” (my current game project, and for lack of a better title) is coming along well. I keep saying that tho, and that is not much of an update.
I have 8 pages done. That’s 8 mini-games (8 out of 40 done… so much work). Some are a little bigger than others. I do like the random, loud, and humorous nature of it. I also really want to move things along faster than they are going, but I’m only one person and I do need breaks and food. Someday I’ll be a brain in a vat, and things will be much more efficient then. I love vats. I hope mine will have bubbles…
It’s also at the point where I could show this to people. It functions well without bugs, or massive placeholders. This is an exciting point to be!
I have not exactly shown it to anyone yet… except for one person maybe. Ok, yes. I did show it to one person.
In terms of theme I do want to make this about my personal experiences. It is proving to be a lot harder than I intended because (as it turns out) I don’t feel comfortable being personal. Call me a coward, I guess. I thought that the abstract nature of it would help in doing this.
Surrealism is a wonderful tool for something like that, but I still lack the courage to completely “go there”. Looking at what’s done, I do dance around things too much and have gone in a goofy cute direction with many of the themes. I guess that’s ok.
I’m making a note of this, so moving forward, I can be more courageous (creatively speaking).
Interesting thoughts about surrealism. In many ways surrealism is abstraction. If you do it right it leaves enough space for anyone to understand and relate to something, while still being “on point”. It’s very metaphoric, and subconscious. I love everything about it.
I did want to avoid the “cyberspace” or “virtual realm” theme for this and try to make it more “based in some real world, far away from computers”, but it went the total opposite direction. There’s a paint program in it, and a word processor. Not in a way that it’s in some computer (separate from the world), but in a way that it’s part of the world. So this is definitely based in some reality where the line between virtual (computer) and reality is blurred… again. Ok, I won’t fight this because I’m totally ok with that. It’s a good place. Isn’t this our reality anyway?
I think this was an easy route to take because I wanted to do cartoon, and then I wanted to do “degraded cartoon” where the clean cartoon look is degraded or worked together with degraded, low quality, over compressed imagery. This reeks of computers. The wonderful outcome of this is that there’s always this unsettling, spooky, wrong, kinda absurd feeling looming in the background as the characters do stuff. It feels unsafe in many ways. It’s almost horror. If I where to push it a little more it could easily be that. Someday I would like to make a full-horror thing using this aesthetic. I’m certain it would be as if the two are made for each-other.
Ok, if this is mixed with cartoon tho it’s a more sober silliness. It’s very interesting. The outcome does vary with the theme of the “pages” but it’s interesting to explore.
Maybe I’m not doing the optimal job I could be doing. I can already hear people playing what I have and saying things like “what?? is that all?” and “man, that’s just weird…” and being a bit “let down” by it… maybe… ok. I have internet comments in my head.
Interesting story from these past few weeks. (being purposefully vague) A friend of a friend just got talked off the ledge. They had been struggling with trying to find work for a long time, and finally where ready to get off the life boat. It wasn’t any secret either. The person was fairly outgoing about their situation. Just when it was almost too late did people decide to help.
I don’t know. It’s so common lately, but what I don’t understand is that people only help when it’s too late. If they help at all. It occurs to me of how much of a non-supportive culture this is (as a whole). You are literally bombarded with a sense of worthlessness, condemnation, etc, if you don’t fit within our ideal of what a successful person is. Our living/professional/financial/personal standards are nearly impossible to achieve. They are such that they are never attainable. All this complaining about “this entitled generation” is really getting to me, sheesh don’t get me started. I find it funny that it mainly comes from people that are themselves entitled.
So when it’s too much, and you can’t “live up to that dream”, just take care of yourself, eat, pay bills, you finally give up and want to get out. Then that’s wrong too.
It’s all a long hard fight, I guess, if you try to live up to “normal”. I still struggle with it.
There’s a pretty cool quote from a veteran that was fighting with suicidal depression. He said: “fight life with life”. I like that.
Everyone has their own way of dealing with trauma. The thing that gets me through is telling myself that I’ll prove all the assholes right if I give up. All the people that told me I’ll never amount to anything, and the sexism throughout… Ugh, they’ll be right. Can’t have it.
Yeah, I guess I’m making a game about how all that feels. It seems so impossible sometimes… look at me put suicidal depression into a video game, if for no other reason but to make light of it. Life is whatever you see it as, yes, and so is your situation, ok, but good lord people have all sorts of advice to give you when you’re going through it… but it doesn’t really help. It can sometimes make it worst.
It’s also hard to talk about it because there’s nothing but guilt. I think we’ve painted ourselves into a corner, culturally speaking. There is no space for failure.
I like this metaphor: a cute little character being crushed by a boulder and all its friends are surrounding it saying feel-good life advice things. The boulder finally crushes the character and then the friends get all sad, angry, and betrayed that “they gave up”. Nobody helped, but they have a lot to say. It’s all very condescending.
I can’t criticize people that decide to get off the life boat, but I have a lot to say to people that condemn them for it. Especially if they didn’t even try to help. I know this sounds like I’m putting people down if they have lost a friend. I’m not. I’m very angry at our society right now. Especially the “millennial bashing”. The way we view this, and the way we stigmatize it, doesn’t do anybody any good.
It’s like failure is our boogeyman, and people that experience it are outcasts… I should stop. This is turning into a long rant.
Jesus tho… I have no idea what I’m doing, and I’m failing wonderfully.
There’s no one solution to any of this. I feel like our culture needs to be torn down. My attempt at an answer so far is to make art to break it. Art has always been my solution, or place to hide. However you view it, but I do believe that culture is changed by many tiny subverting acts. So making art about how you feel, what you’ve been through, how it has been like for yourself or others, is the most powerful thing you can do. Also, humor. Don’t underestimate humor…
This is a society built on lack of compassion, and I feel like we really need to put humanity back into it.
