The Candybox Blog

My favorite thing to do while playing AAA games is to go bug hunting. Not bug as in virtual insects, but bugs as in those weird quirks that totally break the immersion of the game, and put to test my ability to take it serious. It’s almost like the game laughs back at me for being immersed. I’m reminded that this is still software, and it breaks in very silly ways. My current video game hot take: Video game bugs are like glitch art. Just a sillier version of that. It’s incredibly novel to me how each simulated world expresses...

This last week IndieCade ran a small event for the Electric Zine Maker. This is what was done in place of the E3 showcase that the Electric Zine Maker was chosen for. I’m honored and deeply touched by the amazing work they did in organizing this. I have an interview with Celia. You can see that here: Part 1, and Part 2… where we talked about the Electric Zine Maker, many of the ideas that went into it, and Celia ended with some profound thoughts on preservation. It’s a good talk! IndieCade also organized a few streams where guests made...

Thanks to a grant by the Clinic for Open Source Arts (COSA) at the University of Denver the Electric Zine Maker is now open sourced. I am grateful for their generosity to creative open source projects such as this one. The github repository is here: https://github.com/alienmelon/Electric-Zine-Maker Do read the readme… although, this post is the same as the readme. So here are the details… This is a VERY early stage of the open sourcing process. All of the Electric Zine Maker, the various language renditions that it will undergo, and all the messy prototype bits, will be available there thanks...

The newest update for the Electric Zine Maker is out! This marks the one year anniversary of the Zine Maker… It’s one year old. They grow up so fast! You can download it on itch here, or GameJolt here. I’m really proud of this one. It’s a tools update, but it feels like a major milestone because It Got Done. I took a step back from the Zine Maker, earlier this year, to build the story world for it. That’s the ARG that I’ve been talking about. You can check out the itch page for it here, and play it....

I just published this. It’s an ARG-like text adventure game called mackerelmediafish.com It’s about digital archeology, exploring the ruins of a long abandoned website, RSS spelunking, braving the hazards of the old web, and finding friendship in unlikely places. Play it here: mackerelmediafish.com The entire thing is open source here: https://github.com/alienmelon/mackerelmediafish-source I’ve been very quietly working on this for a while. I didn’t want to talk about it because I was afraid of jinxing it. I’m pretty sure that I jinxed my last project by talking about it while I was developing it (that’s why it failed horribly and couldn’t...

I play a lot of walking sims. It’s probably one of my favorite type of game to play when I’m exploring alt-indie games on itch. I think they are interesting for how they explore what it means to be in a space, the relation of space to a player, and how their existence brings into question why you even need goals to be motivated to meaningfully interact with a space. To me walking sims represent a type of interaction I can’t really have in open world AAA games. They are about carving out a tiny moment, and giving attention to...

There’s this type of play experience that’s unique to freeware. It’s been part of the internet ever since Dial Up. That past time of finding weird things to download, from sites that you might more or less trust, and running them. Games, software, weird small things… It’s a pastime that I remember fondly when our modem “could do” 64 kbit/s. I used to spend hours on Downloads dot Com searching for DOS games. I found Chickens 2 that way, and still have the original copy on my machine. I never had the heart to delete it. PC Gamer used to...

Recently I posted a Twitter thread about OSX Catalina blocking all my games… An update for those of you that can't run my games anymore on OSX because of Catalina.I'm so sorry about this…I'll probably write a post about this, breaking it all down for you, but the situation is as follows.(from my point of view, and own experiences with Apple)[thread] pic.twitter.com/PY0y3o9gNF — Nathalie Lawhead (@alienmelon) November 7, 2019 …since I’ve been getting people asking me about that, and there doesn’t seem to be much anyone can do at this point other than throw their hands in the air and...

Sometime last week I released the breakfast tool update to the Electric Zine Maker! You can download it on itch: https://alienmelon.itch.io/electric-zine-maker Or on GameJolt: https://gamejolt.com/games/zine/426661 I also have a lengthy devlog about it on itch.io (here) so you can read that for a detailed breakdown of what’s new. Overall I feel like it’s a major update for all the cute tools it brings to the table (including a more elaborate ASCII art painter, which I can’t shut up about because it’s ASCII art) BUT ALSO because it clearly defines the tone of the overall program…more than before imo. So far...

Earlier this September I released the tool update for the Electric Zine Maker. Yay! You can download it here. You can read the devlog about it (a list of all the new tools) here. It’s not a complete tool update. I released it because I’m kind of in the middle of a lot of uncertainty about the future right now, so (to get around that), I’m changing the release schedule to be more frequent instead of what I planned. I originally wanted to release tools in larger chunks so that it stays interesting to people… You know, if you release...

To start off, I would like to thank all my friends, and supporters, who have reached out to me. I’m also sorry that I’ve been very bad at answering texts, emails, and DM’s. I’ve been trying to stay off social media and lay low. Thank you all for your support. As you can imagine I didn’t expect this. In a recent Twitter thread I said that I would do a follow up post hopefully clearing the air and dealing with some of the misconceptions, or less welcoming theories about my intentions, that have been coming my way. Before you go...

On November 4 2008 I was contacted by a studio in Vancouver to design and build an ARG for their new IP. I talked about my experiences of working with this company before. For example, in this post. What I didn’t share, when talking about my experiences, is that I was raped by Jeremy Soule while I was working there. I’m writing this post to honestly, and openly, explain what I have been through. I am sharing emails between myself and my bosses (and others that I worked with) to provide proof of the abuse that I went through. I...