My head is spinning as I write this. My mom woke me up this morning with the news… and then a beer (she’s from Eastern Europe, morning beer is normal). Tetrageddon Games is an IGF finalist, nominated for the Nuovo Award (recognizing excellence in shorter-form, more esoteric games– abstract… and unconventional game development).
It’s on the list here.
This is mind blowing news. I’m included in a selection among other beautiful games, and there is my game.
< reflections >
Looking back it seems to have been an uphill battle. A couple years ago I finally quit what I think of now as the most creatively and professionally abusive situation ever. One of those where you pull an all-nighter every night, endure harassment, and just suck it up. I got tired of acting oblivious… Quitting was hard to do at the time. There where a lot of empty promises that I walked away from. It also left me fighting with a lot of depression, “why live?!” conversations, and “creative existentialism”. I thought I would literally NEVER EVER EVER “break into” the game industry. No really. I thought it was impossible.
So I did the only thing I could do. I decided to pick up Tetrageddon Games and just work on it. Ignore everything.
I made Offender 2. During it’s development I kept submitting Tetrageddon to festivals, places, writers, magazines. Anything with a “submit” forum. It seemed like a last-ditch effort. Festivals are also expensive (they add up), so it was a crazy last-ditch effort.
Among the most difficult things to work through was to see value in my work and talents. I wouldn’t have thought so at the time, but these things do wear on you. I would love to get more descriptive (share my story) about all “the stuff I’ve been through on my way there”, but it’s not healthy to think on the past. It’s over! This is amazing!
In the end, no layer of skin is thick enough, and that’s my takeaway from this entire situation. It is also what I would like to share with other artists. It’s NEVER worth putting up with crap (abuse). The ends really do not justify the means. Just quit and follow your dream, even if it is crazy.
Things started to happen then. Tetrageddon started winning awards and getting featured. The sun really began to shine when I got notified from IndieCade that it was selected for their E3 showcase. The experience was amazing, and I ended up making all sorts of friends and meeting all sorts of fun people. It has been healing, to say the least.
I am very happy that I was persistent.
< / reflections >
So now I’m writing an announcement about being nominated for THE Independent Games Festival!
Thank you so much everyone for your support, kind words, tweets, hugs, handshakes, business cards, feedback, friendships, articles, and invitations. This means the world to me, you have no idea! :)
—
Ok…
In other news. I just submitted an iOS build of Monkey Fortunetell to Apple’s wonderfully bureaucratic App Store approval process. I hope things will go smoothly, but I’m sure I’ll enjoy the back-and-forth. :) IF it DOES go smoothly, there will be an iPhone version of the game (soon-ish) so you can look into your future on the go.
Monkey Fortunetell has also received some amazing press.
Rock Paper Shotgun wrote about it: The Bestest Best Main Menu of 2015: Monkey Fortunetell
“Monkey Fortunetell can read your future from how you shake and cast a barrel full of monkeys, but its main menu makes one thing clear: no matter what else, 2015 will be a year for boogying hard.”
And Kill Screen has a humorous article about it too: More fortune tellers need monkey onesies and glitches
I laughed a lot while reading it. It’s really good.
“Can you believe in the power of a person in a monkey onesie dancing”
—
Also in other news…
I recently created a Beer & Brewery Name Generator. It’s more of a parody on private brewery names, and buying beer here. Navigating a beer store is always an experience I totally recommend to any tourist.
I like how this generator turned out, because it’s a cute and simple formula it follows for generating a unique name (they are unique) — javascript/HTML.
Source code is available here.
Play it here.
