As I’ve been intending to get around to for months now, I’ve just made my inaugural Substack post. It’s a short story, “Induction Procedure”, set in the Godmind world and also serving as the first chapter of the future novel.
I know at least some of my readers aren’t terribly fond of Substack as a platform and I understand why, but I participate in society (curious) and this is one of the few places it’s possible for authors to get visibility in the current year. I’d deeply appreciate support in finding my footing there, and thank everyone reading for all their support so far.
So, game development update. So far I’ve got some core functionality implemented: you can move around, swing a pickaxe to break rocks, and rocks drop different kinds of ore (right now it’s stone, iron, gold, amethyst, and diamond) that you can pick up and put into your inventory. Rocks are procedurally placed, and more valuable rocks start appearing at lower levels. You can take the ore to a shop screen and sell them for money, which you can then spend to upgrade things like pickaxe strength and inventory size.
The next big step was going to be implementing basic platforming mechanics (climbing, etc.) but I’m getting pickaxe hitbox offset issues whenever I use analog stick input rather than keyboard, so one thing at a time. I look forward to sharing a prototype build in the near future.
Scope Uncreep
All of that said: hitting issues like that so quickly made me realize that, for my first proper video game, I need to combat my tendency towards scope creep a little. Therefore, I’m now thinking that, instead of immediately aiming for the full version of Deep Time, I’m going to first make a vertical slice prototype: all the basic mechanics should be there, but I’ll just be building the first layer, the Anthropocene. Which works out, actually, since that layer was already an embedded form of a complete game idea I had in the past called “Ray Cats”, with the protagonist intended to be included in Deep Time as an NPC. Coming back full circle on that one.
Therefore: new game, (mostly) same as the old game: Ray Cats. Pretty much everything I’ve already written about feature-wise stays, I’ll just be starting with a subset of that concept that I can finish within a reasonable amount of time due to requiring fewer assets. If that works out okay, I can potentially release it as a standalone game, and then expand upon it into the full Deep Time experience later.
What is Ray Cats about, you ask? Well, you may have noticed a number of references in prior posts to events that happened during the Anthropocene: experimentation with dangerous substances, ultimately necessitating their entombment in insulated underground facilities. If you were an engineer designing a permanent resting place for radioactive waste, what could you do to convince people in the future not to dig it up? How would you communicate with an unknown person a thousand years from now who doesn’t necessarily speak your language and might not even know what radiation is?
That’s what Ray Cats is about. I’ll do a post describing it soon.
Novelty
Game development aside, I’ve also got that novel I mentioned before, simmering in the background. That’s undergoing a shift in perspective as well: I came to conclusion that not only would writing it alongside a game about the same thing sap my interest in one once I finished the other, but it would pull the writing in two directions: a story tends to take the shape of its vessel, and the demands of a serial novel and a video game are very different. The more I thought about it, the more clear it became that Deep Time (in the form of Ray Cats or otherwise) wanted to be a video game, which meant that if I was to write a novel, it needed to be about something else.
Fortunately, I am never without ideas on tap – the time necessary to execute them is the only limiting factor. I already had a number of concepts floating in my head for the last several months, so it was simply a matter of selecting one of them to put more energy into.
The tentative title is “Godmind”. It takes place in a world where you can attain psychic powers through meditation and altered states of consciousness. Although at the basic level this resembles ESP-type abilities, the scale goes up much higher, to the point of interfacing with the collective unconscious to rewrite physical laws.
At the beginning of the story, the protagonist wishes to develop this capacity, but struggles to exert even the slightest bit of mental force. Then, through special circumstances, they briefly access the Absolute, suffusing their soul with all-knowing omnipotence. It’s the ultimate rush – then, seconds later, it’s gone, leaving only a gaping hollow in the core of their being. Desperation grips them: they will do anything to get that state of divine consciousness back.
I already have a post written up describing some of the core ideas involved, so look for that soon as well. Plenty of things on the way!
As I type this, a tiny, poorly placed cut on the pressing angle of my left pinkie protests – but I must silence it, as the people need to know the future that awaits them. It has been some time since I posted a holistic update of ongoing projects, and my patrons yearn for data. For metrics! Potentially forecasts, or even auspices, if the birds are cooperative.
Headline number the first: Protoplastic is on its way! A bit more slowly than expected, if the intervening weeks have left you wondering. The text is complete (I said that before and then went back to add half a dozen more pages just because, as offerings to the insatiable Moloch called “content”) and has been for some time, I’m just waiting for the cover art to be finished. I don’t mean to throw my artist under the idiomatic bus here: I have great faith in their ability to produce an excellent finished product and eagerly await showing it to you all. I’ll make a post with more information as soon as more information presents itself.
Headline number the second: my next project is a novel! Print media has been slowly dying since the day I was born and LLM slop now constitutes two-thirds of all e-books, but writing is my vocation and I will rage against the dying of the light. Serialized web fiction remains viable for the time being, so I’ve been researching that market, probably angling for release on Royal Road with early access to chapters through Patreon membership. The working title is “Deep Time”, and it’s a science-fantasy story about a cloned miner digging miles down into the earth for supernatural crystals that can reconfigure matter. I’ve got so many ideas and I’ll share them with you all next week.
Headline number the last one: in a divergence from the tabletop games I’ve been putting out for the last couple of years, Deep Time will come paired with a video game adaptation! It’s a love letter to Terraria, one of my favorite games of all time. Compared to that touchstone, I’m turning the dial down on combat somewhat that I can tap in to the pure flow state of excavation – I just really like digging to collect resources! It gives me a smooth-brained pleasure. So the pitch is, it’s a 2D sidescrolling mining game with a focused narrative experience: crunchier traversal mechanics, strong characterization, and cohesive worldbuilding. You should get a Fromsoft-style lore snippet with every block and item you pick up, and a protagonist that’s more than a blank slate. Learning a new engine (Godot) is a humbling experience, but I’m making a lot of progress.
As of last month, all seven episodes of Rose Playing Games are available on Youtube, so leave a like if you haven’t already! The playlist for the whole series in order is here:
As always, you can also find the full series in audio format here:
There are quite a few puns I could make to introduce this topic, so I’ll save us both some time and let you imagine your favorite one.
There, feeling better? Now you’re ready to watch the sixth installment of the only online show with two Roses. This week they’re analyzing tabletop representations of gaining experience and how that impacts the experience of play – sorry, that’s a second pun, but just a small one.
