Dark Place Progress Post #3 (Patreon)

Hi, it has been a slow week for Welcome To The Dark Place. After finishing the last major addition, I revised some text and fixed many audios which were too loud or badly mixed. I also added a small scene which sits very far on the serious side of WttDP's wide scale of emotions. One of my design goals is that every character should at least try to have something to say about the game's bigger picture.

The reason it's been a slow week is because I've been a little short on inspiration, but also because my life has been very active and vibrant lately. I went to Portland Retro Gaming Expo and also watched The Wild Robot in the theater this weekend. As a quick review, I think The Wild Robot is overrated, but all I really expected was some pretty visuals. However, the aggressive soundtrack actually annoyed and distracted me because of how hard it tried to control my emotions; it felt sometimes like I was watching a trailer for the movie I was watching.

I've also been playing Deadlock. I've been dying for a new game to really get my hands on, but also because I've never played a MOBA before, and it's a new experience. It really feels like a genre that has no fear of contrivance (for example in its numerous stats and hidden mechanics), and I've been trying to figure out if that's an objective flaw. I think it depends on just how deep the game actually is--a game should be "easy to learn, hard to master." But since I haven't mastered it, I can't judge that ratio. I do enjoy learning the core strategy of the game, but I'm afraid I'll always be overwhelmed by late-game combat when 25 different items are being used at once. I don't really want to take a master's degree in Deadlock science, so I think I'll always just spray and pray in a big group battle. My brain might just not be able to handle that much stimulus.

Despite this week being busy, I've still been cooking up ideas for the next few areas I'll work on. One is a restaurant, convenience store, or furniture store. I don't know what will happen in there, but it's just an exciting location to me.

I've also been thinking about a new direction to take Lethal Company's story which just builds on everything in a beautiful way. I know it's good because the disturbing implications have continued to shock me the more I think about it, even though I thought of it like a month ago. It probably warrants at least one more story log from Sigurd or someone else. Unfortunately this all doesn't help with the ending problem, but it might be a step.

I also wanted to give @flustered_mcx on Instagram a shoutout for this epic collection of figures.