There’s a popular children’s book titled *We Are Going on a Bear Hunt*. Throughout the story, the children face various obstacles in their search for a bear: long, wavy grass, a deep, cold river, thick, oozy mud, a dark forest, a swirling, whirling snowstorm, and finally, a narrow, gloomy cave. With each challenge, the children can’t go over it, they can’t go under it—they have to go through it.

Lately, I’ve been feeling the same way, except my bear hunt is a growing list of tasks that just won’t...

Hey friends! Happy FRIDAY! Today marks a significant milestone in the progress of building Martian Alchemist! We have a greenhouse spawner! I mean, I still have a lot of work to do and there’s some quirks I need to iron out, but we have a good skeleton built finally.

The way the game works is...

Hello friends! It’s finally Friday. I hope you have some awesome plans with friends. Life is always better when you share it with friends.

Anyway, I wanted to talk today about the progress I’ve been making on Martian Alchemist. I still don’t know exactly how I want to setup the Potion Making Station so as of right now, it’s still...

There’s an ice cream/coffee shop near my house that makes the most delicious, unique, and refreshing soft serve I think I’ve ever had. They’re so extra the shop is frequently overrun with food bloggers and instagram influencers trying to get the perfect shot of their confection. This is the place where your basic vanilla ice cream cone is served not one, not two, but three dollops high, dusted in red velvet cake powdered sugar, and garnished with fresh

Hello friends. This week I wanted to talk about optimizing content workflow. I recently listened to a podcast episode that talked specifically about how we as game devs can make our lives easier by designing systems and tools to help create the content for our games.

Designing a user interface (UI) for a game is a critical aspect that bridges the gap between the player and the game world. A well-crafted UI can make the difference between an intuitive, immersive experience and a frustrating one. Whether it’s a complex RPG or a simple puzzle game, the principles of UI design remain…

Hello friends. I have so many things I want to talk about today. I got sick this past week and honestly didn’t have as much energy to work in Martian Alchemist as I had hoped, but honestly, it was good for me to take a step back and let all my creative juices recharge. When working in large projects like this, especially by yourself, it’s really easy to burn out and get overwhelmed by the sheer quantity of work. But by taking a step back and…

So I was finally able to make the greenhouse! And I’m so pleased with the results. It was definitely the right move to go ahead with the building of the bedroom while I struggled to conceptualize how I was going to draw the greenhouse. I’ve found that the best antidote to creator’s block is to just start working on a different part of the project.

Hey friends! I hope you’ve had an amazing week. I’ve been traveling the past week but I wanted to give you an update nonetheless. Although I wasn’t able to work on MA too much, I still was able to make some significant progress.

First of all, I’ve added placeholders for all the remaining rooms in the game. This way, as I’m building them out, I’ll be able to build them out quickly. Additionally, I’ve added basic UI buttons that control how the camera moves throughout the room. I’m super pleased with…

I have great news! Since last week I’ve been able to make significant progress on Martian Alchemist. After spending some more time in Godot and making a few simple games, I’ve decided to go back to Unity and build Martian Alchemist in Unity instead of Godot.

The first major milestone was…

This past week I’ve been working on the art style and direction of Martian Alchemist. When I first made the title page, I knew that it probably wasn’t going to be the final image, but it at least felt good to put my ideas on paper. But since then, there’s been this gnawing in the back of my mind and something about it was bothering me. I don’t know exactly what, but my execution was…

This week I wanted to talk a little bit about game design and what I think makes a good game. Good games, in my opinion, don’t necessarily have the best graphics (though they can), they also don’t necessarily have the best story (sometimes they don’t even have a story). They don’t even have to have the best soundtrack (though they frequently do). Good games can be found in every single genre, every single art style, and can be created by anyone. Good games are good games because…

Well friends, we are almost there. And by almost I mean not at all 😂 No but in all seriousness, I’m almost done writing all of Martian Alchemist’s game design. I know that I’ll end up making some changes as I work on building it out, testing it, iterating, etc. but I think it’s really important to start a project like this with a firm grasp of where you are going. This way, when I start putting the pieces together, I’ll know what pieces…

Okay friends. I have a confession to make: I’ve been procrastinating diving into Martian Alchemist (the code part) because I’ve been dreading learning Godot. I know, I know, I said I already learned it. Well, by “learning Godot” what I actually meant was that I downloaded it and watched a few little YouTube videos about it lol… I hadn’t actually built anything in it yet. Why don’t I just…

I’m going to be brief but I wanted to update you guys on what I’ve been working on this past week:

I’m still reading John Romero’s book. It’s more dense than I had anticipated and it is taking me longer than I thought to read through it. I still find it very fascinating learning about how he and id Software created all those games…

This past week I’ve been mostly working on my new game: Martian Alchemist. It’s a potion making and resource management simulator that takes place in a fictional future on Mars! Imagine Firefly (the TV show) + a little bit of Star Wars + witches. I’ve been inspired by the game Potion Craft (highly recommend if you like cozy, relaxing, potion making games) and I wanted to make a sci-fi version of it! Here’s a mock-up of the main title that I’ve been working on this past week or so:

It’s 12:43 am as I sit down to write this. I’ve just spent the last 5ish hours preparing my app build to publish Space Cats to the App Store. If there’s one thing I've learned from the game development process it’s that I really really hate the publishing aspect. It’s just so…annoying. There’s a lot of extra work that just is exhausting to put together when you’re just ready to hit publish. I suddenly know why game publishers are a thing and why game devs would happily hand the reins over to them 😂

This past week or so I’ve been reading John Romero’s autobiography called Doom Guy: Life in First Person. If you don’t know who John Romero is, he is probably one of the most influential programmers from the early days of video games. He and several of his colleagues founded id Software, a successful PC game studio which famously created Doom. There are many reasons why Doom was revolutionary for the time, but one of the main reasons it’s remembered today is because…

Hey friends. Quick update on Space Cats Mobile. Right now I’m trying to fix some performance settings as I get ready to ship it to the App Store. Sorry for the delay but Space Cats Mobile is coming! Once I get everything finalized I just have to wait for Apple’s approval process and then you can download and play it on your phone 🥰 There’s two new characters so that’ll be fun too.

So this past week I struggled a little bit with motivation to finish the mobile version of Space Cats (if I’m being totally honest and transparent with you). I knew the work that needed to be done but I was just lacking the drive to open up Unity, open up my code editor, and work on the project. But I didn’t want the project to stall so I told myself: okay, just make a list of things you have to do and check off one thing, one day at a time.