Posts with tag 'Pets':
Monthly update: January 2025
Posted on 2025-02-09 13:27
I haven't really been able to do much gamedev with my thumb in a cast, but aside from playing all those Sokpop games I've gotten a bit of boardgame designing done. The design for this particular game, tentatively titled "9 minutes to terminus", isn't quite done, but I nevertheless entertained myself by creating assets for it in Inkscape and printing them at a local print shop. The results look pretty nice, I'd say! I suspect that the game won't be that amazing even once I'm happy with the rules, but it has served an important purpose in that it has helped me overcome my difficulties with designing boardgames for more than 2 players a bit.
Regarding the fractured thumb: I got the Kirschner wire removed & my cast off last Tuesday, and met with a physiotherapist on Thursday on how to train my thumb to get back into action. It's still very much a work in progress, but at least the fracture has healed properly. I feel like I've lost most of my gamedev momentum during the recovery process, but I'll have to try to get back to it. Hopefully I'll manage to restart my weekly streams next week.
Also in other news, a couple days ago I saw Vilma sleeping with her head resting on Fondue's butt:
2 
1
Tags: Games, Boardgames, Other, Pets, Regular updates, Art, Streaming
2024 in review
Posted on 2024-12-31 01:44
Here we are again, at the end of the year. I'm looking at the 2023-in-review post as I'm writing this, and right from the get-go I can notice a clear difference in one aspect: 2024 was my most productive year ever, if we calculate that purely by the number of videogames released. Saying this feels somewhat disingenuous due to the fact that most of the Covemountlikes that make up the high release rate were extremely tiny, spur-of-the-moment things, with multiple taking less than a full day to get done. On the other hand, several of the games that account for the previous record unusually-active year, 2009, were also made in just a couple weeks, so in that sense it wouldn't be fair to consider this year "cheating" in some way. I guess with a metric like this the biggest problem is that larger releases that take their time will get unfairly little attention since they fill just a single increment on the bar chart, just like everything else. Oh well.
Alongside the onslaught of Covemountlikes this year saw a couple other releases. Out of those the most notable videogame release was A Solitaire Mystery, although I still intend to get back to it to add some more solitaires and to polish things up further so I'm not quite done with the project. At this point it might make sense to note that ASM was chosen to be showcased at the Experimental Games Showcase at GDC 2025! I won't be participating in person due to the travelling required etc, but it's cool to be accepted in any case. :)
Other than videogames, I made a couple boardgames and paper puzzles. The latter was very much sidelined for this year, although I did occasionally spend time trying to come up with new genres, to no avail. In the boardgame department, Royal Jelly actually garnered some additional interest, as evidenced by 2 people making their own sets (first, second)! This is also the first year I ever entered a boardgame design contest, although my game, Stroll & Hike, didn't fare too well. In fact I made another boardgame for a different contest near the start of the year, but a period of anxiety caused me to miss the deadline and I haven't polished the game up for release yet.
In terms of things not related to releasing creative works, a big change for me this year was that I joined a small group of streamers and we've organized a whole bunch of collaborative streams throughout the year. Thanks to everyone in the possibly-unnamed crew for their kindness!
Another big change was the introduction of Fondue the cat to my life. Apart from me having problems with treating her asthma with an inhaler, I'd like to say that her time here has been positive and she's gained a lot of courage and received a lot of care. Although 2 weeks ago she did swallow a salted peanut and ended up needing surgery for it, the poor cat. She has recovered very well and next Thursday she'll get the wound-licking-prevention jumpsuit off, which I'm sure she'll be very happy about. Vilma has also been doing mostly great, except that her knowledge of being able to demand attention has given me some frustration over the year, haha.
Fondue's not the only one who required medical attention near the end of the year - a couple days ago I fell over after stumbling on some cobblestones and fractured my right thumb. After the cast was put in place the finger hasn't hurt that much, and surprisingly enough I was able to put the final covemountlike together in spite of it. Still, that's 6 weeks of recovery ahead of me, and I actually have to go back to the hospital for additional X-rays because apparently the finger might not be entirely right still. Moral of the story: falling over can be nasty!
A thing that is big for me but probably not anyone else is that I moved my website into a completely new era of design, creating a more dynamic listing for my games, moving my blog away from Wordpress and bringing my art from DeviantArt to my own webspace. It was nice to set this stuff up, and I hope some people other than just me find utility in the website. (Although Hostmonster just announced merging with Bluehost and advertising their AI tools, so we'll see if I'll suddenly need to migrate the whole thing elsewhere, urgh...)
Might that be about it? Next year I think I'll try to concentrate more on slightly larger projects now that this year was themed heavily after making a ton of extremely tiny things. It'd be nice to finally manage to paint again, too, but we'll see about that. ESA2 and Planet Keke will stay on the docket, at least. Happy new year!
11 
92
Tags: Games, ESA 2, Planet Keke, Covemountlikes, Small games, Browser games, Other, Regular updates, Pets, Article, Boardgames
A game and a boardgame!
Posted on 2024-12-15 11:08
The year is nearing its end, but there's still time for some updates and games. Behold:
Yup, that's a new covemountlike. The count is now at 29, and I think I'll take some time at the end of the year to concentrate on getting to 30 (or 32, depending on how well things go).
Play Covemouth
I also released another boardgame! This time it's a roll-and-write, which is a first for me. I started making this for fun, if I remember correctly, but quantumpotato from Playlines Games encouraged me to submit it to a design contest over at BoardGameGeek. The game didn't do very well and only placed in one category (7th in the "Multiplayer game" category, although I did receive an award myself for giving feedback); I overcomplicated the rules in the name of thematic considerations and didn't add quite enough variety between sessions to force players to alter their approaches. In any case, I'm quite proud of the game, and it was an excellent learning experience (also in terms of learning how to make vector art with Inkscape!) If you enjoy roll-and-writes, it might make for a fun game or two.
Download Stroll & Hike
The cats are also here.
1 2
Tags: Games, Small games, Covemountlikes, Boardgames, Browser games, Pets, Happenings
Gridmount, website update & more
Posted on 2024-11-05 00:11
Another covemountlike! The pace has really slowed down, but if we count in RUDE CHESS and IT'S A BLOCK-PUSHING GAME the count is at 27, and as such I'd be really happy to reach 30 before the end of the year.
Play the game on Itch.io
In other news, I updated the games list on my website to use the same basic system I coded for the art gallery & this blog. The new games can fit much more games and includes a tag system for easier findability, so I've added some games that were previously missing in there and will probably add some more.
I've been foraging more mushrooms and decided to try out a traditional drying method of hanging the mushrooms on a string. It seemed to work very well, and the dried mushrooms make for a neat decoration, too! I must do more of this next year. I've also photographed some other mushrooms I saw:
Also take a look at the cats:
2
Tags: Games, Browser games, Covemountlikes, Regular updates, Other, Art, Pets
Monthly update: May 2024 Tags: Games, Planet Keke, ESA 2, Plans, Regular updates, Streaming, Small games, Pets, Other, Browser games Monthly update: Marchpril 2024 Tags: Games, Pets, Happenings, Small games, Nordic Game Jam, Ludum Dare, Other, Plans, Regular updates, Covemountlikes, Browser games Monthly update: February 2024 Tags: Games, Other, Pets, Regular updates, Streaming, Small games, Social streams, Covemountlikes, Browser games Monthly update: January 2024 Tags: Games, Regular updates, Pets, Streaming, Small games, Covemountlikes, Browser games 2023 in review Tags: Games, Baba Is You, ESA 2, Planet Keke, Small games, Boardgames, Paper puzzles, Noita, Other, Regular updates, Pets, Article Cat
Posted on 2024-05-31 15:15
First monthly recap after moving to the new blog! Once again wonder how hard it is to set up my own image-uploading system...
There are now 23 Covemountlikes in total! Apart from them, the month has been quite slow. Planet Keke has been progressing as usual, but ESA2 has been languishing due to my inability to get regular streams of it going. At the same time, Baba Is You has been unavailable on the Google Play Store due to some bureaucracy-esque nonsense; I hope I can have it handled soon but it's been a bit of a pain in the neck. Hopefully June can be a bit more active in terms of gamedev in general; I feel like I've been a bit exhausted lately.
In other news, I had a very nice housewarming party and have enjoyed my time in the new apartment! Also the cats have settled in nicely - I was a bit worried for some time about Fondue because she was being very scaredy, but that has seemed to have fixed itself with time. A friend also gave the cats a catnip-filled toy as a gift, and I recorded a video of Vilma appreciating it:
Anyway, summer is upon us; let's see what kind of news and non-news it'll offer.
Posted on 2024-04-09 04:11
I haven’t updated the blog in a bit, but this time there’s actually a reason for this! I’ve been intending to eventually migrate my blog away from WordPress, and have been setting up a homemade thing for viewing posts & then migrating old posts into the new system. I vaguely thought that after starting this process, the next blogpost would already be in the new system and as such didn’t log in here for a bit. But it’s been long enough (partially because I don’t entirely trust how good my PHP/PDO code is) without the new blog coming online, so let’s make a normal update here instead.
First of all, A Solitaire Mystery is now fully out! It boasts 23 solitaires at the moment, but we do have plans to add more at a later date. You can get it for USD $3 on Itch.io:
That’s my first proper Löve2D release, too! There are a lot of little odd spots in the codebase, but overall I think I’ve built a relatively nice basic system for future lua games. Thanks to Hazelstorm and knexator for the guest solitaires & to Hazelstorm for the excellent music!
In other news, the number of Covemountlikes has reached a whopping 16! All of them (plus RUDE CHESS and IT’S A BLOCK-PUSHING GAME) can be found in this collection!
Also, I’ll be moving to a new apartment soon! It’s exciting although I worry about the cats a bit, both in terms of logistics and especially Fondue getting used to the new place. We’ll see.
Ludum Dare 55 will be at the end of the week, and Nordic Game Jam a week after that. We’ll see what happens with those…
Posted on 2024-02-27 11:56
nother month, another… month. Things have progressed mostly in quite a similar manner as before, but there have been some changes as well. A major thing is that I managed to finally restart my weekly streams, after failing to do so for the entirety of January due to Cat Reasons (and various others). At the moment Planet Keke has the main Tuesday development slot, while ESA2 stays as the Thursday game.
In other streaming news, MelonyPepon‘s crew of mostly-vtuber streamers kindly invited me to play games on stream with them on the weekends, and for the past three or so weeks we’ve had a good time playing Among Us, Jackbox & Gartic Phone. I haven’t really done this kind of social streaming before so it’s been a fun change of pace.
The covemountlike series has also continued, and I’ve now released 9 of these in total this year. The ones released after the previous monthly update are:
- Powermount
- Ueqouow
- Covejank
In non-computer news, the cats have been getting along really nicely. Fondue still needs a bunch of time to be comfortable around guests, but Vilma’s and Fondue’s playing now ends in hisses much more rarely and there was even a recent instance of Vilma climbing onto the sofa and the cats sleeping there together!
Posted on 2024-02-01 10:56
The year has started with a lot going on. Games-wise, the important thing is that I’ve released 6 little browser-based block-pushing puzzle games. It all started with being inspired by a discussion about movement counters in puzzle games in the Thinky Puzzles Discord server, and at this point I’ve actually managed to get out a couple longer-time puzzle ideas that have occupied my brain but not felt inspiring enough to implement. I’ve some more ideas for tiny browser puzzlers, so look forward to that, I guess. Here’re the current ones, in order of release:
- Covemount
- That’s a Warp
- Pultimush
- Lorgeban
- Nabogorf
- Mountinuum
In other news, I adopted a second cat, Fondue! A lot of January was spent on getting her more used to the house, me, and Vilma, and while there’s still ways to go especially when it comes to playing with Vilma, she’s progressed amazingly!
I also recorded a series of videos on Youtube about her process of getting used to her new home. You can watch them from the start here!
Due to me being ill, having some worries, and taking care of Fondue-Vilma relations, I failed to start my weekly streaming. I’m currently trying to get that sorted out but my daily schedule has been even more chaotic than usual due to the cats so it’s a work-in-progress.
Posted on 2024-01-07 08:17
So! Another year has passed. After 2022’s productivity, 2023 followed more on the footsteps of 2020 and 2021 in that I got very very few games released. However, this comparison feels somewhat unfair because I was still working on multiple projects throughout the year, and Mobile Suit Baba was the fruit of those efforts, ending up being quite a bit more ambitious than I initially planned. I also worked on Noita again, adding some more content. Thanks to Petri & Olli for letting me do that!
2023 also saw me getting into boardgame development more seriously. I’ve been dabbling with trying to make my own boardgames/cardgames since childhood (I have about 5 different imitations of Magic: the Gathering & the Pokémon Trading Card Game I made back then stashed in a cupboard), and Petri Purho (from the Nolla Games team) and Erik Svedäng (developer of Blueberry Garden & Else Heart.break()) inspired me further by making boardgames at various game jams. However, during adulthood I’ve never really gotten past the initial stages of design due to impatience, lack of skill, and other factors. Me and Petri developed 2 boardgames together somewhere around 2013, but the first time I got close to actually releasing something was with Piiri in 2020, although that too went unfinished at the time.
Considering the above, me being able to develop so many boardgames to a state where I felt confident enough to put them available online last year felt really nice! Mostly the boardgame design motivation came from procrastination regarding videogame development, but I can’t complain too much about that since the end result was still creative work being done on something I was happy with. The impatience and lack of skill are still present, though, and as such my boardgames have stayed very carefully in the land of 2-player abstracts. Maybe this year I’ll go further?
2023 was also the year of books for me. I started trying to read more in 2022, and once the habit was formed, it was great to get through a lot of new stuff after years and years of re-reading the sam books over and over. In total I read 24 titles last year, although some were very short affairs.
Anyway, here’s the total list of stuff I released last year:
- Baba Files Taxes
- Cylinders of the Wise
- Obsidian Sentinels
- Malsymmetric (technically unfinished because I wasn’t happy with the design)
- Equal measures (paper puzzle)
- Piiri (mostly designed in 2020)
- Kepi
- Elder Dance (technically unfinished because the rules were broken)
- Kurote
- Gnome Thicket
- DIAGORT
- Flatdog Scuffle
- Mobile Suit Baba
- LITSilly (paper puzzle)
Last but not least, 2023 was also the year I finally got a pet, although a better term might be that a pet was got-ed at me. Vilma has been getting more used to me and my apartment, and lately I seem to have figured out what kind of scratching she likes, and she has also started to spend more time lying next to me while I sleep. It’s funny how years-long plans to get a dog turned out like this. Oh well!
For 2024, I have plans to try to release more tiny games like in 2022. However, ESA 2 and Planet Keke are on the table still and especially ESA 2 needs all the attention I can give, so I’ll have to be mindful of that when I decide to dedicate time to sideprojects. I’m sure something’ll work out, though.
Off to a new year we go!
[Wait, nothing about the graduation in this??]
2
Posted on 2023-10-07 13:14
Her name is Vilma, and I adopted her because her previous owner had to spend a lot of time away from home and we thought it’d be better for her to be somewhere with a person around. She’s a very chill cat, which is great because I mostly have experience with dogs.
A couple days ago she wasn’t anywhere to be seen, and I assumed I had either missed her being under the bed, or that she was in some new place to hang out in. Later on I saw her emerge from my wardrobe in the bedroom, and realized that she had made herself a nest among my pants! Very wholesome.
She sometimes lets me scratch her belly and climbs on top of my work chair on occasion, both of which are very fun details. I think we’ll be friends.
