[Strap in, this one is a MONSTER]
...Is the song I thought of today and realized I should've listened to yesterday, when I was holding my first ever Hamumu Longview Summit (since summits are the very top point of a triangle, there was only room for me at the summit). That is something that's just like it sounds: a 10,000 foot view over my business and where it's going, planning for the future. Probably something I should do more than one time per lifetime. Writing this absolutely novel-length blog post is actually part of the mental process as well.
About a year ago (I know because I did an unofficial longview summit at the time, which data I copied into my document this time for reference!), I was feeling old. And I distinctly remember experiencing this with Stephen King, 26 years ago. He was getting old (he is now REALLY old), also getting hit by large motor vehicles, and as someone whose bookshelves look like this:
I was rightfully (and selfishly) concerned with his potential demise. And yes, even the typewriter and the potted plants are Lego. And you can just barely see my Mortal Kombat arcade cabinet on the far left, along with a PVC pipe I should probably put in the garage. But that's not the point!
I think the uplifting part of this story is that about 1/3 of that shelf is stuff he's written
since that point, but my concern here, if you didn't catch on, is that I am getting very old. I am much slower and less effective at building games than I was 20 years ago, and I feel it bigtime. Even when my brain is fully in it, my back can only handle so many hours focused in (unless I play video games, that's no problem!). So for the first time, I am thinking about all of this in a terminal way. At some point, I end, and at some point before that, fingers crossed, my career ends. So the point of the summit is to figure out what it is I want most to accomplish before that point.
I don't think I have the answers, but I think it's a good thing to address on occasion, rather than just blindly stumbling forward with whatever idea hits me at the moment. I made a colorful timeline chart, I guess the cool gamedevs call it a roadmap, but I was only able to fill it out to 2030 before it was too hazy to consider adding any more. I'm not gonna share the roadmap because it contains things that aren't public (because I don't trust they will happen yet), but I will tell you the stuff I am focused on (and the dates I overly optimistically put on them):
- (Soon(tm)) Loonyland 2 steam release. No major new features, just clean it up, modernize controls, and make the achievements more fair.
- (end of 2026) Broken Build Simulator. I'm putting a hard limit on this, as hard as I can, because I need to be DONE WITH IT. It has been 90% gameplay complete for years and just struggling. It is a very fun game, but boy is it weird. So pushing myself to wrap this up is a big goal.
- (Q1 2027) Sleepless Hollow steam release. I don't think there's much to change with this one, just fix up the controls. Could make the puzzles less impossible, but how would that be Sleepless Hollow?
- (mid-2027) Titan Tunnels is coming, which is the 'major new features' version of LL2. In fact, it's SO different, it's absolutely a whole new game. It's as much a modification of LL2 as Sleepless Hollow is a modification of Dr. Lunatic. I guess more so, since at least those two star the same main character!
- (a hazy early 2029 release) Loonyland 3: Diwali Desert. This game has been designed to varying degrees many times over, with some things carrying through since the beginning. It has always carried on the super secret HUGE plotline of Loonyland though, which nobody has guessed, to my surprise. I have it earmarked for a full 2 years of development, come on, we can do that right?
- (after that maybe) Kid Mystic 2. Another game I have redesigned a dozen times. Some version of it is #2 on my dream list after LL3.
I mentioned my dream list there. That was what I came up with last year, and tweaked this year - what are the top 10 ideas I want to get done before I die? I don't have like a super strong need there, there's nothing screaming to get out. It's just more which ideas are pulling me the most, and keep coming up in my head. With the freedom to change at any time. Mainly just there so I don't forget something that would be really cool (although if I forget it, it must not really be calling me, right?). I guess I can share my current Dream List with you:
- Loonyland 3
- Kid Mystic 2
- Altaholika
- Adventures of Bouapha 2
- Drawbridge
- Pedro Fu
- Scuba Jim
- Best Laid Plans
- Warsoul
- Moon Invaders 2
You won't recognize all those names, and that's okay by me! If you dig through all 23 years of journal entries on here, you'd find most of them, possibly all, mentioned at some point with a detail or two (Pedro Fu and Scuba Jim already exist, I want to release them in a new format with some updates. I love those games, and all my Boys' Life games!). I will say that Titan Tunnels has rapidly morphed into something close to Altaholika, so I think that will complete that one for me.
Back to the timeline, the thing with LL3 is that I have reconnected with the old-school pre-rendered 3D thing and I'm ready to crank out some stuff like that. Much as LL1 was Zelda, and LL2 was Diablo II, LL3 was originally designed to be Borderlands. I think that is still roughly the idea, but I thought about it a lot as a third-person shooter, and now I definitely see the path for doing that in the classic Hamumu style instead. I've been pushing myself to dive into other graphical techniques for years, delving into Unreal and Godot and all that, and I can do it, approximately (and poorly)... but it's hard, and it's slow, and I'm too old to learn new tricks, and everybody seems to want more classic Hamumu anyway. So why not? I want to lean into this pre-render thing. It's a niche almost nobody else is doing anymore, the version of retro one step more modern than pixel art. Let's go with that. It's where I have the most fun. I can have a wacky idea and make a very simple 3D model, animate it in a fun way, and throw it in a game relatively quickly.
Mechie Mouse
I guess the question is, why do I make games, and what do I want to accomplish? That used be a painful existential question, wondering how I am helping the world, but since then I've been a part of creating the
Rock Rose Foundation and so I am spending a lot of my time and money helping the world. So I can mess around with games all I want! I'm not making high art that addresses social issues or pours my heart out. It's just fun goofs. I've gotten my share of heartfelt emails from fans about how my games have helped them through hard times, or (much more often) gotten them interested in gamedev themselves. In the wide view, I wonder how beneficial it is for my games' benefit to be getting other people to make games. Is it really a benefit, or just Games as a memetic entity executing an evolutionary strategy to propagate itself? Deep thoughts. The one thing I always come back to in terms of what I'm doing and why is simply: what else would I do with my time? The answer is play video games, and I'd rather be creating them than playing them (in the moment, I'd usually rather be playing than creating, but in the long-term, I feel better about creating than playing!). It's just what I do. It's my creative outlet, it's what amuses me, and, to pour my heart out a little bit, it's my connection to the world.
I am a true hermit. I say that a lot and I think people don't really believe me. I interact with almost
no people in my life. I literally will go entire weeks (not rarely, but
most weeks) without talking to a single person other than my wife. I'm not complaining, I
love being alone! It's when I'm happiest, just jamming to some tunes in my office making or playing a game. It has never gotten old for me, and I've never felt lonely doing it. I just don't have that piece other people have where they crave human interaction. Contrarily, when I am in a situation where I have to chat with people in real life, I feel awful and stressed. And, while I love being totally alone, I also love being alone with my wife. She's all the human interaction I want. We spend nearly every day together and that is also awesome (we also spend large chunks of said days in separate rooms doing our own thing! Both parts of that make me happy).
So, knowing that, my games are the one place I connect myself to the world intentionally. There really is little I like more than getting feedback on a game. Since I'm not out there making people smile with my wit and wisdom in the real world, I really enjoy seeing the results of my game creation in the form of peoples' reactions. Whether that's a direct connection talking to a fan (on the internet obviously, no need for in-person chat where I feel super weird about praise!), or just watching a streamer's video. I'm not saying I enjoy seeing people hate my games, usually it's the positive responses I like, to be clear. I'm not weird! In that way.
So I'm not trying to be separate from the human race entirely. I want this connection. I just don't want to shake your hand or figure out how to make small talk. Let's connect on games. I think that's what I like most about doing this and what draws me back every time. Even if they still sold copies (which incidentally, they
really don't right now!), I probably wouldn't make games anymore if I wasn't seeing human reactions to them. I live in a vacuum in every other way, and this is my way of putting a piece of myself out there and, let's be honest, saying "love me please!" like any actor or writer or filmmaker does on a daily basis. Like everyone, I want to be appreciated, but unlike most, I want it to be in a very small constrained way where I have full control over my experience.
Alright, I gotta stop going over this over and over. Every time I do I make it even longer. <-- just added that sentence on my last trip around. <-- and that one and this one.
So yeah, that's what that's all about. Makin' some games. Let's go! And obviously, thank you very much to the long-time fans who are the only ones who will actually find and read this blog (especially all the way to this sentence!). Your interest and discussion is what has kept me making these things! Keep that
Discord flowing, seeing people turn my creations into
topics of
intellectual discourse is better than praise or hate! Feel free to comment here too, getting feedback is my raison d'etre!
