Spring / Summer "news from beyond"

Hello everyone!

And thank you Tootkin for giving me the title of this blog post when I asked them, "how do I say 'this is all I've been up to since last time' in one English word?" :p

I've been meaning to blog, to journal, to answer my letters-- but I haven't taken any time to sit down at all in the last few months. Part of it was simply not having the time, running around putting out fires due to our relentless lack of funds. I also... did... so. much. stuff.

In no particular order:

• I started making zines!
  • I made a zine on HOW TO BREW A NICE CUP OF TEA for the "How To Run A Jam" in early April. I am very proud of it. I think it's very informational. I'm working on a second issue on growing your own herbs for herbal tea!
  • I made a COMMISSION ZINE for Tootkin's art in late April. I am incredibly proud of it. I think it slaps. I think it looks really cool. Absolute magazine spread behaviour right here. I love it so much.
  • I CAN'T FUCKING TAKE THIS ANYMORE, a sleep-deprived, angry zine for the Insomnia Jam in early May. I think it's a very earnest and poignant piece and I'm very happy with it, even though it feels a little illegal to be so sincere and use swear words in the title.
• I released three pieces of micro-fiction for the Neo Twiny Jam 2025 in June. Each is written in a different engine, and each is under the jam's limit of 500 words.
  • A QUIET EVENING is a cute, domestic piece inspired by my life with Tootkin. I enjoyed playing around with the Dendry engine, which I would LOVE if it didn't miss, like, two features I really need and don't know how to code. This one only took like three hours, don't we love when it goes like that!
  • A FEW STEPS (UP THE HILL) is an atmospheric, immersive piece inspired by my daily walks in nature. I made it in a day or so with Ink, which was fun except the editor crashes when maximised, which makes it useless for me. It took longer because I struggled to remain under the limit, ahah.
  • VERY RESTRAINED SUMMER FUN is a tired, dehydrated piece straight up inspired by trying to survive the heatwave. Made with Twine, which is probably the IF engine I will stick with for now.
• I sank countless hours banging my head against RPG Maker MV after noticing it was gathering dust in my Steam library. I learnt so much about this experience, one of which being I probably won't be making RPGs or any sort of games with RPG Maker MV. Hopefully I can recreate my "vision" for this little game test later.
• When I was too tired to work on anything specific but couldn't just stay still, I also spent some time trying to learn lua, playing around with Solarus or Defold. I really want to like Solarus, but there's no binary of the last version for Linux, I failed to compile the sourcecode myself and even using stupid workarounds (using the Windows binaries through Steam) I never got any answer to my issues on their git. Bleh.
• I worked so hard and tried so, so hard to get four Godot narrative games off the ground. Those projects aren't abandonned, per se, and they all feature the same sort of mechanics, so once I will be able to finish one it will help the others tremendously. But they're all stuck because I can't seem to make any of the Dialogue or State Machine part to work yet, and it's so overwhelming and depressing to even think about. I feel so stuck. I don't know what to do, and for now I'm very happy working on other things.
  • MICE LIFE is too ambitious, too big, and means too much to me. It's a "A farming life sim where rodents and other little creatures live in harmony with the land and each other, focused on anti-capitalist, community-building practices." I want all the things from farming games, and things like befriending NPCs allow you to ask for their help on your farm. I want an overarching plot, I want so many things with those mice. I got so overwhelmed trying to write the GDD back in February and decided to scope down, which gave us...
  • DANDELION'S TEA, a cottage life sim with dating elements which took over most of my March. Garden and forage your way through NPC's narrative arcs, brew potions, blend tea, and do not decorate your house because that sounds way above my skill levels. This was a cute attempt at "scoping down" while exploring ideas I hold dear, but eventually it proved too overwhelming.
  • LITTLE LADS' CHEER-UP SQUAD was my and Tootkin's project for Ludum Dare Jam 57 in early April. It's a very simple game, using very cute storebought assets. Your friend is having a bad day, so you work with other NPCs to cheer them up by talking to people and fetching a few items. I thought doing the LDJ would be a good idea, a way to get out of this "start projects but get overwhelmed after three weeks" rut. I also thought the scope was small enough, but we really struggled with the dialogue manager. We tried several Godot plugins, and we simply couldn't get any to work properly before I started panicking about...
  • HADES INTO SPRING, a walking simulator of sorts, a very personal piece on change, transition, and depression that I really, really, really wanted to submit to Game Poem Magazine. The submission window for the first issue closed on June 15, and in the month and a half leading up to that I tried SO HARD to get it done. I knew what I wanted to say, but I would sit down and the writing would not happen, at all. Tootkin wasn't available to help me with the code, and everything was just too much. There was too much pressure-- to try and make it into a magazine, a regret from my fiction-writing days; to tell a story that matters so much too much. I couldn't do it. Eventually, two weeks or so before the deadline, I realized I didn't want to. It mattered so much to me-- ten years ago. I was struggling so much to make it happen because I was clinging to the dreams, hopes and regrets of someone I wasn't anymore. I stopped trying so hard, moved onto other things, and let the deadline gently pass me by. I still want to tell this story, but I think I need to tell it on my own terms, at my own pace, and for no other aim than to tell it.
• LOUSTIC'S GARDEN is a puzzle game with farming elements which I am currently developping with Tootkin's help in PICO-8. Eventually, something had to give, and it seems that LOUSTIC's tiny scope, the limitations of the PICO-8 fantasy console and Tootkin's obsession with puzzles as well as background in programming... are all aligning like the stars and allowing slow but steady progress on the game. I have been posting weekly Screenshot Saturdays over on my brand-new sideblog for all things games and zines related. This is what I would consider my "current WIP".
• AN APRIL'S WALK is a piece of interactive fiction which takes the reader on a long Spring afternoon walk in the countryside. It's literally A FEW STEPS, but much longer, without the constraint of the Jam, and with the explicit goal of self-indulgently recreating some of my favorite places. Progress is a bit slower than I'd like, but that's due to being too tired to write these days.

I was also starting my transition. Blood tests and doctor's visits and almost immediate lifestyle changes, some more expected than others. (I. am. so. horny. All day, every day. Doesn't my body know I have stories to write and games to make?! I do not have the time!)

I also made a lot of social media posts & graphics to help Tootkin promote their work, since their commissions are our only source of income at the moment. I am very happy with the ones I did for their LiberaPay as well.

And we made a lot of progress regarding "making this house a home". We moved in in a rush three years ago and it's been so rough. The house belongs to my parents, who live on the same land, and our relationship is painful and bittersweet at best.

There's a part of me that simply cannot live here, even though I utterly adore the land, the dale, the forest, the little streams, the hill. Saying good-bye to this place would free me and tear me apart; either way, we cannot afford to move, and so we've been working at making ourselves more comfortable. It's a slow process, but it's a process. We'll get there.

Anyway! The main message of this post is supposed to be how I've been doing so much but I'm actually not okay. I'm not okay at all! I can't afford anything, at all, ever, that's not strictly necessary. I'm terrified of not being able to afford to eat. I feel stuck in my life, even though I'm transitioning and learning and creating every day.

I don't know what I need, I'm too scared to want anything. I can't sit down to journal or answer my friends' letters because if I do, there is just SO MUCH emotioning and feeling happening, and I don't have the time or the tools for any of that.

I do not want to live my life in grief and in anger and in pain anymore-- I think I have spent too many years brain-fogg'd, kept in place by anxiety, mindlessly browsing Reddit or Tumblr, zoning out in front of social media. I have spent too many hours tearfully talking about the trauma on Zoom or on therapist's couches. I am so, so done crying and processing and all that shit... and I still have so many fires to put out, so many crisis (every interaction with my parents is a crisis), and like, I think that's fine.

I think I'm not in an instropective time in my life, and maybe that's allowed. I don't need to be healing all the time. I want to do things, now! The urge to create, the need to exert my agency on something, anything has been so strong and life-sustaining. So, for now, I am rolling with that.

I feel like I should wrap up this blog post with some sort of conclusion, but nothing comes to mind. Thank you for reading! See you next time!