Writing video games with my wife

I am married to a Thai woman whom I met on my second visit to Chiang Mai at the beginning of 2019. She was a major support to me during the pandemic, and we kept building our relationship during that time while she was locked down in Thailand and I was locked down in Japan for all of 2020. We are very different people in a lot of ways, but we agree in our general life goal - to build a simple, comfortable life and to focus on the little things that bring us joy.



During my time in Japan, I came to the conclusion that my life's passion, art photography, did not bring me joy. I did not say that it "no longer brought me joy" because it never did. My art was always about pain. Switching my passion to retro video games meant I was focusing myself on something nostalgic and fun. Needless to say, my partner was onboard with this concept. She has been a major support in that transition, with my retro video game and handheld enthusiasm, and in the development of my first video game, "The Mayor of Sanctuary". She was credited in that game, something along the lines of "some concepts created in collaboration with..."

She has a very different way of thinking than me, which means she can usually see things from a different perspective. It is sometimes quite useful to bounce ideas off of her or to ask her to help me come up with the next step. I tease her and say that she has nine terrible ideas and then one great one. But it is actually entirely accurate. She spits out things that make no sense to the story or just will not work in a video game... and then she will drop something amazing on me. There were so many elements of TMOS that started from her.

In my current development of "Hippo & Buttercup", I have enlisted her 1/10 genius to help write the story for the game and design the levels. And she has proven, yet again, that there are great ideas in there. You just have to let her throw those first nine out and keep saying "NEXT!"

She is credited as the co-writer of "Hippo & Buttercup", as she has helped shape most of the game. Of course, I'm the one in there coding and making pixel art every day, but our weekly concept sessions were invaluable in the creation of this game. If the next game in the Sanctuary series happens, I expect she will play an equally vital role.

Now, if only she did pixel art too...