zeekerss

BMAS Brogress Bost

I can't really call this another Dark Place Progress Post since I've been working on my book again, Between Music And Silence. (I still wish I could think of a better name.)

I've dived into making major revisions to the story structure and character arcs, and I made a couple tweets & bluesky posts about my experience so far. First of all, working on this book is so fulfilling that I've felt physically livened up over the past week. And that's happened about every time I came back to...

Dark Place Progress Post #7

Hello! This post is very writing-themed! A week or so ago, I reached a point where I literally sat in place and didn't move or think for the entire day. Since then my energy has been increasing. I finally developed one of the ideas I've been mulling over for this whole year. It's unique because it takes one of the first characters I ever wrote for Welcome To The Dark Place (either the first or the second) and gives him a "sequel" which subverts his original fate. I've also been working on ano...

Dark Place Progress Post #6

Dark Place Progress Post #5

Dark Place Progress Post #4

Hello, this week I've worked on fixing up the intro to Welcome To The Dark Place, which has always been a strange part of the game structurally. I'm going to talk about it without spoiling the specifics, and this post might be more interesting to read after the game has come out.

Before Welcome To The Dark Place had begun development, I originally wrote the intro as a short story or the beginning of a novel. I think I was frustrated with trying to write an interesting main character and...

Dark Place Progress Post #3

Hi, it has been a slow week for Welcome To The Dark Place. After finishing the last major addition, I revised some text and fixed many audios which were too loud or badly mixed. I also added a small scene which sits very far on the serious side of WttDP's wide scale of emotions. One of my design goals is that every character should at least try to have something to say about the game's bigger picture.

The reason it's been a slow week is because I've been a little short on inspiration, b...

Dark Place Progress Post 2

Dark Place Progress Post #1

Hello, I'm just talking about Welcome To The Dark Place today. Part of why I want to talk about it is because I'm trying to make WttDP my main focus, and maybe talking about it obsessively here will help me fixate on it. Since Lethal Company is no longer an option for now, I had to spend time to adjust, and it was pretty depressing for a few days. But progress on WttDP is picking up. The posts I make about WttDP will probably feel a lot like the early posts about Lethal Company before anyone ...

Conflicted, undecided, many options

Hi, I just began recovering from a gnarly stomach flu or something which put me in bed for a while, so I've had some time to consider what to do next.

Endings

For Lethal Company, I still have not been able to think of a proper ending, and my desire to create an ending is becoming desperate. I will soon reach an impasse. I've brought this up to friends and family, and no one has been able to give me a light bulb. There are many possible endings that seem obvious and may have fun ...

The Gigantic Version 60 Post

Hello again, Version 60 is out now so it's time to talk about it. As usual I'll try to go through in the order that it was all developed. Here we go!

New Scrap

The new scrap was mostly all modeled already, right around the time that Version 55 came out of beta. It's getting a little more difficult to think of good ideas for scrap, since I have some specifications for what I consider good scrap objects. It was hard for me to articulate this, but I think the best way of des...

Version 60 is rapidly approaching from a distance

Hello! Progress on Version 60 has been great, and it feels like it began with a head start. The only thing I haven't puzzled out for Version 60 is what the new creatures will be.

Something that happens when you hit a long, successful streak is that your past successes start to stack against you, and you can fall into the trap of trying to replicate those successes or feeling discouraged when you fall short of the standard. Then you begin to believe you're running out ideas or just "lost...

The Version 55 post!

Hi, I'm sorry it's been almost a month; I basically missed two posts at this point.

In the last post I mentioned that the release date announcement was to serve as a deadline to motivate me, and it absolutely worked (in the last week.) Now I'm focused on keeping this momentum, so the next update will come within less than a month. The downside is that V55's beta got released in a somewhat rushed state, but the only real indicator of that is that the Kidnapper Fox's AI (along with the lo...

V55 soon??

If you haven't seen the release date trailer for Version 55, look here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AyWbIUvKLa8&feature=youtu.be

I released this trailer early, which is something I haven't done with Lethal Company before. The reason is #1. because I couldn't help myself and #2. because I wanted to give myself a deadline to work towards. A third reason is that now I get...

This is a weird post

Hi, I've continued to work on both Lethal Company and Welcome To The Dark Place. As usual I'll start with the former and end with the latter.

At the beginning of these two weeks I focused on Lethal Company exclusively while playing Animal Well every day until I 100%'ed it (minus bunnies). I wonder how many people found out about movement tech involving certain items, since in some cases I can't remember a single place where I was outright forced to use it.

Animal Well and Splatoon...

Deep into 2 projects

Hi, since I don't want to outright spoil the new addition to Lethal Company, I'm just going to refer to it by its acronym, the CC.

I've been working on Welcome To The Dark Place and Lethal Company at the same time; I have never been able to move back and forth between two projects at the same time, which goes to show how torn I am between the two. As usual I'll start with the progress on Lethal Company.

First, it took me about five days to finish modelling and texturing the CC, du...

The time is flying (and so are the jetpacks and tulip snakes)

Hello, it's an exciting time, so here is a progress report on what's going on.

Tulip Snakes

If we're going with chronological order, it makes sense to start with the tulip snakes. Their concept art is already in the previous post. The original idea was simply a critter that scurries around in the grass. I specifically wanted to replicate those moments in real life where you see ...

The Version 50 Post

Hi, this is the post where I talk about all the work I've done on Version 50.

Artifice

The first thing I worked on was Artifice, back in January. For a while, artifice was called Adamance and Adamance was called Constancy, but in my mind the moon names have a thematic progression when read in order, and I wanted to continue that properly.

From the beginning the concept for Artifice was to be a more interesting and nuanced end-game moon than Titan or Rend, and one of...

Fresh thoughts after releasing Version 50 (on public beta branch)

Hi, Version 50 is out now on the public beta branch on Steam! I could have held off longer to make it more full of an update, but I decided everyone had waited long enough.

I'm exhausted so I'm not going to make the full Patreon post or patch notes today, but here are some of my thoughts on Version 50:

-- Spoilers! --

- Adamance's bridge is an inferior version of Vow, and Adamance needs more options/paths. I have to think more about what makes it unique. Besides that,...

2024 is a year

Hello, I'm sorry I haven't released an update to Lethal Company in so long. Crazy changes have taken place in my life, and I've been mentally and emotionally checked out; sometimes I have felt like I am waiting to "wake up". Throughout my life I have found that making any games or art is extremely difficult when there is any other business to tend to, be it school or finances or relationships. I genuinely don't know how I would live a busy life; business seems to suck the life out of me, and ...

i found an old video

Hi, I've finished making the enemy I was modelling and texturing last time I posted. There were many times I considered scrapping it and moving onto something else. This enemy and the new moon were making me feel like Version 50 is an absolute train wreck so far. But we played with it, and it is undeniably fun. The new enemy truly is a part of this cast of misfits--it feels like it's having a tantrum at the fact it was allowed to exist. I wanted Version 50 to be released by now, but I'm deali...

Caves, and the "Weirdly Shaped Game"

Once again I have been watching videos about cave diving, deep diving, and dry cave exploration. I guess it's interesting because #1. I like watching people be experts at things I would never do. And #2. Caves and the ocean are some of the most inhospitable places, clearly not meant for us to be in or see. We've climbed Mount Everest many times, but deep water still feels like the out-of-bounds of the world.

This might sound silly, but the "shitpost" nature of Roblox games often gives m...

Should posts become free to view for non-patrons?

I have always thought of it less as an incentive and more as a way for me to give something exclusive back to you for being here. It kind of felt like a secret club where I could let you in on my plans. But as I am no longer in need of the stable income and have more patrons than ever, it has begun to feel worse--like I'm trying to get some extra cash from everyone by making these posts paywalled. So I think it should change. 

I want to cast a vote though.

(The Patre...

Playing a lot of games

Hello! 

At this point I just love to hate January. It's so dingy and wet and cold, I can't wait for it to be over. I've been sleepy and reflective, but I am making meaningful progress on Lethal Company.

This is a low phase

I remember working on the third and final chapter of Silent Dark, desperate to avoid leaving the game without its last chapter and disappointing people, and how grueling that was to finish. At the time Silent Dark was unimaginably huge fo...

What a 2023

Hello! I'm in a bizarre transitory period in life right now, and meanwhile I've been inspired to look at my book again, Between Music And Silence.

It has been beside all my other projects since I started it in early 2018. I've had the dream of making an animatic for an animated version of BMaS for several years. And whether I attempt to fully animate it myself or get someone else to do it for me, this would be the next step.

I'm itching to see the book in visual form because I wro...

Christmas chaos--so many fast choices

Hello, this is a post about Version 45 of Lethal Company. Spoilers for that. All throughout this post you'll notice cases where I had an initial idea of how I would do something, then quickly changed to the second option.

So the Nutcracker was the first thing I planned for Version 45. I had planned to make the nutcracker during the week before the game came out but was basically bedridden for three days, so I was only able to make the bees that weekend before release. Then I was worried...

Busy month, short post, random thoughts

Hi, it has been a while again. This is the most busy I've been in any December. The image here is some concept art from May 30.

Where is Version 45??

Even though there's technically enough finished content in this update, I sort of held myself back from updating the game this weekend to flesh out the new stuff, adding some nuances to it that make it feel like it's really a part of the game. 

I don't want to spoil the new stuff. However I will say the radar boosters ar...

The times are good.

Hello, sorry it's been a while since I posted on here. I blame the chaos. I spent the entire last week working on the new creature (the baboon hawks which I teased here before) and fixing the game's most pressing issues. I'm going to talk about the baboon hawk and gloat about what has worked for Lethal Company.

There are many... many new supporters here. Welcome! Thanks so much for supporting, and please know it's not neces...