Week 736

What’s this? I’m blogging about my work on a weekly basis – a simple way to track and archive whatever it is I spend my time on.

Last week, being the week after I sent off my latest De verdwijners draft, was too cold, wet and snowy. There were too many distractions, and I was simultaneously bored and overwhelmed. Or, to put it differently: after all these years, I still find it extremely hard to manage a post-deadline dip. Please file under ‘gathering my strength’.

I did visit Two Tribes on Monday, where they are also close to their deadline. On Tuesday I visited the SonicPicnic Utrecht sound studio, together with Two Tribes’ Shan Poon. There, Stefan Leertouwer recorded the script I wrote for puzzle adventure Toki Tori 2’s launch trailer, as read by Tim Gunther.

Also on Monday, I wrote my games column for nrc.next, which appeared on Tuesday. It was about the PlayStation announcement to be held the next day. I’m hesitant to write about pre-release hype of any kind, especially if it includes going nuts over vaporware (as I did about The Last Guardian here, which ultimately wasn’t shown at Sony’s press conference, though it’s still in development), but I did it anyway. As long as it’s not a regular thing… You can read the column over here (in Dutch): De nieuwe PlayStation: weer een kastje.

Additionally, the paper ran two game reviews during the week, Aliens: Colonial Marines by Rogier Kahlmann, which I edited, and Kentucky Route Zero, which I gave four balls out of five. This game got me thinking about how the classic point ‘n’ click adventure template is a pretty suitable medium for ‘game auteurs’: both the visuals and the writing lend themselves to doing something interesting, even (or especially) if you work alone or in a tiny team.

Finally, most of my Friday was spent writing and editing copy for the upcoming car app for children by Little Makuzu.