Week 740

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 I mainly worked hard to finish the (pretty much) final version of De verdwijners, my upcoming novel, but I didn’t quite get there. Spoiler for next week’s weeknotes: I was done on Tuesday night. Which is why these weeknotes are late.

I did other stuff too. For example, I wrote a column about quitting the smartphone game The Simpsons: Tapped Out, which appeared on Tuesday in nrc.next and can be found here (in Dutch): Uitgetapt in Tapped Out. The paper also published short reviews of Castlevania for Nintendo 3DS, which I wrote, and of the new God of War for PlayStation 3, written by Rogier Kahlmann and edited by me.

Additionally, the new issue of Official PlayStation Magazine came out. It contains my interview with Ian Dallas of Giant Sparrow, the studio behind The Unfinished Swan (they just announced the next project, Edith Finch), and a column about Grand Theft Auto 3, which is really, stealthily about my friend Sander van der Vegte.

On Monday I visited Two Tribes, where work continued on the upcoming trailer for Toki Tori 2. It should be done when the game comes out on April 4, for around € 15. The more I see of the finished product, the more impressed I am. Of course, don’t take my word, I was involved in the development and will benefit financially if the game does well.

On Tuesday, I worked with my dad on the photography presentation he gave in Cairo this week. By the way, he’s available for work if you’re at all looking for someone with over four decades of experience in object and macro photography.

I spent my Wednesday over at the Hubbub office, as a newly-formed team kicked off the production of a mysterious project codenamed ‘Kaigara’. It’s an exciting new serious game on which I am the writer.

On Friday I visited the basement of literary magazine De Gids, to discuss the upcoming Your Daily Victory Boogie Woogie. It’s a literary game also built by Hubbub, which I am participating in. If you fancy joining, too, be sure to sign up. In any case, read the official announcement (in Dutch).

I then did a Skype interview with Ken Levine, creative director of BioShock Infinite at Irrational Games via Skype, which would go on to become an article in this week’s paper.

On Sunday, my oldest daughter Mia turned four.