Week 678

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 visited the Amsterdam-based game development startup Glowforth, to take a look at their forthcoming Inuit platform/puzzle game Hiko. They still have a lot of work to do, but the game definitely shows promise. The character animation and some of the setpieces are wonderful. (Just look at that polar bear on their homepage.)

I also visited Sander van der Vegte, a game designer who’s been a friend for almost 15 years. We browsed through his mindblowing list of past and present game ideas, some of which, if you ask me, should definitely happen someday.

On Friday I attended the doctorate ceremony of game design researcher Joris Dormans. I was honored to discover that I’m quoted in his PhD dissertation, Engineering Emergence.

That night, we had drinks and lots of BBQ meat at an informal Bashers.nl meeting at Vlad Micu’s house. Afterwards soms of us went to Eindbaas 8, a chiptunes party in the Utrecht-based club Ekko. This lead to a newspaper column this week.

Otherwise, lots of deep winter cleaning last week. I know it’s mostly in my head, but I still feel like I’m really behind with everything. I really need to get some bookcases and finish decorating my home office, so I can finally reorganize all my paperwork. That should help getting a sense of being on top of things again.