Week 723

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 mostly worked on the rewrites of my upcoming novel, De verdwijners, which is planned for April.

Additionally, on Monday I went to Two Tribes to play the latest build of Toki Tori 2, the puzzle platform game I am helping them with. Amazingly, with just a few weeks of development to go, they released an almost-complete Steam build of the first third of the game to fans who signed up for this. The build is Windows-only, though.

On Tuesday I finished my edition of ‘Goldmine’, a recurring section in Items Magazine, in which one of their contributors describes a book influential to his or her professional career. I chose Game Over by David Sheff, a book on the history of Nintendo from the early nineties, that got me thinking about games in a new way and going on the whole games journalism thing.

On Wednesday I met with Geert Nellen, to continue our conversations about his upcoming game. We also spent a few hours with the Wii U.

On Thursday I wrote another retro column for Official PlayStation Magazine (OPM). This is the one in which I skipped from the original PlayStation to the PlayStation 2, so it will feature a new illustration by Yasmin Sheikh. The PS2 launch totally reminds me of the GameSen days with our attic in Schiedam, which I described, of course.

I also received the latest issue of OPM, which contains my last PS1 retro column and an interview with Shaw-Han Liem and Jonathan Mak, creators of the excellent Sound Shapes.

On Friday I left for the Ardennes with three friends, for a weekend of quiet conversation, explosive laughter, walks through unkempt nature, beer and board games.