Week 797

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 was rather short, as Monday was part of the Dutch extended Easter holiday. Still adjusting after last week’s rejection, I cleared up a lot of notes and email, and tried not to do too much else. I played Child of Light, too, which is beautifully handpainted but also kind of boring, unfortunately.

On Tuesday, I edited three game reviews for nrc.next, which were published on Thursday: Trials Fusion by Rogier Kahlmann, Final Fantasy XIV (the PS4 edition) by Harry Hol and Hearthstone (the iPad edition) by Stefan Keerssemeeckers. That afternoon, I took a train to Leiden to hang out with friends.

On Thursday, Maarten Westerveen of VPRO radio visited me at my home to record a conversation on artisticity and writing in games. I’m curious to hear how the item turns out.

That evening, it was game development hobby night with Hessel. I continued work on my Japanese village strategy game, spending too much time on menu buttons. (So it goes.)

On Friday, I did an interview with Daniel Hasselberg of MAG Interactive, the company behind word game Rumble/Ruzzle, that’s about to launch Ruzzle Adventure, a Candy Crush Saga-ish singleplayer take on the original game. Daniel was in Amsterdam for The Next Web, and he talked to me about having a hit, building a company and the responsibility to create more hits.

After that, I had lunch with Tim Hengeveld. It’s always good to exchange ideas and inspirations with a fellow story guy.

In the afternoon, I put my interview with Triumph Studios’ Lennart Sas online, which I did a month ago (in Dutch): “We hebben de oude fans teruggevonden” – Triumph geeft zelf Age of Wonders 3 uit.

At night, I visited Escape Room in Bunschoten with Kars, Zuraida, Sander, Tim and Bart. These real-life spin-offs of ‘escape the room’ adventure games are currently popping up all around the country, and from what I heard, this is the best yet. We definitely enjoyed ourselves, but talking about it during our Chinese dinner afterwards (with a game designer ratio of at least fifty percent), it became clear that there are still many creative venues left to explore.

Week 797 ended with a full weekend of King’s Day and Sun’s Day. On Saturday, our king celebrated turning whatever age, and on Sunday, our youngest daughter celebrated turning three. Both days were festive and enjoyable.