Release week

With these weeknotes I publically track and archive whatever it is I spend my time on.

Last week was release week for Toki Tori 2+ on PlayStation 4. This puzzle adventure game was created by Two Tribes in 2013, with a backstory by yours truly, and I still love it dearly. It’s the kind of thing that you have to get, I think, and if you do, well, you totally do. For this version we went back in and made the backstory clearer, with telepathic frogs throwing cryptic messages the player’s way. It was a lot of fun to write, at the very least.

I also took it upon me, together with my favorite intern Matthijs, to create a new Toki Tori 2+ website. With a US download release on Tuesday, a EU download release on Wednesday and a EU disc release on Friday (a US disc is forthcoming), it was nice to see some renewed attention for the game.

On Friday I checked in with the gentlemen at Two Tribes, polishing the writing in the first three missions of our next game, RIVE, for the demo they’ll show at GDC next month. If you’re in San Francisco then, give them a shout-out. I’m sure they’d love to let you play.

What else happened last week? I…

• Edited a new Antegods blogpost, probably the last before GDC, as Codeglue will also be there with a demo.
• Waited patiently as my concept for a travel show about game development was delivered to the editors-in-chief at VPRO. Let’s see if anything comes from it.
• Met Daniël van der Meer at Das Mag and Walter after that, showing off my work on Geometry Girl and talking about possible futures.
• Set aside some time to sort through my Geometry Girl notes, sketching a rough outline for the coming year. 2016 is when we’ll finish things!
• Worked on a short story / mini-podcast for Ondercast.
• Drove to Kerkrade with Sander to meet Kenney Vleugels and his co-workers, which was good. Roadtrip!
• #hobbydevved with Hessel, on Wednesday night as usual, putting in some extra hours later in the week. I rewrote a lot of code based on Hessel’s advice, making it faster and easier to manage. Which is why it’s so nice to do this with a more experienced developer, even if he mostly just works on his own stuff. Unfortunately it didn’t fix the one nasty bug I’ve wrestled with for months now. Among the more visible tweaks, I changed all enemy colors again, improved the drilling enemies and made the bomb explosion diagonal.
• Watched the first episodes of the new Girls and Better Call Saul seasons. I like Saul but just love Girls; it’s so funny, patient and well-acted, among other hyperbole. I do think there’s a bit of a trap with longer-running shows, where just seeing your favorite characters again makes you happy, regardless of how well it’s done. Either way, I can’t wait for the rest of the season.

Average step count per day: 6.265
Average staircase count per day: 11
Average sleep per night: 7:00
Average weight: 85,4 kg