A very watchable game

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

Last week, the gentlemen at Two Tribes managed to submit the PlayStation 4 version of our shooter/platformer RIVE to Sony. I was there on Monday to get some loose text ends fixed. The next few weeks will be spent finetuning the Steam version, as both platform launches are scheduled for September 13th, and of course we’ll be promoting the game.

As part of that I planned a trip to Cologne for Gamescom (which takes place this week and includes a small RIVE presence; I will be manning the stand for a few days). As a sort of preview of that I watched a bunch of people playing the game’s preview build on YouTube. It turns out to be a very watchable game, and of course it was nice to gauge people’s reactions, especially because they generally seem favorable.

I made a point of getting back into writing last week, making good progress on the Geometry Girl story and finishing a new Radio Laika episode that I’ll be recording and editing next week. I also created a Google Form for testers of the current Geometry Girl app prototype, and got together with Maurice at Codeglue to reality-check the app’s development schedule for the next couple of months.

What else?

• As I was at Codeglue anyway, I met up with the Antegods team for our monthly session. Niels, Wytze and Tom showed the game, Rik let us listen to the first version of the theme song, and I talked through the script for the comic I’ve been working on.

• As I was in Rotterdam anyway, I got together with Hanne Marckmann who is working on a very interesting Arnon Grunberg letter writing bot game, funded by the Dutch Foundation for Literature.

• On Thursday I attended a Philips Research workshop on emotion sensing in gaming, which was interesting, but I can’t say much else about.

• I played No Man’s Sky, which confirmed my fears (“Dreams about games so wonderful, they almost can’t be true.”), although I liked playing it enough to keep going for a while. I thought it was interesting how a limitless game (with nearly infinite planets, lifeforms and spaceships) turns out to be all about limits (of your inventory and ability to travel). As I mused to a friend, it feels like Minecraft for dads who like science fiction… which I guess is OK even if it’s not the miracle many were expecting.

• As our kids were away during the weekend, my wife and I went to see three movies we’d been looking forward to, Elle, The Red Turtle and Café Society, all of which I liked. Only The Red Turtle dissappointed somewhat compared to my high expectations.

Average step count per day: 6.807
Average staircase count per day: 9
Average sleep per night: 8:00
Average weight: 87,6