of the year 2024

This is probably my most personal game so far; every confession scene has "me" in it, in one form or another. It's also my most referential work, being inspired by the songs provided by ShuffleComp, Italo Calvino, and Disco Elysium's Shivers skill—and a lot of elements were taken directly from the His Dark Materials books.

Considering the time it occupies—a single night between Christmas and New Year's Day—I thought it would be appropriate to give it a little update then. A few more "confessions" were added on December 31, along with small fixes that I had been meaning to get to.

Really nice to be able to look back on this whole endeavor with a physical, handmade book. I kind of forgot how much collective effort went into this—over seven months and 40 contributors total! So, so grateful for my fellow project organizers and all their work 😊 Designing something so elaborate and medieval-inspired was a real treat.

And it was such a nice surprise when the Pentiment team responded to the book's release with incredible warmth and enthusiasm. Art begets art, and so on…!

My first foray into the versatile world of Decker, thanks to Andrew at Indiepocalypse. I'm so used to Twine and its established community—with hundreds of forum posts that cover every possible question and answer—that it was really daunting to try out a new tool where I had to contact the developer directly if I didn't know how to do something. Of course, John, Decker's creator, was very helpful and willing to walk me through how to do X and Y.

Decker's collage-like interface made me gravitate toward a more lighthearted story. I love the inherent grittiness of its visuals and compressed-as-hell audio—this, I think, released me from my typical need to tightly control every aspect of a personal project.

I started this month-long event when October was already half over, but I still had a nice time and managed to make eight new webpages.

Some of these are, like, sketches of games. Since most of my work is narrative-based, it was fun to be able to make something completely aimless and themeless—just a fun thing you can click around on. Also, this taught me that I can be more slapdash about HTML/CSS and code webpages on a whim—like this one!

The small gamemaking tool Downpour released earlier this year, and many good games have been made with it since. My favorite is undoubtedly this one, where you can make a cup of tea in ways I never thought possible.

What I was most surprised by when reading Patricia Highsmith's The Talented Mr. Ripley was how funny the titular character is; not in the sense that I was laughing at him, but it endeared me to the guy. He's melodramatic, he giggles to himself in the bath; he kills people with glass ashtrays and nice wine bottles. He crawls around to the patches of sunlight on his hotel floor to get a tan. And so on.

This is, happily, something that the 2024 Ripley miniseries seamlessly incorporates into its meticulous neo-noir world—though, this version of the character would probably find it impossible to giggle. Instead, his humor comes from his circumstances: how out of place he is when he first arrives in Italy, how he interacts with suspicious hotel clerks, how he keeps dropping and fumbling over a dead body as he tries to discreetly dispose of it.

Con artist jack-of-all-trades social chameleon who sucks and rules all at once—literary character of all time!

It's quick, easy, and has unique flavors that I usually don't taste on a regular basis. All of the vegetarian soup recipes on this site are worth trying out, but this Polish dill pickle soup is my favorite.

I love dressing up for Halloween. There's something thrilling about throwing together a new outfit and pretending to be someone else—with the exception of the holiday, it's not something you're supposed to do.

This year's last-minute pick was Matt Hooper, one of the guys from Jaws. Everyone in the Pacific Northwest already dresses like this, so it was a surefire choice. All the characters in this movie have great fits.

I've fallen in love with glass blocks. I guess there aren't too many glass block windows/walls in my area, which is why I never really paid attention to them until now. They're nice to look at.