TYNK UPDATE #4 - DECEMBER 30th, 2023

Me and Tynk! are both very much alive!

Hi everyone! Since it's been one month short of a calendar year since I last posted a formal update (I'll get into why in a bit) I want to reassure any of you who may be tugging their collars in baited anxiety that Tynk! is still very much going strong!

The second chapter (without finished assets/music) is complete! After her successful(?) album review with Churla, Tynk takes a bus to go see her older brother's show. Getting into the outdoor venue without a ticket is harder than it looks, and as the sun sets it's as if something dark lurks in the stretching shadows...

Something odd about longterm game development is that you have to accept things being ugly for a long time. When I was making the demo I was able to comfortably detour to invest a LOT of time into asset building because there weren't that many assets to make and it was necessary to find the project's visual and narrative voice. Now that I'm developing with an eye to the years ahead I can't really afford to halt everything and get lost in making the perfect menu ui for weeks because other parts of the project are waiting on the boring grunt labor to be finished.

If this was a tertiary part of my life maybe I could just go at it full-whimsy in my free time and allow it to take as long as it needs, but frankly I do not want to be making this game for ten years! That's so much of my life spent in my bedroom staring at the same screen making the same thing. Plus, I'm already a different person than I was when I started this project in 2020 - it feels like the longer I wait the more I risk losing sight of that original vision and muddying the game's identity. I admit I'm digressing here but this year I've really been grappling with the fact that years of labor amount to hours of playtime.

Another side effect of going uglymode is that for months on end completed/near-completed portions of the game will have big stupid placeholder art. It's funny in a way, but also makes me personally less confident about sharing it online. I want to be better about sharing stuff as I go but I gotta admit unplugging from social media somewhat has been pretty great for me.

Where'd you go?

To be clear, I haven't actually left the internet or even stopped posting about Tynk! My tumblr blog remains my safe haven for little game gifs and waxing poetic about my characters, and I've been trying to use cohost to talk about gamedev stuff as well. I had already eased up on my twitter presence when Elon Musk began his twitter takeover, and being on the recieving end of weird unprompted hateful memes shortly thereafter was enough cause for me to peace out entirely.

(Please don't worry by the way it was extremely lazy hate. I'm fine lol. It was less that it "got to me" and more that it signaled an unwelcome culture shift, so I got my goat and retreated to the girlblogging swamp.)

For those of you who used the Tynk! discord as your source of news and were dismayed to see me put it in cryostasis, there is a fan-run discord built up out of the original's community! While I poke in from time to time I have to stress that I really don't pay much attention to what's going on in there, nor do I have any sort of moderation role. So, if you hop in please just exercise the classic internet safety protocol. Don't go giving your info out (including your real name!) I know I sound like an old hag I just don't want to give the impression I'm endorsing a space I have very little knowledge or control over.

To the LARPer backers who expressed interest in a shared space to talk about their characters and how they might relate I'll be sending out an email to all of you tonight! If you don't recieve one within 24 hours please feel free to email me. I'm sorry it's been so long!

Beastieball:

While I wish I didn't have to seek out freelance work I couldn't ask for a better project to be a part of than Beastieball. For those of you who aren't aware, for the past few years I've been working as a concept artist for the game (which you can learn about here), designing beasties of all sorts. Some of my best character designs to date are in this game, and I think people are really going to love it.

On top of concept art I also do most of the menu sprites for the game! It's hardly as glamorous as the wicked little monsters I design but I'm quite proud of my work on these;

Keep an ear out for more Beastieball stuff, there's so much I can't wait for people to see.

The Horizon:

There are some interesting things in the works in and around Tynk! right now, but I'm not sure how much I can/should say yet. I've been waiting for plans to solidify before I make any announcements but progress on that front has been routinely hindered by development slowing as I pick up more and more freelance to pay the bills.

I'm looking for ways to make working on this project my only major focus again, but that is very hard to do! In the meantime I'll still be plugging away at Tynk!. Development of the third chapter begins next year and I'm really looking forward to it.

Talk to you soon! ^_^