I haven't posted in a while - I find it quite hard to talk about things as I am making them. Partly because I fear that I may jinx away my motivation, but mostly due finding it hard to do both at the same time.

Quite a bit of things have happened in the past few months and I will try to briefly touch upon them, the first of which being...

1. BLON

I got an unexpected invitation to showcase Strange Aeons at BLON, an animation festival in Klaipeda. This year they partnered with A MAZE to bring prize winning art games from past competitions in Berlin. And the coolest thing is Strange Aeons was showcased alongside the exhibition.

I also gave a talk about how I make games (including postmortems for Desert of Vice and Ladderhead, my first two games).

The festival took place on 8-11 September. A lot of strangers played the demo and I used this opportunity as playtesting. I got feedback, saw how people interact with the game unattended and when I got back home I knew what improvements I had to make.

I have this short vlog about my experience there on TikTok.

2. Summer Update

During the first half of this year I made relatively few changes to the demo and it was so because I was making the second half of Strange Aeons - the land of the living. It's a big stylistic and gameplay departure from the first half of the game, but for now I will keep it a secret.

In the latest updates I have fixed all of the major bugs and implemented one really big improvement - you can now see the text you say.

3. VR

Now some (not so) bad news.

I am removing VR support for now, but it will be re-added to the game after release with an update.

While I developed initial VR support for Strange Aeons last Summer, now the scope of the game has extended and new sections of the game need new VR integration. As it is not a vital feature, my current plan is to initially release the game without VR. This would make it easier for me to support the game (that is, fix bugs) in the first weeks after launch.

Bringing VR back with an update is a big priority for me!

4. Release

The good news? Strange Aeons is pretty much completed. It is possible to play the game from beginning to end (not in the demo though 😶‍🌫️).

I think it turned out great. It's around 1-2h long (the length of a feature film) and I expect to release it somewhere between November 2022 - January 2023.