Update from 8-12-2025-8-17-2025

Good morning/afternoon friends! 

I hope everyone is having a great start to the week! If not, don’t worry, tomorrow is a new day filled with opportunity, possibilities and adventure! Together we will turn this week around! First, onto the updates! 

While I’m still not fully recovered, I am almost back to full health this week! Last week was a bit slow since I was building up momentum again on projects and chores (ick, chores). Sadly, I don’t have much to show for this week’s update artistically, as I actually worked more on my book and my hidden object game. Since I finished one of my monthly goals, creating a rough first edition of my map for my fantasy book, I started doing research on cultures in fantasy books. I have also decided to try and gather a lot of inspiration from Scotland history and Scotland Gaelic since I am really drawn to them. The research is not only fascinating to learn but has been really giving me ideas and things to mull over. Currently, I keep physical copies of my notes and am starting to keep a Google Drive folder. I also am using Scrivener for my Ipad to take my notes in a more condensed form. (I purchased it last week and am still learning the ropes. It has a bit of a learning curve.) Since I am going on vacation soon, I want to get everything on Google Docs/Google Drive and Scrivener so I can continue to easily work on my projects without lugging around my weight in paper (paper gets SO heavy, SO fast haha) on the trip. I am also working towards creating a rough PDF of a lot of basic notes on my book that I will send to some friends to get feedback. I want to make sure the world I’m building makes sense. There will be a LOT of things going on in this book so doing research, keeping organized and getting feedback throughout the book’s development will be essential! 

Now onto my hidden object game update. So, we almost have a room grayboxed along with a few puzzles done for the room. I need to get all the item’s descriptions that pop up when you click them, done next along with a minimalistic game doc. I’m hoping by the end of the month, I can show you guys a small GIF of the room. Although, I have to say, I am struggling with the concept of an “ugly” prototype. Now don’t get me wrong, I agree with the method of making the prototype rough, so you focus on mechanics, feel, testing etc. But, I still want to spend so much time making it pretty (I know, I know, it’s a bad habit.) But, I know that it would only slow down our progress. I want to increase our progress, efficiency and fine tune our production pipeline in general. I am continuing to do research and am implementing new things to try. We still have a long way to go! 

I was unable to work on my Alice game or Solo journaling game but I hope to make some progress on that this week. I’m really excited to really get the ball rolling and make progress on all my projects! 

How did your projects go last week? I’d love to hear your progress in the comments below! 🙂 

Good luck with your week and I’ll see you guys again on 8/25/2025! 

Squeaky