Saturday Update!

The weekend has come again, and I bring you updates!

Last week was quite productive. I managed to work through an entire week without having a major meltdown 😂

I won't lie or sugarcoat though, I am still struggling with depression and anxiety. My family member's health and the shadow of fascism stretching up from the south is a needle in the back of my head. My coping mechanism of independence screams at me to fix and control situations I am powerless to change. I know I need to sit in the discomfort and allow it to exist in me without twisting myself out of shape, but hey- easier said than done sometimes right?

I think the approaching release of my game is scaring me too. It's always scary around this time. I don't enjoy releasing games 😅 [ but I absolutely will do it anyway, don't worry about that ]

You'd think by now that I would simply be used to publishing this kind of material, but that isn't the case. It's just as vulnerable and terrifying as it always was. People are going to actually read that awful thing I wrote? See that horrible picture I drew? WITH THE PENIS? 🤣

And of course there's the haters. I know I shouldn't worry about them either, but I am and always have been sensitive to rejection. C'est la vie. That fear has changed shape a little bit since I've figured out more about them. It's surprisingly not people who take issue with taboo nature of my content. Those people exists I'm sure, but they usually just avoid the content or at best hit me with a little drive-by comment. The real problem is people who like my work and cope with shame by scapegoating the author. Shame about liking this type of thing, or pirating it, or whatever. You'd be shocked at how much vitriol people can conjure to avoid judgement by themselves or others. Or maybe you wouldn't, the cruelty of cowardice is kind of everywhere you look these days.

Hey! That's depressing! Sorry!

---------------------------------

Okay, let's switch gears to what I actually accomplished. I finished the audio coding!

The entire game is now soundscaped. I've gone through the gameplay start-to-finish and gotten the loops and sound effects in. I've also tidied up the sounds and song beginnings to get the death screen animations working nicely.

I've made some VERY minor edits to the death song [ p much just shuffling a few background noises to get them working better ], I tried making a new bar/intro song but uhhhhhhhhh that attempt didn't work out. I'll try again next week one more time. If I can't do anything better than what I have, I will just have to live with it.

I did manage to make a new main menu song though! And I'm happy with it! 🎉 It wasn't exactly 'retrowave' like I was planning but art just goes where it wants to sometimes. I'll take what I can get! [ That song is attached to the bottom of the post ]

I don't think I'm gonna do another demonstration video [ sorry! ] The last one was on tiktok within 15 minutes of my last update and while I'm fully aware of leaks and not really bothered by them, I still need to consider their impact. Right now I think more hype isn't a good idea. Hype is a double-edged sword and people will have access to the full game soon enough.

The best thing I can do is maintain my health and sanity so I can finish the last crucial steps before release.

Next week I'll take one last crack at getting a bar loop I don't hate, and then I'm gonna move on to stuff like redrawing the main menu, getting a warning screen put together, and building a music room for the game.

---------------------------------

The name of the game is hanging in there! We got this! See you next week!