december update + a request (by 12/7)!

hello! it's the end of the year. a lot has happened & to be honest 2021 was not very good for me at times, so i'm hoping 2022 will better. i'm going to be doing a lot of background stuff this month, some of which i can't talk about in detail here just yet, but i hope you will be excited for it! (i am itching to talk about it all though!)

now, my plans for the month:

• trying to organise a small game-related thing - i don't know if it'll actually happen yet, but i want it to. i've been thinking a lot about how hard it is for devs on itch to actually get people to donate for pwyw stuff so i've been thinking about ways to make game dev more sustainable for more people, especially since i know i am probably one of the devs on itch that is already making 'more' on their pwyw games than most (but 'more' in quotation marks because seriously, gosh, it's not a lot)
• my naninovel game! (for some reason my test switch build does not include translations properly - i found this out mid-november but still haven't been able to figure out what the issue is. naninovel support told me it was a unity issue so i've been investigating over there, but unless i can figure out the translation issue i can't work on the game more, because if i can't release the game in multiple languages it's going to cause me issues in the future! all the files for translation are in the resources folder and i'm told this means they should be included in the build by default, and they are on pc! but for some reason they aren't on switch and i don't understand why, ahhhh.) 
• A YEAR OF SPRINGS console prep! i was working on this for the past couple of months as well but i couldn't say anything until now (& i didn't even know the release date would be 12/10 until the night of 11/30... it's been very busy). i'm very excited to have this out on console because if i'm not wrong i don't think any other game includes ace/aro experiences in a similar way o: i hope there'll be many more in the future though! honestly i was nervous about whether this game could even happen on consoles because while i personally don't think any of the content should be particularly 'controversial', it definitely would be considered so (& spring leaves no flowers ups the age rating just because it talks about things related to sexual attraction, even though it never shows anything explicitly). i'm glad to have a release date now but i'll be nervous until the game actually comes out, i think.
• december postcard for the new year! 
• a tiny game if i have the energy, which is where my request comes in...

>>> REQUEST IS HERE! PLEASE LOOK <<<

i'm thinking about making a game about leaving things behind & saying farewell to them. these can be actual things (old books you've out grown) or places (a workplace you left) or people (a friend you don't talk to any more) or memories (a bad event you have moved past) or anything of the kind. 

if there is anything you would like to say farewell to & have it included in this game, you can fill out this form!

https://forms.gle/yqYckWSCA2jZKf9T8 

i can't guarantee that i can include everyone (or that i will even finish this game) but if there is anything you would like to leave behind, 

>>> THIS FORM IS ONLY AVAILABLE UNTIL DEC 7! <<<

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now, last month i was very stressed over quite a number of different things. (the rest of this post will go into some personal stuff, so feel free to skip out now if you don't want to read it!) in particular, i had the opportunity to speak to a local indie game community that reached out to me asking if i'd be interested in doing a queer game event, so i went to talk to them since i didn't want to do an event like this unless i knew the space was actually welcoming to queer people. this didn't turn out well & i think unfortunately the queer game event won't happen, at least not with me involved, but it really just reminded me about how little support there is for queer devs & devs that make games that are not considered 'mainstream'. i was really hoping for this to be an opportunity to help highlight some devs i know here that normally don't get included when people talk about 'indie' games, but it didn't pan out. the organiser was really dismissive too, complaining that if people really wanted to do events they could just go out & hold them themselves, without even considering that a lot of marginalised creators really don't have the resources to do so, which is why it would mean so much to a lot of us to have the support from a larger group which DOES have the resources. 

i'm already very fortunate because i have the energy & money & time to take the train all the way to tokyo on a weekday & talk to people who are in a position to help (even if they didn't in the end) but i'm going to keep thinking about whether there's anything i can do to help support other devs who don't have the same opportunities. this experience has only made me more determined to try to do more stuff though - hence the small game-related thing. i'm working with somebody else & we're still talking details but i'm hoping i'll be able to have good news to share with you all in the future.

anyway, i hope 2022 will be a better year!