Ryan Bloom

Upcoming GOTY Podcast (I need something from you!)

So I guess I'll put together a Game of the Year podcast where I talk wrap up my game playing habits for this year. This will also be a good venue to talk about everything from 2014, too -- I wrote an entire script for that GOTY video, recorded all this footage, but was ultimately too busy to do anything with it.

Anyway! Since I didn't actually finish many games this year, I figured I could do something special with you guys.

If there was a game that you want me to tal...

Patreon Monthly Update: December 2015

Happy holidays, supporters! I didn't do much stuff that was outwardly facing last month, but rest assured, there are rumblings going on behind the scenes for things. Mostly just, uh, working and typical holiday rush stuff, but, that probably counts. Probably.

New videos did go up on the channel, though, including a promo for shirts in my RedBubble store. I used to get pretty bummed out about nobody buying anyth...

November 2015 patron supported

Thank you so much for the support this month!

Patreon Monthly Update: November 2015

Greetings, my Patrons! My default emotion for these is usually one of apology, so it legitimately caught me off guard that I actually had a fairly eventful October! Seven new videos went up on the channel, which is significantly higher than my output has been all year!

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLBjPEqdagcfbhwwmFLRyxgiyHVNGv5v4S

Normally I would've...

October 2015 Patreon supported

Thank you so much for the support this month!

Patreon Monthly Update: October 2015

Greetings, Patrons! This is going to be a long one.

So, last month, I said I was going to shoot for September 9th for my second Sonic Boom video, a deadline I very clearly missed. But there's a reason for that!

As I was in the process of creating artwork for the video, I noticed Jontron retweeted that Did You Know Gaming was looking to hire more editors. Well, gosh, I'm an editor, right? I know my way around Sony Vegas!

So, even though I was already past my September 9th deadline a...

September 2015 Patreon supported

Thank you so much for the support this month!

Upcoming Super Mario Maker Video

Howdy, Patrons! I realized I said I'd get this Sonic Boom video out on September 9th, and it's way later than that! There's a reason, but I'll get in to that in a few days for the Patreon update thingy. I'm gonna shoot to have the video done by Saturday at the absolute latest. ANYWAY

Before Halloween gets here I want to do a showcase of my Super Mario Maker levels, and I'm finally involving y'all in this. Answer this poll!

h...

Patreon Monthly Update: September 2015

Greetings Patrons! Another month, another list of broken promises. Er.

Good news, though! In spite of what might appear as inactivity to some of you, I've actually started feeling creative again. It would seem after the last four or five months ran me absolutely ragged I have finally recharged my batteries at least somewhat.

In the spirit of that, I started a Google Doc to more easily help me keep track of all the things I've neglected in the mad dash my life has become. Never undere...

August 2015 Patreon supported

Thank you so much for the support this month!

Patreon Monthly Update: August 2015

Greetings, Patrons! Last month I made some promises about things I intended to do in July. Of course, what I failed to realize at the time, was that it was like... July 11th that I wrote that? So when I say "last month," what I really mean is "a little over two weeks ago."

There really wasn't a ton of time to get much done in July once I got home. Especially when you consider that my graduation is on August 8th, so I spent the majority of July crunching really hard on math. Se...

July 2015 Patreon supported

Thank you so much for the support this month!

Sonic Forever (2015 Alpha Build)

So just to bring everybody up to speed that may not remember: So two or three years ago I released a demo of this thing I am/was calling "Sonic Forever." The catch: It was an April Fools joke to riff on the original Sonic 2 HD demo, where a member of Sonic Retro burned a bunch of bridges with the community. Upon booting my demo up, you would be met with a screen telling you the demo could not be played. If you knew the secret code you could get the game to boot up, however.

Somebody on Tumblr ...

Castlevania: Ballad of Autumn (Demo + Final(?) Build)

Here is one zip file containing two builds of Castlevania: Ballad of Autumn.

Castlevania_Ballad-of-Autumn_2008_Demo.zip - The demo build I posted online in 2008. It automatically boots in to full screen and was designed for 4:3. Sorry! There's a video for this over here.

Castlevania_Ballad-of-Autumn_2015_Alpha.zip - The most recent build I've been fiddling with on and off...

Patreon Monthly Update: July 2015

Sorry this is a bit belated, I obviously have a good excuse for it taking so long.

So what's been going on in the last month? Honestly, not a whole lot! A week of (absolutely grueling) Jury Duty and the impending trip to Nevada sort of sucked the creativity right out of most...

June 2015 Patreon supported

Thank you so much for the support this month!

Patreon Monthly Update: June ($5 Patrons, You Have New Toys!)

The old $15 tier is going away. Everything that was $15 (all my games) are getting pushed down to the $5 tier.

So, if you pledged at the $5 level, check the creations tab! The bulk of my Patreon posts from the last few months were actually in that tier, so there's like, a dozen or more things of varying levels of quality to goof around with. 

I decided to change things up like this because I'd bro...

May 2015 Patreon supported

Thank you so much for the support this month!

Shadow of Chaos (Contest Levels)

Here's the scattershot final "build" of Shadow of Chaos, a Sonic fangame I once thought was a good idea. As the story goes, Shadow the Hedgehog had just been unveiled in 2005, and I started playing around with Sonic Battle sprites. The end result was a game engine where you played as Shadow, but no levels. And I didn't want to make any. So I held a level design contest, and that got me a bunch of levels of varying quality. I was going to stitch them all together in to something coherent, but tha...

Worlds Level Editor (v0.1 Alpha)

 This is obviously super early. Still took three weeks of work at least  to get to this point, however.   

WHAT WORKS: 

- Dynamic window sizing and GUI positioning 

- Placing objects. (Right click to place more than one.) 

- Moving objects (Cannot be holding an object to move another one, FYI) 

- Snapping to a grid works

- Grid size can be modified or disabled from the "Preferences"  pull-down menu.&nbs...

Patreon Monthly Update: May 2015 (Boss Fight Books Submission)

Given that it's only been maybe a week or two since the last update, there's not much new to report on currently. My replacement HDD is on its way home, and things are in motion with regards to my job training/education stuff. May is going to be a busy month and stress is already kind of high. I just bit the bullet and sent off my Boss Fight Books submission. Included with this post is a PDF file for one of the two samples I wrote and included. This is the more detailed of the two. Fingers cross...

April 2015 Patreon supported

Thank you so much for the support this month!

The Patreon Pilot Podcast (4-25-2015)

With the sloppiest logo you can think of (click it to listen/download), here’s something tentatively called “The Patreon Pilot Podcast!” Obviously, music’s temp, name’s temp, lots of things are temp. A Tumblr Q&A Podcast is currently up at as $250 goal on my Patreon, and we’re obviously a long way from hitting $250. As a bit of an incentive, I decided to provide a taste of things that could be. Well, sort of; this being a pilot and all, future episodes will probably change quite ...

Movin' and Shakin'

It's been a bit quiet around these parts, so I figure I should clue all of you in as to what's been going on since February. In fact, maybe monthly updates are in order? For starters! I have been enrolled in a job training program. I've been doing a bit of volunteer work at a local thrift store, down in the sorting room. As part of that job training program I'll be going through some educational stuff soon-ish. I've also got two weddings coming up in short order, so there's been a bit of prep fo...

March 2015 Patreon supported

Thank you so much for the support this month!

February 2015 Patreon supported

Thank you so much for the support this month!

BLTN: Sonic Boom Rise of Lyric

And here we are: present day. I just finished this Rise of Lyric video review TODAY. Enjoy. I'm going to go collapse, now.

BLTN: Mario Kart 8

Given I did a video review for Sonic & Sega All-Stars Racing that was just an excuse to complain about Mario Kart, I felt like I owed it to the series to do a video review on it one day. It just so happens to be that Mario Kart 8 is REALLY, REALLY GOOD. Like, the best Mario Kart's ever been. I just wish there was a little more to it (as I say in the video). Since I dove right in to reviewing this after finishing DKC, there was actually nothing posted on my Youtube channel at all from May to ...

BLTN: Donkey Kong Country Tropical Freeze

It's here that BLTN "Season 2" starts in earnest. I was making a conscious effort to define the show's "visual style" more; I created a new intro, with all kinds of custom assets and such. This also began the trend of me getting way backed up on reviews and such. I ended up basically doing these three 2014 video reviews almost back-to-back because they took so long to produce. I had maybe a week or two "off" between each before it was time to dive in to the next one. I really need a faster way t...

BLTN: Game of the Year 2013

And its here that BLTN Video Reviews has kicked back in to full swing again. Directly after finishing the Lost World review, I dove right in to doing a GOTY video. Still on the fence about doing a GOTY 2014 video.