Not good at having an online presence

     As usual, here is another late overdue blog update. The last few posts I made have been art and game design/development related which is really the whole point of this blog I guess. I mean that's why I started this whole thing to begin with. To talk about game design and share my works of "art". This post is kind of different though. I've been doing this indie game developer thing for a while now. Years actually. And I don't know what it is, but I feel like I haven't been doing it right. The main thing especially is communicating. Sure, I have this blog that I post updates on every once in a while to share what i'm working on, or talk about video game design or just have some kind of presence online. But, it just doesn't seem to be really doing it. After releasing "Potato Thriller" (which was my first commercial game) I felt like I had to really go back and pursue this indie developer journey more seriously. Learn more, improve myself, build up my skills to produce better quality and more polished games and so on. And I have been doing that. It feels like I have been working on improving my game developing skills forever now.

     I haven't released anything at all since Potato Thriller as of this post because I have been spending so much time reinventing my skill set. But it isn't enough. Going back to the communication thing, I feel like I have been terrible at communicating. I have a YouTube channel, but I barely ever use it and when I do, I just post some random shitty weird animation I pieced together. 90% of the content on my YouTube channel makes absolutely no sense at all. I have two twitter accounts, my main one which I occasionally use and my "productions" account which I made to exclusively just self promote my work, my games, art and brand or whatever. You know, like those company/studio accounts that the big boys have to self promote their brand. I thought, "i'm a game developer, I make stuff, I should make an account to promote my own brand!" - I barely ever even look at that account.

     I don't know. I'm just not good at having an online presence. Not good at doing PR stuff or whatever. You know what I mean. And I see so many other people who are just so naturally good at having an online presence. It's like woah! These people are so much cooler than me. I don't know how people do it but, it's impressive for sure. I applaud those who can pull it off. It's hard to have an online presence and communicate with people. Like, it takes some real talent and skill to manage. Social media is hard! I'm not an old man or anything. Age 25 as of this post. But I am just so naturally bad at social media. But then again, maybe that's because I spend all of my time dedicated to working on my game projects. But sometimes it just makes you so out of touch man! Game developing. It's a lonely and cold thing.

      I'm not really sure where i'm going with this blog post. It's kind of all over the place. Just a rant about myself. But I do want to reinvent myself. Or at least try to be better at the whole online presence thing. I really need to reinvent how I communicate, use twitter, YouTube this blog. YouTube especially, that's a big one. It definitely is the best and most efficient way to share, get info out and communicate with your audience. I mean, I don't even have a freaking comments section on my blog. I get daily page views and visits but I don't know what people are saying. I can't interact with anyone on here. I mean I can. I can just add comments, but it's just different from a comments section on YouTube. So I really want to get into YouTube and start using that as my main platform of communicating, sharing updates and rants and whatever. And I know, I think I have said "I want to get into YouTube" like a hundred times on this blog throughout the years and never really follow through. I guess blogging is just easier and quicker than filming a video, editing and uploading. But I want to do it! I might go back and clean up my current YouTube channel or just start a new one entirely to have a fresh start. I would still post updates here on the blog as well of course.

     Anyway, sorry for the lengthy post that kept jumping around. Kind of confusing rant I suppose. It's different from what I normally talk about here on the blog. I'm not sure if this was even really worth posting. But I already typed it, so why not.

     As for new projects, as mentioned many times already in previous posts, I am working on multiple new game projects and I still believe that 2018 is going to be a great year. I have so much new content I want to get out there and my new games are a major step up from anything else I have ever developed. I'm excited to continue creating games and sharing them. My next game will probably be announced and have an official Steam store game page within the coming weeks. I'll definitely keep you guys posted!

Forest Soup now available on Kongregate

     Hello again everyone!
As you know I released my game "Forest Soup" a couple days ago on Halloween for Windows, Mac and Linux. Since the Unity game engine is so good at deploying games across multiple platforms, I decided to also release a webplayer version of "Forest Soup". I have put the game up on Kongregate and now "Forest Soup" can be played directly in your web browser. No download required. This is good for anyone who has been wanting to play the game but for some reason could not download it.

You can play Forest Soup on kongregate HERE

There is a few things I want to say though. I still recommend downloading the game for your target platform (Windows, Mac, Linux) instead of playing the kongregate version. I say this because those versions have slightly better quality and a few other differences like the main menu and other small things. I had to make changes to the webplayer version because kongregate only allows 20mb max file size for game uploads and Forest Soup was around 30mb. So I had to reduce the graphics a bit and make a couple of changes in order to reduce the size of the game down to 19.9mb. It is still the same game as the downloadable versions and nothing major or important was changed or taken out but you will notice a few small differences in the webplayer version I have on kongregate such as graphics and menus, etc. Things I already mentioned.

So there you go. "Forest Soup" really is available for everyone now. Its now on Windows, Mac, Linux and webplayer. I guess I can say this is my first real multiplatform game. :)

Whats next?
Now I am truly done with Forest Soup. What I mean by that is, this is my final post/update about this game. Forest Soup has been my project for the past month. I finished it. I released it. I went back and released an updated version and now I am releasing it on webplayer. It has been really fun and I think my best game project yet. So now I guess its time to just let this game exists online on its own and time for me to move onto my next game ideas and projects. I thank you all for checking out "Forest Soup" and stay tuned for my future games.

see you later. :)