It’s been a hot minute.
I’ve sat down to write a new post several times over the past… *checks date of last full post* …YEAR?? It’s just not really happened, apart from a half-post I managed to crack out 5 months ago which essentially said “I’m still alive and will post properly soon!” And, to be honest, so much has happened since June 2021 in terms of the stuff I usually talk about here, that it’d be way too time-consuming to remember it, let alone write about it. So, this one will be the second half to the last half-post, but with slightly more productive news. Let’s get into it:
WHERE I’VE BEEN? (JUNE 2021 – FEBRUARY 2022)
Here.
Mostly.
If you’ve read my last few posts, you’re aware to some degree that I started studying a Master’s in Games Enterprise in 2019. This was a year-long course that I opted to study part-time over the span of 2 years instead. And with that little pandemic situation we recently faced, this ended up taking almost another year to complete, due to several delays, deadline extensions, other stuff in between. It worked out well for me in the end because, as you may also recall, 2020 was not the best year for me and, the latter half of it, as well as the majority of 2021 feel like creative sinkholes when I look back on them.
I had an entire final project to complete and I spent the entirety of the 4 months I had to do it, not doing it. I was sure I’d fail, and would have to resit, and so in my head, I’d accepted defeat and continued to not do it. I’ve experienced this before at the end of my Bachelor’s degree in 2014/15, which I’d fallen out of love with quickly, and coupled with other stuff I was dealing with, left me in a deep pit that I’d dug for myself. But I was quite content stewing in it, and therein lay the problem.
However, while that first experience absolutely tanked my final year of the BA course, things went the other way, by the sheer will of the gods, with my MA – I received a 6 month extension.
When the project first began, I was in a group of 4, and we had some ideas for a Viking rail-shooter game which was melee-focused. Picture Kratos in House of the Dead, equipped with only an axe to fight off the hordes of the dead. I did some work for this, but general team morale was low, and each of us had stuff going on, and so nothing got done for months.
Due to, I guess, “covid”, the University was granting extensions left and right. By the time the original deadline rolled around, we had nothing to show, nothing to submit, and while I was well up for deferring to 2022 and doing something by myself, the sound of an extension sounded very tasty – I was pretty done with the course and just wanted the final stretch over with. And so, we discussed it as a team, and three of us went for the extension, with the fourth deferring. One of the guys pushed on with the Viking game (and actually ended up completing a version of it), but the other dude and I didn’t join. Instead, I came up with some ideas by myself and did my project entirely as a solo submission.
I adapted the idea to fit into Meridian Six, as that was something I still found exciting – there were times I resented the Uni project, because I just wanted to make comics, but whenever I did anything creative that wasn’t for the Viking game, I was overcome with guilt, and it demotivated me even more. It really was a spiral. But now, I was able to channel the ideas I wanted to work on into the project I had to work on. Bishop Chapter was the outcome of this!
I’ve written extensively about this project, and so I’ll spare myself the grind of explaining it again for the bajillionth time, but in summary, it’s a Myst-style first-person puzzle game, based heavily on Ancient Egyptian mythology, with themes of death sprinkled throughout. The aim was to explore the world, solve puzzles, and find a way to open the map’s huge doors in order to escape. I did a metric shit-ton of research into each puzzle and this game became my life for a few months. Apart from my day-job, and sleeping (which I barely did due to work and, well, work), all of my time was spent making Bishop Chapter. There’s an entire YouTube channel documenting its development from start to finish, as well as a run-down of each puzzle. I also commentate each one, and even go into the complex coding and systems behind the mechanics – it’s pretty cool. I had a lot of fun.
(NOTE: I found out recently that I was awarded a 1st for this project, and will be posting the post-mortem I submitted for it in a separate post just after this one.)
WHERE I’VE BEEN? (MARCH 2022 – PRESENT)
I got my first PlayStation 5 game in November 2020, and over the following year or so, I amassed perhaps 4 or 5 others. The one issue I had was not owning a PS5… That changed in December 2022 – through sheer luck of course, as consoles are still almost impossible to get even now – but nonetheless, my day had come…
Except…
I had my final project extended, and I was knee-deep in Bishop Chapter. To play my PS5 then, when I had so much work to do, and so many games to catch up on, would have been a death sentence for my MA, and for real this time. I decided that the PS5 would be my reward when the game was done, and the project was submitted – and not one minute sooner.
People doubted I could stick to it.
People thought I’d cave.
People thought I was lying when I kept insisting I hadn’t played anything on it yet.
To be honest, I’m kind of insulted they doubted me so fiercely.
But apart from updating the software, installing my games and updating those, not a single thing was played on that console until my work was done. Suck it, haters!
But, of course, with my newfound freedom and ability to get back to working on whatever the hell I wanted, guilt-free, there I was with an entire backlog of games. I also decided to switch back to working full-time at my day job, and so I had even less free time than I did during the project. Guess that’s just how it goes.
But I made another deal with myself – I’d put off Meridian Six just a little longer, and I’d reward myself for all the work I put into Bishop Chapter, by letting myself play games guilt-free.
Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart was the first one, and always was going to be the first one – I love the R&C series. I grew up with it. It inspires a great deal of my creative fibres and I imagine my work is laced with its influence. After the bump in the road that was the 2016 “re-imagining” of the original game, I was ready to dive back into the series’ main narrative and finally meet those damn lombaxes! However, as much as I loved Rift Apart, it still ended up being a huge tease. Maybe the next game will be the one? Or the one after that?
After blazing through that and netting the platinum trophy, I moved onto Spider-Man: Miles Morales (it was a toss-up between that and Assassins’ Creed: Valhalla so I opted for the shorter of the two so as to speed up the switch from one game to the other) but the main problem I encountered there was that Elden Ring was out.
And there goes another month, lost to the ages. I had an absolute blast playing Elden Ring, and I ended up swiping the platinum for that too after, like, 250 hours of gameplay. What a rollercoaster that was. It warrants an entire post of its own, so, in case that’s something I end up doing, let me just say I loved it.
I didn’t go back to Miles Morales. I didn’t do anything further to AC: Valhalla than just install it. I recently got Evil Dead: The Game, but I’ve only played one match on it so far…
The guilt is back.
It’s been 3 months since I gained my freedom from the education system. I’ve watched movies, TV shows, played games. And I still have a few I want to get through – AC: Valhalla, Death Stranding: Director’s Cut, Evil Dead, some older PS4 games that have been sitting in my backlog, including Cyberpunk 2077 – which is apparently playable now. I was waiting all this time to get a PS5 because it could apparently actually run on that console, but now I hear it’s even less broken, so I do need to give it another go…
Maybe if I knuckle down for a while and do some comic stuff I can justify another guilt-free month or two for games?
We’ll see what happens. For now, I’ve just been drawing.
And that brings me to the main event:
WHAT’S GOING ON?
Well, things are moving again.
I’ve continued working on Cold Reset after writing a new intro to the next chapter that I’m really excited about drawing, and so that’s flowing. I recently wrapped up drawing the cover art for the next chapter too, which I’ll happily show to you, exclusively here, right now:
Chapter 3 was going to be super-long and include everything from what is now Chapter 4, however, I’ve decided to split them as it’s been so long since I left Chapter 3 on that cliffhanger. It feels like a nice place to cut it off, and to start back up fresh with a new cover. It also lets me add in a nifty little semi-recap/semi-expositiony sequence without feeling like it’s interrupting the flow.
I’ve also drawn up some character posters for the date announcement of Cold Reset‘s return, but I’ll post those when I know the date myself!
I have had some big plans for a while to make Meridian Six regular, and have it come out to a schedule – I think I’ve discussed this in recent posts – and I still intend to do that, but I think the one I have set up right now is a little too intense for me to meet. So I’ll give myself a break, move things around, and hopefully find something I can feasibly meet in order to prevent any more long hiatuses (hiatus’? hiates?) in the future.
I’m also seriously considering getting tables at conventions going forward – I want to print a bunch of comics, design a bunch of merch, and just throw myself into it. But that may be a 2023 thing. Watch this space…
I also want to travel for a while. I’ve been cooped up here in Wales for too long and I need a change of pace. I’ve had my eye on a solo Japan trip for a while. All I need to do is plan a detailed itinerary for it and organise what the hell I have to do when I get there. So, you know, just everything. But I am super keen on doing it while I’m in this little inbetweeny limbo place where I’ve just finished a Master’s, I only have a little hospitality day job, and whatever direction my career will eventually go, it hasn’t gone there yet. Now is the best time to do this Japan thing.
Other destinations I want to see are Stockholm and Vancouver, and, to be honest, of the three places, I’m quite happy to visit them in any order. So, I guess, again, watch this space…
I’m still in two bands, just about. One is on an indefinite hiatus, but we are looking to do stuff soon, and the other is just taking things slow – we have a couple of things lined up and at least one gig in the next month or two, so it’s just a case of getting back into the swing of things, now that we, y’know, can.
I got comfy in lockdown, and life has returned with a bang. I’m quite aware that I’m out of practice – I’m very tired all the time, I find the nights fly by, and I feel that I have way more hopes than solid plans.
But who cares? Things will work out.
I trust myself to get there.
SONG OF THE MONTH.
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