Falling Devlog

2025/3/21

At 2:01 PM, in response to a comment of Galaga vs Tetris, I said This gives me an absurd idea.

At about 8:30, I start streaming dev work, beginning the cart. All progress is lost around 9:00. After letting my computer recover, I work on the game until 3:00 AM.

2025/3/22

I wake up at around 7:00 AM. Couldn't possibly get back to sleep. Need to work on game. At 7:30, I share a gif of the game running. It's very close to the final form, but unpolished (it's got no bag and you can tell).

At 2:00 PM exactly, I have uploaded the files to the relevant places and posted about it.

So, let me talk about this. Like, about this super short process. I very much harnessed the spirit of a game jam here. Years of making games like this put me in that kind of mindset about it, with it being a small game. But not being in any way tied to a game jam gave me complete freedom.

And I know, creative restrictions are good, but also, I'm using Picotron. I have my restrictions. Sure, it took almost exactly 24 hours, but it could have taken 48 or 35 or who knows and I would have posted it when I was satisfied. No corners cut. No compromises. Just my vision, as I intended.

And like, there's so much that I really loved doing, like the scoring and fairy movement and sound design, that easily could have been cut if I was trying to meet a deadline.

Also, this game kinda lives in my head as a shmup but idk how to integrate that linguistically into it being blocks that you're dodging (and also controlling). A synergistic puzzle shmup? Idk, I like it. I feel like I keep reassuring myself it's good by saying I like it or it's fun, but really, what matters is I made it and I enjoyed making it.

2025/3/23

Late on the 22nd, I released falling sideways. That's what it was supposed to be from the start, tate mode. But then, the 23rd was integrating tate mode into the main game. And it worked. You could rotate freely.

2025/3/24

Jokes were made about integrating an hourglass mechanic by Washburnello on Discord due to the ability to rotate. I spent all day on that (special mode). And the start of cat mode (all the visual art meow).

2025/3/25

It’s 5:17 PM now but I haven’t worked since about 3:00 PM. Uh, I made two more songs and made a version of the sfx file that replaces all the instruments with meows. So, cat mode done. Integrating the options menu, making notifications when you unlock stuff, making unlocking and saving and loading all work and yeah, tested it out, unlocked everything, quashed all bugs but one (I think it’s funny and cool), and posted it. Doing a little quiet update. Not posting about it until later. But if someone stumbles on it, they’ll get all the goodies except art maybe.

It’s 9:08. Fixed another bug and uh hyper mode? Not fully implemented but uh yeah, hyper mode. It’s fun. I keep doing wild stuff and playing it and being like This is great.

It’s 12:36. There’s bugs. A bunch of bugs. I got a ridiculous high score.

2025/3/26

It’s 10:12 PM. I put out an update and promoted it at 1 PM when I felt it was complete. Less than an hour later, on explaining I considered a “no fairy” mode but decided against it, I realized what I must do. More fairy. Snake mode. So, uh, yeah, lots of work.

But it’s all working out great. I got real positive feedback on the new update. People crave the fun little experiences. So much cool stuff I did with this game mechanically and cat mode is the big hit and it’s the only purely cosmetic mode.

Oh, so, where I’m at now with snake mode is um, the art is done, including the cat snake fairy (God, I love that that happened). Most of the coding is done. A little technical stuff left and mostly just displaying the snake.

2025/3/27

It’s 4:27 AM. Going to bed now. Snake mode is almost done.

It’s 9:36 PM and version 1.4 is posted. I uh really went all out. Added a chaos mode. It’s such a silly thing. Rest now.

2025/3/28

It’s 1:58 PM and I touched a little up, nothing big, mostly art. And hey, I got it turned in 3 minutes from being exactly one week of work. I really did channel the spirit of game jam here. So, I guess I should talk about it truly looking back, since it’s really quite done other than key art from Penny.

Well, I think I cooked with this one, but the concept itself is not super appealing. People keep asking what the fairy is for except dying and I feel like a bit of a fraud when I explain that’s really it. Just in general, this game more than any other of mine got people suggesting changes. And I implemented some of them. If nothing else, it’s inspired creativity in others.

I’ve been trying to keep it under wraps in a lot of places that there’s more to the game, but it broke my heart a little that a friend got to level 2 and then stopped playing. She was so close to the fun stuff starting and now this lives in her mind as that tiny experience.

I hope this doesn’t sound like nobody liked it or dug into it. I got some really positive feedback, people charmed by the modes and all of them working together. I got a special note about someone loving cat mode in particular, which tickled me. A game full of mechanics and the mode that gets the most love is the purely cosmetic one.

Anyway, with this unexpected game finished and Picotron fully functional for binary exports now, it’s about time to get back to work on Foxy’s. Thanks for tuning in!