Your eyelids rise slowly anticipating an influx of radiant light, but only a black foggy haze fills your view. In the corner of your vision the flicker of an ember draws your interest. You turn noticing for the first time the shadowy figure of your guide. He is huddled in a thick cloak on the opposite side of a dying camp-fire muttering quietly to himself. Even so, each of his mumbled incoherent syllables echoes off the hard stone surrounding you both on all sides. With each utterance, a memory of the endless journey through this hellish tomb flashes in the flame. How long has it been since you have felt the warmth of sun on your skin or a summer breeze brush your silky bearded face? Weeks? Months? Time seems as lost to you as the separation of night and day. Here in this ungodly place there is only the barest difference between conscious and unconscious. Here under miles of stone and bedrock there is only the endless unforgiving darkness.
Happy Holiday’s my faithful, or perhaps, first time readers. Thank you for taking the time out to come back and read another long winded, self-inflated post from the team here at Midnight Fair Productions (me). It has been a very busy and fulfilling year and I apologise for not writing again sooner. I will endeavour to make this post shorter than my other epics as I intend it more as a brief summary of what has happened this year and little on what to expect of the year ahead. As you may have guessed our travellers have not made the progress they had hoped, having following the river Styx to its end. But let us go back to our verbose narrator to fill you in of what’s been missed.
“Ah, you’re awake” your guide says, cracking a rough smile. In that brief moment you take in how the light dances in the dark crags of his face, extenuating rugged features. You feel any harboured anger towards him slip away all questions of his amazing abilities in guiding you on your journey fade into the nothingness around you. The moment passes into anticipatory silence as you stare raptly into his deep set ice-blue eyes and he begins again.
"So remember how we had that trusty boat and a little slither of light leading us along the winding river Styx and out the darkness? Well, after a day or so of furious paddling (well done on your part) we reached the slither only to find it was somewhat lacking in the required width to fit the boat, and said occupants, through comfortably. So, being the rather ingenious, albeit overzealous, wizard that I am I decided to use a little dash of magic to precipitate, the er, extradition of our vessel out said slither. Which in turn caused rather unforeseen and somewhat unwelcome consequences. The magic itself was flawless, as was expected, however due to the ah, clearly insufficient structural integrity the, um surrounding bedrock..." the wizard trails off his speech stroking his beard and turning to you with a frown. "I can see from that look on you face I may need to water this down, that's probably due to the rockfall that landed on your head. Ah, but more on that later. Look, the short and curly of it is, I used a bit of magic on the hole and it became wide enough to sail through a galley. This would have worked perfectly if the cave opening didn't then collapse trapping us and almost killing you in the processes."
A knot of wood popped in the fire and a silence falls between you. "Well, now we have all the bad news out the way let's get to the good news shall we." the wizard reaches into his robe and you instinctively flinch as he draws out what appears to be an oversize bag of marsh-mellows. "How's that?" he says that handsome smile you know all to well resting once again on his face. As you look around with a large rock that might serve as a weapon you notice the scrap of paper that was serving as marshmellow wrapping. After a few moments of mouth agape staring you realise that this scrap of map clearly shows the exit.
Progress
Since we last we spoke I have a confession to confess and a revelation to share. Firstly I have been lazy, I haven’t had the capacity of mind or will power to work on BWT. I have tried very hard to force another hour of work here, or an idea there, but the creative juice that once flowed strong had ebbed to a mere trickle. I spent a good few months wondering if I would ever find that spark that started the fire inside me to pursue this great endeavour of making an indie game. During this time I took a couple of holidays and tried to keep working on something creative, I did some writing and some exercise. All in all I don’t see it as wasted time, just time spent away from my game.
After a month or so off I found that my mind had cleared a lot of the debris, the fire had rekindled itself into a low flame, I started to have ideas again. I looked back at my game and was pleased at what I saw. I solved this niggling bug in the game which was doing my head in for weeks before and I felt empowered. I guess the revelation in this time was two-fold for me. The first part of it was that by giving myself some time off I allowed my mind to re-focus (and for me this was about my only choice at that stage next to quitting). The second was once I had taken time off I had a clearer idea of what was weighing me down was that this project didn’t have a foreseeable end.
The way forward.
So after rekindling the flame into a fire, I have made a few firm decisions I plan to stand by. The first of which is that by the end of next year I will have finished the game. Come rain or shine, spelunking or fresh air fighting I am committed to push this game into its final state and something which I can be proud to show as my own work. Also, I will commit to writing a blog post a month giving a progress update on the game. Since making this decision I have been busy working on finishing the interface for the game which is my first goal. Which I am happy to say is well on its way and will hopefully done by mid Jan. I will also be making goals for each month I write this blog, which I will most likely fail to meet. But, if at the end of each month I can feel like real progress has been made I will be satisfied I am doing what I can to finish this massive quest I have begun. I hope you my favourite ever amputee comrade will stick by me and be there for the day when I finally have a game to call my own.
Thanks again for tuning in. I hope you all have a safe and enjoyable NYE and put some of your own plans for creative fulfilment into action, if you haven’t already. I will see you back here again next time to continue our quest (hopefully out of this god forsaken cave and out into some beard blowing breeze daylight) enjoy!!
