First of all, I play people's games on my channel and post my honest reactions to the first 10-20 minutes of a game. I'd be happy to play yours.

Second, most projects that are developed in secret alone don't go anywhere, just statistically. I guess Stardew Valley was a single guy's project till he posted an announcement and it got picked up. Usually powerful people who can influence who buys a product like to know the people they are promoting, or get paid by them, before they do them any favors. It would be nice if people just posted about games that were high quality rather than the payola/social capital world we live in but alas. Sadly, in the world of games, people don't like doing anyone a favor.

Third, without keeping the audience in mind, most people won't understand what you are making. I've made many pieces of art that no one seems to understand, I had fun making them, I feel like I'm improving at my art, but no one seems to care about what I do. Its partly because I don't play the political game in my second point, but also because I'm not really making art for anyone other than to satisfy my own drives to produce stuff.



But I feel your pain. I wish I had an endgame to all this, I've made 15-20 or so games, I've made thousands of drawings. I'm even starting to write. I wish I could get some kind of pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. Or at the very least, a bit of ego stroking because I have a modicum of talent. It seems like we must beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.

The design process is more communication with the player when it is done right. You have to make something the audience wants, not just something that only makes sense to the author. Thus, most professionals show their games to players in iterations to see what they do with the game. A lot can come from hearing what players do with a situation. Sometimes players will exploit things in very creative ways, sometimes they ruin the game, sometimes they open up new ways to play.

For example, on my XBOX game Hundred Bullets, I started playing it in random patterns to try to doge the bullets by brute force. But many years later I realized that you could trick the levels by coming up with a pattern to how you moved. That was the basis of the entire game after that.

I still wish I had better communication with players, or just in general. I was talking to a guy I met on face book and he only replies to "how are you?" by saying "good" and I told him that bothers me, and he said he understood, so I asked him again and he said "good" I'm not sure if he is even human.

God was tired of being perfect. He could do anything, make anything work, have anything he wants, the result: boredom. An eternity of a world that was as predictable and over designed as a pocket watch. Every piece perfectly in its place, everything in harmony. About as dull as vanilla pudding.

"What about decay?" God thought. The planets and stars spin forever, eternally moving in predetermined patterns, what if there was some sort of force that caused the pieces to fail after long enough. "Rest, peace... death"

And so decay, death, and destruction came to be, but this was still really boring and also kind of a bummer. The perfect universe slowly crumbled. But does the concept of "slow" exist to God? Presumably one could imagine going through time with a fast forward button, one of God's powers given to American couch potatoes. So, with decay, the perfect universe simply disappears in a puff of smoke.

"There must also be birth." God thought. Its almost a matter of economics: if 10 things fail a year and nothing is created to replace it, the universe will vanish. "What a bore.", like watching a giant firework for all eternity. If 10 things fail and 10 things are created the universe will be in equilibrium. "I guess that could be more interesting?" But when you think about it, if the death and birth are in equal opposition, there is again harmony. Harmony can be interesting for a while, like watching waves go in and out, but eventually becomes a pattern. Growth and decay, up and down, black and white, birth and death. A treadmill. So the most interesting option is to grow, for 10 things dead 11 or more things must be created "On average, of course, to make it a bit more interesting. There has to be a net gain over the course of eternity to alleviate predictability and boring patterns."

And so it was that the universe grew, more stars, more planets, a big bang of cosmic growth if you will. So now we have something to work with, an infinitely growing space with variety and decay, but would this be enough to satisfy an omnipotent being? Just because we have an infinite universe that grows and grows doesn't make things that interesting, I've noticed. Beyond just infinity, there must also be variety, the more the better of course. Strange new worlds, phenomena, nebulae, something new!

But what is new to God? Everything God creates God knows already, and God knows all, so everything is going to be seen. Even in the "Everything" universe, one would imagine a growing expanding mass of everything that could ever be. The void of chaos, no structure, no pattern, just more and more stuff. Like static, noise, a hum that gets louder and louder till its too much even for God.

I'm rooting for this one HQ, msg me and I'll retweet you and your trailer when its out!

Also, not to grind on my size issues, but who's art you callin' "little?" Even a small statement can be powerful if its meaningful and relevant.

Cat likely has a common URI, we've had her a week and already vet expenses lol.

Beyond the personal growth of a person associated with completing the artistic process and having your art be seen. There is also the benefit of everyone seeing more art. That is, I think the intense fighting over movies like the Ghost Busters reboot and the new Super Mario Bros and its lack of authentic magical italian plumbers is indicative of most people being complete strangers to the world of artistic expression, both as critics as well as creators.

So both having people create and having people see more art is valuable. Essentially artistic expression is a form of communication. Even extremely emotional pieces communicate something or its not art its a temper tantrum. Art in my definition I keep pushing is the synthesis of logic and emotion, so having more of it means the world is full of more complete humans who know more about their feelings and thoughts, and other people's feelings and thoughts, and we are all closer to one another.

Just from a completely pragmatic pov, it makes small talk much nicer: If most people have done some art, then most people have something to talk about.

None of my art has really been seen by a big audience, but I'm told that campaigning for politicians changes your personality. I'm trying my damnest to get my art seen. My theory is that getting major artistic visibility, and feedback, would be a learning experience for most people. (Even for me.) A lot of people don't "get it" in that making something that is seen is more than just putting together some art. To truly be seen is something that 95% of people on this earth never experience, and as a result most people are sort of incomplete as humans.

Gotta go, cat troubles.

that is a superlative video @Thaumaturge

How about this for a want: I want some people to email into the show, like Dr. Horrible has at the beginning of his sketch. Am I that smelly that even my emails stink?

When they were posting snark at each other they were a great bunch, when they were shitting on people they saw as lesser (everyone newer than them) I'd drop them like a bag of shit.

There's a game that was done by a high schooler with a very similar style to what you have here on newgrounds back when i was in high school that got at least a million plays. The kid actually went on to go to the same college as me. Good advice, to you and to me, is to try not to let other people get in the way of making art. I know its difficult because you want your brother to support you. I still spend time searching for others who think what I do is legitimate.

Just as a matter of empirical fact, there are high schoolers who have made more money selling games than me. Maybe I just suck, its possible, but I think that its more about having a process that turns out good art instead of getting your brother to support you.

My sister spent a lot of her life telling me to get a real job. We have a strained relationship at times. I don't know how to get people to treat me like I'm a valid person who is worthy of respect, other than a small circle of people who really do believe in me. Sometimes I tell myself that people are jealous, but I don't think that's the truth. Most people turn to more practical careers and feel good that they have a boss who likes them and says "good job on that TPS report" every once in a while.

That, to me, is the hardest part of making games. I do not feel like I belong, and usually people will give you more of a sense of belonging if you are really subservient and cater to their whims and wants. But that's the nature of power: people rarely want others to outshine them. It seems to be a universal axiom of the universe. People don't want to support, they want to be supported.

I'm an advocate for consistent rules, yes. Though I'm told we are all subjective, what offends one may not offend others. And since we are all subjects of a subjective world, who's to say that anything is objectively funny or objectively offensive? That is, how can we have consistency when we are all unique delicate flowers? It seems impossible to object to anything.

I'm fairly bland in what I make, its hard to think I would be offensive to anyone, and yet, I really don't know what will trigger some groups. I literally made a match game called Matchy Star, about a cute star and friends taking care of pets. Who could that offend? I mean really. To some extent, my game's blandness is probably why I'm not as successful as I could be. If I made it so you could shoot the cute little star critters, that would probably get more clicks. "Matchy Bloodbath"

RE: Connecting the censorship of games vs censorship of groups where games are made: if professionals can't make certain types of jokes then work that includes that type of humor cannot be made in those groups. If you want to make it clear that your professional group isn't about making games, that's fine, but then whey are we there again? I'm not allowed to make games that have size jokes in them? Or if I do, I can't do it as part of the community there? Its a load of bullshit.

It's a bit like connecting soil and flowers. Some soil will not produce some types of flowers due to its composition. Once the plant is grown we can see that it may be poisonous or have thorns, and must be handled with care or removed from the ecosystem, but its another thing to try to make it so that it is impossible to grow some types of plants, or similarly, the idea that certain thoughts are verboten? that's problematic to say the least.

When we say that its wrong to think about size jokes as a form of art, but its ok to do art of a glorious woman's thighs in a short skirt, we are talking about controlling what kind of art can even be thought about. So there is a connection in my mind.

I shouldn't belittle the theory heads. They are having fun trying to quantify what makes greatness. But a theory person who can explain what makes a great game in theory but doesn't actually make games is dangerous to an artistic mind.

(I'm trying to do some more writing, I always wanted to do a screenplay, though I always imagined I would be making some kind of comedy film. My writing on this topic isn't very funny, though maybe people who are "serious writers" will get a laugh from it?)

The only thing that matters is the system's ability to sustain itself. God, magic, love, freedom, these are just an arrangement of letters that only have a meaning because of a system of rules. Why do we do it? Keep fooling ourselves that somehow it gets better. That maybe some day before we die we can stop competing for scraps of green paper. Only take a step up the tower if you are conscientious enough to add another brick down at the bottom.

We fight each other. Trying to get our place in the sun. Because a piece of cake is nice, but if someone else wanted it, isn't it  sweeter? As long as the rules of the system allow it. A world where people think differently cannot be systematized. It is simply too dangerous to the structure. How can one climb when the question of "what's up?" has a meaningful answer? And if you don't want to climb, what is wrong with you? A person is either right or wrong, or we are dealing in trivialities. Comfort, safety. The system means we have coffee in the morning, and that coffee is something we can talk about because it isn't challenging. A tower of higher and higher padded cells, each one with a barista asking how you take your latte.

But what of Xanadu, what would it be? To be in a world without competition would be boring, no sport, no glory. The crown means nothing if no one else wants it. Why be king if you can't rest your feet on other's backs? If we are all big men, then how do we know we are big? Relative to what? Big cannot exist without small. Perhaps the only reason some people have less is so others know they have more?

Imagine a world on a grid: every house identical, every person the same height, the same features. Every few blocks in the grid there are coffee stores, and bus stops, and grocery stores, all evenly spaced out perfectly so that no one house has an advantage. A collective of drones with the same appearance and the same resources, so much sameness. Would such a world not be more fair than a world where people live in the penthouse apartment on the top floor?

So what of Xanadu? A place outside the system? Could something so audacious exist? A world where we are not cogs in a machine? If Xanadu is to be a computer game, it must be built on rules as all computer code is just more rules. Everything pre set in stone. If we are to code a game to be Xanadu, it must be definitionally a system.

Edit:

Just as this writing is made from letters, the system will have its way: I cannot express words without using words.

I think you'll be ok.

A "throw up" level might be a good idea!

I'm thinking for level 2 I'm going to make a cat paw item that bats at the zombies so you sort of have to make a path of paws for the zombies to move up the screen?

I just got a cat so I want to incorporate our Cruella into the game somehow.

Some small issues: I think the text in the first level needs to explain 2 things, that you tap the sugar to launch a zombie, and to win you have to draw a wall and bounce the zombie into the water.

I also want to make some kind of UI at the top that says what kind of thing you are creating "Wall" "Paw" "See Saw" "Rope" "Pully" etc. so the player can see what kind of gadget they are working with.

Edit: I also need a way of setting the direction of the sugar spawner in the level svg for the zombies so its not always pointing up.

you may not be using Object Oriented Programming, which involves destroying chunks of memory that are "objects" but the goal you want is to reset the game state.

Essentially you want a function "Init()" that does all the one time initialization stuff like setting up your mouse handlers and such. Then you want a "StartLevel()" function that sets up all the stuff that is part of the game state of the level. As long as StartLevel() resets all the state information that is part of the game you can call it over and over to restart the game.

I guess I shouldn't judge, but I do think the world would be a better place if more people made art.

It is a lot of fun, and I'm discovering some movies, thanks for suggesting.