Progress + Process!

(reading time: 3 min)

Two weeks ago, I launched the demo for Adventures with Anxiety... and I'm elated it resonated with so many folks! I hope it helps others with anxiety feel less alone – and, maybe, learn how to better live with scary emotions.

And of course, it's all thanks to your support! I couldn't make these weird experimental games without y'all paying my food and rent.

Though, I feel guilty that my Patreon post schedule's so irregular. Thus, starting today, I'd like to try something new:

🎉 Every other Friday (once per 2 weeks), I'll post a Progress Update!

Not only will this make my process more transparent, it'll also motivate me more! It's pretty miserable to work alone & not show anyone anything for months. So, these updates will let me show & tell more regularly.

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As you can see in the pic above (can't see it? imgur mirror) I think we're roughly 40% done. Diagram's not to scale.

In the last two weeks, I:

🇨🇦 1) Moved COUNTRIES. Yup. Put my life in two bags & Marie Kondo'd the rest of my crap into a funeral pyre. Said bye to Boston friends, said bonjour to Canadian friends. Cried a bit. Good stuff.

💬 2) Wrote all(!) of the first-draft dialogue for Act II (2200 words), Act III (1000 words), and Act IV (2600 words). Total: 5800 words! Of course, since it's branching dialogue, you'd only see ⅓ of the words per playthrough. Which is good! That means each player sees something different, tailored to their expressed fears.

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Back to the "moving country" thing. That's a big, neon sign screaming New Chapter In Life™, right?

Well, turns out life changes don't automatically happen, I still gotta work for it. So here's two big life changes I'm resolving to make:

👭 1) Schedule time for friends.

In-person or videochat. There's just something about synchronous face-to-face that hits an evolutionarily deeper part of you that text messages can't.

Since I work alone, it's too easy for my only daily conversation to be "hi, I'm fine, paper bag please, debit, thank you". So I already knew I want to spend life with friends more. But since I'm busy, and they're busy, we can't count on randomly bumping into each other – we need to schedule it.

I actually already started doing this while I was in Boston, and it's been a huge boost to my mental health! Friendship! I recommend it!

🎨 2) Make time for side projects.

I keep ping-ponging between "ahhh I'm not learning new things, I have to do smaller experiments" and "ahhh these small things are so scattered, I gotta focus my efforts on something bigger". For years I never figured a way out of this trap, until – as with all great epiphanies – I found something while procrastinating on Twitter:

Fun fact: Coming Out Simulator and Parable of the Polygons were side projects. (I was trying to distract myself from my sinking ship of a main project, Nothing To Hide) So, I think it'd be creatively healthy for me to schedule time for both Adventures with Anxiety and other small side-projects. It'll mean "slower" progress on AwA, but marathon not sprint etc etc

(What might my small side-projects be? I'll say more in the next update! This one's gone on long enough...)

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Et voilà, that's my Progress Update! Question:

Do you want a Progress Update every two weeks? Is that too often? Should the updates be shorter? What else do you want to know about my process, like tools & habits? Would you like a thoughtdump of things I'm curious about, reading, watching, playing?

Tell me! I want to make these update as interesting & helpful as I can. 😸Again, from the bottom of mon cœur, thank you all so, so much. <3

À prochaine,
~ Nicky Case