Start of Real News!

Caleb

2025-12-28

Game Updates:

I have made so much progress this month! It's always nice to see the fruits of your labor; the progress keeps my motivation high. :)

Soon, I'll be creating a YouTube channel for BlankSpiral Studios to show how progress is going on Go Once More, but suffice to say for now that I am approaching a full demo.

I've been doing a lot of work on the stability of the game, particularly the online multiplayer (shoutout to the Purrnet community for creating a wonderful networking package for Unity) in addition to talking to a few different artists to get some characters commissioned for the game.

I'll have more news soon but while there isn't really a frame of reference for the game, I'll hold off for now.

Design Discussion:

I've been working on quite a bit of the gameplay recently and it's always fascinating the issues that pop up when trying to create a "feel" for a game. In my initial blog post I shared a graph that shows the area I am shooting for in this game (something that rewards player decisions to create synergistic builds that has enough randomness to allow for imperfection or luck without it being too painful/grindy) and I have been having a lot of fun turning all the little knobs in the game to try to achieve that sweet spot.

This ability to adjust, this modularity of design, is extremely important to balancing a game. Being able to make minute adjustments you can test in moments and getting the immediate tactile response from your decisions that you can intuit how it will feel in a larger scale is essential when creating a game I believe. The amount of burnout it's prevented by being a very streamlined process and the time it's saved alone is worth the effort of planning ahead.

I have been a part of some very painful testing processes in the industry (think 30 minute testing pipelines that have to be hand-held the entire time) and it is one of the most miserable and motivation-killing experiences you can have.

I don't believe that this is any revolutionary idea or something that people have a difficulty grasping conceptually, but everyone gets lost in the weeds sometimes. Take a moment and see if there is any part of your testing process you loathe setting up or doing. You might be able to save yourself hours down the line.

Thoughts of the Week:

It was the holiday season recently so just wanted to throw a Happy Holidays out there. I heard something recently where people are much more motivated when they can see their work having a positive impact in someone else's life and I thought that was a wonderful thought that often is so obvious it flies under the radar. If any of you are working on anything, I urge you to show someone you care about and I can almost guarantee that they will be excited about it with you.

Well, that's enough from me this week. I'm gonna bounce from this coffee shop, it's dinner time!

More to follow!