So, It’s finally out there. On Steam, for everyone to play. I’ll be updating, fixing and adding little details for a few months I think but other than that it’s basically all done. It feels a little odd to think that something I’ve spent over 9 years making is coming to a close. I’m super happy that I’ve got this far and it’s in the hands of people that and told me how much they’ve enjoyed playing it. It’s a great feeling. However, I’ve also already started forming the various ideas for what I’m doing next into something a little more real. This time I’ll be going into it with the intention of selling something at the end which was not something I did for The Moonstone Equation. It as a spare time project in which I could play with game-play ideas and test my engine. There wasn’t any plan about how it could be sold or marketed. If you enjoyed games like Fez, Luminocity or Braid then you might also enjoy The Moonstone equation. You can get it on Steam here and read more about it on the main game website here
It’s been a very long time since I last updated. Over a year in fact. But now it’s finally time to make lots of noise about the thing I’ve spent the past 9 years making. It’s a little odd to think that something I’ve poured almost ever moment of creative effort into for such a long time is finally going to be released into the world. I suspect that a lot of my time over the next few weeks and months will be spent talking about all the little details. Because, beyond the surface of calm puzzle platforming adventure there all sorts of syetsms and details that I spent much more time on that I would have done proffesionally and I hope that’s something that makes this game a little different from the dozens that pour onto steam each week these days. With a little luck a few people will add it to their steam wishlist.
After months of working quietly behind the scenes it’s finally time to reveal the final form of my little personal game project. It even has it’s own website where you can follow it’s development and keep up to date with it progress towards release. If you want to play The Moonstone Equation then I’ll need your help getting it through the Steam Greenlight system
For the quiet sections of iO I needed a calm track. Something ambient that didn’t get annoying after the fourth or fifth time round. This turned out to be a pretty tricky task.
This track is basically as close as I got to what I needed. It’s ambient, it doesn’t really go anywhere and it’s almost impossible to spot when it’s looped. It’s alright but it’s not as good as the Hectic track I made for. So, if I get a chance (and I go back to iO) I might yet replace it.
There are two main reasons I could never be a proper musical artist.
First of all I’m too fickle and whimsical to stick to a single style. Someone listening to one track might decide it’s something they like only to find every other track I’ve produced to be nothing like it.
Second, and more importantly, there’s no way I could argue that what I do now for my own amusment is anything like actual music creation. I can’t play a real instrument (aside from a bit of drumming and I’m not really sure that counts) I can’t read or write music and I have no knowledge of music theory
but hey, it never stopped punk rock
This was one of those nice tracks that just fell together easily, all the components came to hand as I searched and the places I put them just sort of worked first time. It’s a great shame that these days such occasions are very rare.
I’m beginning to think that the time really has come to give up on the manipulation of samples and learn to use a synth and some proper music skills. like it’s that easy
There’s a lot of poetry. and the tools available to search for good bits amongst the mountain of rubbish are about as poor as they could be
It’s not that I’m against poetry, there are some pieces I really love. it’s just a shame that there is so much and no easy way of finding what your looking for, especially as audio
On the occasion I was looking for an interesting piece to thread through the various bits of a track I was making (some time ago now) I came across ‘I Am’ by John Clare. It falls quite easily in the set of poems I like (though a great many of his do not) so it became the first poem I used in one of my tracks, and to date it’s probably the best
Outsider is one of H.P.Lovecrafts many short stories. In many ways it’s typical of his style. A running commentary (in the first person) of a mans journey through a series of carefully described ‘indescribable’ events that ultimately end badly for him. The horror. The horror!
I quite enjoyed making this track using a freely available reading of the short story as a base (and inspiration). It’s worthy of note that this is one of the first tracks where almost the entire drum beat track was constructed a single beat at a time (rather than from sampled loops). This was mainly because I wanted something a little odd and couldn’t find any examples of it. if it’s not obvious, I’m pretty happy with this one, even after all these years.
