Game Journal #111 - New Monster Animations, Time to LOCK IN!

Hey all! Welcome back to my game journal series. It's been a while, hasn't it! At least, since I posted my last official journal entry. I've been posting game build updates, but no in-betweens... in fact, I didn't upload one for the entirety of November. I can explain, okay! It all started on Twitter... let me explain.

All right. So lately, I've gotten back into Guilty Gear Xrd (a fighting game.) I've been a fan of it for a long time, and my friend and I usually play at least once a week. Recently, my friend met someone who also plays, so now the three of us play together. This was about two months ago. Well, this new guy was pretty good at the game... like, good to the point where I wouldn't win all the time. Not to say my OG friend was bad (he's not lol) but you know, I won most of the time. With this new guy, it was like 50/50. Well, I'm not a fan of losing when I play vidya, so I decided to actually open training mode and practice. Usually with video games I can just wing it and play decently without practicing at all, but... yeah, that only works if your friends are casual. Lol.

Here's the kicker. It'd been YEARS since I'd opened up training mode and actually tried to get better at the game. So I messed around trying to find a combo I liked... and THOUGHT I found one that was pretty good! In fact, I thought it was so good that I uploaded the clip to my twitter account to show other people. And well. That tweet literally changed my life:

People that follow me on Twitter for Guilty Gear content

People that have been following me for months for game updates

The infamous 6P tweet.

Do you see the amount of views on that video?! Yeah. I had no idea it would become so popular, my account is very small so I didn't expect to get very much feedback. Anyway, it turned out that my epic combo was actually not really a combo, because in a real match the opponent could just get out of it easily. I had about 50 people tell me that... haha. Some people thought I was joking, others were accusing me of being a Strive player, some people even blocked me. But in that mountain of chaos, I surprisingly got a lot of helpful tips from people. Those people became my friends!

Anyway, this was all to say that because of this, I got a lot of attention on my art too. It felt kinda surreal to me. I'd been posting on Deviantart for years, and I never really got a following there. I knew my art was okay, but I didn't think it was anything to write home about. I was used to posting and getting no response, writing really long descriptions and nobody caring, that sort of thing. It was kinda depressing. I drew less and less, pretty much exclusively for my game but even then I didn't really want to draw half the time. All I wanted were some art friends to share it with. If you're a creative yourself, you can probably understand the struggle.

Well, lo and behold, it turns out I was worrying for nothing. My art wasn't the issue, it was the platform I was posting it on. As soon as I switched from DA to Twitter, I started getting feedback on my art. Not only that, but I met a ton of other artists too! It's strange to say, but... suddenly, I had a somewhat healthy social life. You know that "School, Social life, Sleep" thing you hear about in college? I always chose sleep and school, so I never had many friends.

Too long, didn't read version: I made friends on Twitter after having a nonexistent social life for a long time, this made me engage in social activity and not work on my game as much. Additionally, I got a lot of engagement on my art, which made me want to draw again, and I started posting fanart after years of not doing it regularly. The end.

So yeah, that's pretty much why there's been no game journals recently. But NO MORE!! And WHY?! THAT'S BECAUSE THE GAME'S 1.0 BUILD IS DUE IN LESS THAN A MONTH!!!! ARE YOU EXCITED?!?!

Basically, I've got to lock in. You may be thinking, "How can you do half a game in a month?" Don't worry. You're talking to the guy who did her ENTIRE senior thesis in one week after procrastinating for ages. If I need to lock in, I can do it. All I have to do is... well, do it! And now with my one job, I have tons of time to work on it. So yeah!

The game's 1.0 build WILL be out on Christmas, no matter what. Even if it's not finished (which it won't be) but if it isn't, it'll be out.

Speaking of, have you heard of the game's art contest that I'm holding? You can submit art for it until Christmas! Announcing the Joe Maverick Art Contest! | Hax Dev's Development Blog

And with that, I'll show you my game's progress in this video here. I'll see you in a week, for reals this time!