Game Journal #119 - Death Counter, Joe Overdrive Animation

Hey everyone! Welcome back to my game journal series. This week, I did some cool stuff! I think you'll like it. Are you surprised that I'm actually keeping my word and posting twice a week now? Haha. I meant it when I said I was motivated! I haven't felt this good since I first started this project, I think. I just want to work on my game all the time!

First of all, life update as usual. I'm very happy to report that I will not need to get a second job again. Last month, FedEx Ground merged with FedEx Express to become one division. Because of that, my work hours were cut temporarily for about a month. I was only working about 2 hours a day. I had to dip into my savings for the very first time to pay my mortgage. I did do a bit of job hunting, but as usual the job market is complete trash. Entry level restaurant jobs that require multiple interviews and low pay, along with not responding back to your application even if you've worked in multiple restaurants (like me.) Trash pay, a million prerequisites, and also you'd better have a bachelor's. Lol. I literally saw a position that needed a master's degree and the pay was 15/hour. I nearly died laughing. The current day job market, everyone.

Also thankfully, I was able to do a few art commissions and that helped a lot. Shout out to everyone that commissioned me, since I really needed it! I don't like to post about my financial situation, so none of them knew, but yeah. Anyway, the merger completed at FedEx and now my shift has increased. Now I work about 4-5 hours a day. I know that doesn't sound like a lot, but FedEx pays really well. There's a reason I've been with them for almost 4 years now. You're paid to work out, you don't have to do any customer service, you have a retirement account that they match 20% of your paycheck of, and you can transfer your job to any FedEx location if you move (I did this when I moved from NJ.) Also, if you take any college classes FedEx will reimburse you up to 5k a semester. I was able to take a lot of community college classes for free because of it.

Lastly, I've been making a surprising amount of social progress with my knowledge of Japanese. I made another friend who's a game developer like me, and is making an RPG. He only speaks Japanese, but I can talk to him. One day, I want Joe Maverick to have a Japanese option as well. As for when that day comes... well, maybe a year or two from now. Depends on how fast I get the English ver done, of course.

And one more thing...

Me converting Guilty Gear fans into Joe Maverick fans

My game posts have been getting more attention on Twitter lately. I have a few followers who are really interested in it! All according to plan... muahahaha! The hardest part of marketing is getting eyeballs on your content. I've got the attention, and now I'm just posting about my game more. If even 10% of my followers liked it, that's 100 people! That's a lot! So, I'm even more motivated to work on it because of the feedback I've been getting on there. It's a positive loop! Before, I would get no attention on my game posts, but I worked hard anyway. That's why I kept burning out and taking breaks lol. Sometimes it felt like it was all for nothing and I'd get kinda depressed. But, now that I'm getting some reinforcement, I'm ready to go. So yeah!

All right, with all that said, what's new? I added a pretty cool new feature: the ability to track how many times you died.

It's pretty much this area from Cuphead.

I got this idea when I added a new shopkeeper to the game, King Enma (AKA Yama) from Japanese mythology. He's the ruler of the Underworld and decides on whether or not souls go to Heaven or Hell. Because of the events of the game's story, he and some other demons decided to come to Earth. From their point of view, the world is going to end, so there wouldn't be much of a distinction between there and the afterlife. Hence, they moved there preemptively to establish territory before other demons could. Since he's the arbiter of death, he'd know just how many times you died! Neat little feature.

This also changed the lore behind what used to be called the Cultist Hideout. Now it's called the Hellspawn Den. Hellspawn are just followers of Yama, that's all. You'll still be able to buy talismans/hexes from there, but now it makes much more sense that they're demons. Lol. Btw, you'll be able to meet Yama in the game's next area! So, it should be a few months or so. Also, all the Hellspawn will be able to tell you how many times you died, not just Yama.

And the last thing: I'm almost done with Joe's overdrive animation. Once it's done, I'll upload a new game build to Steam! Then I'll either work on Dan's animation or I'll do something else. Either way, I'll be working on the game more.

All right, here's the video where I go over everything. I'll see you in a few days!