May 2024 Recap

June 17 2024

Over the month of May and part of June, I worked on and finally released Pillow Fight , a short deckbuilding game about sleep. At ~6 months of development time, it is the longest I've spent on a single project, even though it's still quite small (and free).

I never thought I would be the one to do all the artwork for this project. I thought maybe just the stacked sprite section, but someone more skilled than I would take on all the enemy arts and the combat UI. But slowly over time, my conversations with other artists floundered and I realized all my "placeholder" art would in fact be final.

Drawing characters was by far the most challenging part of this project. It takes so much focus and energy to try and draw an original character. I don't know how people do this for a living. I can program with music or podcasts playing, but if I'm trying to come up with or draw a character, I need dead silence and probably great sleep and caffeine in my system.

And the worst part is when you spend hours working on a character and in the end go "Nah" and start all over again. It can be demoralizing. I nearly dropped the project over not wanting to draw all the character arts.

On the flip side, I never minded doing the stacked sprite artwork for the player's room. I still adore the stacked sprite look and enjoy making them too. I hope to keep developing this style further in the future.

Aside from Pillow Fight, I also finished some 1-bit character sprites for my tiny Playdate Pulp game, The Sweetest Sound. I also finished the rest of the "party" room, where most of the game will take place.

I've noticed that having a monthly update makes me think about what I'll have done to talk about in these posts. So in a way it's a small motivator, like a gentle push in the back of my mind to try and have something to show by the end of each month (or midway through the next month in this case). Thanks for reading!