Category Archives: News

General news regarding homebody and it’s games.

A Deep Dark Place – Update #1

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Greetings!

Of my many projects that have gone unfinished, the one I keep gravitating back towards currently is Project Orb/A Deep Dark Place.

I started this project a few years ago. It’s a metroidvania about a kid who is lost in an underground world and stumbles upon a power glove with companion orb. You control the orb as your main source of damage and abilities.

The game is planned to sprawl five areas, and have around 15 boss encounters (that’s 15 new abilities as well).

Hoping to have more to show, but for now heres a little look at how the map of the first area is looking:

Hello, 2023; Hello, 36.

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Well, hello there! It’s been a minute, hasn’t it? Four years to be exact, but who’s counting? Well, I guess I am since I just told you. With it being such a long period of time since my last update, I figure we could just start fresh.

A lot has happened since my last post here. I’ve gained two kids, two houses, and two Castleton albums. Unfortunately, I’ve also gained about 40 pounds, but let’s not dwell on that.

In the past four years, the world has been shaken up like a snowglobe. We’ve had pandemics, civil unrest, and NFTs (what even are those?). But through it all, I’ve been gaming and creating, as a developer by day and a gamer by night. And by developer, I mean the non-game-making kind, unless it’s actually the night time then I’m the game-making kind, sometimes. It’s confusing. I have an actual day job, let’s just say that.

So, what’s this blog all about, you ask? Well, it’s about games, reviews, indie game development, and my music. It’s about having fun and not taking ourselves too seriously (unless it’s crunch time, then all bets are off). I’ll be sharing my game dev ideas, posting new music, and sharing my thoughts on the industry. And who knows, maybe I’ll even throw in some guides to help you navigate the gaming world.

Now, I can’t promise this blog won’t turn into a mess, but I can promise that it’ll be a fun mess. So come along for the ride and let’s see where this journey takes us. Unless you don’t want to, in which case I’ll just be over here eating some pizza and playing Destiny. See ya!

GAMING THINGS 2023!

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Alright, so let’s chat about what’s been keeping me glued to my screen lately. Between my WoW addiction that’s been going strong for 18 years (yes, I know that’s half my life), and my Destiny obsession for 6 years, my gaming schedule is pretty booked. But when I do manage to pry myself away from those, I’m usually getting my horror fix or indulging in some Nintendo magic. Resident Evil, Metroid, and Zelda are like a gaming holy trinity to me.

And can we talk about this year’s game releases? Dragonflight has been a blast, and Metroid Prime Remastered has been an absolute masterpiece. We’ve got the Resident Evil 4 remake and the new Zelda entry, Tears of the Kingdom, dropping soon, and don’t even get me started on Diablo 4 later this year. It’s a good time to be a gamer, my friends.

So, what about you? What games have you been spending your precious time on? Let’s chat about it on Twitter or drop a comment below.

Hope you have a Great Dane. See ya!

Quack #1 – Early Insight

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Since Quack has been essentially been rebooted, I’m going to consider this post the first post regarding it!

At the moment I have nothing visual to offer, but I wanted to take a quick moment to discuss the current outline for the game and what it will have in store.

Story
The game takes place on an island, which was once peacefully inhabited by various animal creature humanoids. At some point, an unknown human traveler invades the area and establishes his own mechanical humanoid kingdom (he’s never been good with actual people, so he made his own so they can’t so no to being his friend).

Years later, the mechanical folks are overtaking the animals, and attempting to capture them for their own experimental use and oppression. This is where our story begins — with Cornelius Quack teaming up with Mr. Stumpz (the tech savvy genius beaver) in order to save his family and fellow animal inhabitants. So yeah, it’s basically Sonic + Mega Man.

Gameplay
The gameplay will hold true to the original vision, with the majority of the game being a series of levels consisting of part puzzle solving and part boss-like encounter. Right now, I’m planning on a total of 23 main levels/encounters, plus a slew of secret goodies. Additionally, things like Boss Rush Mode, Wave/Horde Mode, a Crafting/Gear Progression system will be in place. The ultimate goal is to keep the gameplay tight and polished, while packing as much variety of fun things to do that would realistically fit the game and my resources.

Platforms & Release
My goal is to bring it to PC/Mac/Linux, available via a variety of marketplaces, as well as the Nintendo Switch. Mobile release might be feasible, if I can make the game control as I’d like it to without compromising the experience.

We’ll see where development goes from here in the weeks ahead, I’ll continue to offer updates or insight into the process. It may start as more descriptive and conceptual before moving into showing demos and in-game assets. Until next time!

Music and stuff

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I like music! I like to make, listen to, and discover music all the time. I’ve made music under the alias ‘Castleton’ since 2005. It’s all hot garbage, but I’ll be documenting my Castleton endeavors on here now under the category of the same name.

I’ve added a link to my Castleton works in the top navigation menu, if you feel the urge to indulge in bad sound.

Over the past few years I’ve been (super) slowly creating a new Castleton album, ‘Coda’. It will be available in the first half of this year. If you wanna take a gander at what’s to come with it, you can do so in the teaser below!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IMs0Fhq6NsU

It’s 2019

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Well hey how’s it going!

It’s certainly been a hot minute (like two and a half years) since I last posted something on this here blog! It’s now 2019, and the goal is to change that.

I could rant for a while and make excuses about why I haven’t given any updates on games for a while, but let’s be honest! I lost motivation and have spent a lot of my time at work and playing dumb games like World of Warcraft and Destiny.

But! I’ve also been learning GML (Game Maker Language). You see, up to recent times I have been building all of my projects in Construct. Now Construct, while great in it’s own right, has it’s limitations in terms of what it can do and what platforms it can support.

With swapping to GM, I’m going to have to rebuild my projects from square one, and I’m super excited about that opportunity. It’s not like I haven’t gone through a million iterations of Captain Quack anyway! I have been spending a lot of time fleshing out these games over and over on paper and prototyping things, and I am feeling good about where they are now and am getting ready to start bringing them to life.

I’m not going to be making any lifeless goals this year with these projects, aside from the goal that I will at the very least post SOMETHING related to these games, my game making process, my thoughts on gaming in general, or just a quick look into my dumb life. In short, I want to share more, a lot more, throughout this entire year.

I’m just one man, and I’m doing everything (art, sound, design, programming, marketing/networking) all by my lonesome, I’m also a husband and a full time employee in a time consuming career, so things may come slowly, but they will come in time.

SO WHAT AM I GOING TO MAKE? Well, I’m gonna keep making ‘A Deep, Dark Place’ (previously Project Orb), and ‘Captain Quack: Stool-Fueled Fury’. With GM, I can bring these projects to the platforms I want! My target platforms right now are simply PC and Nintendo Switch. Quack might also see itself in some form on the mobile scene at some point, we’ll see.

That’s it for now! I hope to be much more engaged going forward. Even though nobody reads this, maybe somebody will one day. If anything it will be nice to look back on my stupidity and progress (or lack thereof) throughout this year.

P.S.
Tom Hanks

Love,
Grant