How to choose - A convention in Sweden has been playing the same game of King of the Castle annually every single year since launch, multiple tattoos, and a number of baffling family trees

Doing social media for our latest indie release today and I’m like

Chris! Long time no speak!! You know you’re in the credits right? And your article hangs above my desk? I’m a big fan, basically

That's the abbreviated version! A lot more swearing and re-reading code, and then a fair bit of emotions when I realized the game that was my life for years had finally been finished. Full credit to the Stave team as was, especially Josh and Matt who founded it with me, and Harry who wrote TDQ.

By this point I started bashing together a start menu and explainer using a the Location and Postcard setup, making sure the link to Steam was half decent, and was endlessly bug hunting. An export to itch, a litle more bugfixing, and we were off to the races. Loved to have done more, but I'm happy.

We didn't have enough journal entries, so they had to go. I'd also worked out how to do animations on those lovely Location images, but I only had 4 of them and without them Locations looked broken. Here's what they would have been. Losing a Messerschmidt flying over HMS Centurion was painful.

After a quick animation to swap out portraits, I then noticed 80% of the game was missing SetImage tags - The story was made before the images. So I had to put in 900+ tags across 21 ink files, only to find I'd put most of them in the wrong place, so painstakingly moved and checked each one.

And now the big kick in the teeth - No assets for a map. I did try making a new one in CSS but then went insane. After I recovered from my insanity, I chose to show them in the little pink boxes styled after the main game. Any mid-route postcards (they also can appear there) show up in the sky.

Postcards and Newspapers were made in CSS. Firing them in JS was like pulling teeth - they could show up in the sky, on the ground, one could open after another etc. Here I started re-using artwork from the original game to fill gaps. Mildly useful we had some returning characters... (no spoilers)

Now the Location Art - the real star of the show. Josh outdid himself here and they are beautiful. A few lines of code later and A) when the location is set it fades out and in to the four files B) when the tappables are set, they parallax down, just like Over the Alps. Mildly proud of that:

Next was getting images in. Each of the Characters for Over the Alps had individual stamps for choices - We didn't any, so Aubrey sadly re-uses from the first story. A bit of digging later and I found multiple portraits for Aubrey and Yassin, which was a blessing, as they appear lots! In they went.

I started by: 1) Fixing few bugs in the original files 2) Updating the text to the new ink standard (easy) 3) Separating out shared functionality between TDQ and other OTA files (not easy) 4) Stripping out 1,100 square bracketed texts (a regex saved me) And, with Inky's help, I got to here.

We also got access to the unfinished third story files. These included all Location Art, some portrait art and the entire text story in English by @skelicopter.bsky.social written in 2020. I was personally invested in finishing OTA, but we lacked maps, animations and translations - A dead end.

The first thing we did was an update to Over the Alps - The first in 6 years. Not an easy task. This included: • Updating from the very old Unity version it was on • Fixing a number of broken achievement bugs • Fixing a few locked routes and technical issues • Obsessively testing it into the night

Stave stayed open to keep Over the Alps up, but in the end this became a lot of work and we chose to close the studio. This meant OTA would have been lost forever. So, after a bit of negotiation, it was agreed that Tributary would become custodians of the game - Essentially the game's publisher.

After the success of Apple Arcade, Stave drifted apart. I went on to start @tributarygames.bsky.social with Harry, the writer of the second Over the Alps story, and Owen. We later hired Nick, our editor, to make KOTC - and Jon Ingold (the writer of the first OTA story) joined us as a guest writer!

Oh at least the mansion is aesthetically pleasing and stands as a temple to architecture. Doesn't at all look like a whitewashed office block made by an unimaginative child using duplo.

Camels are not to be bonded with, apparently

I painted this guy as some minis recently

The new Steam Personal Calendar is actually pretty good, there's a few gems in here I've not seen before

About to go on an Idiot Safari and read the comments of this Facebook post. Wish me luck

Behind the scenes pitch for a feature in KOTC - where players would build a castle over multiple reigns. Was cut in descoping, which now means there’s no castles in a game called “King of the Castle”. Woops.

Why do all my models wear helmets? Yeah, lore reasons. Nothing to do with how painting little tiny bloody heads makes me lose the will to live

It's insane how much my indie career has been making prototypes and pitches for titles that have never seen the light of day. Here's a peek behind the curtain: A strategy title called City In Flames we worked on back in 2024. Got close, but no publisher would have it. #gamedev

Yes, all my design proposals have themed header images. Yes, it is weird and annoying. No, I will not stop

I think they’re robotic prosthetics? I prefer to think of them as those really upsetting shoes that have individual toes (pictured) but entirely made from metal for warzones

I had a day off and spent it painting Little Dudes. Fuck making video games this is the most satisfying thing in the world to do.

Cardinals are out! We've increased the amount of content by 343%, which isn't half bad for a free update. This was a team effort, as usual, but my special thanks to our resident puzzlemaster @owennewburn.bsky.social for the idea, design and execution of the Cardinals. Right, go lose your minds!

Same - WIP Though I’m not as brave as @uk-resistant.bsky.social with the airbrush, they terrify me