As we prepare to embrace the month of June, my blades are being sharpened in preparation of the June workload. I’ve got four shiny new ideas planned to develop, some old and some new. This past month has been one of personal development, trying to improve my understanding of anatomy while also making steady progress with my Cosmic aliens and other personal projects. Once June hits, it’ll be time to apply that knowledge to make something a little more tangible, while also continuing to add new aliens to my roster. I also want to keep developing my terminology and continue developing my Cosmic ruleset. There are still some hanging issues with some of the designs I’ve put forward already, and I want to resolve them to the best of my ability.

May has been the first month in a good while where I feel like I’ve made improvements to my abilities as an artist. I’ve gotten better at drawing heads as three-dimensional shapes, as well as drawing the human body in a recognizable manner. I still need to work on drawing arms and legs as more than basic cylinders, and I need to make sure I can connect them properly to the torso. That’ll be one of my focus areas as I work on chapter 2 of Wakeup Call next month, alongside the base storytelling aspects.

I’ve still been playing Mario Odyssey and Monster Train intermittently over the past two months. I’m getting close to 100%’ing Odyssey, but I’m still only a 75% win rate with Monster Train on Covenant 15. Coventants 20 and 25 continue to elude me between that extra Deadweight, the capacity restriction, the extra enemies, and the extra boss HP. I need to get better at power scaling.

I’ve also made another considerable breakthrough regarding one of my secret personal projects. I’ve been struggling for the longest time to work out a system that has that “candy-coated” quality which makes it fun to both develop and play. Taking inspiration from games like Monster Train and Slay the Spire has helped me to finally take another step forward, as both of these games definitely have it. I have a tendency to overcomplicate and then slowly simplify over time, so I’m trying to train myself to be more hesitant to add in new mechanics without thinking. If I can get this system figured out, I can get back to work on the graphical component and start crafting a proof of concept to post on my website.

Let’s see what this summer has to offer! Make the most!