We’re one week out from chapter 2 of Wakeup Call getting dropped. I’m excited to share it. Hopefully it turns out like I’m hoping. I’ll need to make sure I edit the Wakeup Call section so you can easily navigate between pages. I’m looking into getting some indexing for my Cosmic section, so if I pull that off I can repurpose it to ease navigation of my Wakeup Call section as well.

My 2MAD strategy worked pretty well this past week. No major flareups, and the numbness in my arm went away. Going to try it again this coming week to see if I can get repeat results. On an unrelated note, I tried out some of those mookies from Dana’s Bakery, a cookie with a macaron baked inside it. In terms of gluten-free desserts, they rival some of the best desserts I’ve had with or without gluten. Not bad for mail-order baked goods.

Though Wakeup Call is my main focus right now, I’m actually hard at work on a secondary project that hasn’t been added to the site yet. I won’t give away too many details, but it’s a tabletop game of sorts, meant to be spectated rather than played. For now, we can call it Project Mingle. I’ve been working on it for the past six months, switching back and forth between different systems to see what works and what doesn’t. It’s a project I’ve toyed around with for over ten years now, and this is the third iteration of it. I’ve been trying to add on improvements from version 2.0, but then I keep overcomplicating the system and wanting to go back to the simplicity of the previous version. It’s been a fairly vicious cycle that’s kept me from making too much progress, but I still want to make it work. I’ve got a system that I’m playtesting now, probably the most promising one I’ve seen this year. It’ll definitely take more effort to implement, but I expected as much ever since I made the decision to switch to programming it myself instead of using Tabletop Simulator. The additional automation definitely speeds things up, but the lack of dice rolls lowers the suspense factor.

My Cosmic section is also looking healthy. I’ve been working on the designs for next month’s aliens. You can expect to see the number increase from 51 to 71 over the next few weeks. It’ll be a good test to make sure I have my terminology down and can apply it to the mechanics of the new aliens. I definitely want to make sure all of the aliens are usable when adhering to my rules. It’s so easy to overlook something trivial that results in the balance of the game getting upended. All it takes is one Masochist vs. Healer situation and you’ve got to start throwing in special exceptions.

I’m so close to beating all faction combinations on Covenant 20 in Monster Train. Only 3 more to go. I’m thinking afterwards I’ll take a break for awhile before moving onto Covenant 25. Maybe I’ll take advantage of the Steam sale and find a new game to try out. As I continue to develop Project Mingle, pulling inspiration from other games to see what works and what doesn’t has been very helpful. I could also use more inspiration. Make the most!