My adventures on itch.io , begun in May, continue: I have released a new, free, browser-playable (if play is the right verb; “browser read/watch/viewable”), ~1000-word creation on itch: “Of the Firebirds.”
If you’ve checked out my Four Zines of Elsewhere, it’s the second zine in there (but with special effects and music I wrote and new visuals and — if you’re the sort to check out the dev tools — a few Easter eggs logged in the console.)
You’ll see the seizure warning — there’s nothing too obnoxious, but there are some spinning things and some flames that flicker rapidly. CSS animations are fun! If there’s demand, I’ll make a version without those, though.
I still enjoy this way of working. I’m not sure if/how I’ll get publicity for it, but I’m going to try, and — the point is more developing and making solid the vision itself than the pleasure of communicating it, though I am social and praise-hungry enough that having or even imagining an audience helps me psychologically.
I describe “Of the Firebirds” as an entry in a medieval bestiary in interactive zine form, and I think that’s a pretty good description.
In the way of longer-term goals — I hope to start sharing new-to-the-world work seriously next year. I’ve been busily writing about Jennie’s 27th year, but I hit a breaking point (and a big drop in motivation), so I’m taking a couple months off from that to work on my multimedia itch.io creations based on existing material — which I think is good not only because I really really want to but also because I hope to release at least one and possibly two larger game-things next year (January and July) — I had originally imagined material associated with all of January, April, July, and October, but that’s proving to be too much.
At the moment — I’m working in standard web technologies: HTML, CSS, and vanilla JavaScript, because that’s the path of least resistance for what I’m trying (and — have I mentioned that I like the transgressive feeling of working with “bad” art materials, be it cardboard or gel pens or js?). I suspect I’ll restart learning Unity when I need to create a place with (say) real geography; it’s even possible I’ll snag Twine if I want to focus on branching paths, but — that sounds a little easier and more fun to develop from scratch.
Of Elsewhere 