Monthly blog post: September 2022

Welcome to your one-stop-shop for half-baked and very-late ideas. Here’s your order:

Mario Movie

Tomorrow (technically today since I’m writing past 12 PM,) Nintendo will reveal the first trailer for The Super Mario Bros. Movie. We know little about the movie so far, aside from its cast and this poster. But that ignorance will soon be replaced with a glimpse into what will probably be the most impactful video game movie to date.

Historically, Nintendo used to be more open to experimentation with their IPs. Mario Bros. had a live action film in the 90’s, and Phillips had a go at developing their own Mario game for the Phillips CD-i. Though as time went on, Nintendo became more possessive of their properties. They no longer let others wildly experiment with their brands, though Nintendo is still willing to occasionally loan their characters.

It’s safe to say that Nintendo had very strict standards when working with Illumination Studios on this project. Lots of money was spent to make this film a reality. Yet one big (and somewhat subjective) question still remains: will it be “good?”

Detective Pikachu was, in my opinion, a good movie. I found Free Guy to be an extremely intelligent film with a captivating story, despite its many Hollywood tropes and technical implausibility. Tonally speaking, I think both movies had a blend of humor and grit that I really enjoyed. I’m guessing that the new Mario movie will be more of a lighthearted “kids movie,” but maybe it will still win me over. After all, I enjoyed Into the Spider-Verse and The Lego Movie, despite initially not having much interest.

Of course, only time will tell how things will turn out.

N Step Steve Cameos

Let’s do another update on N Step Steve: Part 2.

If you didn’t know, I recently put out an open call for other puzzle game developers to let me use their characters in N Step Steve: part 2. I’m glad to report that I’ve accepted all of the submissions! In other words: if you submitted a cameo (prior to this blog post,) your character will appear in the game.

Some of the characters are from small puzzle games you probably haven’t heard of. Some of these are from big puzzle games you probably have heard of. I’m happy with the amount of submissions; I think I have just the right amount.

This is the first time I’ve done something like this, and I’m hoping that it starts a trend. One of the nice parts of indie game development is the communities you can form around them, and I think that these sorts of cameos build up a sense of community (albeit in a small way.)

Technically speaking, the cameo submission form is still open. Though I’m not sure if I’ll accept any more character submissions after this. I need to keep the game’s scope in check, after all.

Speaking of scope… this is definitely the biggest game I’ve ever made. If you combined 5 Step Steve and N Step Steve: Part 1 into a single game, the result would still be smaller than N Step Steve: Part 2. The map screen barely fits within the game window.

I know I already talked about scope in the “May 2022” blog post, but it’s something that I’m still thinking about. I’ve been working on Part 2 for roughly 16 months now, and it will take two more months to finish. I think this will be good practice for my future projects, many of which will also take a similar amount of time (probably longer) to finish.

If you didn’t know already, I plan on launching this game sometime this year (probably December,) so look forward to that!

Cool Links

• OFF (CW: violence, creepiness, language, etc.) is a freeware RPG game that I enjoyed.
• IDK what else to put here, it’s 12:29 in the morning and I should be getting ready for bed. But I think OFF is cool enough to exceed my coolness quota, which is a thing that this section definitely does not have.

That is all

I’m going to bed.