It was very hot. Too hot. Welcome to the Heatwave Newsletter (June to August). I ate ice cream and despaired as I wrestled with the fact that a lot of my work and hobbies revolve around machines that expel hot air.
This month I have: ART, WORMS and TORCH GAMING.
I’ve had a huge art focus these past two months, it’s been real fun. Most of my work went towards a GAME JAM (see below!) but otherwise I treated myself with OC art, fanart, you name it. I like to draw.
First up is, this! It’s OC art – name of ‘MASON’. I was going back and forth on their design for a while and decided to stop worrying and just draw something cool. I’m pretty happy with it – I tried to limit the palette a lot more as an experiment and I think it came out pretty good! Alas, I have already redesigned them slightly.
Next up is THE DREDGE. My new favourite kind of guy. DEAD BY DAYLIGHT’S new killer is a pile of meat slop that jumps out of lockers and gets you. It’s a delightful kind of creature that I love to play as and against, so I impulsively spent a weekend making a visual mess. Enjoy.
The weather was the hottest during the middle of July and consequently I ate a lot of ice cream. It put me in the mood to draw a Summer Pic ™ and was a nice excuse to draw some more OCs. I didn’t get around to finishing it but I’d like to – here’s a sneak peek.
Have you ever seen TREMORS? I had not. But I did a game jam for it and now I know way too much about it. Some friends and I participated in TogetherJam 2022, a jam that asked us to create a game around a number of under-appreciated IPs, and we tried our best to recreate the cinematic worm experience.
Our concept was as such: a card-based base-building roguelite focused on getting the residents out of town and onto safe, worm-resistant ground. We went for a cute, board-game aesthetic and simple, easy-to-read card designs, both of which I worked on! Here’s a screenshot:
For more details and links to the whole team, visit the project page!
If you want to play, visit the gamejolt page!
ALAN WAKE – I played this game, finally, after years of putting it off. I’ve passed over it despite multiple recommendations over the years but this month was its time to shine. So how was it? It was pretty good. I definitely had different expectations going in – I was hoping for more of a horror focus – but I still had a good time with the overall goofy and verbose presentation. When the game gives me a car and tells me to fight a possessed bulldozer I can’t not have a good time, but I think that a few simple tweaks to the combat would have improved my opinion of it a bit more. It’s almost a good survival horror game, but shooting the same enemies in the same forest for 9 hours strikes frustration into my heart more than it does fear.
gmod selfie
DREDGE BY DAYLIGHT – Seeing as I made fanart for this I figured I’d talk about this video game again. Hello. I am still playing it, somewhat sporadically. These past two months have been busy with events and new characters and patches that take the game and shake it violently until complaints fall out. It’s like a live-service discourse speedrun over here.
The new killer is of course my beloved pile of teleporting sludge, ‘THE DREDGE’. It moves between lockers and jumps out at people. I main PYRAMID HEAD because noscoping people through walls with barbed wire lasers makes me feel smart and I find that the DREDGE scratches a similar itch. As it can teleport basically anywhere on the map it’s rewarding when you accurately predict survivor movements – catching them behind corners or cutting off escape routes. It’s engaging beyond the standard killer formula AND it’s a funny little meat guy. What’s not to love?
Besides becoming more of a menace I now spend a bit more time on the survivor side of things than I used to. It’s a slightly more relaxed experience (even after the discourse patch) and gives a lot of insight into how killer and survivor perks actually work and what builds people are making these days. The minor social anxiety I used to feel when trying not to let down my teammates has long since faded and now I simply Vibe and Cause Problems For Everyone. Anyway, Pride Month saw the developers announce the game’s FIRST GAY CHARACTER, survivor guy DAVID KING which has settled the decision of ‘which survivor do I pour all of my funny money into’, so maybe you will see me around, playing as OFFICIALLY GAY DAVID KING.
I don’t think this time works for me, actually
Well, that’s all for now! The next newsletter will probably be post-Halloween…! See you then!
Caspar 👻
