Weekly Update - November 16 - The Sauce is Thick

Hey Peeps!!

I hope you've all had a nice week! It's been snowy up here in Montreal, which has been exciting and a little nerve-racking. Quebec really likes its ice storms, and we narrowly avoided one this year by, like, one or two degrees.

So that's good!

Everything continues to happen a lot, everywhere, all at once! Some of that everything involves me finishing the next chapter of Play Things! I've completed the 'write-through' stage, so now I have to do variants and then edit.

This chapter has been an interesting one to write because it's the least intense route for Candy and Riley. Most of the friction with Kasha has already been resolved, so this chapter ended up quiet, introspective, and a little sad. Without an external source of conflict, our two protagonists are much freer to get in their own way - the poor dears.

Still, I quite like it, and I hope you will too!

While all release dates are lies, I'm going to say it's more likely than not that everything will be finished and polished, not next Friday but the Friday after that - November 28th.

That's later than I'd have liked. My writing is always way better when I get a good round of beta-reading and feedback, and I'll be looking for betas in a couple of days. Like Miyamoto definitely didn't say (the origin of this quote is vague, but it wasn't Miyamoto), 'a game is only late until it ships, but it sucks forever!'

Speaking of things taking forever, the lovely Clover reminded me that I have not shared the character designs for Is Trixie There with the public yet. Yes - I am still working on that game, though it has been on the back burner for a while.

Here are the character designs! Let me know what you think!

I am still using my new 'trying to get things done' strategy, and it's still working - which is honestly a little surprising. Most of my attempts at organization have fizzled in less time than this one.

I'm not going to detail it yet, because I haven't shipped the chapter, but I will give you a piece of it.

I'm going to recommend an app - shocking, I know!

I'm not going to recommend a specific app because there are several, and I'm sure they all work roughly the same way.

If you, like me, have trouble with getting lost in the social media sauce - if you spend a lot of your time going "I should be doing A Thing!" and then instead of doing that thing you feel anxious and guilty and watch another YouTube video - you should get a website blocker!

I have mine scheduled so that every weekday it blocks the websites that tend to devour all my time between 9am-12pm and 1pm-5pm. Then, and this has turned out to be surprisingly key, it also blocks these websites between midnight and 7am. This means I don't end up staying up too late watching Twitch or reading Bluesky because I'm too tired to go to bed.

This has worked embarrassingly well. I feel ridiculous saying this to all of you. I am an adult. I am a thoroughly middle-aged person - I should be able to manage this without assistance... and sometimes I can. It's not like I can never tear myself away from social media - it's that I can always do it with help.

That reliability is incredibly valuable to me.

So, if this is a problem for you, give one of these a try! It might change your life - it certainly changed mine!

Stay safe out there! Don't slip on the ice!

- Squish

EDIT!! : Oh! Also, Clover also bothered me into getting a Ko-Fi!! You can find it here!! https://ko-fi.com/pinkgoo

If you do not feel inclined to being a Patron but you DO feel inclined to give me money - you can do so there!!