Polytechnicast

Earlier this summer I visited Columbus Ohio to visit my friends Anne and Jerzy Drozd. Part of the plan for our visit was to make some creative experiments together, one of them is this very recording with Jerzy.

For the first time I can think of both he and I are launching products at the same time. Both projects took years of development. Both we made solo. His project is the book The Inscrutable Doctor Baer and the Case of the Two-Faced Statue and mine is the action + cozy game Word Turtle Island.

In this episode, a special crossover of Thunder Punch Daily + Polytechnicast, Jerzy and I navigate stories of why we made these projects and how we're facing the significant task of marketing to reach the people we know will enjoy what we made. It's a lot like an episode of the Lean Into Art cast which was special to revisit for me, hope it will be for you too.

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A new ask me anything form. Some example topics to ask me about like why I made a game for 2.5 years without publishing a whole lot about it publicly. And most important - it's official that Word Turtle Island is going to be available publicly as an early access game on Steam and Google Play June 21, 2024!

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Games and Classes Rob offers and Ways to Support What I Make

Wort and Portia from Word Turtle Island

About 2.5 years. That's how long I've been working on Word Turtle Island to get it ready to publish as an early access game. It's about the right time to be getting the word out and to get myself into practice with showing up social. Practicing being more present even if it's chaotic and inconsistent. Such as this 20 some minute audio podcast. Hi.

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This is Spell, the magical cat who hosts a save place to practice spelling words.

In the middle of working on my next big game Word Turtle Island, where you use words as weapons to battle creatures taking away the books of power, the idea for Spell's Spelling came to me. In this episode of the Polytechnicast I reflect on how this came about and how sometimes a project that takes time away from another project can be worthwhile.

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In the overlapping circles of feasible, viable, desirable, what is the emphasis and culture practiced?

I received a question via my Mastodon account about minimum lovable product vs minimum viable product.

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W-O-R-D up.

Reflecting on game development and how it feels affirming in a way that other video game projects meet delays. I thought I'd have Word Turtle Island ready for first or even early access by now yet I also feel good about how it's coming along.

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Prototype cards for my creative warm up cards game Doodle Creatures Have Needs.

An update about Word Turtle Island and a few other projects I tried to finish this month.

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In this episode I ask why I've posted so few things in 2022. It's a bit about what I'm currently working on and it's also something I've been trying to figure out for years.

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Whether the work that you take on is building on skillful work in the past or not, things got to the way they are for some reason. Now you're here. In this journal I share reasons to find others past work as useful research and signals to help instead of joining a narrative that it has little to no value. Even if that past work wasn't well done, it holds clues and questions to dig into.

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Have you been part of an organization that seems to repeat projects that don't learn much from one another? It's a thing I've wondered: why do companies forget? This episode of the Polytechnicast I journal about group memory and wonder if it would be helpful to remember what different teams have tried and learned in the past. Is it because we resist repeating other peoples stories?

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Games and Classes Rob offers and Ways to Support the Polytechnicast