Blathered recently about how if we are to ever finish our games, we must peer into the void and look earnestly into our projects, and see the rot that is preventing us from making painful but meaningful progress... It dawned on me today that I am utterly terrified to just play the game. To disable the "spawn in the middle of nowhere to test something" debugs, and to just turn on the random level generator, test the game as is, take notes, and work to make the actual game better.

I thought I had more to say on this matter, but that's about it! Gonna actually do a quick playtest of the game, and make that radical shift in development perspective. Rather than just endlessly "doing what I think needs doing". I'm going to begin the arduous task of playing the game I am utterly f*cking sick of, thinking of how to make it better, and working on those aspects of the game.

I want to get back to doing a bit of writing here so that these blathers aren't merely cast to the wind. One of the things that plagues us as a society is this snowballing sentiment of nihilism and self medication. "Why bother? We're overpopulated, we have more than enough food, let's all just get f*cked up and fuck off and enjoy ourselves."

I don't touch on it much, I like to point fingers at society and broken systems for why I ended up here. But to be frank, I used to drink, a lot. If I wasn't working, I was looking forward to friday, and maybe even having some glasses of wine with friends and roommates late night on a weds. We're young! We're supposed to enjoy ourselves! For me being a bit of a neckbeard it was a bit of a crutch. It helped me open up and act a fool in front of others who were also intoxxicated and acting fools. That to me was social interaction and it went on for a very long time. Lots of drinking and smoking and wasting time, nothing more. A better job meant going to nicer restaurants, drinking booze that wasn't bottom shelf once in a while. Gosh looking back, we really do have a problem with a lack of purpose. It becomes so clear why everything decayed so much, I was certainly part of the problem. 

Anyway, not sure if I have anything much more to say on this. We don't get do overs, we have one life to live, and I used to believe that meant, "SO LIVE IT UP!". Some day you're going to be a little older, maybe a little wiser, and you're going to see all those years were squandered, they didn't build anything, in fact, you may become shackled, a slave to poor decisions and regret. What if instead of building bad habits you had built good ones? What if instead of making a fool of yourself and blaming it on alcohol, or whatever your poison happens to be, you'd build up qualities you could be proud of? What if instead of indulging yourself your entire life you had helped to piece together a better and stronger world rooted in principle and sacrifice?

We don't ask ourselves these questions any more. Everything is self indulgence, everything is corruption, everything is bottom of the barrel bullshit... I kinda like that line, maybe I'll have Bottleneck incorporate it into his dialogue, "None drink the bottom of the barrel bits, more for ol' bottleneck!" I can little bottleneck with broken barrels and empty bottles that are strewn about.

Little bit of a self insert, not sure if that's good or bad, but I figure, I'm going to write what I know and try to not speak out of my arse as much as possible. A character named "bottleneck" who's constantly pouring bottles of rum down his neck. It also expands on the big ass rant I've hidden in this game narrated by "bottleneck" it never occured to me until now that I could make him a character in the game that's always drunk and making an ass of himself and is just a general idiot like Crazy Dave from PVZ:

I'm actually kind of creatively burned out right now so i'll edit this post in the future, but i'll just get some scribbles in for how the dialogue with Ol' Bottleneck will go, and I'll just get the NPC and general layout of hte area with empty bottles around him in the game soon. I'll dial in the dialogue later. Rather than having TONS of NPC's with dialogue, I just want a few that I'm really happy with their dialogue and their character. 

It's important to me that I don't lose the players trust. If they're going to take the time to talk to an NPC, I want that dialogue to be meaningful and have some thought and polish behind it to the best of my abilities.

So that said, here's some terrible scribbles I'm not going to dwell on just to get it started and I'll tune up later. Ol' Bottleneck is going to be an insufferable ass, fixated only on drinkin' booze, with hints of redemption in that he'll inadvertently blather some regrets and little bits of wisdom here and there. Then he'll go in hard on being just an absolute dumb f*ck at the end of the dialogue. I want it to be this interesting dynamic of this outward idiot, who HOPEFULLY has a bit more depth and more to offer beneath it all despite his best efforts to just drink himself to death.

===First draft: Ol' Bottlneck (found surrounded by bottles and barrels)===

Stop clankin' them bottles 'round, yer gonna spill the black gold! Some chase pearls, some lament the dying of the light. We could blather f'rever bout what's makes might or what makes right! I tell ya now, don't you run afoul. Knock down them dranks, that's a party foul!

You've never heard of good old Bottleneck!? I don't recognize ya either! Not sayin' much to tells ya the truth. Well hot clam can ya loan Ol' Bottleneck some pearlies! All the shimmerin' shallows knows an Ol' Bottleneck repays his debts! And then some! And then some more! We 'gon tear it up and down the shore!

*HICK*

**Ol' Bottleneck tries to straighten himself up** Oh, I see you light eater. Two uh' ye if we be keepin' truth! Ya think a worn out dingbat like meself was born yestaday!? I ain't be like you, USER! Spawnin' into this realm like ye so important, brining us light like yer our savior. I prefer the black out!

I've seen more flotsam than the res', why ya think I be choking' this viel bottles down me neck into me chest!

**Pssst** Speakin' of chests, the greatest bounty ya won't find in a great big shiney crate, or even at the bottom of a bottle... *sigh*. 

**Old bottleneck looks off into the distance**

Where was we again?! Most won't stoop ta' drinking tha' bottom of tha' barrel, but Ol' Bottleneck thinks free liquor be the sweetest!.. If ya won't sully yer belly with the sleeziest ya might just be elitiest!

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Future notes: Need a perfectly distilled first line of dialogue that perfectly frames this character. Catchy, simple, clever rhymes.

Ok, pretty happy with how that came out for a first draft, we'll wake up tomorrow and see some glaring issues with it, but the important part about writing is to get it started, sleep on it, and revise, revise revise! I'd like to get better temo's and rhymes, and subtle little jokes and gameplay innuendos per usual. Maybe a bit more character and backstory, he could drop more concrete evidence of a better past life. I'm also keenly aware that if every fish in the game just knows the player is the lightbringer, that it loses all luster and meaning, and that I really haven't developed the nature of this relationship the player has wit hthe NPC's. The general idea is that the "player" is essentially the god, they bring light to these digital creatures and breathe life into them every time they play. which is why all the fish are like, YAY isn't killing us all fun!? WEEEEE PLEASE DON'T GO! Which is kind of an allegory to our modern times, and how we the consumers have this really toxic relationship with corporate entities, and we're all appealing to each others' absolute worst and base natures, none daring to demand better from the other as everything devolves into madness and apathy and nihilistic self serving greed and tribalism. 

Damn, I'm really glad I wrote this today because I really hadn't felt this all out, but I think that kinda sums up the story I want to tell, and the angle I want to take. I want this to be a bit of a modern day Brother's Grim mixed with a bit of Twilight Zone, and Pokemon, that's the best way I can describe it,  and I think it could work! One day, one smarm of dialogue at a time...

It won't JUST be a reveal that everything is fake and the player is just a human turning on a cartridge giving life to idiot fish... it could be so much more than that. I've been wanting to get some Lovecraftian terror mixed in churned up with some high and Sci Fi type sh*t, like each zone I want to have a different narrative tone. Area 1 is the stereotypical "pokemon", very bare bones, simple, zone 2 would be the goofy funny pirates. Then zone 3 starts to get weird... with self aware and very introspective horror type sh*t leading to major enemy boss characters.

Ha, it's kinda fun to fall back into that creative mode where you can just conjure up bit ideas without having to dive deep into code and systems to make it all possible right away. I'd almost forgotten what this feeling was like. It's so free and fun. It's nice to think about, and i'm glad i'm cataloguing it, maybe some day we can get to these things. But for now I need to focus and get this first zone up and running and fun.

Back to the grind...