Earlier this week, I launched a Javascript prototype of Cultist Simulator. I hesitate to describe it as a ‘game’ – it’s really only a proof-of-concept of one, temporarily living on the web. But people are enjoying it! You can play it through to the point where you engage in your own inevitable destruction, here: I […]
Author Archives: Alexis Kennedy
Cultist Simulator: recipes and bumping brains
This is a post about the Cultist Simulator systems, and also why you shouldn’t stay too deep in a bunker when you’re working enthusiastically on an idea. That’s something I’ve forced myself to learn: open production in a nutshell. But it can be difficult to remember. My strong inclination is to bunker up. I’m an introvert who ran a company […]
Putting the Open in Open Production: what I’ve been doing, 29th July
Someone asked me on Twitter if I could share the task list for Cultist Simulator. This made me a bit nervous, but things that make you nervous are good. So sod it, here’s the whole thing. If someone finds it useful, great! Cultist Simulator Live Task List A note, and two warnings. The note: […]
Cultist Simulator: “There is not only one history”
I said last week that I wanted to get a Javascript prototype of Cultist Simulator -my weird-fiction-influenced narrative crafting semi-idlegame experiment -up on the web as soon as poss. I’ve got a hundred and fourteen tasks on my pre-alpha list, and I’ve finished seventy-eight of them. I’d like to reach alpha by Friday, but realistically I […]
Cultist Simulator: Making Things Out of Other Things
This is devlog zero for Cultist Simulator. It’s not an announcement or anything: it won’t get any press cos everyone’s off at Develop, and, man, I don’t want press on the screenie below anyway. But I should talk out my ideas in public, and this is something to link to next time I need to explain […]
What I’ve been up to: 8th July
Just before I left Failbetter, our editor, who’d been a long-time freelancer before she joined Failbetter, cautioned me about the freelancer’s disease. “You will,” she said, “end up with more work than you can comfortably handle, because you’ll worry about the future. It’ll happen. Don’t try to stop it, just prepare for it.” I’m trying hard […]
What I’ve been up to: 1st July
I feel like I’ve spent most of this week – like the rest of my Twitter bubble – gawping incredulously at the collapse of the British political landscape into a sort of sinkhole of xenophobic narcissism. If you need a roundup, Michael Gove has one for you below. APART from that: I’ve been in Vancouver, […]
Haunted craters, mobile development, ginger + lime
I’m at Pocket Gamer Connect Vancouver, and out of long Failbetter habit I was dutifully going to write up a blog post about it; and about the experience of being an indie at a mobile games conference; how much it’s like being a pine marten or some other small twitchy hyper animal in an old growth […]
Ten Lessons from running Failbetter
” For an indie dev, your community is essential. They’re your evangelists, your early warning system, your Baker Street Irregulars, your Praetorian Guard…. but you have to look beyond them, too.” I’ve got a feature in GamesIndustry.biz, about things we did right and things I’d do differently: http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2016-06-24-failbetter-games-seven-years-ten-lessons
What I’m up to: 25th June
This is the first time I’ve been out of full time employment in seven years. I meant to relax and do nothing. It turns out that when you’ve been occasionally starving and always busy for seven years, relaxing and doing nothing is like expecting an earthworm to lie still. I just keep rippling, involuntarily-wise. At […]
