📝 Is it really November already?!

2022 November 09

I keep starting to write a blog post that encompasses the entirety of my 3+ months away from here, getting overwhelmed by how much I have to cover, and then abandoning my text editor to go play video games instead. Then the next time I sit down to start writing, I remember how I’ve been trying and failing to bang this out, beat myself up for not getting such a simple thing done already, and then… give up to go play video games.

Such is life.

So to break out of this self-defeating loop, I’ll just infodump my disorganized thoughts into this text editor so that I can move on with my life already. And maybe once I get over this block, I can re-learn how to write proper blog posts? Maybe? Please, Brain, I am begging you, stop doing this to me.

Camping and life stuff

A bright wooden campfire in the center of a dark picture.

More camping = more campfires

Daikon and I went camping for my birthday in late August! This time at an auto-camping site in Sagamihara. It was surprisingly crowded but very relaxing. This was also our first time sleeping in a tent instead of a cabin, and it was very cool!

Life has been kinda hectic recently so I don’t know when is the next time we can go camping, but hopefully sometime before winter shuts everything down. But uh, we’ll see.

I found out that I passsed the JLPT N2! I also signed up to take N1 which is (OH GOD) less than a month away. So uh, cool! Yeah! Not confident in the least that I’ll pass, but oh well!

And in other, much more unfortunate news, we had to rehome one of our cats, Roku, due to behavioral issues with our other cat Henry. It’s been rough, and I’ve been trying not to think about it too much.

Game events and 同ZINE

A white outdoor event tent booth with a laptop, speakers, and flyers on a table. In the foreground are Nice Gear Games business cards taped to a tentpole, and a Nice Gear Games sign over the tent. There are also flyers for 同ZINE hanging down from the tent and off the backs of the chairs.

Our very modest tent for our very first event!

We went to Zentame in Gifu Prefecture and showed off Nice Disc: The Last Hot Blood! This was our very first event and boy oh boy were we underprepared. Luckily the event itself was super chill and we learned a ton for future events.

We also used Zentame to announce 同ZINE, an indie/doujin video game anthology itch bundle and zine! This is a project that we’ve been working on with npckc, and we are super excited to get to work with all these wonderful devs. If you’re based in Japan and make games, I hope you will consider appearing in future issues!

And speaking of 同ZINE, our inaugural Issue #0 is set to go up this Saturday! You can get it on itch (follow our Twitter for links when that goes live), and if you just so happen to be in Akihabara, you can also stop by デジゲー博 and pick up a physical copy of the zine from our booth! Because yeah, we’re gonna be there to promote Nice Disc and 同ZINE!!

Nice Disc was also in this summer’s Steam Next Fest, and planning to also have it in this winter’s Indie Live Expo. We’re also going to be at Tokyo Game Dungeon 2 in January. We are trying to get better at putting ourselves out there!! It is very stressful and scary, and it is hard not to feel like a total loser when you’re surrounded by all these ultra cool devs and their games!!

More games stuff

I gave the Nice Gear Games site a bit of an overhaul, and been trying to move all our Unity Room games onto our itch page. I’ve also been trying to add English descriptions of Daikon’s games. The following games now have English descriptions: Nice Ninja, Nice Flavor, Nice Strike, and Nice Boom. Nice Fish does not currently have an English description, but that’s because we’re planning to overhaul the game and give it an English translation. Once that’s done, I’ll add English to the itch page. Games left to port over: Nice Disc Classic (currently unavailable), Daikon’s first ever game jam game １分大魔王, and Gomasuri Poker.

We’re also getting back into streaming Happy Hour! It’s gonna be on Thursday nights from now on. I’m very happy that we’re doing this again, I really missed talking about all the cool games we find.

I’m also trying to learn how to use PICO-8 for real again, this time by watching Lazy Devs YouTube videos and trying to put together a little roguelike. And I’ve got like three different TRPG ideas, but I gotta focus and nail them down so that they’re not just vague floating concepts. Brain! Stop doing this to me!!

I will be back with more blog posts!! I promise!! Maybe!!

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