or, ‘Why is daddy cleaning the cat with a shop vac?’

Less than 2 weeks to go, and I’m gritting my teeth down to stumps. My extroverted child has taken an interest in science and has a bajillion-and-a-half questions about; volcanoes, black holes, the largest known star, earthquakes, tectonic plates, Marianas Trench and how the world will end.

I just wanna work on my game, kid.

And on top of that, with all the travels, playdates, family gatherings and other distractions – I’m super way behind on basic household chores. Like cleaning the gutters. Or the litter box.

And all of this is keeping from my game. In a BIG way.

In the meantime, my kid has been working overtime creating all kinds of new neat stuff, and I cannot keep up with photgraphing / scanning all of it. There is now a very large pile of 18″ x 24″ newsprint sketchpads growing on the couch in my office and its showing no signs of slowing. There have been all kinds of new dev experiences popping up and I’ve been struggling to find the time to apply to them all (especially since the wife is the better at editing than I am and wrangling her from her busy schedule is a task unto itself)

I did manage to find this lil’ guy in my son’s sketches and he set off a whole slew of creative ideas. He’s the guy skulking around the playground that kids should avoid. He’s the bad guy keeping a close watch on our young hero. I want him wandering around the level and if the play gets too close, he’ll slink away and hide. Eric from the Playmaker Slack channel suggests giving him some dynamic music that gets more threatening as the player gets closer.

Here he is – in game. I realized that his cigar smoke wasn’t parented just right, so that is now fixed and his cigar will puff properly now.