So, due to life being busier than a 1 legged dude at a butt kickin’ contest – I totally forgot to post about showing the game at Cleveland Gaming Classic 2023. Each year it keeps getting bigger and I LOVE that its right in my backyard. I met some amazing dev from Youngstown and was thrilled they won an award for their game ‘Secrets of Hope’
I did meet with one of the organizers from GDEX, and they are going back to the video games only format they had when I started showing Booper. While the long haul to Columbus isn’t my favorite thing to do, hanging with my brother-in-law and seeing people from different parts of the state (and beyond) is always exciting.
Painting
Shortly thereafter, I came across a Twitter post asking if anyone wanted to do a family portrait; a yearly tradition for them. I threw a couple of pix in the post, thinking I’d never hear back. Surprisingly, the poor fellow got swamped with bots and apologetically followed up 2 weeks later giving me details of what he wanted. This was outside my style and really pushed me to try different things – I’d never really painted animals before!
I decided that the years residuals from selling art were enough to treat myself and my game to a little upgrade. I bought myself a Quest 3 and I hired a composer to try and get a sad song for an emotional part of Booper’s journey. I was taken aback by how many composers didn’t do lyrics. After a pretty lengthy search, I did find a woman who sounded like my niece, who I wanted to perform, and she had a composition on piano – which I wanted for my nephew to play.
Weeks later, on a somber Monday morning, I opened my email to see she had something for me. I sat there with coffee in hand and tears streaming down my face as I heard the sample – it was dead on perfect. My youngest, hearing me listen to it, asked if that was my niece singing – which further solidified my feeling this was exactly what I was looking for.
Steam VR Fest
And lastly, in the thick of all this – I got an invite to participate in the Steam VR Fest. Considering I hadn’t looked at, or much less touched, my Steam page in a long time; I felt it was the perfect moment to update, upgrade and enhance my presence on the world’s largest online video game hub.
In reworking my Steam page, I discovered a video of a playtest I never knew about:
I watched as they played my old demo – and was horrified that my earlier creation was making them nauseous! I did reach out, explaining the changes I had made and took a lot of what they had to say to heart.
So, next up? Adding a run mode to my game.
