Helen Greetham 🐝

Something I'm trying which I have a feeling I'll wish I'd done years ago.

Quick reference guide to character portraits representing different emotions, with handy unique numbers which can be referenced in code.

Realised I might need to clarify - heat gun on a *very low heat setting, held a long way away from the laptop, and constantly moving it.

I don't know exactly what blasting a laptop with a heatgun turned up high will do but I'd imagine nothing good.

I rediscovered my school yearbook, where my schoolmates in 2008 gave me all their best wishes.

inkle THE GAME NARRATIVE KALEIDOSCOPE PODCAST Podcast title art

The first episodes of Inkle's Game Narrative Kaleidoscope Podcast are out:
www.inklestudios.com/kaleidoscope/

– hosted by @jon.inkle.co and @sagarberoshi.bsky.social , feat. @darbymcdevitt.bsky.social

Enjoyable conversations, and quite a few thoughts applicable to more than just game writing.

Must be nice to be a pretty cat in the sunshine!

The concept that a 'game of uniqueness' will eventually find its audience and be loved is so comforting.

I think that's been my experience? I'm very grateful that word of mouth and people championing it has sustained my game over its first year of release.

This really surprised me about the games industry.

It hit me when a magazine seemed interested in my game until finding out it had already been out for four entire months (gasp!) and they gently explained that the only covered 'new' releases. It's wild.

I mean it could have been worse, it could have just said 'cats'
OH WAIT

Turns out it meant I'd bought theatre tickets to a performance of... Death on the Nile!

Great job, past me.

For example: I have an entry in my digital calendar for April that just says 'Evil Under The Sun'. Beyond being an Agatha Christie novel I had no idea what this means.

Past Me didn't follow The System and provide links to relevant documents and context.

Much has been written about ADHD folks being told 'just keep a planner/diary!' as if this will solve all problems, and the years of pain and frustration they experience as a result.

I've got various systems that work for me most of the time, but I still mess up sometimes.

They are! I especially love all the ALT ones.

There was one about "The VLE is dead, long live the VLE" which got too damaged.

A while ago my work laptop had to go off for repairs and I removed all the stickers just in case I didn't get it back again (heat gun and greaseproof paper!)

They've now been returned.
I'm very proud of my learning technology adjacent stickers!

My StoryGraph for February!

Getting Inspired at the British Museum YouTube video by Jabbage

I took a trip to the British Museum yesterday, gathering inspiration for my new game!
www.youtube.com/watch?v=b_d9...

Edwardian Spaceships — The Wonder Room LAST TIME on THIS BLOG: I was about to go to the ‘Get Into Games’ festival, and I was testing out a more illustrative art style for my next game. AND NOW: THE CONCLUSION. Get Into Games The mon...

www.thewonderroom.uk/blog-2/edwar...
My February newsletter is here, and it includes an adventure to the roof of a museum.

(I know a lot of people read these via social media links, but if you'd like to get them straight into your inbox, I encourage subscribing here:
www.thewonderroom.uk/blog-2

This is so helpful, thank you!
In my game I did 8 frames because I was referencing Richard William's book the 'Animators Survival Kit' for dear life (I hadn't done any animation before!), and that's how many his examples had. I find it so hard to avoid characters looking like they're ice skating.

I need to read Nero Wolfe! I always looks for them in second hand bookshops, but no luck yet.

(I could buy them online or as ebooks, but where's the fun in that?)

I feel like it's less strange if they're standalone stories, it gives the characters a sense of being timeless. What caught me out in Blandings is that there are some cases where one book follows on from another and only a few days of book-time have passed.

But then Wodehouse is writing in the 60s, and suddenly they become definite period pieces set in the late 20s/early 30s, so suddenly it's like things have gone BACK in time.
The Second World War officially retracted from their memories.

Wodehouse's Blandings books have an unhinged chronology. In universe they take place in a short period of time but they were written over 50 years and remain 'contemporaryish'.

If you're binge-reading, the characters start in the 1910s and then two weeks later they're making jokes about Hitler.

The Beekeeper's Picnic (2025)

(I was very happy to be able to list all the audio-related folks and Kickstarter backers to avoid that situation!)

Yeah, true, perhaps it's inevitable.

Has anyone got any tips for how to describe being solo game developer on LinkedIn without coming across as a bit of a supercilious prat?

I keep writing 'Creative director and founder' and then wanting to gnaw my own arm off.

You'll all get to find out what it is in a few months, but for now it's a seeeeeeecret.

I'm making something this weekend which is making me wiggle in my chair and giggle to myself and generally delight in the act of creating silly things.

I get so much joy in my life from going "Ok but what if this silly thing existed" and then making it exist... it's brilliant.

I spend a lot of time explaining that I work in a library but alas, I'm not a librarian.

I haven't worked out how it's like the musical either, but at least it makes more sense to compare it to another creative storytelling medium than "You know what your cosy point and click game reminds me of? The recruitment of the Cambridge Five to pass secrets to the Soviet Union"

Last year at a convention someone told me that Beekeeper's Picnic reminded them of Operation Mincemeat.

At the time I didn't know about the musical, so I just assumed that somehow my game reminded them of a WW2 deception operation.

Which was confusing, but people's minds work in mysterious ways.

Same!