Resurrection
Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaannnnnnnnnnnnnnnnd we are back
It has been a while. I blew the dust off this blog and my room briefly had the air quality of Los Angeles before things settled down. I've had quite a journey since the last time I was around here. So why don't we get up to speed?
The Fate of Skag Malibu
Skag Malibu was the project I was working on the last time I was here. The truth is I haven't touched Skag Malibu since around May 2025. Between the dismal reception of that second demo and no more interest being drummed up I just kind of lost the drive to continue it. I won't deny that's a pretty vain reason to stop working on a game, but it'd be a lie to act like some of the reason people make games isn't because we'd like for others to play them at some point.
Therefore for the time being I have set Skag Malibu to the side, and I have no date on when/if I'll end up returning to it, if at all.
Living in a Post-Skag World.
After laying Skag Malibu to rest, I was pretty down on the whole game development thing. I love making games (Even if it is a pain in the ass), but the fate of that project was a bitter pill to swallow. I had some ideas for other games that I played with for a short time, but around the beginning of August last year I dropped all of that, and stepped away from game development.
To be honest, I wasn't sure if I was going to return to making games at all for a good while. After August 2025 I had zero drive to develop a new project. For the first time in about 15 years of my life I didn't even have any game ideas jumping at me.
And so the weeks turned into months, and the new year turned over without rejuvenating my interest. The first few months of 2026 were much the same, still no motivation to be found.
Plantains and Pastelón
And then we reach the later weeks of March 2026. At this point I had been seeing the art of a good friend, NexusOddity. She had been posting the occasional 3D model. 3D is a space I've always wanted to work in as a game developer. Simply put, you have a much larger possibility space with the extra dimension. Every few years I would open up Blender or some other 3D modeling program and try and learn to wrangle it with little success. So my dreams of 3D were relegated to occasional coding experiments with no actual models in them.
This is what my average 3D game looked like before 2026.
But that changed when I suddenly got struck by the bolt of divine video game inspiration. Nexus had stated previously in some of our conversations an interest in working with video games, and what do you know! I have a bunch of experience making little video games. So I approached her with a simple proposition, I deal with the terrible awful programming part of games, and she would handle making 3D models. And so, from this conversation began a new game, Project Plantain.
This project started out the same as my other 3D games, a capsule hopping around a land of dev textures, but it quickly began to become something more. As Nexus and I hashed out the details of the game and its characters and world we very quickly moved on from the capsule and grids into something that looked like an actual game.
There was a fervor for this game I hadn't experienced before. Something about this project just felt real. It was like all my other games were just little tests that would have been nothing more, but Plantain could actually become a real game if I put the elbow grease in. As a result, this project is where I ended up actually cracking Blender and was able to start creating actual usable 3D models. The placeholder character there was done by me, and even fully rigged and animated.
Sadly, there was trouble brewing on the horizon. Well not really the horizon, it was sitting in my damn house like Los Angeles again. Not any actual drama or what not mind you, just the more boring realization that while I was now capable of making 3D models, I was still working at a very low skill level and also had no clue on how to UV Unwrap and texture those models.
Needless to say, to make Plantain reach the quality level I would be happy with, we would need to become much more adept at making and texturing models. My worry is that if I did this with Plantain then most of the early work for the game would be thrown out. Not only requiring a redo, but also likely adjustments to the game's programming since a 3D platformer is going to be heavily based on its animation and models.
But then I suddenly got struck by a truly devious idea.
Down, but Not Out
If I didn't know how to effectively model and texture, I had two options. One, suffer the growing pains of figuring it out for Plantain. Or Two, make a smaller project with the expectation of it dealing with these issues.
When I had that idea, I had something weird happen. A near fully formed game idea popped right into my head. Even with a name already set up. 900down. I usually have a hell of a time deciding on names, Skag Malibu took me months to come up with and that name was just kinda me giving up to be honest.
Plantain is still our baby, and I will be returning to it upon the conclusion of 900down, but the opportunity to become fully competent in the matters of 3D modeling, animation, and UV unwrapping is too good to pass up.
So what is 900down? Simply put, it is a First Person Action-Horror Shooter. The game puts the player into the boots of someone called The Server, a low level maintenance worker who has to perform various tasks in a massive underground facility and deal with an infestation of a biological horror known as Dross.
I've been working on this game since the beginning of May, and I've even received quite a bit of help on it. Nexus has provided some 3D models for the game, and some other friends have been helping with voice acting, 2D environment art, and concept art. This game is my current project, and future posts on this website will be talking more about it.
The game has an Itch.Io page, and hopefully within the next few months will also be available on Steam. I don't know how long this game's development will take, but if I want to give a foolishly optimistic release date I would love to release 900down by the end of this year or the beginning of 2027.