The MOKKOGRAD Report: March 2025
Hi Friends!
February was full of things. I announced Virtue’s Heaven’s release date (May 20th) and for a few days afterwards, felt really good about things. About the game, which is incredibly rare, but also on a creative level. Then I look at the world around me and I’m just hit with feeling utterly helpless. I’m trying my best to work myself through this, and having a creative project to channel most of my pent-up frustrations about everything helps a bit, but it’s hard to not occasionally fall into despair, when you remember the scale of the task that lies before us all.
In a way this is all a normal reaction, so is being scared of what might be ahead.
The important part is to, despite everything that’s currently happening, insist that who we are and what we care about has value, even if the rest of the world is trying its hardest to tell us otherwise.
Gamedev-News
Virtue’s Heaven has a release date, a new trailer and a new demo! Aside from that I also put a lot of time in polishing up the currently existing boss fights and I’ve been making very good progress on that end. With the current speed, I should be done with that part towards the middle of March, which leaves me with a good amount of time to get the rest of the game in order.
It’s really interesting to see how having a fixed date for when the game has to be done has helped bring things into focus.
Blogpost-Shares
If you haven’t read it yet, I wrote a larger post about what Virtue’s Heaven is to me and why I think people should care about it:
https://mokkograd.net/posts/2025-02-20-Why-you-should-care-about-Virtues-HeavenInteresting things I played/watched/read
I forgot to send an email out to tell you about this when it happened, but the yearly Roll +Bond charity stream happened over the past weekend and as always, it was a blast to both play in some games, as well to just listen to other community members playing something. The stream will end up on youtube at some point, but until then, feel free to watch the vods on twitch:
Twitch
Roll +Bond is an online TTRPG community brought together by fandom and held together by friendship. We love to play games and tell stories together!
This Essay from Hito Steyerl about AI image generation is pretty interesting:
Hito Steyerl, Mean Images, NLR 140/141, March–June 2023
An artist considers a new form of machinic representation: the statistical rendering of large datasets, indexed to the probable rather than the real of photography; to the uncanny composite rather than the abstraction of the graph.
The Potato section
From the journal of Russet Wrinkle, Owner of the Upper Hills Potato Farm in the country of golden Hills. First day of what will be known as the eternal Spring, Year 492 of the Age of Hairs.
Had another dream. I was sitting in the tavern, talking to Neighbour Lamplight, who suddenly looked me straight into the eyes and said: ‘Go to the small glade between Brakish and Whitewater and look for the Tree with the split branches. At its feet you will find a gift for you.
Next thing I remember was me standing in front of that tree, in the middle of the night, just wearing my pajamas. A sack of Potatoes, almost as tall as me, was leaning against the tree’s trunk. When I went to pick it up (Father always said to never refuse a gift of free Potatoes), I found a small note on top of it, that said: “The Moon always cares for its children.”
The Note had a distinctive Wizard smell to me, so I crumpled it up, threw it into the bushes and went home.
Came home shortly after dawn and stored the extra potatoes in the shed. Went to the kitchen for breakfast and found the crumpled up note laying on my kitchen table.
Is Lamplight messing with me?
Stats:
Destiny: 2
Potatoes: 5
Moon: 0
(Dice results: 2 - in the garden; 6 - +2 potatoes)
See you in April!
