Heya Friends!

The end start of Fall has settled in and I’m also adjusting to a new seasonal work/life balance. The kids are finally in school (AND afterschool) while I’m almost doing midterms, but things have been productive and steady (for the most part).

As I teased in my last message, there’s been some exciting recent news for Essay Games and I’m sorry I had to withhold a bit. BUT now is the time to share what’s been going on the past month as well as some other very recent updates!

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Essay Games included in Pratt’s Accelerator Hub

As part of my recent hiring at Pratt Institute, I was invited to apply for an opportunity at Pratt’s Research Yard. After thinking it over a bit and coming up with a short pitch, I found out in late August that I was accepted to the IDC Research Accelerator Program!

I’m just starting to get underway with my work at the accelerator, but so far the program has been really exciting. My proposal focused on expanding Essay Games to offer support, development, and collaboration opportunities to local non-profit orgs thinking about games & interactive narrative to showcase their work or reach new audiences.

This is all a bit new and still in early stages, but one of the big goals is to try to find some long-term sustainable research-based support for Essay Games to potentially work on multiple projects at once.

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Developing my Next Game!

Kind of dovetailing off of the Research Accelerator news is that I’ve been diving back into active development of the next project!

I’ve hinted at this a couple of times, and I desperately want to post a longer blog about dev stuff soon, but I’m working on a larger project about the Johnstown Flood of 1889.

The game has gone through many design iterations already, but right now it’s a narrative-driven dice-builder game told in various semi-randomized (but hopefully thematically structured) vignettes.

There’s strangely not a lot and kind of a whole lot of stuff to share simultaneously about this project, but right now I wanted to share that a lot of the (technical) narrative design work and systems stuff is in place. My plan is to start revving up production and asset creation in the coming months.

In tandem with this, I’ve been doing some dev streams on twitch (pictured above), and you should totally subscribe/stop by when you can!

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Bundle of Joy in NY Games Week Live

Lastly, I wanted to mention that Bundle of Joy was featured in the OPENING BLOCK of Game Week Live: the kick-off streamed showcase for New York Games Week.

The initiative has been a long-time coming and it’s been really exciting to see the project grow, mature, and bring in lots of great voices. There’s a ton of fun events going on Oct 4-11 around the city, and I’ll probably stop by Game-A-Palooza this Wednesday if you plan to be there.

It was so incredibly nice to see BoJ get such a warm reception by the hosts and live chat. Make sure to check out the whole stream, as I really felt like the showcase did a great job of representing the diverse communities, makers, and projects across the five boroughs.

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Odds & Ends

For Odds and Ends this month, there’s not a ton of “overflow” from the main news above, but I still want to share some stuff I’ve been playing & reading since we last spoke:

• I was so incredibly happy to see Dreamwalkers, a collaborative storytelling TTRPG designed by Pratt Game Arts Alum Meg Donohoe and Kaeden Green, appear in Indiepocalypse #81.

• I’ve been really liking Future? No Thanks by molleindustria (Paulo Pedercini) since it came out at the start of September. It’s just the right kind of irreverent and it’s been on my list since I first saw the trailer.

• I’m scheduled to give a talk at EGD @ CCNY at the end of this week as part of the visiting game dev lecture series. The title is “Your story needs a system: Thoughts and Examples of Technical Narrative Design,” and I’ll probably post my slides afterward online.

• As part of NY Games Week, Bundle of Joy is 50% off from now until the 8th (coinciding with Steam’s Autumn Sale).

• NHL Hockey season has started and I already messed up my fantasy league roster (eyeroll).

• I’ve watched a handful of the Road to Ithica devlog videos and interviews by The Pixel Hunt about their upcoming game and have really enjoyed some of the convos!

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Alright, that’s all I got for now! I know I said this last time, but now that I’m trying to talk about it more frequently I do actually intend to post a game dev post on the blog and to get that back up and running soon!

Thanks as always for reading my updates and always appreciate your support!

<3z

Nicholas
Essay Games