Home Comforts

Or “what a difference a biscuit makes”.

Sometimes you can’t resist a bit of silly. Alright, alright, most of the time I can’t resist a bit of silly.

One of my major gripes that I’ve mentioned before with the development of SYNSO3 is that somewhere down the line it all got very safe and cosy and not nearly enough silly. Leaving aside the things that wot do go in my life stuff that’s been a major roadblock these past 12 months to getting pretty much anything done, when you lose your motivation on things then it all goes a bit “switching to cruise control” and that’s a bit rubbish for the sort of stuff I want/like to make.

Looking back through the 3 or 4 different attempts at titles for SYNSO it became rather clear that there were 2 problems rearing their heads repeatedly. The first being that they seemed divorced from the theme of the game and two, they were a bit playing it straight. That one of them looked like a bizarre-o-world cross between the titles from Geometry Wars and Neon Wars probably didn’t help matters.

That’s no good. SYNSO3 is set in a time and a place. It’s a fiction, obviously, but none the less, SYNSO3 is set somewhere in an alternative 1980′s where aliens can kidnap software developers to change the course of history. Geometry Wars for all its neo-retro stylings is clearly not a good model for a title screen here. Plus, of course, it brings the game into uncomfortable territory with it being an arena shooter. I don’t want to be treading the same ground, obviously.

Sadly, the title screen problem stretched across the whole game.

But y’know, motivation and all that. Lack of direction = lack of arse to do something about it. What was needed here was a good bout of the sillies to give me a kick up the arse.

I got that silly.

Here is that silly.

“But Bob, that’s just a child holding a ginger nut, you mad bastard”

Yes, yes, it is. Here he is measuring the ginger nut.

He refused to share the details of the Quantification Of The Biscuit with me, but I’m assured it has been measured, analysed and its purpose published in a scientific paper somewhere.

This is, after all, no ordinary biscuit.

Look, it’s a special biscuit and not of that kind, you filthy minded twunts. Everyone knows that’s Digestive biscuits anyway. And if someone mailed me a messy digestive biscuit then you can rest assured I’d be posting somewhere more about special biscuit messing than on my own personal blog, right?

Also, if you think I’d hand my kid a soiled biscuit, I honestly don’t want to know what sort of person you are.

See. Untainted.

Whilst you were focusing on the more public schoolboy potential of the biscuit there, you probably missed out the key part of wot I just said. If someone mailed me…

Yes, I received this biscuit through the post. Pics or it didn’t happen.

You can see how excited I am there by just how much my hands are shaking. Fuck iPad unboxing, this is the real deal. Biscuit unpacking.

The moment of biscuity wonderment approaches.

FREE AT LAST. THE BISCUIT IS UNLEASHED.

Who in their right mind would send me, gobby shit and maker of games, a biscuit? What sort of madness is this? Quinns. That’s who.

This is a ROCKPAPERBISCUIT.

IGN offer indie game devs office space, RPS offer indie game developers biscuits.

There is no competition here. I have no need of an office. I always have the need for biscuit. I crave biscuits. Second only to pie, biscuits are the most essential food any indie developer could ever need in life.

Biscuit powered development is an artform.

You’re either with the biscuit or without the biscuit and if you’re without biscuit? Don’t expect me to play your game because it’s probably shit.

If you can’t even get the fundamentals of development down, how can I trust you with the rest? You biscuitless bastard.

When I heard that my application for the Indie Dev Biscuit Fund had been approved, I immediately set about a way of saying thanks. I write games so the sensible thing to do seemed to be to write a biscuit themed game. And so, I started to do just that. I got most of the way through that.

It would have looked like this. You may click to embiggen.

Which is also very silly. It’s also safe. The game is pretty much War Twat again. Playing it safe. Too safe.

And that’s been the problem, y’know? Partly due to life dealing me the hands it has been and me letting myself get rolled over by it a bit, things have all got very sensible round here.

I’m not very good at doing sensible. I get bored easily with sensible. I got bored after a day and a half of making War Twat with biscuits because I’ve been there and done that and that’s no good.

Tiresome, tiresome, tiresome.

And it took a biscuit for me to realise where the problem really lay with the SYNSO3 development. It’s not with the lack of focus or the lack of time or as has often been the case, the lack of will to work on things. It’s been that I’ve been on a one way trip to the land of playing it safe. It wasn’t silly enough to keep my attention.

The RPS biscuit fund was something slightly unhinged that made me realise that I needed to get back to being slightly unhinged myself. To go at things not with the attitude of someone going through the motions making something but to go back to how I felt when I first started it. The point where I decided that I wanted to take a silly idea of making a game starring Kevin Toms and paying tribute to all the people who inspired me to make games in the first place, embrace the silly.

Because without the silly, I can’t be fucked.

I have my plan I detailed last time but now I’ve got the madness back. Look out world and thank you Quinns.