First up, thank you to everyone who’s played (and especially bought) Masques and Murder! Your support is amazing! Today we passed both the 1000 downloads and 100 purchases milestones.
That won’t sound like much to the Jonathan Blows among you, but this is a huge deal for me: although I’ve been making games for a few years now, none of them have been played by this many people, and none made any money. Since the game is available to download for free I honestly didn’t think anyone would pay; the fact so many have actually parted with money for something I made still boggles my mind. It’s also really helpful right now since funds have been low: now I don’t have to worry about rent! Hooray! Thank you everyone. 🙂
But wait, there’s more! I’ve also started a new project: a podcast with friend and fellow game-enthusiast Andy Noelker.
Andy and I love playing games, and we love to chat about them. When we did our MA together we’d natter on for hours about this game or that mechanic. But there was always something missing. Turns out, it was a mic and an upload button.
I’m kidding, but we really did enjoy those chats, and we hope you will too. That’s why we’ve started Twenty Dollar Gaming. The idea is we spend $20 each month on games (mostly indie), then talk about them. And we hope you can be part of the fun, too: we’ll announce each month’s game ahead of time so people can buy the game, play it along with us, and vehemently disagree with our conclusions in the comments!
From the site:
“Mostly we’ll cover indie games, and they will (we hope) be universally interesting. Maybe not polished, maybe not masterpieces, and maybe not fun. But we aim to have something to chew over at the end of the month: perhaps an intriguing mechanic, or an unusual structure, or even just an unexpected tone. We don’t want to like these games: we want them to be interesting. The two aren’t mutually exclusive, but still.
We think games are art, and that doesn’t mean you have to be wishy-washy about them: if anything, that means we have to be more rigorous, more critical and more thoughtful than ever.”
And if all else fails, it’ll still be a neat way to keep in touch with my friend. 😛
When do we start? We already have! Last month we played Tale of Tales’ Sunset – you can listen here – and right now we’re playing cyberpunk megacorp sim AdvertCity. Play along with us!
james patton 
I tried out your game, and like it, except for one thing… I’ve reached level 20 on all skills, cannot visit the princess anymore, went and killed all 3 brothers, and now have no way to advance time. I’m on day 46 and cannot finish the game ;( Please tell me I get to kill the prince!! How do I move time along?! Thank you so much for making this, it’s awesome!!
Hi there, first of all, thanks so much for playing, I’m glad you like it! A handful of people also have the same problem as you – it’s because I thought it was impossible to get all skills up to level 20. In the next few days I plan on releasing a patch with a “wait” button that just allows you to advance time at any point, which should fix your problem! 🙂