MARCH 2025
~NEW RELEASE! BLADE BUSTERS (Beta) NOW LIVE! ~
https://www.elonyxmedia.net/blade-busters
This isn’t an April Fools post. I don’t have a large enough following to do stuff like that, and besides, as an American I feel like we’re in no place to be making jokes when the country elected a literal clown for office.
So on March 22nd I hosted my first ever panel at RIT’s Tora-Con. It was extremely successful despite being my first panel, and my wife recorded the whole thing and I’m gonna upload it to my youtube channel soon.
Not exactly sure when though cuz I’ve been checked out since then. I had to spend all of February and March preparing for the con and making sure the beta for Blade Busters was complete in time. I debuted the project at the end of my panel and the audience seemed genuinely interested in it, but I’m kinda scared to see if it has gotten any reviews yet on Itch.
It’s always scary getting your stuff reviewed cuz your ego and pride are going to be inevitably damaged, but for me an even more devastating outcome is finding out that no one tried it at all. Maybe that’s what languishing in obscurity for so long does to ya. In person everyone seems so excited to read my stuff, but then they never engage with it. Then I’m stuck wondering if they were just lying to my face, or (the more likely option) that something else caught their attention and my stuff didn’t leave a strong enough impression that they couldn't remember to check it out.
I can’t get too mad at people for that, because I’m guilty of it myself. I follow Lute & Hazel’s youtube channel, both are musicians and both I keep meaning to check out their stuff on spotify, but life is so busy that I keep forgetting to do so. I'm probably gonna forget again by the time I finish typing this!
So as a consumer, I get it. But as an artist, it doesn’t make it hurt less, because it fills me with this existential dread that no matter how hard I try, I’m unable to break through the noise.
Maybe these thoughts are why I’ve been procrastinating on checking the numbers for the Zelda RPG. When I announced it, it didn’t get nearly as big of a reception as the Metroid RPG. Which was confusing, Zelda has such a larger fandom than metroid, it should’ve attracted more attention. So I’m gonna hold off on working on the final version for a little bit longer, gonna try to make another push for it so I can get more people to gather more data for me. Once I have equal to, or more, playtest responses as the Metroid RPG, I’ll feel secure enough in beginning full development.
But in the meantime, I was supposed to take the rest of March off, but because I can NEVER stand still, (and I needed to distract myself from the decaying state of my country) I threw myself at ANOTHER gamebook project. Yes, I know, I need to stop doing this- BUT I CAN’T HELP IT! This is unlike all the other gamebooks I’ve developed so far, and it has lit a fire under me that I haven’t experienced since the Metroid RPG.
It’s gameplay is inspired by Custom Robo, and is also about giant robots (Which is crazy, cuz after 3 months of having nothing but mechs on my mind, I thought I’d get sick of it and moved on to my next hyper-fixation, but that hasn’t happened yet so Imma ride it out for as long as possible.) other than that I won’t say more about it.
I’m already close to having a playable demo out, and this time I’m gonna take the plunge and start recruiting local playtesters. My local library hosts board game nights for kids, and since this game is aimed at middle-schoolers and older, I’m gonna ask them if I can host nights for my game so they can playtest them. It’s a huge step out of my comfort zone, but the confidence boost I got from my panel is finally motivating me forward.
Once the demo is finalized, I’ll shift back to working on the Zelda RPG and getting that done as my Q2 release, alongside a video promoting Blade Busters.
That’s about everything. It’s my day off and my kid is in school. My wife tells me I should relax, but I can’t rest until the demo is done. Only then will I go back to playing Xenoblade Chronicles X. 35 hours into that game and only now did I finally unlock the fucking Skells.
I tried to be a good boy and play patiently through the early game, but by the time I reached chapter 5 I couldn’t take it anymore! I did exactly the same as 10 years ago and rushed the rest of the way to get the fucking things! But now that I have my precious giant robots I can finally chill and slow down on the game and play it as intended. It's one of those games where the side content is far better than the main story.