I’ve never really put myself out there. Not for sale anyway. I write a mean resume, but that’s simply the weight of my past. My twitter was super active for its first eight years or so, but it never felt terribly substantial, and I certainly wasn’t hawking a product.
So pivoting into this role, especially during [gestures widely at the state of the world]? It’s daunting. But it’s also my dream. Even as a kid in the nineties, I was poring through AD&D and Palladium books, drawing my own maps, building my own classes, dreaming up new worlds and adventures for my friends. I’ve spent over two decades making my own character sheets for games because the ones included weren’t doing the job for me.
Setting up shop. Rolling out. Prepping for production. I’ve got a lot of things competing for my brain meats — being a parent, caring for my partners, keeping up with my day job. But even within the realm of hobbyist game design, it’s a wild dash for attention, with autistic special interests and ADHD hyperfocus constantly steering my energy into new and wondrous things.
With a wide range of Cortex microgames in my backlog, what do I work on? Push forward? Mythikal: Wand & Steel, which is basically just bog-standard fantasy? coreTEK, which is basically just cog-standard mecha? Nah, I’m gonna take something utterly out there, and (relatively) unique, and make it my flagship. Whiskey Grits n’ Demon Spittle is a weird west game set on terraformed Mars, and it carries every bit the energy of Omnybus’ poem which inspired the title.
Somethin’ wicked this way rides.