Happy 4th of July! My employer gives everyone a 2-day break for the holiday, which means I had more time to work on Outsider (until I can go full-time, that is). I dedicated 15-20 hours to the game and made significant progress as the day I’ll announce the game to more coworkers nears. I aimed to wrap up many loose ends from the previous weeks, resulting in improvements across the board.

Firstly, I enhanced the Galantrix logo with a subtle gradient effect, giving it a more professional look; if you pay close attention, you’ll notice the change. Additionally, I removed the somewhat cheesy wording from the game description, which was a placeholder partially generated by ChatGPT. The new handmade wording is crisper and, though brief, more accurately represents the game. Also, some noticed that the teaser referred to http://www.whoistheoutsider.com/, but that domain wasn’t even Galantrix’s when I published the teaser. LOL. I won’t make this mistake in the future; the domain has been acquired and now redirects to the game page as a follow-up to the trailer.

But the big achievement this week was resolving what I privately called the “gameplay gap.” A long-running issue with Outsider was that I wanted to make it the best game possible while staying faithful to the source material. The good thing about the source material is that it lends itself very well to a computer game; the bad thing was that, before this week, there was a difficult-to-explain interaction between gameplay elements that would have required me to either cut major story elements or simplify the gameplay to a point that would make it hard, as award-winning game designer Sid Meier would say, to find the fun.

I decided to go all-in with my somewhat unconventional process for solving difficult problems: drink coffee, lay down on the floor, close my eyes, and THINK. Recently, I read some academic research suggesting that the best moment for coming up with new ideas isn’t during walks or showers (although these are great too) but when you are about to fall asleep. This meditative-like state close to sleeping is, apparently, excellent for generating new ideas. And that’s probably why this method works for me: the coffee prevents me from falling asleep, allowing me to enjoy this state for a longer stretch.

FOUR HOURS on the floor later, I think I finally found the answer that has been eluding me for months (along with a sore back!). It’s a relatively simple change to the design that actually brings me closer to the source material than before. YAY!

In addition to the game design improvements, I decided to buy a book on audio mixing to improve my skills - I might have a lot of experience in playing/composing music, but mixing it to produce a recording is a whole different animal. The teaser music had a lot of low-end distortion and lack of clarity, it was a bit embarrassing to be honest. I spent a few hours today reading the book, creating a more professional mixing workflow, and remixing the track. I produced a more balanced mix that, while far from perfect, will suffice for the teaser. I still need to get a lot better if I’m to mix and master the final game soundtrack; if I can’t achieve that, I might pay for professional mixing (which isn’t cheap, even on Fiverr).