Monthly Review: April 2022

Wow, its been a hot minute since I’ve done a monthly review post – my last one was in September 2019! I missed writing these as it gave me time to reflect on my content and set accountable goals for myself. Now that I have my blog up, I have a proper home for these and look forward to start writing again.

April started off strong: I “finished” Tunic just in time before the big Ludum Dare 50 event. I helped out with a game entry during the weekend and played SO MANY GAMES the following week! Then I took an impromptu 2 week hiatus 😂. But the break was worth it to recover from the stream marathon, sort out taxes, and edit videos. Streams returned in time for the Ludum Dare results, where I played the top 15 games and I was thrilled to find out our team placed 12th overall in the jam! In the last week of April I made a belated sub craft project, revisited TUNIC for 100% completion, and played Amnesia: Rebirth as a 200 sub goal community reward!

SullyGnome Twitch Stats for April 2022

While I don’t focus on the numbers, I still like to keep track of stats to look back on.

Time Streamed: 81 hours 16 minutes
Average Viewership: 49 (+27)
Twitch Subscription Count: 88 (-220)
Twitch Revenue: $237.39

Twitch Followers: 7,846
TikTok Followers: 98
Youtube Subscribers: 215

New Website

After having an “under construction” banner as my front page for three years, I finally have a proper website again! This has been on my todo list for quite some time, but it wasn’t in the plans for this month until I got an unexpected email! To be honest I should’ve expected it but hey, at least I have a website now! Read more about it here.

Ludum Dare 50

April 1 – April 4 marked Ludum Dare’s 50th event and 20th anniversary! Ludum Dare is global game jam held twice a year, where participants create a game in 48-72 hours based on a theme. This event’s theme was Delay The Inevitable.

For LD50 I joined HonestDanGames, BrainoidGames, and Spacey3D to create The Lars Mission: Behind Enemy Vines. You play as Lars, a researcher assigned to a Mars research base that is slowly destroyed by The Mother growth. Through as series of mini-game tasks, Lars must help as many colleagues board a rocket ship while delaying The Mother’s progress – but of course, the destruction of their base is inevitable. You can go for the minimum 5 passengers or go for a lofty doubt digits, but be warned – lingering too long at the base may jeopardize the entire mission.

My main job was share updates of the team’s progress and promote the game on social media but I also helped out with 2D assets used in the UI. This included some artwork that guilted convinced the team to include a lizard in the game! 🦎

Did know you can pet the lizard? You can play The Lars Mission for free and try it yourself! See how many researchers you can save in 12 minutes – my personal high score is 33 and the current record being 37!

Once submissions closed and ratings began, I started my LudumDare Play & Review streams! I love seeing all the different takes on the theme and I’m always astonished at how much can be accomplished in a weekend. Out of 235 requests, I was able to play through 125 games in 38 hours. I also did an extra Results Day stream to play through the top 15 games in both the Compo & Jam categories. I was excited to see The Lars Mission placed 12th overall in the Jam! 🎖

One of my goals for this month was to make a Ludum Dare highlight video – I made one for my first LD 4 years ago but I never put the time aside to make another. Which is why I’m really proud that I managed to pull enough clips to release two LD videos on Youtube!

Lessons Learned

With changes to Twitch’s API, Dan updated the LDBot and the raffle system to select games went really smoothly! I only ran into issues when highlighting individual games from my VODs as the Twitch Highlighter Tool kept glitching out. Between highlighting VODs and manually pulling video timestamps, it took two days to leave comments on all the games I played so devs could (re)watch the playthrough. 😓 The whole process made me consider restructuring my workflow for future events.

I’m hoping we can update the bot so at the start of each game it will output a link with a timestamp. That way, I can leave a comment as soon as I give a rating during the stream and drastically cut down my post-LD work. The only downside with this method is that the live video link will expire after 60 days but the highlighted videos will still be viewable on my channel.

TUNIC

(A huge thank you to Harris of FinjiCo for providing a release day game key!)

On April 1st, no joke, I finished TUNIC! Well, sort of. 😅 It’s rare that I want to 100% a game, but I was so drawn into the lore and puzzles of TUNIC that I wanted to see what was offered in a NG+. However due to the timing of LD, it would be three weeks before I revisited TUNIC but thankfully it was easy to pick up where we left off. In one stream I managed to solve all but two mysteries without the help of a guide and even though the process was a bit tedious (involved screenshots and Photoshop), I thoroughly enjoyed the challenge. I won’t give away any spoilers as its best to experience this game blind, but if you enjoyed FEZ or Legend of Zelda series, I highly recommend trying out this game for yourself 🦊

Check out TUNIC on Steam

Amnesia: Rebirth

In March, we hit a milestone of 200 subscribers on Twitch! ⭐ As a community reward, I promised to play Frictional Games’ Amnesia: Rebirth. I’m a baby when it comes to horror games, but I was willing to work through my fears to find all the 3D assets that fellow creative Spacey3D made!

Rebirth was my first game from the Amnesia franchise so I wasn’t sure what to expect. I was surprised by my lack of screams a few hours into the game, but later learned that this was a slow burn sort of experience. By the second half of the game I was paranoid of what monster lurked in the shadows, searching every nook & cranny to hoard matchsticks, and playing I spy with Spacey3D’s assets. 🕯 I enjoyed Rebirth’s elaborate story, rich voice acting, and choices the player must make. I didn’t enjoy some of puzzle logic, lack of direction, and missed opportunities for jump scares haha.

Looking forward to when I can do a scream compilation video for this series 😂

Check out Amnesia: Rebirth on Steam

Sub Craft Project

For April’s sub craft project I made a pair of chickens based on Dan’s “spring chicken” idea – I think they turned out super cluckin’ cute! 🐔 This was the first time I got to try out the Cameo 4’s pen holder tool, allowing me to draw outlines so I could line up the cut pieces properly on the different layers. It worked like a charm! I only wish I could have the blade in one cartridge & pen holder in the other so I didn’t have to swap out the tools.

A huge thank you to everyone who subscribed this month, we had 67 super kois on the board!

Lessons Learned

I usually schedule a crafting stream the first Monday of the month but I didn’t get to make this month’s sub craft project until the last week of April! 🙈 I don’t like delaying writing names down so I will need to make an effort in the future to schedule a craft stream sooner if I have plans already in place for the first week.

Here are my goals for the upcoming month:
– Finish WIP pages on the website
– Upload our Little Nightmares 2 playthrough on Youtube
– Create Desk Tour video for TikTok
– Stream 18 days, stick to M/T/T/F schedule

Let’s see what I accomplish in the month of May!