Sunday Show Out - 1/25/2026

Last week, I talked about returning to the routine of teaching, implying that routine would carry through the entire semester. Of course, I hadn’t considered the week’s weather outlook, particularly the impending ice storm predicted for the week’s end.

It’s currently 30°F (–1.1°C for everyone that uses a sensible temperature scale) and getting colder by the hour: it won’t be warmer than it is now until Monday afternoon. It’s cold, needles of ice are shrieking from the sky, and the Sun will rise on a grey, silent landscape. Fortunately, we rarely lose power, have all the food (including snacks) we need, and are dripping the taps so, hopefully, the pipes won’t freeze. We’re hunkered down and ready to wait this storm out.

I work at a residential high school, and, out of an abundance of caution, the administration canceled classes this past Friday and all of next week: the goal was to get kids home and make sure they stayed there until the weather had passed and any power/water outages were restored. Ideally, this gives me over a week of downtime to work on Just Beneath the Holler, which is necessary as I didn’t get a lot done this week.

Well, that’s not entirely true. I did quite a bit of work for the game, just not a lot for the May prototype. That’s not to say I accomplished nothing: it’s just that most of the work was laying the groundwork for more substantial progress later. That seems to be a running theme for me, but I think that’s how game development works: most of the actual work is never seen by the player because it’s done in service of making “tangible” work possible.

What did I do?

I need a new tileset to create a more sprawling, mysterious Place Just Beneath and, since tiles represent different forms of terrain, I created a “mood scene” with common terrain and an initial pass at a foreboding, otherworldly color palette (I used Alien Dish from Lospec). I used Procreate and drew the scene on top of a grid so I could determine the exact tiles I needed. While I got the terrain down pat, the colors were, well:

That doesn’t really whisper “You shouldn’t be here, why are you here, leave while you can” as much as shout “Hey kids, wanna go on a ride down to Funtime’s Happy Hut?” The general colors were there; they were just too cheerful. I spent some time with Coolors and a color index to create a palette that felt more like a rotting world succumbing to fungus and decay. One quick doodle in Aseprite later and I had this:

I stepped away from that for an hour or so and came back to consider its alienness. It read more “woods at night” (thanks Bluesky friends!) than “this place is unknowable and quietly hostile,” but it was a step in the right direction. I can refine it down more to convey the exact mood I want. Right now, though, I’m sketching the exact tiles I’ll need. There’s not many so far, but I have an entire week to sketch the tiles and draw them in Aseprite.

In terms of non-prototype work, I finished the rewrite of JBtH’s narrative. It’s suitably weird, but subsequent edits will push it even further into the strange.

What did I learn?

Color theory is difficult for me. I can look at a palette and tell you the emotions that it evokes, but I can’t tell you why, or how to change the colors if it doesn’t hit those target emotions. I’ve spent some time researching color theory and consulting my color index to get close to the mood I want, but it’ll still take some fine-tuning. As always, though, I just need to make it first. I can make it good, or even better, later.

I’d announced the podcast earlier, but it’s worth telling why I created it. My (normal, this week’s weird weather notwithstanding) commute gives me a lot of time to think about the direction in which I want to take JBtH, but those thoughts sometimes dissipate by the time I get to my office to write them down. It’s important that I document those choices and the reasons for them and I’d like to share those reasons with you. I’m learning that this short podcast is an effective way to do all that in a free way that doesn’t intrude into the game development time I have.

I’m also learning how to prioritize my tasks while allowing myself to deviate from those priorities when necessary. While rewriting JBtH’s narrative served the prototype in any way, I had to get it onto paper while I still had a concrete idea for how the story should progress. Yes, I could have jotted down a few notes in Scrivener and come back to them in May, but I doubt those notes would have made sense without the context in which they were written. The few hours I spent writing took away from prototype development time, but they will pay off later in the full game. Once again, laying the groundwork may not seem productive until you realize it made the big work possible.

What’s next?

This week’s plans are contingent on the power staying on: if the lights go out, battery life must be preserved for emergencies. However, providing we don’t lost electricity, my main objective for the week is to finish the tileset, use it to make a more sprawling Place Just Beneath, and implementing the infinite-scrolling setup for it. There’s an outside chance that I could then begin working on new enemy types, but I’d rather have a more conservative estimate in the face of unpredictable weather.

There’s an easy way to keep up with my progress though. You know that, right? All you have to do is subscribe!

Come back tomorrow for next week’s to-do list. As always, thank you for joining me on the journey! Stay safe and warm, wherever you are.