September 23th 2024 - The ToulouToumou state of things
There are many ways I could start this post, but I haven’t figured out one that would be better than the plain truth: I don’t know what I’m doing and where I’m headed.
I don’t know where I’ll be in a year. Heck, when I started the year 2024 I didn’t know things would go this way.
I tend to start things without thinking if it’s reasonable to take another responsibility at the moment, most of the time I’m impulsively chasing my most recent
obsessions. I do many things at once, I start many projects and still want to start more. Most of my projects are solo so I don’t have to worry about a team, deadlines
and stuff like that. But nevertheless I feel like I’m lacking something in my process. I need some structure. I try to apply some self-discipline in order to get things
done, but this is not enough.
I need to reorganize my thoughts, my current projects, and put them somewhere in plain words, for me but also for the people that follow me, that enjoy my work and look
forward to what I do. It’s weird to think I have an audience, and even though it’s a small one, it still counts.
So, here’s a post about the state of things for ToulouToumou Incorporated, a stream of consciousness post about what’s up in my life, my projects, and what to look
forward to in the future.
What happened in 2024
2024 was the most important year in my life so far, a complete mess but a very useful mess for some parts. I turned 30, went through burnout and depression, recovered
slightly and then came out to my wife. I am a woman now, and that’s a whole thing I haven’t finished figuring out.
But what about my projects? Well in 2024 I released
SNAKEBYTE, a game that took me way longer than anticipated.
It was started right after the release of
STRG.SNEK and I worked on it sporadically over the years, to finally getting very serious about it in early 2024, and release it
in July. I’m proud of it, even though it wasn’t as much of a big success as the first game. Also it will probably be the last Snek game I’ll make.
During the year I continued working on the
Museum of Screens. For the content on social media, I was less passionate, I'll say. I continued my thing, publishing web
games at least ten years old every two days, discovering some new interesting creations and people, but it’s been harder for me to work on it. Especially since I started
to diversify the activity of the museum, the regular content has been basic. I haven’t done an event in a while, and there won’t be any except for the month of december
when I’ll feature games from 2024.
But aside from that I’ve been doing a lot of things for the museum.
I've been writing regularly for the blog, reviewing recent web games, talking about web related news,
and so on and so forth.
The series about the first Flash game was quite popular, so I am pretty proud of it. The second side-project I started,
a series of web games to
showcase different free web games engines, was way less popular, but I haven’t given up on it. I still want to do more of these.
The virtual museum, like I was planning, continued to evolve over time, with more content and new temporary exhibitions added. I received a lot of feedback and a lot of
nice comments about it. I have a lot of things planned related to it and I hope you are looking forward to it. A few months ago I started updating the “new release”
section on a weekly basis, I hope you noticed.
Also in early 2024 I started “Spreadsheet hell”, a side project of the Museum of Screens I launched with two objectives: doing something with my external SSD full of
forgotten Flash games, and encouraging people to donate to the Museum of Screens. The concept is simple: For each cent donated, I’ll look into a .swf file: Their name,
their author, and if they are preserved on Flashpoint. It seemed like a good idea, until I realized I needed to go through more than 6.000 files. So far, I’ve got
through more than 1.000 games, and uploaded the lost ones on the Internet Archive. I am nowhere near done, and I don’t intend to abandon it. And now, I received some
donations for the Museum which is nice. Not a life changing amount of money, but something that could hopefully make the museum grow in interesting ways.
I also published
a short Itch game, updated my personal website, made something called
The Flash Experience, and probably a lot of other small oneshot projects. And I
think that’s what I have been up to this year until now. I’m glad I put the finishing touches on some big projects, now I’m knee deep in new ones.
What to expect in the future
As of today, September 2024, I have a day job five days a week, seven hours a day. It is an okay job, I don't want to talk too much about it, the point is: I have free
time allowing me to work on many projects. But I am also often tired. I struggle with mental health a lot, meaning I often have to take breaks. And also I have a very
short attention span, maybe ADHD-related.
I have many ideas. That’s not a brag, everyone has ideas all the time. But I have many ideas, and alway the urge to act on them. Every day I come up with things I want
to do, and I mean it: I really want to make those things real, I am always taking notes and starting scripts for whatever comes to my mind. Sometimes I am okay with
letting go of some ideas, but some other times I cannot shake the feeling that I must act on them. I always feel like I’m running out of time, that I’m in a hurry to
make everything I want to make before my end. Which is weird to think when you’re 30, I agree, but as far as I remember, I was always like that.
Also, in 2025 I’ll go to A.MAZE! A.MAZE is
the international Games and Playful Medias Festival, a four day long festival in Berlin dedicated to weird games, experimental
exhibitions and everything in between. I wanted to talk about it because I’m very much looking forward to it, to hanging out with people I know from social media, and
seeing amazing creations by great people. Maybe networking a bit? I don’t know, it would be nice. I don’t have anything to showcase at the festival but maybe I can bring
a QR code to the Museum of Screens or something like that.
This post is an attempt at summarizing what to expect from me in the foreseeable future, even though nothing is set in stone and I am very prone to being sidetracked.
The Museum of Screens
The museum of screens will continue as intended, I started it in 2019 and I see no reason not to continue. Sure it’s not been really growing for a while now, but that’s
okay. I know a lot of people are interested in it, and look forward to the updates to get their small shot of nostalgia. And sometimes that’s all that is needed. For now
the account is active on Twitter, Tumblr, Mastodon, and on Bluesky I post some updates but since I can’t post gifs I don’t do the weekly gifs. But I think all my bases
are covered.
This is also the case for the blog, who continue to get some traffic daily. I should look into how to set up a RSS feed on a Wordpress blog, though. I’ll continue the weekly
games of the day, the articles about lost or forgotten web games. I wanna write something about the Flappy Bird situation because I don’t know if you read about it but it is
BONKER, and it ties with topics previously discussed, like ownership of ideas on the internet, creators and remuneration, etc… I don’t know what else I could use the blog for.
The
Chain of games thing was quite popular, and I’d like to reboot it, but getting in touch with people tends to be difficult and I don’t know if I could do it all over again…
For the tool showcases, I have a few ideas to continue but I put the project on hold for now to start a few new projects I am more passionate about. But I’ll definitely come
back to it. I wanna make an episode about Downpour, one about Ren’Py, and several others. Meaning, I’ll have to learn to use many more tools.
The Virtual Museum of Screens
More than ever I wanna make the Museum grow. It became its own thing, a weird website on its niche of the Internet, full of nostalgia for old games, and a lot of useless
interactive stuff. I am proud of it, and I wanna do so much moreSo for the first time I asked for help to work with other people.
The offer is kinda limited to mutuals on social media for now, but if you make creative stuff on the Internet, and wish to contribute to the museum, send a message to me.
You can contribute in any capacity. I want the museum to be a living place full of weird creative things about the internet. Also, thanks to donations, I am now able to
pay the contributor a small amount each.Work has started for the next update, and I have already contacted a few people that are excited to contribute to the museum by making
original creations. I am so grateful to them and look forward to seeing the result.
The money is not really an issue since I only pay web hosting fees, but I am still seeking donations and grants so I can pay more people, and most importantly pay them more.
I firmly believe creators of free content deserve to be paid for their effort, and I don’t want anyone to work on my projects for free.
I was also thinking about making some kind of physical merchs for the museum. One possibility would be to sell limited physical copies of the Museum via the Indiepocalypse
Tape Club.
My next game
SNAKEBYTE was my latest big release. Now the question is: what next? Well I knew the answer a while back. Actually, it was decided a bit before the release of the first Snek game,
when I thought it would be my next main project.
If you know me from my debuts, you remember
OldComputerArchiv.zip, my first ever game published on Itch. It was an “escape game taking place entirely in the folder of your
computer”, which is a bizarre way to describe a puzzle game, but it was kinda true: The game took the form of a folder full of locked files, and you had to solve puzzles to
find passwords and unlock more file, digging through even more folders until you reach the end. It was a bit popular at the time, and right after I released a spiritual sequel,
the 404 case, which was the same concept but on a website.
I wanted to make a new game like this for the longest time, but never really got an angle, a new thing to make the concept unique again. I had a pitch for a more story oriented
sequel but dropped it. Then, over the years I read articles about kids lacking some computer skills we used to take for granted: exploring files and digging through folders. It
is because nowadays phones are obfuscating the files and making the inner mechanisms of the machine less accessible. I had the idea to take my original concept of the game, and
make it all about teaching kids to use their computers.
Agreed, the concept evolved a bit since, but as of today, I wrote a script for a game encouraging players to learn basic functionalities of their computers, which I think is a
neat idea. I also want to include a bunch of games inside the game, for reasons related to the plot I’ll keep to myself for now. This means I started learning Godot recently.
I am working on it from time to time, and I intend it to be the first paid game I’ll release, way longer and more complex than OldComputerArchive.zip. This is too early in
development to say a release date but I’ll keep you informed.
My website
I opened my personal website around 2017, and since then I never really did anything with it. But this changed in 2024, and I intend to do more with it. The reason is simple:
Social media sucks nowadays, and I think personal websites are cool. I think more people should express themselves on a piece of the Internet they have full control over.
Also, as a reminder, if you’re a mutual and have a personal website, send them to me! I’m always expanding my “friends” section, and I see link buttons are making a comeback?
Now I’ve gotta make one for ToulouToumou and the Museum of Screens
Also, I thought it would be a good time for me to remake my portfolio as well. I am a solo dev, and I often think I suck, but a lot of people swear I am great and I do great
things. And in 2024, while I am discovering my true self, I decided to be more positive and embrace compliments people send to me. So, I am in the process of remaking my
portfolio for the purpose of showcasing my work in a more professional manner than my website, but just slightly.
I don’t know if I’ll ever work in the game industry, or if my portfolio will be of any help in the future but it is a nice side project to practice my web design skills,
experimenting with website layouts to appear professional while staying silly.
Unnamed web game project
I talked about the more concrete projects in the near future for me. Here, we are entering a more blurred domain. This project and the ones below are not certain to be finished,
or even come out. But I really want to make them in some form, and writing about them on this post is a way for me to get reminded about the stuff I wanna do. Because I am also
very forgetful.
Anyway, I always wanted to make an idle game, I had a few prototypes over the years but they never really went anywhere. Recently I started a new idle game project and posted
about it on social media: A game where you play the role of the merchant in a roguelike. You have to sell products to attract adventurers and make them wander into the dungeon,
but not too powerful so they die and leave their loot behind.
I work on it sporadically, depending on my mood. I don’t want to pressure myself too much. I already have “serious” projects, so I work on this one to unwind and experiment with
some stuff. I’ll see if it results in a playable build.
Unnamed project
Uuuuuuuh yeah I prefer to stay vague about my other upcoming projects because I don’t really want to expose them when they’re so early in development, but I already talked a bit
about this one. I really want to make an ARG some day, and in fact, I already started taking notes about it, and talked to some people that are interested in participating.
I have no interest in making horror-themed ARGs, and I’d like to make something about the participative aspect of the Internet. And also, what it’s like to make art when the
world is dying. This one, I don’t know when I’ll start to work on it, but I definitely want to do it.
Unnamed project 2
Okay I lied I don’t have an idea of ARG I have two. The other one is more like a hypertext fiction taking the form of a fake website, with no real puzzle to solve but a story
to follow over the weeks. I don’t know if I’ll make this one but I had this idea years ago and I keep thinking about it so yeah.
Writing project
Since I started my blog, I have written a lot about the history of web games, but I didn’t make a lengthy article like I used to do back in 2022. I simply had no idea. Recently
however I talked to a friend that told me something about a french web game that was quite popular at the time, that picked my interest. I don’t know if it will end up being a
thing, but I’ll definitely want to dig the topic a little, to see what’s under it.
Closing thought
It’s not everything I wanna do. I recently made a full list of every game idea I had in ten years, and I had many more I have forgotten. Sometimes I wanna do something that
doesn’t interest me a day after, sometimes ideas stay with me for years and despite having zero knowledge on how to make them true I wanna make them so bad. And this is
without even talking about story ideas I had! I had tons of OCs and scripts for comics/shows/animations/whatever you wanna call it that exist only in my head, that I am
very fond of, and I’m afraid they will never exist in any form. I often wonder what push me to create things in such a desperate manner, like I am constantly running out
of time. Probably a lot of childhood trauma, but also the plain truth is that I love creating, and share my creations with others. It’s been true for all my life and it’s
gonna stay the same until i’m cold in the grave. It’s kinda a comforting thought that my drive to create is sincere and not born out of a misplaced attempt at getting attention.
I wish I realized it sooner than when I wrote this. I really wonder who would stick to the end.
If you did, I love you. And I’ll make sure to make great stuff you’ll enjoy in the future.
Liz
(Toulou)