During this trip I met old friends, some of them for the first time in real life. I met Carni, Kowi, Ally, and Gino.
Gino was releasing his new album on the same weekend, it's called D35C3N7, and I participated in two of the songs, namely GULA and IRA. Fun fact, Renderpunk is also part of the album, and he made the cover too. At Gino's apartment, we played Magic: The Gathering, slapped the mint (for Moroccan mint tea), ate pizza and even made music together. It's going to be a new track for Faith in Despair.
The AMAZE fest itself was quite cozy. I played a few games and talked to indie devs. I met some fellow gamedev friends from Vienna there as well, i.e. Boie who's working on Children of Saturn. I also randomly met a guy with his dog while sitting in the old crematorium of the AMAZE event site. He told me about his life story, as well as letting me read a page of his hand-written journal. I don't know why that happened, but it did.
I didn't participate in any of the nightly AMAZE events, because I was walking around with the aforementioned friends instead. Kowi, Ally and I were climbing one of the old anti air towers. The view from up there was beautiful.
The history of Berlin was quite interesting too, seeing the remnants of the wall in person felt strange. It all happened not that long ago.
End of May, I attended Vienna Comix convention. I had a booth there for my game Faith in Despair. For two days, people played the latest version and gave me feedback.
There were also many awesome cosplayers walking around, so I was constantly entertained, even when nothing was happening otherwise.
Speaking of the game update, it was time to release the next big version for Faith in Despair. It includes a bunch of new bosses, voice acting by Patrick Lamb, new art by Lyfeu, and much more.
The recording session with Patrick was hilarious and awe-inspiring, it was a privilege to work with him. Hope we can create something together again in the future. I'm happy I made a new friend in the process. You can check out the short behind-the-scenes video, if you want to see how the sauce was made.
The recorded voice was then processed by my friend TaskBeenden, who also just released a new EP called RISE under his monicker LADDWICK. Definitely check that one out too.
The Boss Update for Faith in Despair went live yesterday. There is one more update left to do until the end of the year. I've started onboarding my friend JakNak to the project as well. He has already fixed a few bugs and improved some UI issues.
Now that Faith in Despair is also Steam Deck Verified, I'm planning to release the game on iOS in the next few weeks.
I'm constantly thinking of more games to make in the future. Maybe something that builds on Faith in Despair. Maybe something completely different. One might say, work on Faith in Despair is never done. It still has potential for more content. But I want to publish it on consoles next year, and that usually means updating the game isn't as easy anymore.
I am already working on a small game with Alexis though, and I hope I can show that soon.
Last, but not least, I was in a photo shoot recently for the game Resistance Racing 2k97 by my friend Sebastian. Once the game is released, you'll see me walking around like a Doom sprite.
Resistance Racing is a game that reminds me of why I like making things. It's artsy, it's provocative, it's different. It's a middle finger to all the AI generated crap. It's human, it's messy, it's unique.
There have been two events in the last few weeks that have had a significant impact on our lives. But I can always find refuge in creating things. And I will keep on trying to inspire others to do so as well. For this is why we are here.
