root vegetable boy

CHORUS MACHINE DEV LOG #20 - SUMMER 2025

BACK TO ARCHIVE

Hey! It’s been a while! How have you been??

LOG UPDATE

At some point in early July, development progress slowed down significantly, as I was feeling stressed at the prospect of writing a June dev log, as well as the concept of monthly logs in general; eagle-eyed viewers may have noticed I’d slipped into the habit of posting logs days or even weeks late. The same thing kept happening: the end of the month would creep up on me, I’d stop working on CHORUS MACHINE to try and gather my thoughts for the dev log, and then I would procrastinate working on the log and then the log would get posted late and then I would only have a couple weeks left to try and get “enough” done for the next log. All the time I spent procrastinating/worrying/writing these logs ended up also becoming time that actual game dev progress entirely halted. It’s become pretty clear that the ‘monthly logs’ thing is no longer tenable for me.

So, as I posted on bluesky once I reached this concluson—the time of monthly logs is over! From this point forward I’ll be writing seasonal logs every three months. As you might have noticed, this is the SUMMER 2025 log, spanning June, July, and August; the AUTUMN 2025 log will span September, October, and November, and release on December 1st. (Yay for keeping the first-ever dev log anniversary!)

I’m already feeling a lot happier with this decision—since logs are less frequent, I’ll have both more to talk about & more time to spare in writing them. Previously, I would try to write the log on the second-to-last or last day of the month entirely in one sitting; at the time of writing, it’s mid-August, and I still have about two weeks before this will be posted. I still have plenty of time to finish writing, edit, take screenshots, add HTML, etc. Hopefully, this results in logs that feel a little more polished.

DEVELOPMENT UPDATE

I’m still chipping away at the FLOOR ONE DEMO, but I’m closer than ever to completion! I’ve been trying really hard to focus on rooms, enemies, and overall pacing. Once the flow of the first floor is complete, a lot of things will start very quickly falling into place (I hope). There’s lots to share this time around; I’ve made tons of progress the past few weeks! Let’s see what I’ve been working on!

Of course, this is but a fraction of what I’ve actually added to the game thus far... I’ve gotta say, it’s pretty fun to have so much to pick and choose from when writing these logs. [evil game dev laughter]

I don’t think anything will be ready to play (by the public) by the end of this year, but I’m really hoping to have the DEMO available for free on itch.io by Spring or Summer of 2026. Isn’t it cool that I have a real estimate now? It’s kind of scary that I’ve been working on CHORUS MACHINE for almost two years, to be honest... I know a good chunk of that was spent literally learning how to use GameMaker, but it’s still scary! Thankfully, development speed is faster than ever—I can still only do so much as a singular individual, but things are going much smoother than they were even a year ago.

UNRELATED UPDATE

At the end of July, I took an intentional break from CHORUS MACHINE to participate in my first-ever game jam, GMTKJam 2025. It was an incredibly refreshing challenge to throw an entire game together in three days, and I’m pretty pleased with the end result: a simple snake-like with the snake as the enemy. It’s called OUROBOROS.

CLOSING REMARKS

If you’ve made it this far... thank you. Even though I have a really tiny audience, I don’t take for granted that people are interested in experiencing what I make; it wouldn’t exist in the same way without you, and I’m so grateful for that. I’m pouring as much genuine feeling into this game as I can to make it worth it for y’all, even though it’s kind of embarrassing...

I hope everyone has a very lovely Autumn! Let’s meet back here again in December, OK?

Originally posted September 3rd, 2025.