Yolk Heroes has achieved Overwhelmingly Positive on steam!

Fairy Queen bless us, everyone.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2417850/Yolk_Heroes_A_Long_Tamago/

Yolk Heroes has launched!

Greetings fellow humans.

I've been working hard on Yolk Heroes: A Long Tamago for about two years now.

It was supposed to take 8 months.

We're going to be releasing in Japan and China which I've always wanted to do. You have no idea how much I want to be 'Big In Japan!' I would KILL to be Big in Japan. This game was obviously inspired a lot by Dragon Quest and it oozes in every pixel of the game. The early virtual pet games, the one where you were looking after a dinosaur and it looked like a little green egg, and all those dumb games like Cookie Clicker and Progress Quest.

The game is meant to be a toy. A companion game. Something for you to enjoy and have and own. It has no micro transactions and it isn't very expensive. It's meant to be a Virtual Pet Game, a JRPG, and an Idle Game. It's also meant to be something kind of new. You know, a new thing that I invented (By stealing ideas from everyone else).

When I say *I* have been working hard on Yolk Heroes for two years, I mean a team of people who have been nice enough to trust that the things I ask them to do is working to some kind of cohesive whole. Today is the day I wonder if I've done a good job as a leader. However, without a doubt, my entire team has been amazing. Everyone who has worked on this game went above and beyond. I only hope the final product does their individual work even a little bit of justice.

There are a lot of features and balance fixes I want to do, and there will be a lot of bugs found by players (I'm sure) right off the bat. The team will be trying to respond to any player input, especially in this first week.

Thank you for trusting us enough to try out our little indie game.

Hope you have fun.

If you don't play it, I hate you.

-Always

Matthew Ritter

Hey fellow humans!

My game Yolk Heroes is going to come out on Monday and it's Wishlist Wendsday or something like that.

If you could go wishlist my game we'd be cool. Best friends even. Be my best friend. I don't want to go back to the AAA mines, they beat me there.

Wishliiiiist: https://store.steampowered.com/app/2417850/Yolk_Heroes_A_Long_Tamago/

Anyone who wants to make fun of me is allowed five insults per wishlist they get. Go ahead. Mock me! I'm pretty mockable.

-Always

That person dumb enough to try and make their own game and attempt to sell it on the current market

Hey fellow mortals!

It is I, Emptygoddess/Matthew Ritter the um............. human? I'm a human.

I am a huuuuman! Sometimes I even put things on this website. Always have. Probably always will.

Anyways, I've been working on a video game for the last year and a half. We just announced the release date for:

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2417850/Yolk_Heroes_A_Long_Tamago/

Yolk Heroes: A long Tamago

You can go check it out over here! It comes out on March 5th, i hope. I mean, who knows. Still got a lot of work to do on it. it's like, um, a game. yaknow?

Tomogatchi + JRPG = Fun?

That's been my pitch for awhile. Honestly, I'm pretty terrified. Been making games for most of my life. Worked professionally as a narrative designer for years. (I wrote Dontnod's worst reviewed game of all time. Look it up!) Really trying to make my own game here something special.

If you want to wishlist it you'd be my best friend. I honestly think the game is going to be pretty good. it's an attempt to make a game that's a 'companion' game. Something that can be fun and uh... i dunno, fun. People tell me it should have micro transactions if I want to make money, but I won't really do that.

It's going to be like 5ish bucks on PC and like 2-3 bucks on mobile (but free with ads, cause uh... people on mobile don't want to buy things, i get it!)

There's a demo where you can play a version of the game from like six months ago. It's had some work and is going to be eeeeven better on release.

Making games can feel like an endless slog...

Um, go wishlist the game if it seems interesting. Tell any of your friends that have nostalgia for Tamagotchi. Oh, the game was mentioned on IGN yesterday.

https://www.ign.com/games/yolk-heroes-a-long-tamago

That's cool. Now they just need to give me a 7/10 review and I'll know I've made it to the big time.

Stay awesome Newgrounds, I love you.

-Always

Matthew Ritter

Greetings those who live lives amongst other humans!

How are things going for you? I haven't really posted anything here for...

....

....

Five years!

It's been a long five years. I'm not around much these days because I write for a living and having to work eats up my time and makes it harder to make the kind of stuff I'd put up here. I actually write video games for a living (among other things) as a narrative designer.

My real name is Matthew Ritter. I'm 33. I'm a dude. I've worked at places like Telltale, Dontnod, other less cool places where I wrote shovel-ware. I've done comics with dark horse, had a failed TV pilot, made a few weird indy games no one really gets. Most importantly...

Newgrounds is where I learned to do anything, really. This is where I learned how to make games, record audio, edit videos, figure out timing and basically if this place hadn't existed I'd really not be the creative type person I am today.

The last thing I put up on newgrounds was Dead Horizon: https://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/698298

A lot of people, professional people, don't know why I made the game. It took a long time to make. It cost me real world money. I gave it away for free. It's short. but... newgrounds is where I learned that games could be more than just a game. Games could be short stories. Games could be evocative of a single moment or time or thought or idea.

Newgrounds is where I first realized that people treat you differently depending on what gender they think you are or how old you are. Newgrounds is the place where Egoraptor decided I was a bitch for reasons I don't even remember and made my life a living hell totally by accident because of how popular he was at the time. Newgrounds is the place where I first realized that games and videos and things like that wern't produced by massive companies but where made by people. Normal people and if they could do it so could I.

It's where I learned to do pixel art which is how I paid my way through college.

It's where I learned that people often say they want to do something, and do, but often don't have the energy to actually see it through, and that any job is people management.

Newgrounds is still the place I go when I want to see detailed interesting and oddly analytical comments on things. Where the reviews and reactions are going to have 500% more insight than somewhere like youtube.

It's the place where I got my first fan mail and realized that not only are videos and games and books and things like that made by other humans but REAL HUMANS also read watch and enjoy them. That everything is just made up of people.

Other people in my life often make fun of me because I sometimes mention this place. However, I still come here, and view and play the random stuff. Stuff that is often very interesting. Stuff that makes me think. Stuff that there isn't always a place for (or at least a place where people will actually take a look at it) anywhere else.

I will say without irony that in my late teens I was a terrible person. I dropped out of high school, I flunked out of several community colleges. I lied. I grifted people. I probably was going to end up at the very least being utterly useless to everyone. My family put up with me and tried their best, but it got bad. It got trying to burn the house down bad. It got 'you should be in jail you pathetic human being' bad.

It was deciding to actually start making things that changed me. This was before youtube. This was when really there wasn't a way to get yourself out there unless you had your own website and even then no one would go to it. When web comics linked to each other through web rings.

Newgrounds gave me a place to put my creativity up and show it to people and get their feedback right then and there.

Newgrounds in a very real way saved me.

Sadly, you can't REALLY thank a community. I can send a letter to Tom. Thank him for the time he put one of my videos on the front page literally just because I asked him to. I can write this and thank everyone who reads it. But, you can't think a community because they don't exist. They're just made up of people. It doesn't mean they're not real. They just aren't the kind of thing you can thank. They don't have feelings or emotions.

That doesn't mean you can't be grateful. Very very grateful.

Thanks newgrounds. Please have a fabulous day.

Greetings again Newgrounds!

It has been awhile. Not for lack of trying mind you. I'm still working on many projects to show your face. This, is not really one of them. This post is about that thing you've been hearing about so often, the kickstarter.

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1607565961/w elcome-to-boon-hill

Look at that, a kickstarter me and other friends are involved with. It's a game about exploring a graveyard and reading epitaphs. It's about the nature of the legacy we leave behind and the stories there are to be discovered in places we don't always think to look or take for granted. You know, artsy stuff like that.

If you have a moment you should check it out, because if it does well, I'll totally be paid for pixel art and junk, which is something that is nice, being paid. Oooooh how sweet being paid is.

If you think it sounds awesome, show it off to a friend of yours, to help promote its glorious glory.

If you think it sounds dumb, show it of to an enemy of yours, to punish them for daring to be your enemy.

It's actually doing surprisingly well, especially considering the 'does this really count as a game?' basis of it. Pre ordering the game only costs like five dollars, so really, what would it cost you to pre order a copy?

(The answer is five dollars)

All of you have a wonderful day.

I think i heard from some lit professors once that poetry was the voice of the soul.

I gotta say, I think that means that most of us have morons for souls. Or a stupid little soul moron living inside our soul like a soul golem that's a moron. Especially me. I recently started a poetry blog. In which I write poetry. This is not a good thing.

Here is what I have been told is the BEST of the poems I have written:

******************

On top of a mountain crisscrossed with bones
there stands one creature all alone
with eyes of fire that steam forth hate
and a bill that's black ass hell's gate
there waits, the doom duck.

The bodies of those that have come before
litter around his blood stained floor
There is no hope for those that come
He's faced a million, you are but one
He doth be, the doom duck.

Red of feather, from all the blood
His soul as bitter and cold as frozen mud
he does not only slaughter, he prefers to maim
so he can hear the dying call out his name.
The name, of the doom Duck.

Fear sustains him as a fine wine
And he guards the clock that ticks down time
The end of days can not be stopped
the fowl feathered shadow is about to drop
the beating wings, of the doom duck.

So give into despair and give into defeat
Go home to your family, cook some meat
smile and laugh and have a grand time
forget all about this silly little rhyme
forget all about, the doom duck.

DOOM DUCK!

************

That is the best poem, apparently. I've been doing the blog for a month. Attempting to average a poem a day. Ouch. They range from things about cookies and naked people. Fetishes about grass. Things like that. Some of them are even about stuff like death. Super seeeerious terrible trite stuff.

http://hundredpoemshundreddays.blogspot.com/

Read it and despair. Or don't read it and just you know, live a life of normal.

It is attached! The beautiful image of what I have made. See it in all its pixelish glory.

No, it isn't the beginning of any kind of project or anything like that. I made it just becaaaaaause. Look at how amazing.

It is perhaps even more beautiful, then the first sunrise that ever was. Perhaps more beautiful then the rain that falls but once a year on the tiny desert lands. Perhaps it is even more beautiful, then the first time a child's cry was heard upon this land. Or perhaps it's some mediocre pixel art done in the style of fire emblem and Gradius.

Take careful note of how i failed to properly center and balance the text.

This is the kind of boredom that being out of work will force you into kids. Stay in school, get a job, and don't waste your life and dreams on becoming a fairly medicore at best, pixel artist. It is not worth it.

But look at those space ships! Pew pew! pew! Vrrrnnsh! BRAAOONNNGZNN!

As for the image, it's uh... three people, one is short, one is a lizard person in a space suit, another is a pink haired individual with some kind of laser sword, all of them are standing in the shadow of someone evil. Or, someone with reaaaally bad scoliosis. While behind them, tiny poorly drawn space ships fight, one of them may be REALLY poorly drawn, or exploding. It is not clear which is its fate.

The image also proclaims 'Space, Volume One' or 'Volume One, Space' it's hard to tell which way it's supposed to be read, considering that the word space is first... yet below. Counter intuitive to all western style reading. Then, even more confusingly, below all that, in the bottom corner, is the phrase 'Dueling Galaxy' as if someone wanted to fill an ungly while space in the image. So which is it? is this thing called Space? Dueling Galaxy? Volume One? If this isn't the start of some project what does any of that even mean?

Nothing, my friends. It all means nothing.

Enjoy.

Anyone out there that doesn't know what Fiverr.com is, well it is a bizaire place where people offer to do really odd things for five bucks. Like this man here will juggle a soccorball with your message written on it: http://fiverr.com/brettmanu11/juggle-a-soccer-ba ll-with-whatever-you-want-to-say-on-the-ball-and -show-it-to-the-camera-at-the-end

This guy will pretend to be crazy eddie for five bucks... for fifty he'll take his shirt off: http://fiverr.com/mr_marcus/perform-as-crazy-edd ie-from-the-70s-and-80s-commercials

I myself made one where for five bucks i'll make you a crappy pixel art image: http://fiverr.com/poetry_is_hard/create-a-pixel-
art-character

The weird thing is, people actually pay for these things. Now admittedly, The guy who will take his shirt off is damn, but the part that is really weird, is that people will pay for this. I think fiverr may be getting dangerously close to communism. Dangerously, close. Look at these people, throwing up terrible ideas, getting paid to draw Yoda saying something funny, or speak in a weird accent, or cry on demand.

I would admittedly pay five dollars to see someone dress up as yoda and speak like him, and walk around like him, and pretend to have a lightsaber fight with a tree. I would pay for this in a heartbeat, but only if the yoda costume was of a high quality.

The site also lets me do this. Not dress up like Yoda... well it gives me that option as well, but it lets me ask other people to dress up like Yoda. You can tell people "I will pay you five dollars to do something stupid." Only stupid is replaced with something esoteric, like... "Design a concept for a Juice Bar. " "Research 100 low carb breakfast recipes," "write a 1500-2000 word hot romantic short story." These are the kinds of things people will pay five dollars for, and those desperate for five dollars might actually do it. Though 1500 words is a lot for five dollars.

Fiverr is a weird place. Something about it gives me the creeps... I'm not sure what. it might be that someone wanted me to draw 'them killing their sister with a rusty something' but there are other creepy things about it. Like how the site is covered in primary colors. Don't they know that cool sites use dark colors?

This horrible communistic plot must stop... wait... communism... capitalism... have money... fill a need... spend money on goods and services... this is a distribution of wealth...

Is there a difference between communism and capitalism? Because suddenly they seem really similar. Though that begs the question of whether or not a true capitalistic or communistic system has ever actually been allowed to exist. If it has never been seen how can we truly argue the benefits of one or the other and- I'm getting off topic. So I'm just going to stop.

This would normally be the point when I would tell you to buy my fiverr gig because I like money, but no, don't, because I'm a terrible pixel artist and the little pixel figure I give you will be sub par and worth three dollars at best.

To craft the perfect animal, one must first look at examples. There is the platypus, widely judged as a whole hearted failure on the ground floor of creation. Then there is the narwhal, widely considered amazing by most sentient life. Everything else lies somewhere in between...

Now if we're building a perfect animal, first we must start with the head of a Tyrannosaurus Rex. If you have to ask why, then you do not belong in this conversation. It should be given fur, because many furry things are scary, and fur is soft and awesome. So it could be both cuddly and ferocious.

It would have like thirteen legs. Maybe sixteen. Or two. Six... six legs. One for each day of the week. And a tail, for Tuesday. Which in most calendars used by civilized men and women, is not a true day of the week but a strange abnormally kinda time warp weird point. The tail would have a stinger. For stinging.

It would need the bravery of a thousand noble dogs, and sixteen lions. Its heart would be a hole, from which no feelings of joy or remorse could escape. It would have only the uncaring unfeeling dedication to its goals. A perfect beast ready to do its owner's bidding. Also, it would have the cunning of Alexander the great, and the brain of Abraham Lincoln.

For eyes, it would have.... violet ones. The middle bit would be all like.... plushy. But tough underneath the plush, kevlar plushy!

It would be capable of sonic attacks, fire breath attacks, candy beams (beam of candy), and it would have a compartment for storing things in. It would only need to eat the spleens of my foes, and would three times a year lay an egg of pure gold.

Also, its name would be Zantar! Defender of the realm of truth!

It would be my best friend.