brodnork

i'm something

  • they/them

Game developer, animator, artist, dumpling eater, bug appreciator, creator of squishy friends.
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Created Frogsong! Working on a secret new game!

finfin come and see him


My website! 🐝
bumblebee.city/
My frog game! 🐸
frogsonggame.com/
support me pls!! πŸ¦‘
www.patreon.com/brodnork

2023 was a weird year for me... mostly good, but there's been a few struggles, and many of the good things weren't quite what I was hoping for. I wanted to write a bit about my accomplishments and experiences throughout the year. I guess let's jump right into probably my biggest accomplishment of the year (and probably last several years)...

I released a damn video game!!

Finishing a game is so hard!!! It's so hard you guys you don't even know!!! But oh my god I did it. I released Frogsong, a game I had been working on for more than 4 years. It's short and simple, but... it's my first big game, so I'm pretty happy with how it came out. It's got 97% positive reviews on Steam, which is nuts! People seemed to actually enjoy it. I also finished porting it to Switch, and that'll be releasing next month. I'm planning on writing a more detailed retrospective in the near future, once it's out on Switch for a bit. The Steam release has sold pretty alright, enough for me to keep going for a little bit, but I'm probably gonna have to get a part time job in 2024. It's a little disappointing. Still, the fact that I managed to last nearly two years working on my art full time is something I am so grateful for.

I moved to Vancouver, which has been... good and bad?

I've been wanting to move out of my crappy hometown for years now. When I was a teenager, I wanted to work in the animation industry (looking at the state of it now thank god i switched paths) so I've been aiming for Vancouver for a long time. My hometown is pretty conservative and redneck, so as a queer person, I never really felt comfortable there. Earlier this year I finally made the move, got some very nice roommates, met some local gamedevs, and ate so much good food. I'm really thankful I made the move.

But, I won't lie, it's also been really hard. With the cost of living constantly going up, trying to survive as a small self employed game developer is pretty scary. I've also yet to make any solid friendships in the 9 months I've been here, which has led to me feeling pretty lonely and isolated at times. I have plans for meeting more people moving forwards, so hopefully this won't last long.

I played Outer Wilds

This one isn't an accomplishment or anything but playing this game was EXTREMELY impactful. More impactful than any other media I've experienced, I think. It's been almost a year since I played it and I still think about it all the time. It really changed the way I think and look at the world, and I super recommend that anyone reading this go play the game right now!!!

I started work on my next big game

Throughout most of Frogsong's development, I've been brainstorming ideas in the back of my head for my next big game. After Frogsong was out and most of the bugs were fixed, I started learning Godot and working on a prototype. I'm really happy with how this new game is turning out so far - I learned a lot during Frogsong's development, and I think this next one's gonna be really fun! My parents got me a notebook for Christmas and in the past 6 days I've filled 18 and a half pages with doodles and notes about mechanics, enemy/boss designs, characters, etc... needless to say, I'm very excited about this next game.

I'm waiting until there's more to share before I formally announce it, but I'm really hoping I'll be able to talk about it next year!

All sorts of personal stuff

All sorts of stuff happened that's, well, personal, so I won't be going into detail about it here. But, ultimately, I've learned a lot about myself and grown a lot as a person this year.
I'm going into 2024 with a lot of hope and curiosity. Maybe things will go how I want, but if they don't, I'm sure I'm able to figure it out.

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in reply to @brodnork's post:

Congrats on all your achievements! I'm right there with you as far as moving and struggling to connect with people, hopefully that improves for the both of us in 2024.

(Also, the link to frogsong seems to be broken)