There’s a secret room in Ato where you have to go to the game files to setup a Twitch Arena config. It connects to your twitch chat IRC and then viewers can type in commands to do things like summon enemies and so on. It’s more of a novelty than anything but is still neat regardless, you can see footage of a test run of it here.

(At the 1:35:00 mark)

If you guessed I was going to write about Ato you’re WRONG, bye.

-Brandon

 

 

 

…

 

 

 

…

 

 

 

…

 

 

 

 

 

…

 

 

 

…

 

 

 

…

 

 

 

…

 

 

I think right now since it has been a week since launch I’ve still had to grasp my own thoughts lately, especially since what I worked on for a while is finally out there and is pretty much at the mercy of other’s opinions. It’s kind of hard for me to digest the thoughts that have been going on in my head.

I think people want to know stuff that is relevant with Ato and perhaps the future. I feel I need to slow it down with the patching and wait to accumulate a bunch of fixes instead of frantically stressing out over one fix, spending an hour to fix and upload a build, only to get another issue a few minutes after. There’s definitely some issues that I frankly can’t figure out the solution to because of how varied Windows computers are and all the potential issues that are outside of Game Maker 2’s control. It’s hard because if someone likes the game and runs into really bad issues that corrupt their save data, I feel pretty bad about it, especially when I can’t seem to find a solution with GM2.

It’s been weird because I’ve spend so many years making flops and now this game happens, which is good news (though the success is frankly pretty small), but also kind of has made me contemplative.

I’m sure people want to know what my plans are, I think reading this interview is a good place to look if you’re curious: https://scousegamer88.com/2020/05/10/qa-with-brandon-song/?fbclid=IwAR1s0Bmx15NLWsnsxDH-H3f2–d7oFW5waOv1CyRnN7C-99A7mM6S-ueOl4

I don’t know what else to say at the moment, it’s kind of hard to not stress out with patching frantically but I’m definitely relieved to hear some people really like the game, especially when I was worried it wasn’t going to be that great. I know and understand the risk of having to spend money to buy a game with very few reviews and coverage on it.

I feel that if I were to make another game it probably won’t click with the people that love Ato. But who knows I could be wrong, there are aspects of Ato that I like (such as the combat and movement) and concepts that I feel were well done. It’s just that if I did something different, it would probably won’t be liked as much because a certain element of it is not quite like Ato.

It’s been fun seeing the discoveries players have had and I’ve enjoyed keeping my mouth shut and letting the players discuss tech and speed-running.

I’ll probably eventually go back to write on old coding tests and abandoned games, but feel it would be relevant to speak my mind given what has happened since last week.

I kind of just want to play video games. So that’s been nice.

Thanks for reading,

-Brandon