In the throes of brain fog

Hello my friends,

welcome to 2025! I know the year is almost halfway done at this point, but this is the first time with me talking to you on this channel, so it still felt apt. I think I’ve been quiet because ever since I stopped traveling so much, time seemed to have made a habit of getting away from me. And there do seem to be fewer interesting things happening in my life that are worth talking about, but that’s probably just my bias.

Anyway, I just “celebrated” my birthday the other day, but it’s been a sticky few weeks. I’ve caught a nasty flu (COVID test was negative) in the middle of April and since then I’ve been permanently exhausted, plagued by a persistent cough, and lost in a sea of brain fog. Any kind of work that requires concentration feels so strenuous, that after an hour of it, I feel like I need to lay down for at least twice as long.

It’s been a terrible time for me, because I had planned to finish a lot tasks in April and most didn’t even get started. And for me, feeling unproductive while locked inside by myself is a perfect recipe for depression. And even worse, my condition hasn’t really gotten much better. Some days I feel more energetic, while others are worse.

Still, the show must go on so enough complaining. Here’s what’s up with me beyond that!

PERSONAL

What happened to me since last time?

• I spent a few days in Vienna in March with my partner, which was nice. I’ve spent enough time there over the last decade that I do have a number of favorite restaurants I want to visit and lovely friends I want to chat with. It was lovely to do a little bit of both, even if the time was too short to check all the boxes.

• I did attend the Reboot Develop Blue video game conference in Dubrovnik, Croatia in April. The Kreativ-Transfer program supported the travel, which meant I was able to go there with a number of other indie studios from Germany, which was really nice. Also I hadn’t been to the event (or city) before so it was great to finally see attend. Reboot is an interesting event that feels quite different than a lot of other events - more concentrated but also less hectic. I’d be interested to go again, but considering I got the flu from there, the experience is a little soured.

• As mentioned, I did just turn 44 the other day. There wasn’t much in terms of celebrations, because of my overall state and the fact that I’m on the island of Fuerteventura at the moment.

• Why Fuerteventura? Well because my good friend Thomas did book a little apartment for a few weeks and I decided to join him way before I got sick. So I did feel okay enough to travel and decided to not waste the flight. If I’m languishing, might as well languish on a nice island.

MEDIA

What did I watch/play/read since lately?

• I finally completed Hostile Homelands, the book about the connection between India and Israel. I am glad I read it but to be honest, it’s just so damn depressing. It’s just power-grabbing right-wingers everywhere.

• I’ve been playing some Space Marine 2. I did really enjoy the first installment back when that released. But so far, even though it is much more atmospheric, it also isn’t that exciting. A lot of the fighting feels very same-y. The weapons aren’t that interesting either. I guess I’ll eventually work my way through it but I’m not rushing.

• I also ran through Borderlands 3, another sequel that I can’t muster half as much excitement for as I did for it’s first installment. It’s alright. Not a bad time. If you can ignore the cruder parts of the humor.

• I also did play some Reignbreaker, the likely last game from fellow indie game studio Fizbin. It’s visually really stunning and the gameplay is solid but it does make me sad. Because the studio is being shut down and because the game feels like a really good foundation. A lot about it works really well, but if the team would have gotten 6 more months to add more stuff to it it could have been truly great. Definitely worth giving it a try though, if you like roguelike action! Plus it has parallels in name, aesthetics, and politics to my game Crownbreakers!

• I joined a ttrpg campaign by my friend Jacob running Rapscallion. We’ve only had two sessions so far (adult life really makes scheduling difficult) but it’s been fun to play some rpg again for a change!

• I am also gearing up to run a ttrpg campaign of DURF. I’m generally not an old school kind of game master but I’m excited about giving it a try. I do love the idea of being surprised by what will happen at the table. And the DURF rule set just seems so light and fun. It was a joy to read and I’m excited for the expanded edition!

• While I was sick, I got another Dropout subscription to pass the time by binging a bunch of Dimension 20 shows. Specifically Never Stop Blowing Up and Misfits and Magic 2. For my taste, D20 is the perfect formula for ttrpg actual play content. I just wish most seasons were about 50% shorter, but when your binging in sickness delirium, it doesn’t really matter that much.

WORK

What’s happening to me, professionally?

• The Ale and Well Met podcast off Broadway played two more sessions of Goblin Errands!

  • Session 2

  • Session 3

• The Read Play Game podcast finally released all their episodes, including a review with yours truly:

  • Read

  • Play

  • Discuss

  • Interview

• I did a talk at Talk & Play Karlsruhe talking about one of my older projects, a VR experiment called Wheelhouse. I haven’t really given many talks in recent years so I was quite nervous but reception was great.

• Together with some other creative people here in Ludwigsburg, we founded he Kokolores Creative Collective e.V. social club. The Kokolores Space is a co-working community I am a part of since moving to Ludwigsburg. Originally Studio Fizbin (of Reignbreaker fame) was the legal entity managing the collective but with the studio shutting down we decided to finally create a proper entity for the space and beyond.

• I showed off Crownbreakers at a local video game event. It was the first of it’s kind and organized by the Kokolores Creative Collective in collaboration with the Scala event space! And the event was a success! Not only because around 150 people attend, but also because it’s always nice to see folks play your game! Plus the event finally gave me a reason to build a “conference version”. At the moment that’s basically a version that doesn’t let you close the game, that forces the tutorial and disables save games. There’s some more obvious features like resetting the game if it’s idle for too long or playing the trailer to attract folks.

• I will most likely be traveling to Berlin in May for A MAZE as well. Obviously because I love A MAZE but also because I have a workshop planned:

  • Creative Crisis - Resilience and Recovery. A topic that has been front and center on my mind ever since my own run in with burnout. A topic tightly intertwined with this newsletter as well. I was really excited about the workshop but with the sickness dragging on so much I haven’t been in any shape to run a workshop. If I don’t end up feeling better I might have to cancel it, which just makes me feel worse about the entire sickness/lack of productivity issue.

Ex Novo Kickstarter

Konstantinos, my co-designer on the game, and me had been planning the Ex Novo Kickstarter campaign for the printed, second edition of the game since late 2024. (Actually we had wanted to get it off the ground back in 2023 but the campaign always got too big with stretch goals and extras. So this time we kept it as simple as possible. Mainly at my insistence and for my sanity. So on April 22nd I hit the go button and since then Konstantinos has carried the torch, while I languished in the non-space between bed and couch.

However, I have been feeling well enough to join the marketing efforts yesterday and today, so I have written two Kickstarter updates and sent out two newsletter emails (not counting this one). It has entered the critical, final 48 hours after all.

That said, the campaign has been going great! Granted, Ex Novo was the most successful game out of all my digital ttrpg projects, so it was no surprise that it would be a success. Still the campaign has managed to meet the funding goal in less than 90 minutes and it has just rushed past the 1.000 backers and 25.000 € threshold! That’s beyond impressive to me!

It’s a great feeling to know that so many people are excited about Ex Novo and its second edition. I myself am looking forward to working on the layout and text, so I do hope I will feel well enough to get to do that soon.

Crownbreakers Progress

I’m also still hard at work on Crownbreakers, my new roguelike deck-builder. I did spend the first three months of 2025 in what I lovingly call refactoring hell. Refactoring is the process of cleaning up code without changing how it works. So you’re not adding functionality, in fact you’re likely to break something while you rework the guts. Instead the focus is on a good structure that can be extended and improved upon, making new features and functionalities possible.

This kind of work, as you can imagine, can be quite dreadful. You spend a lot of time deep in the system doing complex work for benefits that are distant, nebulous and unclear. Hardly what I’d call satisfying work. However in the moments when it does come together it can feel great. At the end of it I was able to reap the benefits, and I did learn a lot while doing it, but next time I think I will try to better evaluate the personal cost of a process like this beyond just the time it takes. Like: How will it feel doing this? How long can I stand doing this? These kind of questions.

With the refactoring done the prototype phase has officially ended. I did get some funding from the European Union for the prototype/development phase and that kind of support does come with some reporting demands. I tried really hard to wrap up the bureaucratic work up by April but as mentioned, most of it’s still unfinished. The illness has made that kind of work particularly hard.

Apart from that I’ve also poured some energy into the game’s Steam Page, which I plan on launching soon. Part of the reason why that’s not happened yet was that I wanted to first sign with a publisher. I had a lot of good communication and interest toward the end of 2024 but then in 2025 pretty much all of the talks fell through.

So at the current moment I will forge ahead by myself. I do have some more public funding, some of my own money and a lot of sweat equity. We’ll have to see how far I can push the game with that. It might be that Crownbreakers will launch as early access down the road, but that’s still up in the air.

And that’s about all I can muster at this time. I am sure I forgot a lot of important points but you will have to just bear with me.

Much love and may you all be, get, and stay healthy,

💚 Martin