Before I became a programmer, I was trying my hand at a lot of areas of study. It's probably a more accurate thing to say that me becoming a programmer was an accident that happened thanks to all the things I wanted to learn up to actually becoming a software and web developer. I studied graphic design in high school before falling in love with music theory my senior year and decided to audition for a music school and barely made it in. I studied music composition with the goal of writing music for video games before I started regularly designing and prototyping games with a friend. I learned that I really enjoyed the entire game development process and chose to study video game design on my own after getting my music degree. I couldn't afford another degree, so it was more or less a bunch of one-off classes of a DIY degree that demonstrated my experience rather than proving my schooling. Stifled by student debt from my college degree however, I needed something to help pay that off and I used the programming knowledge I picked up developing games (and the referral of a friend) to land my first programming job.
Why do I mention any of this though? Well, I hope it shows that I have a deeply-held enjoyment of video games. I find them a fascinating medium capable of involving the audience in a way that other media can't effectively do. I also enjoy thinking of ways to fuse other interests with the video game medium. After all, game design often starts with a core idea and designing a space around that core. It's a part of why it's so easy for people to agree of categorizing games in genres and how new games take core gameplay from a genre, adding a personal twist or something novel with hopes of that novel thing to become a staple in the genre going forward. It's a neat cycle that brings us to where video games are today. But I digress. Games that take one of my interests and see what they can do with it in a game setting really stand out to me. It's probably a big proponent of why I like rhythm games so much having spent a solid chunk of my educational career studying music, and percussion in particular. And if it isn't abundantly clear from writing for Prismatic Planet for almost 2 years now, ecology and the connectedness of nature is something I'm very interested in. I thought it'd be neat to find a game that attempts to virtualize how our planet works, and find one of those games I did! The game is called Equilinox, and I'd like to explore a bit about how this game attempts to replicate the natural world and its interactions with the species that make up its ecosystems. After all, it's a very human thing to have a fully functioning natural world right outside your door, but choose to make a digital one that you can influence and observe. Let's dive in!
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AuthorPrismatic Planet wants to get excited for the planet, raise awareness of its inhabitants, and get smarter about Earth. Archives
February 2025
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