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!

​Sun sets, shadows rise
Tendrils born 'gainst fading light
Nightmare breaks til dawn

​We perch together
Share our gaze to skies ahead
Wistful, we await

​Fallen hollowed limb
Boughs tangled, weaving with life
Embraced into earth

​Tufts awaiting breeze
To fly, to find home, as home
Senesces to time