youtu.be/UaQjE2B_HCw

www.newgrounds.com/art/view/cya...

So learning to let go and being comfortable with winging it was a life saver for me. Sometimes you might miss when improvising (especially if you lack experience) but it was never going to be perfection, so you forgive yourself for those misses, correct them IF you can, or just learn and keep going.

and you barely consider all that when you're "planning ahead".

Surprise, the so called "filler" time that connects key moments is actually not filler at all, it's a sizeable chunk of the story. Obvious in hindsight but I kept neglecting it in favor of "well um. what ACTUALLY happens in the plot"

There's comfort in being like "oh yeah, I plan everything ahead!" (I like to do it as much as possible), but then you actually start writing it for real and realize you can't build a story just on "key moments" alone. There's so many minuscule details and scenes in between that can make or break it-

As someone who's never had any formal training with writing, this was a HUGE lesson to learn. That whole realization that most of what ended up being in the finalized pages was never ever on any of the outlines and "key moments" that I spent obsessively coming up with

Every now and then I see people still circulating the baseless rumor that Nicalis stole the Cave Story IP from its creator when

1- The dude is still working with them to this day

2- Nicalis is verifiably shitty on its own and making stuff up just distracts from the actual bad stuff they did

Its a spoiler in the sense that it's only revealed near the end in the hardest route, but its only significant because the protagonist is the "amnesiac protag trying to find out who they are" trope

Official material calls him Mr Traveler (a name given to him early in game) but that one didnt stick

Like he's not a narcissist or malicious for it, and obviously MG is ok with it but be for real

Your work has overshadowed each and every one of your inspirations 10 years. We know it, it's great. Could you not hold the self references for a sec and let the og have the spotlight in its own remake?

The tediousness ironically made me appreciate pacing more as well, since each page takes careful planning and both an effort of writing/sketching back and forth, it keeps me aware. Previous attempts either dragged out too long or felt too exposition-heavy if I relied on only one or the other. [5/5]