New Makealotl Trailer!

I cut a trailer for the Makealotl Music site! I hope you love it, it was tons of work.

And of course, you should probably visit Makealotl Music for all your music education needs

neon98.com updated

My developer web page, neon98.com, got updated with Makealotl Music! I was waiting until the site was a teeny tiny bit bigger to put it on my main site.

I once heard some YouTube dude say that websites really get best over iteration, meaning they get better as you change them over time. That means if you want a cool website someday, you gotta start with a thin one today. I think websites are fun, I think everyone should have one. I think you should link me yours, even.

But really everything you do is iterative, if you'll think about it. Which is fantastic game dev advice, but really it's fantastic advice for any creative endeavor you're going to ... endev.

I realized after I put Makealotl on there, I need to put my smaller projects on there too.

Game Harvest 2025

Just making sure you wish you developed games in Kentucky: all us Kentucky Developers got together and showed off our games to the public during the fancy fancy event Game Harvest, put on by Louisville Makes Games. We held it in an art musem, because we're art ~

So that's us, and all our little booths, before we turn the lights off. You can see Makealotl Music over on the far left!

You can see Makealotl even better here:

And on the left of that picture, you can see Vaporwave Battler running too.

I gave out stickers! That was fun, I love giving stickers to people.

I got to talk to a tonnnnn of people, too, and watch them play both Note Nab and Vaporwave Battler. It was also excellent to talk to my fellow dev pals, get ideas, and play with their games as well. I walked off with so many ideas, you guys, I have so many ideas now.

My list of ideas for me for next year:

• Get little yard sale signs -- you know, the neon cut out ones? -- to give people a call to action about the game ("Buy on Itch.io!" or "Visit Delia on the web!"). Also use the signs to mark the stickers as free
• Reprint my buisness card holder, it busted right before
• Maybe Game Harvest specific builds that reset or give directions after a time so my booth needs less babysitting
• Headphones. I brought purple ones for Makealotl Music just because Delia has purple headphones and I think I'm funny, and I noticed they got used when the bands were playing really loud. They're just 5 Below headphones, I think another pair of cheapies would be a fine investment.

Stickers!

My local library lets me print stickers!

Do you recognize that axolotl? That's Delia!

I have plans for promoting Delia's site, Makealotl Music, annnnnnnd I need stuff. My local library will let me print $8 worth of stuff a month, and apparently THIS many stickers is eight bucks. I get eight more bucks every month. It's my tax dollars, may as well go down to the library and use it. While I was down there, I printed a zine about Vaporwave Battler too. Free printing at the library.✌️

Give me some time, I'll give you your opportunity to get your own Delia sticker. Also, I wonder what I'm printing next week? 🤔

Weird Marketing Tactics

I'm not sure if this is dumb or not, don't roast me. I've been thinking about other things that can go into little free libraries, ever since I saw a tiktok where some artists made tiny tiny paintings and left them in their libraries. So art is one, right? My husband's work place put together a bunch of children's stem kits to distribute in little free libraries. Hm.

To my little feral self, zines are a perfect fit in little free libraries. I'd love finding a zine in a little free library. (I actually did find one, I took it, it was awesome.) So I got a bunch of small posters printed at the public library, and I've been distributing them in little free libraries. If it's a library close to a place of buisness, I assume it's got more people coming in and out and I drop double.

Pictured: one of my drops. The bottom thing I'm pointing to is a flier for Warp Zine, the top thing is one of my husband's stem kits. I deliver a bunch by bike and have to drive the rest around town. My city's bikeable if you're creative, but it's 1) large and 2) not entirely safe to bike to every single place I'd need because cars go vroom. Those are my bike gloves in the picture, I'm not cool enough to just walk around with fingerless gloves.

So the obvious marketing benefit is that people are getting sent to the latest issue of Warp Zine, right? Right now, that's free advertising for anyone who's featured in Warp Zine. It could be me someday soon! But I still want to give Kentucky Developers some good karma out there.

I'm trying to think of other cool stuff to drop in little libraries, it seems like it could go hand in hand with indie dev stuff. Given that this blog is probably gonna hit video game fans, my two indie dev ideas are either direct advertisements for games or, if you're developing something narrative based, developing some comic zines to go with the story and drop those in little libraries. Get creative, and then leave me ideas in the comments, because right now I'm super into this idea.