Hey everyone, it is my birthday today! I am officially 23, which really doesn't feel much different than 22 or 21. But that means its been another year of grind and another year of development hell.

I usually like to use this time to give sneak peeks into what has been going on behind the scenes on most of my projects. It has been quite a quiet year for me, largely due to the immense amount of work I have been putting into my music and my games. But, I do have one major project that is on the cusp of release.

SQUIRE, AND DEVELOPMENT HELL:

My studio and I have been hard at work for the past 11 months doing what we can to make Squire the best possible experience. So far, it has been immensely difficult, but we are slowly reaching the final stages of development. Below are some screenshots of the game so far:

Merchant being smug, as per usual.

Innocent Squire 7 minutes away from death.

That damn Crow that I hate.

A large aspect of this difficulty has largely been due to legacy code which has become extremely buggy and outdated as the project has continued. Since we were learning the Godot engine at the same time as we were developing, every month came with a new improvement and several new bugs. Some of the craziest bugs we've experienced have been:

• The Squire getting stuck shitting himself if the player held down jump.
• The Lancer Knight hitting a wall and glitching out like hell.
• Cannonballs going into mock speed after bouncing off a wall.
• And finally, the Rainyburn glitch. You'll see what that is when you play the game.

I hope that once we get to the release stage, that you all truly enjoy what we have worked on. It has not been easy to get to this point of development.

SOUVENIRS AND METAMATON:

While Squire has been in development, I have been working on two albums simultaneously. I likely have a workaholism problem. Neither of these albums are likely to release this year, but I hope to have them ready by Spring and Summer of 2026 respectively.

SOUVENIRS is a electronic breakbeat album that I have been working on for nearly 5 years at this point? It was originally meant to be an album for when I was producing as a duo for DISK-DYKE, but as we have went our own ways I have turned the album into my own solo project. The project has entered its own type of development hell as I've worked to get further on it and really make something unique. I believe that this album will be something everyone will enjoy, especially if you liked the Newgrounds Baby EP. Below is a snippet from the album so far:

So I'm doing another breakbeat album, what about METAMATON? Well, this album is shaping up to be one of my most spiteful works I have made in quite some time. I hesitate to describe it as a love letter to the vaporwave scene, and rather a regretful look towards the currrent state of the scene, and the people who have maimed what I believe is genuinely a very unique genre. It'll likely be the last time I ever revisit vaporwave, since working on it has at times gotten me very frustrated. But I have been putting my heart and soul into this project, listening to multiple albums and trying to put my take on several aesthetics to hopefully illustrate what I believe the genre could have been, and why it has stagnated. Below is another short snippet:

For now, that is all. I will continue to chip away at these projects and keep you posted, and hopefully begin consistently blog posting with dev logs. But for now, I have to return back to the dev hell mines and slave away for another month or so.

- Ethan