At some point over three years ago maybe I have spent way too much time working on video games and video game adjacent technologies. A tale of burnout in the games industry is not uncommon, but what happens when you are already burned out on day 1? Turns out the plan to address all those things *later* was, in fact, not a good plan. But I made it to the other side (I think?)

At one point you just get tired of everything and wonder what are you even doing. During our lifetime we will see the collapse of Capitalism, we will be thrown into barbarism, and we will be in The Good Timeline if we don’t see nuclear weapons being used. That is to say that some days you just look at your video-game-making day job and can’t help but have no other reaction besides feeling stupid and wondering what the hell are you doing with your life.

Well, I’m trying to make video games, that’s what.

Tiny Tactics powered by The Machinist is a videogame project that I have been cooking in my head for way too long. I know that the name “Tiny Tactics powered by The Machinist” is a silly name, dare I even say it’s goofy. But every single word is here for a purpose, including *these* ones.

Tiny Tactics powered by The Machinist is a storytelling project. I like to think of it as “playable short stories”, because making video games is stupid, and silly, and video games are for babies and man child. Short Stories are for Cool People.

Tiny Tactics powered by The Machinist has multiple steps and multiple faces, and every now and then I want to make slices of this project public. Those are going to be what people call “video games.” But ultimately, it’s about creating stories, and a game engine capable of telling these stories to an audience, a game is a mere byproduct of the process.

Now, I could spend a long time here using words to describe aesthetics, gameplay, intentions, player goals, or player interactions. None of that matters. Every good project needs a humble beginning, and the humble beginning of “Tiny Tactics powered by The Machinist” is simply trying to copy Final Fantasy Tactics.

It’s obviously incredibly facetious (and dumb) to say that “I’ll just copy Final Fantasy Tactics” is a “humble beginning.” What I really mean here is a subset of the functionality and gameplay, whatever I manage to put in on the first iteration of this project.

A complicated aspect of Final Fantasy Tactics is its isometric art. I both love it and hate it. The isometric perspective allows for incredible cutscenes and it achieves a diorama-like feel that is Very Beautiful and I love it (In this house, we stan Sakaguchi-san.) But on the other hand, it does make gameplay harder to read.

To top it all off, I’m not really passionate or very excited about making pixel art, but I will try my best to learn it and, who knows, eventually, I can find someone I can pay to make beautiful art for these little projects.

Now, I would be lying if I said I knew where this was going. Or if I said I knew when something playable would be out, but hopefully, in a few months, maybe!

As to the question “But what is it about?” – The answer is that I also don’t know. I have some starting points for the first thing I’m working on and let’s see where this will go. The process is basically writing scenes and short stories within the constraints I have. For example, for the first game, I am working with an asset pack, so I have constraints on characters and environments.

So, every day I will sit down, look at the characters, look at the environments, look at what I have, write down some ideas, and proceed to write some scenes, a short story, or both! Whatever comes to mind. It’s all about experimenting with different ideas until one tells me that they are the chosen one.

I guess what I’m really trying to say here, by using a lot of words, is that I’m trying to make a video game.