"When I look back and I think about the things that I've done, I love working scared. It keeps me up at night. I love this expression "getting out over your skis", where you have no choice. You've invested your money, you've made a stake in what you decided to do... I ask myself one question: is it going to be fun?"
-Ina Garten, in a recent interview with the NYT

"Well, you know, for me, the action is the juice."
Michael Cheritto, Heat (1995).

I spent a significant portion of last week tediously adjusting spaceships in 3D space. Although I work in film, my specialization is editing— sometimes adjacent to the wizards who work in animation and VFX, but not one of them. So it's been an uphill battle, learning Blender enough to make animations for our Kickstarter trailer. It's slow and careful work, and I've had to learn to think in 3D rather than the nice simple 2D images I usually look at all day.

We'll talk more about our art process for Lonesome Star as we get closer to our launch date, but we've been absolutely militant about making sure that every piece of art in our game is made by hand. It's been a real pleasure to collaborate with (and support) our artists as we all work together to create this world we hope you'll inhabit with us soon. The things I've done myself haven't always felt that way; frustrations, doubling back to try another approach, scrapping ideas that weren't working. But of course, that is fun in its own way, too.

One of the problems with using AI is that it produces art that is worse than what our artists can make. But another issue with AI is that, by design, it removes friction. In the creative process, this is an incalculable loss. The friction, although frustrating, is also a place where the best ideas come from, where happy accidents lead to breakthroughs. The friction is the process. The action is the juice.

Last week, Jim and I tested a late-game episode that's been plaguing us for three years. We had some of the pieces in place, but couldn't get it to work on the first try, the second try, the third try.... On Friday, we printed out the eighth version the map, and the eighth version of the enemies, and we ran it again. And it really sang.

Here's an image from August 14th, 2023. Every component of the game looks much, much better now. (And apologies to the concept artists whose work was serving as placeholder here. Thank you for your unwitting and unwilling service.)

Our friends sat around a table and played through this mission, fighting their way through robots and Rebel soldiers and obstacles. And they had fun, and it almost worked— but not quite. And so we iterated it 7 more times until it did. That's why this game has taken us 5 years. And you know what? It's been a blast. Even when we were playtesting missions that didn't quite work.

Here's a link to that spaceship shot. And I promise you'll get to see the rest of the trailer before too long.

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Back when we started sending these, I said that I'd share a piece of art with every update. A year or two ago, I shared this item art with a friend and told him it was our homage to Dolly Parton. He said "I'm not sure what the Venn diagram of board gamers and Dolly Parton fans are." I laughed and said he probably had a point, but it was our game and we were gonna do what we wanted to.

I don't have the space or time here to write about what Dolly meant to me, and there's nothing I have to say that hasn't been said better by someone else anyway. I love Fernando's art here— you really get the sense that it was sewed together with scraps, but also with a lot of craft.

Writing the flavor text is one of the most fun parts of the game for me. Usually I do a little world-building, or more often find a little joke. In this case, I played it straight. So long, Dolly, and thanks for everything.

Anyway, thanks for reading! Lonesome Star has been a labor of love for Jim and I. It's really an old school crowd funding project. It's not a pre-order. We are two creators who won't be able to make this game without your help. If you could share the game with anyone you think will be interested, we'd greatly appreciate it!

-Hamilton

Ina Garten, Heat, AI, and Spaceships