This post is actually going to be about game design!
I started teaching myself how to code in 2016, but my various efforts dropped off when I moved to Colombia (since I was busy having an actual social life for the first time in two years!). However, I did enjoy it, so last month I determined to try and make the most of my current free time by getting back into it. I've signed up for a game jam (which are regular competitions/prompts to make a game) with the theme GHOSTS and am making decent headway with my entry for that. You can eyeball a short video of the "cursed Atari 2600 game" I'm working on here: INSTARGHGRAMZ
But something that is closely tied to making games is the same thing that's closely tied to writing, for me: listening to music. Ever since I read that James O'Barr used to listen to music to get him in the mood when creating THE CROW (particularly Joy Division, early Pitchshifter [aka Pitch Shifter] and a bunch of other bands I also like) I decided that I would do the same - this was wwaaaaayyyyy back in the mid-to-late nineties, but it's a practice I've kept up ever since. And quite often the music does influence or otherwise inspire whatever I write (I have quite a few published stories out there containing music-related easter eggs).
For some time now, I've been listening to less and less metal and metal-adjacent music (unless it's heavy/mental, like Converge) and more and more electronica - especially really dark, heavy Berlin-influenced stuff. At the moment, I'm utterly in love with this particular song:
Mainly because it, for me, perfectly captures the feeling of impending doom, closely followed by some form of actual apocalyptic terror as the beat fully kicks in. Suffice to say, I've been listening to it a lot lately, and I think it's helping shape my current game idea (you're a park ranger trapped in continuously-shifting woods as dark forces hunt you, with strong themes of inescapable fate and futility).
Music is, for me, one of the most powerful and immediate expressions of art a person can make, so I fully appreciate anyone that can distill any form of strong emotion and/or theme into five minutes, whether those minutes are clanking industrial beatz or some catchy pop song. And I mean real emotion, too, not the dimestore schmaltz of many acoustic singer/songwriters. Love is easy to write about (badly, I mean) - give me stories about how we're all doomed no matter what we do. Sure, this is bleak but I find that sort of thing far more interesting.
And on that note (music pun!) and to end, here's another recent song I can't get enough of:
