Keith Kritselis - Creative, Adaptive, Problem Solver - What's New Blog

Shelving Scramble Up on Steam...

5/29/2025

I always knew that Scramble Up! was not a good fit for Steam, but I figured it would be easy(ish) to make and I would learn a lot... Which is mostly true, and I have, but the fun of the gameplay loop wears of quickly and I have not come up with a way to make it fun.

It always felt like a better word-a-day puzzle like wordle, and I have built a version of that and posted it to:

www.scrambleupgame.com

I'll keep posting new words there and to the 'paper' version on instagram, but the expanded Steam version need to cook a little more.

Time for another sprint...

4/11/2025

I was burned out after that last 10 day push to get the game in a playable shape... and I haven't touched it in a week. I have had the time, but not the will... :(

I planned out the next 2 months until the game launch and I need to get a polished demo submitted to Steam by next Tuesday and cut an official trailer by the end of next week. If the submission process goes smoothly, I want to launch the demo on the 21st. There is a lot of work to get done this weekend, but it's crunch time.

A game demo and some data wrangling...

4/2/2025

I have been heads down for 2 weeks working on the Scramble Up! demo in order to get it done in time to enter it into a a puzzle game festival. I got a playable version done, but it is not very polished. Still a lot of work to do, but I see the end in the distance. The biggest benefit was that it forced me to go through the process of building executable files, getting set up in the Apple developers program and all that took longer than I thought. The next hurdle is to get the demo approved and released on Steam... but I still need some polishing before then.

The other thing I did was finish adding data to my festQuest app... In the process, I found that the design broke when I loaded it in... :) These are only things you can discover in the process...

So. I have some tweaks there, but I can finish that in a weekend.

SXSW wiped me out, but I'm back baby!

3/16/2025

Had a lot of fun and was very busy during South By, but by Wednesday, I was burned out. The sxfreesw app didn't get as much traction as I hoped it would, but I have time to focus on marketing next year.

I need to get back to working on my Scramble Up! game, there is festival I want to enter with a deadline at the end of the month, but instead of that I started building another game. :( :)

The vibe coding craze continues and I decided to revive an old idea I created in the 90s as a Macromedia Director web game. It's a mash up of breakout and Tetris.

You can find the hosted version here.

It's pretty fun with just about 8 dev hours on it. I'm still refining the game loop, but the core mechanics are there.

SXSW 2025

3/11/2025

Whew... this has been the busiest SXSW I've had in a decade...

I released my app and I've been out hustling to get people to use it.

https://www.sxfreesw.com/

We are halfway through it... I am going to take it easy for a couple days and focus on keyboard promotion and then do the final push going into the weekend.

Prototyped a game...

2/25/2025

Simple prototype... not as fun as I would have liked, but there is something there... need some more time to mull it over.

February 24th, 2025

2/24/2025

A very productive weekend. I got to 100 events in the sxfreesw.com website. I am probably about half way there. Should have it in there by end of week, but I am launching it today on linkedIn.

I also built a quick app on Sunday to help with a band fundraiser for my son's HS band. They sell bags of mulch and offer free delivery to certain zip codes. It's a big production every year to organize delivery routes. I created this speed up the process and so far, it's gotten good reviews.

A new game prototype

2/19/2025

A friend suggested creating a physical board game out of my Scramble up! game.

It was an interesting idea and there have been some successes extending video game IP for indies into the board game world.

Once I started thinking about it, another game idea was a better fit for a board game, so I started prototyping it... I am going to do some play testing and work on balance. If it pans out like I think it will, it might be a good fall kickstarter project... more updates to come.

Happy Valentines Day

2/14/2025

It was a productive week.

I launched the festQuest site and reskinned it and launched a website to plan out your free event agenda during SXSW.

Both apps are up, but the data in both cases are unfinished. I have about 100 more festivals and a lot more SXSW events. There are 3 weeks until SXSW, but it'll get done.

This weekend, I have to work on a project for my friend Rob.

The journey continues...

2/3/2025

I primarily worked on the World Series Race bar chart project.

I was able to get it running and recorded about 30 years worth of series.

I got the channel created and the first video posted this weekend.

I will have 123 videos when I am done... curious about what release cadence makes sense.

I also added youTube streaming to the DevJobsDaily channel on Friday.

I also started another project, it is a map and calendar of festivals all over the world. It's a very rough prototype and I have not spent any time on design, but I picked up a domain, festquest.club where it will live. Not sure where this fits in the launch schedule yet, but I could finish it in a day if I found the time.

This week

I need to figure out data scraping and finishing the DevJobsDaily website.