Welcome to Boon Hill

Not that I'm not successful. You see, I write video games for a living. Millions of people have played games I've worked on. I've written words for franchises like The Walking Dead and Galaxy On Fire. I mostly work freelance, which means I get to set my own hours and show up to board rooms as the “out of town guest”, talk story for 20 minutes, then walk out before the boring part of the meeting hits. But I don't get to tell my own stories. I get to help other people craft and perfect theirs. I get to work on machines already in motion. I tune the engine or rebuild the carburetor mid-race or whatever other metaphors I can use that prove I'm not a car guy. I don't get to do that most terrifying and wonderful thing. I don't get to connect with people. Not through my art. At least not the art I get paid to make in my day job. So, I burn the candle at both ends. I get up and I start dealing with my clients. I take the notes, I write the drafts, I beat out the stories. Heroes save the day, cats fall out of trees and dogs learn the meaning of friendship. Around sixteen hours after I wake up I finish the last of what I should be doing that day. Then I yawn. Drink an energy drink, and start working on one of my own projects. I have about four hours before sleep will demand I stop. I write, plot, craft, build, beg, and talk to the team of people I've put together to work on my own stories and my own games. Games like Dead Horizon. It's not one of the Triple A games I write for. It was made on a shoestring budget, paid for out of pocket by me. This is because as someone who has worked on the other end, I'll never ask someone to work for free if I can avoid it. Dead Horizon is a “retro” indie game. That means pixel art and chiptune music. But it's not just for style, it's there because it's very evocative of a time and place in which the emotions I'm dealing with in the writing for this game are from. A lot of the game is about my relationship with my grandfather, my feelings about gender and masculinity, and my emotional attachment to the western genre. And that... ooooh boy. That is the scary part. This game isn't like the Triple A games I write for. It's me. It's me splattered across thousands of pixels for anyone to see. Its my emotional guts and my journal pages spilled out in text boxes and cutscenes. It isn't a carefully calculated product that's been focus tested and rejiggered a thousand times. It's not trying to trick you out of your money to keep hundreds of people employed. Hell, it isn't even worth money. The game is free. It's just me, telling a story I think matters. Trying to say something and wondering If I actually have anything to say. Attempting to connect with you and not knowing if what I've created will manage to make you feel anything or just leave you cold, bored, and displeased. I made this game for you and I don't even know who you are. I made a thing hoping to find some way to speak to you and express something and I don't know enough about you to have any idea what you'll do with me being so open. I hope so, so much that you'll be moved. That you'll experience what I intended. Or even magically, you'll see something there I didn't know was there and find joy or sorrow or insight beyond what I could have imagined or predicted. Maybe you'll find rage. Pain. Hatred. Maybe you'll curse my name and rant and rave. Maybe you'll try and hurt me. To make me feel the kind of frustration I've caused in you. Worst of all, maybe you won't even care. I'll never connect with you because I failed to even matter enough to be a gleam in your eye. That's why you scare me. Because I care what you think of my game more than anything. Because I make art for you. Because I'm screaming into the void with all I have to see if all the other people in the void hear my cry. I like making my own things. I like being scared. It is, well, scary though. I'll tell you now, honestly, if you want to hurt me? You can. Very easily. I read every review. Every comment. Every random post on some random forum. Every article and every random discussion. It hurts every time someone doesn't like what I've made. Every time, even when It's a project I barely worked on, even if the comments are right. Though, when people are mean, at least they care. It's so hard to get people to care. To make that connection. Steve Martin's quote isn't the whole of it. Money really helps. I've seen it from the inside. People can only care about what they hear about. You can't just be good. You also have to be loud. Which is why I'm writing this. Why I'm being completely honest. I am scared of you and I need your help. I need you to play my game. If you play my game, and I manage to connect with you, and you tell other people about it? Share this post, link my game, write about it. And that happens enough? Then I might get to spend more of my day working on my own things and less on other people's. I might get to focus on telling my own stories. It's terrifying. If you think I have something to say, then I have to say more things. If you think I don't. I don't. It's much less safe, but it's something I want and something I can't do alone. Something I can't do without you. If you've ever made art of some kind, you probably understand, you're probably scared too. I probably frighten you. So, I offer a trade. If you show me something you've made, written, filmed, whatever, I'll look at it. I'll give feedback. I'll spread the word on it. All you have to do in return is play my game. You don't even have to like it. I guess I should talk about my game at some point, huh? Dead Horizon is a very short retro-styled shooting game for the PC, on Windows, Mac, and Linux. It's only about 10 minutes long, and it only requires a mouse to play. It's free. The soundtrack costs about five dollars if you want that, but there's also a sound test in the game itself. You play as a gunslinger who's going through a series of quick draw duels. Yet, it's about so much more than just quick draw duels. It's about violence. Death. Redemption. Getting a chance to matter. It's about those dreams we have as kids and about people who we hurt because we tell ourselves that we don't have a choice. It's about westerns and machismo and gender and love and fear and addiction and age. It's about... more than I have the words to say. But... that's just what I think it's about. You decide what it's about. You're the one who has to play it. This is the hardest part right here. Saying it's done. This post. The game. Putting it out into the world and knowing that you... you will be reading this and will judge me. Well, thank you. Thank you for taking the time. I owe you everything. Please, play my game and tell me what you think and feel. Please, be honest. Dead Horizon is available on Steam here: http://store.steampowered.com/app/671700/Dead_Horizon/ and Itch.io here: https://pixelwestern.itch.io/dead-horizon