6/2/2026

There’s a third fish in my pond. I discovered it the other night while taking a look at my pond in the dark. I’ve spent the last few days trying to catch a legitimate photo of it but haven’t been able to. Anyways, that’s endemic life, that fish was born in the pond. Its world is the pond.

I am its god.

5/28/2026

Q&A

“Hi, Lateralis, I’m a big fan of your work, and I especially love your tracks “In the Face of God” and “Haunting Eternal.” The atmosphere and energy in your music are truly incredible! My friends and I are currently developing a game called Scarecrow (https://scarecrow-game.com/), and I would genuinely love to feature your music in the project so that more players can discover your work. I wanted to ask whether you would be interested in creating one or several tracks for the game. If so, I would appreciate it if you could let me know your pricing and licensing terms. We are interested only in fully licensed and legal usage, because we truly respect your work and want to do everything properly. Thank you for your time, and regardless of your answer — thank you for creating such amazing music. Best regards, Nik Rai”

Thanks for reaching out, and truly a master class in how to commission music. I don’t have the time currently to undertake any work like this but Scarecrow looks cool, good luck with the rest of development! I’ll keep an eye out for it.

5/17/2026

Forza Horizon 6 is good. It would be an all-timer if I hadn’t also put 166 hours into Forza Horizon 5, but alas.

5/10/2026

Lack of updates cause I’ve had my head down working. Excited about it though.

4/25/2026

Q&A

“Hey Nate, you make a lot of music along with your games. When it comes to music who would you say are your favorites in terms of albums and artists. And who are your biggest inspirations (also in terms of artists and albums)”

Hm, my music taste tends to adjust all the time, so my favorites and inspirations have a tendency to shift, but I think I can certainly name some albums that have had a large impact on me.

The Last Kind Words - DevilDriver
PetroDragonic Apocalypse - King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard

Rat Wars - HEALTH

Set the Dial - Black Tusk

Dahinter Das Gesicht - Schwefelgelb

Immersion - Pendulum

Terraformer - Stranger Heads Prevail

Nothing More - Nothing More

And there’s a bunch more I’m forgetting, this was just 20 minutes of me sitting down and trying to decide from my spotify and yt music what albums were truly ones that impacted me. A lot of metal. I love an electric guitar.

4/23/2026

Q&A

“What's your take on VR games? Ever tried playing or making one? Do you believe there's a future for the medium?”

VR is cool, I played a lot back in the day (close to when VR chat came out) on a Windows Mixed Reality headset which was decent enough. My take is it’s really cool conceptually, but technology-wise it’s not all the way yet. The continual circular problem with VR is that there aren’t any good VR games, and there’s no good VR games because the market for VR isn’t there.

I think most issues market-side are actually user-experience problems with VR inherently, i.e. most people would rather sit down to game after a long day of work than stand there in a headset that can give them motion sickness. And the “You have to stand to play this!” problem is typically touted as a feature of VR, so it’s already only going to attract a populous of players who are willing to do that. And that’s just problem #1, you also have to have a dedicated setup to use VR frequently or you’re constantly putting it up and tearing it down, the headsets can be bulky and uncomfortable, etc. And end of the day that’s a lot to ask to play basically like 3 games that are actually worth your time. Like look, I hear you, Half Life Alyx is probably awesome. But they made that game to SELL A VR HEADSET. That’s why that game is good. So they could also sell you a VR headset to play it.

I have a racing wheel that I use basically exclusively to play Forza Horizon and there’s a lot of similarities to a VR headset, i.e. I have to get it out, get it all set up, break it down when I’m done. But Forza Horizon is also a really big fully featured game that doesn’t require a wheel, it just enhances the experience. I never would have played Forza if I had to have a wheel first to play it. And that’s what a decent amount of “made for VR” experiences are like. It might be cool, but the fact that I have to buy the whole VR thing before I can even try the game is a huge turnoff.

As for whether or not there’s a future, I believe there probably is (not sure how far off). There’s no doubt in my mind it’ll probably take the form of glasses rather than a full headset and gloves that can provide some kind of haptic force feedback so you could grab an object in VR and “feel” the object through the gloves, but of course this only works for objects that you can pick up, touching walls etc your arm can just push right through. So there’s a lot of issues inherent to selling the simulation fully, and mixed with the issues of bulkiness and setup, I just don’t think it’s there yet.

4/21/2026

Q&A

“Hi, will we ever see any updates to Manus Dei? I currently have no.1 spot on the leaderboard in the world by finding a way to rack up points during the boss fight by killing the smaller enemies added during it. Is this something which would ever be patched? Have felt unsure about whether to post on steam community page about how this score was achieved for fear of invalidating the rest of the scoreboard.”

I’m not planning on it, and its ok. Ultimately Manus Dei probably should have been an itch.io release only but I am ok with how it is because it’s a $3 game. Not my absolute best piece but it got me into the swing of 3D work.

“Hey, dont know if you remember me but im the dude that asked you on twitter about your music making. Still making music and you are one of my biggest inspirations! Keep doing you love your games and music!”

Hey glad to hear it! Keep it up, we need more people making the kind of music they like to listen to.

4/16/2026

Q&A

“How are things with Spencer and Jacob? Besides the game jams, i mean.”

Good as far as I’m aware, I’m doing the music for Jacob’s game (We Kill Monsters) so we’re in touch a lot.

4/9/2026

New enemies are coming along swimmingly, pretty fun to fight and interesting enough.

4/7/2026

I have a steadily growing wasp problem in my backyard that I have been solving with a spray bottle full of dish soap and water (kills wasps by technically suffocating them, if you must know). That worked for about a weekend, but now the wasps are back in full force and are building new nests everywhere. So I went to Walmart to pick up a Super Soaker, you know, the kind I had when I was a kid that you pumped up about 30 times and then could fire a stream of water about a mile. I figured I could fill that up with dish soap and water and really go to town on the wasps. But they don’t make air pressurized ones anymore. They stopped making them around 2010.

They stopped making them half my lifetime ago.

4/2/2026

Q&A

“Hey, I'm the guy from last question, no need for an answer if you don't feel like it, just wanted to say that I got you, and thanks for making Video Games. Also, this page is very cool.”

Thanks dawg!

3/31/2026

Q&A

“I read "I will respond on the Updates section of my site" and thought I'd find what I was looking for there, but it seems I'm the first person to ask this? (on this page anyways). I liked your music, a lot, and I wanted to share it with my friends, and so then came a thought: What's the limit on how much I can share this songs? There's surely no problem with my group of 4 friends, but can I share it with a discord server? Can I post your spotify link on social media? Not that I will follow through with 2 of this 3 hypotheticals, but I am curious on where you'd draw the like. Chears and salutations from Argentina.”

Feel free to share any of the official links, like Youtube/Spotify etc! I’d prefer if you didn’t share like raw MP3 files and such. If you want to use my music in stuff (like videos or memes or whatever) feel free, but if you monetize it I’ll find you and destroy you (you can use my music, but if you start making money off it we have a problem). That’s about it!

3/24/2026

Slay the Spire 2 is REAL good.

3/20/2026

Coming up on the day I have to write a big document that talks about what the hell this game even is.

3/14/2026

A hard part of growing up is watching your heroes toss away their values and principles. System of a Down is an incredibly poignant example, their drummer John Dolmayan was and still is a Trump supporter, which if you’ve listened to any of SOAD’s music should come as a surprise. Serj himself ventured into NFTs when all that was popping off. I find it kind of despicable to make music that so clearly promotes values that the band itself apparently can’t even hold to.

I don’t know how else to put it but I think the principles that a person upholds are the only thing that really matters in terms of judgement of a person. But many people seem content to just lie or obfuscate the truth. It disgusts me. Especially when it’s lying for money.

3/13/2026

New playtest is out for patrons. I’m so tired dawg.

3/7/2026

It’s looking good.

3/1/2026

Mostly trying to define the game’s aesthetic somewhat. It occurred to me after improving a handful of assets that the game likely needs some limitations on how I choose to do the visuals to drive it towards a clear vibe. I hadn’t been truly texturing models but instead just applying some materials to their various faces, while I thought it was alright it turns out this makes everything look very blocky and uniform (it looks like minecraft). To compensate for the lack of detail from the textures, I put in a ton of extra geometry detail: rubble, loads of pipes/wires, etc. But I had one of those “awoke with fresh eyes” moments and realized that I was pushing the game’s aesthetic into an undefined territory rather than something that would resonate with players in an interesting way. I think the game is best if pushed towards an early 2000’s FPS visual style, and that’s relatively low geometry count with well made textures for detail. Think games like Halo and Metroid Prime. So I need to go through and remove geometry detail and add texture detail.

2/25/2026

In reference to the previous, it turns out that as I’ve created more assets and become adjusted to the workflow I have become faster.

2/22/2026

Let’s take a look at these two control panels.

As you can see, they’re similar in a lot of ways. Parts of the texture are reused, similar themes and vibes, and sure one’s a little bit larger.

But turn to a slightly different angle, and the differences become much more obvious.

The left control panel took about 15 minutes to make I believe. I slapped together a couple rectangles in Unreal and pasted a control panel decal on top of it.

The right control panel took about 3 hours.

So I don’t know if my asset pipeline is just bad or if I’m slow due to lack of practice. The right control panel is modeled with actual 3D details for the parts that matter (levers, ridges, other things that pop out), and then the appropriate sections are given a texture that I composite from typically real world images (I’ve started a nice collection of various greeblies and little things to slap onto textures).

This is where I’m at. To complete a generic asset model to the satisfaction I want (which is honestly just a single step above the decal method) takes 3 hours. A game like OTXO had about 300 unique assets (the folder view is telling me there’s 417 items in the “Environments” folder for OTXO but I’m not sure that’s all environmental assets versus other bullshit). So 300 assets times 3 hours per asset: 900 hours, or 37 and a half FULL 24 HOURS DAYS. Over a month of nonstop work. That doesn’t strike me as sustainable.

Notably I had OTXO’s asset pipeline down to an exact science, greatly assisted by the fact that that game used a 4 shade grey color palette. Easy. This game simply requires more, it’s in 3D, it has full color, etc.

I guess what I’ll be doing is trying to analyze the workflow and see if I can’t just get the time down. For starters I’ve got the greeblie collection as previously mentioned. Just having some pieces like this I can copy and paste onto a texture really helps when needing to add detail.

2/20/2026

I can’t keep spending a whole day modeling and texturing one piece of furniture.

2/17/2026

Here’s some decent game dev advice I just learned from practice: If you want to lock in on an aesthetic for your world, start with the save points. You could probably extrapolate that to “start with the things the player will use/look at the most that are part of the world”.

2/11/2026

I’ve just been redoing some assets lately, stuff that I made early on that needs to look better.

2/8/2026

I was trying to base my game’s story off of a sort of “what if the US government became even more fascist” and ultimately I’m not sure that’s the right direction, namely because when I think about the United States of America it just sucks the energy right out of me. And there’s nothing interesting to say anyways.

2/2/2026

I’m trying to make this one really good.

1/29/2026

I got these nice little chainlink paths now. When your uber driver takes a detour through Silent Hill type shit.

1/22/2026

Almost have another enemy completed, bringing the grand total up to 3.

I spend a lot of time thinking about how to be more efficient in my work and my decision-making, which I mention because I feel today I hardly got anything done. If I’ve learned anything over my time doing this it’s that breaks are king. It’s like this: Working hard on the game, that’s swimming. Working not as hard on the game or just lightly thinking about it, that’s treading water. But taking a break is getting out of the water entirely. And it still happens that I’m sitting there treading and going “well this is alright I’m not swimming” but treading takes energy too, and the only real solution is to get out of the water. Does that analogy make sense?

Anyways I don’t know how long it’s gonna take to have this vertical slice ready. In December I was “4 list items” away from having it completed but quality-wise it wasn’t good enough, and now I couldn’t even tell you how many list items there are.

1/18/2026

Big new patreon post that has all the deets of what I’ve been cooking. But for today I’m just gonna chill.

1/16/2026

It’s all still coming along! I’m working on adding a new enemy currently, I spent most of this last week touching up the main weapon which I still don’t have a name for.

1/9/2026

Rare project footage. Finally getting this somewhere.

1/8/2026

I’m polishing this shit dawg. I need the game to look better so I’m adding more props, more details… And desperately trying not to think of the whole rest of the game I have to make once this vertical slice is done.

1/6/2026

Q&A

“Happy new year bro, hope u doing well. Just wanted to ask are there any plans for OTXO in the future”

Happy new year to you as well. There are no plans for OTXO, I’m putting 100% of my time and energy into my new project, which I will have something to show for eventually.

1/4/2026

Last night I went downtown and people outside city hall were protesting the US military actions in Venezuela. Some guy pulled up and asked another guy who was just standing there smoking a cigarette what was going on. The cigarette guy said he didn’t know and the car guy responded with a laugh and said “I bet they don’t either.”

Bruh. It’s just painful to see this kind of ignorance first hand. But truly what do I expect when a majority of Americans are functionally illiterate.

12/27/2025

Having completed Metroid Prime 4, I have some thoughts. The only other Prime game I've played is Metroid Prime Remastered so that will be a lot of my comparison points. Here's my opinion:

The game is way too afraid to let the player fail or otherwise figure things out for themselves. This is exacerbated by clunky design decisions where you wouldn't be able to figure things out (how would I possibly know to go back to Volt Forge) unless the characters radio you and tell you what to do. This is the most damning aspect of the game easily and really hurts the overall experience.

The characters, while generally as annoying as they seem from Mackenzie's introduction, are really not the worst part of the game. That said, some of the areas being heavily character focused tends to take away from the experience, such as the Great Mines (and Flare Pool, to some extent). The strongest areas of the game are the ones where the player is generally left alone, like Volt Forge and my personal favorite Ice Belt. But that's 2 of the 4 areas that are just completely "companion missions" and that's incredibly mid.

I found there to be very little metroidvania style backtracking or exploration which was a big dissapointment. Part of the fun of Prime was feeling clever that you remembered where you could use X new ability you got, but Prime 4 just streamlines this into oblivion. Certain individual map areas were better about this (Ice Belt and Volt Forge again) but generally speaking you would just be told where to go if you needed to pop into a previously explored area, and the new section you would unlock would be just a sideroom with the thing you need in it instead of a whole new section of the map.

Map design in this game is not great, which I imagine is the fault of the semi-dated open-world design of the game. The game is set up in a kind of Hyrule Field manner (Ocarina of Time if you kids need explanation). You have your 4 major areas in each of the corners of the map with nothing in the middle. The areas do not interconnect in any fashion, you drive your motorcycle out the door you drove it in when you're done in the area. This set up works wonderfully in Zelda where you're mostly done in an area once you've finished it and have that expectation of completeness. But in Prime 4 it just feels weak.

I don't think the combat in Prime Remastered was really all that good, it's simple lock-on combat where you typically mash the right trigger until the thing dies, which Prime 4 also repeats. But Prime Remastered had an incredible world that asked you to explore and solve its mysteries which made the combat take a backseat to the exploration. But Prime 4 doesn't do that good either.

Here's some uncategorized issues that I had with the design of this game:

Making a psychic mote out of a morph ball bomb is so incredibly clunky that I don't understand why they included it in the game, especially since after you use it once the game barely asks you to use it again! It's like they recognized that it kinda sucked but didn't have the heart to remove it.

The three different shot types you get are FIRE, ICE, and LIGHTNING. I was under the impression that we had retired such simple elemental inspirations for upgrades in the mid 2000s. Hell, even Prime 1 has Power, Wave, Plasma, and Ice. It's just tired and boring! I'm not excited to get a new shot type when I fucking know it's "just the fire one". Also, the lightning shot type is called Thunder Shot. Thunder is the sound, dumbasses. Goddamnit. This shit still pisses me off, why the fuck would they call it Thunder Shot. Just stupid.

The game rewards minor exploration with missile expansion and shot expansions, which would be great if I didn't already feel like I had more than enough ammo capacity from the jump. Increasing my ammo capacity is not a reward if I don't even feel ammo capacity being a problem in the first place.

The shot upgrades fall into a similar place. I honestly liked the shrines in the desert for providing a small puzzle but being rewarded with "Super Fire Shot" didn't feel like much of a reward. These upgrades didn't feel like they did much damage and having to charge them up mid-combat generally just resulted in getting hit.

OVERALL:

There's a lot of signs this game was in development for way too long. There's considerable design baggage. I don't know what else there is to say, it's a disappointing game in a series that should be standing head and shoulders above others in the genre (the genre that's named after it). Just play Metroid Prime Remastered if you want the ideal experience.

12/25/2025

MERRY CHRISTMAS

12/19/2025

There will be a new playtest today. And this one has save points.

12/15/2025

This is the story of an unforced error:

The playtest didn’t have any sort of checkpoint or save system. I figured players would be able to whip right through the game content without dying and not have a problem. The game is, of course, much harder and trickier than I am familiar with because I play it all the time. And when players died, they had to fully restart the level…

The issue with this is that it colors player perception. They’ll be less willing to try things (such as jumping a big gap) if the consequences are greater (a full restart) and they’ll dread their mistakes. The same thing happened when I made OTXO as well so hopefully this time I learn from it and aren’t just doomed to continue making my initial playtests way too hard.

12/13/2025

Playtest is out for patrons! Excited to see what the people think.

12/11/2025

The vertical slice is 4 list items away from being completed, provided I don’t add anything else to the list. I got a lot more of the art implemented and it makes the entire experience considerably better.

12/6/2025

Next week is going to be a lot of polish ideally. The game is there I think in terms of gameplay, I figured out the combat loop and incentive to loot. Now I just need to make it look really good.

12/2/2025

For my friend’s birthday I digitally painted a Sliver token of his dog! Took a few hours but it turned out pretty good. The little puddles are puddles of piss cause Pochita (the dog) pees a lot. Slivers are a creature type in Magic the Gathering for the record.

11/30/2025

Q&A

“Are you cool with people making and sharing fanart for your games? ( the game is OTXO in my case and fanart is for non commercial purposes of course ). I know most of the time it doesn't get asked for fanarts thus since there is direct communication method, I gotta ask this cause' I respect the craft.”

Of course! Please, by all means make fan art of my work. And show it to me!

11/21/2025

I have fully implemented the first enemy now, with sounds/particle effects/etc. And it’s pretty decent I’d say. I’ve got a lot to do in the aesthetic department with the rest of the game in many ways but I’m glad this enemy is at least fun to fight.

11/17/2025

Q&A

“Hi there, just want to say that I'm a huge fan of Otxo and I love your work! I'm writing to say that I found some guy named Recursion Label who has uploaded the soundtrack to Otxo in its entirety to Youtube, Apple Music, Spotify etc. and as far as I can tell he isn't affiliated with you or given any credit at all. I could just be completely wrong but if I;m not I would seriously hate to see you getting your work stolen.”

Yeah I’m aware of this, I’ve even sent in the appropriate takedowns per youtube/spotify/etc and nothing seems to happen.

11/16/2025

I’ve developed a “Ten Thousand Kicks” idea about Magic. One of my friends who plays at our weekly MTG night only has a handful of decks, and ultimately ends up playing the same deck many weeks in a row. This has caused his proficiency with his deck to increase quite a lot and now he threatens and gets wins because he’s so familiar with his deck. I’ve likened this to that Bruce Lee quote where I’m paraphrasing but effectively “fear the person who has trained one kick ten thousand times rather than the person who has trained ten thousand kicks once” or something christ I really butchered that. But you get the message. I could have just opened a new tab and googled that.

Anyways this recognition has spurred me to figure out which of my decks will be the one that I play every single week so I can get really good at it. Typically we only have time in a night for about two games of commander, sometimes three if we’re lucky. I have a lot of decks because I enjoy variety, and each of them is decently strong, but some of them are just kinda stupid (Krenko, as an example). So even though these decks are complete they don’t see a lot of play because they’re either boring to pilot/lack interaction in some capacity or they have a rather direct path to victory that gets easily thwarted by the time I fire it off.

One of my strongest decks is Niko:

Niko has a tendency to “win out of nowhere”. Basically I flicker Niko a whole bunch, making some permanents called Shards that can then turn into a creature. So I get about 8-12 shards out and then I turn them all into a crazy good creature that I just cast that turn and I swing out and win.

So my weekly group has started removing the creature I cast before I can turn my shards into it. I have to be constantly wary of counterspells and removal and have to hold up mana just to protect my board state. It slows me down and is annoying.

This is all to say this is one of those factors in choosing what deck to play every week! Niko is incredibly strong but has a kind of easily exploited weak point. I need something more resilient that I can make it to late game with.

Right now I’m thinking Magus Lucea Kane.

I need to rebuild this deck from the ground up and cannibalize a handful of other decks to do it, but this deck can be kind of explosive. I want to run it as kind of an X spellslinging deck, ideally untapping Kane a whole bunch and copying a direct damage spell to just kill all the other players on the spot. This deck will naturally run a decent amount of ramp to get my X spells to be large, but historically I’ve found card draw to be difficult. There’s a handful of X spells that do it, but you have to make sure that by the time you have the perfect X spell in hand (i.e. a lethal one) you have enough mana to cast it, and casting spells just to draw cards can make that tricky. I dunno tho, maybe this is a problem that can be solved with more ramp.

Anyways, interesting game. I’ve thrown a handful of the cards onto Moxfield to work on the deck and based on online retail prices for singles the deck has over $400 worth of cards in it, and that’s before lands. Interesting game, expensive game. Too expensive now tbh.

11/15/2025

Man I fucking love Magic the Gathering dude what a good game. But I gotta stop building decks at this point cause I play about once a week and that means on a good night 3 decks tops.

11/7/2025

Q&A

“What's your indie take on AI in the gaming industry? I mean Square Enix is planning on handling 70% of QA with AI models. Do you believe that's viable? Do you use AI yourself? greetings :3”

Generally speaking I have disdain for AI. I think art by definition has to be created by a human being because the process of creation is what makes it art. Telling someone or something what you want and then getting the finished product is not being an artist, it’s being a taskmaster. Of course this is more related to generative AI/vibe coding etc.

In terms of how Square Enix is going to use it, I’d certainly be curious to see how well it actually works. QA requires a lot of human creativity (i.e. “I wonder if I can break the game in this way”) that I don’t think AI will be able to replicate successfully. Like they might be able to catch the pretty obvious bugs but if those bugs are so obvious they need to be programming their games better off the rip.

11/6/2025

I’m going to have actual content to show in regards to the enemies real soon so hang on to your hats ya’ll. They’re really coming together nice at this point. I feel like I said this before and then it turned out they were bad. Such is the cycle.

11/2/2025

Rethinking enemies a bit for this game. Progress is being made.

10/22/2025

Getting the enemies right just continues to elude me man. Being honest with myself and essentially all of you, I think I keep trying to take shortcuts in search of an acceptable product when really I need to sit down and actually rig and animate some shit. The 3D workflow is brutally slow compared to 2D which is still a little bit hard to get used to. But I think it just requires more planning.

10/19/2025

Q&A

“How do you get inspiration for your games' style and story, like going from OTXO to Manus Dei they are totally different games from their style and story.”

I usually make the core gameplay first and then wrap it in some kind of aesthetic that matches it (or doesn’t get in the way). I tend to like stories that are relatively simple and with few characters and my games tend to reflect that. Manus Dei in particular is much more of a style piece than OTXO cause it doesn’t really have anything to say. OTXO does have something to say, which is “depression sucks”. I wouldn’t hire myself as a narrative designer.

10/17/2025

Game’s called Basilisk, it’s a survivor-like where you fly a train around in space and kill demons and interact with wizards. I dunno honestly, it got away from me. I’ll do a little writeup on the thought process soon but I stayed up too late playing Silent Hill f.

Check it out: https://lateralis.itch.io/basilisk

10/16/2025

Jam game done, will post in the discord tomorrow. I think it’s alright!

10/14/2025

We jammin’.

10/10/2025

Going to end up redoing my first enemy already, which is expected. I know I can do better with it so that’s what I’m going to spend next week doing. Then more polish and it should be something.

I’m tired though.

10/9/2025

Work on the game is going super smooth right now. I’m getting everything ready for a patreon playtest which should hopefully be soon. There’s a lot to polish up but I’m really pleased with the aesthetic direction.

10/7/2025

Today is my birthday.

10/1/2025

Q&A

“How many musical instruments can you play?”

I can play guitar and drums decently! I use synthesizers but I’m not the greatest keyboardist. I’m most comfortable with guitar though, and I play both electric and acoustic.

“If I wanna join your game studio and work alongside, how do I do that and what all skills would be a must.”

I won’t be working with anyone else for quite some time most likely, but I like your enthusiasm. Anyone that I eventually work with I would like to see that they themselves are kind of standalone and a go-getter. Like if you’ve released your own game I think that’s huge, and it shows that you’re willing to put your ass in the fire lmao. Making games especially standalone is quite the trial and anyone else who willingly put themselves through that I look at with a lot of respect. If you’re serious about this question, I would honestly tell you to pursue your own projects and work hard. I’m just some guy but I managed to do this shit, you know? I’m not especially good at programming or art or even music (honestly) but I just work my ass off until it’s done.

9/28/2025

Q&A

“Will future games be mod friendly?”

I will say probably never intentionally, but that’s not a slight towards modding or the community or anything like that, I’m just trying to be efficient in my game development and a lot of the tools I use tend to be difficult to mod, so any modding that the game would have would have to be completely designed and implemented by myself. And while I recognize that in many ways it would be cool I can’t justify the time spent to create, implement, bug test, and ultimately ship those features with my projects. Also economically for my continued career I have to keep producing new games until one of them wins the ol’ game dev lottery.

9/27/2025

Q&A

“Why Lateralis?”

When I was coming up with a name for myself as a chiptune artist back in the day I decided I wanted to use an image of a dog/wolf/canine for myself cause I like dogs. I was looking up some obscure scientific names for canines and came across this:

As you can see, one of the seven subspecies of Side-striped jackal is titled L. a lateralis, and I saw that and went “Welp that’s it”.

So now here I am, Lateralis. I like it because it’s not particularly stupid, I typically don’t have to have a bunch of numbers after it, and calling my game development studio Lateralis Heavy Industries sounds cool imo.

9/21/2025

Going forward (and retroactively) I’m going to put all questions in red so that they’re a bit more legible, I realize the white with bold isn’t necessarily enough to tell the difference sometimes.

As far as the project goes, I’m honestly really comfortable with it. I’ve got a track done for the combat gameplay which is rad, and I’ve got a lot of environmental detail stuff to go through and do next week. It feels like I can see the vision clearly.

9/19/2025

Q&A

“Have you always worked solo? If so, would you ever consider collaborative efforts or working for an indie studio? lybb”

I have, generally speaking, always worked solo. I have on the agenda a collaborative project but it’s incredibly distant and relies on some timing factors. So yeah I would absolutely consider collaborative efforts. I’m less keen on working for a studio because in a lot of ways that’s just… a job. The best and worst part about my work is truly having total control over it, so to get that in a studio environment I would have to start my own studio, which in turn seems to make “running a studio” your fulltime job. And I think that would probably blow. If anything as my projects increase in scale I’d probably hire some contract work.

9/18/2025

I’ve been absolutely busting ass with the game right now. That’s all. I’m excited to show something from the combat.

9/17/2025

I’m gonna be unable to finish for the Falling Block Jam, I haven’t even done anything!

9/14/2025

I’m trying to do the Falling Block Jam (LINK) and I ain’t got jack shit. No idea, no direction, no plan.

9/10/2025

Q&A

“Hey there, does your song Gore actually play in Manus Dei? If not, would you consider adding it? Really love the song”

It does lol, it just doesn’t play until you’re at the final boss fight. I made the game in 3 months! There’s a lot of bad decisions.

9/8/2025

Q&A

“The soundtrack of OTXO is one of the greatest game soundtracks of all time. Reminds me of Gesaffelstein and Ehiztaria is in particular a banger. Would it be okay for you, to share some about the technique you use, your process, technical stuff like what DAW you use, what inspires you? If you ever find the time I would watch tutorials how you make music. Keep up the good work, mate!”

Thanks! I use Reaper and a handful of generally free VSTs + Serum. I usually start with the drums and a bassline and go from there!

“Are you aware that someone has put your OTXO soundrtack on Youtube music under the name "RECURSION LABEL"? If not - they are riffing off your work, afaik. Thanks for the games, cheers.”

Yeah I am aware of this, I’ve put in a report with Youtube and ¯\(ツ)/¯. So that’s that I suppose. Honestly it seems like it’s a losing battle, it’s likely less an actual person as a malignant entity as it is just some automated bot that rips albums from elsewhere and repuploads them so the combined views net some dude somewhere a handful of cents. It’s annoying but people who actually want to listen to the soundtrack usually find it. I don’t need to scrape the few listens I get off appearing in a few random radio shuffles.

9/4/2025

Q&A

“I missed the Vinyl release for the OTXO soundtrack. Will there ever be a CD release, or a second press on vinyl?”

There are currently no plans for another physical release of the soundtrack. Burn a CD for yourself, send it to me, and I will bless it as an “official” CD.

8/27/2025

I really should have been just making a boomer shooter from the start and I think I was trying too hard to get away from it. I probably felt that I had already kinda “made my boomer shooter” with Manus Dei but that’s dumb. I like boomer shooters. They’re fun.

8/23/2025

Progress is already being made on Alkaline. The car has been totally converted into a hovercar now and I’ve completely reworked the driving system. Initially I was using an asset which was great but ultimately unwieldy. Now it’s my own code that I understand + it makes the car behave more “realistic” to how you would imagine a hovercar would work. It’s exciting.

8/20/2025

About a week ago I hit a significant snag with “the card game” that caused me to realize my core mechanical ideas were a bit poorly implemented and slightly misguided. My initial goal was to solve the deckbuilder ideal strategy of “card draw is best”, and I had the novel idea of using a blackjack adjacent mechanic for that. Once I deemed that was too boring I attempted to add a card-matching puzzle to the cards themselves, stacking a mechanic on top of the pre-existing blackjack mechanic. The game only ever produced mediocre results, and while it was interesting and I sunk a lot of time into it I don’t think the path I took with this one was the correct one. I’ll probably try again in the future, I think part of the issue was there was just so much randomness in the card draw because cards were typal (attack/defense/etc) as well as number based. When I try it again I’ll probably reduce the randomness element to just the number, and allow the player to assign the number to their preferred type that turn. I had the thought of using dice for this today which could be kind of neat (roll dice, assign dice to attack or defense or whatever, roll until you’re at or under 21), just have to make sure not to ape Dicey Dungeons. I worry about engagement a bit but rolling a dice and assigning it somewhere is inherently more interesting than “do i draw another card or do i not”.

Anyways I’m working on Alkaline again. My initial scope was moronic so I’ve brought it within reason, and I’ve made the Alkaline itself into a hovercar. The structure of the game, as currently planned, is basically car “platforming” sections, halted by outside-of-the-car boomer shooter sections. I’ve wanted a reason to put another boomer shooter out there because I don’t feel Manus Dei lived up to its full potential, plus I want to make loud guns again.

8/10/2025

Sometimes it feels like I get the most work done in these tiny little spurts of inspiration and energy. And then the rest of the time I’m sitting there figuring out how the fuck to solve the problems the game has.

8/5/2025

Vacation has brought clarity.

7/24/2025

I’m taking an 11 day vacation (big roadtrip) which I’m looking forward to because it’ll be nice to be away from the game a bit. I know there’s some problems still with the core of the game but I can’t really figure out exactly what they are. I think some aspects of the game don’t feel entirely right or could be improved on quite a bit. Hopefully some time away will grant me some clarity. Anyways, see ya in 11 days.

7/22/2025

Alright, new Patreon playtest is out. Lots of work went into this one.

7/20/2025

Q&A

“Hey there! Couldn't find a better way to reach you so this'll have to do. I was randomly recommended these "albums" on youtube and they're literally just the ost to OTXO. Since they were a topic channel I thought to look on spotify and they're also published there. Feel like I should report this to you so here's the spotify profile! It's the 2 albums with the red covers. - https://open.spotify.com/intl-pt/artist/6Uv5HOxG8JtgSpgUonQhnf”

I’ve sent in a copyright strike through Spotify’s help service a while back so I’m just kinda waiting on that now. This is probably just a product of living in the age we live in ya know? Not much to do about it.

7/19/2025

Everything is coming together nicely now. There’s been massive changes to the game behind the scenes despite the game’s mechanical identity not really changing. If I can pull it off I’m thinking I’ll have music in the next playtest too.

7/18/2025

Q&A

“Hello Lateralis could you uncap the frames by any chance in OTXO my game doesnt really run smoothly i wish to play the game with uncapped frames since the game being locked at 60 frames only sucks and i feel like if the game is uncapped that it would be much better...”

I cannot uncap the game’s framerate. I built the whole game tied to Gamemaker’s step event, so it’s completely locked to 60 FPS as all the bullet travel, character/enemy movement, etc, moves based on frames. I would have to rebuild the game from the ground up. If it were as simple as just pressing the “uncap frames” button, I would have done it by now. I didn’t know any better at the time and I’d do it differently if I were to make the game today.

7/17/2025

Q&A

“First of all thanks for the absolutely wonderful game otxo and keeping the midnight animal dream alive by Yan. Secondly would you ever work in on future OTXO content possibly a DLC with new stages, levels, enemies, drinks, bosses, characters and some new exotic weapons. As a HLM fan, you made a game which was a dream come true and I'm still starving for more Stay well and thanks again”

I won’t make any dlc or further updates to OTXO. It is incredibly likely that I’ll make a spiritual successor to OTXO in some capacity (I like those kinds of games) but it probably won’t be top-down.

7/14/2025

Q&A

“Any indie games you got your eye on? (except for MWINYD and WE KILL MONSTERS, of course :3c)”

The sad answer is no, honestly. I even went through my Steam and looked but the reality is besides my friends’ games and my game I’m just not super aware of the community. Part of that I think is cause I left twitter but it really sucked ass over there (and engagement went out the window), so I’m following a lot less people on Bluesky. I’ve seen a lot of hubbub about FISH FEAR ME, Heather Flowers’ new game but I have not played it (it looks pretty hogwild), so I’m gonna say that’s the one I have my eye on. I should probably play it.

On a further note about games and my lack of exposure to them, it’s a huge bummer. But I also have to balance it with the reality of my life, like I can’t play a videogame that wastes my time for an extended amount of time because I don’t have the time for that. And a lot of games that get popularity are co-op titles (valid) but as someone who would also like an engaging/interesting single player game it sucks to either play a game not intended for it solo or be locked to the play sessions of my friends. And then I don’t know if this is just a me problem but I also find myself so tired of so many games. Like Nightreign is a completely fine game but I also have no desire to start it up because I’ve played almost every souls game + Elden Ring. Like why would I put away another 40 hours doing effectively the exact same thing I’ve already done? I want games that are interesting and exciting. At least Doom TDA did that last part right, maybe it wasn’t the most interesting game in the world but it was exciting and fun. And it had a campaign you could finish in about a week. What a treat man.

7/9/2025

Q&A

“is water wet”

I would say yes, I think if you were to touch water, your hand would become wet, by the existence of water being on your hand. So if water is the necessitating factor for something to be wet, water is all water, therefore water is wet.

7/6/2025

Look at these dingdongs.

7/3/2025

A lot has changed and I’m excited to feel like I have some control over the project again rather than nebulous question marks.

6/29/2025

I feel I’ve cracked the game’s identity a bit better, but also learned a very valuable lesson: there are certain things that I am good at doing. I was intentionally not doing those things. It’s probably an interesting exercise and obviously it’s what made me learn this lesson, but once I went back to doing what I’m good at it all immediately snapped into place.

Here’s beautiful Uncle Rico.

6/28/2025

Thanks for sending questions ya’ll I love seeing these pop up.

Q&A

“Is there a brand, IP or franchise you would be interested in HYPOTHETICALLY working with?”

Absolutely. Doom, Warhammer 40k, The Matrix is an easy top 3 I could see myself doing something with in this fantasy scenario, but fuck it I’ll throw in Magic the Gathering as well if they wanna do an OTXO Universes Beyond.

“Dear Nate, thank you so much for your work on OTXO. It was a blast, and I'm among the few (1%?) who cleared all Achievements. Took me 46h, of which I got immense enjoyment. Then, I researched OTXO and found your site, and realized this entire masterpiece was pretty much solo-made... Including the incredible music that I listen to every day in my Spotify playlist called "Slaps Hard". What you made is astonishing, I am in awe of how someone can be so talented; you make the world of gaming a better place, or the world overall, given how crucial creativity is. I'm a passionate, avid gamer at heart, who started at 3 years old on Ms Dos. I’ve always wanted to make games. Yet, I am also so stupid that I went into business studies and jobs; and nobody in my entourage has ever been into gaming or into development careers to guide me on that path early enough. So one thing led to another, I got into some random office jobs, became a head of deparment and team leader; and I'm now at a point in which I can't do these "bullshit jobs" any longer. I have interesting game concepts on paper, and I am learning Unity daily now to try and make my own, like you did (albeit yours might be Unreal?). It's gonna be super hard without any dev/design background, but games like Otxo and solo devs like you keep me hopeful. So, with this message, I just want to thank and congratulate you on your success. I can't wait for your next games. And, if you happen to have maybe 30 minutes to spare, I would like to invite you for an interview. You have not much to gain, as I'm a random marketing director in industries that can probably barely be helpful to you. But perhaps you'd like to share how you made Otxo possible, so that I can perhaps one day join the ranks of successful solo-devs who contribute to the gaming landscape with fun, unique ideas made passion-first. Cheers!”

Thanks for the nice message! I went to college and graduated with a “business and communications” degree, then worked a desk job for 3 years before I started trying my hand at game development. Honestly I hadn’t even really dabbled too much in game dev before that point either, but I was very serious about it so I locked in and made Dogworld. This is all to say that good ol’ saying about planting trees: the second best time to do it is today. So if you wanna swing for the fences, the first step is to start fuckin’ swinging.

“Hello there. Recently I noticed that OTXO tracks from the playlist of megaOmega were authored by a guy named RECURSION LABEL on Youtube Music. I also checked out Spotify and found RECURSION LABEL with loaded tracks from your game and the same names. Is that guy with you? I just won't give any money to this guy within monetization or something and wrote to you”

Bro do these fuckers ever quit AAAAH. I got a copyright strike sent to spotify so hopefully that gets taken down.

6/27/2025

The previous post was NOT correct.

6/22/2025

I’ve had a nice 4 day break from even thinking about the game and now my mind, body, heart, and soul are all fully replenished. Funny how that works. I’m feeling solid about the direction of the game, and honestly I’m getting excited to start adding more content.

6/17/2025

I’m hitting a “pushing builds for the patreon testers” pace of a new build every day, which is either really good or really bad.

6/15/2025

I’ve been busting my ass on the mechanical side of the game and I believe my lack of devotion to the aesthetic/fictional parts has kind of burnt me out. I’m hoping that going forward I can give more attention to the world-building. I think not only does the game need it (and was always intended to have it) but I also need it to get excited about the project again.

6/11/2025

Q&A

“Will you be making a sequel or similar game to Otxo maybe in color? I absolutely love this game. Probably one my all time favorite games! 🖤♥️”

I don’t plan on making a direct sequel to OTXO, but eventually I imagine I’ll make a spiritual successor (used loosely). Generally speaking OTXO is a fast paced action game and I think I’ve got some more of those in the tank.

6/4/2025

Faster = more fun. Don’t argue with me on this one.

6/2/2025

Q&A:

“I found a Youtube page with the OTXO soundtrack but it's unlabled. I was curious if someone had stolen your music and distributed it or something.”

Appreciate you finding this for me. I’ll see if I can fire off a copyright strike. This isn’t the first time this has happened and seems to just be a consequence of the internet world.

5/28/2025

Every time the game gets a little bit better I can’t help but wonder if it’s actually gotten a little bit worse. But that’s a problem for the playtesters now.

5/23/2025

Pleased to report my game has now entered the “not bad” zone.

5/21/2025

I believe I have learned something. If a player says that they don't use something in your game or they find themselves never selecting it or wanting to use it, the first appropriate thought should be whether or not you should cut it entirely. It's easy to fall into the trap of "well I added the thing, I just need to fix it so players like it" but in my experience it often just leads to inelegance and a bunch of shit tacked onto your game because you want it, NOT because it serves the game.

I have a larger philosophy that you have to be super self-aware to be an effective developer, which this fits into as well. Not self-aware in a social sense, but self-aware of what you're currently experiencing. This is a long way of saying that when you play your game, you have to be honest with yourself about what you're feeling and the way that you play. Example incoming.

My current project involves cards numbered 1 through 11, and though the higher number cards are "stronger", they decrease the player's consistency and often lead to accidental losses. A recent playtest note brought to my attention that players aren't typically comfortable choosing the higher cost cards. However, only later did I realize that when I play my own game, I don't choose those cards either! They aren't optimal, they aren't useful, and they make it harder to win. I think in the back of my mind I was thinking "well, some players will probably want to do this" but damnit I AM the player. If you have something in your game that you yourself wouldn't use to try and win, and consistently find yourself not using it, then what is it doing there? Who is it for?

5/19/2025

Alright I’ve got some changes being made here, hopefully in the right direction. There’s been a lot of carryover as the game has transitioned and there’s a lot of cleanup to these other aspects.

5/17/2025

The game is missing something.
I don’t know what it is.

The game is missing something.
I don’t know what it is.

5/14/2025

I think removing the card limit is probably the right move, I always knew it was a concession I made because I had to fit a certain amount of cards on screen. And I always knew it felt like an arbitrary restriction, which sucked. I’ve gotta go through and reupdate the artefacts to fit with not having a card limit but I’m pleased about this.

5/13/2025

Playtest is out. It’s only Tuesday and I’m pretty beat lmao but it’s out so now I will simply see what the thought is. I honestly feel good about this one. Every change has been an improvement so far.

5/7/2025

It’s all shaping up. Patreon playtest next week.

5/6/2025

I’m angling towards a playtest by the end of the week but I’m beginning to believe in what I’ve got here. There’s changes from a base level that increase the overall complexity (and player decision-making) that the game needed. In hindsight I think the issue was that the base gameplay wasn’t all that interesting. This is a lesson I already learned with OTXO: if the base gameplay is fun, anything else you add is just cherries. I think I forgot it here because I wasn’t sure “base gameplay” necessarily existed in a card game but I have since learned.

5/5/2025

I think I’m making a game that my mom might be able to play and I’m finding a certain happiness in that, plus the startling realization that I’m just old.

5/4/2025

Q&A:

“Do you deal with sampling a lot when making music? How do you search for/find the right sound?”

I actually don’t sample too much, most of everything is VSTs for certain instruments. I do sample a ton for sound effects though and the secret there is to just keep browsing freesound and stacking sounds until it’s loud af.

Just paying the cat tax today.

4/30/2025

I think I’m on the cusp of figuring this out.

Or I’m nowhere close. It feels like I’m wandering around with my eyes closed grabbing bits and pieces of the game but looking for that special something.

4/29/2025

Trying out some new complexity additions with the card stamps, I figured they could be other things besides just “position in the card order”. However I want a lot of the new additions to be things that deal with card order in some way, which I’m finding to be a little bit tricky. The stamps have to be complex enough to be interesting without overwhelming the player. It doesn’t help that half the ideas I have I can’t even implement because I wrote the stamp system in some sort of delirium.

4/28/2025

Alright, noted a couple things over the weekend. I still feel like the game is absolutely missing something, and I’m still unsure what. But I think maybe the direction is to provide more polish on top/more narrative moments for the player to feel each run as unique, which is a conclusion I had landed on a bit at the end of last week. I feel a certain lack of “depth” to the game currently but I don’t mean like mechanical depth necessarily. I think what I mean is I want the game to be a bit more all-consuming, so the player gets lost in the experience. Obviously better art and adding music will do some of that but I feel like on a purely gameplay level you should be able to be immersed: i.e. you are thinking only about the game; you’ve entered a flow state. I’m not sure what it is but it feels like whatever puzzle piece is missing it has to do with fully locking the player into the experience.

Q&A:

“Do you keep archives of the different builds you make during the production of your games ?”

Yeah, on the production side I use github just to keep everything backed up and have some version control, but then I will occasionally zip a full build exe of the game and just keep that somewhere. What I mainly try to do is not empty out my videos folder cause all the clips I record of the game in development sit in there and do a pretty good job of capturing the game’s transformation.

4/27/2025

Q&A:

“Any plans on lore of YAAW? You've been working hard on the gameplay, but any ideas for the surrounding stuff?”

Only the truly loosest stuff you can imagine. The initial conceit was you go into a dungeon to find a rare/powerful staff, and the dungeon is full of other wizards doing the same thing as you. Served to launch the gameplay but not really final plan material.

4/26/2025

It is the first day of the weekend and I’m already thinking about YAAW lmao. Put out a Patreon playtest yesterday that’s been well received so far.

4/25/2025

The game is still missing something but I find myself just genuinely unsure what that is. Ideally over the weekend here I can remove myself from the project a bit and come back with an open mind. The more I do game development the more I realize it’s all about how you treat and utilize your own brain. My body rests quite often: I sit at a desk while I work, I sleep. I take walks and such of course. But by comparison I’m ALWAYS thinking about the game and I have a tendency just to circle. That said it’s also fun to think about my game because I like the problem solving, which just makes the circling that much worse. Regardless I’m gonna take this weekend and make a conscious effort not to think about YAAW and come back to it fresh.

4/24/2025

Initial playtest reactions are good, and confirm what I thought: currently the game is the best it has ever been. The question is how to push it further. Obviously polish and such is gonna get it there but there’s gameplay aspects that could be refined.

4/22/2025

Next playtest for patreon members is going to be coming soon, at this point I’m just fixing up minor bugs and trying to apply a little bit of polish. The closer you are to a project the more you tend to lose sight of the big picture which is where I’m finding myself a bit currently, but I imagine the playtest will help lock some things in a bit as we find the fun.

4/21/2025

Something I realized about YAAW recently: overlimiting is ok. That’s part of the gamble. If a player dies to a gamble that they knew they were taking, they typically don’t get too pissed about it. Mark Rosewater (lead designer of Magic The Gathering) had a podcast talking about the mana system in Magic and how even though the mana system in Magic can basically screw you over randomly, it can also randomly screw over your opponent, which is to say, it can be random in your favor as well. The same applies in YAAW, the gamble gives the player hope, because even though they could over limit they could also cursebreak. I think I was hesitant for a long time to make the gambling aspect of the game so pronounced but it’s really the thing that makes it interesting.

4/20/2025

First entry on this thing, lets go.

Ain’t nothing down here!