Jay Tholen

Are there any podcasts similar to Idle Thumbs in that they're not afraid to joke around, but with more of a focus on game design/development? Also, I don't mind incredibly long casts.

I've gotta say, save for Jackson Park Express, I'm not big on it at all. I don't mind songs being parodies, but the writing in most of these seemed a bit weak. For as much as he makes fun of buzzwords and cheap namedropping, he does an awful lot of it on this record. Way too much referential humor this time around. :'(

This happened to me about three years ago. They started adding contacts in like ~LuvaBoi~ and *`~AuNtIe~'* and stuff, which I found synced on the website. I called *'~AuNtIe~'* who said she thought it was strange that her 13 year old niece got a new phone on her own. She took my address to send the phone back. It never came, and new contacts were being synced to the website still. Auntie wouldn't pick up the phone either. I was more amused than mad, and I kind of liked people not being able to contact me, so I let it stay that way for a month or so before cancelling and hooking up my old clamshell. It was a not-smart-phone, so there wasn't much she could do with it anyway. I hope they got it hooked up to a different service or something.

I just hope this frees him up to do a 20 minute Weird Al prog rock epic.

I'm not dealing with any anger issues, but I'm with ya on the sleep thing. I keep waking up gasping for air and I haven't been able to get a solid, refreshing night's rest in a long long time.

The Dollar General near my house had a few Discworld paperbacks for $1. I grabbed Eric. So far I'm digging how colorful the writing is. Is this book considered an okay introduction to the series? Edit: Ahh, just saw that chart.

Thanks! I just liked how it went from ~here's something I did that would make a cool adventure game background~ to something bigger. And yeah, it IS kind of a BS reason, but as long as yer still making pretty/rad stuff I can't really complain. Whatever the case, I love the aesthetic of your junk, especially the first two scenes you drew here.

Sorry for resurrecting this, but dang, this thread was really inspiring. Any progress or plans to pick this back up in the near future?

I'm interested in getting into David Lynch more. So far I've seen Twin Peaks and The Elephant Man, which are apparently his most accessible works. Anyone have any favorite Lynch films?

This was great. Thanks!

Anyone have any shoegaze suggestions? I'm more into the pretty mixed guy+girl vocals like MBV or Slowdive or Lush than the completely noisy lo-fi stuff like Whirr or whatever. I like strong reverby melodies buried under layers of guitar.

My state is awful. Also: vvv - I know, I just love it so much that I'll take any excuse to post it again.

Thanks man! Fixed the link. :0) If it wasn't such a teeny tiny game I'd definitely put it on Greenlight. I may make an updated version (or a sequel!) after Dropsy is done and slap it up there. I also wouldn't feel right about contributing to Steam's recent oversaturation problem. Also, it's not too late! Do creative stuff! Nothing's stopping you, even if you suck for the first X years of whatever it is you're doing.

Asa Chang & Junray are radical:

I'm loving Flanner O' Connor's book Wise Blood. Her short stories are pretty fun and trippy - but I really wish she wrote more full novels. I love her grotesque depraved surreal view of 'the south.' It wrestles with a Christianity/Christ that it claims to follow but secretly detests. It's very Twin Peaksy/Lynchian to me in its symbolism too.

Any point you make while also bottle feeding a lamb is immediately validated. I hope this becomes a series. Here's a little burnout prevention project I finished last month: The game + OST are one dollar: http://jay-tholen.itch.io/hypnospace-enforcer --- Also, I just made this album free. Listen if you enjoy chiptunes, prog rock, fuzz organ, shoegaze, mellotron, etc: http://jtholen.bandcamp.com/album/epidemic-deluxe-an-all-inclusive-invasion-experience

I haven't really shared this anywhere for fear of the scrutiny I'd receive, but what the heck. Edit: Whoops, looks like I wrote an entire dadgummed blog post. I’ve always wanted to be a game developer. My time as a lad playing NES games sparked that passion in me, but a simple game-making program called Klik & Play solidified it. I joined the Klik community in ~1998, and started releasing my paltry little games into the wild. I’ve always been a decent artist, so while my games weren't the worst looking, they were still largely unplayable monstrosities. I grew up in a middle class home that slowly drifted into ‘poor’ territory, with my parents’ divorce being the catalyst that drove us all to ‘really really poor’ territory. In school I struggled with ADHD-PI, culminating in my having to drop out of. I was already in my second year of 12th grade, so it was more than a little embarrassing. I received my General Education Diploma a few months later and found work at a call center. My crowning achievement since then was holding on to a factory job for four years. Shortly after high school, I gave up on the idea of being a game developer and plunged myself into other mediums. The Klik community, my only anchor to that world, seemed to fade from existence, leaving game development looking like a distant hazy childish dream. Games moved away from the low res art that I had become adept at, and I didn’t have any skills in industry standard programs. Music and sound became my focus until about ~2011, at which point I’d already released 25 albums and EPs worth of music. I couldn’t sell any copies of anything, and my live show was routinely pretty bad, but it was lots of fun. I did putz around with pixel art still, creating Dropsy, a Choose Your Own Adventure game about a horrifying-looking-but-good-natured clown on the Something Awful Forums. The initial thread was posted in 2008, followed by another in 2010. Dropsy achieved mild popularity there and generated some interest in seeing an actual game. So, in 2011 I ran a small successful Kickstarter and game development was back in the picture. My original plan was to use Multimedia Fusion (Klik & Play’s descendant) - but its porting limitations gave me guff, and I promised backers that they’d have a Mac and Linux version. This, combined with improvements in my artistic skill, led to a re-design in 2013. The time I was spending on Dropsy absolutely destroyed my productivity at work, resulting in my being fired. Taking advantage of my new-found free time, I pumped out a fancy intro cinematic and launched a second Kickstarter in the summer of 2013. I enlisted my long-time friend Justin (or DarklordJW as I knew him in the Klik Community) to program the game in Unity, and jazz maestro Chris Schlarb to compose the soundtrack. Unfortunately, it failed, but I made tons of new friends in the process. At this point I have to mention my dad being rad for STILL believing in my dumb clown game and allowing me to stick around the house a while longer. I worked feverishly on refining the game and launched another campaign in October. It worked! Devolver picked me up towards the end of the Kickstarter’s run, and I was completely blown away. My life did a crazybutt 180 on me, and it was the best feeling in the world. It’s still the best feeling in the world. I have a chance that I never thought I’d have, and I can’t feel anything other than thankfulness - even during a few of our recent bumps in the road. I’m still living with the ol’ dad, still dealing with ghetto-rigged plumbing that works infrequently, and still driving the same that stalls out if you turn on the air conditioner - but I’m doing what I love, with people I love, for a cause that I love - and I may even be able to keep doing it as a career. Feels good man. Really really really good. If Dropsy sells a lot, I’m gonna relieve my pops of his house payments until he finds a decent job and put something towards my sister’s car fund. She’s almost 24 and hasn’t owned one. They’ve been rad and need some tangible reimbursement. It’s probably a dumb idea to see one single project as your big chance, but I’m so deeply committed to making this game incredible that I’m not too worried about it floundering. Also, I’m already planning a sequel.

Howdy, I'm Jay Tholen. I'm a composer (more like a sound-player-wither) pixel artist, and game developer from central Florida. My current project is Dropsy, and we're hoping to have it out by the end of the year. I'm a regular on Something Awful, but I wanted to find somewhere more relaxed and this place seems like a lovely alternative.

Does Magma count? I know they're a little prog rocky and bombastic, but this is totally jazz:

I've been trying to get into RiffTrax ever since it came out, but I can't find anything that tickles me the way MST3k did. A few of the shorts have been okay, but every full movie I've tried has left me disappointed. Any suggestions for where to start? I've already tried Jurassic Park, The Dark Knight, and Night of the Living Dead.