First and foremost, I really appreciate the support I received from everyone after posting my last video in early August talking about needing to take a break from Solace Crafting. I'm still only four years into running my own personal game studio, and being open and honest about things like that is scary given that I don't yet have a fair sized chunk of profit in my business account, which makes the potential backlash of my actions feel much more potentially dangerous regardless of how necessary they may sometimes be.

This post is again me being honest and open about my current situation, as I don't like to leave our community in the dark as to where am I and what's going on. Having said that, August was hands down the weirdest month I have every lived.

The first week of August I spent working on my second title, Solace Kingdoms. The first several weeks of any project of any notable size are very much focused on just getting the code base set up, initial user interface creation, basic game-play mechanics like camera controls, data structures, and so on. On the weekend after that first week, unfortunately, my wife's mother was diagnosed with late stage cancer. We ended up spending the entirety of the second week at their house, helping them clean, organize, and in general get ready for chemotherapy. My wife and her siblings are very close, and we had a lot of teary discussions late into the evenings. I personally am a very positive minded person, and am looking forward to a full recovery for her mother, but there is nothing scary than the unknown and the feeling of helplessness that often comes with illness.

Every year in mid to late August my high school buddies and I always get together for a guys weekend up in the mountains of western Washington. I already had bought my tickets, and it was agreed that I should continue on with my trip. I wasn't able to attend last year due to the pandemic, but having received both of my vaccinations recently I was ready to see my friends and family for the first time in two years. This is where things got even weirder.

Getting into the US was no problem. I had to pay a hefty fee to get a PCR test confirming that I was not infected before being allowed into the airport, and ticket prices were almost double what they used to be, so I was unable to take a direct flight, instead flying backwards to South Korea before then flying to Seattle. In what universe that translates to a cheaper ticket cost still baffles me, but no big deal. The trip was great. I purposefully did not bring a laptop, though I did borrow one for a day when there was nothing going on, and generally just tried to unwind and spend a lot of time catching up with everyone.

The return flight worked out that I would have a one night layover in South Korea, so I had booked a 1 star hotel just to have somewhere to sleep for the night. Upon landing in South Korea however I was told that if I left the airport I would be required to quarantine for 14 days. I actually had a business meeting setup with a potential investor who was waiting for me outside the airport, but they wouldn't let me out, and they wouldn't let him in. I ended up having to cancel my hotel reservation and stay in a ridiculously overpriced airport hotel, which was located in terminal 2, while my gate was located in terminal 1. For some reason passengers are not allowed to travel between terminals 1 and 2 and I had to have a security guard escort me between the two terminals both to get to my hotel room, and to get back to my gate the next morning.

Landing in Japan the next day, the entire flight was escorted to a long series of folding chairs setup in the corridors of Narita airport. We underwent two hours of questioning, saliva testing, mandatory cell phone quarantine app installation and setup, and a handful of us were separated from the rest of the group. Apparently Washington State was on the "high risk" list, and I ended up waiting several hours along with a variety of other passengers until hotel reservations and a bus could be secured for us. We were being quarantined into hotel rooms for 3 days after which a second saliva test would be conducted to confirm we had not been exposed to Covid-19. One girl that I spoke to was a university student who was now going to be missing her first day of classes, but it seemed that everyone, like me, was taken by surprise.

I'm still banned from public transportation and am now self-quarantining in my house, but in total it was 20 days before I made it back to my own bed. I still receive frequent requests from the apps that were installed on my phone to report my location and sometimes even to respond to an AI operated video call to confirm that I am indeed at my location and not just making someone push a button on my phone.

So, it's been a very relaxing, and a very stressful August full of surprises. I took a couple days to unwind and get back into my normal rhythm, and here I am now updating everyone on the strangeness of it all! I don't not understand why the precautions were taken, but I sure wish it had been made clear to everyone at some point that we would have to go through all of this. On the other hand, everyone that didn't visit a "high risk" area walked straight out of the airport and got on their trains and buses towards their final destinations, so I do question the effectiveness of the whole ordeal, but we're all just trying to do what we think is best. I'm not begrudged or disgruntled, but it was not fun being stuck in a tiny hotel room for 72 hours after nearly 48 hours of transit.

I hope that doesn't leave a sour taste in anyone's head, it is what it is, I just wanted to update everyone on what's going on, and why I don't yet have more development progress ready to show off and talk about.

I wish you all the best, stay safe, and happy gaming.