What can I say. What started as a small hobby project, a half-finished but working app has grown into a professional app. I’ve been doing a lot of tinkering with the mushrooms lately. There’s now a full adventure mode that fits perfectly into the storyline. I also added a new game mode for players who want to choose between a quick match or a more strategic challenge.
On the horizon you can already see small clusters of mushrooms. As you walk through the forest, you see them coming closer and closer. Every now and then you come across a little field that you need to search through.
Watch out for the poisonous mushrooms, and look for the edible ones. You won’t find the edible ones often, but when you do, it’s always worth it. Once you’ve picked a field clean, you continue on to the next one. A perfect way to unwind.
This is what I wanted to achieve for the adventure mode of Mushroom Mayhem. What I had before was just a long list, which didn’t fit the feeling I wanted to evoke at all. Luckily, with the help of AI, I managed to straighten it out. The adventure mode has now been transformed into a beautiful map where new levels appear as soon as you complete a level. (Small) inconvenience is that you will need to start your adventure from scratch. Your old adventures don’t count anymore so you will have to start anew from step one.
There is more. The different game modes now look more alike: the game in the center and at the bottom a line of text indicating what you’re doing: an adventure level, a daily challenge, a quick game, or a (new) custom game. There are even more achievements to unlock, and the entire app has received a refreshed, improved look and feel.
The kids were happily playing, the mothers were chatting away, and I went for a nice run. I do that more often, but this time was a little different than usual. From a big skate park, I run a loop of about five kilometers through the neighborhood. It’s all mountain paths, with the occasional bit of asphalt. After about a kilometer, I came across a group of sheep. Just on the public road. There were about fifteen of them, I think, and five were little ones. Cute. I stopped for a moment and grabbed my phone to take a picture. One sheep walked up to me, and I thought, ‘Oh, how nice, I’ll pet him’.
My mother-in-law’s (MIL) apartment is being painted. Time to remove unwanted shelves and screws from the wall so the whole wall looks nice and smooth. Some new holes were also drilled in the wall to move things to a better spot. Ana/MIL also wanted two paintings on the wall in one of the bedrooms. These had once been brought from Madrid by my MIL and had been lying neatly and safely in the closet all this time. They were made by one of Ana’s aunts, and they were two paintings with Chinese text/symbols on them.
After my recent 
It does work. I had rushed the initial version of Mushroom Mayhem into the store, with quite a few bugs still in it and really only the bare minimum features needed to make it playable. I strongly suspected that doing this would prevent the project from stalling again and me not looking at it for years. And it worked. Even though there are only around 20 people that installed the game, I’m motivated, and many evenings I find myself improving and fine-tuning the app.
I also did some things myself and updated all the apps graphics, so everything looks a little bit cleaner, the app has a brand new icon and there are a number of bigger changes:
A simple costume can create a surprising amount of magic, especially when it’s worn by an incredibly charismatic and photogenic little character. Add a few finishing touches, and you’ve got pure spectacle.
I ran into my upstairs neighbor in the elevator. The usual small talk unfolded: he asked how I was doing, and I asked how he was doing. Normally you get the standard replies, ‘everything’s fine’ or ‘same old, same old’, the autopilot of everyday politeness.
Grandma Nel also came for a lovely visit. She had escaped the Dutch cold for a few weeks and arrived with a suitcase full of gifts, sausage, cheese, eel, and alcohol. She came to enjoy some time with the grandchildren and the Spanish sun. First, a week with friends in the south, where sunshine is guaranteed, and then a week with us, with pleasant temperatures but also the occasional shower.