John Ayliff (Space Goblin Games) is a creator of text-based games and interactive fiction

Foolish Earth Creatures: December 2025

In the echoing passages of my dreadnought you will hear the robot before you see it—a metallic clattering sound that must seem to come from all around you...
But that sound cannot prepare you for the sight of the robot when it appears at your feet! A mass of razor-sharp blades and glowing red optical sensors faces you, behind which stretches a long, flexible body that clings to the wall with dozens of twitching legs. It regards you with a cold intelligence, its adaptive programming prepared to react to anything you might do.
That mass of chittering blades will be the last thing you see, Commander Vortex! The hunter-killer robot coils its body and prepares to lunge...
Happy midwinter celebrations, Earth creatures!

I took a break from working on the game for a couple of weeks over Christmas, but earlier in the month I did some work on a chapter in which the hero braves the air ducts of Vorak's space dreadnought and must face a hunter-killer robot and a whirling fan of death.

Looking back over the year, I'm pleased with the progress I've made. I've taken Foolish Earth Creatures from a vague idea to a roughly half-finished game, which a limited playtest has confirmed is on track to be fun. I still have a lot of work to do, but I'm pretty confident in the overall design of the game. All that remains now is to fill in the content.

My plan for the next few months is to finish writing a single path through the game and then work sideways from that to fill out the other paths. I'm hoping to finish the game by the end of 2026.

What will the new year have in store for Vorak, the Master Brain? Learn more in next month's developer diary!

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