How's youse guys doin', ah?

It's almost that time again, that month where I actually make art for public consumption. This year, I'm taking matters into my own hands and putting out my own prompt list. "But why" I don't actually hear you ask but will answer anyway? Well, let's be real - the lists out there are not that great and belong to a different media ecosystem. This one will be one for and by Newgrounds users, with prompts that mix some of the usual basic fare with stuff that's a little more out there and fun. I'll be putting some effort into promoting it on Bluesky as well. I'll be reposting and linking to other participants there all month long. For Newgrounds, I'll be recommending my favorites to the Art Front Page Suggestion Thread. Be sure to add tags witchtober-2025 and the name of that day's prompt to your portal submissions and tag me in your Bluesky posts!

Note there are only 15 prompts! Why!? I'll tell ya! I see too many people get burnt out on lists of 31 - I was one of those people last year. 15 pieces in a month is still a lot when you're shooting for finished pieces; that's what I'll be doing. But even if you just want to do sketches, I think the lower time pressure makes it more likely that you'll stick with it to the end.

Hope to see youse guys out there starting October 1st! Or 2nd, doesn't matter. See you in that general time frame!

WE DO'D IT!

Big thanks to everyone that enjoyed Circuit Break! We got a lot of good feedback, some of which we hopefully addressed in our latest patch, namely some balance and difficulty nerfs. We also added a "Next Room" option in Arcade to queue up whatever room design you prefer.

Special thanks to Tom for giving us the feature and letting me do the wall art to match; we definitely benefited from the boost!

Shoutouts to @qwerty741 , @Urichov and @Adarcela for being the first ones to beat both Arcade modes!

We also got some fanart! Thanks @MOHD5aqer !

So, what's next? Our heroine is finally back in her home world, which took a couple years longer than I originally planned. I think about 50 Marvel movies featuring multiverses came and went in that time, so it's the last thing I want to do again after this Robot World business is done and dusted. Whatever new story Waha is in, it's gonna be in her own world, no if ands or buts.

I said this would likely be my last Waha project using Unity, and even though my reasons for that have mostly been reversed in the time it took to make Circuit Break, I'm still drawn towards other engines. My first thought was Godot, but I've been learning Unreal Engine for work, blueprints just fit my visual-oriented brain better than coding, and since you can do HTML5 builds in UE4, I'm currently giving that a shot. I've successfully run little tests of UE4 projects on Newgrounds, so I figure if I can make something that stays relatively small, I can eventually post it here. It's easy to bloat the hell out of a UE project so it'll be a good exercise in optimization.

I'd be working within significantly more limitations if I attempt the "programming" myself, so a smaller scope is all but a given. I feel like a slower paced - dare I say cozy - game might be fun to make after working on what is likely the world's toughest Woods-Like (Whose woods? I have no idea). I want Waha to eventually go on other big adventures, and I think there's potential in a more modern, elevated approach to puzzle game/platformer hybrids that isn't so derivative. But that'll be a lot of work, and I'd kinda need my situation to change. If you're a publisher willing to bankroll me, gimme a call - I'm cheap!

Thanks again to everyone for making these past weeks the highlight of my time doing indie development. Onwards!

ARE YOU READY!?

Cuz we are! Almost.

It's been a bumpy ride, but Waha's Circuit Break is officially set to release right here on Newgrounds on MAY 21.

I won't give too much away, but suffice to say, when it's out, you'll know.

I'm pumped. It's finally happening! We're perfecting the last few bits and using the coming week to hype it, but it already feels great. It's the biggest thing I've ever put out and I'm pretty proud of it. I hope y'all enjoy. Just a few more days!

Much love, see ya soon!

HELLO BEAUTIFUL PEOPLE

Well lemme tell ya, we've been hard at work getting this sucker up to snuff, and there's light at the end of the tunnel.

We are about 95% feature complete, and we've started a closed beta test to do as much bug-finding on the WebGL version as possible. We've already gotten a lot of useful information that will lead to the version you'll eventually be able to play on Newgrounds being as stable and reliable as possible. Unlike with Robot Daze, we have no deadlines to hit, so that means a lot more polish on a lot more content.

We felt this game has enough stuff to stand on its own, so although it's part 2 to Waha's Robot Daze, we've given it its own title and logo. Say hello to Waha's Circuit Break!

Tons of new art and music, smoother gameplay, and now with controller support.

Last time, I said I couldn't promise an Easy Mode, but now, I can! You can now switch difficulties on the fly, meaning you won't have to start the game over or quit just because one level is giving you trouble.

Speaking of trouble, here are a few new challenges that Waha must face:

-Hostile bots have telegraphed attack patterns that must be avoided. Waha's only got 3HP, so you better be careful!

-Bosses? Yup, we got em.

-New Piece types, including X-shaped bots that can only be cleared diagonally.

-There are upwards of 20 NPC encounters, some hidden, some difficult to reach. You'll need to find and talk to them all to get the coveted Chatterbots achievement.

We've still got some secrets to keep, but you won't have to wait too long for them now. I've been saying "home stretch" for a couple months now, but that's kind of the nature of game development. You finish all the fun stuff, and then all the "I'll get to that later" stuff needs to finally get gotten to. There's less and less of that every day, I'm feeling pretty good. This is gonna be a big one.

Much love, hopefully the next time I make an news post, it'll be a launch announcement.

Cheers!

HEY YOU!

Well, we've been keeping it a little hush hush because of game dev superstition and a general fear of things not coming together, but I think we're at a point where I can say things are really coming together.

Not only is Waha back in action, she's in more trouble than ever, and you might be able to play whatever we end up calling our "Part 2" "soon" (by my definition).

Tharosthedragon took over on programming a few months ago and has been doing a bang-up job handling all my dumb little ideas; we've added enough new mechanics and art that it feels less like a "Part 2" and more like a proper sequel.

Got a little clip of gameplay on Bluesky showing off some of the new mechanics. I didn't mention I'm on Bluesky now! That's something.

The campaign is multiple times the size and scope of Robot Daze, and a fair deal more difficult as you might be able to tell from the clip. I won't promise an Easy Mode, but I'm not not considering it. We'll see what my carefully handpicked playtesters say.

If you want to skip the story and get straight to the action, there are now two different Arcade modes, one with vanilla levels and one with all the new mechanics, 50 levels each. That's 100 arcade levels. That's twice as much as last time. Wow!

I know Newgrounds games are typically something you play and finish in one sitting. That's still technically true. My hope is that this game is fun enough that the one sitting you do give it is a big one. Still got a few surprises up our sleeves that you'll just have to play to find out about... which you'll be able to do "soon" (my definition)!

Much love, expect updates

Howdy Pardners,

The TL;DR up front is that if you're a programmer in Unity, GameMaker, Godot, etc., we might be interested in collabing with you. PM me! Now the details:

So, last time I said we were looking for a Unity programmer to fill-in for our OG - that option is very much still on the table, and if you're one of those that can help us finish Part 2 of Waha's robot saga, hit me up, pretty please. That's still our easiest and fastest option, at least in terms of once the ball is rolling.

That said, (and this is something I expected,) getting the ball rolling is the tough part. It's been a little difficult finding people that are still interested in doing work in Unity nowadays. It was a couple updates ago that I myself basically swore the engine off, thinking that we were going to have a fresh start on Godot. Unity as a corporate entity is too shady, too unpredictable and ultimately not where we want to dump all our skill points. If we're lucky enough to find a Unity programmer to wrap things up, this will still likely be our last project in it.

With that in mind, I'm going to be reaching out to people with Godot and GameMaker experience to see if they're up for building Part 2 from the ground up with us. That would mean a lot of extra work for me too, but I'm obviously up for it. I wanted Waha to end up on one of those engines, regardless.

If you've got the chops but are on the fence about reaching out, lemme engage in some minor bragging to entice you: Every Waha game so far (yes, all two of them) have been award-winners on NG: Panpukin Panic won 3rd place in Stepford's Mobile Jam, and Waha's Robot Daze won 1st prize on Robot Day 2023. If you want to shoot for a slot in NG's Legendary Games category, so do we. Be a part of our upwards trajectory!

Waha thanks you.

It's been far, far, far, far too long, youse guys.

A little less than a year ago, there was a whole load of drama regarding Unity and their bonehead bosses, breaking basically right around the time Robot Daze came out. Although a lot of the stuff that got us up in arms has been squashed, walked back, annulled entirely, and the people responsible are off on their golden parachutes to ruin some other company, we still wanted to migrate to Godot just as a way to stay independent and not risk being roped into some shareholder-traded company's shenanigans later down the road.

That, of course, caused some delays up front for Part 2. I was keen to strike while the iron was hot and migrate everything ASAP, but we ultimately decided to take a break for the holidays. That turned into waiting through the spring for schedules to free up. That turned into now, where I'm sorry to say our programmer has had to bow out. There's no hard feelings, no drama, it's just how things go sometimes.

That's put me in the position of deciding whether to just call it quits, or "reorganize" as they say. If there's one thing I can't stand, it's setting up a sequel that never comes; I don't want to do that to anyone, least of all have that hanging over my head forever, so I'm gonna do everything I can to get this show back on the road. We're currently looking for Unity devs that can use our preexisting framework to help us make something at least as good as Part 1. As much as I'd like to make games in another engine -especially more Waha games- I'm just eager to get this one done with as few bumps in the road as possible, so we're gonna use what we've got. If you're a dev that has a bit of free time to come rescue this project, please don't hesitate to drop me a line.

For my part, I've been going ahead with writing and art, treating this as my signal to get started rather than my signal to give up. Like a mighty phoenix, etc. etc.

Anyway, spread the word or let me know if you've got the chops and the time for a project that is, honestly, going to take less time than it would have if we went with Plan A. The sooner it's done, the sooner you'll find out who this is:

What's their deal, hmm???

Much love, hopefully good news soon.

MY GOODNESS. MY GOSH. JEEPERS CREEPERS.

It finally happened. My days and years of counting single digit hundos is at an end, as I now enter a new era of counting 4-digit numbers. I ain't never had this many people follow me anydangwhere, so to me, this is a big deal and I'm very happy. I'm glad Newgrounds is the place I first got the Quite Sizeable Thou. I know there are people out there with hundreds of thous, sometimes whole-hog mil'yuns out on those algorithm-based netzones, but each one I got here feels like I really had to earn it, ya know? These are higher quality, premium follows. Real grade-A stuff.

Big thanks to alls y'alls for liking my stuff, promoting it, saying nice stuff and such. This was a big year where I started taking game dev on my own time a lot more seriously, and I'm hoping that's gonna pan out to something I can do more of consistently. I have a lot of hopes and plans for Waha, and getting those done faster is gonna depend on me keeping up my momentum. Sooooo, no time for laurel-resting! I'm finishing up my Witchtober prompts this month and I'll be participating in the Sweet Sixteen Comic Contest, so keep a look out for that. Will a 2nd Thou come my way one of these days? I'm shootin' fer it!

ALLO ALLO AGAIN!

So in case you missed it, Waha's Robot Daze did pretty well! At the time of writing this, we're near 8k views after just a couple weeks, we were featured at one of the best games of August, and we freakin' won Robot Day, baybeee! Wooo! Big thanks to everyone who played the game and said nice things; it's been a pretty great project so far and we're not even close to done with it; more on that in a bit.

We've added an ARCADE MODE to Robot Daze, which is 50 puzzle rounds, back to back. If you want to just get to the action, that's the option to choose. It starts easy, but it ends more difficult than anything in the main story campaign towards the end, so even if you've played before, new challenges await you! Check em out why don't ya.

Nine Hundo: Getted

Normally I'd make a post just for this, but thanks to the game, I've hit the More Sizeable Nine Hundo in followers! Yowza! Hachi Machi! Now that's what I call a lot (nine) of hundos! Thanks to everyone that's stuck with me this year. I didn't post as much as last year, but there's still time, with all those october drawing challenges coming up.

About Unity and the future of Waha Games

On a more serious note, I think it's worth talking about recent news regarding Unity's sudden and extremely unpopular decision to begin charging what they're calling a "runtime fee" to developers that cross a certain threshold of revenue and installs. We're not making any money from Robot Daze and we're not anywhere near meeting the 200k threshold on installs (though it seems that a WebGL game getting loaded in-browser does in fact count as one). This decision, if it isn't reversed, will affect midsize studios most, which we are not. That said, when a company expresses its desire to use bait and switch tactics to rob its userbase, using metrics that I'm not sure they can even legally collect or can be reasonably verified, it doesn't matter if we're the ones getting boned this time. The fact of the matter is that Unity is a shady company run by bad people. They're partnered with a major spyware developer, their CEO is the same guy responsible for dragging EA down into the microtransaction muck, and as a member of the Taiwanese game dev scene, it's especially problematic for me how often and how zealously Unity carries water for the Chinese government at our expense. There was no goodwill or trust there to begin with, and now that they're showing how far they'll go to cheat their users, they've gained a negative trust. I trust that if we continue to use this engine, they will get around to holding our projects hostage and scamming us, too. It might not be today or tomorrow, but they're going to do it.

For all of my professional life, I've had no choice but to use Unity since it is (or was) the engine of choice for indie studios for well over a decade now. As a consequence, it's what we're most familiar with, and that's why Robot Daze was made using it. Not because it was the best engine, just because it's the one we knew best. We built the game with the intention of using the framework to make more games, and so this puts us in a bit of a conundrum. It might be wise for us to port everything to Godot, (something easier said than done) sooner rather than later, so that we don't have to worry about some company swooping in and literally making it too risky to try selling one of our games someday. I don't have anything solid to report yet, but it's something we're talking about. There are over 200 animations in Robot Daze that I'm pretty sure need to be redone by hand, but if it will wash our hands of Unity once and for all, I'm willing to do it. This does mean that our plans for Part 2 might be delayed, though. Nobody's been banging my door down asking when it'll be out, but I might have made it sound like it was gonna be easier to make than part 1, and now I've got no idea. Sorry about that.

Hopefully the next update will have better news. Til then!

OH GOODNESS

It's here! On Robot Day, no less! The first installment of this two-parter can be played RIGHT THE HECK NOW.

Here's a peek, but it's better to just go ahead and play it, yeah?

This is the biggest undertaking I've done on Newgrounds so far, but I have a feeling the next one's gonna be biggerer and betterer; lots of stuff to add, things to do. But for now, I'm gonna sleep! It's 5AM here and I've just pulled my 3rd all-nighter in two weeks.

Have fun, youse guys~