If anyone actually visited this site and looked around, they’d see that there has been a “Store” section on here that was completely unused for a long time. Since 2010 or so it has consisted only of the following:

Well the future is now! I have begun a shop on Etsy on which I am selling a little printable colouring an activity book called The Many Monsters of Mackestry Manor. I hope to turn that into a series of such books, but hopefully I will have other things on the store as well down the line.

I have opted to keep using the name Bottomless Hippopotamus to maintain a continuity in my attempts to accomplish this. Maybe I only ever sold one or two things on Cafepress (not including the Adventure Dennis mug I still own), but it was still a part of my past that led to this shop here, so the name continues and I can tell myself this is what I’ve been building toward after all these years of failure and stagnation. This is, hopefully, me taking a step in the right direction.

Nothing against Pete and Jeremy, but it bugs me to see nothing but Phone Guys going up on the site. For a while we had that thing were my Twitter posts would come here, but that’s busted I guess. Ah well, I’ll just have to actually post something to break things up momentarily.

Life continues about average for me. Financial struggles continue to govern my life, but at least I’m making good progress on several projects (because, as always, I am unable to focus on a single project at once). Here’s some updates:

Surrounded By Danger: The game I am making has gotten to a point where I feel like I would be realistically able to finish it within this calendar year. But the thing is, as it is right now, it’s a game about characters I created for SecGov Robots and the Beekeeper Chronicles. I love that cast and am enjoying making a sort of “Choose your own path” Story Mode game with them, but that is complicated and they’re not exactly universally known. So what I’m gonna do is restart the whole concept and make a Zombie Mode version of the game. Since the beginning I’ve been aware that the mechanics of the game are pretty good for simulating a fight against zombies. This should, if I don’t mess it up, allow me to create a version of the game without a Story Mode that can be put into production and actually get into the world while I go back to working on the Beekeeping version of the game.

The Many Monsters of Mackestry Manor: Another project I am working on is a franchise about a bunch of little monsters who live in a house. This one is aimed at very young children. I’d love for it to progress to the point of being a series of little adventure games, but that feels unlikely. What I am working on now is a colouring and activity book starring these monsters. That’s a much easier scale for me, and I honestly think I can have it complete by some time in October. Once that’s done I’ll begin work on a book that tells more about the monsters and see where we can go from there.

So while I’m toiling away on these and other projects, I’m sorry that the Phone Guys have the whole place to themselves.