articles: 61
This data as json
| id | title | slug | url | content_type | category | shelf | is_headline | description | published_date | updated_at | sort_order | hero_painting | body_markdown |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 61 | Mindscape | mindscape | /projects/mindscape | project | Rabbit Holes | Creative Systems | 0 | Mindscape was the weird sibling of Cats Fishing: same Unity project, very different mood. The world is The Natural World, a digital nature index that's been rebooted ten million times and is due for deletion. | 2026-04-30 | 2026-11-07 00:42:20.183767+00:00 | 0 | <!-- portfolio-2026-11 --> Mindscape is shelved and no longer online. Mindscape was the weird sibling of [Cats Fishing](/projects/cats-fishing): same Unity project, very different mood. The world is The Natural World, a digital nature index that's been rebooted ten million times and is due for deletion. You're a cat with a magnetometer, sent in to get anything valuable out before it all goes dark. The horror is all environmental: bushes that follow you, a TV in the woods advertising a pill that takes you apart atom by atom. Clip out of bounds and you drop into a procedural maze full of loot and danger like a doom map from the good old days. I focused a lot on the lore, the zones, the fiction and the art direction. The engineering was done by a studio team between October 2025 and April 2026. They built multiplayer networking, a one-button lobby, extraction, knockdowns, noise and threat systems, flashlights, hazards, and in-game terminals. Amazing team and work. Around the game sat a few web pieces: a launcher that handled sign-in and booted the browser build; mindscape.software, a terminal emulator with a CRT look, a virtual file system and achievements; and a VHS-styled lore wiki, which I built myself. We shelved it in April 2026. I took the fishing game back out on its own (that's Cats Fishing). Mindscape isn't live any more, but what's left is a finished fiction, a lot of design work and a playable multiplayer prototype that I still am holding onto for the right moment, lots of experiments. <!-- media slot: hero-video. Planned: 60–90 s from the archived build: lobby, drop into Whisker Woods at night, flashlight sweep, a magnetometer ping, then jumping into an extraction hole. Cut in 5 s of the CRT terminal. --> <div class="media-slot" data-slot="hero-video" style="aspect-ratio:16 / 9;margin:1.25em 0 0.5em;border:1px dashed var(--text-light,#999);display:flex;align-items:center;justify-content:center;color:var(--text-light,#999);font-size:12px;text-align:center;">Video coming soon</div> <div class="media-grid" style="display:grid;grid-template-columns:repeat(auto-fit,minmax(140px,1fr));gap:0.5em;margin:0.5em 0 1.25em;"><!-- media slot: image-1. Planned: the mindscape.software CRT terminal mid-session. --><div class="media-slot" data-slot="image-1" style="aspect-ratio:4 / 3;border:1px dashed var(--text-light,#999);display:flex;align-items:center;justify-content:center;color:var(--text-light,#999);font-size:12px;text-align:center;">Image coming soon</div><!-- media slot: image-2. Planned: zone map or key art of The Natural World (Violence District, Void Indexes, The Pit, Paradise Gate). --><div class="media-slot" data-slot="image-2" style="aspect-ratio:4 / 3;border:1px dashed var(--text-light,#999);display:flex;align-items:center;justify-content:center;color:var(--text-light,#999);font-size:12px;text-align:center;">Image coming soon</div><!-- media slot: image-3. Planned: the wiki's VHS landing page or one lore entry. --><div class="media-slot" data-slot="image-3" style="aspect-ratio:4 / 3;border:1px dashed var(--text-light,#999);display:flex;align-items:center;justify-content:center;color:var(--text-light,#999);font-size:12px;text-align:center;">Image coming soon</div></div> ## Specs | | | |---|---| | Status | Shelved Apr 2026; not live. Multiplayer code preserved on archive branches | | Dates | Oct 2025 – Apr 2026 | | Role | Founder and creative director: world, lore, design, art direction. Engineering by the studio team | | Repos | Mindscape branch of the Unity project (1,605 commits), launcher (92), terminal (59), lore wiki (195) | | Stack | Unity 2022.3 URP, Photon Fusion, FMOD, WebGL; React 19 + Vite (launcher); React + Three.js CRT shaders (terminal); React + Express + Three.js (wiki) | | Infra | AWS (dev/staging/prod) with dedicated game servers, built by teammates | | Not yet / never | Public launch | |