Hello, and thanks so much for subscribing to the Sesari newsletter. With the rapid deterioration of social media (and frankly the internet in general), it seems important to find a more reliable and independent way of keeping in touch with you. It was pretty silly in retrospect to have given so much of ourselves to silicon valley psychos.

In this first edition of the newsletter I’ll be talking about how part 1 of Sesari came to be and how its release went. You may not hear from me again until part 2 is ready to play.

But before I get to that, I want to say here at the top — please drop me a line if you have anything to say about Sesari. Just reply to this email. I would love to hear from you.

Sesari is something I have been trying to get to for a long time. Years ago I created a 100 page graphic novel called Dead Man Holiday. It was a weird, quiet, bleak horror story. I had a lot of fun over the next few years collaborating with other artists on different comics projects, but I was always dreaming of getting back to my weird, quiet, bleak horror stories. And so, Sesari coalesced in my mind during long, silent drives across the dreamy state of Massachusetts to visit my girlfriend (now wife). It came to me bit by bit, and eventually I had enough to string together to make a story.

Before starting Sesari in earnest, I wanted to do something smaller. I produced the chapbook DELI, a story about a woman who finds herself patronizing a barely functional deli run by a cult. I set out to make the most lavish book I could, and I’m really proud of how it turned out. You can still buy a copy (or read it for free) at colinpanetta.com. It’s in-continuity with Sesari.

With DELI out of the way, I was finally ready to start Sesari. I thumbnailed the entire story and started drawing pages. Here’s how they were looking:

However, I quickly realized… this was going to take me a decade or more. I work slowly, and had just become a father. I started to get a sinking feeling whenever I thought about Sesari. I didn’t want to spend 10 years toiling alone at my drawing table before sharing Sesari with anyone.

But I didn’t have to worry about that for too long, as COVID came and promptly supplanted any concerns I had about anything at all. To cope, I started playing video games seriously for the first time in my life — the idea of retreating into beautiful little worlds that had clear rules suddenly became very appealing. I was mostly replaying point-and-click adventure games from when I was young. Suddenly an idea came to me; could this be the answer to Sesari? Could Sesari be a video game instead? The idea cemented itself immediately.

I spent the next couple years learning things from scratch; how to create pixel art, how to animate, how to program a game, and how to survive having a second baby that despised slumber. I engaged in what Julia Minamata calls the “dollhouse phase” of game development; creating an environment and making it interactive to no particular end. I realized I was in the same position as the graphic novel; it would also take me many years to complete Sesari as a video game. In another eureka moment, I decided to release it as a series of installments. (An idea that somehow eluded me when Sesari was a comic book, a medium famous for releasing in installments.) I stumbled my way into a narrative by retrofitting what had been random interactions into a sequence of events, and polished it up. I got a little help from my friends; Alex Noonan served as the basis for the protagonist, Cameron Stuart assembled an atmosphere-defining score, Noel Freibert oozed out a spine-tingling logo, and information architect Dan Zollman provided some absolutely essential 11th hour feedback.

Finally, eventually, somehow, I had a snippet of a game I could release.

Okay, I’m going to get really dorky and uncool in this section. I like numbers and planning and organizing, which means I like marketing. I know, I know. Please don’t beat me up.

Knowing I wouldn’t have either the time or interest to get traction for Sesari by doing the relentless, monotonous “real” marketing I see other game devs do, I only had a rough plan to be active on social media for a limited period to try and drum up some interest. In addition to posting, I also had my friend Brett Thompson interview me for my YouTube channel — as much as anything I wanted to see how hard it would be to learn to quickly spin up some video content, which ended up being easier than I thought. I also tried to run a contest on Twitter to win a copy of DELI, but no one entered 🫠 Here’s how my efforts paid off, by the numbers:

• As of July 24th, 2024 part 1 of Sesari has been downloaded 176 times; 89 times from sesarigame.com, 72 times from the AGS Games Database, and 15 times from itch.io.
• Of those sesarigame.com downloads, 70 were of the Windows version and 16 were the Mac version. (Why don’t those two numbers add up to equal the total 87 downloads? Ask Google Analytics.) Itch.io downloads were all Windows.
• The biggest traffic generator for sesarigame.com was far and away Twitter, followed in a distant, fairly tight cluster by Google, YouTube, the Adventure Game Studio site, a Time Extension article (more on that later), and Instagram. (I guess Mastodon referrals don’t show up in Google Analytics?)
• This newsletter racked up 48 subscribers. Thank you again for being here!

I have no doubt these numbers are peanuts when it comes to games, but interest in my work has always been, ah, limited. Frankly, I’ve gotten more interest from strangers for part 1 of Sesari than I have for any of my comics. I chalk this up to video games having a larger built-in audience. However, video games lack the vibrant real-life community comics provides.

But video games aren’t completely lacking in community; during the development of Sesari I made online acquaintances with some fantastic, like-minded game devs. When I posted the announcement that part 1 of Sesari was out, many of them spread the word. Many of them also said nice things about the game, which honestly is the most rewarding response I could hope for. There were also a couple of small but nice pieces of press; I was mentioned in this article from Time Extension about modern-day EGA game developers and itch.io uploaded a full playthrough to their YouTube channel for some reason.

For fun, I also engaged in a small amount of good old fashioned advertising; I paid $10 to the Adventure Game Hotspot Fan Fair Kickstarter for a social media shout out, took out a $30 print ad in the hit indie comic Santos Sisters (issue #6), and plan to take out another print ad in the next issue of the stupendous comics zine Bubbles.

So what’s next for Sesari? Unsurprisingly, part 2. I’m back to it after focusing on the release of part 1 and losing a couple of months to a busy day job. I’m looking forward to applying what I learned during the development of part 1, which should enable to me to have a much more intentional approach to game design. I had an idea that would limit the amount of new game assets I would need, but then I had a very fruitful story consult with Cameron Stuart and that plan went out the window. So while I’m very excited about what’s coming in part 2, at this point I couldn’t hazard a guess as to when it might be released. You’ll be the first to know. I’m looking forward to telling you about it. I can’t imagine what our world will look like then.

I’ll see you there.

Love,