It's TAGAP Day 2025 – today marks the 18th anniversary of TAGAP. Insane to think about it, Pablo is all grown up now!
The Next Game in the TAGAP saga keeps on progressing, but is not ready to deployed in as extensive form as I want it to for its debut. But doesn't mean I can't start peeling back the curtain around it. The last two teasers showcased our hero, sitting in what looks like a cockpit of sorts.
And here is the thing the cockpit is part of, shown in its bay being refuelled.
1920×1080 1920×1200 3840×2160 (4k)
There are a lot of things going on in the Next Game – some very different from TAGAP titles past.
The fun thing is, this an honest-to-Davoth concept art;
It's a visualisation of a scene in the game.
It's an actual object design; despite having thought of every tiny detail of this thing, I realised I hadn't designed its landing gear yet.
And of course, it works as a great teaser leading to a proper reveal.
I will still have to recreate the scene in game asset format and style, but having this to reference to will hasten that process.
And no, I'm not going to take habit of designing most things in the game this way. This is part of my experimentation with my design processes. For example, earlier I designed one key element in the game in Windows Paint as pixel art and flat colour palette, to make sure it pops out even during hectic action. Don't get me wrong, I loved creating this piece, but it's too time consuming to pull of when a (digital) pencil doodle will do.
The most often asked question is, what's going on with the Next Game. It's getting to a really good place and progresses nicely. For an abstract 'bird's eye view' of the project, as of July 2025 it consists of:
Art assets: 6987 files / 389 Mb (compressed TGA)
Sound assets: 403 files / 5.56 Mb (compressed OGG, /wo music)
Script files: 105 (excluding maps)
GLSL shaders: 258
The data project folder (all source resolution art and sounds): 69.6 Gb
So yes, I've been hammering and tinkering away with the Next Game every day for the past couple of years. And checking the statistics, just realised The Next Game already has more art data than the final version of TAGAP 4 (6631 art files)!
I've explained this before, but the problem here is that I wasn't organised enough with my art creation process, especially last year, resulting in the progress being lopsided. For example, I have big chunk of the penultimate level ready... but I can't exactly debut the game with that, now can I?
I mean I could, Bethesda Zenimax spoils all the games they publish this way, but I'd prefer not to. This means I'm now specifically building the missing parts that would lead to a proper, splashy reveal that doesn't spoil the game's climactic end battles.
It's all on me and I'm sorry you have to wait this long to see what this game is about. On the plus side, there's plenty to talk about once it is revealed, including its wildly different and, in parts, almost esoteric tech.
Yes, more updates to the older games are on the way. Just a matter of scheduling conflicts. I plan my dev hours in a way that The Next Game gets a specific amount of time and everything else gets sprinkled to everything else. And recently there just hasn't been enough 'time to sprinkle'. But for good reasons for once.
18 years. I still can't believe it.
It's been a wild ride. Sometimes jolly and easygoing, other times hard and stress-inducing. I've almost quit three times, first time before the first game was even out. But somehow I'm still here, tinkering away with my penguin army.
Thank you for being there on the ride. I won't promise there will be 18 more years, but at least one more game.
Then again, that's what I thought the previous times, too.
