Josh 'Cheeseness' Bush

Who Are You Then?
Hi! My name's Cheese (or Josh if that's easier), and I have a passion for making and writing about games.

Primarily, I like to make games that give me (and hopefully you too) the chance to focus on a specific feelings, experiences, or thoughts. That might be the contemplative peacefulness of skipping stones on a lake in In the Snowy Winter's Wake, it might be the fast paced track-many-moving-objects-and-project-the-safe-paths-through-them gameplay of Honeycomb CRUNCH, or it might be considering the impact of pets and friends on our lives in Ruben the Claw Troll.

I also like to contribute to Free/Open Source projects from time to time and release some of my work under F/OSS licences.

I typically write long-form articles on cheesetalks.net that explore a facet of game or game adjacent culture, or my  personal experiences with such. Sometimes I like to do interactive visualisations, like my interactive timeline of licenced Star Wars games. Sometimes I'll do a deep dive on a game I'm interested in, like my article on Another World (also known as Out of this World). Sometimes I write about what it's like to work on games, like in my article on porting and Day of the Tentacle.

You can find out a bit more background on me and the stuff I've done over here.


Why Are You Using Patreon?
Early in 2015, I resigned from several community groups and other commitments to allow me to give more attention to game development and writing. This Patreon campaign was created to allow people to support me in this endeavour.

In the intervening years, I feel like my skills and experience as a game developer have grown immensely, and I'm enormously happy to have been able to share that with my supporters.

My hopes here are to raise enough support, through Patreon contributions and through sales of games that I manage to finish and release, to reduce my reliance on contract work and day jobs and dedicate full time hours to making and writing about games.


What Are Some Of Your Previous Games?
In 2002, I released my first public game, a silly deathmatch Half-Life 1 total conversion created with fellow students as a side project whilst working on a more serious team based multiplayer game inspired by Looking Glass Studios' Thief series (both are projects I would like to revisit and give closure to someday). Since then, I've been creating game prototypes and contributing to Free/Open Source Software games as much my spare time has allowed.

My more recent projects include:

• Bat Egg - a cute flappy game that's really about gliding and finding a family.
  
• Hive Time - a cute and zany bee-themed base bulder/management sim.
  
• Winter's Wake - an attempt to create the kind of imagination-oriented experiences text adventures and books provide, presented as a VR-friendly first person game.
• Icicle - a first person/text adventure hybrid engine created for Winter's Wake.
• Bonesweeper - a prototype of a Minesweeper-inspired game about digging up fossils
  
• Honeycomb CRUNCH - a top down scrolling arcade survival game, created as an example Godot game.
  
• The Spicy Meatball Saves The Day - a lightly comedic superhero adventure created for the Linux Game Jam.
• Ruben the Claw Troll - a Hand of Fate 2 mod that explores and expresses some of what it's like to have a pet in one's life.
  
• Hidden Star - an in-development space exploration, trading and combat game initially created for LOWREZJAM.
• Memories of Myst - a Myst fan-game that re-creates Myst's miniature ship puzzle created for Myst Jam.
• Super Happy Sun Fun - a pyototype exploration/movement puzzle game with a focus of gravity and inertia.
• Voices of the Past - a first person text oriented interactive fiction work initially created for the first TasJam.
• Above The Waves - a short point and click adventure initially created for Adventure Jam.
• FLAT - a prototype of a first person sci-fi ice skating combat game with unique movement mechanics, created for 7DFPS.
• Dance - a prototype of a first person puzzle game in which players control their movement through a progressive dance to reach a specific partner, created for 7DFPS.
• Colossal Cave Adventure - Icicle Edition - a remake of the 70s classic text adventure Adventure, created as an example Icicle game and as part of the Year of Adventure game jam.
• Hover Drive - a simple radio controlled hovercraft sim, created as an example OpenGL/SDL game.
• Robin's Rescue - a simple point and click adventure, created as an example SLUDGE game.
• Tiny Chopper Raceway - a simple top down helicopter racing/drifting game, created as an example Godot game.
• Bad Golf: Community Edition - a community developed third person golf/golf cart game, created during Amnesia Fortnight 2014.
• Pongball - a community developed competitive pong/pinball hybrid game, created during Amnesia Fortnight 2017.
• Neverball - a Free/Open Source Software rolling ball game that I contributed to between 2006 and 2014.

In addition, I've also given support and assistance to some exciting games by other developers, including The Fall, Hand of Fate, The Journey Down, Armello, Airscape: The Fall of Gravity, Expand, Day of the Tentacle Remastered, Full Throttle Remastered and many others.

What Projects Are You Currently Working On?
In Progress Primary Project
Winter's Wake: A fantasy adventure attempting to explore exclusively text-based storytelling through hybrid first person and point-and-click style mechanics.

In Progress Small Project
Bonesweeper: A Minesweeper-inspired palaeontology game
Previous: Bat Egg

In Progress Cheese Talks Content
Another World follow up article
Previous: Cheese talks about Hive Time finances and pay-what-you-want pricing
Previous: Cheese talks to JP Lebreton (about Doom, FPS games and NPCs)
Previous: Cheese talks about Star Wars game history
Previous: Cheese talks about porting Day of the Tentacle Remastered to Linux

In Progress Prototype
The Spicy Meatball Finds A Way (7DFPS 2018)
The Farrier (AdventureJam 2017)
Hidden Star (LOWREZJAM 2016)
Previous: Bonesweeper
Previous: Pecking Order