Helen Greetham 🐝

You'll all get to find out what it is in a few months, but for now it's a seeeeeeecret.

I'm making something this weekend which is making me wiggle in my chair and giggle to myself and generally delight in the act of creating silly things.

I get so much joy in my life from going "Ok but what if this silly thing existed" and then making it exist... it's brilliant.

I spend a lot of time explaining that I work in a library but alas, I'm not a librarian.

I haven't worked out how it's like the musical either, but at least it makes more sense to compare it to another creative storytelling medium than "You know what your cosy point and click game reminds me of? The recruitment of the Cambridge Five to pass secrets to the Soviet Union"

Last year at a convention someone told me that Beekeeper's Picnic reminded them of Operation Mincemeat.

At the time I didn't know about the musical, so I just assumed that somehow my game reminded them of a WW2 deception operation.

Which was confusing, but people's minds work in mysterious ways.

Same!

A few days ago I genuinely said to someone that I wish we'd let the Furby Organ Guy enter Eurovision.

Amazing way to discover I have the gift of prophecy.

Spring is coming!

YouTube video by Jabbage Avoiding Crunch in your Production Process as a Solo Indie Dev

How do you avoid 'crunch' as an indie developer?
I did a video exploring what people wiser than me have said, and reflected on my own experience!
youtu.be/iQBnGrUvaz8

We all deserve a space library!

In the Beekeeper's Picnic I kept motivating myself by designing interiors which had environmental storytelling, but were also spaces that I'd personally like to hang out.

I'm continuing that with The Museum of Everything, because if I could have an art nouveau space library, I would.

I don't think so. They might show up in specialist shops as imports.

Those look so good!

Wonder what all those peeps are up to?

Cover of Weird Tales with a ghost and a frightened lady

Almost finished Weird Tales The Early Years (1923-5) and my standout favourite writer so far is Greye La Spina; characters that feel real, wry humour, Occult stuff, very fun

I also excel in World Wide Web
(still chasing that gold, though...)

why yes I AM a qualified actor.

2026 update

It worries me because the primary thing students use it for is to get it to explain things to them, and it can't. It's produces plausible text.
It becomes so clear as soon as you ask it about topics you know well.

It's not the lack of reproduction of literary works that bothers me particularly, I don't actually want people to be sat reading Pride and Prejudice inside Copilot, it's the way it weaves around, unable to tell me "truthfully" how it is designed, which leads it to give incorrect information.

And then we come to this, where it just denies the content of the exchange we've just had and insists it was right all along. But it ressures me, I did nothing wrong!

Well thanks!!??!

It's so incredibly slimy. I can see how this really gets inside people's heads.

Apparently haiku aren't literary works, they're 'quotable units' 🙃

Oh, except it CAN produce them in full if they're short, although it then goes back to saying that it's the public domain status that's the problem.

But actually, it does know all the facts to identify that the Raven is in the public domain. Turns out now it's saying the issue is that it can't produce texts in full.

I wish I I didn't have a professional obligation to understand how Copilot works which means I have to kick its tires sometimes.

I saw a post discussing its response to public domain texts, so I had a play.

For example, here it is telling me that the Raven is still under copyright:

One of the barriers to game development that nobody discusses is when squirrels get into your attic and eat your electrical cables so you have no electricity and therefore can't work on your game.

I did have a lot of fun walking around my house last night like this though:

🙌 So exciting! Firelight Isle is one of my favourite comics by just about every metric I can think of, the artwork, the craft of visual storytelling, the story. Can't wait to have the full set!

Libraries are great.

Cover to the Comics Cultural Impact Collective's DCMS Report from April 2025

Once again sharing this phenomenal report proposing a £1.5m UK Comics Fund, on top of also being a bangin' evidenced manifesto for comics in general: www.thecomicsculturalimpactcollective.org/CCIC%20DCMS%...

The Beekeeper's Picnic has hit 10k in sales!

I'm delighted that this niche little game which brought me so much joy to create has resonated with so many people. I don't know how to articulate how grateful I am to everyone who has supported it!🐝