Welcome to this week’s edition of Eets Weekly!

This week, I’ve decided to talk a little about how I ended up at Klei Entertainment; how I became your chief Eets level bamboozler and Eets Weekly writer. When Eets Weekly is written for the masses, I suppose you should know a little more about the crazy person who delves on the ins and outs of Eets each and every week . . .

Well, let’s start about exactly how I got into Klei and the Eets team. You see, it’s kind of a long story, dating all the way back from July of last year. I was just a Young Grasshopper back then, soon-to-be graduated from university and freshly back from an internship in Japan. In essence, I was only a Marshmallow Bud, ready to experience what is known to many as the real world . . .

Just a happy bud in the springtime of life . . .

Upon my return back to home sweet home, my friends, long missing my cool, awe-inspiring presence in their lives, decided to hold a welcome back party for myself (i.e. try to get me really, really drunk on a bottle of beer! ) Well, needless to say, my friends succeeded in that! Anyways, at that very same party was my good high school friend Jamie “Bigfoot” Cheng. He had just started his own game company and released a preview of a game about this creature whose emotions could be manipulated by eating various coloured Marshmallow Buds (what a crazy idea, huh? )

Well, at the time, Jamie was looking for someone to help him take the game known as Eets to the next level, gathering feedback from others about the just-released preview and eventually molding it into a full-fledged fun game. So at the party, he decided to take my drunken self on a walk . . .

Jamie: Hey, how’s it going? Wanna join this game company I just started?
Me: webjkasvb * …knurd yllaea m’i … * ncvoirhgvs
J: Cool! I’ll take that as a yes.

So basically that’s how I ended up on the Eets team.

A great place for holding tea parties . . .

Fast forward a little, and after a few days of getting accustomed to the basement *ahem* . . . ‘office space’ . . . of Klei, I soon discovered my Eets destiny . . .

J: We need you to bamboozle people!
M: Wha-?!?!?!
J: We need you to bamboozle people . . . with the Eets levels you’re going to make!
M: Ah, I see . . . Cool, so how do I begin?
J: All you need to do is use this level editor we’ve been using for Eets . . .
M: Sweet!

Little did I realize that back then, it was not so sweet. You see, the level editor used to make the levels in the Eets Preview was, well . . . nearly impossible to use. You could probably pass the official release of Eets . . . twice . . . before I could finish making a decent level with it.

The old Level Editor in all its (un)glory.

If you’ve already tried the Puzzle Maker in the current release of Eets, well, be very thankful you have the ability to easily grab and place objects, rotate and flip platforms, and easily do pretty much whatever you want with it.

See that platform? Want to place it? Well, you’ve got to randomly click places just to select it!

In fact, here’s a little experience I had with the old level editor:

(After spending several days using the level editor and lots of head bashing . . .)
M: Aw man! I just messed up placing that platform on the screen again! Now I have to spend 10 minutes trying to fix what I’ve done! Grr . . . stupid level editor!
J: (Walks over.) What do you mean? (Presses CTRL+Z on the keyboard to undo changes.) See, that’s all there is to it!
M: What??!? There’s an UNDO?!?!?!?
(Envisions obtaining a Marshomech suit and thwacking the Level Editor into oblivion. . .)

However for the sake of my sanity, we gradually improved the level editor, eventually resulting in the Puzzle Maker currently found in Eets and also used to make the levels in the game.

Here’s a conversation we had while designing Eets way back then:

M: So, how many levels do we expect to make for Eets?
J: Well, I’m thinking around 60-70 levels for Eets. If we have time, we may try for around 80 . . .

. . . So 105-plus levels later, I managed to make many levels such as this one and helped out a lot with the development of Eets. I’ve had a blast working on this project (even with the old level editor woes . . .) and really hope you all enjoy playing Eets

However, I’d love to make your Eets experience an even better one! Feel free to add any feedback or comments about Eets, or even suggest something you’d like me to write about!

Until then, see you either next week or in the Eets Community! And remember, “There’s an UNDO?!?!?”

Marcus “CheesyRamen” Lo (Ramen with cheese really does taste good!)

Me hard at work . . .