Why Baldwin? Also, A Brief Hello

When starting some sort of space to cascade an endless grouping of thoughts, one would think it prudent to at least give some sort of introduction, a way to entice the audience with the presence of that special someone and why their ramblings may be of heightened attention. You know, there must be some reason that this is as important as taking up a few bytes of space on a machine somewhere out in a gigantic humming data center, right?

Such reasons likely won't be found here. In the age of ever expanding content, farming engagement, and endless feeds of people who seem to have figured it out better than the rest of us, I humbly claim this small piece of digital space to plant my home.

No, the garden won't contain the typical flowers that line the rest of the neighborhood. The driveway may have a few cracks here and there, the color of the house may not align with preconceived notions of 'acceptable', and sometimes you will drive by and say, "What the hell is he going on about over there? Keep driving honey, don't make eye contact with him!"

Yet, here I am! It feels amazing to have a place to share experiences, give updates about games that will hopefully bring enjoyment to many, and a space where I can share any interesting stories I happen to want to share.

I was singing my daughter to sleep the other night when I realized there were all sorts of memories floating around in my head. I was suddenly overwhelmed with emotion, as if I had put on a pair of VR goggles and was once again living experiences from years past. I then thought about how I didn't want these memories to just sit inside my brain to be relived every so often, I wanted to put some of them out there and hopefully provide an experience that impacts whoever chances upon it.

In recent times, I have picked up on reading again, something that I thought only kids in Elementary School with summer reading requirements do! Kidding, a little. Although I avidly read events going on each day, it has been a long time since I really got into a book. When I discovered them again, I realized that it's so rewarding to have a chance to look into the lens of someone's life through their thoughts on a page, and I want to do that here.

"Honey, he's still out there… take the other way home let's not even drive past him."

Okay okay, so we get it, six paragraphs to tell us you want to blog, when are you actually going to do it you ass!? You're right, I suppose I should do what I intended when I came up with the title for this novel blog post.

For myself, Big Al as it were, I am a software engineer who has been dreaming of 'making something one day' since I was in my teens, and I'm now finally following through on that. I've had a desire to share stories and build new experiences, with an emphasis on engaging people with what I create. Nothing beats getting someone to laugh their head off or watching them stare at you intently as you unravel an intriguing story before them.

I'll save the details of my successes and failures of game development some other time, as I think it's more important to talk about Urban Explorer: Baldwin, since it's soon to release and I wanted to share what exactly inspired the idea in the first place!

It was a late night in March of 2024 when myself, my wife, and my brother BUS and his wife were all on a small road trip and were driving through a brutal snow storm in Wisconsin. Initially, the snow gently fell on the ground from a bright and gray sky above us. We were cruising along I-94 at whatever the speed limit is there, with no concerns other than what we were going to do when we reached Minneapolis. Maybe we'd get Indian, or hey what about Tea House? We had never anticipated what would shortly follow as the day began to slowly turn to night.

It must have been about 8 PM or so when sh*t really started to hit the fan. The snow was now rapidly descending around us, and the sun had long escaped the sky above us. The road was so bad that even though I-94 had two lanes each way, everyone had piled into the right lane, as it was the only clear lane that didn't have 3+ inches of snow on it. My wife and I in my car, Bus and his in theirs, were creeping along at about 35 along the highway, and even that seemed way too fast for the conditions, but we didn't want to lose the cars around us.

Ding! A faster route has been detected and you're being re-routed. Fantastic! I knew my fancy electric car would come to the rescue, as it highlighted the road up ahead as being dark red with traffic, and it offered a detour along the highway that would help us reach my charging destination of Eau Claire faster. We pulled off the highway and onto the recommended route.

BIG MISTAKE. Now, we were traveling along a country road with NO lights, NO plow, and LOTS of hills. I could barely see where the road ended and the countryside began. My brother generously offered to take the lead, even though I was insistent he could have the honor. He took advantage of the tire tracks I made as I led us down the road. The car fought tooth and nail with me, just begging to find its way into a ditch and call it a night. If you could have seen it, I promise it was the most bad-ass attempt to control a vehicle going 20mph you'd ever have witnessed.

At one point, I noticed a stop sign that had been completely covered in snow, as the snow banks had piled up to at least halfway up the actual sign itself, so there was half a hexagon sticking out of this pitch black but snowy side of the road. I panicked and tried to stop to no avail, and accepted my fate of rolling through and onwards. A police officer was parked nearby and I took a deep gulp and prepared for the sirens, but in an act of pure understanding he let us continue on without even a stop. They probably knew there may not be a guarantee we could have gotten rolling again had we stopped.

After what felt like hours, but was like maybe 20 or so minutes, we reached Eau Claire and celebrated. We did it! We survived the storm. We rewarded ourselves with Fazoli's as they kindly let us feast a few minutes before closing. It seemed as if luck was just on our side that day.

However, as the car charged, the snow didn't let up. The parking lot was one massive glacier of snow, and the winds drifted that snow all around. When the car finished charging, I made my run to unplug it and get back in the warm car. At last, we were off again, on the way to Minneapolis.

Now, things were even worse. I know, it didn't seem possible, but they were. The snow was piled up higher, and the right lane that everyone was driving over was slick with what felt like a thin layer of ice. We tried our best to keep up with everyone else at 30 mph, but it felt like the car was floating, kind of like those air hockey pucks when you set them down on the table, they just float in some random direction.

I was cursing the roads and the car, begging for it to behave. My brother called my phone and cursed along with us, he was right behind my car. "I can't f*cking see! My windshield is fogging up! I need to get off the road! We need to pull over!" I responded, "We can't pull over! There's no shoulder! We need to get off at some exit ramp, but they're all covered in snow. I see a gas station a couple of miles ahead, let's go there."

We somehow made it there, and we had to give the pedal a little juice going up the off-ramp, as it was covered in snow. The gas station was empty, only the bright lights above the pumps and the sign itself were illuminating the new tundra around us. We were also the only ones there, so I parked while my brother filled up and cleaned his windshield.

When it was time to take off again, my car was stuck. My brother, and our wives had to push the car from behind as I punched the pedal down to the floor, and eventually the car wiggled its way out of the snow. We were back on the road again shortly thereafter, and into the same, awful conditions.

After another mile or so, we decided we couldn't make it to Minneapolis like this, we needed to get off the road and FAST. We looked and saw that up ahead, there was a small rest stop and hotel in the town of Baldwin.

We made our way up the off-ramp again with power, and took a right turn into a small little area that had a few restaurants and a hotel, along with a gas station at the corner. The gas station was still open (it was about 2 AM now), but everything else was closed. However, waaaay in the back of the dead-end rest stop was a cheap hotel. A sanctuary away from the hellish roads.

As I approached the hotel, my heart sank as there was a massive semi-truck blocking the path to the parking lot. It had tried to take a right turn out of the truck rest stop and got stuck across the entire road, blocking the one entrance there was to the hotel. Now, it felt like fate was toying with us.

I was on the phone with my brother, so he heard what was coming. He was still taking a right turn at the light to catch up with us. For some reason, he thought that he had to take another right turn sooner than he needed and he pulled onto another road that ran behind the restaurant and other buildings. He figured it was no big deal, as he would cut through the parking lot of a warehouse to meet us on the main road and figure things out.

As he cut through the parking lot, his wheels entered a depression in the lot, and all of the sudden he was trying to push through a foot and a half or so of snow. His car wiggled, sputtered, and screamed as he pushed the pedal to the metal, but it was of no use. He was now completely stuck in the lot of this warehouse.

So, now we had a semi blocking the hotel, my brother was stuck, and we were parked on the side of the main road with our hazards trying to figure out what to do. The trucker who was stuck in front of us came over to us and asked me, "Do you have a shovel? I just need to shovel and get out of here!" I didn't, and I offered to use my ice scraper to try to help him out a bit. He agreed, and I ran to start shoveling out his tires that were stuck.

Meanwhile, my brother and his wife were trying to use their ice pick to get their own car unstuck. They continuously tried and failed to get out of the snow, while I worked on getting the trucker out. He yelled back, "Is it clear now? I think I can get it out!" and he revved with full power while I was still trying to shovel his wheel out. Good God, this guy is gonna run over me if he really gets out! I ran back as I heard him full throttle the truck. His truck wiggled in the snow but also went nowhere. I went to help my brother as the trucker debated his next options.

We kept trying to clear space to get him out, we tried to go full throttle, we cursed at the world for the situation we were in, none of it seemed to work. We went to the gas station to warm up a bit and as luck would have it, a snow plow was coming through! We went to talk to him to ask to get a path for my brother and the trucker.

"Nope, I only do main roads, sorry." We pleaded with him to make an exception, but he wouldn't relent. Instead, he plowed the main road and left an even larger pile for my brother to get out from as he took off. A real showing of community that just touched our hearts.

There was a police officer that showed up as well, and recommended we call a buddy who has a towing service. He wouldn't be awake for another few hours, but for a few hundred bucks he could get my brother out of the snow. Again, the showing of community was tugging at the heart strings. I nearly broke out into a full chorus of angelic singing, thinking about how wonderful it all was.

We were snapped back to reality as we saw the trucker with a shovel now, hopelessly trying to get his truck out of a massive snow bank. If you know the needle in the haystack analogy, the best I can describe it is this dude was trying to clear the haystack with the needle. He wasn't going to go anywhere, but he wasn't going to give up the shovel until he was out. We asked where he got the shovel, and he mentioned the gas station lent it to him.

No, the gas station didn't have an extra one. I knew you were going to think we were saved once we got there to ask. And no, they didn't have one for sale. So we were stuck using the ice scrapers. Even worse, the trucker had taken my brother's ice scraper earlier to try to get his truck cleaned off and snapped it in half. When it rains, it pours. When it snows, it… blizzards, I guess.

So, in one final adrenaline driven effort, I grabbed my scraper and began shoveling like a mad man. I told my brother the plan, "You get in the car, I'm gonna give your wheels a foot or so of space, and you just effing floor it."

I gave him the space, and ran out of the way and yelled, "GO!" He smashed the pedal down, and the car roared to life and used up the foot within milliseconds. It created a small track in the snow as it pushed up the depressed area of the parking lot and towards the exit. He had made it about 15 feet and was right there at the exit, but the car started to fall back when it tried to overcome the damn snow bank the snow plow driver had created. I yelled for him to stop as I again made another foot or so of space for him to use.

We tried the same thing again, and this time he got his car into the snow bank, before it stopped and wiggled again in the snow. I yelled for him to stop, but he kept pushing, I could see the desperation and anger in his eyes as he was determined to bridge this final 2 foot snow gap.

With all the power that little Nissan had, he smashed through the snow bank and onto the main road, with thunderous applause from all of us as we cheered into the echoing night. It was now almost 4 AM, but we had finally got him unstuck and could once again make a choice on what to do next. We looked at the map and saw we were only about an hour from Minneapolis, and decided we would brave it out to get to our intended destination. Miraculously, without us even stopping to pay attention, the snow had stopped and it was lightly raining.

As we entered back onto I-94, we were delighted to see it had been plowed as well! Finally, we were back in the good graces of fate as we set off towards Minnesota. The rest of the story isn't of much note, other than we made it safely to our destination and finally slept.

So, in the years since that time, we thought about how weird that night was, how odd that town felt, and the dread that the entire situation caused us. Bus jokingly mentioned Baldwin as a setting for a horror game, and I couldn't refuse the idea. It was such a pivotal moment of triumph over a terrifying situation for us that it felt like the perfect setting for our game's story.

Thus, Urban Explorer: Baldwin was born. With a special emphasis on the hotel we never made it to, the setting was drawn up and I came up with a story of government cover up to introduce our monsters. I loved the idea of an urban explorer happening upon the area, similar to the way we did as well, being forced off the road due to an increasingly worse storm.

That being said, should you ever intend to visit yourself one day, you may (or may not) be relieved to see there's no EPA superfund with some drastic monster being hidden away. Instead, it's a small, quiet exit off I-94 that just happened to host an insane night for the developers of this game.

Until next time, wishing you all the best in your endeavors. Goodbye for now!

BIG AL