Earlier this year our AAA game company suffered mass layoffs, all my friends at work have been made redundant and I'm alone at my job, and a lot of new games fell flat. AAA is looking worse and worse, and I'm not very optimistic about future releases. It's unlucky that I've spent my life working towards this career for it to explode right as I get started. FUCK ah well
We Continue - here's my silly little projects
Made Trainplanner and won #1st place in every category out of 122 entries! This was great fun and I love the Love2D gang.
Also made Candela with the lovely mothkira. Making 3D things in Love2D is hard, and I spent the majority of the time fixing bugs in love-gltf rather than making games. I wish I did this beforehand. Despite that, our rankings were still pretty great! It feels undeserved since I definitely underdelivered on the gameplay due to tech issues, but Moth's 3D and UI art was cool.
Tetrenga's also on Steam now, which has been a fun project. Team Sylph is official...
I wrote a short story called girls in rock. It's about a girl who got in a mining accident and is now scared of mining forever and feels bad about it, but instead of facing her fear, she'd rather feel the guilt of doing nothing. She gets a new mining partner, and tries to get her to affirm and validate her fear, but she's a brick wall. Her desperation for this affirmation sorta makes her Go Through It.
Writing is nice. I was sad when I wrote this and I don't think it demonstrated the moral I was going for, it was bad but it was fun.
I'm practicing more writing and hoarding it to myself - you may or may not see more stories from me next year.
I played the Factorio DLC with Cero. This DLC surprised me with how fun it was - a lot of Factorio mods introduce complexity, but this DLC transforms the way you play quite a lot. (Cero also transformed the way I play too because she hates using bots OAUHG - though belts ended up being more fun, even if it was more complicated)
Discord server had a Minecraft phase - we played The Chocolate Edition modpack, this is the most fun I've had in a modpack with friends. It's not really tech-focused, it's very objective and exploration focused, having "eyes" you need to gather by doing quests. It feels like Minecraft with Terraria progression, we loved it.
This is the first year I've gotten involved with Advent of Code, competing on a Love2D server leaderboard. This was great - in industry, you don't really get to do pure & dense algorithmic stuff very often due to enterprise-isms, so it was nice to know I've still retained some of my university leetcode chops. The first week+ of tasks were quite simple so I used it as an excuse to learn how to make Manim animations. (Also as an excuse to learn Python, I've somehow dodged writing even a single line of Python in my 15+ years of coding...)
I had 2 goals this year - make a fighting game and host a tournament, and make physical oil paintings.
My friends got me some oil painting classes for my birthday and they were great fun. I got along with everybody there, but the class was full of older people I couldn't relate to much though, so I didn't make friends. I bought oil paints after this but haven't used them yet. I'd like to join the city's art club next year, but building up the courage for it is hard..
And here's my first attempt for a fighting game. For a while I've wanted to make a traditional fighter but the win condition is similar to smash bros - the sort of sumo-wrestling-y knockout.
This was a lot of work and the resulting games that were played weren't incredibly interesting. I know that even if I get all 5 fighters into the game, with their full moveset, that'll only be 20% of the full game's work. The remaining 80% will be balancing and making the kits more interesting.
Character design is hard!! I wish I could create n'zig ironmaiden but I can only make jimmies.......
For the amount of time I have available to me, a traditional fighter is far too complicated to make fun, so I wanted to fart out a Nidhogg - here's Smaurai Buttshit. It's far far simpler than a traditional fighter, but I think the movement keeps things pretty expressive. Playtests for this game have been great fun (thanks Shaun, Kae, Moth, PG and Jill 💖). I still haven't hosted any kind of tournament for it yet though..
I think I hit my goals this year but I think I did the absolute minimum for both of them. I could paint more.. I could have made a full fighter.. I'd like to continue working on both of these..
The Goats:
Very Good Honorable Mentions:
Dishonorable mentions:
Nice ones
Magdalena Bay - Wandering Eyes (the whole of minimix vol 3 is good)
Sports - Damn I'm Tired
Men I Trust - I Come With Mud
Dayglow - Woah Man
The Hotelier - Among the Wildflowers
Songs: Ohia - Just Be Simple
HEALTH - ANTIDOTE
Hudson Bikichky (Eclipsium OST) - Torn Apart in Your Image
Ethel Cain - Waco, Texas (again, whole album is incredible)
Red House Painters - Katy Song
Sun Kil Moon - Carissa
Wisp - Yellow
Yume 2kki OST - Giant Toilet (Extended)
Fun ones (some start really loud be careful of volume):
Vylet Pony - Monarch of Monsters, ya the whole album
Camellia feat. Camellia - BITE ME MORE PLS
eternityz - I Can't See
TAK - LEMON MELON COOKIE
Tallah - Hard Knock
156/Silence - Character Development (Cold Start)
hugo808 - The Devil
Magdalena Bay - Body
Jagged Jaw - Again And Again
Experimental Harsh Noise Instrument
I've been very indoors this year, and very sad about my job, but it's been good.
Next year I want to:
Thank u x100