As another year comes to a close, it’s once again time for the customary recaps, rewinds, and retrospectives, and here’s mine.
I can say that of all the years, 2024 has been one of them. It’s actually been a pretty good, if very busy, year for me personally, but creatively it’s a bit more complicated. I said I would be stepping back a bit in my 2023 post, and I stuck to that plan. You might have noticed there was no mid-year update, but I’ve been a lot more active on the blog and launched a Bluesky presence near the end of the year, so there have been a lot of more gradual updates there.
Filling the gap
I finished the final part of Gap Year, the illustrated novella tying in to the Outliers and Outsiders (Magical Girl Gina) games. Looking back, I have mixed feelings about the project. It fills a pretty big gap in the timeline, and it gave me an opportunity to focus on writing and drawing which was super nice, but I don’t feel the end result lives up to the ambition I had for it. I haven’t done a full postmortem and I don’t know if I will, but I think it suffered from a lack of focus- it was a weird compromise between slice-of-life and more plot driven- and just having too much on my plate to give it my full attention. I think it turned out okay, but only okay.
One jam only
I said last year that I’d be doing fewer jams going forward, and I stuck to that. In fact, I only made one new jam game* this year: The Excessive Sound Guys. That was my entry to So Bad It’s Good Jam, which remains a perennial favourite, though honestly my experience this time around was pretty rough. I did a devlog post on it, but in summary: I like what I made, but it did badly, leaving me with mixed feelings, and I’ve found I just don’t enjoy game jams as much as I used to because I have to balance them with living my life. I’ll probably still do one or two next year, but I’m thinking about looking for different kinds of jams, or changing my approach to them.
*I’m using this weirdly specific phrasing because I did participate in the Magical Girls FOREVER Continue-It Jam and its sequel, but those were very chill jams where I continued/completed existing games.
A midday gleaming
This year did see one major release: By The Meridiem Gleam, the third main game in the Outliers series. Early in the year, I decided to prioritize this project over Shattered 3. I almost started it for Magical Girl Game Jam 9, and when the Continue-It Jam came around I jumped at the opportunity to get some momentum going. There are two devlogs (first, second) where I go into detail about the development process, so I won’t dive in too deep here. I’ve had the basic concept in mind since the beginning of the series, and though I had to cut it down significantly to make it manageable* I was able to keep the essence of it and experiment with some new gameplay ideas. I don’t think this will be the last game in the series, but it’ll be the last one for a while, probably the last big one, and it does tie up what I consider the first “phase” of Outliers.
*To a point; it’s still my largest project since Shattered 2 and probably the third largest after that one and The Crystal Tower.
Blink if you missed it
That’s two games released this year. I said I wanted to step back going into this year, and doubled down on it in September, so that’s all according to plan. One big one and one little one is still probably more than I should be doing, but it’s a much better balance than previous years.
What if I told you there was a third game?
Shattered Special Edition was my April Fools project for 2024, the first after a pretty long hiatus (the last was GPU Buying Simulator in 2021). It’s a very silly shitpost of a game, even by my standards. It was only announced in a few places and only available for a very short time. I wanted to experiment with something ephemeral for a few reasons. I wanted to see if it could generate some extra engagement, and I felt it was a lower stakes way to play with some ideas that are too risky (or too risque) for a “proper” game. I also stole a bunch of assets was a lot looser with what I put in it, which is probably not something I should make a habit of. It was fun to play with some weird ideas in a place where I really didn’t have to worry about whether they’d work or not. The end result is probably the most cursed thing I’ve ever made, yet strangely compelling at times.
Doing other things
I came into 2024 with the intention of putting less time into game dev, and I carried through with that goal. What have I been doing instead?
Well, a whole lot of things that aren’t creating content. Playing games, watching shows, going out and meeting people. Doing a bit of travel, getting back into my old hobby of photography. It’s been a good year for me outside of this creative sphere.
That being said, I haven’t been entirely idle. I’ve been doing more long-form content on the blog, and it’s been really nice to get back into that dying art form. It’s been a pretty random assortment of topics, and I think I’ll keep it that way. I poked my head back in the RWBY fandom and started writing another fanfic. I bought a sketchbook that I’ve barely used- last year was better for art, but it’s something I’d like to get back to. I’m even poking at video content again, although I think it’ll be a long while yet before I get back in front of the camera.
Finally, I’ve finished winding down my Twitter presence after going back and forth on it for over a year. There’s no one-for-one replacement, but the blog has already mostly filled the gap, and I’m starting to use Bluesky now as well so that will probably end up pretty similar.
What now?
I haven’t talked much about Shattered 3 because I didn’t work on it much this year. At one point I’d been hoping to finish what became By The Meridiem Gleam in the first half of the year and spend the second on Shattered 3, but that was never a realistic plan. If you’ve been following me closely, this may not be a surprise (I’ve hinted at it here and there), but I’m not sure if Shattered 3 will happen next year either… or maybe ever.
I want it to be a thing, and I don’t want the work that’s already been done on it to go to waste, but every time I think about getting back to it, I’m filled with dread. I know it’s going to be a long, arduous project that I just don’t want to take on right now. So, I’m stepping away from it for the moment. Maybe I’ll come back to it, maybe not.
SE7ENGOKU is also abandoned, but that was always kind of a weird side project that’s been on the rocks from the beginning, and I think I’ve already stated that I was moving away from it.
Okay, that’s more what’s not next, let’s get into what is next!
I’m planning to release the Shattered 2 source code and art, it just needs some cleanup and checks before going out (it almost, but didn’t quite, make it this year). CommonCore is very much in maintenance mode at best now, but expect R6.2 soon rolling up some of the bugfixes and minor additions. I’ve been thinking of doing a revised, combined edition of Gap Year. I’ve also been thinking of physical releases of Shattered 1+2 and/or the Outliers games, but that’s way more out there and might never happen.
It feels weird having no big project to announce, but it also feels weirdly relieving. I have a few ideas in mind that I’d like to poke at, but I’m keeping a blank slate going into the new year. As I mentioned in the last section, there’s a lot of other stuff that I’d like to spend some time on as well.
For better or for worse, 2025 is going to be an interesting year!