New year, new blog post. This post is mostly me organizing my own thoughts on my projects: looking back at the past year and thinking about what I’d like to achieve next year. I’m not sure if this is interesting for anyone other than me, but I think the exact same about any project right before its release, so what do I know.
2022
2022 was a year that existed, we can all agree to that. It had four entire seasons and contained a whopping 365 days (in case you didn’t know). Furthermore, I did 3 full releases of web games, which is below average for me. In 2020, I “only” completely finished 3 web games as well, although that year I also spent some significant time on the Amidst the Sky sequel, AKA Project Amidst. Past year was similar, as I spent a lot of time developing Cursed Travels: Sunken City (WISHLIST IT NOW THANK YOU).
On the positive side, I’m satisfied with how my games of past year turned out, and their reception was favourable as well. Two of them were entries in the Cursed Travels series, including the fourth entry, which became my personal favourite. Factories and other places with vaguely designed machinery are fun to play around with.
My third game of 2022 was Generic Fishing Game, which at some point was meant to be a very short, dumb gag for Halloween, but changed into something bigger during development. I actually had to work surprisingly hard near Halloween to make the deadline, but fortunately that work wasn’t in vain. The reception was more positive than I expected, but then again, I had absolutely no idea what to expect from that weird project. As a side note, Generic Fishing Game very recently released on Armor Games.
That’s not all, in 2022 I also released a prototype for a fun (at least IMO) little mouse-based game called FlowerFlight and a prototype for a shmup called Stone Blast. These are both exclusive for Patrons though.
2023
At the very least, 2023 will bring the full release of Cursed Travels: Sunken City on Steam (have you wishlisted it yet?). Furthermore, count on the very minimum of 3 “smaller” games, much like in 2022. Those’ll very likely be web games, but I’ve been considering other platforms as well, such as mobile and more Steam. This is the baseline.
That’s all good and all, but I’d like to achieve more this year, so let’s set some goals that are blatantly unreasonable, but would be really great to get done in 2023. That way, if I fail to do them all, it was as expected, and if I succeed at even one of them, we can say it was some great achievement against all the odds. Okay let’s go, here are all the things that I’d like to do game projects-wise:
- Have a fully fletched demo for Sunken City for upcoming Steam Next Fest, start and maintain a weekly dev log at some point and pretty much finish the entire game in March. The Next Fest is in a month or so IIRC, so I really need to get to that basically right now. The demo will likely be a small part of the forest area, and feature some wacky gameplay mechanics and characters. The weekly dev log should be doable, the biggest challenge will be figuring out what the heck to even write about. As for finishing the game in March, we all know that’s very wishful thinking (speaking of wishes, don’t forget to wishlist the game on Steam!).
By the way, I’m thinking $13.00 for Sunken City would be a cool price tag, but it depends on how long the game turns out to be and how pricing even works on Steam. - Get some actual significant progress on all three: Project Amidst, Cataractae Remake, and this game. Finish and release at least one of them. All of them are meant to be released on Steam for a ridiculously reasonable price.
- More “small” (web)games. Let’s say at least 6 total to roughly match my original plan of releasing a game at least every 2 months. I have so many unfinished projects and concepts lying around that it’s genuinely getting depressing. This includes games such as Ferry Wheel as well as some stuff outside of my comfort bubble. This may or may not also include an April Fool’s game (although that’d clash with me working on Sunken City) and a spiritual successor to Generic Fishing Game for Halloween.
In case I manage to amp up the frequency of games, I’ll also finally expand my Patreon a bit more. - Port Warper to mobile and finally make something really cool I’ve been planning for mobile. Yes, this is pretty vague, and I’ll leave it as such.
That’s it for this ol’ blog post. Let’s make 2023 our best year so far. Oh, and here’s a screenshot from Project Amidst, because a blog post without an image is annoying:
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..Oh right, happy new year and all that. Bye.
P.S. Has anyone found the Cursed Travels fellas in N Step Steve Part 2 yet? They should be in there somewhere, but I haven’t found them as of writing this haha.
Ferociter Games 