2022 has been my most productive year in game dev, by a considerable margin. I've released 11 games this year, along with 2 new fonts, an asset pack and plenty of additions to my music pack. I've also made a bunch of pixel art for pixel dailies, played a lot of games and made significant improvements to my Chemex technique.
As part of what I hope will be a yearly tradition, I thought I'd put together a few statistics and stray thoughts to reflect on what's worked and what hasn't, and to get some plans in place for where I'd like to take future projects.
At the time of writing, my games and other projects have received:
My most popular game is still last year's The Cleaner, with 2440 downloads, followed by Critical. with 769 plays.
The majority of page views I receive are from game jam entries, although Reddit has proven useful for drawing attention to music and asset packs, and generous featured spots on Free Game Planet have been great for The Cleaner and Critical.
(Stats taken from itch.io as my games are only hosted here at present. As I don't have stats for previous years, these figures represent the full lifespan of my itch.io profile).
For this year, my aim was to enter as many game jams as possible, with the intention of creating a variety of games in a range of styles to improve my technical abilities and see what genres and ideas I enjoyed working with. The standout releases for me were:
This was my first attempt at a text-based game, and I'm fairly delighted with the result. While it could have used a little more variety and balancing, I really like the atmosphere and tension, particularly towards the end of a run as time is running out and the player has to carefully consider what sacrifices they are willing to make.
I'm also particularly happy with the general "feel" here: the CRT filter and very green display, the small clicking noise to respond to input, and the modem sound and loading screen between rounds all ended up coming together really nicely to create a distinct sense of place.
I'd love to return to this genre at some stage, whether as another short form game jam entry or as part of a larger experience.
My first ever Godot project, which ended up shelved for around 6 months as I eventually realised it was far outside of my skill level at the time. I returned to it at the start of this year, having made a bunch of smaller jam projects through the final half of 2021 and found it much more achievable - turns out that the common advice to start with small projects and work your way up is common for a reason!
After I cleaned up the mess that I'd originally made and added a few new features I ended up with a fun little top-down shooter, with a nice range of playable characters, a variety of enemies and bosses and some useful powerups. It's nothing too unique or challenging, but makes for a fun way to waste 15 minutes and showed me that I could make slightly longer form games.
As an aside - the UI implementation here was appalling, and encouraged me to learn how to use Godot's excellent control nodes much more safely and efficiently for future projects.
This is, by a big margin, my favourite game I've released this year, and by far the most distinctive in terms of gameplay. I've always enjoyed typing games (despite being terrible at them), and once it occurred to me to tie the typing to the narrative the ideas started to flow very naturally. Coming up with new ways to mess with the player's expectations was great fun.
While there's nothing currently in the works I'd love to make a sequel to this at some stage - I've got plenty of ideas!
For 2023, my primary focus is a single, larger scale project - nothing to announce just yet as it's still in the early stages of development. This will likely mean entering less game jams over the course of the year to allow me to focus a little more, although I'll still likely enter a few when I need a break from the main project.
I fully intend to enter GMTK Jam 2023, as it's proving to be a fun annual tradition.
I will also continue to expand my CC0 Music Pack as and when I have new tracks available.
In no particular order, I'd like to extend thanks to Alex de la Cour, Mandy J Watson and Tanasak, who have all been wonderful and helped me to improve.
I'm also thrilled that a fully Gameboy compatible remake of Harold: Paranormal Instigator called PSYkid was released very recently by the amazing Lazy Dev Games - it expands and improves upon the original game, reworking existing areas and even adding entirely new ones. It was a fantastic surprise for the end of the year and is great fun to play - plus, my childhood self would have been overjoyed to see something I made being used in an actual gameboy game! If you'd like to give it a try, you can find it PSYkid here.
Also thanks to everyone who has streamed my games and sent me links - I've loved watching so many people play and commentate over the course of the year :)
Have a wonderful new year!
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For some reason I didn't get a notification about this blog post - perhaps because it's not tied to a game page? Hence this late comment.
One of my favourite things is getting a notification in my inbox that you've released something new. There's always an element in each project that captures my imagination, whether it's a tweak to a simple mechanic that results in something really novel or even just a great piece of music or art. Both the journalist and game dev in me are constantly delighted by your progress (and, admittedly, a little envious but your results are well deserved through hard work) and it's inspiring.
I wish you much success in 2023. I'm looking forward to what comes next!
Thanks so much Mandy - this absolutely made my day! I really have appreciated all the feedback over the year, it's made a huge difference
All the best to you too, hope you have a wonderful 2023 :)
Congrats on the highly productive year, best of luck in 2023!
Thanks! Best of luck to you too :)