Year-Lookback thingy:

Heyope (long since I last used that greeting)

2023 marks my first real year of Game development. I've always played around with different tools and trying to make some games, but nothing really came out of it until last year when I released BigJumpSmallJump. It's a really small Project I completed in ~1-2 Weeks. But I am very happy with it. It's a pretty simple Platformer, something with which I am quite familiar so it isn't really something where I have to think about a lot of the necessities. Making Jump n' Run levels feels very natural to me because I had played around with multiple level editors over the years (one of the first Programs I used was likely Lunar Magic, a Level editor for Super Mario World).

The design of that game goes pretty tough in the latter half, which I didn't originally plan. The difficulty curve up into light Kaizo material came mostly natural and I am pretty satisfied with it. Something I noticed when viewing Others play it is that they have quite the hard time learning the Air-Control. The game has no Air-friction meaning the Character continues to move in the air unless you control into the other direction. I was pretty used to that fact by Mario Games and my experience with their Kaizo. However every other person had quite a hard time with the Air control, so when I make another game with such air control I wanna make sure to spend more time teaching its nuances (that's the one big issue I ended up having with how this games difficulty curve ended up).

I also noticed I forgot to give an actual Tutorial for the Control-scheme which was a bit of an embarrassment... So I swore to fix that in future games.

Next up is Throw Frog at Bird, a short 1-Day Project. I was having a really annoying/boring day at my Day Job and suddenly I was thinking about how I could try make a high-score game because of their lower scope. I had quite a lot of difficulties with the Game-Design here because of how unused I am to High-Score games. It really didn't end up a good High-Score game... but I find it freaking hilarious.

I also didn't really care about giving a tutorial for the Control-scheme because of how absurdly minimalistic it is.

After that I joined my first jam, the Game Mockup Jam with my submission Untitled Selfdamage Concept. This one is definetly the most boring thing I did. I saw that Jam and thought it looked fun, but because of my inexperience in graphics I couldn't really do lots of justice to a concept alone. And the only review is one praising the spriting... which I didn't do, so thanks again to Ansimuz's SunnyLand Fort of Illusion, Chierit's Boss Demon Slime and Pixramen's 2d Action Platformer Sci-fi Vagabond.

With this only being a concept showcase of course there is no Control-Scheme to teach.

The last Project I finished this year was the wonderfull Oil Saga, my submission for GTMK-2023. I really like how this one turned out, I really crunched myself out in those 48 hours. Because I had been talking about Crowd-Control-Games where you play an evil overlord with a friend sometime before the jam, so I got the idea I wanted to make quite quickly (we were playing a bit Right Click to Necromance, so that was the main inspiration).

This one does work quite well as a High-Score game, even if the difficulty is a bit messy. I love how it is a back-to-back of 2 different High-Score games switching the side after death. It also lend itself to a hilariously fun plot that I came up with towards the end of the jam. It ends up with not just having the player switch roles between the good and evil side but the usual roles being inverted, the dark Lord of the Dead is actually the good guy, while the Heroes trying to defeat him are just greedy Oil Barons. I got the connection between dead and Oil from Touhou 17.5 which resolves around Oil being the Blood of the Earth.

Anyways, if you play the game you might notice something... something other than the glitched out Lifebar of the Skeletons (Godot why?). I FORGOT TO EXPLAIN THE CONTROL-SCHEME AGAIN! And this time it was really upsetting because of how confusing that is for the second half. I do want to fix that by adding a Control-Scheme shown in the corner, but I also wanna fix the Glitch, but last time I tried Godot still messed that up (someday I'll fix that for sure).

Moving away from release stuff, this year I actually got to know the local Gamedev scene in my area (I was surprised there was one). Which is really cool, just getting to meet up with people which are as hopelessly obsessed with Videogames as yourself is great.

And beyond Videogames I am now only half a year away from finishing my "Internship" ("Ausbildung" in German, it is a system where you work at a company with the goal of learning a job with lots of hands on work, with school every 2 weeks as supplementary (but 80% of the teachers at school are insanely inept, and the curriculum is within the top 100 worst things I've seen)). When I finish I'll likely be able to have more time to work on projects and I'll finally be able to get a bit of money on here (theoretically I could beforehand but it was a bit of "possibly complicated" because of German Bureaucracy).

Looking towards my next Year of GameDev I have a few things in store. I am hoping to develop a few more small Jump n' Runs while learning how to make Action Games because of some Dream Games I wanna make (and for that I'll have to know how Souls-Like Action-Games are made as I really wanna expand on the Platforming and Combat options which requires a good understanding of how to work with these). I will also likely learn how to use Unreal and Unity. So far I only have know-how in how Godot works and I think it is a bit limiting to know only a singular way to make full games. Games are extremely versatile and I wanna learn the different ways that one can be made. I already know quite a few nieche Tools for Game Development (like Lunar Magic and Danmakufu), but I wanna stock up on some Engine-knowledge.

I already have a really good Project planned for this Year. Alongside the games I actually finished, I have been working on a Boss-Fight that is taking up quite a good Shape. I sadly have barely managed to slip in time to work on the Project, and this Month I was kind of hit with a Wave of Procrastination. I really wanna give it a good Polish for my possibilities as it'll be my first Boss-Fight and I really care about those deeply. But thanks to that and me rarely finding time to work on it it just being in progress since June 2023.

Anyways to Anyone who sees this I'll make sure to finish that and a few other Projects I started in the near future, am quite excited for that.

Game-Review-Corner Thingy:

This year I played an whopping 104 free Games on Itch, 1 free ROMhack and 20 Paid games

As a thanks to the games I really liked I wanna give a few Bucks to my 10 Favorite free Games I played on here. When I am talking about my favourite Games of 2023 I am always talking about the Games I played that year no matter the release date, not just the games I played that year and which released that year.

The lower it is here the less sure I am about its placement, the lowest 3 are mostly based on which ones I wanted to support more.
Therefore special thanks to all the remaining games that could've gotten into those spots and which I would reccommend just as much as the rest here:
Rainboy Demo (steam link), Kaizemo, Mobs Inc. and Birdson (do check out all the other games by this guy, all are of this quality), Princess Peach Sex Hack (it is a seriously fine SM64 ROM-Hack, I know it sounds weird but I would've given the maker of this money)

I will also put a list of all the Games I played this year, everything about 7 was a candidate for this, everything above 6 is very reccommendable and everythign above 5 is a good time (and most of the stuff below too)

No. 10 Help no Brake by Edgar Mendoza:

A really good challenge game with an interesting caracter controller.
Here's the Review.

No. 9 Fallen Girl by Fullmontis:

I really like how this game uses it's mechanics to tell a story... I also remember writing a longer review on how much I like that. But I can't find it anymore, did I mess up posting it or something? OHHHHH it is a review not a comment... Thanks itch, I do actually want those public.
Here's the Review as Comment

No. 8 Die in the Dungeon by Alarts:

I haven't played much Deck Building games like this one. But out of those I played I'd say this is the most interesting one (and that's saying a lot when Peglin is the comparision point (Peglin isn't in my full lsit because I only played the mobile version and didn't bother to note it down)). The tactics already Possible in this short mini-version are really really good.
Here's the Review.

No. 7 Like a Boss Rush Thing by Delta Never Used:

I kind of feel like I hav to put this game into my Top List this year becuase it is what motivated me to work on my current Boss Project... It kinda send me down a spiral into DevHell so I dunno why that is a + point. Still the bosses are really neat and definetly worth a play.
Here's the Review.

No. 6 Dire Decks by Kindanice:

Insanely good High-Score game. This is exactly the type of Game I wanted to make with the High-Score Games I tried to make. Also on this list because Kindanice always makes some of the best of these games, definitely one of my favourite Devs on this Website.
(No actual review for this one, just play some of KindaNices games... they're all really kindanice I don't have any more words for it)

No 5. A Time Travellers Guide to past Delicaties by Gabriel Helfenstein:

One of the best Walking sims I played. I personally might actually like The City has Problem more but ATTGtpD is definetly the more noteworthy actual game and what got me invested in this Dev (though I still gotta get around to playing anything else than these 2 games)
Here's the Review.

No. 4  Thief Redemption by IndieGen:

Really unique twist on a stealth game, even manages to express what makes stealth games interesting better than any other stealth game I played.
Here's the Review.

No. 3 Fragments of Euclid by Nusan:

Best Puzzle game I played this year. Has a really uniqe graphical style too, probably wouldn't be quite this high without it (probably like 2 spaces lower).
Here's the Review

No. 2 Pogo3D by HEDGEWIZARDS:

A really tough chaotic 3d Platformer. Also has a really good amount of content for a free version. And by now the full version is out, and it being this high means I basically end up getting it for free (because I would've given like 8 bucks either way).
Here's the Review.

No. 1 Yuuma Game by Woah Maaan:

This easily deserves the Number 1 Spot on this list. It's so good it's also gonna make the general list of my 10 Favourite games of 2023.
Here's the Review.

Games Played 2023:

On Itchio/Free:

Here is a list of all the games I played for free (This includes the free ROMHack and a paid Game I played with a friend):

The Ratings are very rough estimates I made a few weeks ago when trying to get my top 10 Games filtered out, don't take them too seriously, I wish I would've actually used the lower numbers more (I entirely skipped 0, 1 and 2, which I really shouldn't have, that always ends up with having less space to rate the higher games). And to anyones Game where I wrote something like "plain bad": I don't mean it personally, we all start somewhere and I don't mean it as an insult to the work that has been put into these projects

(the Nr is a rough order of when I played it, so Obsidian doesn't mess with my ordering)

List of Paid Games:

These are all the paid games (and newly released parts of payed games, like with Ultakill) I played

There's lots of lots of Good stuff.
My top ones in no particular order are Probably:

Outer Wilds Echoes of the Eye (this one is nin particular order, becaus I love this DLC)
The Legend of Zelda: Breath of The wild: Tears of the Kingdom (that's the actual name, you can't convince me otherwise)
Pikmin 4
Nier Automata
Kirby's Return to Dreamland Deluxe
Mario Wonder

(Crosscode would also be on this Frankensteined TopList list but I didn't finish it in my winter break as planned, so it'll end up being a 2024 game)