30-12-2025
Started 2025 doing contract work and ending it the same way.
Once again it's time for my annual blog post!
This year was spent mainly doing contract work for MicroProse. Half of it on the same project as last year and the other half on a new game.
A couple of weeks in between it was not clear if I'd have a new project to work with them so I spent working on a tower defense prototype but I had to accept it was way too much like the amazing Gnomes and lost interest in it.
I always think I should try doing some twist on the tower defense genre, since I spent 10 years working on TD games at Ironhide Game Studio, but it hasn't happened yet. I do have some ideas though!
With TragicoMedia we did a couple of pitches for two different government grants but we missed being selected in both of them by a slight margin. Too bad, but at the same time it's nice seeing so many new local teams working on cool stuff.
We do have some plans for the future but they'll have to wait for 2026.
I've never talked about my cycling adventures here, but this year I became a Super Randonneur!
That means I completed four different long distance events of 200km, 300km, 400km and 600km in a self-sufficient way. I had ridden three 200km events before so that one was "easy", but this distance was the last one I completed and I was really nervous something would go wrong and I'd miss my Super Randonneur opportunity.
Achieving this was an amazing experience, on a lot of different levels and I'm glad I managed to do it. The 400km was really really hard and the worst I've felt on a bicycle, but it is incredible what you can do if you manage to convince your brain to push just a little bit more, the legs will follow.
Cycling gives me so much freedom and brings me much joy.
In fact I have some ideas written down for a cycling/randonneuring game... maybe a new prototype in 2026?
Same as last year I helped organize our local gamedev event LevelUY. It's a huge amount of work but feels good to give a tiny bit back to our local gamedev community. This year I also ran our national videogame contest as well as being one of the three judges. With 44 entries it was a huge amount of work and made me think we need a plan B after a certain amount of entries are confirmed. More judges, maybe some some sort of point based system to filter games quickly. Made me wonder how other awards work internally.
I don't play as much as I'd like these days... ~~don't think I actually finished anything I played this year which makes me a bit sad.~~
I did try to finish Elden Ring but I still have a long way to go even though I have played for around 68 hours. It is an incredible game and hopefully I'll finish it next year...
At some point in the year I finally got hooked on Factorio, I think it lasted for like a month. Woud like to play more of this but I'm also afraid it might consume my life.
I played a lot of Castle Crashers with my kids which is really fun and they laugh their asses off with a lot of its crazyness.
I love this game and I played it on and off... I have only reached the final (final?) boss once but got killed. I'll finish this one eventually. The gameplay is so crazy and the simulation makes some really fun situations. It reminds me a lot of classic Spelunky which I played thousands of times (was young and didn't have kids!)
This one got me completely hooked. It sort of becomes a puzzle game because of how you can affect enemy paths. Probably my favorite game I tried. Could be tied with Factorio.
The first game in the KR series which I haven't worked on!
Played it with my kids but we haven't finished it yet. Same good old KR fun.
Diablo meets Vampire Survivor. Brilliant.
Really loved the art and mood of the game.
A good game but didn't really hooked me. No pun inteded.
I loved the old school OS vibes. Want to finish this one eventually.
Great, short game. Definitely on the other end of Elden Ring lengthwise. Made me feel stuff. I actually finished this one!
What I want more than anything is to release a game, no matter how small. This is something I've been failing to do for the past couple of years.
I've a bunch of ideas written which I'd have to trim down so they are actually doable while actually working the whole day and having a family.
This is my big objective for next year.
Happy new year!