Thoughts: Year End 2023

As 2023 draws to a close and I spend the last two weeks of the year in trash-goblin form doing nothing but playing old junk games and eating 2-3 times my daily recommended calorie intake, I reflect upon the year and the media I've consumed, and the things I've worked on.

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Books & Comics

It was a good year for books and manga! I do a lot of commuting and dog-walking, so I almost always have an audiobook going, and managed to get through some of my backlog.

I also got through four Brandon Sanderson novels on account of him releasing his kickstarter books throughout the year.

Outside of those I was heavy on the sci-fi, as I've been working on some of my own sci-fi stories and have been seeking inspiration. (Also I just like sci-fi).

I also got through a couple of Mangas this year -- mostly dark and serious stuff to keep me from having too good a time.

Standouts for this year are probably This is how you Lose the Time War, A Memory Called Empire, and Goodnight Punpun for reads that gave me a lot to chew on.

Games

I didn't end up getting through a lot of games this year, but I did play some amazing pieces. Citizen Sleeper and The Machine were both fantastic, and reminded me how much a game can accomplish with finite moving parts. The Case of the Golden Idol was a random recommendation I really really enjoyed.

Unfinished & Abandoned

I'm pretty quick to drop a game that I'm not enjoying -- my backlog VS games time is wildly unbalanced, so if something hasn't gripped me by the 10 hour mark I'll usually move on.

  • Final Fantasy 15
    I got about 20 hours into this. I liked the party, the graphics, and the gameplay -- but the story and characters weren't big enough to fill the world it took place in. Also, fuck the frog sidequests.

  • The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom
    Breath of the Wild blew me away in so many ways, and I think may be a top 10 game for me. I don't like replaying games, however, and ToTK felt like just that -- there wasn't enough new, and I bounced off out of boredom after the wind and water temples.

  • Final Fantasy 5
    Loved the simple job system, music was great, but by the submarine I was getting sick of the random battles and the thin story. I put it down to pursue other titles.

  • Rain World
    Too stressful to enjoy for me!

  • Cassette Beasts
    Wanted to get into this one: godot-made, indie pokemon, what's not to love? Alas, it never stopped feeling too loose to me; like the game was about to fall apart any moment. I don't know how to put it, but it kept me from getting invested.

  • Disco Elysium
    On paper, I love this game. I own it on multiple consoles, I've started it like 10 times, but I can not get into it. I love everything about this game except actually playing it.

Project Progress

I had a couple of successful projects this year, though all have been small:

  • Zig X Tic-80 X Aseprite layers-to-parallax converter
    A bit of a special use case, but got me a little more familiar with all 3 tools

  • Local Hosting of Blog
    I moved my blog off of Netlify and got some Proxmox + Cloudflare-for-DNS thing going, so now my site is running off a little local server and way less reliable

  • Pixel Art Headers
    Alright this one isn't done but I've started making pixel art headers for my blog posts about books or games. I've been updating some of my older posts from the year with the art, and it's been helping me get better at pixel art!

I also spent some time exploring Gameboy Studio, Blender and LSDJ -- none of which yielded anything worth showing off, but I'm happy to slowly accumulate relevant skills.

I wish a had a bit more to show than this, and but I've also been spending a lot of time working on concepts and stories for 3 larger projects I expect to take several slow years to finish.

Moving into 2024

I ended up purchasing a lot of new games this holiday season, as well as some devices to better enjoy more of my retro backlog. I'm hoping I can spend more time with the hobby in 2024, as I really enjoy both the entertainment and artistic aspects of the medium.

I struggled this year a little with the idea that I may never be capable or inspired enough to produce the content I want to -- having 2 weeks of holiday to relax has showed me that a lot of that feeling comes from work pressure, as I've felt very optimistic during my break.

Work's back in 2 days and I'm sure I'll slip back into doubt at some point in the work year. I hope leaving this post here helps to remind myself to balance work with my personal goals.

I hope I can publish at least 1 or 2 small games next year as well, as I believe I'm sufficiently equipped to produce some game-jam quality games. I need to get out of my head and stop waiting until I'm "good enough" to produce something I think is great, and just make some stuff for fun.

Here's to the next 365 days!