Year End: 2024

Another year has come and gone with its ups and downs. I've finished my last day of work for the year and already descended into hedonism, forgetting the civilized world and consuming a full party sized pizza to myself in the basement while grinding out roguelike games and generally being of no use to anybody whatsoever.

Note, this opening paragraph was written December 16th, and the hedonism has continued through until today.

I really liked writing up a year-end summary last year, so having finished what's likely my last book of the year it is time once again.

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Life

This year saw some medium-scale life changes. We moved from our temporary tiny apartment in the big city back to our medium-sized house in the medium-sized city (my parents were kind enough to rent it from us while they were between apartments!). It's an adjustment, but I think the pace of life here suits me much better. I think my partner craves more of the busy life, but it's more affordable here and we'll try to do a little more city-hopping to keep things fresh.

We got a second dog, which has been a little wild. I always saw myself as a one-dog person, but our one dog just has too much energy. A second dog to keep her company seemed like the nicest thing we could do for her, and it's overall been good! Definitely had some hiccups, and my first dog is a bitch from hell, but the new guy seems to be fond of her despite this. It's caused some issues with my siblings visiting with their own pets, but we're working through it.

My partner got laid off back in early August, and took the opportunity to visit their parents (out of country) for about 2 months. I got to spend a lot of time alone with the dogs and tinkering with hobbies, though admittedly my mind was mostly consumed with work stuff during that period. There was a pretty rough adjustment period when they returned, as we'd both become accustomed to very different lifestyles in that short two months!

For the first time in my life I'm seriously considering a future that isn't in Canada. My partner's always been flexible and adventurous and willing to move, but I've been static for much of my life. I don't know that I like the direction our country is slowly moving, or the way North America feels right now. I don't know that there's necessarily anywhere better in all honesty, but for the first time ever I'm willing to actually look around at potential relocation options within the next decade.

Hobbies / Projects

One of the first things I did this year was publish a demo for a TIC-80 game called The Tower of Einar . I'm really proud of the little demo and even got some feedback!

As simple as it is, I've had the idea (and a long list of iterative sequel ideas) for the game and its basic mechanisms for a long time. I never finished making the game -- in fact I don't think I opened the codebase more than once or twice since launch -- but I'm still happy with the product. I may re-implement it in a different engine (love2D or godot) after cutting my teeth and getting a little better at one of them, as I don't think I want to make the final entire game fully in TIC-80 and battle the fantasy console's constraints for a finished product.

I also spent some time publishing the rules for a standard-deck playing-card game: Duel of Nobels!

I picked up music this year, which has been massive for me. As a "Jack of All Trades" creative type it's always been the one trade that I couldn't get into, but I'm finally breaking into it. I even made a little music player for my blog!

I'm really enjoying the hobby's various aspects -- I'm learning piano, Bitwig Studio, the Bass Guitar, and dipping my toes into hardware synths and writing software tools (hardware synths will maybe wait until we're back to dual incomes).

I also had a good idea recently for a game. It's a smaller-scoped game than my ideas usually are, and I feel like this one's potentially an actually-marketable concept. Maybe. I've been polishing up on Godot and Blender (both of which I'm terrible at) to see if I can make this a reality. As with all my projects -- even if I don't get to the finish line I know I'll learn a lot along the way.

Games

It was a rough year for games for me. I think I dropped more games than I finished, and by the end of the year discovered I could no longer stomach my beloved RPG genre. With my dogs, job, and other hobbies eating up so much time, the inherent grind of (most) RPGs just ends up grinding my nerves. This is a pity, as it's been an amazing couple of years for RPGs and I've got a pile of them on my backlog I've been looking forward to.

I still got through some interesting and unique games, and found myself leaning into more puzzles and narrative games by the end of the year. I really do think 5-10 hours is the perfect length for a puzzle or narrative game, and most of my favorite titles of the year fell into that bracket.

  • Super Mario RPG (Switch) is a game that needs no introduction. Despite having an in-box edition for the SNES sitting on my shelf I jumped on the remake and finished it for the first time.
  • Paradise Killer (Steamdeck) is a batshit insane murder mystery on a shoestring budget.
  • Klonoa: Empire of Dreams (GBA) is a clever little puzzle platformer with perhaps the worst soundtrack and SFX I've ever heard.
  • Final Fantasy Tactics A2 (DS) is a tactical RPG that ate a month of my life with its perfectly addictive gameplay loop.
  • 1000XResist (Steamdeck) is a sleeper hit narrative pseudo-visual-novel about aliens and immortals and clones and chinese parents. It's really fucking good.
  • Forgotten City (Steamdeck) is a time-looping puzzle / walking simulator set in an ancient roman town. It was a random purchase and way better than I expected.
  • Disco Elysium (Switch) is a modern narrative RPG that makes some very innovative changes to stats and builds an intricate and detailed world full of derelict characters and places. I wanted to love it, but alas.
  • Animal Well (Steamdeck) is pretty well known already, but it's a little puzzle platformer done in a very unique pixel art style. It's a made-by-one-person masterpiece and has several layers of puzzle to solve.
  • Lorelei and the Laser Eyes (Switch) is the best (and most surreal) escape room you can get in a videogame. It's got terrible controls but it's worth toughing it out.
  • Balatro (Android) is a game I didn't write about because everyone and their mom has played it, but it's another single-person masterpiece about playing goofy poker in super satisfying ways.
  • Mischief Makers (N64) is a mediocre action platformer with a couple of amazingly memorable bossfights and a lot of personal nostalgia.
  • Children of the Sun (Steamdeck) is a puzzle game where you shoot all the cultists in the head with a single bouncy bullet
  • Mouthwashing (Steamdeck) Is a wildly surreal narrative horror game about horrible people in space.

The fact that two solo indie darling games came out this year and made it big feels significant. Animal Well was fantastic, and Balatro was a contender for game of the year next to things like Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth. A reminder that fun is such a key aspect of overall videogame enjoyment. The fact that a fun enough game made by one person in Love2D can stand toe-to-toe with a multi-million dollar budget remake of the most famous game ever gives me continued hope for games as art and games as an industry.

If I had to pick a single game this year to be my "Game of the Year", I think I'd actually go with 1000XResist. It was a completely unique experience that was filled with twists and surprises. I had several "holy shit" moments as I realized the connections within the story, and hope more people play it.

Tactics A2 and Balatro get special mentions for highly-addictive game loops.

I had so many abandoned games this year that I needed to put them in their own posts!

  • August:
    • Drilldozer
    • Pokemon Unbound
    • Castlevania Aria of Sorrow
    • A Space for the Unbound
    • Cocoon
  • September:
    • Sekiro
    • Void Stranger
    • Mother 3
  • December:
    • Solatorobo
    • Caves of Qud

Books / Comics

I feel like I got a lot of books in this year. Most were audiobooks I ingested while walking the dogs, but thats a decent chunk of overall time in the span of a year. This year had some amazing books.

  • Dorohedoro (manga) is a wild, violent, and finished manga about a lizard man and his pals trying to figure out who he is. It's got a lot of class war undertones and boobs.
  • Lord of the Rings Trilogy (audiobooks) is probably the most famous fantasy series ever written, which led to the most famous fantasy movies ever made. I didn't really enjoy it that much, honestly, as I've got no mind's eye so the lush descriptions of the world fell on deaf ears. Also Tom Bombadil.
  • Children of Time / Ruin / Memory (audiobooks) is a series about highly evolved non-humans. Spiders, specifically, in the first book, which may be the single best science fiction I've read in years. Books 2 and 3 were okay, but you should 100% read Children of Time.
  • Skyward Inn (audiobook) is about a mopey lady, her angsty teenage son, and her weird alien boyfriend and past experiences. I didn't like it at all.
  • Babel (audiobook) by R.F. Kuang is a wild industrial-revolution-era book set in Britain with some extra magic sprinkled in. It's like Harry potter gone wrong but also it's Oxford. It was great up until a point, then fell off hard and felt called in for the remainder of the book.
  • Snow Crash (audiobook) is a super famous sci-fi book that I just found way to cheesy to enjoy. I loved the setup, the exploration of language, and the predictive technology but wow. I've been convinced to give the author another try.
  • I am a Strange Loop (audiobook) is the first exploratory philosophy book I've managed to get all the way through. The author does a great job keeping things interesting as he meanders through his thoughts on what "I" is (with a lot of extra observations and ideas along the way). While I enjoyed it, I got a weird flavour about the author and picked up some elitism by the end. Still a really good read.
  • Chain-Gang All-Stars (audiobook) is probably the stupidest titles ever for a really really excellent book set in a future where death row has become a spectator sport. The book weaves facts about blackness in america with several perspectives from characters in the world, all intertwined. Truly excellent.
  • Someone You Can Build a Nest In (audiobook) is a random novel I saw mentioned on mastodon so I picked it up. It doesn't really stack up against some of the heavy hitters of the year, but it was a cute little monster / body-horror fantasy romance novel that made me smile a couple times.
  • Innocent / Innocent Rouge (manga) is a manga that fetishises the French revolution's executioners. It's got gorgeous art and inspired me to read up on the real accounts of the revolution and executioners, but besides that I'm honestly slightly ashamed to have finished it.
  • Tokyo Ghoul (manga) is a fairly famous manga about a tokyo filled with "ghouls" that look human but consume humans and have fancy fighting powers. It was good if you like fighting / action manga, but nothing mind-blowing. Honestly I had to look up my own thoughts on it as I've already forgotten much of it.
  • The Saint of Bright Doors (audiobook) is a very interesting fantasy book set in an alternate india with lots of interesting magic and religion mixed in. I really enjoyed most of it, though felt it ended a little flat.
  • Embassytown (audiobook) is my second attempt at getting through a China Mieville book. I almost quit, but made it thought. Great scifi, not-so-great storytelling as I kept losing focus through the first half of the book. It was pretty OK.
  • Slaughterhouse-Five (audiobook) is a mega famous book at the top of nearly every "must read" list. I don't read a tonne of literature but this was worth it. It's an objectively good bit of writing that's weird and funny despite being desperately dark.
  • Piranesi (audiobook) is a book by Susanna Clarke of "Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell" fame. I vaguely remember liking the other book and this one felt really magical -- both due to the magic present in the book as well as the sheer innocence of the protagonist. It almost has a Ghibli-like property to aspects of it.
  • (Took a break to listen to some history podcasts here, and also accidentally read the The World We Make by N.K. Jemisin without reading The City We Became first, and I don't think it's fair to review it since I missed the whole first book)
  • Amber 1-6 (audiobook) is the first 6 famous fantasy books from Roger Zelazny's Amber series penned in the 70's and 80's. The first 5 books weren't amazing, but had some cool ideas and a fast pace. I couldn't get through the second half of the series and dropped it at book 7.
  • System Collapse (audiobook) is the most recent book in the wonderful Murderbot series. The book doesn't do much on it's own, honestly, but I was glad to read more of the series and see they're moving forward with the story.
  • Chainsaw Man (manga) is a pretty popular and very gory manga that I think is about managing one's aspirations (and touching boobs)
  • Infomocracy (audiobook) is a "hopepunk" novel about a future deep into micro-democratic elections and the information conspiracies therein.

I feel like there were a lot of heavy hitters in there this year, and I got through a serious chunk of my "books I've been meaning to read" list.

I'd say the best books I read this year were probably Children of Time and Chain-Gang All-Stars. Both had my full attention at all times and did amazing things with their respective stories. Children of Time wove together one of the best scifi stories I've ever read and had me itching for more spider drama, while Chain-Gang blew my mind over and over with its fantastic narration and interwoven facts about black prisoners in america. Listen to them both if you can!

And with that the year-in review is ended. I didn't end up doing half the things I intended, but I'm satisfied where it went. I'm feeling hopeful for 2025 in terms of creative output, and while I've mostly abandoned my "pixel art covers" thing for the blog, I do hope to publish more art-related stuff here during the year.

It should be an interesting next 365 days.