2025 is wrapping up, so that means it's time to think about how the year went and what's to come next year.
I usually start with a summary of my drawings from the year, so here's that:
And then this year I'm starting a new tradition... Posting my summary of games! It's not a game from every month, but this year it actually ended up being more than 1 game a month. This is just to showcase more of my focus in game dev:
One of my main goals of this year was to scope down and do less. The fact that I developed 15+ games might not sound like I scoped down, but to be fair, 6 of those were for work and I included 2 of my Twines in here. So just a lot of mini projects instead of big projects! I'll talk more about these projects as I walk through my detailed recap of the year:
Recap
With Clockify, I can also view how much time I spent on my projects per month and which projects were worked on in which months. I took these screenshots in late December so some of my projects from December weren't tracked here, and I did edit the screenshot below to also show December 2024 when I started tracking Escape From Tag World so it'd be more accurate to the projects I'll talk about in this blog post (~28 hours not accounted for in the graph above). As you'll see here, January and August were my most productive months with March and April close behind. And June, October, and December were the busiest in my personal life, so had the least amount of project time.
Month-by-Month Project Summary
If you remember my recap post from 2024, you know that 2024 ended rough with being sick and burnt out. But that led me to coming up with my main project for the year: Escape From Tag World.
As my yearly projects sometimes do, this project started in December technically. And you'll see this theme come up a lot in my projects, but I wanted to make something small compared to Nay Saga. So in December and January, I planned some of the initial rules, sketched some card concepts, put together some prototypes in nanDECK, and tested it out in Tabletop Simulator.
Outside of that, I also got an early start on my Eventure Twines. I finished the storyboard sketches for The Gek's Favorite Eventure and the ComplexNet Eventures, and also did the lineart on The Gek's Favorite Eventure.
My brother and I were able to write our first Eventure of the year, the Frank Lady Eventure, as well. So we were off to a stronger start on Eventures.
Leading up to the Global Game Jam, there was a trial period for RPG Maker Unite, so I tried it to see if it was worth using, since I hadn't used it since the beta. It still didn't feel quite right for GGJ, so I just made a test project and messed around a bit. I also edited together The Note Competition game dev vlog.
And then we made our GGJ project, World Bub. We kept trying to scope back for this one because last year we over-scoped. It was still a pretty big project and probably our most complicated one so far, but it was reasonable and we did cut some areas from the plan. We planned for only a few characters and also made the sprites a lot more simple so it'd be easier to fit into the scope. It turned out being my favorite GGJ project so far because I'd say it's definitely the most fun gameplay-wise. I spent a few extra days after GGJ updating it and doing some bug fixes, but didn't spend quite as long as I did for last year's project. We met for a day in February to do some final fixes beyond the couple of days the week after, but that was it.
After the GGJ, I was still inspired to make games so I decided to learn Pixel Game Maker MV. I've wanted to learn it and always stop halfway through the initial tutorials. So I spent a day on it and finally made a quick test level with my own assets. I reused assets mostly from World Bub, but was able to learn more about a new game engine.
Then I came back to The Nays. I was proofreading a bunch of Eventures as I read through them, and also writing some Eventure Trailer scripts. Trying to make progress on both of those goals. I also finished all of the lineart for the ComplexNet Eventure Twine and all of the base colors for The Gek's Favorite Eventure.
By March, I had finished all of the shading for The Gek's Favorite Eventure Twine. Then from there, they announced the RPG Maker Game Jam was returning for this year. It wasn't the most ideal time, but I decided to participate because I figured that could be my solo game for the year that I wanted to make. I knew I would be out of town for one of the weeks it was running, so I decided to spend a couple of days before the official start date just brainstorming ideas before officially working on the game. Once it officially started, I made some core mechanics and started making some of the functionality for the puzzles I had planned. By the end of March, I had the core mechanics, game loop, and story done for #No_Hacks.
The majority of April was spent finishing up the game. I dedicated about a week to the art and another to playtesting. Like I mentioned, I was gone for a week of this time, so I really planned and scoped around that so I could mostly be done with the game before I left and focus on the visuals and testing when I got back.
After the #No_Hacks was done, I came back to working on the ComplexNet Eventure Twine and finished all of the base colors. I also worked on a Google Sheets template for which characters are there for each Eventure so I could update that instead of a Photoshop file more easily.
In May, I came back to the Escape From Tag World project because I was making good progress on my other projects. I had a lot of travel, and worked a lot of weekends and overtime during this month, so I didn't have a lot of time to dedicate to projects. But with the time I did, I made a design for the cards that was more finalized and did a lot of playtesting. I tested in TTS but also printed the first cards and started to solidify the rules more.
At this point, I was really burning out at work, which affected my personal projects a bit too. In June, I was also doing travel for work, working weekends, and I went to the Origins board game convention. For Escape From Tag World, I really only playtested this month. I did finish The Gek's Favorite Eventure Twine though, including the trailer and everything.
In July, I really tried to get back into it and ended up getting a lot done on my personal projects. I finished the ComplexNet Twine including the shading on the drawings and the trailer. I also mostly finalized the card design for Escape From Tag World.
Then we wrote the SN World Eventure and did some drawings around it. This really motivated me to get back in the mood for The Nays. I had a period of time where I was really in the zone. I wrote the Forbidden BBW Eventure, rewrote the Aiml World Eventure, and planned a bunch of rewrites or new Eventures. I started going through and reading more of them and did some sketches and drawings from the Eventures too.
In August, I started to take a break from writing The Nays. We did a drawing activity with Mr Marcus World, but otherwise I went back to Escape From Tag World. I started to finalize all of the additional game pieces including the box, and finally making the logo and title of the game. I spent a lot of time on different iterations for the logo, box, and card backs.
During my week off from work at the end of August and beginning of September, this was the first time since 2020 that I didn't travel a lot during it. We wanted to keep it low key, so I got a lot of my personal projects done. I made the rulebook for Escape From Tag World and did the final printing of the game. I also finalized a lot of the game pages and Tabletop Simulator mod during this time.
Because I was pretty much finished with Escape From Tag World and I had a lot of time off, it really motivated me to start a bunch of new projects. My brother and I started a new project called Nay50 where we made three mini-games in Unity on the weekends.
The main project I worked on during my week off was starting an Eventure scene for the Bobolo River. I haven't finished it yet, but it was a project I spent a lot of time on. I wanted to focus on the visuals of a game project for a short cutscene from The Nays.
Then I did some video editing. I wrapped up my Eventure Twines with the video preview and started on a devlog for another GGJ project. I realized I hadn't posted gameplay videos of my games I've made throughout this year and last, so I recorded and posted those. I also started working on a game dev demo reel, which I fully edited together, but wanted to add a few unfinished projects to, so hadn't exported and uploaded it yet. I also attended GDEX.
And that leads me to October, where I originally planned nothing because the new Digimon and Pokemon games were releasing. So I just wrote descriptions for Eventure drawings that I hadn't posted online yet. And after I went to GDEX, I was inspired to start working on updating The Note Competition to RPG Maker MZ so we could remake the game, so I started that process.
Then in November, I really started working on a lot of mini projects because Escape From Tag World was done; I just made the how to play video and some social media plans. Otherwise, my brother and I wrote the Mr Marcus Eventure and also continued the event we started earlier around it.
And then because I was playing so many monster catcher games recently, I made a test project in RPG Maker and went down the path of making my own plugin. For all of the projects around this time, I was trying to learn plugin creation, so I was in the process of about 3 of them, but officially released one of them for The Note Competition remake. This was really a month of coding and hopping between projects.
But because I was working on so many mini projects and coding a lot, it did start to burn me out a little bit. There were a couple of weeks when I was having trouble focusing and I was starting to realize it was all maybe taking a toll on me again. The time between Thanksgiving and Christmas turned into mostly just Christmas shopping, prepping for Christmas, and wrapping up loose ends on everything I wanted to close out for the year. I also did more traveling around that time since I was actually not sick and able to attend our family Christmas party for the first time in 3 years!
After Christmas, I beta tested a plugin in RPG Maker, so I experimented a bit there. I also started re-reading Eventures in The Nays again, so it inspired me and led me to drawing and planning a bit. I started to get back into writing some of my Eventure trailer scripts too.
But with that, I'll transition into this next section.
2025 Goal Breakdown
And that was my 2025. Now I'll go through what my goals were last year and how I did with those:
- ✅ Write more than 2 Eventures (2 together, more than 2 solo).
- ✅ Create at least 2 Twines.
- ❌ Write most of the Eventure Trailer scripts.
- ✅ Create a solo game (either progress on an existing one or a new game).
- ✅ Make progress on game dev portfolio, updated resume, and/or game dev vlogs.
I'd say I did pretty good with 4/5! While I didn't focus quite as much as I had hoped on Eventures, I did write 5 total: 3 together, 1 new solo, and 1 rewrite solo. So I just swapped them and wrote more than 2 together and 2 solo (counting a rewrite). The beginning of this year and spurts throughout the year were The Nays-focused, though, which was good.
I also made 2 Twines and a little more progress, but still not beyond the 2 a year. I'm not sure if I will be, but I can stick with 2 for now at least!
The goal I didn't meet was the Eventure trailers scripts. I made some progress and wrote a few of them, but wouldn't count that as most of them. I might put this goal on hold and just continue to write them whenever I'm reading Eventures or complete the Twine for now.
And as you saw with my initial game image... I made a lot of solo games! So definitely completed this goal. I'd say #No_Hacks and Escape From Tag World are the ones that count the most towards this goal, but I did more, which was fun.
And finally, I did make progress on my game dev portfolio. I only edited 1 game dev vlog fully and maybe didn't make a lot of progress, but I did at least mostly edit the demo reel that I'll post next year too. It's a slow process and one I'm continually working on.
Final Thoughts
2025 truly was the year of scoping down. I made that general goal, and I really hit that and have been trying to hone in on it.
I traveled less than normal, and it really healed me to have that time and space back to myself and my projects for a break year. I still traveled and spent the night elsewhere at least 7 times, but they were spaced out and more manageable, so it really was manageable and a good amount.
I also did a lot better with my schedule this year. I planned ahead knowing when I would be traveling or when game releases were happening to really know that nothing should be planned for that time. And because I expected to do nothing, when I did do something, it made me feel good because I did more than planned.
Additionally, everything was meant to be smaller, like I said previously. Escape From Tag World was one where I limited myself to only ~100 cards instead of ~750 cards and I challenged myself to fit it into a very small box so I couldn't include a bunch of extra game pieces to over-complicate it.
Because I had a smaller year-end project, it also meant I had more time to work on smaller projects that I could hop between. This allowed me to work on whatever I was in the mood for instead of having to work on a project I was burnt out on.
I ended up getting a little excessive towards the end of the year when I had lots of little projects floating around though, but I at least tied up the loose ends and put them on hiatus as needed.
So even though I met most of those goals of scoping down, I didn't end up working on The Nays as much as I maybe hoped I would. But I'm glad that it was an improvement from the previous year. I made a lot more mini projects instead.
The collaborative Eventures was one where we exceeded what I thought, so that was fun! I also feel like in general I was trying to be more collaborative this year. Both in spending more time with my friends and more voice chat days with my brother. It helped keep me motivated and working more collaboratively on projects.
Overall, 2025 was a pretty good year! I'm glad I finally took a break. I feel more rejuvenated than last year for the most part, so it was a much-needed break. I'm looking forward to next year. Thanks for reading!
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