2026 Plan

Welcome to 2026!

For the start of this year, I'm following tradition of adding to my yearly art image. It's getting quite big so maybe I should chop it up at some point, but here it is:

In this post, I'll build off of what I talked about in my previous 2025 recap post. So you can read that post for the full context before this. As usual, this one's a text-heavy post so not really any visuals beyond this point; just thoughts and plans.

Recap

Last year I focused a lot on scoping down and taking a step back, and I think it really worked out well for me. I mainly missed not writing as many Eventures or working on The Nays as much as I hoped. My plan is to mostly work off of the same framework as 2025 for 2026 though.

I usually have a lot of goals for the year, but this year leads into a 2-year goal I'm aiming for...

Game Project

I've previously mentioned that my brother and I are thinking about remaking our GGJ project, The Note Competition, and entirely retheming it. With this in mind, I really want this project to be at the forefront for the next year or two. This means all other projects would be more supplementary to meet this goal.

I have a detailed plan in my personal Google Docs/Notion pages, but essentially by the end of this year, I want to have a Steam page with the demo of the game live. And then the goal would be to release the full version of the game by the end of 2027.

To meet those goals and my dream of finally having my own game on Steam, I'm going to incredibly scope down all of my other projects and limit the types of goals I have outside of this so it can be attainable and not too stressful.

This means The Nays will be on the back-burner for a little bit longer. Obviously I'll still work on it as I have been, but I imagine it'll be closer to last year or the year prior in terms of how much I actually accomplish because of this.

 

2026 Goals 

With all of that in mind, here are my 2026 goals:

• Write 2 together Eventures and 1 solo Eventure.
• Create 2-3 Twines.
• Develop some kind of mini-solo game project (scoped down).
• The Note Competition Remake Progress:
• Create a playable demo.
• Create a Steam page and upload the demo to Steam.
• Attend GDEX and present the demo at a table.
• Stretch Goal: Finish most of the full game for version 1.

I know this may look like a lot and I just said I'm scoping down, but I don't think it's unreasonable. My goals for The Nays are about equal to what I did last year, if not a little bit less.

And then for my mini solo project, I'm envisioning something that doesn't take longer than 1 month. If the RPG Maker Game Jam runs again, that would fill the slot for this. Otherwise, it could be something else I come up with that's very small in scope.

Lastly, that brings me to The Note Competition remake. If I want to showcase this at GDEX, that would mean finishing the demo by September or October. With that in mind, I could spend the rest of the year after that on refining the game and hopefully having something that's mostly there with the core mechanics. That way I can spend 2027 focusing on the playtesting and polish phases more so it can be released by fall that year.

Because this is a collaborative project with my brother, it really will all depend on how much time we both have and if this lines up, but it's something I really want to do. I've been slowly picking away at ideas for this game the past couple of months, but I really want to seriously start working on it this year to get it in a finished spot and turn it into my first real big commercial project on Steam.

So that's it for my goals this time. These are definitely some of my most text-heavy posts, but I like to reflect on where I'm at because it's a core part of my creative process to hold myself accountable and measure my goals. I hope next year at this time I'll be able to report where The Note Competition remake is at (and what the new title even is). Thanks for reading this post and sticking with me while I figure this all out!