Back in April 2021, my friends and I decided to start a project where we would meet bi-weekly to talk about our projects and what we were working on... and that became tradition for our CUPdates project. We've been keeping up with it and meeting for 5 years now and made a big milestone to CUPdate 100!
While I usually take these CUPdates to talk about what I'm currently working on, I wanted to turn this into a rapid-fire recap of the past 5 years to reflect on projects I've made and where I'm at today.
My first CUPdate post started with a variety of projects and one of those being that I was getting into video editing more and updating my YouTube page. As a throwback to that, I decided it'd be best to start this out with a video that's ~100 seconds long to summarize the 100 CUPdates.
The first few CUPdates were honestly a mix of jumping around projects since I didn't really have a main project I was working on for the year other than Eventure Twines. Then, I spent about 4 months working on a bigger personal game project, Compass Nays.
For the rest of that first year, I worked on a few smaller projects on the side while working towards my bigger first Eventure Twine. So I created a short Unity project called Frank Hawk.
I also worked on our OC trading card game for a bit, including printing off paper prototypes and testing it.
And the final big project of 2021 was The Gek Eventure Twine. This was the start of my yearly tradition to create at least 1-2 of these. This one was one of the longer ones too!
In 2022, I officially converted all of our Eventures to Google Docs, which is how I pretty much solely view them now. I was drawing a lot more storyboard sketches of Eventure moments as well. I didn't know at the time that this would turn into my yearly projects too.
For the Global Game Jam, we created Prisoners of Time Fabric, which was also the start of fixing up projects after the GGJ ended. I worked on Compass Nays a bit more, but not a whole lot.
I was still hopping between projects like writing The Nays, working on games, and drawing. I wrote a lot of Eventures and worked on The Nays a lot in 2022. I started my monthly digital sketchbook drawings this year also, since I was trying to draw daily at that point. I did this for about a year or so.
I spent a month this year creating Spirits of Combination Village, my game in the IGMC game jam. This was what really spiked my interest in creating a solo game a year.
To end 2022, I created the Cimc Eventure Twine, which was the second one I finished so far (chronologically).
I started 2023 with some goals to draw more because I got Colors Live, so I was drawing on my Switch a bit in the first few months.
I was going through a lot of health issues in 2022-2023 and got 2 surgeries within a year, but I was still creating. I did the GGJ for 2023 while laying down mostly post-surgery, but we ended up making Tag World Roots.
In 2023, I started my yearly tradition of creating a project that I was documenting privately throughout the year because it was a Christmas gift for my brother. So those CUPdates weren't necessarily public until months later. This was when I created my GameBoy game, The Nays Origins.
This was also the first year that I completed 2 Eventure Twines by October. This was likely because my health was much better and I started these projects pretty much at the start of the year. This was really the start of my goals to finish projects yearly!
At this point, my years have started to follow the same formula in terms of yearly recap posts, goals for the year, Global Game Jam that has a few weeks of clean-up afterwards, creating multiple Twines, and creating another solo project. So for 2024, my GGJ project was Biggert City Battle Show.
And then began my yearly project: Nay Saga. This was one of the most ambitious and it turned into 15 devlog posts, so the majority of 2024.
In between, I did two Eventure Twines (The Night Kids and The Gek's Rival), and a very quick solo game jam. But these were all a lot shorter dev times in between Nay Saga, since that was my focus throughout the year.
For 2025, I did GGJ again and made my favorite game we've made so far: World Bub. It was more ambitious, but I really like how this one came out. And with our post-GGJ updates, it turned into a full game.
So after that, I made a mini project in Pixel Game Maker MV using the same assets to learn that software.
I also participated in the RPG Maker Game Jam, where I created #No_Hacks.
And I finished my 2 Eventure Twines earlier this year: The Gek's Favorite Eventure and Complex.Net Eventure.
During those other projects, I was also working on my yearly project, which was another card game: Escape From Tag World. It was mostly in the background until July when I was full-on developing it, but I did technically start it in December of the previous year.
I also took a break for a couple of weekends to work on some mini-games in Unity with my brother on a side project called Nay 50. We made 3 mini-games over 2 weekends, so they were kind of like mini-game jams.
At the end of 2025, I started a variety of game dev projects. This turned into my CUPdates throughout some of the start of 2026 when I was more ready to show the projects, like a creature collection plugin I was working on. I learned how to make RPG Maker plugins and was finally able to create some that I could use for my projects.
Then it led into our big 2026 project: remaking The Note Competition, one of our GGJ projects. So I spent a bit of time just updating and converting the project and that's what I imagine a lot of my CUPdates for the rest of this year will be around.
Aside from that project, we also worked on our most ambitious GGJ project to date: Macca Masquerade. Usually we spend a couple of weekends or a week fixing up our projects, but this involved at least a month after the GGJ before we were ready to share it.
Then after that project, I took a mini-break to work on an OC personality quiz.
And that's the CUPdates so far from 1 - 100! I usually do reflections at the end of each year, but I'm taking this moment to reflect a bit as it's almost halfway through 2026.
The CUPdates project has really helped motivate me to keep working on projects and finish things. I feel the pressure of wanting to present something to my friends each time, so I work hard to have something to show. At the start, it was really any project, but it's evolved into showcasing my larger projects.
Like I mentioned above, 2023 is really when I started to get into a rhythm and have been structuring my years the same way ever since then. While I really like the structure, I will admit, I've maybe started to get a little too ambitious in some areas, and could probably scope back a bit to avoid burnout. I realize that was when I started to do a lot more because my health was improving, but I don't want to go backwards by overdoing it.
So this year is kind of breaking some of the trends. I'll be honest, I'm not working on any secret projects really yet for this year, so I've kind of been taking a step back because of how intense GGJ was this year. And for our big game project, we scoped it out so the goal is to release it in 2027, which gives us more time. We're aiming for a demo this year, but I think that's manageable. If not, we can always change that scope or timeline if we need more time too since it's not super urgent or anything. I figured we can reassess once we get deeper into development, if needed. Until we're fully into development, it's still not clear how long we'll actually need.
Just looking back and reflecting on how many games I made in 2025, I'm starting to really connect the dots on why I should maybe slow down a bit and that it's okay if I need a break. Honestly I've felt a little guilty these past few months because I haven't been working on my projects really and I've mostly been taking a break because I've been tired. But I think it'll be okay as long as I can get this demo out by the fall, like we planned. Or at least figure out the scope of it soon once we officially start development and move past the pre-production phase. Outside of that, I'm really trying to keep it pretty low-key this year.
The past 3 years have had really intensive 1-year-long projects (on top of a bunch of other mini-projects!) so I think it's okay to put those on the back-burner for a bit until I'm ready to come back to something bigger. If anything, I'd like to give myself some space to do mini-projects that aren't as intensive when I need them, and really find ways to reignite my passion again.
I noticed for some of my longer projects that I did start losing motivation towards the end, but with shorter projects I didn't really run into that issue. And then on some of my longer on-going projects like writing The Nays, I don't ever seem to lose motivation, but rather, it unlocks passion within me that makes me fall in love with the project more every time I work on it. As it should be obvious by this point, I realize the longer I go without writing or working on the core story of The Nays, the less motivated in general on projects that I become. I do need to find the time to work on The Nays more so I can get some of that motivation back throughout the years to help keep my motivation going on these projects. It just always feels "lowest priority" because it doesn't have a deadline, but it's really what keeps me going.
I also noticed that whenever I do a mini-project, ranging from 1-2 days or under 30 hours, I don't seem to get burnt out on those projects, especially compared to my 100+ hour projects. So this is something I want to be open to when inspiration hits, so I can experiment and allow myself to work on something outside of bigger projects. This can help keep that motivation going throughout the year. I'm hoping to allow myself to be less rigid than I have been so I can bring the passion back into more projects outside of The Nays.
Generally, I'm realizing that with my schedules over the past few years, it takes about 3 months for the Eventure Twines and about 3-4 months for my yearly project. This means means those months that are solely (or mostly) dedicated to the project without a lot on the side. So the remaining ~4 months can be gap projects or working on The Nays. I also need to remind myself of which times of year are most busy. For example, my work is most hectic every year in April-June, so I really shouldn't expect myself to exert a lot of energy into my personal projects during those months. But instead, those should be my recovery months where I allow myself to just play games or do side projects without pressure on my personal projects if I'm already having a lot of pressure at work during that time. Same with November-December where there's a lot going on for the holidays. I've honestly been struggling with personal projects in May, and connecting the dots again, it's because of that extra stress at work. So I'm slowly allowing myself to take breaks and trying hard to not feel guilty about it.
So anyway, I know this has been a pretty long and reflective post, but it's something I wanted to do to make CUPdate 100 special. Huge shout out to my friends Jinny, Hillary, and Laura for coming along with me for the ride so far in our CUPdates project. They've been really supportive and listened to me rant bi-weekly about my projects, so I'm thankful for that.
I'm happy to continue doing this as long as we can, and looking forward to sharing more big milestones in the years to come!
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