2018 Year in Review – A Hectic but Informative Year

It’s that time of year again, that time after Christmas but before New Years… the time when we all try to hurry up and finish what we’re working on to finish one last thing before the next year… but, that also means it’s time to look back and see what was accomplished this year!

As Vast as the Sea was an entry for Ludum Dare #41. It follows Erita, a young woman who becomes lost at sea until she wakes up in Ogygia, an underwater world full of mermaids and secrets.
​

That Which Binds Us was originally a demo I made for IGMC 2017 and then extended into a full visual novel in Ren’Py. It’s my first fully commercial game and first game on Steam, so I’m pretty happy with it! It changed a fair amount in development to the finished product and I learned a lot from it’s release- a lot of which makes me more confident about Asterism.
​

I Saw Him Today was an entry for Ludum Dare #42. It’s a short, experimental and completely linear game about dealing with grief among other things. It’s one of my favorite if not favorite Ludum Dare entries I’ve made, and I wasn’t the only one to think so since it ranked #12th in Mood.

Crossed Paths:Connected Worlds ~ At First Sight ~  was an entry to Yuri Game Jam 2018 and a remake of my very first visual novel, Crossed Paths:Connected Worlds (which was made in 2014 for Ludum Dare #30. It follows mostly the same story as the original but with better writing, choices, art, etc.
​

I’d be remiss to only talk about successes this year, wouldn’t I? Well, I did release 5 complete games this year as usual (1 big release, 3 Ludum Dare releases, and one additional game jam release), and that includes Left Behind. While not a total failure, it’s certainly not on par with the rest for a number of reasons ranging from final exams to lack of interest. It was an entry for Ludum Dare #43, and follows a group of friends making a video about an abandoned mansion.I’ve thought about extending it some and adding more endings, but I’m still uncertain whether that would equal quality. Since MV doesn’t like to port to Android (despite claiming that it does) it’s hard to say if I’ll spend the time editing this when I could spend that time making an Android port for That Which Binds Us.
​

​Now that we’ve gone over what all I’ve released this year, let’s go over what my resolutions were for this year! (copied and pasted from last year’s year in review)

• Publish all the games I’ve started. Now, this one comes with a bit of a catch- basically, I want to publish something from every project I’ve started. I want to finish That Which Binds Us, upload the update for The Witch in the Forest, finish a side project, and upload a demo for Asterism (as I’m shooting more for summer of 2019 now). That sounds like a lot, as you also have to include all three Ludum Dare games I hope to make in 2018 and maybe other side projects, but I’m nearing completion on a lot of projects right now, so publishing 5~ games this year isn’t out of my scope at all.
• Get faster at writing. In 2017 I started writing much more heavily, and thus got better at it as I went along. In 2018, I want to focus on writing better and faster.
• Get better at marketing. Yeah, I’ve learned marketing is super important this past year. So, in 2018 I want to get better at it.

Publish all the games I’ve started. Haha…. yeah…….. I definitely did only half of this……… I’m not close to a full demo yet for Asterism, but I did publish a demo for Paths Taken! So…. close…….

Get faster at writing. I’d say this one was accomplished, since That Which Binds Us was around 60,000-70,000 words long and only took me around 4~ months to write it while the original draft for Asterism was only about 45,000 and took me over half a year to write.

Get better at marketing. I’d like to say this one is accomplished! This past year was a bunch of reading, studying, asking questions, and researching, and now I’m freelancing as a marketer for other visual novels. So, I’ve definitely learned a thing or two about it.

Now onto resolutions for 2019! There’s a bunch of small ones like “be more active in clubs at school” (which I already am, but I want to keep it up), “panel at my local convention”, etc. but here’s my main list for 2019:

• Publish Paths Taken and a demo for Asterism. This… is a big one. Paths Taken is currently about 60% done, with the route divergences being written and coded right now, so I’m hopeful we can have it ready around the summer. Asterism, on the other hand, is a very different story- the RPG sections are giving me trouble but I plan to, for now, code the entire game in VN style (as you’ll have the ability to pick between playing it as an RPG with VN sections or as a pure VN), send that to testing, and then finish the rest. There’s a lot of assets still needed so I’m very unsure of what percentage of the entire game is done.
• Market further. I want Asterism to be a success so once I’m nearing the demo stage I’ll be amping up my marketing. I’m really hoping to get it into some festivals and competitions as well as share it wherever I can.

…That’s really all I can think of as major goals go. There are some I’ve mentioned here that I consider “smaller” such as entering more competitions both at school and online and hopefully paneling at my local convention, but these are the main ones I want to work on.