Happy New Year!
If you're new here and have no idea what this post is, at the turn of the new year I like to take a moment to look back at the past year and celebrate all the good things that happened over the course of the year. Despite my development cycle slowing down, there's been a lot that happened in 2023, most of it good things.
Starting with my Patrons. From those of you that just dropped a dollar or three and left to the V.I.P.s that form the backbone of my funding, I am well and truly humbled by your generosity. The year started with over a year of barely making enough money to pay for a meal or two, and support has grown all the way to the point of being able to pay a bill or two. I still have a long way to go before I can be considered to be making a living off of the work I do full time, but all of this support still makes a huge difference. All of you have my utmost gratitude.
Speaking of making a huge difference, Maids & Masters joined a number of bundles this year, all of which I am quite comfortable in saying were very successful. I continue to be blown away by the generosity of people. While I only saw a small percentage of the money the bundles made, the one I want to call out is one that I didn't see a single cent of and happens to be the very first bundle I've ever joined - a bundle for the Turkey/Syria earthquake that raised nearly $2000, all of which went to charity. As exciting as it is to see the other bundles I've participated in reach even higher heights, it was really fantastic to see me and my little game make a tangible difference somewhere in the world.
On top of all those warm and fuzzy feelings, I feel I've done a lot of growing as a developer. At the start of the year, Redemption Harem's demo went public, which was a project that I felt was highly ambitious in terms of creating crafting and management systems almost entirely without the assistance of plugins. It's a little buggier than I'd like it to be, but I learned a lot in building it and have the knowledge to iron out those bugs given some time. More than that, it laid the groundwork for me to build the demo for Saccharine Soil. Saccharine Soil by itself is easily the most mechanically complex game I've ever made, using a plugin set that doesn't have a lot of documentation about how to use or modify it to turn RPG Maker into a real-time action game. Having that demo out in the world feels like a huge accomplishment, because it represents a lot of ideas that I'd been wondering if I had the skill to implement for a long time.
If that wasn't enough, there's also Precious Kouhai. That isn't quite fully public yet - only Patrons have access to the preview right now (though it will be available through the Winter Games Bundle soon) - but I've been meaning to learn Ren'Py for a long time. Now I've got a project in that engine, too, which opens up a whole new set of options and opportunities. I'm not totally committed to the idea yet, but I may start developing Precious Kouhai as a second project alongside Maids & Masters just for the sake of diversifying my work, but that's a topic for another day.
Back on the topic of opportunities, I had the immense pleasure of working with Bear in the Night (if you're not familiar, look up Lust Academy) on Lust Element as a member of the Night Icons team, and now I can say that I have work published on Steam. It still trips me out a little that I saw something that I worked on featured on the pages of Steam's VN Fest. If that wasn't enough, I've also joined Burst Out Games as a writer, and worked with Berkili to remaster the first chapter of his AVN, Companion of Darkness. And that's just the paying work - the number of other developers, writers, and artists I've gotten to known over the last year approaches triple digits, and it's been great getting to know them all.
I still have a long way to go to reach the point I'm trying to reach, but 2023 felt like a couple big steps in the right direction, and I can't wait to see what 2024 has in store.
No comments:
Post a Comment