Phew.
Of all the years, 2025 sure was one of them, wasn't it?
A massive wave of censorship, legislation passing to encourage and empower more censorship, economic turmoil, and so many more things that had such a broad and terrible impact on so many people - myself very much included - that only want to make their art and share it with others.
But despite all of that, it wasn't all bad, and these posts are supposed to be a celebration of accomplishments and the positives of the year, so let's get into that.
My financials are still, in a word, rough. The upside is that - despite the weird backslide that happened, where I'd see more supporters but the actual income would continue to drop - the actual number of people supporting me has continued to rise. It's genuinely awesome to see more people come in, especially since spending all that time developing side content felt a lot like spinning my wheels.
The other side of this, which most of you don't really see, is that I cleared out most of my client work. While it would be easy to view this as a negative because it's income I no longer have, the extra work had become a point of stress, and I feel the best I have since 2025 began having the freedom to work on what I want to work on rather than being blindsided by extra deadlines when I'm already putting myself under pressure to get an update published.
That's not to say all of my client work is gone, though. If you weren't already aware, I'm the writer for Divine Intervention, which also had its very first release into early access just before the end of the year. If this is the first you're hearing about it, you can check that out here. The public release for that prologue is happening soon, so if you want to get your hands on that, you can go join the public Discord.
The itch bundles are struggling compared to where they were last year, but they continue to be a highlight anyway. Just like I'm continuously humbled by anyone at all wanting to support my dream-chasing, it's truly inspiring to see people continue to support these bundles despite the international wave of censorship making it harder and harder for people to find us at all. It's been tough for a lot of developers, and it gives me a lot of sorely needed hope seeing people find their way to us and actively support us anyway.
Moving on to development, my plans for Maids & Masters obviously took significantly longer than I wanted them to, but I still managed to get v1.0 out before the end of 2025.
That, more than anything else, feels surreal.
Even if the work isn't quite done on MnM yet - I've already got a fairly lengthy changelog of bugs and other little updates and fixes for v1.0.1 - there were more times than I'd really like where it felt like I'd have to abandon game development entirely before I got this far. The fact that I managed to get to v1.0 at all is still settling into my brain as something that really happened, even though weeks have passed since I pushed the publish buttons.
Precious Kouhai obviously didn't get more than the occasional mention over the course of the year, but I think you're mostly okay with that. It's a practice project, and to that end, I think it's served its purpose well. I still fully intend to complete it, but being a practice project, it was always intended to be short, so I'm expecting it to take two, maybe three updates before it too hits v1.0, and then I'll have two whole games under my belt.
Not counting the games I've worked on for clients that are also finished now, anyway.
Looking toward the rest of 2026, I don't expect it to be any kinder than 2025 was, but I'm excited for it anyway. The poll that will decide what project comes next will be going up on Friday on both Patreon and Subscribestar for paid supporters, which is something I'm anticipating and anxious about in equal measure. There are already a few polls up for everyone that'll factor into that decision for everyone, so if you have opinions about what I should be doing next, go get some reading in and cast some votes and/or leave some comments. I really do want to hear from you.
I am extremely excited for whatever comes next, regardless of where the vote lands. The fact that I managed to get far enough to start on a second major solo project is pretty exciting by itself, but I've also learned a lot, and I've put some work into updating my tools and assets, so if you ignore PK and go straight from MnM to whatever I end up making, you should notice a pretty good jump in fidelity.
It's going to be a bit of a slow start after spending so much time burnt out last year, and I really don't want to repeat that this year. Even by accident, because I've discovered that when I'm excited to work on something, I won't actually stop working on it even if it's a detriment to my health.
Between that, and expecting this year won't be any easier than last year was, I think this is about where my attitude is:
2026 - have at you.
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