Another year come and gone, and my what a year it has been. In 2022 I released only 1 new game, in 2023 I released 3!

Here’s the current stats for my games for those interested:

My new games are currently my least popular games, which is a bit disappointing, but I’m happy with how much I learned from them.

Something else I’m happy about is how much time I spent NOT working on games this year. I read several books (last book I read was in 2019 for school), got out for walks more regularly, started paddleboarding, continued working out, started playing guitar again, and I spent a lot more time socializing! Despite this, I still got a lot done this year, part of why I bother writing these yearly reviews is to remind myself how far I’ve come, and 2023 was jam packed.

I tried to make this years review less of a slog to read than my recent longform posts, so hopefully you find it interesting!

January-February: Thesmothete Expansion

The year started the same way it ended: playing video games and working on the Thesmothete expansion pack.

This time though I managed to privately release the first level as a teaser for the expansion, and it felt great to finally have SOMETHING played by someone else. The reception to this level was… mixed, to say the least. Players liked having an actual boss fight, but the Revolver Scope weapon mod and some of the platforming was found to be too unwieldy.

It further hammered home the shortcomings in my typical level design, mostly that it sucks. The level was very spartan, and despite the amount of time I spent on them they still look and feel very rushed.

February-March: Experiments

I needed a break from Thesmothete for a while, so I decided to try out a couple ideas I’d been meaning to work on for a little while.

The first of these was an attempt to implement stencil shadows (like those seen in FEAR and Doom 3) in Unity, which sadly only lead to me being confused and gaining only a slight understanding of stencils.

Lighting sample from FEAR (2005).

The second was my first attempt at developing for VR. This attempt didn’t really get that far beyond being able to use the Out Of Order pistol and the Thesmothete Boomer grenade, but it was a fun distraction. I would love to do more VR dev in the future but have no idea if/when I will.

Mid-way through March, I began following some tutorials and prototyping ideas for my second release of 2023...

April-May: Pits of Goremoth

As I mentioned in my review of 2022, I wanted to take part in the Dungeon Crawler Jam but didn’t have time to. This year, I did have the time… or at least I thought I did.

Pits Of Goremoth was my first true attempt at RPG mechanics since my cancelled Vampire The Masquerade project from 2021 (I ended up referencing some code from that one), and boy did it reveal my lack of knowledge in making stat-based RPG systems.

For more details on my thoughts on the game so far, you can see the postmortem I wrote a few months back here.

I was happy that I finally made a grid-based dungeon crawler, but I was equally frustrated that I couldn’t get more than one tiny introductory level working. I’ve worked on a couple levels since I submitted, and I would like to finish it in some form, but it would be only to put my mind at ease.

May Part 2: Space Flight Experiment

Much like my experiments in February, in mid-May I needed a break from working on my active projects. This time I decided to explore how to create a space combat sim. The idea largely stemmed from my interest in figuring out proper 3D movement, and potentially flying enemy AI. I also had some vague plans of making a Starfield parody called “Starsfield”, but that obviously never went anywhere, and I only finished some basic movement controls.

I might revisit it if the mood strikes me, but for now it’s faaaar down the list of things I wanna try.

June: Dialogue System Revamp

I’ve been using the same XML dialogue system since 2018, and it became more cumbersome with each project. The foundation of the system was shaky and limiting, and creating a conversation was tedious. So, I decided to start from scratch and build a system that allowed me to quickly create detailed conversation trees.

I won’t go in-depth on it here, as I’ve discussed this system in greater detail in the postmortem for my third release this year…

August: So Bad It’s Good Jam  -  How To Be A Hugh Mann

In late July that special time of year came around: the So Bad Its Good jam!

In 2022 I went full tilt on the combat, this year I decided to go the opposite direction and focus on dialogue. The result was How To Be A Hugh Mann!

It finished in 7^th place in the jam, A very respectable placement for a game that came together quite late. It also continues my streak of ending up in the top 10 every time I manage to submit!

Another fun little note is the town of Stalewater, the titular setting of my 2021 SBIG entry, showed up as the first level of the winning submission! You can play it and the other top 10 entries here.

I wrote up a postmortem that goes more in-depth about my thoughts on the game and the dialogue system, which I was quite proud of. But unfortunately, I won’t be continuing work on it for reasons I’ll discuss later.

September-November: The Big Switch

After the last update for Hugh Mann, I turned my attention to integrating the mechanics of my projects from the past year into a single game and refactor the code. This was never intended to be released, it was just a fun playground for me to test mechanics that could be used in any number of games.

I managed to implement some cool stuff, like dual wielding, automatic reloading, and various UI experiments. But it all came to a screeching halt due to a little announcement by Unity…

Yeah, like almost everyone else on the internet, I saw this mess and decided to jump ship. So, in early September I installed Unreal Engine 5 and started from square one.

My first goal with Unreal was to try reaching parity with the gameplay mechanics I had implemented in Unity. I started by trying to create a grid inventory system (I don’t recommend this as a starting point for anyone who hasn’t made one before), because I knew it would be the base component from which other mechanics would interact. I followed this tutorial, and it worked well except for minor changes needed to migrate it from Unreal 4 to 5.

From this inventory base I added a weapon system, health system, a container looting system, and even that quick loot menu I’ve been wanting to do for years!

My plan was to get the systems up to a point that I could release a small demo before the end of the year, but I ended up not getting far enough along for that. Instead, I decided to try tying up loose ends…

December: Thesmothete Expansion Continued

After spending almost 3 months working with Unreal, I felt a strange urge to finish the Thesmothete expansion pack. Partly to ensure the stuff I worked on sees the light of day, because I already have enough neat looking unfinished prototypes. Specifically, I wanted to show off the movement changes, weapon mods, and new weapon.

But I also came back to it to force myself to practice level design again. I still think the levels are underwhelming, but it’s at least something. It will admittedly be a bit rushed because I don’t want it to eat into my vacation and free time too much, so there is some definite corner cutting. If nothing else, I think it’s helping me eliminate my bad level design ideas so I can get to the potentially good ones.

And while Thesmothete has the best combat in any of my games so far, coming back to it after so long has made its shortcomings clear. I’ll discuss these in a postmortem on the expansion in the new year, so I don’t bloat this post further. But for an estimated release date I think it should be public by the end of January.

Plans for 2024

In the summer I had a vague plan for 2024 set out, but switching engines kinda threw that up in the air. I can carry over some of my knowledge, but I still must recreate everything I previously implemented. I’m not starting from square one, but I have taken several steps back.

It also raises the question of using different engines for different jams. While Unreal is incredibly powerful and I think it has already helped improve my FPS mechanics, I’ve found it a bit top heavy so far. This will probably change as I learn the engine, but even then, Unreal 5 could still melt the PCs of some players. Instead, I would like to try out Godot sometime in the new year, though I have no idea when.

My first goal for 2024 will be finishing the Thesmothete expansion. I would like to try finishing Goremoth as well, but if I do it will likely have some corners cut so it doesn’t eat into my other projects. A big reason for finishing these games is so I can get feedback on what I tried with them. So, I might take a massive L in terms of how they’re received by players, but I genuinely think it will improve my future games.

I definitely want to participate in SBIG as per tradition. I have some vague ideas jotted down, but I think the only important thing will be trying a less ambitious idea and submitting on time.

I’d like to join dungeon crawler jam again with a MUCH smaller idea, no RPG progression, and far fewer menus.

Overall, my biggest focus will be Out Of Order, for which I’ve been thinking of just releasing the levels as I finish them, sorta like an early access. As part of this, I’m hoping to release that previously mentioned test project in the first couple months of the new year. Because most of the mechanics are intended for use in Out Of Order, and it will give me some experience in releasing an Unreal engine game.

As a bit of a side tangent, playing Amnesia: The Bunker lit a fire under me to get back to my horror project Sub Mortis. The Bunker is basically a Penumbra game if it had a stalker-type enemy like the Xenomorph in Alien: Isolation, and Sub Mortis was basically conceived as Penumbra meets Alien: Isolation. It’s reassuring to see the idea can work, but it also prodded me to get back to work on my idea before it ends up looking like a cheap knockoff. I still need to improve in several areas to do the idea justice, so while I make no promise of an updated demo in 2024, much of my work in Unreal will be done with Sub Mortis in mind.

I mentioned in my 2022 review how I wanted to try some more RTS stuff, but I didn’t get around to it. After playing more Total War and trying Myth: The Fallen Lords for the first time, I’m tempted to try it. Mons Badonicus has worked its way up to being my 2^nd most downloaded game, so there’s some player interest there. With my engine switch though, the work would have to be restarted in Unreal or Godot. Which I think would be a good thing, as the setup I built for Mons Badonicus had major issues. But with so much stuff already on my plate, any RTS work is considered a stretch goal for now though.

For a major goal however, I would like to try making one small but polished game sometime in 2024. As fun as it is making janky ambitious games, I think it’s time I practice smoothing out the rough spots. Every game I’ve released on itch has several bugs or design issues, and it’s to a point where I’ve kinda gained a reputation of releasing broken games. I’d like to have that not be what my games are known for, at least the non-SBIG games anyways, so I want to address it next year.

This planned polished project would be separate from the FPS test project and would have a very small scope. Possibly a single room like the early demos of Sub Mortis. Something where I can spend my time making the game feel good to play, rather than just making the game playable. Also, I should credit my fellow dev XCVG for a good chunk of the idea. Since they pointed out how broken my games have been and suggested it would be cool to see what a polished game made by me would like. If all goes to plan, in 2024 we’ll find out!

2023 was arguably my most productive year since 2021 for game dev. With 3 new releases and an engine change, compared to 2022 where I released 1 new game and mostly updated existing games and worked on test projects. It’s almost certainly been more exciting for fans of my games compared to 2022, and I got to start a lot of different projects, but I’m disappointed at how little I finished.

My big goals for 2024 are releasing SOMETHING for Out Of Order, improving my level design abilities, narrowing scope for my jam games, and improving my ability to polish my games. If the past 5 years have shown anything, 2024 likely won’t go as I expected and I won’t hit all my goals, but it will be interesting…

Thanks for reading if you made it this far, I hope you have a happy new year!