2022 was an… interesting year to say the least. Personally I'm not that sad to see it end, but I thought it would be good to recap the past year and give an overview of what I managed to accomplish.

For anyone interested, here’s the stats on my released projects now.

As you can see Stalewater is still far and away my most popular game, though Mons Badonicus has been steadily getting downloads to the point of being in the most collections now. Maybe I should revisit that project again sooner rather than later.

From the outside looking in, 2022 ended up being a relatively quiet year on the game dev side of things for me. I participated in only a handful of jams, put out a couple patches for past projects, and released only one new game. In my devlog covering 2021 I did say 2022 was going to be a year of quality over quantity, and I think that generally held true, though slightly unintentionally.

I got some good IRL goals out of the way, started working out again somewhat regularly, and tried intermittent fasting the past couple months. Between the two I finally managed to get back down to below the weight I was before Covid, and I'm slowly building muscle mass back up.

I did some voice acting for other games for the first time, in my friend Tofu Sheets Visual's game Chance It!. It was fun but I admit it feels surreal hearing my voice in a style of games I rarely play and don't develop for, especially since it was mixed in with people who regularly do VA work. The game turned out quite nice though, so if you enjoy visual novels I recommend it.

Anyways, onto the detailed breakdown of the year.

January – February: R&D, Out of Order Work

The year started off much the same way it ended for me. I spent a fair bit of time playing some video games, partially for fun and partially for researching ideas for my own games. And surprisingly the research did end up coming in handy later in the year.

On the dev side of things, I spent a lot of my time reworking the inventory system, which changed everything to be an instance of an item rather than directly reference an item itself. It sounds incredibly stupid in hindsight, but if you had two of the same item in your inventory, a change to one of them would change both (that includes ammo count, UI rotation, modifications installed, etc.).

I also worked further on various AI features, like the ability to dodge, jump, switch weapons, and perform jump attacks. You may recognize this feature from a recent game of mine.

If all goes according to plan, these changes should be included in the Out of Order sequel.

March: Sub Mortis Update

Almost a year after I submitted a build of the Sub Mortis prototype for the capstone project of my CS degree, I finally decided to take the time to fix up the full demo and post it on itch. By this point I not only had feedback of the demo from friends who played it, but I had also published Stalewater and Mons Badonicus, which had vastly improved versions of some systems I first created for Sub Mortis. Most notably the behaviour tree for AI and more customization for various game settings.

So before releasing the updated demo I took the time to fix some bugs, clean up the monster AI’s behaviour tree, spruce up the UI, improve some of the physics interactions, improve the audio balancing, and add more options for volume levels. I’m glad I made these changes before the release, because they’re far more representative of my vision for the game than the original demo was.

I timed the release so the demo came out during an Improve My Game jam, so I could get extra feedback. In my experience I only ever got a couple comments on my submissions to that jam, but luckily this time I got a whole bunch of useful info.

Seemingly everyone who played the demo agreed I managed to capture a good creepy atmosphere filled with tension, some describing it as almost feeling like Half-Life in a weird liminal space kind of way. The notes and emails that can be found by the player throughout the world were also praised for not being overly dramatic or flowery as could be found in audio logs or notes in other horror games. The music was warmly received, not many people mentioned it, but I think the fact that it wasn’t mentioned as distracting or horrible is a complement in and of itself. Players also noted the phone UI was easy to navigate but looked kinda bland in some areas.

Sadly, not all feedback was positive. The most depressing fact I discovered in reading all the feedback is how horribly designed the demo is in certain aspects.

The stealth mechanics aren’t properly introduced to the player. The hint popups explaining the player has light and audio visibility levels show up at the very beginning of the demo, but sneaking isn’t required until the very end of the demo. In fact, several players mentioned they were completely unaware stealth was even an option. This combined with the monster’s introduction being a bit too subtle led to many players being seen and killed by the monster right away. To date I don’t know of anyone who has reached the end of the demo without dying.

There was actually one really weird death I watched on a FunBaseAlpha stream, where they managed to keep the monster locked in the room, but still ended up being killed. I made a short video to explain why it happened, because to the streamers it looked like they died for no reason.

The physics interaction still has some issues to iron out. Holding objects freely is still incredibly awkward, currently held objects rotate around a fixed point rather than where the player grabbed them, and they don’t maintain a constant distance from the player if the player turns left or right.

The phone’s functionality isn’t fully utilized in the demo, there’s no inventory organizing required, the camera is only required once, and there isn’t much reason to look at the objectives or notes. One response even suggested that the phone UI was unnecessary and a more traditional interface would be better. Frankly this suggestion is understandable from the players experience, but it also goes against almost everything I’m trying to achieve in making the game as diegetic and immersive as I feasibly can. But the fact that it was suggested I scrap the phone mechanics I think speaks volumes to how poorly I used those systems in the demo.

The feedback forced me to think more about design in my games, which is a theme that continued through the year. Currently Sub Mortis is on the backburner, I’m hoping to resume work in 2023, but that might be pushed back by Out of Order. I’ll be starting fresh with a new project using the systems that have been polished through Stalewater, Mons Badonicus, Thesmothete, and hopefully Out of Order. Most importantly, the next version of the game will have a save system, a feature requested by almost everyone.

Even though it will take some time for the next demo to come out, I think it will be a massive improvement over the current one. I’m still intrigued by the possibilities of what I could do with further experimentation of the game’s mechanics, and if done right the final product could be a great little horror adventure.

April: Cancelled Dungeon Crawler

After missing the 2021 Dungeon Crawler jam due to my work on Sub Mortis, I decided to participate in the 2022 jam. I wasn’t fully confident I would have time to submit, so I used the jam as more of an excuse to try out some newer stuff in Unity. Specifically, I upgraded to Unity 2021, made a working WebGL build, implemented a grid-based first-person controller following a YouTube tutorial, and most importantly I tried out Unity’s new Input System.

It had been a goal of mine for years to let players rebind controls in my games, and from my research it seemed like a much easier feat to achieve in the new input system. I spent a couple days changing my inventory system and grid-based player controller to use the new system, and though there were some definite growing pains it also gave me a good excuse to clean up some old code.

All this time spent on upgrading old systems however meant that submitting for the jam was a lost cause. Once I realized this, I started up a new project, changed the new code for a more general FPS and went back to working on ideas for Out of Order.

May Part 1: More Out of Order stuff

Once I had the new project setup with the changes from the failed dungeon crawler, I decided to try my hand at improving my modelling and texturing skills. I decided to start small and with something that I knew I could make good use of once I’d finished it. So naturally I started by making the new and improved pistol model for Out of Order.

I still don’t think it’s amazing, but it looks better than it used to.

(Yes this is what the original model for the Out Of Order pistol looked like in 2019)

May Part 2: Stalewater Update

In May I decided to take advantage of the upcoming Improve My Game jam to address some issues I noticed with the last release of Stalewater. Mostly just minor stuff like moving a hint trigger, changing an incorrect control listing, and some better audio mixing. Another small but noticeable change was the increased health for the dummies at the shooting range, as someone pointed out you could no longer witness the dummies’ beautiful running animation.

The biggest change is to the final cutscene, which I made to give a bit of a bone to fans awaiting a sequel. I won’t spoil it here, so you’ll have to play it to see what it is.

Much like the other games I updated this year, I think Stalewater is now as updated as I can realistically make it without completely changing it (again). So, v2.1 is likely the final patch for the game.

If you haven’t guessed from the theme so far, I also spent a fair amount of time working on more Out of Order and general combat sandbox stuff.

June-July: Ja Wizardman Video & Update

Since I enjoyed making my video on Out Of Order, I decided to make a similar video for my second game Ja Wizardman. The major difference is this time I showed off and discussed a bunch of cut content and features, which I never had a chance to talk about before. It was especially interesting seeing how I have implemented several of those cut features like stealth, magical powers and takedowns, in later projects.

I don’t plan to make another video as lengthy as this one, but the amount of editing that went into it gave me some more good practice. I hope to make more videos on my games, but for the short term it’ll probably be more short clips or trailers.

Alongside the video, I also released what is almost certainly the final patch for the game, making the Federal Legion questline possible to complete. I think Ja Wizardman is still my most interesting game to examine, but its also the most painful to actually play. I’m not sure the update will bring in many more players, but it gives me some peace of mind and allows me to put the game to rest once again.

August: So Bad It’s Good Jam & Thesmothete

Once again, I participated in the So Bad It’s Good jam, and thankfully managed to submit my one new game this year (even if it was a day and a half late).

And as an added bonus I managed to have myself or my work show up in 3 other entries, which was cool but surreal. I did some more voice acting for Tofu Sheet Visual’s entry (Un)DETECTED, my username and icon appeared in CYBERHAX II: DEUCE, and one of my characters made a surprise appearance in You did WHAT?!?! with my salad? [LEAKED ALPHA BUILD].

As I mentioned last year, I wanted to really focus on improving combat and just making the gameplay feel good. So, in the months leading up to SBIG, I played a lot of fast-paced shooters like Necromunda: Hired Gun, Doom Eternal and its DLC, Quake, Northern Journey, Cruelty Squad, and even the leaked 2001 build of Duke Nukem Forever. I took some of the ideas I liked from those games I thought I could implement during the jam and combined them with a couple new ideas I came up with. Some features I had already implemented in previous projects, such as climbing ledges, slowing down time, and having AI using NavMeshLinks and jump attacks. But I still had to go through the paces of updating and integrating these past features in a somewhat clean way.

The big thing I thought would be funny though was to have weird Lynchian cutscenes between levels, so you have the contrast between fast-paced wacky boomer shooter action and slow, eerie dialogue scenes. The biggest source of inspiration for the cutscenes was Pathologic 2, which is quite frankly an amazing game, but also a very weird one. This combined with the dark surrealist elements and creepy, disgusting visuals of Cruelty Squad gave birth to what became Thesmothete.

I can’t overstate how worried I was that Thesmothete would be boring. I thought the enemies might not be weird enough, the cutscenes too dry, levels too bland, or God forbid the combat feel too much like Stalewater!

Fortunately, I managed to implement my stew of ideas in such a way that most players really enjoyed and Thesmothete ended up placing 2nd of 41 entries. The combat was praised, and players found the game weird and fun, and that’s all I could really ask for in SBIG. The game still had several issues, but for the most part it didn’t make the game less enjoyable for players. In patches released since I’ve been able to remedy most of these issues.

I’m really pleased with how Thesmothete turned out, and I managed to stick to improving on many of the weak points of my past entries. I managed to make combat better than functional, but still managed to include stupid cutscenes, bad voice acting, and silly walk cycle animations. Someday I’ll probably go over it in more detail, likely a video similar to what I did for Out Of Order and Ja Wizardman. I have quite a lot to say on how I made the game and what I learned from the player feedback, and I genuinely think some of it could be helpful for other devs.

I mentioned in my 2021 review how even if I never released the Out of Order sequel, the knowledge and skills I built up and the improvements/additions made to various systems could be used in other projects. I think Thesmothete is a prime example of what I’m able to achieve after all that work, and its why I’ve decided to continue working on it in ways I’ll explain later.

September Part 1: More Video Editing

Since I wanted to try more video editing but was exhausted from the last long-form video, I decided to try something I’d been wanting to do for a long time. Attempt to make a half-decent trailer for one of my games. Thesmothete had just come out and I figured was the best suited for a somewhat short trailer. I spent a lot of time editing the music and video to sync up, and sadly it falls out of sync in the middle, but for a first attempt at a trailer I’m just happy it isn’t too long and dragged out.

I hope to try doing more trailers and get more practice at editing, it’s fun once I get into the groove of it.

September – December: Thesmothete Expansion Pack

After I finished Thesmothete’s first few patches, I immediately set to work on making new features for an expansion. Thesmothete is frankly the first game I’ve made where I felt the core gameplay was fun and juicy enough that it provided a solid foundation for future content. Since the game was a level-based shooter and was heavily inspired by Quake, I decided to try an old school style expansion pack with more polish and a bit more stuff.

Some of the features and fixes planned for the expansion appeared in the birthday gift and 1.4 patches, with the end level stats screen, memory leak fix, AI aiming and navigation fixes, and some general polish. There’s plenty more planned, some of which I’m sure will be interesting, others might honestly just be some stupid ideas I wanted to try because I didn’t think they’d fit in any other game ideas I currently have.

Sadly, I didn’t finish the Thesmothete expansion in time for the end of 2022. A major reason is just the fact there were so many aspects I wanted to improve and build upon. And since many of these aspects are planned to be further used and explored in later games, I want to ensure they aren’t too hacked together.

The other reason is that I wanted to relax during my vacation, so I decided not to really push these past few weeks. I had my fill of crunch with the initial release of Thesmothete.

The good news is that the new features I wanted for the expansion are basically complete, the most complex ones are certainly as finished as they are likely to be without player feedback. The major task now is to make the levels, I’m about 70% of the way through making the first level, and I’m planning for there to be 3 levels total. I think the level I’m working on now is better than any of the levels currently present in Thesmothete, and since I’ll likely improve with each level, I think the expansion pack levels will be noticeably improved from the original game. My cautiously optimistic estimate is the expansion pack will be released either at the end of January or the beginning of February.

Plans For 2023

I plan to have multiple new games released next year, and I don’t see any of that being sidelined by updating past projects as they’re already updated as much as they feasibly can be or are just simply too out of date to bother. Thesmothete will likely receive a patch or two after the expansion is released, but after that I think its all new stuff.

The Out of Order sequel will be my priority after the Thesmothete expansion is released. I already have several key features implemented, and as you saw earlier some weapon models are about as good as I can make them currently. Some of the ideas I got to try out in Thesmothete, so I’ll be able to carry over both the lessons learned and in some cases the code to Out of Order. There are still some additions I’d like to make to the combat sandbox, but that list is far shorter than it was at the beginning of 2022.

The gameplay will be slower paced compared to Thesmothete, but more polished and hopefully more enjoyable. Thesmothete was great for trying out ideas and pushing them to the extreme (for my games anyways), like enemies being able to dodge, jump and move across platforms, launch into jump attacks. Out of Order will have a lot of these same ideas, but in a far less janky fashion.

Considering how long Out of Order has been in development so far, I’m projecting for a late 2023 release. It could be out sooner than that, but I’m accounting for touching grass, playing other games, and participating in game jams. I truly plan and hope to finish it this year, and the design doc I have for it now has helped me narrow down the scope, so I'm not worried about it balooning too much. Oh and I'd love to start on that melee focused remake project I mentioned last year, but that might either slip or just not get released publicly.

On the topic of game jams, I’d love to do more this year, but we’ll see how that pans out. I will definitely attempt SBIG as per tradition, and hopefully I’ll actually submit on time this year. I don't think I'll try something combat focused in SBIG, simply because I don't think I could ever top Thesmothete, so hopefully "excessively non-violent" get chosen as the modifier. The Dungeon Crawler jam is another I’d love to try, having missed it the past 2 years. I also plan to make use of Improve My Game jam to further development on my games and encourage me to work on them.

If 2022 is anything to go by though, I will at the very least get through some of my major goals, but how I get there is anybody's guess. Happy New Year and thanks to everyone who read this far, I hope 2023 is good to all of us!