And we're back with part 2 of all of the games I've played this year!

Most people post their Game of the Year, Top 5 Games this year, Top 10 Games this year, etc...

I cannot simply choose one or two or ten games that I liked this year. Nor can I choose only games that were released this year because I never play anything in a timely manner. My list is backed up from years long since passed. I have determined to at least pretend to start some of those games I have in my steam library that have gone unloved for longer than I care to admit.

So I'm just going to list off Things I've Played This Year in order of broad categories from least-ish interesting to most-ish interesting. Hopefully, I don't leave anything out.

Anyways, let's jump right in!

I started typing up a post of every game I've played this year and then decided it was probably too long, so I'm diving it into two parts. Next part coming, uh... probably before the end of the year. I'm trying to give myself a little more time to finish/start certain games (and also to remember what other things I've played this year), so we'll see how that goes.

In the mean time...

Short or Incomplete Experiences

(in no particular order)



Despite not usually being full games, game jam games still have quite a bit of work put into them. A lot of them have some spark of imagination, an interesting concept, or just a unique feeling that I think makes them worthwhile to experience. Like reading a short story, maybe the idea hasn't been fully explored, but you can often get something valuable out of the experience anyways.

I thought I'd talk a little bit about some experiences that might go overlooked. This is just a short list of free, incomplete or short games and toys (about an hour or less in length) that I've played this year. Many of them may seem rough or unpolished, but I thought they were worth fiddling around with for various reasons.


• Monster of the Weekend
  A little monster raising game jam game. Pretty neat! At first it seemed like I might be missing something, but as you play and try different combinations of food to feed your monster, it opens up the world in different ways. Pretty cool.
• The Riddle of the Temple
  A sort of test made in Decker. Will probably take less than 10 minutes to get through it all, but very enjoyable.
• Silver Thread: Deux
  I thought Silver Thread was pretty good for being the dev's first game. It reminded me a lot of little games I'd download off of tumblr back in the day, where it's maybe not super polished or well designed, but you can tell the dev cared and has some interesting ideas that could be iterated on in future projects.
  Deux, like the first one, is not very long. I don't think the mystery is really that deep or interesting, but it's still decently fun to play though. I like the character interactions, and the art is quite nice.
• Post Memory
  Made for a visual novel jam. Also by the Silver Thread dev. It's about moving to a strange little town and delivering mail. It's also a little rough around the edges, like their other games, but I think this one is my favorite so far. There are certain little "glitches" that I'm fairly certain are there on purpose that unfortunately don't really add much to the experience in its current form, but I think it's neat to find them regardless.
• Carpet Gallery
  A "toy" made for Toy Jam. Not really a "game" but more of an interactive experience. You just wander through uh... hundreds? of rooms filled with "carpets". Kind of an interesting labyrinth to explore. I feel like it would be neat to come back some months later and chart a different path through there.
• Company
  Another Toy Jam toy. Plant flowers. Attract little guys. That's it.
• Tender
  Another game jam game (I play a lot of those evidently). Raising strange and alien plants while following the diary of your botanist parents who have disappeared on this foreign planet... A cute a sweet little story. Neat concept. Maybe about an hour long.
• FISH FEAR ME (demo)
  Despite being on the short/incomplete list, I think I spent about 10 hours playing FISH FEAR ME already. lol
  It's technically still just a demo but I would dare to say there is quite a lot to be done.
  FISH FEAR ME is... it's like... if SNAKE FARM (the developer's previous game) had tank controls--which is to say... chaotic. Haha. (Okay but hear me out though...)
  Like SNAKE FARM, it's a top down roguelike hoard shooter/bullet hell where you can basically control the difficulty of the game by summoning as many or as few enemies as you'd like. The player is encouraged to summon specific fish (increasing in difficulty as the game progresses and you get stronger weapons) to get currency to unlock better skills and equipment.
  I thought maybe I wouldn't like FISH FEAR ME from the outset because... tank controls... but it turns out the first boat you get is just crap and you quickly unlock more interesting and specialized modes of movement. I was hooked...
  Get it? It's a fishing pun...

Anyways, those are my recs to keep you busy while you wait for any games you may be receiving or buying for yourself this holiday period. All of them are free, so you have no excuse to skip out on them!

Ah, the best laid plans... ...Mine, specifically.

I haven't really talked about it anywhere, but back in October, I got mysteriously ill. I went to the doctor and he just shrugged and made a noncommittal noise and was like, "that's weird but you're probably fine." (I'm not though.) I had been having some sort of weird anxiety attacks (I think partially hormonal) and my blood pressure was super high, and I think it was spurred on by some other weird health problem I'd been having. As these things go, I kept getting sick (a bunch of weird episodes and then a cold and then more weird episodes maybe brought on by the cold?), but I think I'm mostly recovered now. I'm back up to at least 80%.

I had thought that being stuck in bed for a week would make it easier to work on the game jam, but it turns out, I couldn't even properly look at a computer screen for like, a whole week, which meant I couldn't do my work, so I spent the next week of FYG jam catching up on work. TT_TT That's not to say I haven't worked on my game at all. I don't think the progress I've made can be called impressive by any means, but in true Sydney fashion, I've spent some hours doing a bunch of nitpicky work to make stuff run "just so."

When I started it last year, I had thought that I would make something like a short visual novel with pretty limited mechanics game-wise, but somewhere along the way, I lost my damn mind and thought, "what if I made the game bits more fun? more aesthetically pleasing? more like other cool games that I have played and enjoyed?" Unfortunately, I guess I committed to this train of thought because that's what I spent the whole jam doing and I guess that's what this game is now.

In the 20 or so days I had to work on Nana Soup last year, it was more of a regular shop sim, where the inventory in your store could be used to make recipes to give directly to customers. The recipes were all set in stone and could not be improvised (except if you had certain items, like a cure-all that would basically be a one-time instant success). However, my initial vision had been that you could swap in other ingredients if you didn't have enough of the correct ones, but I wasn't quite sure how to implement that without coding in a complex system for substitutions (or a very shallow one that may not really feel good as a player).

The old and new recipe screens. there's some UI missing from the second one still.
Graphics still unfinished in general. The idea I had earlier this year--which I began picking away at on a whim, not really sure if I would commit to it--is what I've been working on for the past few days, where each ingredient has certain properties, and you must combine ingredients with the correct properties to make recipes. So instead of saying you need 3 aloe, 2 cotton, and 4 sugar, I would say the end result needs to be a soothing, sweet, soaked cotton ball, which could be made by combining any ingredients with those properties (though some would work better than others). The system is pretty simple. It just takes the top 3 properties of the ingredients you've combined and judges how closely you've come to the requested item. _{Well, it's a little more complex than that, but not very...}

The other thing I've been doing was learning about source control. I can't decide whether I really like it or not. I was doing it myself manually before by leaving large sections of commented out code _{(which is a pain to do in python by the way since there are no multi-line comments)} or saving multiple files like "fruitwheel.gd," "fruitwheel2.gd," or "fruitwheel2b.gd" with comments at the top of changes, bugs, and to do lists, which is honestly not that far off from how something like git works, except that I had to revert any changes manually and it's more difficult to compare files. I do honestly like that feature of git--the ability to compare files--and theoretically, if I ever used my other machine to develop games as well (or had other people I worked with), the online repository would be really useful, but I'm... a little unimpressed, I guess. Haha.

I don't know if it's just because sourcetree (the GUI i'm using with git) is not very good at visualizing things or I just don't understand how it really works, but I've been having issues with branching and reverting changes and also not accidentally overwriting my entire repository with the thing I didn't want to do that with. But perhaps I'll improve with time...

Anyways, I think I'll try to finish my most recent commission quickly to give myself a nice long holiday this year and see if I can make some good progress on my game (and hopefully not get sick). See you on the other side!

Stay fresh!

Also look at my newest dnd character. She's a lizardfolk cowboy ranger.
I haven't played her yet, but I love her already.

As some of you may know, I started working on a little game last year [tentatively] called Nana Soup.

The cover I made for Nana Soup last year. Unfortunately, it may have to change if I decide to change the title...

It actually started out as the prototype for a really ambitious project I've called Anachronic (working title), but when "Finish Your Game" Jam (FYGJ) came around last year, I thought I'd simplify the concept and make a much shorter game. I thought I'd do that, and yet here we are. lol

Heyo!

It's fall! Go jump in a nice crunchy pile of leaves for me!

There aren't any big trees in my neighborhood. ):

I've been on somewhat of a gamedev hiatus--just busy with work and social stuff-- but when I saw Toy Jam, I knew I had to jump into it. It's a jam where the aim is not to make a "game" but a "toy" (distinguished in the jam's statement as something with no win or loss state).

You can go check it out here on my itch. It's for download windows but is also playable in your web browser as long as you have a keyboard or controller!

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It's been a long time since I made something small and fun just because I wanted to. Also the first time I've really completed one of my little toys in Godot engine. I have a few others in the works, but keep putting them down for various reasons. My old code doodling program of choice was Processing (which I've been meaning to get back into, as a matter of fact). I have quite a few little interactive doodles trapped in some old code that I'll maybe port over one day...

I'm hoping to get around to finishing the animations for this little toy some time soon (but I've already spent too much time on it this week). Aside from that, I have a couple other little features in mind that I think would be cute, but I won't mention them here and curse you guys with thoughts of what could've been in the (admittedly likely) case that I don't finish them. >_>;

Anyways, I'll probably see y'all again soon, since I think Finish Your Game Jam is likely ready to jumpscare me around any corner. Maybe I'll make some good progress on Nana Soup (title pending) this year.

Stay fresh!

As you've probably noticed, it's 👻 spooky month 👻, y'all!!

I love October. I'm not sure why, but it always seems to be a busy month. It's host to some of my favorite online events of the year (in no particular order):

In addition to all of that, it's just fun to cozy up in a blanket in a dark room and read or watch or play something spooky, so here are a few recommendations for spooky stuff I've enjoyed this year:

A lot of things are happening in October! It's a busy busy month. I had kinda been struggling to find something interesting to write about, thinking that I'd try to write at least one blog post a week, and then October hit and now there's too much stuff to talk about. Haha

Shortbox Comics Fair 2024 is here! It's one of my favorite comic events of the year (aside from my beloved SPX), and runs from October 1st-31st. It's a curated event which debuts of over 100 new comics every year. (There are 117 this year! Wow!) It's run by just one person--which is kind of amazing--and is full to the brim with talent.

The comics featured vary in style, genre, and length. There are mysteries, ghost stories, slice of life, romance, trans-humanist stories, 16 page reads, 200 page epics, wordless comics, and much much more! Basically anything you could think of. There's a particular showing of "what if i was a robot and fell in love" and "what if i fell in love with a robot" or "what if a robot fell in love with me" themed stories this year, which I think is interesting.

As usual, there are far more comics that I want to read than I have money to buy. Hopefully, by the end of October, I'll have saved up enough pocket change to return and grab a few more.

Anyways, if you're into comics (or even if you're not) go give it a look! You'll probably find something cool and interesting!

---

Also, looking at all of those comics has really excited my comics brain and I almost immediately ran to start writing a short one. So maybe? Expect that? In the future??? Or something... If it doesn't happen in the next year, just give me a nudge.

So yesterday was the annual re-opening of one of my favorite little virtual spooky season traditions:

The Ghost Town Pumpkin Festival!

made and maintained by adamgryu on itch.io

It's a little virtual ghost town where the main attraction is carving pumpkins! As far as I know, you can carve as many as you want and place them around the town and see other people's pumpkins. You can also bump into anyone else currently active on the server as ghosts and play little games together, go on the haunted hay ride, solve the haunted maze, and take pictures!

Me and my friends gathering to take a quick selfie at the top of the tower at the end of the maze during last year's festival. It's honestly a very cute and wholesome little tradition that's pretty near and dear to my heart, and people make some pretty amazing pumpkins!! Anyways, if you're bored and have a few minutes to spare, I'd highly suggest checking it out and maybe even bringing along a couple friends. :)

The pumpkin festival is open until some time in November, so check it out while you can!

"What is a fun blog," I hear nobody ask.

Yes. Thank you for noticing. The original intent actually has nothing to do with actual english language concept of "fun," but we can all pretend it does.

Funwalker is my social media handle everywhere that I can get away with it. It's my very clever way of not having to fight 6 other people on the internet for the coveted "funambulist" handle.

You see, it all started long ago, when I was a wee Sydney...

I played Garden Story.

It's a cute little game. Not quite what i expected when I played the demo (however many years ago that was now).

I had assumed it would be an adventure game in the vein of The Legend of Zelda where you pick your way through the world fighting monsters and solving puzzles, but it's really quite different from that, sort of blending in management sim(?) elements (managing your towns by gathering resources every day, fighting off monsters, fixing broken things around town, etc.).