Annual devlog: 2025
Looking back on 2025, this was kind of a weird branching out year. Not a lot of puzzle game work, but a lot of other stuff:
- Meticulous Microbes update, with new puzzles and a little QoL
- The Musing on Metapuzzles blog series, and a ThinkyCon talk about it
- Safari Logic, basically a paper puzzle, for the Thinky Puzzle Game Jam
- Bow Bird's Mine Ride, a first PICO-8 project, for the GMTK Game Jam
- Check For Traps, a platformer, for Pizza Jam
- Energy Excavation, the one actually new puzzle game, for Confounding Calendar
The one interesting prototype I did was for the "Collector" Ludum Dare- didn't get anywhere puzzle-wise but I did find a bug in the version of PuzzleScript Next I was using, so it wasn't a total waste.
Some more thoughts below the link:
Of the longer-term projects I mentioned this time last year, the Meticulous Microbes update is the only one that actually came out in any respect. My secret goal with that was to give it enough content and polish that I'd feel good submitting it to Mystery Tournament, and I don't think I got there. I'm happy to have gotten something out the door, but I haven't really been able to buckle down and focus on any bigger game projects since then. The blog posts count as something bigger, I guess. I'll try to find some other ways to scope things a little bigger than a jam game.
Working with PICO-8 was fun, and Check For Traps came out okay, so I'd definitely try out non-puzzle stuff if I can think of ways to make it "me." Art's still a limiting factor for me, and is going to be more so for those projects- low-res pixel art like the PuzzleScript games is the most I can do on my own, and it's not exactly high quality. I could look into asset packs, or maybe even returning to text... Plus, I may want to find some more general gamedev communities- the thinky Discords are great but not as useful for action projects.