Summary
2024 has been a busy year. With lots of updates pushed. Its once again been the best year to date for the little side hustle. While it doesn’t break even, I still find the work fun though 2025 is going to focus on games. With the tools only get worked on at times when I’m using them and need a feature or fix. Or any reported problems are serious enough for an update.
I’m currently working on 2 idea’s. I want to get both of them prototyped by the end of next year at the latest if I can manage that. At a minimum, there will be a single-level demo to play. I’ve already announced one project as Project Sakura. The other is Project Yukute which I’ve shown a little clip of on my personal Blue Sky account at the moment and is focused on a keyboard as the main input.
More on this later on….
The Stats
Like all the years before, this year has been another record year. Given the very little marketing done this is pretty impressive. The numbers haven’t gone through the roof or anything, but a little SEO here and there seems to have aided with the visibility of some of the tools I’ve released.
In recent days there has also been some decent growth on Github with the standalone Notion Data repo seeing some decent traffic since its latest update.
You’ll note Google Play is not listed this year. This is mainly as the platform isn’t going to be used in 2025 as they have decided to require all solo developers to show personal information publically such as my address. Something I’m not comfortable with so the store will likey close my account in early 2025 due to this. I’ll update the site to have a download for the Detective Notes app, so users can still get it should they wish.
I’m hoping to push for some games to be in the stats next year with the prototypes I have planned. More on these below:
Upcoming
An already announced project, Sakrua is going to get some development time in the next year. The idea is to prototype a single level or stage with some of the basic mechanics in place and see how it plays. The future of the project will then be decided.
A new project that is also getting a prototype in 2025. Yukute is a stealth game where the environment can be changed by the player pressing, holding & releasing keys on their keyboard. Like Sakura it is going be prototyped with a single level or stage, focusing on the main mechanics. From there the project will either go forward or be left at this stage.
Misc upcoming
As well as the game titles, I do have some left over bits from 2024 that I want to get released as well. These are:
- Audio Manager 3.1.x update
- A QOL update with lots of little fixes to the asset, both in functionality and GUI. Its currently about 60-70% done with the music management setup overhaul and documentation still to sort.
- The Cart 0.10.x update
- I’m already using this version personally on the new projects mentioned above and will be adding or fixing bits as I spot them when making the prototypes. You can already try 0.10.x out in the development branch of the public repo should you wish to. This includes 3 new modules and a load of backend improvements/fixes from the 0.9.x version.
- Save Manager Save Slots (Uncertain at present if it’ll be done in 2025 or not)
- I have a good idea of how to implement these currently. Its more of a backward compatibility concern that is halting development at the moment. I may end up as a 3.x instead of 2.4.x or whatever. This is mainly due to the save file not being a structured JSON file and more of a general lookup of values. The update would also support cloud save bits in the future.
- Continued support and bugs fixes on all released tools.
That’s all for this year in review, you can see previous years linked below. 2020 was on Twitter, so I may have to report that at some point xD
Previous years in review: