Each year I write a post looking back at the previous year and talking a bit about my aspirations for the new year.
It’s actually incredibly insightful to take stock of what you’ve done in the past 12 months. When I start writing these posts I really don’t have much idea of what will be in them. I tend to begin by reading my blog posts over the past year. Its an opportunity to review and reflect.
Website
As tradition dictates, lets take a look at some website stats first.
9,334 sessions from 7,124 users
16,084 pageviews
Most visits in a single day: 250
The top 5 most popular posts were:-
- App development: The design document
- A beginners guide to iPhone game development
- Procjam 2014 – A Procedurally Generated Roguelike Using Phaser
- Getting started with Moai
- iPhone Game Development Toolkit
The downward trend of visitors continues albeit at a much slower pace than last year. I think I have to put this down to my reduced interaction on social networks and the like. I have to say that this has been purposeful and taking a bit of a step back from Twitter has helped me personally.
One heartening stat is the peak number of visits in a day (250) which, whilst not stellar, shows that a single article can still bring traffic if its linked to by another high traffic website.
Procjam 2014
I really like game jams. This is only the second one I’ve participated in (the first being ludum dare) but they are great fun. You have to get into a totally different mindset to creating a game normally. What I end up with is usually very basic but functional. Its nice to have a sense of achievement no matter how short lived it is.
Procjam was all about procedural generation and gave me an opportunity to try the Phaser JS framework. I’ll definitely pick this up again for game jams and prototypes.
A new website
It was finally time for another new website design this year. Once again I built my own theme but this time from the ground up. It’s responsive and a much better base from which to extend. There are some things I want to tweak and improve but overall I’m happy with it.
All Apps pulled from the App store
This was the big one and unfortunately not necessarily positive. I think when you post an App on the App store, you also have to commit to updating it fairly regularly to keep pace with Apple’s changes and users’ expectations.
Ultimately I made the decision that I no longer wanted that responsibility and pulled my 2 remaining Apps.
2015
Okay, I have a confession; I actually renewed my App store contract late last year having let it elapse a few months prior. My old Apps are still no longer for sale and I have no plans to re-instate them. They were great experiences but they are in severe need of redesigning and I don’t want the pressure of maintaining them.
What I have done is to register a new App with the name of my new game.
It is still the Puzzle RPG that I’ve been working on in dribs and drabs for the past few years. I actually picked up work on it again towards the end of 2014 and continue to make slow but steady progress.
I’ll only share information about the game on this blog at key milestones so as not to disappoint. My goal, for what its worth, is to release it in 2015. If you want to follow the progress at a more granular, but raw, level which may include varying degrees of disappointment, you can do so at the devlog here.
I will say that I’m happier with it than I ever have been. Things finally seem to be falling into place.
(Current status – WIP)
So, 2015 could be the year.
…and I expect I’ll dabble in a few game jams too :)
Have a great Christmas and a Happy New Year.