December is finally here and in keeping with my usual tradition of writing one of these, it's time for another annual recap post!

Overall, this year been all over the place. While online I was able to output a lot of content that I'm very proud of, life outside of that wasn't as good.

I got to meet a lot of talented programmers who I'm hoping to work with much more in the future. I feel like I struggled a lot earlier on with consistently releasing games I thought were actually good, and I feel like this year broke that trend.

To tell the truth, I had almost no passion for any of the games I was a major part of before this year: the obvious exceptions being Karrion Killer and Rat Game. That's not a dig at anybody I was working with on those projects or anything like that, but still I feel like my creative voice isn't really there with most of these earlier projects.

Going into 2024, I think I'll be able to make projects that speak to my own sensibilities, rather than just being a sideshow to other authors.

YEAR SUMMARY

Things started out kinda shitty because my apartment flooded whilst I was working with Tombdude on Bird Tapper & The Great Krampusnacht Cleansing. I've been meaning to reach out and collaborate with him for a few years now, so I was heartbroken when I had to take a step back from the project.

That said, we managed to finish and release the game in time to score second place for pixel day, which was absolutely a highlight of my time here on Newgrounds! All the art (minus some stuff with the puppies) was drawn by me, and I'm very happy with how it all turned out.

It's no Fulpware, but still: I think what we managed to accomplish was special, and I'm very grateful for the love the community has shown to this little game (flawed as it may be).

April 1st saw the release of high-society art: a spam movie Pop-Tart requested I make for this year's "clock day". Fulpware Clicker released the same day, but these were both just small joke submissions made to rile people up.

Dry and a few friends watched the FNAF movie on Peacock, and so I decided to make a quick cartoon to poke fun at it, FNAF: The Movie: The Game (Theory). Honestly, with this one I just wanted to make something fast to practice animating again, since I don't really have the time to make cartoons these days. It was dumb fun, but there wasn't really all that much to it beyond me just really not liking the film lol.

November was definitely some of my most "lucrative" time on Newgrounds so far, with Bird Tapper: Purple Platoon Panic finally releasing after a year or two of work.

Originally intended for the 2022 Mobile Jam, Purple Platoon Panic was sort of my response to the lukewarm reception of Super Meat Boy Forever: while the game is certainly a controversial one, I saw a lot of untapped potential in a lot of ideas the game presented. That, coupled with my love of mobile fighting game Flappy Fighter really inspired me to reach out to BobbyBurt to propose an autorunner focused on combat. I checked Newgrounds the other morning to discover the game had attained a spot on the "Legendary Games" list: getting something up there has been a huge aspiration for me as a creator for years, and I'm beyond overjoyed that it's finally happened! Thank you all so much for making it happen!

There's a few small homages to a few earlier projects sprinkled throughout the game too: like the bear statues from Ruby Heart Matchmakers which appear throughout Ursul City.

Time will tell how well Purple Platoon Panic holds up, but I have high hopes!

A map pack with new levels made by a few hand-picked developers and friends of ours from the community is in development.

And last but not least, Bird Tapper Easy Mode. This one is gonna require a bit of explaining...

I watched GameMaker's Toolkit religiously when I was younger: it's how I discovered the masterful game Downwell, and it gave me a stronger appreciation for the artistry that goes into game development. As I've grown older, however, I've begun to find Mark Brown's takes on accessibility to be downright ludicrous and often times self-contradictory; such as suggesting that Super Meat Boy is a poor game because Meat Boy is "too floaty" or that it's overly-cruel to players to give easy difficulty settings derogatory names like "wuss mode".

To me, accessibility should be about allowing for the player to partake in the challenge: not to eliminate it completely and give everyone a participation trophy. Some experiences, in my opinion, benefit from being inherently inaccessible: if I wanted to just know a game's plot, I'd watch a let's play.

Coupled with a few ridiculous reviews that had cropped up on the first two Bird Tapper games (many of which spoke very highly of the games but claimed to be rating low due to difficulty) I decided it would be fun to make the most barebones and simplistic product imaginable for the sake of pandering to accessibility.

The result was Bird Tapper Easy Mode, many elements of which were a response to reviews that we found to be ridiculous (this is why the music is what it is, you'll know what I mean if you scroll through the reviews on PPP haha).

THE FUTURE

Karrion Killer 2 eluded me once again this year. Hopefully we can eventually get around to it, but at this point I feel like we'd have to approach it very differently.

As seems to be becoming a running theme, two new Bird Tapper projects are currently in the works: Bird Tapper: Retro Challenge and the Purple Platoon Panic Map Pack.

Retro Challenge is a reskin of a Mario 1 browser engine by WaterSilverC that I saw on the portal before it got taken down for using Mario assets. You can actually still play the original here, but I wanted to lend him a hand and get it up on Newgrounds too. Hopefully we'll be working on more projects together in the future, since it's been really fun collaborating with him on new assets for this thing.

As for the Purple Platoon Map Pack, it's just more of the same. There's a slew of new levels with new art and music, but structurally it's identical to the base game of Purple Platoon Panic.

Bird Tapper DX is likely to still happen once Tombdude wraps up production on Gimmiko. I've been messing around with that Rayman 4 prototype that leaked not-too-long-ago and it's given me some ideas for new gameplay that'd fit in with the style we established in GKC.

Even if we don't make DX, we'll probably still make something or other: collabing with Tombdude was really fun!

To be honest though, I feel like I need a little break from Bird Tapper right now. He's a fun character and his world is fun to explore, but I wanna do something else after I wrap up what I'm working on now.

I'm pretty sure I mentioned it in one of these posts before, but ideally I'd like to have at least 3 "series-worthy" submissions at some point. I already have 2: Karrion Killer and Bird Tapper, but a third would be nice.

Super SimLove Tactics came extremely close, but sadly that never panned out. Maybe my luck will turn in 2024 though? Here's to hoping!

New cartoons are coming next year too! I'm working with MKMaffo on something for the LISA Campfire collab, and there's one more animation collab I worked on that I don't think has been announced yet. Look forward to it!

MISC/IRL STUFF

As I eluded to earlier in the post, life's been sort of all over the place this year.

While there was a lot of good, there was also a lot of bad. I never posted about it, but there were some very dark times in late 2022 and early 2023...

It might sound a little pathetic I admit, but for a long time the only thing keeping me going was my art. There was a lot of imagery in my work this year that retrospectively feels a little too revealing of my personal struggles...

Anyhow, micro-rant over! I'm finally done with that, and I'm in a much better place now.

I'm back in school again this year! Honestly, it's just for the degree credentials: I've shown bits and pieces of my portfolio to some industry professionals I've met, and all of them talk about how via my personal work I'm more qualified to work in the industry than most people who apply to work with them, but I just need a proper degree to seal the deal.

I'm enjoying it though: I'm putting in the legwork to really make the best of this opportunity. I actually have a few job offers lined up for after I'm done, but I'm taking the time to make sure I get shit done right. Since I'm anticipating that professional work will eat into the majority of the free time I'm now using do games, I'm also gonna push extra hard to at least make one more series-worthy submission.

MINI-SECTION ABOUT FUTURE PROJECTS

I've been skeptical about talking about this project on Newgrounds much, since I feel like I tend to get caught up too much with the "glamour" of public game development... but...

Pommisc, Topple, Dry, and I have been working in relative secrecy on a little game called "GiggleForce". An adult-oriented parody of the quirky Earthbound-inspired RPG subgenre, the game is one of my proudest in terms of narrative design and I really hope to finish it someday. I don't consider myself a strong writer whatsoever, nor do I consider any of my games to have anything close to a strong narrative, but I am damn proud of what we put together with GiggleForce's plot. It needs to come out some day: I think the themes and core message of the game would age like wine.

Beetle Ninja 2 might also come out of development hiatus late into 2024... maybe?

I have a stronger core idea of what to do with the game: when I started it 2 years ago, my idea was just to do a murder mystery-type game about discovering what happened after the end of the world was prevented, but I've begun thinking about how to structure the game around a New Vegas-styled faction system.

My ideas were basic at the beginning, but I think I know how to connect them a lot better nowadays.

Before I move on to industry work, I want to finally wrap up the long-overdue sequel to Karrion Killer, finish Groove Tapper, and make at least one more Beetle Ninja-esque one-off game that's really good. That doesn't mean any of this will happen of course, but I'm optimistic that I can get at least 2 of these finished.

Here's to hoping 2024 will be a fruitful year! I love you guys!