Archive for the ‘Plans’ Category

2023 Review and 2024 Goals

Sunday, January 7th, 2024

You can find last year’s goals here.

Well straight away I’ll confess that I failed to achieve most of my 2023 goals but it’s not a disaster as I’ve had a pretty good year and 2024 should be good too. Ideally I’d have acheived my goals but it’s OK for them to be targets so that I’ve got something to focus on, which I did.

So how did I do with my goals?

2023 Work Goals

  1. Ship Regency Solitaire II in Q2. (FAILED: It’s still not done, however it really is *nearly* done. We even made a 1 hour (4 chapter) demo in December that we sent to the casual portals to get the conversation started about them distributing the game and a couple of them have already agreed to take it.)
  2. Ship Shadowhand Solitaire. (FAILED: We haven’t touched this because Regency Solitaire II is the priority, but we’ll be getting back to this soon.)
  3. Grey Alien Games’ revenue is over $100K. (FAILED: We didn’t quite reach this mainly because we didn’t ship any new games! But 2022 was pretty good so we were OK financially for most of 2023.)

Success rate = 0/3 = 0%. Wow, that’s the first time that’s happened with my goals. We made good progress on our game, continued to publish 3rd party games on Steam and did some consultancy and writing work. Combined with our residual income from previous games things were fine-ish but we are running on fumes now and must ship soon. Also we did succeed on both of the stretch goals, so that’s something.

Stretch Goals:

  1. Start work on something else. (SUCCESS: During the summer we hired our son as an intern for a month. He’s a University student studying Game Development and he made a prototype of a game called Dead Man’s Mine for us in Unity which we shipped on itch.io. This isn’t quite the same as us starting a new IP ourselves, but I’ll take it as a win.)
  2. Make some kind of platform/funding deal. (SUCCESS: We made a free game deal with GOG, and also a key bundle deal with Fanatical, which brought in a bit of extra income.)

2023 Personal Goals

  1. Get my weight below 67kg by Christmas. (FAILED: It actually went below 67kg in the autumn when I got Covid (not recommended for weight loss), but when I got better I put on some weight in the run up to Christmas and now it’s 67.4kg today. Still, it’s not a huge gain, and my BMI is in the normal range, so I’m OK with that.)
  2. Have at least 6 weeks of “no work” vacation even if it’s a staycation. (FAILED: I took 23 days out of 30. I did want to take more time off but with Regency Solitaire II being late I didn’t feel I could justify it. At least it was more than 20 days.)
  3. Fix my C64. (FAILED: I have got some more tools that I’ll need to do this but it’s been on the backburner for some reason. Well actually I got a bit distracted because someone gave me a Spectrum +2 and some games which I cleaned up and tested out.)
  4. Keep doing Yoga all year. (SUCCESS: Though I haven’t been in December due to the class changing time and us prioritising work. I’ll get back to it this coming week though. Also we went on a Yoga Retreat in Crete in the autumn.)
  5. Sort out our attic. (FAILED: We did a little bit but it’s still not finished, but we also did a bunch of home improvements and repairs this year, (see stretch goals below), which was good.)

Success rate = 1/5 = 20%. Well, it’s better than 0%! These goals weren’t super-important, just nice things to do, so I’m OK with it. Lots of other stuff happened meanwhile and we completed both of our stretch goals!

Stretch Goals:

  1. Get a significant home improvement done. (SUCCESS: In fact we got TWO things done. We got new windows and patio doors, which was needed because the old ones were not in great shape and were leaking heat and letting in noise and drafts. We also got both of our home offices decorated along with the master bedroom, two bathrooms and the living room! Furthermore, the decorator spotted a problem with some roof tiles that was causing some water ingress, so we got that fixed.)
  2. Go on a holiday away from home. (SUCCESS: We went on a yoga retreat in Crete. Earlier in the year we also went to Reboot Develop in Croatia which is a work thing, but we stayed on a few extra days to chill by the pool and also went on a fab boat trip to an island with some friends.)

Bonus Points

  • I went back to the The Netherlands with my son (who now has a job as a C++ programmer) to do some Aikido, and I did a couple of very interesting Internal Power courses. I also taught half of one of our organisation’s courses to show some of the new stuff that I’ve learned, which went well.
  • As mentioned above, someone from Twitter (who I’d never met before but was friends with) gave me a working Spectrum+2 and a bunch of games! I always wanted a grey one because I think they look great, so it’s fabulous to have that in my retro collection.
  • I did more enjoyable and interesting consultancy work last year and hope to do more this year. Once again I wish I’d done even more but various work priorities and life stuff meant it was hard to find the time. I’ve also picked up a new client in Canada that I’ll be doing some cool stuff for.
  • My wife finished decorating one of the boy’s bedrooms (he’s at Uni now) and turned it into a guest room. The other boy’s bedroom is now her craft room! I have a retro room (we converted part of the garage a few years ago) and she has a craft room, which is nice 🙂
  • I had good fun during the Christmas break making almost 50 videos of me playing vertical scrolling shoot ’em ups on the C64 (well in an emulator anyway). I aim to make more this year as well.
  • Our eldest son finally passed his driving test and we gave him our old car (Vauxhall Vectra) for Christmas. It’s not posh, probably worth about £800, but it’s functional and it means he has a lot more options now that just relying on the defunct and overpriced British railway system.
  • I’m sure there’s more but that’ll do for now.

Mistakes

  • For the second year running I can say “I underestimated the time it would take to finish Regency Solitaire II.” Oops. However, it’s nearly done and it’s pretty great. In order to make it pay for itself, it would be wise to make a 3rd game in the franchise more quickly, and we already have plans afoot for that!
  • We haven’t really had an opportunity to sell our TSLA stock at a profit, though probably could have sold it once or twice at breakeven. This meant that we nearly ran out of company cash in December (and wouldn’t have been able to pay our salaries) but luckily I did a last minute platform deal and some invoicing and we got through OK. I think we’ll be fine for Jan/Feb (but it’ll be tight) so we need to ship Regency Solitaire II ASAP to fix our cash flow. Plus I want to get rid of the stock as soon as it’s viable this year because it’s too risky and we may need it for salaries and/or for art for a new game.
  • Unfortunately I got Covid for the first time this autumn due to lowering our guard on a trip (or more specifically me, as I’m usually the paranoid one). My wife got ill first but by the time we realised she had it, she must have passed it onto me. It hit me pretty hard especially as in the UK people our age haven’t been able to get an updated vaccine since 2022! I was pretty ill for two weeks with a full list of symptoms inc. loss of smell/taste, dizziness, breathlessness, headaches etc. And then I had some after effects that lasted another month. It was no joke, and it cost me a good chunk of work time. Anyway, I’ve been avoiding social engagements this winter because Covid and Flu are everywhere and I can’t afford to get ill again at the moment.
  • Somehow after a patch of good health I’ve done something to my lower back, but I don’t know how. I think it may have been due to working too many hours without a break on Regency Solitaire II levels. Normally I set timers and take breaks and also use my standing desk, but I got too absorbed in work for several weeks and maybe that caused it. It’s a good reminder at my advancing age to keep varying my posture and to take work breaks. Many people don’t have this sort of problem (yet) but it’s definitely a thing for me, which is kind of annoying because my brain wants to do more work than my body can manage!

2024 Work Goals

These goals are basically the same as last year because they were not complete and they are good goals.

  1. Ship Regency Solitaire II in Q1. (It’s really close. All the art/sound is done, all the levels are done, and all the main code is done. It just need balancing, an intro movie, the Collector’s Edition UI coding, and testing. We are planning to take part in the upcoming Steam demo fest thing to get more wishlists, and launch shortly afterwards.)
  2. Ship Shadowhand Solitaire. (In theory we should do this in Q2 but I want to leave this open in case we take a break or something else crops up. But it’s kinda a no-brainer to finish it as it won’t take long and should generate some good income.)
  3. Grey Alien Games’ revenue is over $100K. (This should be doable providing we ship the things we have planned to ship!)

Stretch Goals:

  1. Start work on something else. (We’ve got several things planned including a collaboration with someone else and we should be able to start something new in the second half of 2024, if not sooner.)
  2. Make some kind of platform deal for Regency Solitaire II or III. (I’ve been specific with this goal as I’d really like to get some extra income by doing something special with the franchise. It might be a long shot though due to it being a casual game franchise, we’ll see.)

2024 Personal Goals

These are also the same goals as last year because I don’t need big/crazy personal goals, I’m happy to have realistic fun goals that support me having a good life.

  1. Get my weight below 67kg by Christmas. (Same goal as last year. I need to do some more walking this year which should be possible if I’m feeling less work pressure.)
  2. Have at least 6 weeks of “no work” vacation even if it’s a staycation. (We got close to it last year but I think we can do it this year if Regency Solitaire II does well and gives us some breathing room. I’d love to switch to a 4-day work week but currently that’s just not viable for us.)
  3. Fix my C64. (This is an overdue loose end and I think I’ll enjoy it.)
  4. Keep doing Yoga all year. (This was a very positive thing for me in 2023 and there’s no reason to stop. Maybe I’ll even go on a special weekend yoga course!)
  5. Sort out our attic. (This is so overdue it’s a joke. The problem is, unless we tackle it consistently in small parts, we need to take a week off work to get it done probably.)

Stretch Goals:

  1. Get solar panels fitted. (This has been on our todo for years but we either haven’t had the spare cash in a lump sum or have had more urgent things (e.g. repairs/maintenance) that needed doing. Once we have got them then we’ll start saving up for a secondhand electric car.)
  2. Go on a holiday to Scotland! (My wife has been wanting a holiday there for ages plus we’ll do some research for a future game there at the same time. We can only do this if Regency Solitaire II ships and sells enough though.)

2022 Review and 2023 Goals

Sunday, January 15th, 2023

You can find last year’s goals here

2022 was a good year and also a year of change for us.

I still haven’t caught Covid (unless I’ve had it asymptomaticly), and in fact I haven’t caught any kind of bad illness; so I guess my precautions are working. We even went to a conference in September in Croatia (between Covid waves + wore a mask on the plane), which was great!

Work-wise we’ve had a very good year. Lots of biz dev that I did early in 2022 ended up paying off and we’ve gained some breathing room for while so that we can finish Regency Solitaire II and work on what’s next without panicking about finances.

Also our youngest son went to University (he’s studying game development with programming) and our eldest son got a job as a C++ programmer. We are very proud and now we are getting using to having an “empty nest” (I like it after 21 years of parenting. It feels sort of like being on holiday!)

So how did I do with my goals?

2022 Work Goals

  1. Finish city builder prototype in Q1. (SUCCESS: Yes we did this, although I think it needs more work to turn it into a vertical slice suitable for pitching to publishers. I hope to return to this project later because it’s cool and has real potential to make good money.)
  2. Ship Shadowhand Solitaire in Q2. (FAILED: I did some more work on it but we ended up starting Regency Solitaire II in April instead. That’s fine though as I’ll return to it as soon as RS2 ships.)
  3. Ship Regency Solitaire II in Q3. (FAILED: Oops. For a variety of reasons it’s taking longer than planned, which shouldn’t really be a surprise to me. However, it’s turning out great and it is close to being done now. In December we launched the Steam page for it with a cool teaser trailer and some great-looking screenshots.)
  4. Start work on something else. (FAILED: Regency Solitaire II isn’t done yet and that’s our main focus until it ships.)
  5. Grey Alien Games’ revenue is over $100K. (SUCCESS: Numerous different revenue sources combined managed to make this possible. I’m not going to say what the exact number was, but it was satisfying.)

Success rate = 2/5 = 40%. This sounds bad but in reality we had a great year financially (see Stretch Goal below) and our main project has progressed well, so I’m fine with it. I would have liked to have shipped both games but it didn’t happen; pretty sure it will this year though!!

Stretch Goals:

  1. Make a platform deal for a back catalogue game. (SUCCESS: We actually made TWO platform deals and had a good year on Fanatical as well. This made a big difference to us. I hope that we can make more good deals in 2023!)

2022 Personal Goals

  1. Keep my weight below 66kg (FAILED: I almost immediately went up to about 66.5kg and stayed around that amount for most of the year. At least it hasn’t gone up drastically. I think that having the goal helped me to “stop the rot” as it were.)
  2. Have at least 6 weeks of “no work” vacation even if it’s a staycation. (SUCCESS: My goal was 30 days and I took off 29, so I’m calling this a success. In the end it was mostly a day off here and there except for a week in the summer and two weeks over the Christmas/New Year period. This is probably the most vacation I’ve had in years, or ever.)
  3. Keep my daily average distance walked at 3km or higher. (SUCCESS: Confession time: it was over 3km for most of the year but then I slacked in the bad weather we had recently and it dropped to 2.9km. But I’m allowing myself this one as I was only 3% off target! However, I’m not going to have this goal again in 2023 because I found it created too much pressure when I was busy with work or the weather was bad.)
  4. Spend more quality time with my youngest son. Specifically do 20 things, whatever those things may be. (SUCCESS: I printed out a little chart with suggestions on like gaming, watching a movie, playing music, discussing code, go out for a meal etc. and ticked them a lot more than 20 times in total.)
  5. Finish Cyberjam (FAILED: I didn’t touch it but I did have a great time looking at my old Amiga code instead, see the Bonus Points section below.)

Success rate = 3/5 = 60%. This is OK, but to be honest I think I succeeded at the really important things (relaxing, health, time with family) and substituted a hobby activity for another one, so that’s fine.

Stretch Goals:

  1. Make a mortgage lump sum overpayment at some point in the year. Minimum £3000. (PART SUCCESS: I didn’t specifically do this but early in 2022 before interest rates went up *a lot* I remortgaged for 5 years at a really low rate and I calculated that we’ll save at least £3000 in the long run – so it’s at least equivalent if not better.)
  2. Go on a holiday away from home. (SUCCESS: We went away twice! One was at a friend’s holiday cottage in Cornwall, which was very nice. And the other was a work holiday at Reboot Develop in Croatia. It was so nice that we are planning on going again this year.)

Bonus Points

  • As I mentioned at the start of this post, we have succesfully shepherded our sons through adolescence and sent them off to University and work (and, dear reader, it has not been plain sailing!) We also went to our eldest son’s graduation ceremony for his Maths and Physics degree, which was a proud moment. I am aware though, that parenting doesn’t stop when they leave home – it continues in many ways, just different.
  • I had a variety of medical tests for things that have been bugging me as I get older but luckily all of them proved to be fine. Generally things have been good, though I still get occasional flare ups of back, neck, shoulder problems, but I have strategies in places for dealing with those. I even got a split keyboard (R-Go) this year and switched to a vertical mouse (Logitech), which I like a lot!
  • I went to some very interesting Aikido courses including one in The Netherlands, and have made some new Aikido friends. I have a policy of only going on courses between waves of Covid to minimise risk. I also ran a successful Aikido weapons course for our specific organisation.
  • I got into retro computing in a big way. I joke that it’s my wholesome midlife crisis. I knew it was coming and have fully embraced it. First I bought a bunch of Mastertronic and Codemasters cassette tapes for C64 (a machine I had as a kid), and I really enjoying doing that. Then I bought an actual C64 and various old and modern add-ons – though it broke just before Christmas! However, I’m going to attempt a self-repair as I think I know what the problem is after watching tons of C64 repair videos.
  • I also dug out my Amiga 1200 and managed to image the 80Mb HDD onto my PC with WinUAE. I was then able to fully explore my old drive and compile/run the numerous games and demos that I coded in Assembly and Blitz Basic 2 back in the 1990s. I put some videos of these online and was even interviewed by amiga-news.de, which was honestly really cool to me.
  • I did some enjoyable and interesting consultancy work last year and hope to do more this year. In fact I wish I’d done even more but various work priorities and life stuff meant it was hard to find the time.
  • I took up Yoga and have been enjoying it even though it’s actually pretty tough! My ham strings know about it for sure. It’s making me think about my posture more, which is good.
  • We got a new front door fitted. It was quite expensive but really keeps out the drafts and also lets in some nice light. We also got our corridor and kitchen decorated (by a pro-level decorator) and have made progress on smartening up the boys’ rooms.
  • I did some remote work experience for a local kid who was into game programming. I got him to do some tutorials and then make his own small-scoped game in Scratch and he really enjoyed it. I thinking of doing this again as it felt like a good thing to do.

Mistakes

  • I underestimated the time it would take to finish Regency Solitaire II. I ended up being a bit more perfectionist than planned about the art/UI, but to be fair, it is looking great! Also various real life things took up time and mental energy.
  • I also should have released Shadowhand Solitaire by now so that it could be providing a nice passive income stream, but other projects took priority. I’m determined to get it done this year though as it’s an asset just sitting there waiting to be finished and released.
  • I could have sold our TSLA holdings at a peak, and I nearly did but I mistimed the close of trading by 30 minutes, doh! Since then they’ve gone down a lot (along with the whole market), but I’m holding and waiting for the NASDAQ to recover generally even if it takes a couple of years.

2023 Work Goals

  1. Ship Regency Solitaire II in Q2. (I’ve done a projection with time estimates based on past experience and this should be doable but of course random stuff can happen. Worst case it *must* come out sometime this year and we can see if it does well enough to justify another one. I hope so!)
  2. Ship Shadowhand Solitaire. (It’s well overdue because it keeps getting put on the back-burner. I’m not specifying a target date, just by end of year. Again, this should be possible as long as we don’t have something higher priority come along.)
  3. Grey Alien Games’ revenue is over $100K. (We’ve done this before and can do it again. Perhaps I should set my sights higher, but I also know what we’ve got in the pipeline and without any special deals, this is realistic.)

Stretch Goals:

  1. Start work on something else. (We’ve got the city builder prototype to return to and even a possible third Regency Solitaire game. This depends so heavily on completing the main goals that I’m making it a stretch goal).
  2. Make some kind of platform/funding deal. (In recent years various funding deals (and tax relief) have really helped keep us going, and so I’d love to line up a great new deal of some kind. I won’t just be “hoping” this will happen, I’ll actively do biz dev to do my best to make it happen. Wish us luck!)

2023 Personal Goals

  1. Get my weight below 67kg by Christmas. (It’s currently a tiny bit over 67kg due to some winter fattening, but I think I can lose a bit through watching what I eat and exercise – the old classics.)
  2. Have at least 6 weeks of “no work” vacation even if it’s a staycation. (Ideally I’d like to increase this! But that feels too radical at the moment with the workload we’ve got, so I’ll stick to this standard UK employee amount for now.)
  3. Fix my C64. (I’m going to have to desolder at least one chip and install a hopefully working replacement in a socket. It could all go horribly wrong of course, but will hopefully be fun and a learning process.)
  4. Keep doing Yoga all year. (I’ve only done 6 lessons so far, but I’ve gone to every one that I could. When one starts something like this, I think it’s beneficial to try to commit to going regularly and for a certain amount of time to really give it a chance.)
  5. Sort out our attic. (It’s a mess of old boxes, stuff we no longer need, kids’ stuff etc. and it’s getting a bit grotty up there. So we need to tidy it all up, throw stuff out or give it away, and clean everything that remains! Not a pleasant job but it’s well overdue.)

Stretch Goals:

  1. Get a significant home improvement done. (We’ve got plans for things like solar panels, new windows, decorating the “game room”, sorting out the loft insulation etc. These are cost/availability/time-dependent, but we hope to get *something* done.)
  2. Go on a holiday away from home. Minimum of “a long weekend” but hopefully longer, and/or do several of those. (Covid is still a factor but I’m hoping that we can ship Regency Solitaire II before the summer and go somewhere nice during a safer period for travel.)

2021 Review and 2022 Goals

Wednesday, January 12th, 2022

You can find last year’s goals here

Summary

Well I made it to the end of 2021 alive, which was actually one of my goals (see below). It’s definitely been another strange year but once again I feel lucky that we were already set up to work from home and have managed to keep focused on getting work done, and it’s been a good year actually!

I’ve barely been anywhere or met anyone though. I think I slept in my own bed every night all year long! We met a few people at outdoor things in the summer and had a couple of meals indoors when we felt it was safe enough to do so, but that’s about it. However, I’ve continued to interact with people online via social media and zoom (or equivalent app), so that’s been good.

Workwise: we’ve had a successful year even though it might not look like it purely based on goals achieved.

In terms of personal goals: I kept healthy and met some other goals too, so I’m pleased with how that went.

OK let’s look at the goals, how did I do?

2021 Work Goals

  1. Release secret project in Q1. (PART SUCCESS: This was Regency Solitaire for Nintendo Switch! However, it didn’t come out in Q1, it launched in Q4. So I’ll award myself half a point. It turned out well and people like it, and because it’s in Unity we have the possibility to reuse that engine again.)
  2. Release Shadowhand Solitaire in Q2. (FAILED: We did some more work on this but then had to switch over to a completely new and unexpected thing for Q4, more on this below in the Bonus Points section.)
  3. Support the forthcoming release of the funded project I completed in 2020. (SUCCESS: This was T-Minus 30 and it launched in August. People seemed to really like it (it’s currently 94% positive on Steam). Also it was pretty much bug-free, so I just made a couple of small updates to it.)
  4. Release Regency Solitaire 2. (FAILED: We’ve made progress on this both in terms of pre-production and funding (woo!), but it has not shipped yet.)
  5. Stay alive and stay in business. (SUCCESS! I am still alive despite having an operation (gallbladder removal) in April, and despite ongoing Covid stuff. Our son even caught Covid at Christmas but we managed to avoid getting it from him (he’s OK btw). And of course we are still in business and increased sales revenue as well as sourced some new funding.)

Success rate = 2.5/5 = 50%. That doesn’t sound that great but two games came out that I worked on, and we changed plans in Q4 to something cool, as well as got in some new funding. So overall it’s been a successful year.

2021 Personal Goals

  1. Keep my weight below 68kg. (SUCCESS! I managed to get as low as 64kg by the end of the summer due to lots of walking, but it crept up to 66kg at Christmas. That’s fine though as I think I can slim down a bit this year.)
  2. Have at least 4 weeks of “no work” vacation even if it’s a staycation. (SUCCESS: Yep, we took 2 weeks off in the summer and 2 weeks off over Christmas, though the second break did admittedly straddle Dec/Jan with a week in each month. Also I did a little bit of work during the Christmas break to compile our annual revenue numbers but I wanted to do that so I’m still calling it valid!)
  3. Increase my daily average distance walked from 2.4km in 2020 to over 3km in 2021. (SUCCESS! Managed a daily average of 3.2km. This was quite tough to do due to weather, work, and having an operation! But I did it and enjoyed it.)
  4. Spend more quality time with my youngest son. (SUCCESS: I made a list of possible activities and exceeded my target of 20 things. I still feel like I could have done more but he has a girlfriend and is round there more than he’s at home, so it’s a bit tricky.)
  5. Make a gamejam game. (SUCCESS! I made Where’s My Computer Gone? in Pico-8 over a long weekend just before I had my operation. I’m really pleased with how it turned out and had great fun doing it.)

Success rate = 5/5 = 100%. Wow! I did it. I’m glad I managed to prioritise and fit in these personal goals along with my work goals. Hopefully I can repeat this, or get close, in 2022.

Stretch Goals:

  1. Make a mortgage lump sum overpayment at some point in the year. Minimum £1000. (SUCCESS! We actually managed to make a £2000 overpayment. We’ve still got a reasonable chunk of mortgage remaining but if feels good to keep chipping away at it like this if possible.)

Bonus Points

  • At the start of the year I had a brainwave about a city builder I could make with a unique hook. I told some friends (also sim devs) and they were very positive about it. Then in the summer I put together a basic proof of concept and pitched it to UK Games Fund and was successful! They funded us to make a prototype for 5 months with the aim of pitching it to a publisher this year! So that’s what we ended up doing instead of shipping Shadowhand Solitaire.
  • We sought some funding for Regency Solitaire II in December and ended up in a crazy situation where we had four separate offers! In the end we picked the best deal and will be working on it later this year.
  • I’ve continued to improve my C# and Unity skills and have really enjoyed that journey. It’s been fun asking for advice on Twitter and seeing all the different approaches that people have.
  • I finally got notified that I could have my gallbladder removed (I was on a waiting list). Obviously the operation and recovery wasn’t a “walk in park” but it has gone well and I don’t get hideous pains any more. I was able to get back to walking regularly pretty quickly afterwards too.
  • I’ve continued to teach my Aikido class for most of the year when we were not in lockdown. We are still learning and practicing various weapon techniques that we can do “socially distanced”, and it’s been great fun and really interesting! Though I’m hoping we can also get back to on the mat training together this year when it’s safe to do so.
  • I’ve continued to do lots of walking in the local area and have got to see some new places as well as enjoy familiar places. I’ve also done a few walks with some friends, which was good. I’d like to branch a bit more in 2022 and see some new areas.
  • I finally did a bit of stock trading in 2021 but initially lost some money (this almost ended up in the mistakes section!) However, I learned some things and eventually made back the losses and made small profit. I’ll continue to cautiously invest in 2022. Our main holdings are in Tesla at present.

Mistakes

  • The 3rd party Nintendo Switch port of Regency Solitaire took way longer than we had originally planned. We wanted to make sure it was really polished and stable and, because we constantly had other projects going on which involved 3rd party funding, that meant it often had to take a back seat for a while before we could get back to testing and fixing/polishing stuff. But I did learn more Unity in the process, so that was good. I also am familiar with Nintendo’s numerous back end systems now that we’ve finally shipped on their platform.
  • Shadowhand Solitaire still didn’t come out. If I had pushed myself at various times I think maybe we could have got it done and shipped, but in the end it got delayed again whilst we work on our funded city builder prototype. That’s OK though as we’ll get back to it this year (see 2022 goals below.)
  • Not sure if this is a mistake or not but we didn’t go anywhere or do much because of Covid. There might have been a few opportunities to travel a bit in the UK during safer periods, though I recall looking for accomodation at one point and it was all booked up. So we just ended up staying at home and working or chilling out, which I was mostly fine with tbh. I guess we could have done more day trips though.

2022 Work Goals

  1. Finish city builder prototype in Q1. (This should be pretty easy tbh as it’s in progress now and there are no obvious blockers.)
  2. Ship Shadowhand Solitaire in Q2. (This should happen shortly after the city builder prototype is done and I think we’ve allocated enough time to do it because there’s not much work left to do now.)
  3. Ship Regency Solitaire 2 in Q3 unless we have a really good reason to delay it. (This is our main project at the moment for 2022 and we are committed to making it happen. We’ve got a good plan and it is achievable.)
  4. Start work on something else. (We’ve got several potential things planned but haven’t finalised what will work on next yet because we need to see how all of the above things go first.)
  5. Grey Alien Games’ revenue is over $100K. (This is just about doable if we maintain existing revenue streams and also launch the two titles mentioned above. If we get funding for anything else, that will be bonus money. Possibly this should be a stretch goal but I’ll keep it as a main goal as a challenge.)

Stretch Goals:

  1. Make a platform deal for a back catalogue game. (In 2021 we had success in getting Ancient Enemy onto Epic Games Store, GOG and Humble Store, and we put our games onto Fanatical. Though what I’d really like to do is make a sweet platform deal of some kind where we get a bunch of money for putting our game(s) on some kind of new or existing platform e.g. Epic free games, Humble Choice, etc. We’ll see if anything crops up. I’m always keeping my ear to the ground for such opportunities. If you know of any, please let me know!)

2022 Personal Goals

  1. Keep my weight below 66kg (it’s 66kg now and I can definitely get it lower in the coming months by walking and watching what I eat. But then I mustn’t put (all of) it back on at Christmas!)
  2. Have at least 6 weeks of “no work” vacation even if it’s a staycation. (This is a pretty radical sounding goal but we basically always end up working on bank holidays and the UK is due 9 days of those in 2022. Most other employees take bank holidays off and so I thought I’d try to take them off in sequence instead of piecemeal, seeing as I’m my own boss. Those 9 days add up to approx. 2 weeks of vacation which we’ll take on top of the normal 4 weeks amount.)
  3. Keep my daily average distance walked at 3km or higher. (I found this doable but tricky in 2021, and I want to keep the habit going because I had many benefits from it.)
  4. Spend more quality time with my youngest son. Specifically do 20 things, whatever those things may be. (He’s got just under 1 year at home before he heads off to University.)
  5. Finish Cyberjam (This is a gamejam game I started ages ago that I made some good progress on in 2021 and I really want to get it done and shipped on itch.io this year.)

Stretch Goals:

  1. Make a mortgage lump sum overpayment at some point in the year. Minimum £3000. (We managed £2000 in 2020 and 2021 so I’m upping the ante this year!)
  2. Go on a holiday away from home. Minimum of “a long weekend” but hopefully longer, and/or do several of those. This is a bit dependent on Covid and availability of places to stay