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.)

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

You can find last year’s goals here

Summary

Well it’s been a strange year for sure! I’m very lucky in that I work at home and run my own online business so have been largely unaffected by events, though I haven’t been able to go to any meetups or game conferences of course. I’ve also done my absolute best not to catch the virus which was an unexpected goal.

What I did manage to do was 1) ship a game during the first wave of a pandemic, and 2) finish working on another short project (over about 8 months). Plus I’ve done a ton of walking and improved my health. So somehow I’ve actually had quite a productive year and I hope that can continue into 2021.

The pandemic has affected some of my goals of course, so let’s see how I got on.

2020 Work Goals

1. Grey Alien Games’ revenue is over $100K. Same goal as last year. (FAILED: Despite launching a new game, this was not achieved. We had some OK revenue as well as money in the bank from the funding deal I made in Dec 2019, so it’s been fine.)
2. Ship Ancient Enemy in Q1 unless there’s a really good strategic reason to delay it. (SUCCESS: It actually shipped on April 9th which is Q2 BUT it was ready in Q1 and I delayed it on purpose to avoid clashing with some other big releases such as Doom Eternal.)
3. Ship secret project 1 in Q1 (ideally) or early Q2. (FAILED: I planned to get back to this after I finished Ancient Enemy but I had to move straight onto the newly funded project and so this got delayed again.)
4. Complete newly funded project. (SUCCESS: I finished it in December after working on it for most of the year and I am proud of my efforts. It’s not out yet because the launch is being handled by someone else, but I have done my bit at least.)
5. I stay in business until the end of 2020. (SUCCESS: I’m now in my 16th year of being indie.)

Success rate = 3/5 = 60%. It would have been nice to hit the revenue goal, but I’m still pleased that I finished two major projects and am still in business.

Stretch Goals:

1. Ancient Enemy breaks even. (FAILED: Alas, this did not happen. Despite a pretty good launch (on par with Shadowhand’s launch in Dec 2017) sales dropped off pretty quickly. However, based on projections, I think it will probably break even towards the end of 2021.)
2. Secret project 1 breaks even. (FAILED: I didn’t even launch it, so this goal automatically failed!)

2020 Personal Goals

1. Do not gain any weight by the end of 2020 compared to now which is 68kg. (SUCCESS: I lost a couple of kilos from diet/walking during the summer. Then I gained a kilo during the run up to Christmas and ended the year at about 67kg, which is fine.)
2. Go on 10 nice walks/daytrips/long weekends with my wife. (SUCCESS: I achieved this easily as we did a ton of walks in the local area. It was really nice and I’ll do more in 2021.)
3. Go on a week long vacation with my wife to Wales or Scotland, or maybe Ireland, and look at castles and standing stones. (FAILED: Well the pandemic meant this was not viable. However, we did take a two week summer staycation during which we didn’t work at all and did tons of walking, so I will award myself half a point. I also took two weeks off over the Christmas period. Having four weeks vacation in a year is very rare for me so this was good.)
4. Spend more quality time with my youngest son. (SUCCESS: Perhaps the pandemic actually helped with this one as we did quite a lot of stuff together including playing Diablo 3 and jamming with piano and guitar. We also got to see more of our eldest son who came home from University for 6 months!)
5. Play electric guitar 10 times. (PART SUCCESS: I didn’t succeed with this, but did play it a few times. I also played my accoustic guitar a bunch, so I will award myself half a point.)
6. Go to a new fitness/health class at least once. (FAILED: Haha, well the pandemic really messed up this goal. I could have succeeded if I’d gone in January. I could technically have gone in the summer when lockdown eased but I wasn’t comfortable in doing that. I did go to an outdoors Aikido weapons class with another teacher though, and that was cool.)
7. Make a mortgage lump sum overpayment at some point in the year. Minimum £2000. (SUCCESS: Yep! Did this.)

Success rate = 5/7 = 71%. Not bad considering the limitations imposed by the pandemic, otherwise I think I might have scored 100%! I have priorised my mental and physical health this year. It’s important at all times but this year especially so.

Stretch Goals:

1. Work on my Cyberjam game in pico-8 for 10 hours or finish it, whichever happens first. (FAILED: My plan was to do this over the Christmas period, but in the end I didn’t spend much time on my PC as I was relaxing playing PS4 games or going for walks. I feel like I needed the break from achieving things, so letting this goal go was OK.)
2. Go to 10 new fitness/health classes (can be same class). (FAILED)

Bonus Points

• Still alive + healthy. I realise this has been an awful year for many people and so I’m super-grateful that it’s been OK for me and my family.
• I’ve remained mostly positive and productive for the whole year despite everything that is going on. I hope to carry that into 2021 for a good year.
• Ancient Enemy is 94% positive on Steam and people really responded well to the improvements I made to the game mechanics (to reduce RNG and increase tactical play) since Shadowhand.
• The funded project I worked on was very interesting and I had to learn a bunch of new things such as: Unity, a new game genre, and someone else’s codebase. So it was a real year of growth for me as a game developer.
• Despite my Aikido class being cancelled for most of the year, I was able to learn and teach a lot of socially distanced weapon practice outdoors (and sometimes indoors when permitted), which has been really interesting.
• As I mentioned already I did a lot of walking, way more than my goal. I’ve got to know the view from all the major hills in the local area and have walked on the coast, in woods, in fields, on lanes, and more. It’s been fantastic and I can really feel the difference in my leg muscles and general health. Recommended.
• We finally got a new boiler fitted as our old one was from the 1980s! It was pretty expensive and was uncomfortable having people round to do the work during a pandemic, but it went smoothly and has been working well this winter.
• We got a new cat! Our beloved Suki passed away aged 19 and we waited a couple of months before getting a lovely young cat called Ciri (on account of her silver hair).

Mistakes

• Ancient Enemy was supposed to be a 6 month project but was more like 20 months! (Though some of that time was spent on sub-projects.) I’m proud of it but it dragged on a bit and meant that I was unable to finish our secret project as planned. Maybe I could have delayed the funded project a bit to get the secret project done so that it wasn’t hanging over me all year, but I felt obligated to start it ASAP.
• The funded project had various challenges as could be expected, and there were some things I could/should have done differently. I overcame some issues and (hopefully) learned from others.
• I didn’t invest in Tesla or Bitcoin lol. I could have, but I view such things as very risky and needed to keep my cash reserves safe to ensure that I can get projects done and shipped in 2021. Hindsight is wonderful…

2021 Work Goals

1. Release secret project in Q1. (This is my priority now, though I am somewhat dependent on 3rd parties which could cause a delay. As long as my work is done on it, then I will call this a success.)
2. Release Shadowhand Solitaire in Q2. (I haven’t talked about this publicly yet, but it’s basically a reworked version of Shadowhand for the casual portals (+ maybe Steam) without the turn-based combat. It was nearly done 2 years ago but I put it on hold to work on Ancient Enemy.)
3. Support the forthcoming release of the funded project I completed in 2020. (Another party is responsible for the release, so the timing is out of my hands but there are various things that I need to help with and be available for.)
4. Release Regency Solitaire 2. (I’m pretty sure we will make this, but it’s dependent on a couple of other things such as how well Shadowhand Solitaire does on the casual portals and if we can fund the art costs. We’ve already done a bunch of preproduction and planning, and we want this to be a relatively short project so that it can come out later this year.)
5. Stay alive and stay in business. (I’m not going to have a revenue goal this year because if our main project comes out at the end of the year then we won’t see most of the revenue from it until 2022. So it’s possible this year might be a bit lean, we’ll see…)

Stretch Goals:

I’m not going to have any this year. I failed on both of them last year and I honestly think the above list is plenty to be getting on with.

2021 Personal Goals

1. Keep my weight below 68kg (it’s 67kg now).
2. Have at least 4 weeks of “no work” vacation even if it’s a staycation. (In 2020 I took off two weeks in the summer and two weeks over Christmas and it was definitely good for me.)
3. Increase my daily average distance walked from 2.4km in 2020 to over 3km in 2021. (I’m already on track to do this as I’ve been averaging over 3.5km a day for the last 6 months.)
4. Spend more quality time with my youngest son. Specifically do 20 things, whatever those things may be. (He’s only got another 1.5 years at home before he hopefully heads off to University, so this is an important goal).
5. Make a gamejam game. (It can be pretty small. I just want to do this at some point alongside my main work.)

Stretch Goals:

1. Make a mortgage lump sum overpayment at some point in the year. Minimum £1000. (I think it might be quite a lean year financially so that’s why this is a stretch goal.)