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.)

You can find last year’s goals here

Summary

Overall it’s been a good year even though I didn’t release any new games.

I’ve basically been working on Ancient Enemy all year and it’s late (for various reasons), which is a bit embarrassing, but it’s turning out really well and is almost done.

I also spent time managing a secret 2nd project (outsourced), and helped a friend with a small project as a designer during the summer, which was interesting and fun.

Also right at the end of the year I got funding for a new project in 2020, which is pretty cool. More on that when we officially announce it.

Due to funding, as well as ongoing sales and tax relief (VGTR) we had a pretty good year as you can see by the chart below:

I also have had some back problems for 2.5 years which finally cleared up in the second half of the year and I feel great as a result. Also my Aikido class is going well with lots of new students and more training.

So I’m looking forward to getting multiple games released in 2020 and having a productive and enjoyable year

2019 Work Goals

1) Grey Alien Games’ revenue is over $100K. (SUCCESS: Yep, did it)
2) I ship Ancient Enemy before June 2019. (FAILED: Nope)
3) I ship secret project 1 in Q2. (FAILED: Nope. It’s so close to shipping but I had to put the last bit on hold whilst I worked on Ancient Enemy because it was too much of a distraction even though a 3rd party is handling most of the work.)
4) I ship secret project 2 in 2019 and it is at least part-funded by Kickstarter/an investor/grant. (FAILED: We went quite far down a funding route but that’s currently on hold until we ship some things. We might come back to it later though because we’ve done a lot of preproduction on it and it would be a cool game.)
5) I stay in business until the end of 2019. (SUCCESS: Yep, did it! This summer will be 15 years since I went full-time indie.)

Success rate = 2/5 = 40%. This doesn’t sound great but I did complete two very important goals which was to stay in business and make money, and the other goals are very close to completion, plus I’ve lined up something new for 2020. So I’m not gonna beat myself up about that.

Stretch Goals:
1) Ancient Enemy breaks even. (FAILED: It hasn’t even released yet so I will carry this goal over to 2020.)
2) I start work on a new game (SUCCESS: I can’t really talk about this yet though, sorry! It’s linked to the funding I mentioned above.)

2019 Personal Goals

1) Get my weight down to 65Kg (its 67kg right now, so this isn’t too hard) and maintain that to the end of the year. (Part success: I managed to drop to 64.7 but then put it all again by December! But at least I’ve ended up staying approximately the same weight in the long term.)
2) Go on 10 nice walks/daytrips/long weekends with my wife. (SUCCESS: We did at least 20 walks which was great.)
3) Help my eldest son to pass his Aikido black belt. (SUCCESS: He did it! Also I helped another student get their 2nd dan.)
4) Have a week long staycation, probably after Ancient Enemy ships and the dust settles, but maybe before if I need it. (SUCCESS: Perhaps this is cheating a bit but I had a week off work over Christmas, so I’ll count that.)
5) Go on a week long vacation with my wife to Wales or Scotland, or maybe Ireland, and look at castles and standing stones. (FAILED: I’ll move this to 2020 as it’s quite likely we’ll go on one or more trips.)
6) Spend more time with my youngest son (playing games, watching TV, cinema etc). (FAILED: We’ve spent some good times together such as playing Cadence of Hyrule coop but he’s so focussed on his friends right now it’s tricky. I could do better as well. I probably spent more time playing Battlefield V with my eldest son who is at University now.)
7) Finish my Cyberjam game in pico-8. (FAILED: I was going to work on this hobby project over Christmas but I ended up just playing Dark Souls Remastered on PS4, which was really fun. I’d still like to get back to it though, perhaps spread over some weekends later in the year.)

Success rate = 3.5/7 = 50%. That’s OK and I’m pleased with how the year went, and I feel happy, which is good.

Stretch Goals:
1) Pay our joint account back some of the money we have loaned my company in recent years. I’ll put a figure of £10000 on this. (SUCCESS: I actually did this twice at different times in the year, which is great!)
2) Make another mortgage lump sum overpayment at some point in the year. Minimum £2000.  (FAILED: We could have done this in December, but we didn’t get round to it. I aim to do this in 2020 though after various things ship.)

Bonus Points

– I didn’t go to GDC and I didn’t miss the cost or the time away from work or the jetlag/illness. I’m probably not going in 2020 either but I will still be going to a few things in the UK as per usual such as Rezzed and Develop.
– I published more solitaire games on Steam for Suricate Software. It’s going pretty well (they are happy also) and December was a good month due to the Steam winter sale.
– I helped Ichiro from Dejobaan Games with a small project during the evenings in the summer. It’s an expansion of his 20 Minute Metropolis city builder that he was working on with some Boston-area interns and I joined the project as lead designer. Anyway it was interesting and fun and I learned a lot.
– I got funding for a new project. I wasn’t even planning this but later in the year I asked around a bit for funding for a potential project and got a great offer. I’m pretty excited about this as it represents some big changes which will be interesting and will hopefully turn out great.
– I got awarded 4th dan in Aikido after 22 years of training/teaching.
– My Aikido club is going well with new students and more training. I also coached someone through their 2nd dan grading which they passed with flying colours.
– As I already mentioned, my back problems finally went away. This is actually a big deal because it was dragging me down and it took a lot of willpower to stay positive and productive (and sometimes I failed).
– My eldest son has gone to University to study Maths and Physics. We’ve successfully shepherded a being into adulthood and he’s doing pretty well.
– Just generally I’ve had a good year with my wife and am feeling grateful and positive. More of this please Universe!

Mistakes

– I didn’t ship Ancient Enemy. I know why though: Partly due to design overscope and project-related things (I ended up doing more work on some aspects than I had planned). Partly due to other projects taking too much time. Partly due to my back problems flaring up again. Partly due to general slackness/enjoying life and not wanting to crunch. Oh yeah and we had a leaking pipe under our kitchen floor and had to rip out and install a new kitchen which was another big, unplanned, distraction.
– Not shipping secret project 1. I outsourced this and was hoping it would require minimal work on my part but that turned out not to be true due to various reasons. I have learned some lessons from this. However, the end product is very good and we look forward to releasing it soon. Also in theory this wasn’t supposed to be a distraction from my main project, but it did end up being one which I found stressful. It reminded me again why I don’t like multi-tasking projects. I prefer to work on games in sequence. Anyway, it was an experiment that will be good to finish soon and it will have some positive results.
– I’ve already mentioned above that I didn’t go on holiday with my wife. This has happened before and is normally due to a) thinking my game is nearly done, when it’s not, and keeping on working, and b) running out of money and thus not wanting to stop working!
– I still need to work on spending quality time with my youngest son before he leaves home (in theory) in a few years. I teach him Aikido every week, so that’s something at least.
– I let myself put weight back on in the Winter, though I didn’t really mind as it feels kinda natural to fatten up. I expect I’ll lose it again this year with a tweak in my diet. It’s like a fat tide!

2020 Work Goals

1. Grey Alien Games’ revenue is over $100K. Same goal as last year. (OK sure, ideally I’d see growth in this area but honestly even just reaching it again would be good going and is tough enough as it is. If things pan out I could blast past it, but nothing is certain in this industry.)
2. Ship Ancient Enemy in Q1 (Unless there’s a really good strategic reason to delay it.)
3. Ship secret project 1 in Q1 (ideally) or early Q2.
4. Complete newly funded project.
5. I stay in business until the end of 2020.

Stretch Goals:

1. Ancient Enemy breaks even.
2. Secret project 1 breaks even.

2020 Personal Goals

1. Do not gain any weight by the end of 2020 compared to now (68kg). (This will probably mean I need to lose some first in case I put it back on in the winter and then controlling any weight gain in the winter.)
2. Go on 10 nice walks/daytrips/long weekends with my wife. (This worked really well in 2019 so I want to do it again.)
3. Go on a week long vacation with my wife to Wales or Scotland, or maybe Ireland, and look at castles and standing stones.
4. Spend more quality time with my youngest son (playing games, watching TV, cinema etc) in addition to the Aikido that we already do together.
5. Play electric guitar 10 times. (I’ve been playing guitar for 30 years but not so much in the last few years and want to give it a boost.)
6. Go to a new fitness/health class at least once. (There are a few things I’ve been meaning to try out for a long time such as Qigong, Pilates and Yoga.)
7. Make a mortgage lump sum overpayment at some point in the year. Minimum £2000.

Stretch Goals:

1. Work on my Cyberjam game in pico-8 for 10 hours or finish it, whichever happens first.
2. Go to 10 new fitness/health classes (can be same class).

Right then, it’s that time of year when I review last year’s goals and come up with some new goals for 2019.

Summary

It was a strange year because at the start I felt burned out after releasing Shadowhand and took a couple of months off development whilst I recovered.

During this time I applied to the UK Games Fund for Ancient Enemy and went to a few conferences such as Games Forum London, Casual Connect (London), and GDC (where I spent most of the time at the first “IchiroCon”, which was epic.) Those conferences yielded some good contacts and information, and resulted in me publishing some Jewel Match Solitaire games on Steam for a German developer associate I met with at Casual Connect.

Then I did a few updates to Shadowhand and began working on a casual port of the game with no combat (only puzzle levels), a modified story, and a less complex RPG system. I didn’t actually ship the casual version before starting work on Ancient Enemy (more on this in the Mistakes section below).

Helen and I also did some planning for a new game which we’ll announce soon. We hope the news will make a lot of people happy.

I also spoke at a conference in Latvia, where I made a good contact (more in this in a blog post soon!) Then I spoke at Develop in Brighton, and later in the year I got invited to speak in Dublin, Ireland. I also made a bunch of interesting data-filled blog posts this year and a video called “You are spending too long on your game“, which got shared widely.

During the summer I found out that we weren’t successful with getting funding from the UK Games Fund and I tweeted that I needed some money to make my next game and prompty got 5 funding offers! That was pretty amazing and we ended up getting some financial support from Bithell Games, which is great. Around that time I also received a chunk of money from Video Game Tax Relief which I put towards Ancient Enemy development.

So at the start of August I began work on Ancient Enemy (wishlist it!) and worked on that for the remainder of the year. We’ve got an all-star team working on this including Jim Rossignol (writer/designer), Jen Pattison (artist), Dan Emmerson (artist), and we’re just about to bring a well-known indie on board, which I’ll announce soon! We’ve probably got about 3 more months to go if all goes to plan because it’s supposed to be a short project utilising the existing (modified) Shadowhand engine.

In September I flew to Boston for an “Ichirocon” and had a really great time. Hoping there will be one in 2019.

In terms of revenue, this is what 2018 looks like. Basically 2017 was a poor year because we didn’t release anything until December. So 2018 was a definite improvement (+50%), though not as good as some past years. With the release of Ancient Enemy in 2019, and some other projects I’ve got in the works, I hope that 2019 can be a great year.

Currently I’m feeling very positive, despite my Steam revenue dropping due to discovery algorithm changes in October 2018. I’m productive and getting good work done, and I’ve spent the year trying to make optimised decisions by applying the 80/20 rule where possible (look it up). I want to keep improving that way of thinking during 2019.

2018 Work Goals

1) Shadowhand hits $150K gross on Steam. (FAILED: Got pretty close though, so I’ll award half a point. After the launch sales slowed down quicker than I hoped.)
2) I secure some funding for a new game. (SUCCESS! For Ancient Enemy. See the summary above.)
3) I ship a new game. Most likely reusing either Regency or Shadowhand engine. (FAILED: I worked on two, but didn’t ship either yet! Not going to award any points as you can’t half ship a game, well maybe you can.)
4) I stay in business until the end of 2018. (SUCCESS! I’m still here and revenue was up from 2017.)

Success rate = 2.5/4 = 62.5%. Not bad (and better than last year). If I’d got my act together I could have shipped Shadowhand Solitaire and scored 3.5/4 or started work on Ancient Enemy sooner.

Stretch goals:
1) Shadowhand hits $250K gross on Steam and other channels. (FAILED: Sadly not close. We’d hoped to get Shadowhand in a humble bundle/monthly, but got rejected! Also I really needed to release the casual version to help hit this goal, which I didn’t.)
2) I ship a second game. (FAILED: Didn’t even ship a first game, ho hum.)

2018 Personal Goals

1) Get my fitness and health back to previous levels. (SUCCESS! I did a lot of walking in the first half of the year and managed to lose 6kg (which I mostly put back on in the run up to Christmas) and my SI joint gradually got better and now I rarely get any trouble from it. Really pleased about this because the pain was dragging me down for over 18 months!)
2) Have a “staycation” with my wife. (SUCCESS! We needed this because Christmas 2017 wasn’t very relaxing due to the usual family stuff and because we’d just shipped a game. We had planned to tidy up the attic during our staycation but we didn’t even get round to that, which is fine.)
3) Go on a vacation with my wife and kids. Maybe to Austria as we have friends there with a flat we can stay in. (SUCCESS! We totally did this and stayed in our friends’ fancy apartment in the middle of Graz and also in a cabin by a lake in the mountains.)
4) Get back into playing guitar. (FAILED: I played a bit here and there but never re-developed my finger calluses properly.)
5) Make at least 6 pieces of art. (SUCCESS! I only made 2 digital paintings, but I did some pixel art and some mockup art for Ancient Enemy which I’m including in these 6 pieces. You can see some of them here.)
6) Do a gamejam. (SUCCESS! Right at the end of the year I used Pico-8 for the first time to make a game called CyberJam. It’s not really finished but it’s pretty cool and I’m pleased with it. I’d like to spend a bit more time on it so I can release it to the public.)

Success rate = 5/6 = 83%. This is a great score, much better than last year. I think these were reasonable goals and I made sure I did them.

Stretch Goals:
1) Pay our joint account back some of the money we have loaned my company in recent years. I’ll put a figure of £5000 on this. (FAILED: Sadly Shadowhand didn’t make enough money for this to happen and as I didn’t release any other games, this wasn’t possible. In fact we ended up lending the company some more money.)
2) Make another mortgage lump sum overpayment at some point in the year. Minimum £1000. (SUCCESS! Yes we did exactly that ha. It’s not much but it’s something.)

Bonus Points

– Early in the year Cliff Harris said I should blog more often. And so I wrote a bunch of informative blog posts that got widely shared and were a factor in me doing talks and getting funding for Ancient Enemy. I even turned down two international talks because I was too busy with work and didn’t want to travel. People even mentioned my blog posts in their GDC talks and articles. So I think I got a good visiblity boost within the industry this year and I also had a fun year networking.
– I wasn’t expecting to turn into a “publisher” but it’s worked out pretty well. So far I’ve published three Jewel Match Soltaire games on Steam and there are more coming in 2019. It’s bonus money and helps with my branding as a card game developer.
– I got contacted by a developer rep from a well-known console manufacturer and now plans are afoot for something interesting…(more on this soon)
– I went to a couple of great Aikido courses. My Aikido has been changing in the last few years as I gain more understanding of different principles from different teachers.
– I had nice a Christmas break at home and I played tons of games.
– I lost some weight, which wasn’t a goal I’d set, but I just did it anyway. I’ve also been using my standing desk a lot and my legs and back feel stronger.

Mistakes
– I didn’t get going fast enough with new projects after shipping Shadowhand. To be fair this was because of burnout and it happens to me pretty much every time I ship something but it was quite powerful this time.
– I didn’t ship Shadowhand Solitaire in the summer. I only needed a few more weeks to finish it and if I had shipped it then by now I would be receiving income from it, which would have been REALLY useful. This is because I didn’t want to delay working on Ancient Enemy after I got the funding and the team together. I’ll probably go back to this after Ancient Enemy ships, but the casual markets have declined further in 2018 and it is really starting to look like a non-viable earner.
– Early in the year I had a meeting with a large mobile game dev company and I had the possibility of making a deal with them about a certain IP we own. However, I just couldn’t work out a deal that I was happy with. This was during my burnout period and thinking back on it, maybe I should have persisted more and tried diferent approaches. However, the rest of the year has worked out anyway and I’m happy with what I’m doing now.
– I put the weight I lost back on in the run up to Christmas. To be honest I was just enjoying myself eating food and feeling that “hibernation” vibe. But it’s OK as my BMI is still in the normal range.
– I wish I’d done more art and music and spent more time with my youngest son who is 15 now (though we did get into watching Brooklyn 99 together, which is great).

2019 Work Goals

1) Grey Alien Games’ revenue is over $100K. This is reasonable based on past years but a lot depends on the timing and success of my upcoming projects.
2) I ship Ancient Enemy before June 2019.
3) I ship secret project 1 in Q2.
4) I ship secret project 2 in 2019 and it is at least part-funded by Kickstarter/an investor/grant.
5) I stay in business until the end of 2019.

I’m breaking my usual rule of only working on one project at time in 2019 but I’m aiming to work with other reliable people to get stuff done so that I’m no longer the bottleneck in my business. That should also free me up to do more biz dev, which has been succesful this year, in order to create more opportunities.

Stretch Goals:
1) Ancient Enemy breaks even. Whilst I’ll do everything I can to make this happen, it’s mostly out of my control due to market forces, so I won’t make it an official goal.
2) I start work on a new game (preferably our own IP.) Self-funded if I have enough $, otherwise externally funded.

2019 Personal Goals

1) Get my weight down to 65Kg (its 67kg right now, so this isn’t too hard) and maintain that to the end of the year.
2) Go on 10 nice walks/daytrips/long weekends with my wife.
3) Help my eldest son to pass his Aikido black belt.
4) Have a week long staycation, probably after Ancient Enemy ships and the dust settles, but maybe before if I need it.
5) Go on a week long vacation with my wife to Wales or Scotland, or maybe Ireland, and look at castles and standing stones.
6) Spend more time with my youngest son (playing games, watching TV, cinema etc). This should probably more specific, but I’m going to go with gut feel on this by the end of the year.
7) Finish my Cyberjam game in pico-8.

That’s more goals than last year and I’ve missed off things like make art and music, but I’ll probably do some of that as well anyway and I don’t want to make the goals list too long.

Stretch Goals (these are almost the same as last year):
1) Pay our joint account back some of the money we have loaned my company in recent years. I’ll put a figure of £10000 on this.
2) Make another mortgage lump sum overpayment at some point in the year. Minimum £2000.