You can find last year’s goals here.

Well I’ll come right and say it: on paper 2025 looks like a failure in terms of achieving my work goals, but actually it’s been a very successful year in other ways and 2026 is going to be very exciting. So let’s dive into it!

2025 Work Goals

1. Ship new game (FAILED: This game is Forbidden Solitaire! We aimed to ship in the summer as it was supposed to be a small scope game using existing tech. Well, despite working hard all year with no distractions, it is taking a bit longer due to complexity and slightly increased scope. However, we think it’s nearly done and it’s also it’s pretty awesome. Plus it’s been really well received on social media, in the press, and by streamers. We’ve got nearly 40,000 wishlists, which is way more than we’ve ever got for previous games! So the signs are very positive for this game.)
2. Ship Spooky Bonus Collector’s Edition (FAILED: After we announced Forbidden Solitaire we decided to shelve this idea and just focus on our main game, which I think was a sensible decision.)
3. Net revenue is over $120K (FAILED: We had a “mid” year due to not releasing any new games but we got a decent way towards this total from sales of previous games and other income+tax relief, which I’ll detail in a Patreon post soon. However, I’m hopeful that we’ll blast past this goal in 2026!

Success rate = 0/3 = 0%. Er, yeah so that’s maybe the worst I’ve ever done with work goals haha. Last year it was 100% success. However, we are sitting on a giant asset with Forbidden Solitaire, so I don’t feel bad at all.

Stretch Goals:

1. Start work on something else (FAILED: This didn’t happen because we haven’t finished the current game yet. You can see how my goal failures have cascaded from that. Oops!)
2. Make any kind of platform deal (SUCCESS(ish)! We didn’t make any big deals but made a couple of smaller distributor deals for our older games that brought in some bonus revenue. This is the cool thing about having a back catalogue.)

2025 Personal Goals

1. Go on 20 nice walks (SUCCESS! I went on 37 and may have forgotten to note some down. Most of these were in the local area but some were in Croatia when we went to Reboot Develop in April 2025, and a few were on day trips in the UK.)
2. Sort out our attic and add more insulation (FAILURE: I was just too focused on work to spend any time on this. Maybe this year is the year it will finally get done, along with solar panels?)
3. Finish the year lighter and fitter than I am now (68.5kg) (SUCCESS! I was 61kg on New Year’s Day and was a bit lower a month ago but Christmas food fattened me up a bit. At the start of 2025 I lost a couple of kg by watching my diet, but then I had some tests done and was told I should improve my diet even more and so I really went for it and managed to lose over 10% of my bodyweight. I was on the high end of normal BMI and now I’m in the middle and feel pretty good for it. The other half of this goal was about fitness but foolishly I didn’t specify a measure of this. I am probably weaker (less muscle due to weight loss) but I feel pretty fit and healthy and can walk fast and do Aikido fine, so I’m probably about the same fitness overall.)
4. Go on a holiday for at least a week (FAILURE: We did spent a week in Croatia for Reboot Develop, which included a few days lounging around beforehand, but we didn’t go anywhere else because I was working so much on the game. I even worked a bunch of weekends, but I took two weeks off over Christmas, which was nice. I don’t mind though as I’ve just been really focussed (not crunching though). This year we will definitely go somewhere plus have a staycation when the weather is good for walks+sunbathing.)
5. Convert my Flash games to Ruffle (SUCCESS! This turned out to be quite easy and it feels great to have revived these 10+ year old jam games. You can play them here.)

Success rate = 3/5 = 60%. This is pretty good tbh, especially as one of the goals was to do with my health. If you have good physical/mental health then it’s easier to achieve life and work goals, so I take my health seriously.

Stretch Goals:

1. Get a new tarmac/brick drive (FAILED: Probably couldn’t afford to do this properly and I was too busy to even think about it anyway. We might end up moving house in 2026, so we’ll have to think about if doing this would help sell the house due to it looking nicer or if we leave it for the next person to sort out.)
2. Ship a hobby gamedev project (FAILED: I have a hobby project that I started in 2018 in pico-8 that I’ve returned to several times. I booted it up over Christmas and reviewed the TODO list but then we had a family crisis and suddenly it felt too much like “work” to finish it, even though it would probably have been fun. So alas, it’s shelved again for now. I really do want to finish and release it soon though as it’s really cool.)
   

Bonus Points

• I did an updated version of my 2016 GDC Talk “The No Hit Wonder” at Reboot Develop and we also got our hotel paid for as compensation. The talk went well and it was a big room full of many people who said they enjoyed it. I aim to record a version of it and put it on youtube soon.
• Also at Reboot Develop I met RJ Mical who is famous for being part of the Commodore Amiga team. It just so happened that I had an Amiga T-Shirt on that day and I didn’t know he was speaking but when I found out I managed to chat to him and get a selfie, which really made my day/year 🙂
• Our youngest son finished university and got his degree in Game Design+Programming. He then worked for us part-time on Forbidden Solitaire, and moved to Bristol and has recently started working for us full-time remotely. We think alike and get on well, so it’s been really great to have him as part of the team!
• We’ve really enjoyed working with Night Signal Entertainment on Forbidden Solitaire. They are very creative and nice people and we’re glad to be able to help bring their vision alive. Also, the game has been really well received and is approaching 40,000 wishlists. In fact, we just got mentioned on this list of “Coolest 2026 games” by Kotaku alongside Resident Evil, Star Wars, GTA6, and more. Wow!

Mistakes

• Possibly we’ve overscoped Forbidden Solitaire despite trying really hard not to. Certainly we underestimated how long it would take and thus couldn’t release it in 2025. But the game is really cool and will come out soon after approx. 1 year of development, so it’s not like it’s dragging on for too long in the scheme of things. This is a common problem for indie devs and heck, we still make this mistake after doing it for 20 years!
• Maybe I could have gone on holiday somewhere or taken a bit more time off in hindsight, but we were aiming for a Halloween release at one point and I was working hard to try to hit that. Now we have another release date in mind and will run out of money if we don’t release then, so a holiday isn’t on the cards for now. Perhaps we should have signed up with a publisher to get funding but we think we are doing a pretty good job of marketing and (probably) don’t really need one. We’ll see!
• I’ve had a few health worries this year but luckily after investigation none of them are too bad and I’ve been able to either take action or ignore them. Often the worry is worse than the actual thing. And stress is known to cause health problems anyway in a vicious circle. So I have tried to prioritise my health and relaxing (when not working) a lot this year and that seems to be going OK.

2026 Work Goals

1. Ship Forbidden Solitaire in Q1/2. (Ideally it will come out in Q1 but there are some weeks we want to avoid launching in, so it could be early Q2 and I need to give myself some leeway in case we need it, but not too much!)
2. Capitalise on Forbidden Solitaire. (We have various post-launch plans for the game depending on how well it does. I’m not going to be specific, but basically I hope the game does well enough that’s it’s a no-brainer to do various follow up activities that help keep the game selling well. I’m also not going to add a work goal to say “start working on something else” this year because I really don’t know what is going to happen until we launch and see the results.)
3. Grey Alien Games’ net revenue is over $200K. (I’m setting an ambitious goal this year because I really think we have a good chance of meeting and exceeding it, which would be wild and a nice change from “sustainable game dev” for the last 20 years. We’ll see… Wish us luck!)

Stretch Goals:
– I’m not going to set any this year. It’s really a big unknown until we ship and then I’ll be able to make plans and set goals accordingly.

2026 Personal Goals

1. Have a positive medical test result. (I’m not going into details but I needed to make changes due to a not great result last year and I’m hoping those changes are reflected in a test result later this year. I just need to keep doing what I’m doing and then find out.)
2. Have a one week staycation in nice weather. (We live in a great area and it’s lovely to go on walks or just relax in our garden, and I want to set some time aside to do that this year.)
3. Go on holiday for at least a week. (Can be in the UK or abroad. Don’t mind, just need to go somewhere cool and enjoy it. Bonus points if we can do this for more than a week, or twice. As always, our finances/work schedule and getting the cat looked after are the biggest hurdles.)

Stretch Goals:

1. Move house. (We’ve talked about this for quite a few years now that our kids have grown up and left home. We’d like to live somewhere quieter and more rural instead of the outskirts of town. Our house is very nice so it’s not urgent to do this, but would be nice and the whole process could in fact take a long time. So we’ll see what happens.)
2. Ship a hobby gamedev project. (It might be finishing one that I have in the pipeline, or a new one, or even working with my son on one. I’m open to all possibilities.)