Hello, everyone!

So the years is ending and I wanted to make a recap of I worked on in 2018 and the plans for 2019!

YBit left early access

This year, YBit left early access and had a final version published in Steam and Itch.io. It has been more a personal project I decided to make from what was my first game where I studied, a game called Cubito.

It wasn’t a financial success but it was listed in a bundle for IndieGala and Groupees which lead to having profits from the game. Apart from that, it was a really nice thing to make the code, art and game design all by myself and working with a great team that made the music. Remember you can always buy the OST of the game here!

Also, if you are interested, I wrote a complete post-mortem about YBit.

Started working on a new VR game

This year I started working on my first VR game ever. This game started as a project where I worked with the intention of learning new stuff and winning some extra money. Also, at the beggining, it was planned to be made in Unreal but because of some issues, we decided to go back to Unity and make the whole game there.

We had been working in a really slow pace, mostly because of me. Don’t having a VIVE in my house makes a lot more difficult to make stuff for the game. We also lost some deadlines we had but, now that we will be on holidays, I hope to compensate the time we lost and make extra content for it.

Summer Snow Day

This year, I also started working on the first visual novel I ever made. This came from Chad idea for the second Happy Ghost Studio game. Being honest, making a visual novel was never in my plans but it ended being a lot more fun than what I thought. Also, we are having some great artist behind who are making really cool characters and backgrounds art from the awesome vision Chad has for the game.

Most of the year was focused on making the main framework so later we would be able to integrate all the dialogues easier. Luckly, I think we already have 99% of it and only a few tweaks left. I personally hope to have this game totally done in 2019.

Witchcraft final release

From Silky Smooth Studios, we finally made the final realease for Witchcraft. It was a long journey till the final release. We started this game as our final project in the career and continued it with a slower pace which lead to a long time to finally publish the game.

Anyway, apart from the long process, it was actually a great think to work on. It was really nice to get greenlight in Steam and published with the public approval, instead of the pay to enter system that Steam has right now. It almost felt like a “deserved” thing.

Skeleball

This year I participated in three different game jams. One of them, was the Minimalistic Jam #3 where I worked on Skeleball.

I made a post-mortem about it but I got to say it was a really nice thing to make. It was a long time I didn’t make a web game and it remembered me of why I choosed to work in videogames.

Shot Wave

Another game jam in which I participated was the UE4 2018 Summer Game Jam where I worked with part of the VR team and made Shot Wave.

The game was a lot of fun to make and was the first time I used Unreal Engine for a game jam. We felt a bit dissapointed when a really similar game to ours won but we were kinda happy that a lot of games decided to make a similar aesthetic after we posted some progress of the game in Twitter.

Saiba-Run

The last game of the year that also was the last game jam of the year is Saiba-Run. We made this game for the 2018 Epic MegaJam.

Different from the first Unreal game jam, this time we had a lot of problems and it wasn’t as nice as the last experience. We experienced problems because the workflow we were using and also had engine problems where some things would work only in the computer the game was built (and this was checked with the documentation that confirmed it worked like that). All this issues, made us rethink if we were going to participate in another Unreal Game Jam. For now, our vote is for no, we prefer working in Unity than continue with it, but one never knows.

Stickerboy

This year I also took a freelance project called Stickerboy. I was asked by Frederick, an awesome writter who wrote reviews for Asterash and YBit, to make a game for Öffnungszeiten. From there, I contacted Kevin Miles, the artist of Asterash, and Patricio Maffud, the musician from the two Unreal Game Jams and started working on this project.

The game isn’t complete yet but it should be a tribute to the Paperboy game with some differences on the main mechanic. Hopefully, it will be released in January or Febraury so stay tuned!

New job

This year, apart from teaching at Escuela Da Vinci, I also started working as the career cordinator. This lead to a lot of extra work I didn’t have before and a lot more of responsabilities wich made me stress a lot more. Anyway, I start feelling like slowly learning the way things work and with all the support I had, probably next year will be a lot easier thing to deal with. Apart from this, I am happy anyway with this new position and looking forward to do my best!

Social media

Also this year I started using more my Twitter account. I am not used to post a lot there but I am trying to push myself to do it in order to have a better marketing at the momment of publishing a game. This resulted in having more than 100 new subscribers (and more than 100% of what I had) from people I don’t actually know in person. So, even there is a lot to do, I think the results are coming out great!

Prototypes I made

This year I also made two prototypes of games in my spare time. One was I am a sad rodeo clown because my friend shat himself when he died.

This was a really quick game I planned to make with a co-worker but sadly we didn’t continue it. It wouldn’t have taken too much more to us but because of work times it became impossible to keep it up.

I also made another prototype where the player would fire to some random enemies while moving in circles.

I actually like this one and maybe I find the time, and an artist willing to work for it, during 2019. Who knows, maybe it can be the next new game!

Start of 2019

Now thinking about the future. These is my wishlist to do in 2019:

• Finish Stickerboy during January or February.
• Finish Summer Snow Day or be close to it by the end of the year.
• Have at least a working prototype of the VR game.
• Announce a new project I am working on!
• And, when finishing current projects, start new ones!

So, hopefully it will be a year with lot of more updates. But for now, I will be taking some holidays at the beggining of January. I will be posting once I am back.

Thanks for reading!