A look back at 2022 | Gamedev Dairy #59
Hacks for learning, productivity, having work-life-passion balance and finally game development!
TL;DR
Intro and some stats
My top 7 books of 2022
My top 10 games of 2022
Intro and some stats
Can you believe I've been sending these emails for more than a year? I remember making a New Year's resolution each year to regularly post something on a blog. And I failed every year.
And here we are - a weekly newsletter published regularly for 59 weeks!
Last year my resolution was to make a game, any game. I think I underestimated this resolution ;-) But I will get there. Next year, definitely!
This year was full of small successes:
19 subscribers (from 11 at the beginning of 2022). Thank you!
No unsubscribers (love you guys for that!)
Managed to interview an inspiring game developer - Mariusz Chwalba!
Managed to remain regular!
Changed the engine from Revue to Beehiiv! So far - benefits only ;-)
If you're curious:
top viewed issue of 2022 - Is Godot Git-friendly?
most inspiring (to click a link) issue of 2022 - What games can you do if you suck at art?
My top 7 books of 2022
This year I decided to read some books to self-develop a bit more.
Allow me to suggest some of them. None of the following links are affiliated. I could do it but didn't. Why? Because I'm an idiot, that's why ;-) Nevertheless, all of them are worth your time!
Ryan Holiday, Ego is the enemy which I read because I realized the truth of that title little before learning about there's a book like that ;-) Definitely will check other works of this author, especially given the author is a stoic!
Simon Sinek, Start with WHY - classic ;-)
Ryan Singer, Shape Up - heard about Basecamp's creators and decided to give it a try. They do have some interesting approaches to work organization. But to be honest, it's better for people working in IT, especially those who are scrum bo not really agile (read the same way as the sentence: "are adults but are not mature"), not necessarily wannabe indie game devs. At least when they're solo.
Jason Fried, Rework - yet another book from Basecamp guys. Also worth reading.
Derek Yu, Spelunky - and now for some books from our cup of tea. The creator of Spelunky himself shows us how he designed Spelunky. A very interesing read.
Sid Meier, A life on Computer Games - also a great read - the road of Sid Meier. Good read, interesting conclusions (his, not mine).
Reggie Fils-Aimee, Disrupting the game - this one is a fairly new. Ex-CEO of Nintendo of America shows how he singlehandedly changed gaming ;-) His confidence is legendary, but what he shares in this book proves this legend was not build on marketing. Really, I took many notes on this book, and I think I might as well use them soon.
I read 50 books this year (I should consider this a record), so it might sound weird that I deemed only seven as valuable. Well, I had worse years. Also, I only recommended those closer to our theme, I spared you the ones about raising kids and making websites in Blazer ;-)
My top 10 games of 2022
I also managed to finish 28 video games for... RESEARCH purposes. That's right!
Among them I considered these to be really worthy of suggesting:
Blast from the past: Panzer Dragoon Remake - one of those games that are heavy on shooting, and have no weight of explaining anything from the story. It's nice in a way.
This is what Indie Games should be doing more of: 1979 Revolution: Black Friday which shows the revolution in Iran, presented as a Telltale-like game. Worth your 2 hours.
A most mature game about immature people: Catherine Full Body is worth playing for the story and puzzles.
Artistic mastery, and I still needed a walkthrough: Papetura is ingenious. I hope to interview the author of this game, but I wouldn't know what to ask him, because his from a different angle of game dev. He actually has artistic talents ;-)
My new favorite franchises: Bayonetta is a fun action game that became a Nintendo exclusive and the two episodes made me really want to play the third one, Valkiria Chronicles is a J-RPG about a fantasy world war with an excellent battle system. Definitely worth playing!
Loved the game, but did not understand a thing: Inside, and I already did an issue about this game.
Biggest disappointments: Butcher was supposed to be something like a Doom demake, but was just a bland shooter with pixels (I'll spare you the screenshot).
Child of Light was almost likable. Although a bit of a bland story and the fact that every character spoke with rhymes. Not that it is a bad idea, just makes it hard to focus. It had most of the things to make it enjoyable. It was just average.
Buggy, but nice if you're patient: Grand Guilds
Steam
Unfortunately, I did not play anything new. So no game of the year was played on release year :-(
Recommendations
Congratulations to the Dwarf Fortress creators! Here's a case study that has to be done someday!
"We found a foolproof way of saving our money, which was to not sell anything for 20 years and then drop it all,"
Zach
After spending 20 years simulating reality, the Dwarf Fortress devs have to get used to a new one...
Disney said, "no IP is off limits to indies". They weren't kidding...
Pitching to work on a well-known IP
Here's a helpful video I will return to someday :-)