A Fresh Start

Look at that, my first post.

Part of me is proud for taking the first step and writing this. Another part feels a little silly to be creating their first ever blog post in 2026. It's almost as if I showed up for the movie as it was ending. Why am I here? Why write this at all?

The answer is simple: motivation. A publicly declared challenge to myself.

A little over a decade ago I acquired a game design degree, and I've yet to use it professionally. Well, technically the degree helped me get a job at a software company, but I haven't really done much in the way of game design or development. If my life were to end today, I think my largest regret would be that I never published a video game. I figured with 2026 just starting, why not take this year to change that?

Years back I stumbled upon Yahtzee Crowshaw's Dev Diary series, where he pledged to make 12 games in 12 months. I found the series inspirational. You have a creative individual with a number of books and games under his belt, pushing himself create even more.

I always figured such a goal was always out of reach for myself. What indie game development I've done over the last decade usually fizzled out quickly due to a lack of time, or getting to a point where I just feel lost with the project and put it on the metaphorical shelf indefinitely.

I'm no Yahtzee Crowshaw. Despite that, I'd like to give his challenge a try.

The Plan

I'm going to commit to working on an indie game every month over the next year, posting my progress and results to this site. I'm not going to 100% emulate Yahtzee's challenge. More specifically, I want to:

1. Work on a new game every month, until January 2027.
2. Post a minimum of one devlog update each month.
3. The games do not need to be complete. The point of this project is to prototype quickly and try different things

Regarding #1, I want to develop a routine where I find time after work to stop playing games, and start making them. It's far too easy to be exhausted after a long day at work and fire up something on Steam. I still want to play games, but I'd like to develop a habit of making them too.

Additionally, I want to get more comfortable with my tool sets. While I have some base comfort with Unity and a couple of different drawing applications, I think some consistent work on my part would help me skill up.

Regarding #3, while finishing a game is the long-term goal, this year is about building a new habit. It's okay to put an incomplete game down. The optimistic side of my brain likes to think that with twelve separate ideas fleshed out, I could spend some time in 2027 developing one of them into a more finalized game. Until then, I need to be okay with moving on at the end of a month.

Here goes nothing!