Heya friendos! Tonight we’ll witness the birth of a new year. How exciting! It was a great year for me personally, so I’d like to take a minute to reflect on it. Luckily, we have my predictions for 2024 on hand thanks to this newsletter! Let’s see if any of my plans actually panned out…

How Am I Doing?

Honestly, I’m great. Even after two weeks of social activities, which usually tire me out, I’m happy, fulfilled, and energetic. I can look back at a deeply satisfying year of unfeathered creativity, lots of rest, and many new connections and experiences. Everyone deserves this kind of freedom.

My recent trip to the Netherlands left me pondering my childhood. I’ve revisited some places I have fond memories of, checked out a bunch of childhood pictures and talked with family. We also found some old rapport cards. My love for writing and games manifested so early and so strongly, even though I didn’t know it was something you could do professionally.

What Am I Doing?

I thought it would be a fun exercise to see what I projected for this year at the start of it and compare it to what I actually did! Let’s dive into the first words I’ve written for the newsletter in 2024.

I wish everyone who is reading this (and everyone else as well), an easy 2024! I think easy will be the keyword for me this year. I’m taking things easy and hope the world will follow suit.

It was an easy year! For me at least… The world at large, not so much. I do think “easy” describes the year pretty accurately. I’ve had no stress financially or with deadlines, I’ve taken so much time to relax and rest and focused solely on my wellbeing and creativity.

It’s also fun to see how much more consistent my Cartoon Daan became over this year.

Then in A Year in Foresight, I actually published my plan for the year. In that post, I talked about how the pace I set for myself was unsustainable. I didn’t know the half of it!

• 🏕️ First and foremost, try to keep our Discord community alive.
• 🗼 Travel to South Korea and Japan for 6 weeks.
• 🗞️ Keep writing this newsletter every week, with few exceptions.
• 📜Publish a total of 8 New to Narrative articles this year.
• 📽️ Publish a total of 4 New to Narrative videos this year.
• 🐨 Create a Demo for Clysmoids, but not sure of the scope yet.
• 🤳 Publish deVlog every 2 to 4 weeks. At least once a month.
• 💼 Found a company and all the paperwork that entails.

First and foremost, I did keep the Discord community alive! It didn’t grow that much, but it’s a comfortable size to see some daily activity without needing extra moderation. The new folks we’ve onboarded are really nice and creative.

My trip to South Korea and Japan went smoothly as well, and I came back with enough inspiration to start a whole new game. I even kept the newsletter going, with nothing but a single missing week. So far so good!

Now here is where it gets wonky. I aimed to publish 8 articles this year. I got to 5, not too bad. But the wellspring of educative information I thought I tapped into dried up pretty fast. There’s still some articles in drafts, that I’ll get around to finish soon, but I had hoped to have more time and energy to focus on these.

Likewise, when it comes to New to Narrative YouTube, I launched 3 flagship videos. Technically, I also published 1 for another series so we’ll count that goal of 4 videos as achieved. Then, my idea was to publish deVlog every 2 to 4 weeks, or at least once a month. I ended up with a whopping…. drum roll… 4 of them! I’ve found it pretty hard to consistently come up with showable content or something to talk about while developing games. I post my screenshots here and there, but a full-length development vlog seems to still take me a day or two from start to finish, which is not time I can afford right now.

Also, I was supposed to create a demo for Clysmoids, the Pokémon clone I was working on at the start of the year. I’ve completely abandoned that project in favor of Rumorweaver and whatever comes next. Often when I think back on game ideas I’ve had, I tend to still believe in the concept as interesting and fun, either to play or to develop. With Clysmoids, not so much. I honestly believe there’s no real space for the game as I designed it. I think it speaks to my maturity as a designer to be able to let go of it. I still look fondly on the time I spent creating it however!

And finally, found a company. I did that! New to Narrative has been official since somewhere in the start of the year. It was a struggle to get it all done, but the relief of having everything in order is palpable.

Why Am I Doing? (this)

All-in-all, when I look back at the goals I’ve set for myself, I’ll allow myself to be proud. Not only did I reach most of the goals I set out to reach, but I did it in a way that was healthy and enjoyable. I’ve allowed myself to experiment, learned from those experiences, and found out what I do and don’t want to do anymore.

So, what’s next for old Daan? I’m not so sure yet. We’ll aim to finish the Rumorweaver vertical slice for sure, and try to ship it around for funding opportunities. I’ve been thinking of rapidly making some games to secure some finances in the meantime, but even that is risky in its own ways.

Then, I think I’ll let YouTube take a backseat for a while. While I enjoy being helpful to people who like to learn through videos, the process is too time-consuming to be viable while also making games. I also… don’t love the process as much as I do other creative ventures. I think, I’d like to return to writing articles instead, and let that guide me to wherever it leads me.

Either way, it’s going to be an interesting year! Happy new year everyone!