{"id":4663,"date":"2024-12-27T07:57:36","date_gmt":"2024-12-27T06:57:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.winterwolves.net\/blog\/?p=4663"},"modified":"2024-12-27T08:02:29","modified_gmt":"2024-12-27T07:02:29","slug":"end-of-year-review","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.winterwolves.net\/blog\/2024\/12\/end-of-year-review\/","title":{"rendered":"End of year review"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

So as usual, in this post I’m going to review my goals for 2024 and see what happened. For reference, this was the blog post with my “new year goals”<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

House of Chavez<\/strong> was released<\/a>, which was a sure thing for me (whenever I do a Kickstarter, I\u2019m confident I can finish the project in a reasonable amount of time). The reception was mixed, with some people not liking the gameplay part (and I\u2019m not even talking about the minigames that can be entirely skipped!). Sales-wise, I was expecting a bit more, considering the quality of the product. However, I\u2019ve come to realize that it\u2019s really hard nowadays. The exposure and sales provided by Steam are always going down, so you can have very different (worse) results even from one year to the next.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Overall, I\u2019m pleased with the result and really like the final game. As I\u2019ve mentioned elsewhere, this VN\/adventure mix had just the right amount of complexity as developer, and I\u2019d love to create another game like this in the future (not necessarily horror). It felt like a nice change from the usual plain VNs. However, I might skip the minigames next time and just do the adventure part!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

TFTU: Lilith<\/strong> was also out<\/a>. In the blog post at beginning of the year I was assuming I’d do Thieves Of Dingirra this year, however in April I made an update, explaining why I swapped the two games<\/a>, so that I’d do Lilith first. And I still think it was the best move. Lilith has only been out for a short time, so it\u2019s too early to draw any conclusions. However, I\u2019m pretty happy with it so far, and I think many fans (in particular those who wanted Evelyn as romance and a true triad route) are too!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Last but not least I did the campaign for Christine’s Care<\/strong><\/a>. This was probably one of the most disappointing Kickstarter I’ve ever done – not only the final amount is the lowest ever (even lower than my first try with Hazel!) but I honestly couldn’t understand why – considering my previous two KS all made over 10k! I even asked for feedback after it ended to understand better what was about that game that made people skip it, and the sad thing is that it seems it’s just that even on Kickstarter the overall exposure is going down. Anyway, I’ve enabled late pledges until end of the year,<\/a> so if you missed it you can still pledge for it until 1st January 2025.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I have in mind some changes for next year but I’ll discuss that in the usual “New year goals” post at beginning of 2025.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This year I was also celebrating 20 years as indie, and my 50th birthday. I’m amazed that I can still be doing this after so much time! And it’s all thanks to you.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Personal Stuff<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

If on the professional side things went OK overall, all things considered, but on the personal side… let’s say that things could have been better.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In March I lost my dog Skipper (I dedicated House of Chavez both to him and Tofu who I lost last year). We got a new dog, Daisy, a month later. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Summer was also a nightmare due to the climate, so I could neither work, neither take some time off to relax\/recharge batteries. Terrible!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Then in the Fall I had to do the other eye surgery, which was planned but still a pain because I lost several days of work and was stressed about it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I also had to said goodbye to Micia, a 20 (or more) years old ex-stray cat that we rescued when we moved here.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So, last year I said 2023 was a bad year, but actually 2024 wasn’t that much better…!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Getting older sucks!<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Who would have guessed? Haha, jokes aside, I\u2019ve noticed each year I\u2019m a bit slower working than the last. With age, minor health issues pop up\u2014nothing serious, like back ache and so on, but they do slow you down.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Looking back, I\u2019m glad that when I was younger and in good health, I worked hard. It would\u2019ve been such a waste to not take advantage of that time. So, if you\u2019re young and have a dream, make sure you\u2019re putting in the effort to achieve it! Don’t waste your time! Carpe diem<\/em>, etc.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While it\u2019s true that many famous people found success later in life, it’s definitely easier to achieve when you\u2019re in your prime years! (I\u2019d say between 20 and 40).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That\u2019s all for now. I hope you\u2019re enjoying the holidays, and of course, Happy New Year!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

So as usual, in this post I’m going to review my goals for 2024 and see what happened. For reference, this was the blog post with my “new year goals”. House of Chavez was released, which was a sure thing for me (whenever I do a Kickstarter, I\u2019m confident I can finish the project in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4663","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general-topics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.winterwolves.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4663","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.winterwolves.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.winterwolves.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.winterwolves.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.winterwolves.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4663"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/www.winterwolves.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4663\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4749,"href":"https:\/\/www.winterwolves.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4663\/revisions\/4749"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.winterwolves.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4663"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.winterwolves.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4663"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.winterwolves.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4663"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}