2022's come and gone, and it's certainly been eventful.

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At home, there's been a HECK of a lot of family events, a number of which I'm still not allowed to blog about, along with some that I can, including the passing away of a family member just a few days ago.
If you've noticed my somewhat obscure schedule (or lack thereof) this year, just know that there's been reasonings behind it all.

But what DID I do, this year?
Let's take a look!


Click for a full sprawling mass of a Spreadsheet of AGameAWeek Insanity!


Willy Bomber (Browsercade)

I started the year off with a strong surge of releases, managing to do one a SmileBASIC, a GotoJSE Basic and an "AGameAWeek Proper", every week for a solid eight weeks in a row.
I managed a set of Browsercade games like a Tower-Defence-style game and a fast paced River Rapids one, and then a Jigsaw style game, and another Word Game for Shoebox.
Meanwhile, the weekly SmileBASIC games included a Bomberman style game, more Space Shooters, and even the forever-unloved game Cardagain


Last Train to Munky Town (SmileBASIC)

Amiga

After my eight run awesome streak, however, the overhaul of my bedroom ended up taking over my free time. Out went a couple of 20 year old units, and in came some nice new Ikea units. A lovely new desk, and some chest-of-drawers to fill up the area.
The whole room was taken out, and bit by bit, everything moved back in with new places being found for all.

More than anything else my unexpanded Amiga-600 took pride and place, on the end of the chest-of-drawers where the TV was situated.
Over the next month or so, I scoured the internet for "Things that would enhance it, but which wouldn't have been out of the realm of possibility for someone to do 25 or so years ago."
That is, a 1Mb ChipRam expansion, a nice new mouse, and a Compact Flash -> PCMCIA adaptor with a 128Mb drive.

Anything more than that seems to require more complex things like a full Kickstart overhaul, and modern CPU Enhancement modules.
Call me crazy, but I've always been of the mindset that if you expand something to extents like that, then it isn't "really" the same system anymore.

If I wanted a "Sooped Up" Amiga, I could easily have picked up the "TheA500Mini", which incidentally showed up at around about the same period of time that I was expanding my little A600.

No, I wanted "My Amiga 600", but with a little less disk swapping, and that's what all these little tweaks allowed me.
(Though, incidentally, I DID buy the "TheA500Mini" mouse, and used a USB->Amiga adaptor to get it working on my Amiga.

Over the next few months, I learned how to use Blitz2.0 on the Amiga, and managed to whip up versions of Spike Dislike, Flappadiddle and Blockman Gets for the system, all of which proved to be minimally popular in the Amiga realm.


Blockman Gets (Amiga)

I then pushed myself far too hard, trying to get a version of RetroRaider to work on the system, to the point where I gave up, and disheartened by my lack of ability to get it working, have unfortunately not revisited the world of Amiga Development since.
*slaps wrist*
I should definitely go back there, at some point in 2023.

Meanwhile...

Alongside all the Amiga chaos, I still somehow managed to squeeze in weekly SmileBASIC games, but my regular AGameAWeek Proper games were suffering, and the GotoJSE releases had all but stopped.
Cheeses Heist, Magma Rose and Draggly Spogs showed up in the Browsercade, but GOPS in May was the only Shoebox release since January!
Signs were showing that all wasn't right in the JNK Household, and after the release of RetroRaider for SmileBASIC, a drastic change in schedules occurred.
First I took a semi-scheduled "Mid year break".. two whole weeks off, but that was followed rapidly by another "Family" week.


Block 4 (GotoJSE)

From this point on, SmileBASIC releases were reduced to monthly events, as I tried to catch up on the things I hadn't been focusing on, and then came the UK Heatwave!
Another week or so where I was far too hot to actually accomplish anything at all.
Shoebox games started to reappear, with Lockbox and Higher or Lower, and then a couple more Browsercade games, too.
Taking the break from weekly SmileBASIC games, even amongst the chaos, was giving me a little bit more time to work on the things I was supposed to be doing.

The monthly schedule of SmileBASIC also allowed me to work on a few things I hadn't previously had the time for.
A PROPER version of JNKPlat was made on the system, as well as that nice four-player version of Popcorn Bucket that I said I'd make, all the way back in 2019!
Orret Cha showed up, and was a lovely little Browsercade game, so much that it got a remake in SmileBASIC. This was usually something that happened the other way around, with the SmileBASIC platform being my place to try out experimental ideas.
Having that place be AGameAWeek Proper was a nice change to how things have been for the past couple of years, and I quite enjoyed the change in methodology.


Alien Deathmatch Arena (SmileBASIC)

And yet, even then, I still struggled. I struggled to make only 14 games between July and September, and anyone who knows me, knows that's not me!
Family life was taking over, my mind wasn't in a good place, free time was erratic, and October was looming.

SpikeDislike

The SpikeDislike engine was getting outdated, and the website was having some serious issues on iOS.
I decided to rewrite the SpikeDislike website from scratch, erasing everything I'd previously written, and redoing it all from the beginning.
Proper Delta-Timing for slower systems, reduced graphical scaling, and an overhaul as to how I create new themes, I found myself with a much more expandable engine.

Not knowing how I was going to manage an Advent collection this year, once October struck, it was time to put down the usual tools and try to come up with something unusual to end the year.
Since I was already looking at a newly expandable version of SpikeDislike, the decision seemed really obvious.
Take the time to build theme, after theme, after theme for SpikeDislike, and release one a day over "SpikeVent".
The themes came together nicely, and a few more Shoebox and Browsercade games were built in any free time I had alongside them.


SpikeDislike.com

One of the Shoebox games was Five Words, which Spinal over on Socoder suggested might work well as it's own thing. This seemed like a fun idea, but with December just around the corner, I had to hold back the urge to do such a thing, and instead focus on the final few SpikeDislike themes for Advent.
Most new themes were kept, but a few were rejected along the way, and there's still a half-incomplete theme in the engine that I really need to finish off.
But other than that, the SpikeDislike themes came along well enough, and throughout December, the SpikeVent mostly went off without a hitch.

December

With only 31 days remaining, my focus was on Spinal's suggested "FiveWords Engine". Deciding it works best as part of the Foldapuz world, I set about creating Foldapuz Play, and within the new engine are now a set of 10 puzzle games, from FiveWords, through A to B, to Treasure, ScrollBox and more.


Five Words (Foldapuz Play)

I've added retention for the past 10 days results, and your times are shareable with others via screenshots or plain text.

Even still, family events continued to loom, and what should've been an easy set of 20 or so games, ended up just being 10.
That's kinda disappointing, if I'm honest.
Still, the engine's now part of the world of AGameAWeek, so if in future I can come up with a nice puzzle that'll work in a daily manner, I can easily pop it into this one, and expand upon the engine like I do Shoebox, Browsercade and Foldapuz itself.
It's nice to have all of these sites that I can throw my crazy ideas into.

Ugh..

It's been .. a year. Let's just say that.
In all, I "only" managed to create 87 games this year. Last year was 91, the previous 113 and before that 139...
.. I'm definitely slowing down in my old age!


Variable (Music)

Although I haven't yet mentioned it, another big event this year was that I switched my Music Creation tool from the iPad's KORG Gadget, to the Mac's Ableton.
It's been a bit of a jump, and has required a little more focus for each Choon, but I feel I'm already getting into a swing with it.
Having to come up with little videos for each choon, however, has also eaten up a ton of my usual GameDev time. But, like I always say, practice might not make perfect, but it does at least make things quicker!

A flow has been found!!

2023

I'm hoping that 2023 will run a little smoother.
I've opted to stop making new SmileBASIC games. *gasp*
Not because I've fallen out of love with it. It's still my "Most played game" on my Switch, and no doubt will remain that way.

The honest truth though, is that I just can't come up with any new or original ideas that I can do in a week.
I managed 100 on the OUYA, and have so far done 155 in SmileBASIC. But you can tell the original ideas have been much more of an effort, in the later games.
Perhaps I'll continue to make Monthly games on there? I'm not sure.

For now, it's on the sidelines.

I'll try my best to do weekly "AGameAWeek Proper", and I'd really love to start making some sort of Tutorial series for GotoJSE. That's definitely something that's missing.
I also have a larger "Not ANOTHER new website, Jay!?!" collection of games in mind, though how well that'll work out will be down to my ability to .. make it!!
Stay tuned to see how that turns out.

I also didn't manage to get my SpikeDislike VR engine up and running by the end of 2022 like I'd planned, so there's that to work on, too.

Will I manage to beat 87 games next year?
I certainly hope so.
But only time will tell.

I hope you can join me on the adventure, this year.

AGameAWeek : It may not all be perfect games, but there's usually the odd thing you'll love along the way.

And may you all have a fantastic new year.