and that's it, bring on 2026! I'm tired from typing this out on new years eve lol
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So I guess that's a wrap for 2025? Man this has been a crazy year from start to end. Which is also a pretty good order to go through things
I already wrote a whole thing about this, but it's still kind of crazy I actually did this, even though it was right at the beginning of the year it still sticks out in my mind, a very enjoyable experience for sure. Nothing much came of it at the time but I shall get back to my wider feelings on gamedev at the end..
Specifically my Final Major Project for my year 13 media course. With almost no prior experience in making movies, I threw myself into an ambitious 10-minute film that pushed me beyond what I'd ever done before. While the final work is heavily flawed and has loads of things I can pick apart or wish I'd done differently, I'm still incredibly fond of this thing and would do it again in a heartbeat. I remember when I'd kicked into high-gear on production, I described it as feeling like I'd found what I was put on this earth to do, which is definitely not a feeling I'd forget in a hurry. I learnt many practical lessons about filmmaking such as don't dump the tasks of concepting, writing, planning, shooting, directing, video editing and sound editing all onto one person, I found I really enjoyed being on set directing actors but struggled a lot more in planning out stories and characters, and I had my first experience working with a creative partner, and learning the delicate dance of gives, takes and fun that comes along with it (specifically a good VRC friend of mine, Ellie, chipped in an excellent soundtrack, working with her was lovely and I am so happy with the songs she made for this project). As I hinted at earlier, on top of all those practical lessons I also learnt just how much I enjoy this whole process, how much I want to keep doing this for as long as I can get away with it, and that I'd rather have fun with friends for a bit longer than immediately go into the serious adult world of work, which resulted in me applying for university, which I'll get back to later
for those interested in watching the film, I unfortunately don't think I'm able to release it publically, but if we know each other feel free to message and ask me for a copy.
ahh the videos I made in the summer. That brainfart of a video about miracle chan and the shortfilm was a wild ride, I decided to write a video about it pretty much as soon as I had that initial reaction to seeing it, and my body moved faster than my mind could catch up to check if it was even a good idea, something I'm very glad of because I think the final video has a very unique quality to it as a result. It seems like it struck a chord with the small amount of people who watched it too, not only did the creator of miracle-chan and my main stylistic inspiration for the video leave lovely comments (among quite a few others), someone who I was vaguely aware of on bsky decided to reach out wishing me luck at university, only to realise I was applied to the same one as her. After many months of messaging and calls I'm glad to say that she is now one of my closest in-person friends at uni, and I am very grateful for the insane collection of coincidences that led to this point.
and the HIG Glove video also came out around this time too, after an initial week of poor performance this one shot up to being my highest viewed video on the channel, something I'm still incredibly grateful for. I feel I was truly firing on all cylinders here, and these two videos are going to be a high standard to live up to going forwards.
In the summer prior to moving out I cleared a load of stuff from my backlog (did a misguidedly scattershot video about that too) and allowed myself to stagnate as the months ticked away. In anticipation of moving to a new city full of new people, I joined and created a good couple of group chats relating to my uni, continuing on my streak of proactivity that began last year (an old teacher of mine would often reference the idea of an internal/external locus of self-control, worth looking up sometime). This proactivity would be very helpful and land me a lovely group of friends a familiars by the time I left in december, I screwed up a good deal of things there too and a lot of hard lessons were learnt (I have no desire to administrate a semi-public discord for a while now), but you live and learn
I've not mentioned a whole lot about this online, mostly because I don't have much to say that's relevant to bsky or youtube, but to quicly condense things here, my social life started off rough, then slowly put itself together over time from an insanely large series of equally crazy coincidences. My studies started off rough but have also settled down now (albeit not in a state I'm the happiest with), and that whole "living alone as an adult" thing? Well I'm trying my best, though with far too many potnoodles for my liking.
Soon after moving in, I decided to start playing through a game that'd been sitting on my steam deck for a while, 428 Shibuya Scramble. This combination of visual novel storytelling (friends of the show will be correcting me that it's actually a sound novel) and live-action filmmaking (albeit in the form of still photos), all held together with a very interesting and systematically rich narrative which has you jumping around between multiple characters massively captivated me.
Not long after I also finally sat down and played through the story of vivid/stasis, a combination of rhythm gameplay, visual novel storytelling and ARG puzzlesolving. I can't go into much detail about the story because I feel it's best left as unspoiled as possible, but I implore you to check it out. For me one of the biggest impacts of this game was that it got me pondering storytelling within rhythm games, which was a loose thread in my mind that would soon be tugged on even further with the release of UNBEATABLE
This one elaborated on the idea of combining rhythm gameplay and storytelling so far that it breaks out of the rhythm gamer niche into a game that I think everyone owes it to themselves to play, seriously, this is the big one for me. While there are things to be said about the technical elements and how parts of the game suffer from a lack of pollish, the final thing is still really something. For me the thing that hit me hardest was the credits strangely enough, seeing so many names I knew and people I was aware of, working together on this passion project bursting with humanity and emotion, has massively emboldened me in my own desire to make art, which is the thread I'd like to take
Next year (alongside completing all my obligations for my uni course), my biggest ambition is to make more art, more cool shit, more weird shit, more shit that can only come out of my brain. I've gotten so many ideas for things I want to make that it's going to be hard fitting it all in.
One last point, this year marked a turning point for me, before I'd look up to creative people making the stuff I liked. Now I'm slowly becoming part of the circle making cool stuff, I've had people whose work I love reach out and talk to me as an equal, which means to absolute world to me. Finishing unbeatable really hit this home for me, seeing the names of people I know in there really hit home how something that good could be made by people like me, and maybe one day if I'm ambitious enough I could make something myself. I still don't know what these feelings will manifest into next year, or if they'll even blossom that soon, but I've got a fire lit under my arse now that's gonna take a lot of shit to put out, like it or not I'm planning on sticking around for a good while longer, and I hope you'll stick around to see what I've got to say for it.
Thanks for reading this far! I hope you were able to get something out of my self-indulgent rambling, before I leave I'd like to give some thanks to:
and that's it, bring on 2026! I'm tired from typing this out on new years eve lol
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