Well, this is the last day! I had to throw out my Page-A-Day calendar, and I'm very sad about it. It was all logic puzzles.
Here's all the stuff Hamumu released in 2012: 11 games ported to the Blackberry Playbook and OS10 (a couple are actually ridiculous new games, including one that has yet to be approved -
check them all out here); Nikki Neigh and Tricky Trey finally came out publicly; Scouts Vs. Aliens, Pedro Kicks Back, and Dredd Speed all came out on the
Boys' Life website; Made 4 "Pirate Kart" games live on film; released SpaceManiac's updated versions of Dr. Lunatic Supreme With Cheese, and Sleepless Hollow (both still beta today though!); and
Indiebusked the very unique Sneaky Brats multiplayer game.
I also worked on a bunch of stuff that isn't yet released - Witch Game, NPC Quest 2,
Growtopia, and Dr. Exploro are the ones I can remember offhand.
So, not a lot of chance of income from all that. I got paid for the Boys' Life games, and I made a couple bucks for Nikki Neigh and Sneaky Brats, and I will in theory receive a little money from the blackberry ports (I've already made $11 from sales of those! WHOO). But overall, this was not a money-making year. Which is generally a problem. NPC Quest 2 was intended as my "if this doesn't make me a living, I have to quit" project, but it turned out that I needed money I didn't have in the first place to create it. Now I think Growtopia has taken its place, so let's hope that works out
really really well.
This year has been smack-dab in the "blah" column. I like the games I made (the three Boy Scout ones... other than that I only made tiny jam games!), and I'm really excited about Growtopia, but the indie world has become increasingly locked off, and I'm on the wrong side of the door. What it's really become is increasingly unindie - nobody except a select few is making it in an actual independent fashion, it's all about Kickstarter, Steam/Greenlight, iTunes, and a dozen other little app stores here and there. Selling on your own website, which used to be my entire purpose in life, has basically ended. Things are actually spiraling even further in dark directions for indies (hello Windows 8), and at a faster pace all the time. I saw Terraria on the Steam sale for $3.39 and thought "That's perfect research for Growtopia... but that's a bit too pricey for me." We are really far down that rabbit hole people! I don't know where it comes out, and I don't really think anybody does. This industry is changing faster than ever before, and I hope it all comes out well, but right now, it's a tough nut to crack. And any cracking you do is only valid for a couple months before the rules change again. It scares me!
But I guess that's more future talk than past. And that's what I'm gonna blog about tomorrow, when a wild new year appears!
