This is the 2nd annual yearly-review post that I have written. Last year was the first and can be viewed here, and a list of all reviews can be found here.

Last year’s post was split into 4 sections, professional review and goals and personal review and goals - this year everything will just be split into 2 sections, review of the year and goals for next year.

Review⌗

Some of my notable events this year were:

Wrote a Book⌗

Something that wasn’t planned from last year, but I successfully wrote and self-published my own ebook about The Typescript Compiler API. This was a topic I found very interesting and had a vast amount of experience and knowledge around, so it made sense to write about it and obtain some passive income from the sales.

Quit My Job⌗

I left my job at Unity in June. I worked there for just over 3 years and I wanted to take some extended time off to learn about new topics and build my own multiplayer games. It was a difficult decision at the time, but in hindsight, it was a great decision.

Created 2 Indie Games⌗

During my 6 months off, I learned a lot about 3D modeling in Blender and I successfully created 2 multiplayer games in the Godot engine that I always wanted to build.

The first was a multiplayer 2v2 3rd-person shooter named Neon Blitz (not publicly released). The objective of the game was for teams to plant bombs around a map and have the other team attempt to defuse the bomb or kill all the members of the opposing team. The game was heavily based on the rules of “Search & Destroy” from Call of Duty. All assets were created by me from scratch in Blender.

The second game was a multiplayer card game named Pali, similar to something like Pokemon or Magic the Gathering. The objective of the card game was to build the best 5 card hand possible using the same deck as your opponent sitting at the table. The game rules were inspired by the Star Trek card game. I open-sourced the entire codebase for the game here so it can be used as a reference for anyone else who wants to build similar games. Some assets were created by me, and some were premade or generated.

10-Day Meditation Retreat⌗

In early March, I accomplished one of my previous years goals which was to attend a 10-day meditation retreat. This one was in Montebello, Quebec, and taught by S.N Goenka. It was a lot of work - long days starting at 4 am with around 10 hours of meditation per day, with no talking or contact with anyone. Overall though, it was a great experience, and look forward to attending again in the future.

Conference Talk Planned⌗

Another goal from last year was to give a conference talk this year. I didn’t get a chance to achieve that yet but I do have it planned for next year as I will be speaking at Future Frontend 2024 in 🇫🇮 Helsinki!

Goals⌗

Last year, I had a lot of smaller-sized goals for the year, this year I only have 1 real big goal for 2024 and that is to move the needle on game development.

Game development needs a change and I have big plans, but I can’t share any details yet. Hopefully, by next year’s review, I will have some great announcements related to game development!