Leaving DeviantArt
Hey guys, I'm not closing my account, but I'm not very active here any more. Now that this website is flooded with AI-generated garbage, I don't see DeviantArt having much future. Please follow me on other platforms: I'm very active on my Discord server, and there's an active art community there. I post a lot on Twitter - both art and drama. Newgrounds is still fun for art and animations. Follow my Steam developer page for new game releases. I've started using Instagram occasionally. I sometimes do livestreams on YouTube. And finally, here's my website.
Summary of 2023
Hey guys, every year I write a long blog post summarizing the highlights of that year, so here it is for 2023:
Finally decided to ditch the old 2002 Honda Civic, and bought an automatic 2018 Skoda Karoq. Ronja recently got her driving license, and this seemed like a good disability-friendly car to share. We got the fully-loaded version because we wanted the seats to automatically adjust for each driver, but this also came with other cool vanity features, like a sun roof, 4 wheel drive, and a more powerful engine. We had to drive all the way down to Llandudno in Wales to get this rarer version! Loving the car so far, and made good use of it already. But most importantly, it feels a lot safer than the previous one!
Me and Ronja went on two cabin trips this year with Ethel, our dog. The first was in the Lake District in England, where we stayed 3 nights, and saw a nearby castle, birdwatching platforms, and hiking trails. The second was a cabin by the lake in Lochgoilhead, not far from Glasgow. It was located in the back yard of a fancy hotel and wedding venue, but there were no events on, so it was just us there. It looked beautiful during the day, but like a Resident Evil location at night!
Attended a lot of big life events this year, including 2 weddings, 6 or 7 birthday parties, PhD graduation party and a bachelor party, in addition to the usual May Day, Midsummer, Eurovision, Halloween and New Year’s Eve parties. I’m building up a collection of colorful shirts to wear at these. One of the birthday parties was at a trampoline park, and another was a game of bubble football, both of which were new and fun experiences for me, and exhausting. Also went bowling for the first time in years, and bought an ornamental sword for a friend, which looked very cool.
A bunch of my friends are starting to have babies, which is making me feel old. I’ve started collecting cute Duplo sets to gift them later.
Workwise, I spent most of the year working on Hidden Cats. There’s 30 levels that are mostly finished, but I expect I’ll be adding another 50 or so, plus some story elements. It’s turning into a pretty big but still quite experimental project. The demo has been well received by players, but my audience still isn’t particularly interested in the game, so I need to do more to market it next year.
I’ve started work on porting Epic Battle Fantasy 4 to mobile, which includes adding widescreen support and a bit of new content.
Epic Battle Fantasy 5 continues to sell well on Steam and on Android, and a Chinese government-approved version launched this year. I’ve also been helping modders with some graphics – the scene is getting more lively as Flash decompiling tools improve.
Went to see the The HU – a folk metal band from Mongolia. I don’t do live music very often, because of how crowded and painfully loud it is sometimes. The band was fun but the venue was awful!
My most played game this year was once again Age of Empires 2 – the game is still getting updates, and me and my friends are still not bored of it. Other games I really enjoyed were Resident Evil 8, Resident Evil 4 Remake, Jusant, Humanity (VR), Pistol Whip (VR), Katamari Damacy and We <3 Katamari Remakes, Final Fantasy 7: Remake, and replaying Half Life: Alyx with developer’s commentary. A lot of remakes! I’ve also been getting my dad into some calmer VR games, and occasionally returning to Overcooked, Moving Out and Mario Kart 8 with Ronja.
I’ve been reading a lot of horror manga this year, particularly most of Junji Ito’s work. I think the whacky scenes from Gyo and Uzumaki stuck in my mind the most. Also digging into small, obscure, indie horror games, including Who’s Lila?, Utility Room (VR), Feed Me Billy, and Squirrel Stapler. The video essays by Jacob Geller and iceberg videos by GriefSpeaking give me tons of horror recommendations.
On the topic of horror, I’ve been hosting horror movie nights for my friends to show off my vast collection of films. Some recent favourites include Barbarian, Deadstream, Soft and Quiet, Smile, Bodies Bodies Bodies, Talk To Me, Infinity Pool, and Butterfly Kisses.
I collected a bunch of retro space Lego from my childhood and some from even earlier. M-Tron, Space Police, and UFO themes from the 90s. Loved the whacky colors they had at the time. The modern stuff does nothing for me.
I went on a theme-park road trip around England by myself, staying in Travelodges and spending 5 days in Alton Towers, Drayton Manor, Fantasy Island and FlamingoLand. The kids were in school and the weather was cloudy, so the parks were totally empty, except for Alton Towers, which still had 15 minute queues. The big new rides in Alton Towers (The Smiler and Wicker Man) are thematically incredibly impressive. FlamingoLand is a hidden gem – it has 3 great rollercoasters, and the zoo is pretty good too. The scariest ride by far was the 70m tall Sky Flier in Fantasy Island – besides being very tall, it also felt unsafe, and I was the only person on it.
Later in the year I did two more theme park trips, this time with some friends, to Blackpool Pleasure Beach and FlamingoLand again. Blackpool’s Valhalla dark/water-ride is probably the best ride in the UK, their Icon rollercoaster may be the best rollercoaster in the UK, and the crowds are generally smaller than in Alton Towers. So if you only do one theme park in the UK, this maybe should be the one!
Finally, I visited Thorpe Park on my way to Brighton with Ronja. Even though school should have still been on, the park was very crowded with kids – even the queue skips were sold out, and the best ride, Swarm, broke down while we were queuing for it! Stealth was fun, and Saw could have been an awesome ride if it was smooth instead of painful. Ronja only rode the water rides, which were pretty good too. Good day regardless of all the challenges.
Me and Ronja went to Brighton for the Develop conference, and bumped into a few British indie game devs, including The Super Flash Brothers, Damp Gnat, and Grey Alien Games. The conference was packed and there was a lot of indie stuff to see, but the best parts were getting food and drinks with people afterwards. We of course did all the tourist stuff too, including seeing the Royal Pavilion, going up the i360 tower, and riding a crappy rollercoaster on the pier. We also saw a bit of Oxford on our drive down. On our drive home however, a combination of bad weather and road closures meant that our trip took 13 hours instead of 9. A new daily driving record for me!
Ronja went to Finland for 2 weeks, and then again later for 1 week. I thought being home alone would be fun, but I didn’t do anything special in my free time besides babysitting the dog.
I’ve been continuing some of my good habits from last year – trying to eat out at cute cafes and restaurants regularly, enjoying buying clothes, trying to buy more long-term furniture and home decor instead of cheap stuff.
Also continuing some of the bad habits, like spending too much time on Twitter. It takes a lot of discipline to do the fun parts of social media and then stop before you get to the bad parts.
In terms of exercise, I’m not doing great. I stopped playing Beat Saber because it was damaging my shoulders, and I haven’t been getting much regular exercise since. I should get back into weightlifting, as it’s very effective, time-efficient, and safe, but I’m lazy, and dog walking takes up a lot of that exercise time these days.
In August I went on holiday to the Greek island of Kefalonia. I was there with Ronja, my brother and his partner. Splashed out a bit on fancier accommodation with some nice views of the hilly countryside. Driving a car there was like real life Mario Kart – no lane markings or speed limits, goats and pedestrians all over the road, and always at the edge of a cliff. We visited the ruins of a town destroyed by an earthquake, walked through some castle ruins, drove to the top of the highest mountain, and tried a lot of local food. Loved hiding from the sun in caves by the beaches. Managed not to get sunburnt. Learned about Balkans meme culture on Reddit. Great stuff overall. But then our flight home was cancelled and we had to sleep on the floor of the airport.
Halloween was a big effort this year. I painted a bunch of cheap skeleton props to make them more interesting, and putting up all the decorations took a couple of days. Every year the collection grows. We hosted a party and got tons of trick-or-treaters.
Had some fun upgrading Ronja’s PC with new (but used) CPU, GPU and RAM. It’s 6 or 7 years old now, but can play AAA games once again. We also replaced the case with something more beautiful. It’s the biggest PC build project I’ve done, but it went pretty smoothly and it was fun to figure out what the best components were for an old motherboard.
I voted in Poland for the first time! I didn’t know I could. I’m happy with the election results, but it will apparently take some time for the damage done by the previous party to be undone. Now if only we could kick out the conservative party in the UK sooner…
I started attending pro-Palestine ceasefire marches. I’ve never been to political rallies of any sort before, so it’s been quite a spectacular experience. It’s nice to be around hopeful and energetic people, rather than the usual political talk at the pub where everyone just complains but feels helpless. The West’s disastrous invasion of Iraq was probably the worst thing the UK government has been involved in in my lifetime, and I would like for that sort of thing not to happen any more.
December was a tough month for my family – my brother’s dog died of cancer, my aunt died of cancer, and my uncle was diagnosed with cancer. My dad had heart surgery to improve his chances of surviving his 70s, and he’s currently recovering in the hospital. I’ve been visiting him almost every day, and he seems to be gradually getting better.
Ronja’s mum visited for Christmas again and got me the big Lego rollercoaster set, which was a massive and time consuming build, but looks really cool. It was a Chinese knockoff, so it took a little bit of DIY to get it running smoothly. Ronja put a lot of effort into cooking and decorating, where as I mostly helped with cleaning. Since my dad is in hospital and my brother and his partner are away in Lithuania, Christmas dinner was a smaller affair.
Finally, here’s some of our favourite photos from the year – onwards to 2024! Happy New Year, ya’ll.
Trip to Kefalonia
Hey guys, I just got back from a week on the Greek island of Kefalonia. I was there with Ronja, my brother and his partner. I was a little bit nervous about the trip, as I was worried about how hot it would be, and then shortly before the trip the news broke that several Greek islands were on fire. But in the end we handled the weather pretty well - our accommodation was comfortable, and the car we rented had good AC too. There was one day where the smoke from distant fires covered the island, but luckily it didn't cause any trouble besides obscuring the view from our balcony and smelling like barbecue. The only trouble we had was on the way home - our flight was 20 hours late, and we had to sleep on the floor of the airport. I read a lot of manga by Junji Ito in any spare time.
Anyway, we stayed in a roomy house in the village of Pastra for the first half of the trip, and then in the top floor of a countryside villa near the village of Agios Dimitrios. On most days we would go out and swim in the sea and then find somewhere nice for lunch and dinner. In the past I haven't been a fan of swimming in the sea due to the salt water and sunburn, however most of the beaches in Kefalonia came with small watery caves that you could hide from the sun in, so that was a welcome perk. I didn't do much actual swimming, as I had a painful shoulder injury - probably from playing Beat Saber before the trip - but sitting around in the water was pleasant.
Besides eating and swimming, we also visited the Agios Georgios castle ruins, Old Vlachata ruins (village destroyed by an earthquake), Drogarati and Melissani caves, Mt Ainos (highest peak on the island, very cool view), Aquarium in Lixouri (saw a cool lobster with a giant eyeball pattern on its back), and turtles and obelisk in Argostoli. I also bought too many fridge magnets - cats are popular and a lot of them looked like NoLegs.
Driving on the island was fantastic - like real life Mario Kart. The roads were incredibly steep, bendy and slippery in places, traffic rules are just suggestions, and you'd frequently find goats and pedestrians on the roads. Most roads were at the edge of a cliff, didn't have line markings, and even the cities didn't have many traffic lights. But it still felt safe enough as you were physically prevented from driving too fast by the environment. The other drivers were not particularly aggressive as it was hard to overtake without falling off a cliff. Managed to complete the trip without any sunburn or car damage, and only getting a tiny bit fatter. Not bad.
EBF Collection FanArt Competition
Hey guys. It’s been nearly a year since the EBF Collection launched on Steam, and we're celebrating with a fanart contest!
To participate in the contest, you can create new fanart of my old games, specifically any of the eight featured in the EBF Collection (Mecha Dress Up Game, Brawl Royale, The Kitten Game, Epic Battle Fantasy 1 and 2, Bullet Heaven, Adventure Story, and Cat Cafe). Make sure to post your final submission in the #contest channel on the EBF Discord Server ( https://discord.gg/s3mtA52C4k ) alongside the contest tag, the name of the art piece, your name/nickname, and a link to your art page. The contest tag is "Collection-Contest-Entry", so just include that in the comment with your submission, so we can find it more easily. The deadline is Tuesday May 30th at 10PM BST. You can make as many entries as you’d like, but all art must be new, still images (no animations please), your own work, and PG-13 (bonus points for avoiding copyrighted material - we'd prefer if you used the updated characters from the Steam version). The EBF wiki is a good source of references, if you want images and information about characters and enemies ( https://epicbattlefantasy.fandom.com/wiki/Epic_Battle_Fantasy_Collection ).
There is a total of £500 (~$620) to be split between the top entries, as well as Steam or mobile keys to any existing Epic Battle Fantasy games. Cash prizes will be awarded by PayPal or bank transfer.
Entries will be judged by me and Ronja (and maybe some others), and winners will be announced within a couple weeks after the deadline.
Let me or Ronja know if you have any questions. (we're easiest to contact on Discord)
Summary of 2022
Hey guys, as is my yearly tradition, here’s a summary of my year, in no particular order. • Valve sent me a free Steam Deck! I felt like sempai had noticed me. Many of the indie games I wanted to try out didn’t fully work on it, but I eventually had a good time playing The End is Nigh and Everhood on it. It’s comfortable to play for hours at a time, so I give it a big thumbs up, as long as you’re happy with a bit of tinkering. Oh, and most of my games work on it too, to various degrees. • I finished off and published the Epic Battle Fantasy Collection this year, which involved polishing off my old web games (not fun) and adding a little bit of new content to them (fun). The collection performed reasonably well on Steam, considering the games involved are ancient, and were originally available for free online. Valve gave the EBF series a nice featured spot on launch day, and as expected, EBF5 sold even better than EBFC did! • I helped my brother build a fence and a pergola, and a lot of planters of various sizes. I also collected a bunch of rocks and logs for his new pond. In return, I got coffee whenever I visited, and some radishes and pumpkins from his garden. It’s gonna look good in a couple of years when his trees grow up! • I built a dog house for Ethel! It was made from recycled materials and is totally over-engineered. It’s incredibly sturdy and nicely embellished. I basically built a very small shed – and next year I’ll build a full-sized shed! • Me and Ronja started shopping at a big Asian supermarket to try out some good instant noodles, weird mushrooms, sichuan pepper, and other new flavours. They went out of business later this year, but my instant noodles skills have massively improved.
Me and Ronja went to Finland for an awesome and chaotic wedding, which included a cool barn venue, shenanigans with the bands, and an after party on a boat. We got a cold shortly afterwards (thought it was covid) and spent most of the holiday recovering. I was hit especially hard, and took 3 or 4 weeks to fully recover – half my hearing was gone! • I bought a bunch of devices for my mobile development work, including a 2015 MacBook, an iPhone 11, and a Samsung S4 Tablet. The MacBook was a pretty good purchase – It runs well for such an old computer, still has USB ports, it’s perfect for my iOS development needs, and it’s also my first ever laptop. I’ve been using the iPhone as my main phone for a few months, and I still haven’t got used to it – I’ll probably go back to Samsung for the next one. And finally, the tablet… was fun to play around with for a few days. Games look good on the larger screen, but it’s too big to hold comfortably in many cases! • I tried out a lot of mobile games this year. Most were awful and were uninstalled in 5 minutes, but some great ones include the Dadish series, Meow Tower, and Total Party Kill. • Me and Ronja and Ethel stayed in a cute log cabin on a farm for a couple of nights. It was refreshing to not have electricity, running water, or internet, and to live more deliberately. They did have a gas barbecue though. • I started going to therapy for depression and anxiety. I thought I had some sort of neurological disease, as my concentration and coordination was somewhat impaired, but it turns out I was probably just stressed out by work, relationship issues, growing old, and the state of the world. I’m a little better now. • Continued going on small trips around England and Scotland with my dad, to deliver my mum’s paintings to art galleries. Found some interesting beaches in Edinburgh, visited Bamburgh Castle but it was closed due to a storm, and sneaked into a small private castle where a wedding was being planned. • Me and Ronja started going out for brunch at least once a week, to see new places, try new food, and just get up earlier in the morning. Brought my parents and other close family members along to a couple of my favourite places later on. Previously me and my family have been too cheap to eat out. My favourite discoveries were egg and salmon toast, and pomegranate salad. • We also had dinner in a few fancy restaurants, but the higher the price the less I enjoyed it, due to the pretentiousness, and the food looking less like food. But I’m willing to try it again on special occasions. • Visited the Scottish Borders with my friends for a couple of nights – this was a yearly tradition until covid hit. This time it was more tame than previous trips, with earlier nights and more moderate drinking. • I learned to drive a modern, automatic minivan, which I borrowed from my dad. It was really easy! Big improvement over my 20-year-old, manual Honda Civic. Me and Ronja are now considering buying an automatic car. (and Ronja learned to drive this year!) • Me, Ronja, Ethel, my brother and his partner stayed in a hobbit hole for four nights in Speyside near Inverness. Very cosy building with a strong nature theme, fireplace, skylight, telescope, bunk beds, traditional construction, wood smell, and good vibes. Luckily we had minimal rain on our visit, and did some easy forest and seashore walks. Also tried a bunch of edibles – I’m into them now. • I finished off my Android port of Epic Battle Fantasy 5 – it was in Early Access for a long time while I slowly and painfully sorted out some crashes and other issues. I did my best to optimize the performance, but this created a lot of bugs, and in the end, many of these optimizations were not worth the trouble. Lessons learned for next time. But the game’s done fairly well on the Google Play Store so far! • Once the Android port was finished, porting EBF5 to iOS was fairly quick. It was mostly a case of getting familiar with the iOS ecosystem, and fulfilling a ton of annoying requirements for the App Store. It took less than a month, which ain’t bad, and the game seems to be off to a decent start on the store. With some luck, EBF5 will keep selling reasonably well on both mobile platforms for many years to come, so I have no pressure to work on anything new. • Flash is alive and well. Ruffle can now run some ActionScript 3 games, and AIR is getting regular updates with new features. • While procrastinating from my mobile ports, I started work on a new hidden object game called Hidden Cats. I wanted to try a different (but still very much Flash) art style, and game mechanics that were focused more on art rather than coding. • Me and Ronja hosted two Epic Battle Fantasy fan art competitions with cash prizes, and it’s been fun, with a lot of entries being submitted. We’re planning to do more competitions with bigger prizes in the future. • I continued playing a lot of Age of Empires 2 this year with friends, and also added some Valheim sessions. Both games eat a lot of time! • Other games I enjoyed this year were Astalon: Tears of the Earth, RUN: The world in-between, It Takes Two, and Hidden Through Time. I’m mostly still playing 2D indie games on my super powerful gaming PC. • I donated a chunk of money to charities helping in Ukraine, and bought a limited edition war-themed Nintendo 64 Everdrive cartridge. I can save N64 roms on it and play them on a real console, so I played a few games that I never had as a kid, including F-Zero X and Yoshi’s Story. I also played a modded version of Ocarina of Time with quality of life improvements, and Smash Bros Remix, a fantastic mod of Smash Bros 64, which is made so well it feels like an official sequel. • I started to enjoy shopping for clothes, where as previously I would buy the bare minimum needed to survive, and rely on gifts from family members. • I finally decorated my bedroom. It’s a tiny room with little natural light, so I figured some fake plants and lighter furniture would help somewhat. Even added a Tiffany-style bedside lamp. • Visited a lot of antique shops and markets this year, getting decorating ideas for the future. My first time at Glasgow’s infamous Barras market too. • Me and Ronja have been thinking about features we’d like in our next house, like a double garage, wine cellar/basement, bigger rooms, etc. and we went to view a few houses for fun. We’re not actually planning on moving any time soon though, and thinking about it is more fun than the reality of extra costs and responsibilities. • I was quite excited that Epic Battle Fantasy 5 was invited to be part of the Yogscast Jingle Jam event – this was the biggest content creator to cover the game. But in the end, it didn’t make any difference to the game’s engagement stats on Steam – much like any other type of game bundle. Helped raise some money for charity I guess. • Hired a cleaner! No more scrubbing dirty bathrooms for me. • Ronja’s mum visited us from Finland for New Years! Her and Ethel get along very well. Here’s a collection of some of our favourite photos from 2022! And Happy New Year!