Enclave Games in 2024, and plans for 2025

#yearlyreview #javascript #ayearinreview #enclavegames

The past year was even more difficult than the previous one, with struggles along the way, but had some good moments, positive surprizes and achievements as well. Let’s look at how 2024 went in detail, and what are the plans for Enclave Games in 2025.

This is the tenth Yearly Report already - make sure to check the previous ones if you want to learn more about our history: 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, and 2023.

Let’s start by reviewing the plans I had a year ago:

Build and release some games, hopefully with the help from Copilot. Nope, nothing at all.
Continue organizing Gamedev.js Jam. Yeah, the biggest edition yet.
Conduct Gamedev.js Survey earlier than in the last month. December, but it happened!
Send Gamedev.js Weekly newsletter regularly in 2024. Every. Single. Week.
Organize the 13th anniversary edition of the js13kGames competition. Did that, went well.
Release two planned eBooks. Didn’t even start writing.
Launch Web3 Gamedev School. Nope.
Explore decentralization further. Not how I wanted, but still did that a bit.

Now, a quick recap of 2024, month-by-month:

January: Gamedev.js Survey 2023 results, Phaser World newsletter
February: Badlucky t-shirt, WebDX community group
March: Enclave Games logos, NSHex Counter open sourced
April: Gamedev.js Jam 2024 with js13kGames challenge
May: burnout and shifting focus again, OP Guild start
June: Badlucky level in Flood Escape, new Gamedev.js Weekly website
July: js13kGames preparations, vacations on Mallorca
August: js13kGames start, new website
September: js13kGames deadline, Web Game Challenge, js13k on Arcadia
October: js13kGames winners
November: GitHub Universe, Survey ask for help
December: Gamedev.js Survey 2024

Let’s look at the past year in detail and see what happened to Enclave Games in 2024.

Bad things

No games at all, and no GitHub Copilot usage as well, even though I have access to it from being in the GitHub Stars program. I’m quite sad about missing both to be honest, but I do hope 2025 will be the year when it changes. I’ve been updating NSHex Counter web app and released it as Open Source on GitHub this year though.

Almost no sales in any of the online swag Shops: Enclave Games, Gamedev.js, js13kGames, and NeuroshimaHex.pl. I guess it won’t sell if I don’t put any effort into marketing it, but they were on the TODO list for far too long, and now are online, so let’s not stress about it too much.

I experienced burnout, or rather: realized I burned out years ago and was struggling with basic tasks. Luckily, it felt better after realizing this, going on vacations (first time since 2015), and then joining OP Games to lead OP Guild.

Ok things

No speaking gigs at all (beside talking about Gamedev.js Survey 2023 results at two online meetups), but I guess I can stop pretending and call it what it is: I’ve retired from giving talks at conferences. Quite frankly some time ago already, even though after pandemic I kind of tried doing more than online events alone - did two on-site talks in 2022 and that’s it.

The 13th edition of the js13kGames competition was celebrated with gadgets giveaway, new website (we’ve launched last year’s voting app as such - and yes, it’s the “legendary” new backend) with multi-step submit form, and old t-shirts promo. I didn’t manage to write and publish the “history of js13k” ebook though which was supose to be the core celebration gig.

I’ve attended GitHub Universe 2024 and enjoyed it so much, but as a GitHub Star member I didn’t utilise access to GitHub Copilot at all.

Gamedev.js Survey 2024 was conducted. It was suppose to happen around June, but ended up being December, though I guess it’s better to have it in December than don’t have it at all, right?

Good things

I was asked by Rich Davey to help reactivate the Phaser World newsletter, and was preparing the contents most of the year, from the beginning of January till the end of August. It then switched the platform from MadMimi to Hashnode and Rich started writing those himself.

Gamedev.js Jam 2024 was a success, with 2790 devs joined on Itch, 238 games submitted, and 6050 ratings cast. We even had the very first js13kGames challenge, which ended up having… 13 entries! All of those folks got a cool Badlucky t-shirt as a prize.

I’ve joined OP Games folks (awesome bunch, Paul Gadi and Chase Freo are doing an incredible job for indie game developers!), started leading the newly formed OP Guild, and kind of also helping with developer relations tasks for Arcadia. This is the “explore decentralization further” part I enjoyed this year.

Gamedev.js Weekly newsletter, beside being sent every single week, finally got a new email template and a brand new website right after.

Our whole family went on the very first vacations in almost a decade. Not the proudest fact, but I’m glad we finally did it, and we’re already planning to spend this year’s summer on Mallorca again.

New js13kGames backend, the legendary tabu topic discussed since 2015, happened thanks to Alkor - we’ve launched the voting app as the new website! There’s a whole lot of things missing and need to be completed to call it done, but it’s a good start! I’m so happy Alkor is back.

Plans for 2025

BACK TO MAKING GAMES! If I don’t build and release a single game in 2025 I’ll quit calling Enclave Games an Indie Game Development Studio and start calling it Event Organizing Company instead.