6 min read

2024 Wrap Up

2024 Wrap Up

I like to do a post to wrap up the year - it's good because I always start going "eh, but what did I do, anyway?" and end with "oh, that's a lot of stuff". So with that, here's 2024's. What did I do last year?

Released Downpour

This is the big thing. The project I was working on for years came out! If you're not familiar with Downpour: it's an app you can make little hypertext games with. And it has hosting and social features built in. It's cute, it's easy to use, go try it out already.

Look, here's a big logo you can click to go to the site:

If you take one thing from this post, it's go make a game with Downpour. Look here's a link which directly lets you download it.

Anyway, it would be too much to do a proper retrospective on it here (though that is a good idea), so let me just say that it was great to work with Susie Buchan to get it actually launched into the world, with nice press assets and everything. It got a lot of good coverage! Enough that I'm going to skip trying to compile it here.

I continue to work on it - there's a lot of stuff I still want to add - but progress on that has slowed down as I have been distracted by other paying work. Speaking of which:

Other work

I also did a bunch of other work. Most of this is on stuff that's NDAed! I write these posts as much for future me as for anyone else reading, so let me elliptically refer to some stuff in a way I'll recognise and you hopefully won't.

It was great to work on The Device with Arlo Howard - a joy to finally work with you, Arlo, and a shame we didn't get greenlit to take our thing forward.

Did a lot of map thinking for the wildlife project - I'm excited to see where that goes. But I hope it's not too rude to say the highlight was coming up to visit and going for a swim in the Wye.

I returned to do a bit of consulting with Weiwei & co - exciting to get to dig my teeth into social design in a whole new context.

And finally there's a real exciting thing I've been working on with Marie, Dick & Angus. I'm still on this going into the new year, and it's such a dream team to work with. More maps!

To be more general and less elliptical - it's nice to look back and see the patterns in what this work involves. To see what niche I've found for myself. It's doing game design and early prototyping in spaces at the edge of traditional gameplay. Games which involve weird hardware, or using real world data, or that from another angle are social media. Games where the context is as important as the content. And it's being able to take a real holistic look at the problem, rather than narrowly focus in on "game design" - thinking about the tech stack and the business case and the team dynamics just as much. If this sounds like it could be useful for your project, please do get in touch!

(Because despite doing all this work, I don't really know how to find any besides happening to talk to a friend who says: hey I heard about this thing, are you interested? But then I gather that's probably the normal way, so...)

Things I didn't do

I wanted to go to the US, and even had tickets booked. And then I got Covid and had to cancel. Bummer. (also, I still need to chase up that travel insurance claim...)

I also wanted to go visit my friend Kaho in Japan. But I didn't get as far as booking a ticket on that one. Maybe this year. Similarly, I need to go over to Denmark to meet my new niece (I'm waiting til my brother has a roof over his head. By which I mean he's having renovation work done, not that he's homeless).

I didn't start a podcast, but I did think about it. I didn't start a blog either (until after the year was over).

I didn't get into a romantic relationship. But I did fancy some people, and was fancied in return. There's hope.

Trips I did do

Lots of travelling to talk about Downpour! It was nice! Please do keep inviting me places!

  • I spoke at EMF Camp at the start of June about making creative tools like Downpour
  • at Subotron in Vienna in the middle of June
  • and at the PM Studio at the end of June
  • and at Peckham Digital in July
  • and also at BIG in Bilbao in December. Look if it's a good talk it's worth giving it repeatedly.
  • At Develop in July, I spoke about doing UX for mobile game by imagining you're an alien who has never seen one before
  • At AMAZE in May I was on a panel about less-corporate game engines
  • And I finally demoed Downpour at the Future of Coding meetup, although I did have to insist it isn't actually coding

I also demoed my epicycles project at QueerJS London. Just for a change, you know?

And I ran workshops on using Downpour, too. Two on using it to make little fortune tellers:

And some more general ones:

Again, I'd love to run more - do get in touch if you're interested in having me come to run them for you!

I also have a setup for showing Downpour as a drop-in kind of thing - you can make a game with a particular hashtag in the title and it'll get collected up and can be played on a kiosk at the event. Here's the collections from showing it at EGX Expo and at EMF Camp.

And I also had a chance to go on a trip that was less work focused - the fabulous Possibility Retreat in Crete, organised by Kate Compton. Lots of interesting talking, and creative collaboration, but when I look back the first thing I think of is holding a little sea anemone on a snorkelling trip. It seems very possible there will be similar shenanigans in the Danish countryside...

Other nice things

Gotta say what a joy it was to watch my friend Holly Gramazio's book come out and absolutely smash it. A real delight to be at a party and have someone ask her what she does, and she says she's a novelist, and they say anything I'd have heard of, and she says well it's called The Husbands, and they say I'm not sure I know that, and then I get to interject and say well did you know it's a New York Times bestseller.

I made a bunch of pottery. Lots of different things, and I even put some of it on sale at the studio open weekends, and a bunch of it sold! It continues to be a joy to make things with my hands, and to be able to get on my bicycle and within 5 minutes be in a studio filled with creative people I know and like.

I did a bunch of writing on Cohost, and I felt like my brain unkinked a little from years of writing tweets. I watched a bunch of films & got into the habit of writing about those, too. And since I was liking that so much, I wrote about the books I was reading too. And, on Cohost and then on Downpour, I collected links worth reading. And now I have a blog!

Also I made some games with Downpour. I guess this should also count in the work section, as this one about getting stuck in a dream was shown at No Quarter as part of Izzy's Dreamscape Explorer. I've always wanted to show a game at No Quarter!

I got an official diagnosis for my chronic illness! Well, kind of official, the doctor told me I was "POTS-y" and showed me a wiggly line from an expensive machine that backed that up. Some hope for getting some treatment that might help a little... but mainly it's just such a feeling to have some validation.

I went to The Smoke LARP festival and had a great time. I'm into larp now.

Saw some good art - this Emma McNally exhibition, this Charlotte Mei exhibition, that Hetain Patel one, and loads of stuff in Bilbao, all of which hit somehow. Probably the best was the upside down camp fire at EMF. I should probably make more of an effort to see more art this year? Or just to lean fully into being a hippy.

I went to the sauna a good few times. A great reminder to do things for the sheer pleasure of it. And they're opening a new one even nearer my house!

And just - good times with friends. I'm pleased to know the people I do.

(Whew! Told you it added up!)