2024 WRAP post

Wow. The year is coming to a close. And what a year it’s been. I hope you enjoy this amazing Bru & Boegie diorama that my talented girlfriend Louise made, complete with seasonal fancy-wear. I love it.

I thought I’d wrap up with a summary of some stuff I wanted to write about this year, both work and personal I guess.

Books and Audiobooks:

Audiobooks have become my friends. One of my favourite things to do is go for a walk with my old wired headphones in and listen to an audiobook. I’ve made good use of Audible. I was going to make a big list but cut it down to some of my highlights:

‘Sapiens’ by Yuval Noah Harari. Great book, listening to his ‘Nexus’ now but not enjoying as much as Sapiens which kind of details humanity’s evolution.
Jason Schreier’s books ‘Play Nice’ about the videogame company Blizzard’s story, I listened to it 1.5 times I liked it so much and I didn’t even really like Blizzard’s games. He also wrote ‘Press Reset’ and ‘Blood Sweat and Pixels’ which are 2 of my favourite books about the videogame industry, and excellently narrated. I’ll probably pick up whatever he writes.
‘Tomorrow, and Tomorrow and Tomorrow’ by Gabrielle Zevin, not an audiobook but normal book. Superb. Fictional love story set in a videogame startup. I gave it to my Mom for her book club and people loved it, even non-videogame peeps. It’s more about the writing and love story tbh. Was recommended to me by one of my Mom’s friends.
1984 – George Orwell – old book but expertly performed by talented actors.
John Romero’s ‘Doom Guy’ – Romero was a founder of ID Software that gave us Quake and Doom. Superb memoir.
Sid Meier’s Memoir – I didn’t really like Sid Meier’s games but a brilliant memoir about his life, and a great snapshot of the early videogame industry.

I’m currently listening to Videogame Storytelling, Bill Bailey’s ‘My Animals and Other Animals, The Pragmatic Programmer, and have another couple audiobooks I got on sale.

Projects:

Bru & Boegie: METEORITE
Well, managed to get the trailer out for my short movie ‘METEORITE’. I did the thing by myself, and Pete O’Donoghue did sfx and Wayne Simpson did music. I’ll be working on this for probably the first half of 2025, finishing it, because it’s got production funding now. Nice.

Bru & Boegie: Get the Milk
I, uh, I’m making a little point-and-click adventure game! I bought a bunch of great assets off the Unity Asset Store during Black Friday specials to help kickstart my videogame-making journey, and one of them is an engine to aid in point-and-click game making. I’ve got pretty far, it’s still WIP and I hope to have it playable for free on itch.io during Jan. I’m really excited about it tbh and made a little behind-the-scenes WIP video:

Nouns – SMASH!
This was a fun one. I wrote about it here. Basically, just did what I wanted and got paid for it – what a jam. Thanks, Nouns.

Moosebox
I get quite a lot of visits to my site from people searching ‘Moosebox’. I’m afraid it’s pretty much lost media at this point, lol. The first season is on YouTube, someone put it there, it weren’t me, but I’m pleased people are able to enjoy it if they want to. It’s out of my hands and owned by Nickelodeon who I believe aren’t doing anything with it.

Goldfish
Some pretty exciting developments. Some years ago I started developing a Goldfish animated show, and made a little animated pilot (which is currently not public), with Dave & Dom voicing themselves, and with Martinus Van Tee voicing other characters. It was actually pretty darn great. Then, we sat with it not quite sure what to do next, until recently – the show got production funding, so in due course there’ll be some sweet sweet new Goldfish animated content, not animated by me but by a full local animation studio. I’m sure Goldfish will release more info on this when the time is right.

Videogames

I don’t play a lot of games anymore, I think maybe being involved in the videogame industry has done that thing where it kind of can taint things a bit, which is why people sometimes say ‘don’t turn a hobby into a job’. But, let’s not listen to those people, because now I’m enjoying making games. Anyways, here are some of my highlights:

‘Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom’ for Nintendo Switch. It looked like a very young gentle game, and it kind of is, but I found myself getting sucked into its world and clever puzzles. I’m still not finished it, I think I only ever finished one Zelda game (Link’s Awakening remake), but this has been a treat.
‘Red Dead Redemption 2’ for PS4/PS5. I got this on release years ago, played about half and then lost the plot, and I think only this year or last finished it. It is SUPERB and I’m so pleased I finished it. Makes me amped for GTA6.
‘Monkey Island 3: Escape from Monkey Island’ emulated on iPad/ScummVM. I never played this game because I always was put off by the art style. However, because I loved Monkey Island 1 and 2 and because so many people love #3, I thought it *has* to be good. Well, I was right. I bought it and got it working on the iPad in the free ScummVM app, and it’s brilliant. I ended up loving the art style I previously hated, the writing is perfect, the puzzles were fair, and I think I only looked to the web for clues twice when I got stuck. Is actually my Game of the Year 2024, even though the game is probably something like 30 years old lol.
‘Dave the Diver’, PS5. I didn’t play it but I watched Louise play it. Very relaxing for the most part, but some tense boss fights. I’m also watching her play ‘Animal Crossing: New Horizons’ and it too is entertaining.
‘Borderland 3’, PS5. Another old game, I think I finished Borderlands 2 and enjoyed it, I’m 31 hours into #3 but only about halfway through the main story. It’s a kind of cozy game for me because you don’t have to think too hard. I play it on PS Portal in bed.
‘Katamari’, Switch. This is the Reroll version of something. I love Katamari.
‘Webfishing’, PC. I never actually played this but LOVE the concept of it, a social kind of game like Club Penguin (which I also never played) where people end up making their own fun gameplay. If I get proficient enough at game-making I’d like to make a game like this.

Games I kind of am enjoying/enjoyed:

Alan Wake 2: yeh, very nice. Story-driven, terrifying. Not finished yet.
Control: started like a year or more ago, finished this year. Pretty good!
Monkey Ball, the new one for Switch. Banana Rumble I think. Ehh… it’s ok.

Whack games I didn’t enjoy that others loved:

Spider-Man 2, PS5. Whack. Same as but worse than Spider-Man 1.
Baldur’s Gate 3, PS5. Prob works well as a desktop game due to all the text, I did not enjoy trying to play this on a TV from far away. If you play on console, prob need to be sitting right up close to the TV.

Louise and I had a holiday in the UK which was fun, and met brother and his wife. We had a great time, missioned pretty much the full vertical length of the UK, almost twice lol. I realised it’s not a holiday if you can’t switch off your phone and leave it alone.

The Kiffness

I must mention my brother Dave’s work – he’s done phenomenally well as The Kiffness, going on International tours here and there and getting millions upon millions of views for his mashup songs, which are so expertly produced both sonically and visually. If anyone knows how to use social media properly and as a force for good, it’s him. Sometimes his old vids pop up in my YouTube feed and I enjoy watching them, to track his progress. I can’t seem to embed his YouTube videos here, but they’re great. I’ll link one here, ‘Ievan Polkka ft. Bilal Göregen‘.

Personal

In summary, it’s been a bit of a… tough last 3 years. I’ve mostly been focused on Nifty League, the company that I joined and found myself one of 3 co-founders of, and recently left. I’ve incurred some health issues that I’m trying to get sorted, and taking life more on slow mode and getting back to more freelance work in my own time.

I’ve nuked pretty much all my social media accounts besides YouTube, enjoying spending time with family, I got myself a Mac Mini M4 to better use Unity which has been a real pleasure thus far (and it’s so quiet! No more laptop fans spinning up like crazy).

Oh yes, I was thinking of using this retro DOS theme for my site, lol. I still quite like the idea, but maybe it’s just a nostalgia thing.