Weekly Recap #88: Just Hit The Ball and Hello 2018! (Patreon)

As I wrote in this recap, this year I want to start cross-posting the things I write on different platforms. So this recap is also available on trasevol.dog as usual and the format might be a bit nicer there, but it may be more comfortable for you to read and react here on Patreon directly, so here it is as well!

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A chaotic week with a pretty good ending but also hey it’s 2018, happy new year, I am excited but also tired, oh no!

This week I got back from my family holiday trip, I replaced Windows 10 with Windows 7 on my laptop and I released Just Hit The Ball and then it was 2018!! :O

Look! I compiled 9 of my favorite Pico-8 things I did this year into this big gif because everyone was doing it and it was clearly a good idea! (you could tell because they all got lots of likes and retweets on Twitter)

Only four of these things are games (which you can find over there) and one, the voxel island thing, is unfinished. (I want to finish it but I also want to do a lot of other things)

If I’m being completely honest, I’m not very happy with how much Pico-8 stuff I did in 2017. It’s just not enough. But fear not, 2018 will be better.

And what better way to warm up than releasing a tiny Pico-8 game!

Just Hit The Ball is a two-player versus game where you hit a ball (hard or not) and try to get it to touch your opponent’s ground. There’s three difficulty modes that just change the ball’s speed. And I am proud to say that this game is family-friendly, as I personally got my grandma and an uncle to play it and have fun with it and I was told on Twitter that a 3yo also had fun playing against her dad!

This game was made mostly on the road during my holiday trip and total dev time has been of around 10 hours, counting the title-screen and all. I’m happy with it!

Play it with someone else over there! Download it over there! (playing with two controllers is super recommended)

And with barely a transition, here we are in 2018, woah! I’ve been saying that I would be doing things a little differently in 2018, so let me tell you about that a little!

~ First off, this year I’m releasing at least one game every month! It can be a 4h game because I was busy working on a bigger project or it could be a 48h LD game or it could be the bigger project that I was busy with the month(s) before. I’m extremely keen on making more things this year.

~ Second, the Patreon is changing up! Hopefully I get the changes published tomorrow or the day after. I have decided what rewards I would be proposing but I’m not fully sure which rewards will be at which tier yet. My biggest issue is the exclusive write-ups. On one hand they are currently the best value on my Patreon, but on the other hand I’m striving for accessibilityand I feel very uncomfortable putting a pay-wall on explanatory posts. As I was saying, I’m not yet fully decided on what I’ll do about that. One solution I like is to make all the write-ups public but also have a Patreon reward be an early look at the article, maybe pre-editing, maybe with extra notes. Other new rewards will include exclusive access to unfinished/abandoned projects and early versions of the ones in progress!

~ Third, I’m writing more things! I’ve written very few technical write-ups since I took up a contract in June. I’m done with the contracts now but even so, I’m feeling very apprehensive of writing things again. But I want to do it. I’ll say it again, accessibility is something I cherish and explaining technical things with accessibility in mind is something I find super satisfying. I’m super happy to share knowledge with people. I want to do more of that.

~ Fourth, I’m getting out there more! I already made a Tumblr and I intend on updating it regularly with new gifs but also my new write-ups if the format copy-pastes easily from one platform to the other. And I also want to do the same on Medium. I really love having everything on my website but it seems obvious to me that if I want more people to share my articles, I should post them on these platforms. Oh and directly on the Patreon as well, because it would just be simpler for my generous supporters! I’m also setting up an Instagram and a MySpace. … Ok, I’m just kidding for the MySpace. :P But yeah, cross-posting is something that will finally happen this year.

~ Fifth and final, this year I’m releasing premium games. At least one of them should be pretty consequent, the other ones will likely be 1~3$ “time-killer” games. This year I really want to get my earnings from personal projects to the legal minimum wage in France. I’m going to be pushing the Patreon a lot more than before but I don’t think it will be enough, so I will also release premium products. Quality ones though, obviously.

That is the plan! I remember posting my goals for 2017 last year and I don’t think I really completed half of them. This year I’m doing better!

That’s it for this week! It’s been pretty intense actually! But I’m pumped for the new year!

This next week, I’m making the Patreon overhaul and I’m properly announcing Tiny-TV Jam 2!! It will start on Saturday the 13th and it will end on Saturday the 21st! Mark it down! :O

Have a great first week of 2018 everyone!

Take care!

TRASEVOL_DOG