This is Gleb speaking.
I noticed that in almost every year-end summary I write that I managed to release little of everything during the year. But for 2024 I really released almost nothing!
It was an empty year, even though I was actually doing something. I'll tell you more about it now.
Break
The year started with me announcing that I was taking a break from my main endeavor. At the end of 2023, I was dense with Froggy vs. Carolina, and I realized that I was tired. Along with that, I decided that I would do something else, as long as it wasn't game development.
So I remembered that I had one unfinished thing, namely another “movie” about Cotty and Draco.....
Cotty and Draco 2: The Order of the Guardians
⚠️Внимание! Cringe content! Best to skip this part of the year-end summary.
A little backstory
Sometime back in 2016, Artyom (tam) and I made and released a similar movie about the adventures of Cotty and Draco in Toy City. The movie looked like this:
Later that year, after the successful release of the first movie, filming of the second movie began. For the second movie, a more interesting plot was devised, more action, more drama, more mystery!
The filming was successfully completed, all that remained was to edit the movie. Artyom released a teaser trailer, and the release date of the movie was given as “this winter”.
This is where the legendary phrase “This winter” first appears.
After editing the first twenty minutes of the movie, for some reason I was deflated and gradually abandoned editing the movie. A couple of times attempts were made to continue the “production”. Once in 2019 I even tried to hand over the editing to Artyom, along with that another teaser trailer was released and again a “promise” to release the movie “this winter”. At that point, this phrase was already a meme.
It's “this winter” all over again.
But the work still stood still and never progressed. The movie remained in a long drawer for all the following years.
The revival of the second movie
And that's what I decided to do during my break from game development - finishing the video editing of the second movie. Immediately in January, I got to work. It was certainly fun to revisit and reminisce about all the footage.
While I was working, I revisited the first film in places and suddenly... I realized that I wanted to improve this film and at the same time “rebrand” it.
So work began on the director's version of “Cotty and Draco. The Stolen Diamond.”
The movie has more music, improved sound, a widescreen format, scenes not in the movie, and even bilingual subtitles, making the movie now available to a wider audience.
You can watch the enhanced version of the movie at the links below:
After completing the improved first movie, work on the second movie continued and was completed in May. The movie was completely finished and it could be announced.
The movie was uploaded to the channel and was set to premiere this winter.
Closer to the premiere, teasers started to be released, and even a trailer was released at the end of November.
Finally, as was once “promised,” this winter the movie “Cotty and Draco 2. Order of the Guardians” finally saw the light of day!
The movie runs a full two hours, and you can watch it at the links below:
The curse of “this winter” has finally been broken...
Bomb on April 1st
On April first, a Bomb Update was released for Five Nights with Froggy 2, which adds a secret “Bomb” mode to the game.
How to unlock the mode and a list of changes can be found here.
Five Nights with Froggy 3
Nothing has changed with the game and it is still on the development queue.
ℹ️ More information about when the game will be released can be found here.
Mystery Chamber: Forever
The ideas keep going strong, and new ideas, concepts, and tracks for the game keep popping up. For now, it's too early to tell you more.
Froggy vs. Carolina v3.0 - Progress
After working on the movie and releasing the bombastic update, I continued to work on the redesigned Froggy vs. Carolina. In fact, the update was almost ready, and it was even already in beta, but at one point suddenly a lot of ideas started popping up and I wanted to implement all of them.
You can now expect things like:
Adventure mode with a level map;
A store with a wide range of items;
Customization of playable characters and Caroline;
Power-ups used in gameplay;
Character level system;
And more.
Well, I've made it harder on myself. However, it will still be good for the game. It may seem funny, but technically the game may even surpass the second part (which is now still known as Froggy vs. Mother-in-law 2).
Here are some screenshots from the development.
Development was underway at the beginning of the summer, but after a month I somehow got tired of it and... development was put on hold again. This is where the saddest part comes in.
The saddest part
I can't say for sure, but I think I had a burnout while working on FvC. I guess the winter break wasn't enough for me. I did almost nothing until the fall.
In addition to burnout, I continued to experience an audience attention and response crisis. I used to be very encouraged and moved forward by the various reviews, videos, and special interest in my games, but as my productivity dropped, so did the amount of community material, and consequently my productivity dropped even more. Sometimes it seems to me that no one is interested in anything anymore....
Other trivia
In fact, before the fall, I still did some things. I'll mention most of them.
Localization system
This year I've been finalizing my localization system that I plan on implementing into my older games. As I told you before, more languages will be added to my older games, and there will even be support for custom languages that the community can create.
Language Menu. The flag with the cat is just an example of a custom language, it won't be in the games. You will be able to make such a language.
You can find out which languages there will be, and whether a localizer has been found for them, at the link below. Don't forget, you can apply to become a localizer. You can contact me on Discord or by email (you'll find it if you look for it).
People are needed for the languages: French, Kazakh, Chinese, Korean. If I can't find people, the translation for these languages will be machine translation.
📄 List of languages in GKProduction games
I won't demonstrate the languages themselves in the games yet (though I did show Japanese in FvC above), but I have released a video of the new language menu this year. You can watch the video here.
Exclusives canceled and more news to come
This year I realized that it's hard for me to provide bonuses for paid subscribers and it's morally difficult to hide interesting screenshots, developments and devlogs from people. I want to show my work to more people like I used to, so I've lifted the exclusivity of materials, and I'll share development information with everyone. Over time, everything that was once published for paid subscribers will gradually be published for everyone. Other perks for paid subscribers will remain.
Updated information can be found here and here.
Sneak Peek's Steam page
This year Valve made it possible to create pages on Steam for game demos (previously demos were available on the game's page itself), so now Mystery Chamber: Forever - Sneak Peek has its own page.
The return of advertising
This year I switched to another advertising network, so ads are working in my mobile games again, which means that you can get various bonuses again and I can get some money.
Many thanks to @REXE 
for giving me this technical opportunity. Without him the transition would not have been possible.
More platforms
This year I have expanded the list of platforms I release my games on. This is due to plans to port some of my games to web browsers and plans for additional promotion.
The full list of platforms on which you can find my games can be found here.
Replenishment of albums
From time to time I replenish the photo albums on VKontakte group with various screenshots and images. Be sure to visit them, you may find something interesting for yourself.
New titles for Mystery Chamber games
It was decided to give the Mystery Chamber series games new less wizened names, first of all getting rid of the year 2015. Most of the titles didn't change much, but MC 2015 Deluxe is a different matter.
Here's a list of the new titles:
Mystery Chamber: Classic
Mystery Chamber: World
Mystery Chamber: Forever - Sneak Peek
Mystery Chamber: Forever
Monthly results
In November, I launched a new column called “ Results of the Month”. At the end of each month I will release a post in which I will tell you what I did during the month and what interesting things happened in the community.
Stopping purchases in mobile games
And the latest disappointing news is that Google Play is suspending payment processing for developers who specified a Russian bank account as a withdrawal method.
Since December 27, purchases have been impossible to make in my games on Google Play not only in Russia, but also worldwide.
If you have already purchased something in my games, the purchase will remain on your account forever, as usual.
How do I buy content in my games now? For now, you can't. If something changes, I will inform you about it, but for now you just have to wait. Don't forget that I have plans to bring some of my games to more platforms with their own payment methods.
So that's what the year's been like. Minimal releases, but there was work on some technical stuff. I hope that the work on them was not in vain, and the results will be used next year, because this is the year I plan to move to the next stage, but more about it in the next post.
From now on I will publish a post about the plans for the year separately from the results. Soon all the plans for the next year or two will be posted. It will be interesting.
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