I know for a fact a lot of people are not gonna see this the same way, but 2025 has already been a super productive year for me and my projects. Just for fun I wanted to summarise some of the stuff I've worked on and spent time on just this year.

In January we released New and Improved, the major overhaul update for myPOPGOES. And in June we released Fighting Chance, which was an even bigger update for POPGOES Arcade. Both of these took months of work and in the case of Fighting Chance I was directly involved with tons of brand new assets. We also had to spend time testing these updates and making release trailers. myPOPGOES and POPGOES Arcade were clearly improved massively by these additions and changes, and they're now in the hands of Clickteam for the porting process. I hope you enjoyed the games.

Between these, in April, I released my first ever "video essay" on the definition of the term Mascot Horror. It was a topic I was genuinely interested in, so I spent a fair bit of my spare time, and a bit of money, on this hour-long video for my channel. To be honest, it was an attempt at presenting an interesting analysis about a broad and popular topic, to see if I could make something outside of POPGOES that could go "viral" to some degree. Unfortunately it did not come even close to that, but it was a learning experience I suppose. I'm proud of it, and it was fun!

A few weeks before the mascot horror video, we released a short animation of the 2016 model of Simon in the POPGOES Evergreen location, for April Fools'. This was done on super short notice, to the point where I actually felt the need to edit the video myself (my first ever attempt at such a thing). Though the video was short, people did find it funny, and exciting, so I'd consider it a win. It also got more views than my video essay lol.

In August and September I organised a second "Creator Showcase" for my BMC members. This involved a collection of 25 posts (on Twitter and Game Jolt) spotlighting different artists and developers from my BMC server. This sounds simple on paper but it was quite a hassle lol. Communicating with 25 people, asking for images, videos, gifs, social media links, etc, and scheduling them at specific times across a week. Still, it was done eventually, you guys saw a bunch of cool stuff (and you followed some super talented people I hope), and we got a couple new members in BMC too.

My Team Fortress 2 project, Team Fortress Future, has had quite a bit of progress behind the scenes this year as well. I've been speaking to a group of totally new people to get a fresh perspective on the ideas I've come up with for the concept. This has resulted in numerous changes to stuff like weapon balance and some artwork. I still need to sort out how this project will be presented as a video series. Need to find a stylish editor for it. We've also shown off a few new things publicly in 2025. You can follow along at FutureTF if you're interested.

Some of you know that, ever since I joined the Fanverse, I've made rough mockups for FNAF spinoff game concepts (unrelated to POPGOES) that could theoretically be pitched to Scott one day. I do these almost entirely by myself, and they have been kept small-scale and private. Some concept art here and there, but it's really just for fun, or I suppose for the longevity of the Fanverse (I'd love to continue contributing to FNAF if it can be a job for me). In 2025 I've developed one of these ideas a fair bit more. It's not something I'll talk about, maybe ever, but I'm still happy with the things I've come up with. Thought I should mention it here just in case it does happen one day and we can look back at this lol.

POPGOES Evergreen has also had major developments this year. I was expecting 2025 to be a year that was mostly spent on myPOPGOES and Arcade, and maybe some merch, but we ended up getting the updates done in the first half of the year, and merch has been basically frozen due to issues/delays with the involved companies. The process for developing Evergreen has changed a bit, but our new programmer Tuparman has been doing a great job. In May we showed an animated mockup of the main menu for the game, but later in the year it was actually fully programmed in Clickteam with some super fancy effects. It did not take long. Since then, Tupar has also implemented the base AI/movement for BB (and Halfway/False BB) in the Red Vault. We have been working on the general feel and balancing of the post-nights for a while now. I am also working with the rest of the team on important (2D, 3D, SFX) assets for them too. It's still a meticulous and slow process but it's the most amount of progress the post-nights have had since Garrett finished the model work for the environments a long time ago. Very promising. And quite scary.

I had a bit of a New Year's resolution for 2025 to actually play some video games this year. I realised, when people asked me what games I had played recently, or what my favourite games were, that I rarely had a good answer. I lost some of the passion I had for gaming, and felt it was important that I explore new things. I challenged myself to actually play and complete some of the new exciting projects coming out. So in 2025 I played Blue Prince, to completion. I even came up with some ideas for features for that game (which people on Reddit seemed to love). I also played DOOM Eternal and Donkey Kong Bananza, both to completion. Also the entire demo for Morsels. And though I didn't/can't complete them, I've played plenty of Slay the Spire (which I was not very good at), Mario Kart World, and quite a bit of Marvel Rivals. I plan on playing Outer Wilds (to completion?) next, mostly because Emil keeps bugging me to try it. And then hopefully ROUTINE which I've been excited for for YEARS, which is apparently releasing at the end of the year. All of these experiences have made me more excited, and inspired, for gaming in general. I won't go into my thoughts for each game here but they were all quite fantastic. People are making some awesome things.

Ah yeah, we also had the Youtooz beach pin release, and the Hex plushie re-release, which were genuinely quite stressful. I worked with artists for both of these, and pushed the products on social media as much as I could. Speaking of merch, I've been communicating with multiple companies, trying to get some new things moving. I've worked with artists on shirt and keychain designs and we're just kinda waiting for someone to take them lol. Right now there is literally nothing in the pipeline in regards to merch, but I'm trying my best to get back to always having at least ONE thing in the works. Fingers crossed something happens soon.

"Productive" is one word for all of this. I've been doing my best, really. Starting new things, connecting with new people, releasing stuff, teasing stuff, and trying to be healthy about it. Written down, it is a lot of work. But, unfortunately, it's not particularly sustainable. I'm holding out for things like the mobile and console ports for myPOPGOES and Arcade, to see if it helps, but it is seriously tough. I know I'm contributing official games for an IP apparently valued at almost $2 billion, but it certainly doesn't feel like it haha. Still, it's my problem to deal with. If I need to do something else, then shit happens, innit. But we'll see how long this lasts.

Thanks for reading - I hope this provides some insight on what I've been doing this year. And there are still a few months left!

Kane