Hello there,
2024 has not been my year at all. I was on a near mental breakdown practically each month, for different reasons each time. There have been good things, like finally gaining true irl friends for once since like middle school. That being said, I'm ready to abandon this thing on the side of the road like how litterbugs leave plastic cups on the grass. That also being said, I do feel like a discussion over the year is in order, both as a way to resolve any withheld trauma and as some sort of parasocial tradition.
To start off, my lackluster performance this year in terms of game making. I will say that either from repressed trauma, early onset Alzheimer's, me currently being sleep deprived as FUCK writing this, or some combination of the three, I can't remember the year in detail that much, atleast in terms of Game Development. I've probably done a lot in terms of small things for other people but in terms of MY shit, I can only remember 3 things.
FNaFB: The Golden Years/Frashaw Edition 0
Anyone that has interacted me for a decent amount of time will know how much I have a "picky" preference in my FNaFB games. The one that has stuck the most with me is KE0 made by Krick. While through a completely analytical lens, the game is fine if unbalanced heavily due to a very meta strategy, but something about it urks me to my fucking soul. Regardless, in celebration of the Gamejolt Server reaching 420 members, I suggested a much shorter gamejam. 1 month max. While this jam crashed and fucking burned HARD for reasons that I won't personally discuss, the theme was to remake another person's game. So, I picked KE0 because I found it the easiest to do and I felt that I could do the most to improve it. I say I did but I'm not exactly the most bias free source on that front.
The two things I tried to do the most is give actual depth to the gameplay and make the characters feel like characters. Part of my issue with KE0's gameplay is that most of it felt like it was just random bullshit skills cobbled together (who the fuck uses a skill that deals damage and then recovers Sp for like 100 Tp?). With my remake, even if you practically only have Fredbear and Springbonnie throughout the run time with Golden Freddy making a very brief appearance in the Rat King boss fight, I felt I had done a good job in making sure all the options the player has at their disposal were enough to formulate strategies and provide actual time to think through your next move. One example being that you could use Pain Magnet if the Boss is going to be dealing a lot of damage to either protect your allies or maximize off the damage off his innate thorns. But then again, you could use Havoc Rush and choose a more linear damage option depending on the things you upgraded it in. Those types of options were always the ones that I prefer to see in the games that I play, ones where I want to consider both options as both have they're own pros and cons.
The other area was characters. The Characters in KE0 were as bland as soggy toast. So, for my remake, I decided to instead try and expand the characterization of Fredbear and Springbonnie. Brothers by blood, they truly care for each other, but I feel that KE0 made Springbonnie gradually more and more grating as the game went on. Sort of joining in on the peer pressure of forcing Fredbear do shit he didn't want to do. My version more focuses on Springbonnie being Fredbear's ride or die. Actively birching out the other two to make sure that Fredbear is safe and well thought of. While there isn't many scenes in the demo due to time constraints, I wish to more expand upon that angle that the game set up.
While i refuse to be entirely negative about the game as it has several things I find interesting and cool like the Art Style of everything, the game does need a lot of carefully made choices to make to something I enjoy. I do plan to eventually finish it someday, but currently I'm wanting to get some bigger shit out first.
Five Nights at F***boy's: Golden Edition Rigilded
Hoo boy, this one. This one was meant to be a group project for a more secular group I'm in. Keyword "meant to be". The game was a hot fucking mess. The original idea was an idea for FNaFb 4 (this was before QED was announced so...) and so we went to start brainstorming. Here was the game idea I proposed: Game focuses on JJ as she lives her life post act 3/Finale BB assblasting. Ever sicne that day, she's been having terrible nightmares each night and so while she sleeps she summons Nighmare Balloon Boy to proceederally take down the Nightmare Classics so she can live a normal life. The idea is that it would be akin to that one Silent Hill game where your locked in a room the entire time, where you play day segments as JJ trying to improve herself while N. BB would crack skulls open as she sleeps. This idea was rejected on the basis of, I shit you not, "Not having the Nightmare Classics as playable characters". As you can tell, I'm still immensely salty about that. The idea that ended up going the farthest was one made by Typo/@MeltedBox 
where the Nightmare Classics were stuck in hell and trying to escape, with Nightmare Fredbear being a way out that dies midway through because Nightmare is a jackass or something. The gameplay was meant to be a more Euclidian take with it being much more "out there" in terms of designs. I personally didn't really like it as it felt too much like a rehash of the older versions of FNaFB 4 attempts with nothing truly special about it, but democracy won against me.
One of the problems is that fucking nobody worked on jack shit... except me. I had fully designed Nightmare Foxy and Nightmare Bonnie, through a shitfit because of people complaining about minute model overlapping and dropped the fucking project. Was it my proudest moment? No, but I still feel some resentment towards some people because of that. After my quitting, the team decided to scrap the entire idea and do a GE1 Remake instead which I felt cross about because all my hardwork would've then been thrown into the toilet but I having people work on a project they want to work on leads to better productivity or some shit, IDK. however, they decided to instead hide behind it like it was still going on? I didn't approve of this decision and threw shit fit 2 electric boogaloo. I felt that the game would've generated more hype and would've been more honest if they just were upfront with it instead of some stupid bait and switch.
That aside, props to @baahysbnbn 
, for clutching up and actually doing something with project. Did I particularly enjoy it? no, but I still have respect for snatching victory from the jaws of despair.
The literal golden child of my games. Before the 420 Jam and a little before 2024 event started, there was another jam that was based on differing perspectives. The idea was that you have 2+ separate viewpoints that would do different things depending on how things played out. One idea I threw out was a Fran Bow Pills/Vanny Mask mechanic where you had an item that made transported you into a similar but different world in order to solve puzzles and what not. I liked this jam idea because it allowed for a lot more creativity then before, and I decided that this would be the perfect time to spring into action an idea that was in my head for a long time. Summon gameplay, but good.
While I won't go into some grandiose essay on how GR Summons are better then a normal game's summons and shit, the simple point is that Golden Reversal was made with the summons in mind instead of a side piece. This certainly reflected in the dev cycle. Out of the 3 months, I was given, I spent more the 2.25 on fine tuning the game's combat. I also spent the first 2 weeks creating the rework of FNaFBee, but that's not really a "this year" project so it's only relevant in that it eated away at my precious time. I literally hard focused so hard on the combat that I had to speed run the absolute fuck out of the last few weeks to eek out a demo with 2 bosses. And by god was it glorious. Literally every single fucking thing I've heard about it was that it was fun, but needed more content.
And so more content I made... sort of. Alongside other projects and starting up big boy College, I got my ass handed to me to the point where I could barley work on the game properly. As such it took me 9 months to add 1 phantom. While it also came with a lot of technical tweaks and reworks, a part of me does feel a slight bit of shame with how little more there is to do in the update. People also did barely play it because of how it got released during the 10 year anniversary of FNaFB and subsequently got downed the fuck out by people playing CC Plus by @kamocpl 
. It's deserved but I'm still a bit miffed how the reception of the game died down a lot, at least in terms of proper discord interactions on the game.
The new update is something I have mixed feelings about. On one hand, more Golden Reversal, on the other it does feel like I spent several months on bullshit glitz to satiate some gremlin inside of me instead of using that time to properly introduce more content. It'll go away as I work on the next one, but it still feels kind of wonky I'm not gonna lie.
BTW, if you were wondering about the Jam, I failed, Hard. This was obviously because my introduction of the theme was non-existant which I understand 100%. Near the end of development, I knew there was no chance in Hell I was winning (not helped by the fact one of the judges kept on telling me I was fucked from the get go) and so I just made what I wanted and continued on.
Thank you all for enduring this year in review, I'm thankful for all that want to march me do my little money dance and I will hope to see you soon in the new year. And as a little treat. I will now probably dev a little bit before sleeping off in preparation of the next College semester.
Sincerely,
Frashaw27
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