2024 Retrospective

Well, is it any surprise to see that most of my videogaming this year has been Battletech or Battletech related? It's a bit of an obsession, I will admit. 

I did get back to Fallout 4 this year (mods are wonderful) and I spent quite a bit of time playing Aliens: Dark Descent, which is an amazing real time tactical squad management game like XCOM, but better, in my opinion. Certainly it is more frantic!

Other than these games above, I also played quite a bit of SABLE and SYNERGY, which are two very Moebius inspired games. SYNERGY is a wonderful little city builder and SABLE, well, I've played it so much that I'm at about 98% completion, and when I play it these days, I mostly just do it to zoom around the old familiar areas on my hoverbike.

Star Renegades is another favorite from this year, though it gets progressively more difficult in a nearly vertical curve (or I just really suck at it) that it quickly became un-fun to play after the initial "dimension" is saved. I also went all the way through Alien: Isolation again, and though it was fun (especially after seeing Romulus in the theaters) I had pretty much memorized all of the jump scares from my first playthrough and it was just not the same thrill-ride it had been the first time through. I yearn for a new Alien experience like this. I crave it.

Oh, and I got back into Minecraft again this year. It's one of those wonderfully peaceful games that I can slide into once in a while if I just want to work a digital farm and listen to chill music. Mods, of course, also make this a fresh new experience. Currently I'm playing with the RAD Forge-pack and that's a lot of fun. Build the perfect house, farm on the coast, wander around and dig up tombs and rob the undead! Everything I love to do in an RPG.

Some of my favorites among the miniatures that I painted this year.

Looking back, it's weird to say that with all of the game-related stuff I did this year, I don't think I managed to find the time to play much in regards to boardgames or card games (not even solo) in the whole of 2024. I did back a couple of exciting Kickstarters (Rejec's Our Golden Age, Willet & Molloy's Painted Wastelands and Games Omnivorous's Boreal Frostlands) one of which has already delivered.

I also grew my hoard of painted Battletech minis by quite a lot as well.

Painted Battletech minis as of the end of 2023

Collection at the end of 2024

My father "Captain Deaf / Death" immortalized as a miniature. 

Part of this year's weirdness (and lack of posts after June) stems from the fact that when my father died on May 10 of this year, it kind of knocked me sideways. It was sudden but wasn't unexpected. When he was diagnosed with cancer in 2010, they gave him six months to live. Instead, almost in utter defiance, he lived another 14 years (and almost all of that time dealing with a G-tube. Talk about tough!) 

Right up until he passed, I was riding a wave of writing. I was learning how to draw and was just creating new stuff like crazy. His passing hit me so hard that for the past seven months about all I've been able to do is edit and finish projects I had already nearly completed.

So here we are, more than 7 months after the fact, and I still haven't bounced back to the same level of productivity I was at before he passed. I feel sparks of it sometimes, but I still can't write much of anything new. I want to, but there's this hollowness in my chest that I haven't gotten around yet. It is my hope that in the coming year, I can reclaim some of my creativity and push ahead through the grief. I really don't want this to turn into a "dark phase" that stretches on for years. I'm too proactive to accept something like that from myself. I must pick myself up and move forward somehow!

On the plus side, I did manage to edit and release three new books this year. These were already written though last year and early this year, but I was able to muster up the emotional fortitude to edit and release them this year.

(Click the covers to learn more.)

My overarching goal for the coming year is to play more. I spent so much of this year growing and maturing and fighting and mourning that I'm ready for a rest. We'll see what happens over 2025, but that's the goal!

Here's to an exciting and productive 2025 for us all! 

I hope this post ages better than my "This is my year!" post I made in January of 2020, lmao!

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