One Game Per Month For A Year - RECAP

Hello everyone! I am TheCheshireHuman, and in June of 2024 I challenged myself to design and release one game a month for a year. In that year, I have changed and grown so much. Even on the days when I didn't think I could complete this challenge, I pushed through, and now that I finally finished I'm so glad that I did it. I have had such a great time submitting to bundles, finding other indie creators that I love, and overall feeling the most fulfilled that I ever have. Throughout this year, I discovered revolutionary things about myself, and these games serve as a time capsule for me to remember who I was during these 12 short months. Today, I’m going to cover every game I made, what I liked about them, and what I could improve. This is mostly for me to look back on when I’m older, so it won’t have any flashy graphics or anything. However, if someone else does see this, I hope it inspires them to undergo a project that will change their life for the better as well. Without further ado, let’s begin.

Free Love

Free Love was the first game I released (but not the first one I designed; more on that later) because it coincided with pride month. I think this is one of my best games from this challenge, simply because of the new adjacency system I developed for skill checks that I hadn’t seen anywhere else. I think this was a super strong start, and a great way to gain my footing on itch. If I could change one thing, it would probably be the landing page for the game, and overall this was something that I could never perfect throughout this entire challenge. I am extremely excited about this game, because at the time of writing I am currently working on a 2nd Edition version with expanded features that I will hopefully submit to a publisher.

Bio-Battlers

Bio-Battlers was the first game I ever seriously designed in my life, with the original version dating back to about 3ish years ago. Over those three years, it evolved significantly, becoming unrecognizable from the original aside from the fact that it kept the theme of making fights precise and brutal with a combat system that outlines which part of the body is the target for each attack. This game was actually the reason I wanted to undergo this challenge - since I had spent so long designing it and was extremely proud of it, I was curious what other games I could design if I stuck to a strict deadline of releasing one per month. Suffice to say, I think I made some pretty great games lol. If I could change one thing about this, I would probably keep it the same. While it's not perfect by any means, I think it’s a great sample of what this system can do, and showcases it brilliantly while fitting on only one page. Like Free Love, I hope to one day make a 2nd Edition of this game and release it, however currently that project is on the back burner as I know I’m always going to want to add more to it every time I think I’m done with it lol.

Fun Fact: In my earliest idea for this challenge, I originally planned on releasing one Bio-Battlers supplement per month, ranging from new features to adventure modules to April Fools upgrades.

Love and Monsters

Love and Monsters was my August release, and concluded what I like to think of as my original trilogy of TTRPGs. I love Doctor Who, and I saw an easy opening to make a Doctor Who-themed Lasers and Feelings hack, so I took it. While this one required only a little effort on my part, I tried to not make it low-effort, and overall am proud of how it turned out. If I could change one thing about this, I would have not made it a direct hack of L&F and instead have tried to add some unique mechanics of my own.

Down to Business - A Business Card CCG

Down to Business was my first journey into designing a non-TTRPG game, and I’m proud of it - conceptually. Honestly, I think the idea of turning an everyday item into a CCG was one of my best ideas from this challenge, but the execution was poor. In my attempts to fit the rules onto a single business card, I think that I made the rules way too simple and potentially even unclear. If I could change one thing, I would have ditched the business card gimmick and instead tried focusing on turning another item into a CCG. I even had an idea at one point to turn anything in the universe into a “card” in a CCG by giving traits such as shape or color certain abilities, but that is still too ambitious for me at the current moment. I would love to revisit this idea in the future though, and hopefully make something cool out of it.

Intruders of the Mind/The Cabinet of Doctor Caligari

I’ll combine these two together, as they are both short and I like to think of them as a classic film double bill. Intruders of the Mind was one of the most powerful and emotional games I designed during this challenge, second only to Esperanza. I loved making it, and honestly I think this is the perfect type of game to release on itch - short, impactful, snappy, and otherwise unpublishable. This was also my first journey into more abstract game design concepts. I submitted this for a “Danger TRPG Jam,” which introduced me to the concept of Danger Art, which in turn led me to the Fluxus art movement (along with the Dadaist art movement). This is the movement I feel that some of my games fall under, and overall an art movement that I hold very close to my heart. I’m super glad I designed this game, and wouldn’t change a single thing.

The Cabinet of Doctor Caligari was something I added on, since I felt that Intruders of the Mind was too short of a game to release on its own. I had recently watched the movie at the time of designing, and it quickly became one of my favorite classic films. I thought that it would be interesting to release an experimental game, in the same way that the movie was experimental as it kickstarted the expressionist movement. While this game frankly was pretty low-effort, I still tried my best to put thought and time into the graphic design of the game itself, and considering that it was my first real attempt at graphic design on Canva, I think it turned out great. I would change nothing about this game.

Fun Fact: Technically this month caused me to lose the challenge, as I had originally said only one game per month. However, I still consider that challenge complete, since my original intent was just to motivate myself every month to make something, and I simply exceeded my expectation this month.

Battlin’ Bytes

For the second month in a row, I released more than one game lol. While this one didn’t perform too well statistically, I am still very proud of it. This stemmed from me seeing a design challenge online where designers had to create an 18-card game where every card was the exact same. I took this a step further by having all of them be completely blank just to see what I could come up with, and I wound up with 3 unique games. While they are definitely not the most fun games I designed in this challenge, they are functional, and I think they would work well to teach someone the basics of binary. If I am ever in a situation where I need to do so, I will definitely be playing a few games of H@ck3rz or Bits of Blank to reinforce the concept. Would I change anything: no. I think the graphic design for this one is simple but spot on for the coding theme.

Business Card Battlers

Originally designed as a pocket-sized version of the already tiny Bio-Battlers, this game grew into something unique that I am extremely proud of. I think this is my best business card game I designed throughout the whole challenge, and perfectly encapsulates everything I wanted in a simple and concise way. The limitations I set for myself with this one really let it shine, as opposed to dampening it like some other games that I designed with constrictions in mind. I know I’ve said this about a lot of my games so far, but I REALLY love the graphic design on this one. I would change nothing.

The Thirteenth Chair

OH MY GOODNESS. This is hands down my favorite game from this challenge. I’ve peaked. It’s all downhill from here. You can stop reading now (jk). This game is my magnum opus. AND to top it all off ITS ONLY 36 WORDS. While it doesn’t look like much when reading it, it is EXTREMELY fun to run and play if you have the right group. I was so extremely fortunate enough to be able to run it multiple times for small groups during an event, and wound up having about 100 people in total help me playtest it. While some groups thought it was silly, others had a blast and told me that they loved it. I would absolutely love to run this again for other groups of people, specifically people into games and LARPs as most of the people I ran it for weren’t expecting to play a game during the event which primarily consisted of food and performances. I might even rewrite this game to fluff it up some more and expand on the rules, because I think this is literally the best thing I made during this challenge. Additionally, the fact that I managed to create it based on another favorite classic film of mine is chef’s kiss (can you tell I like classic films yet? lol). If I could change anything, I would not have the filename end in .pdf.pdf (my friends will never let me hear the end of that), and I would’ve promoted it more.

Fun Fact: This game was inspired by Werewolf in the Dark and other games which are meant to be played in the dark or with your eyes closed.

Time Heist

Throughout February, March, and April, I started losing motivation to design games. This was probably my roughest patch of games, as I just got kind of lazy. Time Heist was cool as I got to make another Doctor Who-themed hack of a game I love, but like with Love and Monsters it felt kind of like an easy way out of making something original. I don’t really have much to say here, I just wished I did better, especially after delivering two strong games back-to-back in the previous months. If I could change something about this, I probably just wouldn’t have released it and would have designed something else instead.

Hydras and Heroes

Partially why I lost motivation with my itch releases during this time period was because I was super focused on designing a game for Button Shy’s design contest found here: https://buttonshygames.com/blogs/news-1/the-18-card-challenge-9-cards-per-game. This game was my submission to that contest, and while it didn’t wind up winning, this was probably the game I had spent the most time designing and playtesting since Bio-Battlers. I am super proud of it, but I’m not proud that I released it on itch just because I had no other game to release for March. If I could change something, I would have given March its own game and given this game its own spotlight by submitting it to another game publisher and hopefully getting it published there. However, I am currently in the process of revamping it and hopefully I can submit a newer, improved version to a publisher to get it officially released sometime in the future. 

Doctor Who Crossword Puzzle

This one is completely inexcusable. I waited until literally the last day of the month to figure out what I was doing, leading to a cheap game. It’s not even an original game, but technically for the purposes of the challenge it is a “game” and I never specified that the games had to be original. If I could change something about this, I would change literally everything and just release something else.

Not-so-fun Fact: On April 30th, the last day of the month, at 10 PM where I live, I tried to submit this game but itch’s website went down and I had to frantically keep refreshing it for the rest of the night until it came back on 30 minutes to an hour later. Lesson learned: don’t procrastinate.

Esperanza

This game was a journey, both literally and figuratively. It combined everything I learned throughout the past year - Fluxus, vulnerability, identity, passion - into my first lyric game. I had been wanting to design a lyric game for a while at this point, and I am super glad that this was the first one I made. I would not change a single thing about this game, because doing that would be changing who I am. If you haven’t already, go ahead and read it. I promise you won’t be disappointed

Stats

Jams Joined: 49

Jams Submitted: 34

Future plans

In the future, I am most definitely going to be releasing many more games on itch. But…I think I deserve a break. Maybe a long one, maybe a short one, who knows! But I will be back and releasing more games at some point. Additionally, I will be trying to get games picked up by publishing companies, so not all of my games will be available on itch. Big things are coming, but for now thank you so much for all of your support and have a great day!

Upcoming projects (in no particular order, and any/all of these may or may not be released on itch or otherwise published):

Free Love 2E

Bio-Battlers 2E (probably under a different name)

Hydras and Heroes (the revamped one)

Death to Dadaism!

House of Cards

AND MORE!

Ranking the games I made from favorite to least favorite:

1. The Thirteenth Chair
2. Esperanza
3. Hydras and Heroes
4. Bio-Battlers
5. Intruders of the Mind
6. Business Card Battlers
7. Free Love
8. Battlin’ Bytes
9. Love and Monsters
10. The Cabinet of Doctor Caligari
11. Down to Business - A Business Card CCG
12. Time Heist
13. Doctor Who Crossword Puzzle

Good luck and happy designing! And remember: laugh hard, run fast, be kind.