Hello fellas and happy new year! Right now I have a couple days left in my break, and I've been having a super fun time. Got to hang out with a ton of my friends and just vibe out. I had hotpot at a Chinese restaurant for the first time, and I liked everything I had which was great!
So what did I do this year?
Super Raft Boat Art Contest
We ran a Super Raft Boat Art Contest! Check it out: https://www.newgrounds.com/bbs/topic/1495048
Last Slice Released
We released Last Slice this year, check out the release post for that: https://jasoonmargoon.newgrounds.com/news/post/1265364
New Secret Project
Before Last Slice released, me and @blstrmanx already started on a new project. It's been going SO well, that we got money to work on it! It also means I can't say what it is yet, but you will know VERY soon what it is. It will most likely be my main project this year as well, and it's the best Shattered Journal Games game to date. It seems like a natural progression of the games we made, and improves on a lot of aspects of past games. I will post about it soon once it's publically announced, so get ready gamers!
Life Stuff
Each year has progressively become more and more challenging, but I guess that makes sense? This year I have put in more consistent work on this new game than I ever have on anything. Before my time was much less limited, so I'd work whenever and always try to work a lot. Now we have a schedule, a timeline, milestones, and many people that are helping the internal team. It's a very leveled up experience from just doing whatever to doing stuff that makes sense and has purpose.
This year I've put in a TON of effort cleaning my basement at my family's house, and have recently turned a section of it into my office! The work/life separation has been a massive improvement to my well-being, but there's still more I want to do in the basement. I've also started to digitize a lot of our family's stuff and organizing it (VHS's, cassettes, etc). My goal is to maximize as much space as possible!
I got a bike towards the end of Summer, so I biked a bit around town. Whenever it gets warm, I'd love to bike more. I want to do more outside, but currently it gets dark once I'm done with work. It is kinda grind time for me right now, so it's not too bad.
This summer and a good chunk of Spring and Fall, I played Softball with a local group in town. My friend Ralph got me into it later into the season last year, and this year I went almost every time! My brothers and some of Ralph's friends go too sometimes, and we usually did stuff afterwards. It gave me a reason to wake up on Sunday mornings, and was fun to actually get better at the more I played. I don't really enjoy watching sports, but playing them is pretty fun. I'm sure by the time it rolls around this year I'll be rusty, so I'll have to hit the batting cages to train up!
I also try to play my alto sax every now and then. I mostly play anime and video game songs, this guy has been a great resource.
This summer I played a lot of Pokemon GO, it was nice to do just to get out of the house and walk around. I also found out that Spewpa and Vivillioin, even Scattergbugs, fetched high trade values on the Pokemon Home market. I started with just filling out my pokedex, but then started just getting legendaries. About a month after I started, no one wanted them anymore, but I got a great haul and have almost all the pokemon now. I even replayed some of Pokemon Y to transfer more of the bug pokemon to get more pokemon trades.
This year I got into Binding of Isaac, really hard, but really fun! The game I probably played most was Dragon Ball Breakers. People are complaining about the gacha mechanic and the balance between survivors and raiders, but me and my friends have been having so much fun playing it, and have not done any of the micro-transactions. I somehow got a lot of my friends into it, even though half of them know nothing about Dragon Ball. It's such a unique anime game that I haven't really seen, I hope we get more like it.
Other cool things I did: went to PAX East and Shine. I saw Beetlejuice on Broadway, definitely in my top 5 of shows for the songs, stage effects/design, and humor. I saw a Toto/Journey conert, and a Madeon concert! The latter being my first EDM/DJ concert of any kind that I've seen, and it was incredible.
One Piece Gushing (SPOILERS)
If you don't know, I absolutely love One Piece, so I'll end my new year's post just gushing about One Piece.
Egghead Island arc has been going CRAZY, I have never been more addicted to One Piece in my life. I loved Wano and was super hyped when Gear 5 happened. Wano was really long, and it seems like it'll still be important in the final saga, so I'm curious how we'll look back at Wano with everything put into perspective. The finale of Gear 5 I think hit perfectly, and it's immediately relevant in the new arc which is nice. All the plot points and characters are starting and I'm beyond excited for the final saga. I'm an absolute One Piece goon, so I watch the anime too. Some parts have great animation, and it's a nice thing to have every Saturday night. What we've gotten has been great, but obviously the big climax has yet to come.
Film Red was also great! Of all the One Piece movies I've seen, it's definitely my favorite. I'm a big musical/song guy, so the moment the first song started, I was dazzled, and it just keeps going and getting better. The animation and songs were incredible. I got to see it with my brother, Ralph, and another friend in town, us being the only people we knew that were caught up with One Piece. I'm also really glad Jinbei was included, since he was not for the new One Piece game coming out in January (which I'm also pretty hyped for, but don't know how much time I'll have for it).
This year was super cool cause Ralph caught up last year, so we could talk about, plus my brother has been caught up longer than me, AND I got another friend to start. He just finished Alabasta and I can't wait till he's caught up sometime this year. I also got new One Piece shirts and merch that I love. I hope that I can go to Japan before the manga ends to see Japan in full One Piece hype mode, or at least before the anime ends.
It feels obvious to pick the main character as your favorite, but Luffy definitely is for me. I want to see what his dream is, and I want to see him become the king of the pirates! I'm so excited to see all the Gear 5 fights, the one's we've already gotten are so fun and imaginative, I can't even think of what his next and last fights will be. I like all the straw hats, my other favorites would be Chopper, Jinbei, and Usopp.