Wrap up 2025

Hey! It's been quite a while since my last update. The latter half of this year ended up being quite busy for me, so I was plugging away on work instead of updating this blog. Sorry about that.
Here's a quick recap of my 2025!

Projects

Strawberry Starter

I made a blog template for 11ty, an awesome static site generator. Heavily inspired by Zonelets, I wanted to make modern webdev tooling like Node more accessible to webdev beginners - mostly because I prefer writing Markdown over HTML, and think being able to write in a more "natural" way might push more people over into making a blog.

This year lots of friends pivoted away from social media, which is good, but at the same time, it feels like the "old web revival" is at a bit of a crossroads. For every personal site you visit, half of them are using ancient layout and templating techniques (heavily reliant on JS, or using tables or even framesets). Sites where the HTML is a mess of divs, and the dreaded "site looks best on desktop!" warning is plastered as a mark of shame.
Strawberry Starter is meant to be a clean break - it uses semantic HTML and works on mobile browsers, and won't make screen readers explode either. Writing Markdown comes at the cost of having to use Node, but 11ty is fairly intuitive and (hopefully) the included guides on the template make it easy to use.

I'd say it's been a success! Lots of friends and strangers have made their own blog using it. My deepest thanks to the users who submitted bug reports - maintaining a project like this isn't easy and I made lots of silly mistakes along the way.

Let's keep blogging in 2026!

Windowpane 2025

I kept working on my interactive story tool windowpane this year. I released three games with it, which helped me iterate on the tool a bit (and fix some bugs)!

• bilingual language diary is a personal game I made for DOMINO Declassified Jam.
• s*ssy caption aesthetic II is a mix of collage & essay on random contemporary topics.
• new eyes cycle is a mystery game I made with fotocopiadora for DOMINO Boneyard Jam.

Windowpane also requires Node, and compared to Strawberry Starter, I can't say it's as successful. That's to be expected, though - windowpane makes you write your own CSS and a bunch of other annoying things, so it's trickier to use.

Still, some people did release Windowpane games!

• Check out crotovane's Nihilist Syndrome! A really moody short story - I loved this.
• And greyfeather's TOXIC YURI JAM game, the girl who was hypnotized to huff armpits.

Here's hoping to some more windowpanes in 2026, too!

BRIEFS 2025: Baetyl

I made an atmospheric puzzler!

This game was pitched to & funded by the Austrian arts collective gold extra. In their fourth edition of microgame grants, they looked for games that exemplified the idea of "CHEESE". I made a troll-ish game that messes with the player, inspired by the indie games of my youth like Mondo Medicals. (Please tell me someone remembers Mondo Medicals!)
Check out the whole CHEESE collection here! The other two games are also definitely worth your time.

Other Stuff

Slime Feet on Steam!

Nadia Nova's amazing and heartfelt game from last year got a steam release, thanks to yours truly!
I originally did some engine work on slime feet, but Nadia summoned me back to wrap it up in an electron app.
I'm really happy how this came together. Please play slime feet!

Videotome Improvements

Speaking of videotome games...
I helped Freya make the engines look a bit better on mobile this year.
Why not consider one of them for your next game project?

Life in general

• We went to Asturias on a little trip. It was very pretty, although the wildfire season this year was quite scary, so it ended up being a horrible time to go sightseeing. I was worried we might have to rush back to save the gatos in case a fire came close by our home, but we were thankfully OK. I don't remember a season this bad since when I was a kid... I really pray 2026 won't be as bad.

• Visited Lisbon with Gwen! It was very fun to explore a big city again. Also, Gwen is the best and you should play her new game.

• 2025 marks a full year of listing movies on Letterboxd. Probably the only social media I've ever really enjoyed - I found lots of obscure stuff I wouldn't have otherwise!

• Slowly improving my skills with drawing / making music. I want to spend more time doing these next year.

The future

Overall, 2025 was a good year for me, with lots of personal growth. Next year, I'm hoping to pick up some more work, although with the current state of the world, I'm not expecting too much. I'm toying with the idea of a paid game release to help keep the lights on, and also try and introduce some more people to my work. We'll see! Endless thanks to my patreon patrons and anyone who donated on itch or ko-fi, who help lighten my load.

Right now I'm working on a tool I hope to release soon. I hope you'll enjoy it.

Anyway - I'll see you in 2026. Happy New Year!