January was suppose to be a fresh start after not so successful 2022 (to say the least) - I can’t say we did all what we wanted, since we didn’t (flu season is still on), but we did some of that.
Games
Only a clean build of Flood Escape which is going to be used to prepare a custom version for OP Games’ Arcadia.
Writing
We were able to start publishing on the Gamedev.js website with the help from a new junior content writer, Ken Obi. Here are his four published articles so far:
- [10.01] Choosing the right rendering method for web games: a comparison of Canvas and HTML
- [20.01] Using local storage for high scores and game progress
- [24.01] Best practices of optimizing game performance with WebGL
- [30.01] Best practices of building mobile-friendly HTML5 games
Ken is a purely virtual assistant and is powered by ChatGPT. He’s going to write in the new Basics series of articles, mainly to boost the SEO ranking of the main page with related content. After all, we had months without any new stuff published there, and I’d like to change it. The articles themselves, as you can see above, will revolve around some basic knowledge about HTML5 games.
Design
Ewa did a banner template for Ken’s posts, which was also used in the articles of her own new series, Let’s Talk About Games:
- [16.01] What are loot boxes?
- [26.01] What is the PEGI mark for games?
Those two are based on her writing over at MamaDesigner blog, which is in Polish. She finally started publishing some English related gamedev content out in the wild, for which I was rooting for in the past months.
Events
No events at all, but I’ve updated my Speaking page and my GitHub Star profile - not much, but better than nothing.
Other
I’ve published the Winners of the Poki × JS13K post-comp jam (on Friday 13th), and the preparations to Gamedev.js Jam 2023 and Gamedev.js Survey 2023 already started.
Plans for the next month
Focus on the Jam and the Survey, plus some other work that was suppose to be done months ago, but I’m not gonna mention the details to not jinx it. Or maybe because I won’t have to explain myself when it won’t be done, again.