I finished many aspects of TLS in 2024, and in 2025 I polished them and then brought them to the public. It's been an interesting year, hurling me into a 2026 that will be the most unknown/uncertain I've had in quite some time. Nonetheless, I think there's enough for an interesting annual post!
Releasing The Last Sovereign
Even if I finished the final battle and other key events last year, the work on TLS in 2025 was not trivial: I had five major releases with 24 different public builds. This includes the postgame updates, major features like Steam achievements, all the combat busts, and tons of revisions and overhauls. It feels like an age ago to me, can you believe that all those things weren't even in the game this time last year?
Anyway, after that we did the official launch and it went fine. Not earth-shaking, but also nothing really went wrong. I've already posted a great deal about this in the weekly updates since launch, so I won't belabor all of the conclusions here.
Between players old and new, the game more than doubled its peak player count and the review count passed 1000 just at the new year! Somehow TLS has held on to the "Overwhelmingly Positive" rating by its fingernails. Thanks to everyone for supporting the launch. ^-^
As I've said, TLS updates will continue into the new year: version 1.1.0 will finish all Chapter 4 illustrations plus include the Eustrin redesign and all known bug reports. Those have really slackened off, so hopefully that build will be pretty stable and we can shift to a comfortable pattern of illustrating more scenes each build.
Other Things
For both the previous two years, I've intended to pivot more than I actually did. That said, I did finish some other things in 2025:
DStP Kickstarter: This was a big endeavor for one month of the year! I can't say for sure whether KS will be a good path going forward, but I'm glad that this campaign was success and it's another potential foundation, and at minimum a good way to finish up this long-suffering side project.
TLS Survey: I said I'd finally take time to do this again and I'm glad I did. ^-^ It was fun to look through and analyze all the demographics, even if it took a chunk of time.
Cognosticon Audible Deal: I negotiated the biggest deal of my life with Audible, for the first time getting a substantial chunk of money from a corporation. It feels strange that this - a side project that wasn't particularly successful - earned far more money than the TLS launch, which I poured myself into for over a decade. That's how things go, though. It seems likely that this series will not pan out, because big money for me is small change for Audible, but it made my career substantially more secure.
Collaborator Search: I spent a while looking for potential future collaborators/projects via Discord and Reddit. There were two or three people I appreciated talking to, even if we didn't end up working together, but for the most part this was a huge waste of time. So it seems like I'm still on the same path forward: do everything I can solo and pay for 100% of the rest.
Agent Search: This was a frustrating year for traditional publication: I had multiple literary agents look at my work or request full manuscripts, and some even said nice things, but none of that matters because I couldn't close a deal. I don't spend much time on this because I feel like half the speculative fiction agents are looking for only romantasy. =/ I'm not giving up, but I'm also not putting too much time into this.
Looking Forward
I know I've built up some trust from my work over the past decade, and I intend to be worthy of that trust. One of the things on my mind is that I don't want to leave all of you hanging for a long period of time, waiting my next project: I don't think that would be fair either to you or to that project, which will of course be a first build, not a final build.
So, over this coming year, you can expect:
Continued builds of TLS as well as the bonus TLS content I've mentioned.
The first major build of Slave Rehabilitator.
Certainly alpha and beta builds of Don't Save the Princess, hopefully the final as well.
Builds of a secret new project to be announced next week!
Continued $10 art posts of new TLS art.
Weekly updates, as always.
I still like the idea of a developer's commentary on TLS, but I don't think it would be responsible of me to spend so much time on it now when there's so much to do.
2026 is likely to be another pivotal year for me, though perhaps at this point I should just say that I'm in a pivotal multi-year period. I will probably wrap up two major projects (DStP and Depthless Hunger) this year and I will definitely be launching some new things, which I hope some of you will enjoy.
Thank you for your support, and please look forward to the coming year!