Blue Pin Studio

Badcaster Shneebly Post Mortem

Sat, 09 May 2026 11:00:00 +0000

Introduction

During the Ludum Dare 59 game jam, we created Badcaster Shneebly. The theme was Signal, and we had 3 days complete the game. The team consisted of Myself (Viktor), Prav, Manisha and Keely. I’ve worked with Manisha and Keely on two other Ludum Dares but this time Manisha added Prav who is another local Toronto gamedev!

We contemplated meeting up in person to work on the game but our schedules didn’t align very much. Maybe next time!

Timeline

Pre-Jam

We formed the team relatively early, a few weeks out. So we had the luxury of chatting for a bit, and since Me and Keely and Manisha have already worked on three seperate jams, the workflow and roles were already pre-defined and locked in.

There was a bit of trepedation surrounding what Keely would be up to since we had Prav doing art. Luckily once we got going that wasn’t an issue. There was plenty of stuff for Keely to do. He ended up spending as much time as me!

The first sketch that was a precursor to the game we ended up making. This was drawn roughly 3hrs after the theme was announced.

Jam Begins…

We got into a call as soon as the theme was dropped and ended up deciding before the call ended on the game we were going to make. I had lots of ambitions around the voice-over component of Shneebly and perhaps even sneaking into people’s game sessions but all of that ended up being scrapped for time. I didn’t even get to voice Shneebly in the end.

Some of the ideas we had that we discarded are:

the Fairy Bubble Pop game from Neopets
Switching an old school wire switchboard
something with trombone champ that i dont remember

The Development

Development went ok. I was able to deploy builds periodically as I was developing the features. The game doesn’t really resemble anything I’ve played before from a gameplay perspective so I didn’t have much to lean on for UI/UX.

During development myself, manisha, prav and I think also Keely were busy doing other real life stuff. I was working, Prav had plans, etc. We didn’t no-life this jam and work to the fullest.

More details about what went right and what went wrong are below…

Early sketch of the city layout

What Went Well

As per usual with Keely on board, we get a really funny mascot and premise. That went well, and I think the graphics overall look nice. Given more time, we could’ve really made this city pop, but even in a day or two, it looks really nice!

Comment from Prav (Art): The art style came out pretty much close to what i envisioned in my mind, and this being my first jam i think it all went pretty well overall, considering the tight deadline

Comment from Keely (Art & Design): The game visuals and music turned out pretty good.

Comment from Manisha (Audio): I think the process of audio development went pretty well, and looking back at my progress clips over the course of the jam helped me realize that. I was able to put together a basic drum beat and some potential sounds pretty quickly, and I feel like I’m getting more efficient with GarageBand. By the end of day one, we had already settled on a clear idea, which helped us get to work the next day. I also had time to record voice lines for Shneebly, which I think added a little more personality to the character and vibe of the game. Setting the game in Toronto made it feel more personal since our whole team is based here.

Reference we found for Shneebly. Drawn by the infinitely talented Batsyhead.

Challenges

Boy oh boy! In addition to the usual challenges of making a game in 3 days while working a day-job there came some relatively new ones!

Our artist Prav was using software (Procreate) that he never used before, and wasn’t communicating as much as we would like. Roughly half of the jam was spent without any game-ready asset completed. And on top of that, even when we got near the end, the jam assets weren’t prioritized properly. We had 29! different tree assets!

Thank god for Keely taking over as a middle man between me and Prav because if it wasn’t for him, we would’ve had no time for anything. Prav only send the psd files, not individual pngs for us to use. So Keely had to go in and separate out every layer. This was done on multiple occasions and it would’ve taken up a ton of my time.

Also, here’s an exchange that would help color the experience I had for you:

Viktor: You went a whole day (yesterday) without sending anything, its scary
Prav: Yeah cause i was learning procreate. Life is a gamble when you work with me. People realize way too late.
Viktor: You should’ve told me before we started.
Prav: I believe in practical lessons. Life doesn’t come with a manual. Anyway goodnight see you tomorrow.

Comment from Prav (Art): I wasn’t able to finish the whole city so we ended up duplicating assets, but i’m still happy with the way it turned out. Definitely could practice more art using Procreate.

Comment from Keely (Art & Design): We didn’t reckon with any of the game design problems until the last few hours.

Comment from Manisha (Audio): One of the main challenges was figuring out the right sound and mood for the game. I initially imagined something more comedic and chaotic to match Shneebly’s character, but by the midpoint of the jam I realized the gameplay required a slower, less distracting track so players could focus. I also ran into some issues where certain instruments didn’t end up fitting as well as I had hoped. These factors made it difficult to fully match my original vision, and in the end the music might have worked better as a funny villainous theme rather than something fully integrated into gameplay.

The Final Product

I felt really bad about the final product. It ended up being too confusing and esoteric. Given a few more days we could’ve polished up this relatively uncommon game design and make it more easy to understand but such is the nature of weekend game jams. Not enough time!

I think we could’ve done a lot better when scoping this game and organizing what needs to be done and what can be avoided. Keely did great work showing first-timer Prav where he can cut corners and save time while I was too busy on day-job and programming tasks to handle management.

Comment from Prav (Art): Definitely happy with the outcome, maybe next time i’ll do a better job of planning things before execution and probably use a software that i’m familiar with to save time!

Comment from Keely (Art & Design): I’m a little sad about the outcome tbh. I don’t feel like I’m enjoying the process of game jams as much anymore. Maybe I need to stick to coding 🙃.

Comment from Manisha (Audio): Overall, I like the concept of the game and think Shneebly is a really fun and memorable villain. The idea of him messing with people’s TVs is genuinely funny and fits the signal theme well. I do wish we leaned further into the comedic side and refined the level design more, since the user experience felt a bit confusing at times. That said, I think the game has a lot of potential, and I really enjoyed contributing to the audio and helping shape the overall feel of the project.

A screenshot of what the final game ended up looking like.

Reception

Final Game: We had 98 Browser plays for the game over the Ludum Dare rating period. Lots of comments and feedback as well, thank you everyone for checking it out! Here are the scores:

There were 1213 other entries

Criteria	Rank	Percentile
Overall	620th	Top 51%
Fun	680th	Top 56%
Innovation	387th	Top 32%
Theme	165th	Top 14%
Graphics	324th	Top 27%
Audio	255th	Top 21%
Humor	179th	Top 15%
Mood	482th	Top 40%

Just to add a little bit more commentary now that you’ve seen the scores… Isn’t that facinating? After 6 years of doing Ludum Dare, I ended up making one of my worst-reviewed games. The chart looks like this:

Previous Ludum Dare Scores going back 6 years.

Makes me doubt if I’m improving, or at least improving faster than the standards for a good game are changing… Time will tell I suppose!

Comments & Reactions

Your ideas are your gifts

Sun, 03 May 2026 09:00:00 +0000

Welcome!

April 2026 has come and gone! Welcome to May ladies and folks… Let’s see what the one they call Viktor was up to.

April 2026 Goals

Trash Force incremental demo (in the new resolution)
Falling Thingies new demo and full back to front feature complete
Prepare the Steam page for the new collab project announcement
Participate in Ludum Dare 59

Wouldya look at that?! We actually managed to pull off all of the month’s goals! Well, they were goals I had in progress from last month, but still. Good timing too because I’m going to need all the free time I have to focus on the Falling Thingies launch. The Steam page for the collab project is ready but hasn’t been deployed publicly yet while we refine the screenshots and prepare a trailer. The hard part is done though, getting a 7-way revenue share agreement squared away and deciding on a name and logo for the project.

For Trash Force, the new demo build internally supports a new higher resolution, new menus and lots of game changes. For example, you don’t take damage from running into regular asteroids now which was a change a lot of people wanted.

We’re still not entirely an incremental game, more work needs to be done on that front. That will have to wait until Falling Thingies is released… In the meantime I can show you the differences between the old and new version of the in-game scenes. Lots more room for activities!

I guess it's harder to depict like this, but trust me there's way more room!

Bonus Tasks Completed in April 2026

Publish the Ludum Dare entry to Newgrounds
Purchase Salazar

I rapid-fire deployed the Ludum Dare submission to Newgrounds in addition to submitting it to Ludum Dare. Normally I spruce up the game with medals and bug fixes and extra features before I do that, but this time around I have no time for that.

More importantly, in the second week of April I went down to the largest artisan craft show the city has to offer and picked myself a little something-something. As soon as I saw this guy when I was walking past his booth I knew I needed to buy him. I’m sure you all will agree! Meet Salazar, the newest addition to Blue Pin Studio. With Salazar by my side, I fear nothing and I fear no one!

Introducing...Salazar the rock!

May 2026 Goals

Birthday partyyyy!
Falling Thingies launch candidate build
Make the new collab project public

Go go go! Busy Month. Falling Thingies has to do fairly well for all the time I’ve put into it. What I’m hoping to do is launch the game right as the Bullet Hell fest starts. This will overlap my launch discount with a steam-wide festival. Hopefully that nets me a least a few hundred bucks extra, but obviously only a few hundred wouldn’t excite me that much. What I would like is to generate $3000~ from this project so I could get a decent return for the time spent on it.

We’ll learn more about how that went once the launch happens and I can do a monthly update for June.

Salazar watching the sun rise over a grateful city

Musings

Yo Vickle, how are you doing, It has been a bit over a month that your long term relationship ended? Welp, I could feel better I could feel worse. Perhap I’m over the hump, over the worst of it. I’m super grateful to everyone who reached out as a result of my previous blog post and people in my personal life in general. April was filled with lots of distractions from the feelings. I spent a lot of nights stuck in my feelings despite that but I guess that’s to be expected, no? The one upside besides everyone being so nice, time moves alot slower when you’re stuck in your head. This April felt like 3 Aprils haha

Me and Salazar will get through it no problem. Thank you to everyone again! See you in May’s recap! ❤️

Here is the monthly song. I almost couldn’t think of any song I wanted to shoutout but I found this one near the end of the month. Such a banger! A little bit awkward using the non-official version of the song but I think mekedes did an amazing cover of their own song so that’s the one I picked!

The Boy I Am by Mekdes

Comments & Reactions

Regret is proof you've grown

Sat, 04 Apr 2026 09:00:00 +0000

Regret is proof you’ve grown. The fact that you wish you had done better means you are already someone who would.

Welcome!

We’re back and we’re back! Let’s see what old vik did in March 2026. I can’t believe the “6” at the end of 2026 sometimes. Where has the time gone?! Time is unrelenting…

March 2026 Goals

Trash Force incremental demo (in the new resolution)
Falling Thingies new demo and full back to front feature complete
File Taxes

I transferred February’s goals into March and still didn’t finish them in March. Can you imagine that?! I write more about what happened in the “Musings” section down below. It is an outlier for me to not have any planned tasks done 2 months in a row. But such is life, sometimes you have outlier moments.

Bonus Tasks Completed in March 2026

Banger April Fools post
Lots of private gig work for games
Progress on a project I’m announcing next month! This is a big collab with 6 other devs, it’s verrrry exciting :)

Regarding April Fools

I made this post The End and posted it everywhere. The next 24hrs were honestly amazing. I had so many people reach out expressing their concern, sharing their warmth and compassion. This included people I never expected. But it also didn’t include people I expected to reach out. Quite facinating the breakdown of who said and did what. The post I made was mostly genuine. All of the feelings I have for everyone that has helped me and encouraged me are genuine. I feel blessed to have as many people to thank as I do.

Obviously, since you’re reading this, I didn’t quit game development and I’m carrying on. Carrying on with some new friendships! Thank you everyone who reached out and thank you again for everyone who has supported me along the way.

Here's a sneak peak at the collab project I'm announcing next month!

April 2026 Goals

Trash Force incremental demo (in the new resolution)
Falling Thingies new demo and full back to front feature complete
Prepare the Steam page for the new collab project announcement
Participate in Ludum Dare 59

Falling Thingies will be entering the Steam Bullet Fest on Jun 8. So the game will have to be launched and for sale by then. Which means April we’re getting it finished. It’s about damn time. The Trash Force new demo is almost ready too. I made progress on it, converted most of the systems. Just need to add some of the new upgrades I wanted.

Musings

Well well welllllll. We’ve arrived at the part where I talk to my future self and to the reader. It’s always tricky writing this part because there are so many things I want to remind my future self of, but i don’t want any potential random person reading that stuff.

One thing that I think needs to be shared is my last 9 months of struggling with love. I had a long term relationship that ended (i mentioned it in this post). After a few months I came to my senses and reached out to try to make it work. Long story short, after 9 months of working hard on repairing the relationship and getting back to the hayday, it didn’t work. When we ended it the first time I think i was the one who wasn’t able to pull my weight emotionally. This time it was her. Its tricky thing that is ultimately blameless. When the feelings aren’t there, nothing can be done.

That’s what the little blurb at the beginning of this post is about. “Regret is proof you’ve grown. The fact that you wish you had done better means you are already someone who would.” I regret ending it originally but at least I’ve become someone who wouldn’t do that again. Silver linings!

Anyway. Onwards and upwards. I want to thank everyone who reached out as a result of my april fools prank again, it was a well needed medication to soothe the soul after such a heartbreaking month…

Here’s a nice track I’ve been hitting up lately. See y’all next month!

renaissance man by april27

Comments & Reactions

The End

Wed, 01 Apr 2026 01:00:00 +0000

This is the original post. It was made for April Fools! You can see my reveal post here.. This post is still worth a read though, it contains a lot of gratitude for all the people who helped me along the way.

How do you make god laugh? You tell him your future plans.

Welcome Back!

This is the final blog post… It has been an absolute pleasure to try gamedev and get all your support for this long. Me and Will, the other half of Blue Pin Studio published our first game on itch in March 2020.

I figured there’s no better time to contemplate the past than every year in March. This time I decided enough is enough.

In the beginning many people were supportive but as I sunk more and more time without financial success I started getting concerned comments. I had falling outs with family, friends, and even lost a long term relationship partially because of who I became chasing game dev success.

I can’t even tell you how many people told me to stop, to slow down, to focus on getting a real career, etc.

I know their heart was in a good place. It’s time i listened…

But before we go, I would love to reflect on all the positive comments people have left on all my games. I also want to write a special thank you to everyone who helped me on each of the games. I made an effort to work with and meet as many great people as I could.

I’m honored that all of these great people carved out at least a small part of their time, effort, emotions and energy for me…

Collaborators

I’m proud to say everyone I worked with was great at their role and made each of the projects greater than the sum of their parts. I couldn’t have done it without you all, literally and figuratively. Thank you.

Toaster Treasure: Will & Dano & Luko & Cherry
Keep Dano Alive: Will & Dano & Luko & Cherry
Imperial Eggnog Inc: Will & Dano & Cherry
Explory Story Jam: Bizmaster & Thlurp & Tepg
U49 Meltdown: Matias & Ashley & Likenjay
Quadratorum: Bahska
Blend Defend: EiRe & AENJO
Panopticon: Al
Charles the Bee Jam: Gina & Minus
Devilivery: Manisha & George & Dale
RAMpage: Manisha & Keely
Sinful Scoops: Funky Mushroom & Chrishie & Leunarie
Insock Out: Augusto & RedCocoa
Charles the Bee Steam: All of the talented composers & Gina
Save Nebuville: Pijinguy & Bonejacq
Trash Force Jam: Mike & Pixel Pigeon & RedCocoa
Power of Loveball: Pijinguy & Fasla & Princess Sylvysprit
Falling Thingies (jam): Calvin
Antz vs Plantz: Manisha & Keely
Ship Happens: Rujum & Tarudesu & Liam & Calvin
Greg Gathers Ghosts: Manisha & Keely & Axel

Never-Ending Encouragement

Thank you to everyone, your support means the world to me. If i forgot to list you its probably because I forgot, not intentionally omitting you. These are people who never told me anything except how to improve and encouraged me to keep going.

This list doesn’t contain some people because they’re already in the list above ❤️

Dmitri
BDMatsterrr
DragonSlumber
Evan
Athano
Fruloo
Zemeck
Patrick
Yashar
10 Tigers Groupchat

Players

Thank you to all the players who checked out the game, or bought the game. You made it easy to keep going. Until it wasn’t.

600+ Eggnog Incorporated players
11,000+ Pixel Fixel players across Steam, Newgrounds, Itch, iOS, Android
2000+ Charles the Bee players across Steam, Newgrounds, Itch
10,000+ Players across all game jam entries on Itch & Newgrounds
Hundreds of positive comments on Itch and LudumDare and Newgrounds

It would take me possible weeks to gather screenshots of all the comments.

Parting Words

I want to thank all my friends that comforted me during all the tough times.

I did the best I can. If you want to see the journey, this website will remain up. Don’t be a stranger, drop into my dms.

Onwards to greener pastures! Good luck to us all.

I’ll leave you with a new song by Fetty Wap. I would rather die than not leave you with a witty remark :D

White Roses by Fetty Wap

Comments & Reactions

Hard work and the donkey

Mon, 02 Mar 2026 09:00:00 +0000

If hard work led to success the donkey would own the farm

Welcome!

Welcome back peeps! Are you ready for the shortest monthly update that I’ve written since I started writing these in August 2024?

February 2026 Goals

Trash Force incremental demo (in the new resolution)
Falling Thingies new demo and full back to front feature complete

Would ya look at that? It has not been a productive month on the game development front at all! There is some progress on some unannounced things but as far as Trash Force and Falling Thingies goes, not great. I was sick for the end of Feb and I had a day-job crisis the week before that. March should be much smoother!

Here's a lil screenshot of what I was up to in between all the stress. I highly recommend giving Lego Voyagers a try! It's a very wholesome co-op game.

March 2026 Goals

Trash Force incremental demo (in the new resolution)
Falling Thingies new demo and full back to front feature complete
File taxes

Just sliiiiiiide the previous months tasks into this month and pretend like nothing happened haha.

Musings

Most of Feb was dealing with day job fires and then getting sick. In between doing that was exploring secret collabs and secret projects and playing video games. I think I managed to offset the stress with video games enough that March won’t be negatively affected. Long term stability over short term goals is the key! March is going to be good, have no fear!

I found this track when it only had literally 1 view on YouTube. Apparently its an indie Canadian artist! Very cool. Thank you YouTube for giving me the honor of being probably the first or second person to hear this song on YouTube.

Procedural RAM Syntax by Jack Sazonov

Comments & Reactions

Somewhere ages and ages hence

Wed, 04 Feb 2026 03:00:00 +0000

Somewhere ages and ages hence

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—

I took the one less traveled by,

And that has made all the difference.

Welcome!

First month of the year down! Month 70 in the Blue Pin Studio game development arch…

January 2026 Goals

Eggnog Incorporated Overhaul Update
Falling Thingies steam-ready build
Trash Force milestone planning for 2026
2025 yearly recap post read it here!

What an elusive Eggnog update amirite?! I might have to move it aside to free up brain space. I didn’t get it ready in time for the holidays so we’ll have to circle back for next years holiday season.

On the bright side, the Falling Thingies project is almost entirely done! We should be able to do a launch late Feb or early March. Starting off the year with a game launch is perfect medicine for the soul (and hopefully a little bit of medicine for the wallet too).

Bonus Tasks Completed in December 2025

Hosted the 2026 Construct 3 game jam!

It was my third year in a row doing the Construct 3 game jam! This year we had more prizes than ever thanks to generous sponsors. People who have know me well can see the influence I had over the theme of the jam haha

I had a blast finally seeing a jam with the chicken theme. Getting to play 30+ chicken games was a blast. It was a cool experience and I’m proud of being able to do it for the third year in a row.

February 2026 Goals

Trash Force incremental demo (in the new resolution)
Falling Thingies new demo and full back to front feature complete
File taxes

Time to focus! Fewer tasks, big tasks, no distractions. In March we’ll resume going to meetups and April we’ll do a game jam. Even this post is short and rushed, NO TIME!

Musings

Who has time for musings?! Im writing this 1hr before I have to run off to do day job stuff. I have to focus on releasing Falling Thingies, preparing Trash Force and most importantly trying to make more money in my day job. Go go go!

As is customary here’s a banger I’ve been listening to lately.

LUNA by JLLY

Comments & Reactions

2025 Yearly Recap

Fri, 23 Jan 2026 05:00:00 +0000

Welcome!

Hello hello! Welcome to 2026 and welcome to another yearly recap! If you want to check out previous years, head over here. I’m excited I’m still here doing gamedev and excited to share with you what I did in 2025.

Metrics

First thing’s first. The numbers! I have collected various cool metrics that pertain to my success (or lack thereof) in game development.

Total Net Revenue from All Sources	$563 (USD)	-57% compared to 2024
Discord/Mailing List	147	-1% compared to 2024
Followers	1429	+63% compared to 2024
Steam Store Impressions	699,247	-82% compared to 2024
Steam Store Visits	218,755	-68% compared to 2024
Website/Blog Unique Visitors	2500	+9% compared to 2024

Total net revenue includes all sources such as game sales, merch sales, publisher payments, contest prizes, merch, etc. The various vendor fees like Valve’s 30% and Etsy’s 7% has been subtracted.
Followers is a combination of all the other platform followers such as bluesky, twitter, youtube, steam, itch, newgrounds, twitch, etc.

Another interesting thing to consider is how my own project management went. In 2025 I planned to do 72 tasks and completed 47 of them. Thats 65% completion. I find myself asking “Is completing 65% of the stuff you set out to do a lot or a little?” I’ll compare it to 2026’s ratio and decide then. Its addressed from both sides, smaller more achievable goals AND becoming better at actually working.

Noteworthy things from 2025

Migrated to this website. The previous website had a blog section seperately and a landing page seperately.
Published two new steam pages. Falling Thingies and Trash Force. Pending launch in 2026! 🤞
Exhibited Falling Thingies at two in-person expo’s. (Musician for Falling Thingies Calvin was there in person)
Started Twitch Streaming again! Managed to do 108 hours of uptime. Let’s try for double that!
Pushed big updates to Charles the Bee and Pixel Fixel. Cementing them as things I can move on from and don’t have to think about as much.
Made a suite of tools for various pre-production and production tasks for myself. These are the tools that are publically available here.
Competed in 6 game jams, won one. That’s 6 more Blue Pin Studio mini games out there!
Wrote 21 blog posts (including this one). That’s basically twice as many as last year!
Created a steam bundle for games similar to Eggnog Incorporated called the Corporate Climb Bundle
Co-created a minecraft server with a bunch of other game devs. All of our communities can co-exist in this online space that we’ll evolve over time. Check my discord for more info!

Extra Tidbit

Here is how each year compares to the previous year

Year	Revenue	YoY Delta	Game Jams	Commercial Releases
2020	$307 (USD)	-	3	1
2021	$1,067 (USD)	+248%	2	0
2022	$351 (USD)	-67%	3	0
2023	$232 (USD)	-34%	4	0
2024	$1,296 (USD)	+459%	5	2
2025	$563 (USD)	-57%	6	0
Total	$3,816 (USD)	-	23	3

Musings

Last year I wrote that I had the best year and worst year simultaneously and was hoping 2025 would be better. Was it better financially? Not really. But it was better in all other aspects of life. I made more money from my day job than the previous year and managed to still do game development a lot.

As I’ve mentioned in the December 2025 monthly recap post, I aim for 2026 to be the best year for Blue Pin Studio to-date. And I’m not talking about simply making a few thousand dollars. I’m going to try to break into the 5 digits gosh darn it. In my mind I’ve framed the first 5 years as a valuable education where I spent 5 years part-time learning the ropes, tuning my skills, meeting cool people. The next 5 years is when I cash in all of that education and start doing game development properly.

There are concerns amongst game developers and people at-large that A.I. will make artistic endeavors even less profitable than ever. It has also never been easier to make cool games, so there are lots of humans joining in too. Will these two factors affect my ability to succeed? I doubt it, but who knows! I’ll surely let you know by this time in 2026 how it all went.

Thank you following along, thank you for playing the games, thank you for hanging out and chatting. Thanks to everyone for everything! Let’s have a great 2026! :)

Charles the Bee Fan Art by N.G Jose

Comments & Reactions

Promises to keep and miles to go before I sleep

Mon, 05 Jan 2026 03:00:00 +0000

Welcome!

Ho Ho Ho! December has come and gone! Let’s see what ol’ vik was up to! Happy New Year by the way :)

December 2025 Goals

Eggnog Incorporated Overhaul Update (due by Dec 17)
Falling Thingies incremental slight pivot
Prepare “5 years ago I made this game” video for publishing Jan 1
Take it easy pal, relaaaax

I think I took the “take it easy pal” task a little bit too seriously haha. The eggnog update got roughly 70% done but then i devolved into simply playing games to soothe the mind. I’m going to put the eggnog update in January 2026’s goals, it should be relatively easy to get it out in the first week or so of January. Look forward to that!

Regarding YouTube? Man… I’ve put that task on my to-do many months now. Perhaps I just don’t have enough time to do it. I’ll reconsider doing YouTube content once Falling Thingies is released…

Bonus Tasks Completed in December 2025

16hrs of Twitch Streaming
Updated my suite of gamedev tools (beta) test em out here, at your own risk!
Created a new Steam bundle with some new developer friends! The Corporate Climb Bundle

January 2026 Goals

Eggnog Incorporated Overhaul Update
Falling Thingies steam-ready build
Trash Force milestone planning for 2026
2025 yearly recap post

Look at that! Only four tasks. How hard could it be? Don’t mind that one of them is literally making a game :P Place your bets if ol’ Vik will be able to do 4 simple tasks in an entire month.

Musings

A much deserved restful December has come and gone… I think I spent more time playing games this month than any other month in the last 2 years. It was a great time!

I have so many plans for 2026 so unfortunately we’re going to need to pick up the pace in January. See y’all in the 2025 yearly recap to learn more about those plans. I suspect 2026 will be the biggest year for Blue Pin Studio yet!

As is customary here’s a banger I’ve been listening to lately.

finding butterflies by BLISSFOOL

Comments & Reactions

You Dance Fast But I Dance Faster

Mon, 01 Dec 2025 03:00:00 +0000

Welcome!

Woweee! November was a bit of a whirlwind. I was tasked (by past-me) to chill out. But I didn’t really chill at all. So much stuff done! Let’s dive in…

November 2025 Goals

One long-form YouTube videos (November 24th?)
Pixel Fixel update
Charles the Bee Multiplayer Update
Visit 2 in-person gamedev meetups (Bonus Stage & Dirty Rectangles in Toronto)
Submit a game to Alakajam 22
Write a post-mortem blog post for Alakajam submission
Take it easy pal, relaaaax

Welp! We did it! Almost.

The youtube video goal has been quite elusive. Will I finally have one ready in December? Only time will tell. I have moved it for a December 2025 goal. The other list items were accomplished quite nicely and have corresponding blogs on the website or posts in the discord.

Bonus Tasks Completed in November 2025

Visit the Toronto Game Expo
42hrs of Twitch Streaming
Released a suite of gamedev tools (beta) test em out here, at your own risk!
Blue Pin Studio x EvanMMO x Bonejacq x Manishagamedev Minecraft server!
1hr interview on IGA twitch stream for Charles the Bee

Out of the bonus tasks. Two are the most exciting ones. I made a series of tools you can find in the tool section of this website. They are all pretty game-dev centric, but I aim to expand them and add more to the tool belt. A lot of it is self serving like making a tool to help me find similar games for pre-production research, or tools to help me find random factoids like “90% of steam games make less than $100k” etc.

The other exciting task completed was setting up a public minecraft server! A bunch of my gamedev friends got together and made a minecraft server that we can all use for all our communities. It’s tough keeping a minecraft server populated using only one small community. Hopefully since we’ve combined 4 small communities it would be much more lively :) If that sounds like something you would enjoy, don’t hesitate to reach out for an invite. At the moment it’s invite-only to keep away the spooky bad actors.

December 2025 Goals

Eggnog Incorporated Overhaul Update (due by Dec 17)
Falling Thingies incremental slight pivot
Prepare “5 years ago I made this game” video for publishing Jan 1
Take it easy pal, relaaaax

This time we’re actually taking it easy! Last month I was crunching to finish those updates and get started on the Eggnog update. This month, half way through we’ll deploy the eggnog update and the rest of the month will be relaxing. Finally! Some respite :)

I’m sure I’ll have a bunch of bonus tasks that I’ll report on…

Musings

The tail end of November has been pretty stressful because of the looming dead of the eggnog update. I got a lot done on the day job front and went to a lot of gamedev events. It was a professionally enriching month in every way! Updating pixel fixel and charles the bee have been eating away at the back of my mind for a long time. Just like the eggnog update. Let’s get that behind us and onto greater things in 2026!

I know you’ve probably heard this song a million times if you doom scroll on instagram or tiktok or youtube, but I would be remiss if I didn’t include it. It’s a certified banger fleeky yeet 6 7.

MONTAGEM XONADA by MXZI, DJ SAMIR, DJ JAVI26

Comments & Reactions

Yield Post Mortem

Sun, 23 Nov 2025 11:00:00 +0000

Introduction

During the Alakajam 22 game jam, I created The Yield. The theme was Under the Surface, and I had 2 days complete the game. This time I decided to do my first ever solo-jam. I didn’t enlist anyone to help. Spooooky. Let’s see how it worked out…

Timeline

Friday Day 0 - Theme Announced

The theme was announced at 2pm my local time on a Friday. Unfortunately for me, I was at work and had a lot of crunching to do on day-job stuff. As soon as I got home, I booted up my Twitch stream and started working on the game. I got a lot of the bones done within the 7hr stream. The game idea I landed on was making a digging game similar to the old flash game Motherload.

Below is a screenshot of how the tile generation and upgrade data looks like. Quick and dirty json data. The image on the right is determining the probability tables for different ores. I had 8 different tables like that depending on the height, the one you’re seeing there is the one at the absolute bottom tier of tiles.

Saturday Day 1

Saturday morning came along and before I could work on the game I had 3 important tasks. Do laundry and then meetup some friends for fun activities and dinner.

My dinner plans were over, so it was time to head home, take a small nap and begin working on the game. The only problem? I woke up from the nap on Sunday morning!

Sunday Day 2

Here we are on Sunday morning and I have to go to work again! Darn it…

Fast forward to coming home after work, I boot up the Twitch Stream again and get back to work. Determined to finish everything I still needed to do. Upgrades screen, progression, saving and loading, scene transitions, sound effects, etc.

Welp. I didn’t manage to get all of it done, but I did get all these fancy gems in, spawning at different depths and a working upgrade system.

It was time to submit and I still didn’t have solid scene transitions and there were a few bugs and no sound effects. What did I do instead of submitting? I pushed submission back 1 day so I can still participate in the 72hr category. This means my jam submission won’t get any ratings. C’est la vie (forgive me for my french).

Bonus! Monday Day 3

I had an extra day! Woweee. The problem? I also had to go to work on that day too. At least I had extra time. I ensured the level transitions, upgrading, running out of fuel, the hazards and everything was working properly and pressed submit.

I also squeezed in secret button commands that let the user cycle between different color palettes. I grabbed the color palettes according to old technology. 16 colors each. Here’s a gif of me cycling between them…

What Went Well

Considering I worked on this game for maybe 20hrs total. Entirely by myself. I think it’s a really great outcome. It has something like 20 minutes of gameplay as you mine deeper and deeper, seeing new gems, getting new upgrades, etc.

Challenges

The biggest challenge was the time crunch. I had so much going on that weekend and I was all alone on the game. I couldn’t lean on other people for help for art or audio. The final game jam submission basically had no audio except for a few voice lines I recorded for the upgrades screen.

If it wasn’t for making a game and a post-mortem being on my monthly goals for November, I might’ve just said “fuck it” and not submitted anything. We’ll see, based on what it ends up becoming, if that would’ve been better.

The Final Product

All that being said, I think the final product is solid. I would rate it a 7/10 game jam submission.

Reception

Because the game was submitted to the extra category of a pretty small game jam event, I got basically no reception. However I showed it to a handful of gamedev pals and go their take on it. I will take their advice and spend maybe 20hrs on it in the next few weeks to make a solid post-jam version.

The post-jam version will be posted to Newgrounds in December so stay tuned for that!

Blue Pin Studio

Badcaster Shneebly Post Mortem

Introduction

Timeline

Pre-Jam

Jam Begins…

The Development

What Went Well

Challenges

The Final Product

Reception

Links

Comments & Reactions

Your ideas are your gifts

Welcome!

April 2026 Goals

Bonus Tasks Completed in April 2026

May 2026 Goals

Musings

Comments & Reactions

Regret is proof you've grown

Welcome!

March 2026 Goals

Bonus Tasks Completed in March 2026

Regarding April Fools

April 2026 Goals

Musings

Comments & Reactions

The End

Welcome Back!

Collaborators

Never-Ending Encouragement

Players

Parting Words

Comments & Reactions

Hard work and the donkey

Welcome!

February 2026 Goals

March 2026 Goals

Musings

Comments & Reactions

Somewhere ages and ages hence

Welcome!

January 2026 Goals

Bonus Tasks Completed in December 2025

February 2026 Goals

Musings

Comments & Reactions

2025 Yearly Recap

Welcome!

Metrics

Noteworthy things from 2025

Extra Tidbit

Musings

Comments & Reactions

Promises to keep and miles to go before I sleep

Welcome!

December 2025 Goals

Bonus Tasks Completed in December 2025

January 2026 Goals

Musings

Comments & Reactions

You Dance Fast But I Dance Faster

Welcome!

November 2025 Goals

Bonus Tasks Completed in November 2025

December 2025 Goals

Musings

Comments & Reactions

Yield Post Mortem

Introduction

Timeline

Friday Day 0 - Theme Announced

Saturday Day 1

Sunday Day 2

Bonus! Monday Day 3

What Went Well

Challenges

The Final Product

Reception