Hi everyone!
What a year it’s been! It feels kind of weird writing an end of year wrap up because it feels like it’s been about 5 years crammed into one for me. So much has happened that it’s all kind of blurred together.
This year we hung out on stream together for over 207 hours, you witnessed my diminishing sanity drawing 201 portraits, we had 4 fun community nights, did Steam festivals, attended dev events and since Garland was released into public Early Access 2 months ago I’ve put out 10 updates. What a fricking year!
Game Updates
The biggest updates recently have been around controller UI and Steamdeck compatibility. It’s taken me a bit longer than I’d like to get it all moving smoothly and while I think I can say it’s now functional, every update I’m getting things closer to polished. Moving this up has taken a chunk of time I was originally planning to put towards content but I’ll be back working on that again now dividing time between Petal Events and daily activities.
Community Updates
A special thank you goes to our tireless Building Managers who have taken everything that I (and the year) has thrown at them with grace and managed Garland’s growing community wonderfully, I’m so proud and lucky to have been able to work together with them!
Following on from that: thank you to every member of the Garland community. Whether you’ve been here from the start, came from the streams or found us after the Early Access release, you’ve all been so supportive. I could never have dreamed that the community would grow like this and every time I get a Discord notification it makes me so happy to get to know you all better.
Holiday Break Schedule
So personally, on top of game dev, this year has been a lot for me. I’ve never done anything like this before so it’s all been navigating uncharted. I’ve balanced actual game dev, working with 2 government agencies and running a business, while trying to make time for everyone and just general life stuff.
Over the next few weeks I’m going to take a little time away from my full work schedule, reset my brain, touch grass and not think about code 24/7. I’ll still be hanging out in the Discord but I won’t be streaming or putting out any patches until mid-late January. Next year I'll be back at it full force so get ready for some fun content updates!
Whether you celebrate holidays this season or not, I hope you have a wonderful December and a Happy New Year. Thank you for every post, chat, bug report, minute of play and emote.
2023 has been wonderful for Garland and I can’t wait to see how we grow together as a community in 2024
See you in Garland!
<3 Violet
