Welcome to my update article for Fall 2024. It is an overview of the work I’ve done, projects I finished, and any other interesting developments during the months of October, November and December 2024. Let’s see how it went!
Writing
After having made the decision that writing will be my “main job”, at least in the coming future, it’s a bit easier to prioritize things and plan further ahead.
- I would like to write 10 Wildebyte books per year. To reach that, I “only” needed to finish one part of one book this year. (It’s somewhat of an arbitrary number. But I release 5 of them each year, so writing 10 just felt like a nice way to create a buffer and work ahead each year.)
- Completely finish Saga of Life (Cycle #3). Just a few final translations to go.
- Do a second edit on a standalone novel I somewhat accidentally wrote, to be released near the holidays.
Now, normally, this would be it. I’ve written more than enough this year; I will just take a break and start the next cycle of stories/books next year.
But it feels really weird to call something your full-time job and then just not do it for nearly 3 months. It also feels like a waste of time, because I am overflowing with strong story ideas that need to be made at some point.
As such, I decided to finally pull the trigger on what has been my “next writing project in line” for quite some time now.
It’s still a collection of shorter novels. That’s just what my hyperactive brain prefers; that’s where my ideas naturally land. In fact, they’ll probably be half the length of the Wildebyte books.
There is no rush here and no planned release date for any of that. But at least I was able to keep writing and keep turning some more ideas into actual stories to give to the world. I am even tempted to just completely finish that collection before releasing the first one, but I’ll only do that if it doesn’t take too long to finish. (I don’t like just “sitting” on 10 or 20 finished stories for years on end.)
Games
Board Games
There were a few board games that were 90% finished but I simply forgot to finish them. That happens when I am tired of a project and “don’t feel like finishing it”, so I do something else for a few days, and before you know it I forgot the old project existed at all!
I simply had to finish them now, because their deadlines for release were coming up. When I say “finishing”, I mean stuff like …
- Creating a pretty cover image for it.
- Fixing three typos in the rulebook + updating the PDF to download to that fixed version
- Writing the actual marketing blurb ( = “short description”) for the game.
So the game itself is done and I know it works and will be released. It’s just all the other stuff that comes with 100% finishing a project and giving it to others that I still sometimes forget.
While doing so, I realized that if I created 3 more board games … I’d have finished all board game projects for next year! If disaster strikes, and I suddenly forget how board games work overnight or something, I have a year to recover because I’m that far ahead of schedule :p
No, it just felt like a nice timing to finish all 2025 board games when 2024 finishes. Also, those 3 final ideas were rather simple and short, and I just knew they would be great fun to try with the family during the holidays. So I needed them done before then.
This excludes one big board game project, though. But I don’t consider that part of my regular board games. It’s a huge standalone project that deserves its own time.
Besides that I have nothing special to mention. My Pandaqi website is extremely solid now and makes creating + showing new board games very easy. I also didn’t do any crazy experimental stuff, like inventing new genres of board games.
I also didn’t make a lot of topical games this season, such as a game made specifically for Christmas or Easter. Which removes another potential topic of interest to mention here :p
As usual, for all the updates on my games and that website, go to Pandaqi Blog.
Video Games
This is the big one for this update.
I realized that I am just not built for the regular career of a video game developer. The games I make are too different from what people will buy in droves. I am too easily distracted and bored to work on a project for very long, and even the simplest “sellable” video games take a long time. It’s absolutely the most complicated and involved creative product you can try to make. And I am not really interested in making (or even playing) the things that would probably earn a solid income.
I realized that I am making amazing board games now, but the number of people playing board games is faaaar smaller than the number of people playing games. And of those people, only a subsection would download and print their own game (if interested enough). Even the worst video game I ever made has probably been played by more people than my best board game.
What to do?
As I said, writing is my main work. It’s full-time, at least 4 days a week.
That leaves 2 or 3 days for “something else”. (I really try to take one day off completely, usually Sunday.) And I think that should increasingly be tiny video games that only I will ever make.
Last update I talked about just playing around creating tiny web games. This season I basically evolved that idea into something even better suited for me. Something I can make 100% in a day or two, which is always local multiplayer, and extremely easy to pick up and play for any group of people.
I do still have a handful of “big games” I either need to 100% finish (they’re 80%–90% done now) or that I really want to make because I think they’ll be great. I wrote down a specific plan of action for them, with clear priorities and limited scope (to make sure they ARE finished when I make them).
But there’s currently no actual deadline or certainty about making them. I still have terrible hardware (or “general working circumstances” really) that simply makes large game projects too much of a pain to work on. I also learned a lot from previous failures and am much better at not overworking myself and being realistic about how big a game made on my own can be.
By the end of this season, I had finally 100% finished one of those big unfinished games from years ago. I have also completed the basic template/framework for my new approach to games, which (hopefully) allows me to slot in new ideas easily and actually make them in a weekend. As I said, though, this is very much not my main job and there’s no rush or deadline.
Surprise!
The “surprise!” section of these updates is becoming a ritual by now.
As I said, I worked really hard and finished almost everything for 2025 at the start of December. This left a few weeks to “do whatever”. (That’s literally what I wrote down in my notebook, which usually contains a vague to-do list for the coming week.)
When I allow myself to do so, you can really see what being hyperactive truly means. And how many good habits and discipline it takes to not do that most of the time.
Here are some small things I did just before Christmas.
- I wrote half of a “cozy crime” novel I intend to submit to a writing competition.
- I wrote half of a Christmas novel for kids. (I had a good idea for that years ago. But that was supposed to be picture book. Knowing how expensive those are to make and self-publish, after creating a few myself, I can’t afford to create another one right now. And so, instead, I repurposed the idea to a general written novel.)
- I actually got quite far with the one “huge” board game release planned for 2025. You know, the only one I hadn’t finished yet, and which I “thought” needed more time than December had left.
Most of all, I created 3 printable “escape rooms” themed around Christmas and New Year’s Eve. (That is, a set of ~10 puzzles for the others to solve around the holiday theme, where each one gets progressively harder and requires them to really think out of the box—or out of the paper, I guess, in this case.)
I’ve been thinking about trying my hand at these for a few years now. But there was never any real urgency, or simply never enough time.
This year, however, we had a “puzzle advent calendar” we played at home. Every day we’d open a new box and solve the little puzzle inside, until day 24 (Christmas Eve), of course. And … I was disappointed? Half the puzzles were so easy that we saw them immediately and were like “that’s it?” Half the puzzles were incomprehensible even after reading the solution three times.
That’s when I thought: I have a week before Christmas, why don’t I make one myself?
As it turns out, my skill set is uniquely suited to making escape rooms :p I am very much a logical thinker and problem solver. I’m an engineer of mathematics, a programmer, a gamer. Within one evening, I had written down 12 puzzles that I thought were quite good. A nice gradual increase in difficulty. Different types of puzzles (visual, spatial, logical, mathematical). Very little icons/text needed, and the solution only relies on a creative leap instead of doing homework.
As it always happens, though, I was too ambitious. That first Christmas escape room was a mountain of work, and I almost considered dropping it because I feared overworking myself to finish it in time. Because I’d never made an escape room before, there were hundreds of tiny things I hadn’t considered (but needed to be done), and I didn’t have good habits or intuition for creating the puzzles yet. There’s a huge gap between writing down “the puzzle works like X” and actually drawing and designing the specific, final puzzle on the page.
My second attempt, for New Year’s Eve, took those lessons to heart and made something far simpler and smaller. But, as it always happens (again), this was too simple and small. It was more a “pocket escape room”.
With my third attempt, I think I found the right balance. It’s quite rewarding to be able to make a fun 60 minute puzzling experience in just a few days. I can upload the PDF, others can print it (and perhaps do some cutting), and we can spread the joy. Even better, the puzzles also look nice, and I can hold them in my hands. I’ve always preferred something real and tangible over creating some (purely) digital product.
As such, I think I’ll be making a few more printable escape rooms next year.
Because the holidays are over now, and these first attempts contain some mistakes I need to fix, I will only publish them next year. Expect a bunch of escape rooms a few weeks before the holidays.
That being said, I did actually take a break during the holidays.
All the work I just described, it’s like … freeform? Free flowing? My brain just wants to be creative, and if I just let it (without deadline, without expecting income, without even expecting myself to stay focused and finish it), then stuff like this gets made and it doesn’t feel like work. It doesn’t feel tiring. I made those 3 escape rooms back to back and I still felt like I could create a hundred more puzzles for days.
Perhaps my biggest new year’s resolution would be to be able to find that flow state more often next year. Because too often, I still wake up and think “ugh need to write three more chapters for that stupid book again today” Whilst if I can somehow change that to “let’s just write what I want and see what happens”, the same work gets done, just in a weird order and with less energy wasted getting over the hurdle.
Running
I almost forgot!
Due to my chronic illness, I’ve exercised every single day since I was ~11 years old. I don’t do it for a six-pack, I don’t do it because I like it, but because it’s very much needed. There have only been a handful of times when I couldn’t exercise for 3+ days. And every single time, the worst of my injuries instantly returned and I struggled to even get out of bed.
Well … due to all the renovations going on at home, I suddenly lost all my exercise possibilities. Both outdoors (in the garden/around the house) and indoors (I barely have a square meter to stand on—there’s no space for any fitness exercises). I don’t have the money to buy a membership somewhere (fitness, soccer club, etcetera), nor would that suffice, as “soccer training” an hour or two a week is faaaaar below the amount of exercise I need.
This loss of exercise happened just before Summer holiday, but it has gotten worse in the meantime.
I just explained that I don’t like exercising (this much). That’s why it took me months to finally buy running shoes and sportswear—I always just exercised in my regular clothes before, as that’s all I have—and give it a try.
I still hate running, but at least I’m doing it daily now.
I wake up, I run for a bit, and then my day starts.
The first two times were a bit uncomfortable. I hadn’t (intensively) exercised for months at that point, and I was so incredibly bored. I completed a 5 kilometer run, but took one or two short (30 second) walking breaks.
Several of my siblings already got into the habit of running a year earlier, and they were also quite instrumental in finally convincing me to start doing it too. But they did so by following one of those famous “running schedules”. The ones that tell you when to run (usually 2 days a week), and exactly how long, and when to take a five minute break. The one where, after a year, you can finally run a bit longer.
Well, you know me. I hate schedules! I hate planning, or certainty, or looking ahead! Let’s go go go!
As such, ever since then, I’ve simply run (almost) every morning … without preparation, without tracking anything, without any sort of plan. I go as fast as my body allows. I run a distance I feel I can handle that day. And that’s all.
Sometimes I run a slow 4 km. Sometimes a fast 10 km. Usually a middle ground of both. I know several routes and can take early exits if I’m not feeling it—or, like that one time, drizzle suddenly turns into a snow storm.
I guess that’s the reward for exercising my entire life. After that first “demo run”, my body remembered how to do this.
Why am I explaining this? Because it’s a major change to my routine this season. Because it’s a very big deal for me to be able to exercise heavily each day. If I don’t, my body fails, yes, but I’m also too restless to mentally focus on anything.
Also to show, once more, that strict control, planning, schedules, whatever just isn’t needed most of the time. Habits are important. Environment is important. If you simply do something (almost) every day, you don’t need to set any targets or make schedules, as you’ll get stuff done at some point—and usually faster. Feel how much your body or brain can handle in that moment—don’t force yourself to hit some arbitrary goal you set for yourself today.
People often give the counter-argument that I do a lot of things that end up “not being needed”, that I am “all over the place” because I lack a clear path to follow. People pretend to know the future and to know exactly what was/is “useful” and what not. In reality, we don’t. We can’t predict the future. Even if something went well, in hindsight we might even see that it could have gone better if we did something else. Even the best-laid plans, by the smartest people, are disrupted all the time. And because they’re not flexible, because they only followed the plan and nothing else, this is disastrous.
Simply having the habit to do stuff every day means you’re also often prepared for unpredictable future events. (It also means that, no matter how much I dislike running in terrible weather, I still do it. Because not doing it feels “wrong”. Uncomfortable. It’s breaking a habit that my body is expecting. That’s the power of habits.)
For example, I never had any exercise routine or diet. I simply did my best to exercise well each day and stay active. I look out the window, sun is shining, let’s play soccer in the backyard now. Legs hurting today? Fine, I’ll grab some weights and throw them around the room. I’ve been sitting for 30 minutes, and I know that because my butt is starting to complain? Kick the chair aside and stand. No plan at all, as long as I use my body to make some varied or hard movements. Because that’s what we were made to do.
Research shows, more and more, that just exercising intensively once or twice a week is not that great. Yes, it’s better than NOT doing anything. But if that’s all the exercise you get, and the rest of your days is spent sitting behind a screen, you’ll still feel the negative effects of that. Instead, our body was made for moderate exercise throughout the entire day. Keep your intense exercise a few days a week, yes, but ALSO keep moving and keep challenging your body throughout the day.
And that could be as simple as placing your stuff throughout the house in such a way that you HAVE to take the stairs 10 times a day to grab things :p
Because of that, I could go 3–6 months with barely any exercise, then run 5 kilometer as if it was nothing. In fact, a few days after “running” for the first time ever, I spontaneously joined my siblings in the “Eindhoven City Run”. (There weren’t any tickets left, but someone else was injured a week earlier and gave their ticket to me.)
Me and my sister ran 5 kilometer in almost 30 minutes flat. She specifically asked that I stay with her for encouragement, company, and to keep her going. This was her fastest time ever, though she complained for the entire backhalf that she was “about to start walking” :p My first response once we finished, which probably wasn’t very tactful but was very honest, was “yeah, it was nice, but I honestly barely feel like I’ve done anything at all”.
Alright, I’ll shut up about it now. I’ll leave you with some final statistics, because this is a major change (and time sink, of course) that belongs in this specific update.
I haven’t formally tracked anything, though. I don’t even have my phone or earbuds or whatever with me while running. It’s literally: get up, put on clothes, very quick stretches and upper body exercises (which I’ve been doing daily anyway for 15 years), then RUN.
If I have to make an educated guess, looking back in time, being conservative about it, I’d say …
- I started running around October 7th.
- I’ve run about 400 kilometers. (I average about 5–6 kilometer per run, and I only take Sundays off usually.)
- My best time is 5 kilometers in 15 minutes. Which I only know because I left perfectly on the hour mark (if our church clock is to be believed), and arrived perfectly a quarter past (same church clock near my home, of course).
- But my average time is more like 20 minutes. (There’s this section just outside our home that gets really slippery after heavy rain or frost, so depending on the weather, I often start by walking over that slippery section before actually running.)
- On really tough days, I take the first exit and take it slow. So I guess my “worst time” is ~25 minutes for ~4.5 kilometers. (That’s the whole point I’m making here. If you make something a daily habit, it’s fine to do the “minimum” or to “go slow”, because you’ll still get more done than otherwise AND you will actually listen to your body/mental.)
That’s the advantage of running over anything else I did (such as playing soccer or playing table tennis … against myself). You can actually track things, see improvements, get a total of what you achieved the past season.
I’ve been tempted to use an app or something and actually track this. But I just don’t care enough to put in the effort. I’ll just get up in the morning, run 5–10 km, then start my day.
One of the consequences of my “chronic injury”, though, is that the left and right side of my body are very … different. It’s almost as if two halves from different bodies were stitched together. They look different, they grow muscles differently, they make me a bit lopsided. It’s a miracle, really, that it works at all.
Anyway, the fun part here is that I CAN’T run straight. My slanted, dysfunctional body can’t actually stand straight up and walk in a straight line. When running, especially at lower speeds with less momentum, I am basically zigzagging. Another reason to just keep running FAST, as then strangers will actually give me compliments instead of weird looks.
Anything Else?
Usually, this is the place where I talk about more personal stuff. Maybe some philosophical rambling, maybe some major changes to my situation, who knows.
But … I don’t have anything to add.
Any personal insights, developments, thoughts are usually a separate article published on this blog. So I suggest you read some of the latest personal articles for updates on that. The rate of those, however, also slowed down compared to last year. Maybe I’m becoming boring; let’s pretend I am becoming more stable :p
This is, I guess, the danger of becoming good at something. Even without a planning or structure, I hit deadlines far in advance, I finish all my projects now, and when I set out to do something … I just do it? I know it can be done, I know how it must be done, I know how long it will take, and I am right. Most of the time.
Which makes it very enticing, especially to hyperactive brains like mine, to purposely do weird shit and surprise myself. Because it’s boring when things go according to plan! If I’m not struggling with some highly experimental project, then why am I even making it!?
But I am older now and wiser. I know I can do one or two “highlight” projects per year. Those are the ideas I think have the most potential and might become masterpieces, so I’m allowed to experiment and challenge myself and do completely new things. Everything else? Keep it simple, keep it managable, keep it low maintenance.
There is value in knowing you can do something (easily/according to plan/not-a-masterpiece) and then still doing it.
Some of my best board games did not challenge me in any way or do anything new. I knew the exact parts I needed, I knew how long it’d take, I did that, and it just worked. That doesn’t change that now a game exists that didn’t exist before, and that the game is fun to play.
Some of my best (short) stories simply had a very clear outline that came to me as I was showering or riding my bike. I wrote down the outline—a bullet point list of exact scenes to hit—then simply expanded that. It was a pretty straightforward “uncreative” process, like checking things off of a grocery list for hours. That doesn’t change that a story now exists that nobody else wrote before, and that the story is solid.
There you have it. Still a nice philosophical quote to end on.
What’s the planning for next year? Any other “new year’s resolutions”? Well, this is a bit weird now.
- My board games for 2025 are all done. I guess I could work ahead for 2026, but there’s no need.
- Many of my stories for 2025 are all done. I have time to write a few standalone stories—and finish that Christmas one, of course.
Nearly one hundred things are set to release next year. And all of them are 99% or 100% done. (The only reason I don’t finish some yet is just because I want a break on purpose. You need a few weeks/months away from a project to return with fresh eyes and catch any final mistakes/oversights.)
What do I do? Work ahead even more? Or enjoy this extra bit of freedom I’ve given myself?
I guess I’ll balance it. It’s nice to be ahead of schedule, so I’ll keep already finishing things for 2026 and 2027. I’ll keep writing Wildebyte books to stay 5–10 volumes ahead of the most recent one published. I feel this “rush” inside me anyway to create more and do more.
At the same time, I just explained how nice it is to work more freeform and let my busy brain wander. And I do really need to start earning money somewhere. What I’m doing right now is earning me pennies for each new book released, and that’s that. Perhaps it’s time to reflect and reconsider, at the start of next year, and maybe find a way to insert “earn an income” into my schedule too :p
Onto next year! Hopefully with more cool projects and, if the gods shine their favor upon me, and the planets align, and the pigs dance after dark, and favorable winds blow in my general direction, actual income from them.
Tiamo