Welcome to my update article for Summer 2025. It is an overview of the work I’ve done, projects I finished, and any other interesting developments during the months of July, August and September 2025. Let’s see how it went!
Where We Left Off
In the previous update, I explained that …
- I was working really hard on my online store that will launch start of next year.
- Our “home renovation” had become even more disastrous, limiting my options further.
- Because of this, I was falling behind a bit on the work I’d actually planned for this year.
- I might finally become a traditionally published author.
Well, the summary for this update is quite simple.
- Still working really hard on that online store 99% of the time.
- The renovation somehow became even more disastrous.
- I caught up with some of that overdue work—not as much as I’d hoped though.
- I received the intended publishing date for my book and it’s far into the future, so not much happening on that for a while.
The Online Store
Working hard, making stuff, still the work seems to never end :p
Whenever I complete another topic (like teaching basic shapes, or a child’s first numbers (1–5), etcetera), more ideas have popped up. And I want to make them now, while still in that mood/flow, or risk never making them later. After working on a topic for a week, my brain finally figures out solutions to all the problems. And then suddenly, as I want to jump to the next part of the curriculum, my brain is like “So THIS is how you turn that topic into a really good board game that anyone can play!”
Even with my productivity and discipline, I still have to pick and choose what I want to do. Most topics I have “finished” actually had 10 more ideas for games, puzzles, quizzes, escape rooms, etcetera. But I had to say “maybe later” and move on, or get stuck in one topic forever.
Besides that, I usually “go along with the seasons”. So, as it is summer now, I wanted to take a few weeks to make “summer-related products”, instead of following my educational approach. This means activity books to take with you on holiday, board games to play on a camping, some fun fairy tales around summer/holiday, etcetera.
I’m very sensitive to the weather, the world around me, the season, and so forth. I can’t help it. I really really can’t make such products—and make them well, without feeling weird—when it is not summer. Thus, I made an effort to actually create some summer games and activity books while it was still summer.
I can’t share more specifics here because the store hasn’t launched yet. But once it launches, you should be able to find that range of productsin the Summer category.
The Overdue Work
For several years, I’ve released 5 Wildebyte Arcades books and 10 Saga of Life short stories (each year). I also did a massive update to all my websites (and any errors found in the meantime) each year.
When those are my main projects, that’s very doable.
But now that the online store takes up all my time, I was falling behind. I kept telling myself “okay, next month I will have finished this next big pile of work for the webshop, and I will take a few weeks to write the next books/stories”. I mean, I already have a plan for them, I know it can be done in a few weeks, and it would put me back on track.
But it just never happened.
Because the online store became bigger and more ambitious each time. And every time it happened, I actually started believing in the plan more. What started as “shit I need to earn money somehow” has become “I’m making really, really good products for this online store”. I keep finding new clever ideas to put games and fun into education. I keep finding better approaches, completely new ideas that nobody has done before, and I can and will make all of that.
That obviously takes time and energy. I only have so much of that in a day :p
And now the year is almost over. And I’ve fallen hopelessly behind on my old schedule for these two projects. It’s not a lack of want or effort, it’s just a lack of time.
For six months I planned to edit and release the next Wildebyte book next week … and I just never found the time to even get started on it. At some point, you just have to accept that the speed/schedule you wanted isn’t feasible.
The Wildebyte Arcades earns me barely enough in a year to buy food for a day. Saga of Life earns me no money at all. Writing + editing + releasing for both took at least a few months of full-time work the past few years. And that was without the distraction of “the online store” and “better ideas”.
And so, I decided to keep it realistic. To scale it back.
I always planned to keep doing 1 “cycle” for Saga of Life per year until the 5th cycle. (I already predicted the project would be big enough then to slow down to “just” half a cycle, or 5 stories, a year.)
The Wildebyte Arcades have no reason to stick to their schedule at all. I simply picked something that worked and ran with it, but most book series obviously only release 1 book a year. (Usually it’s closer to 1 book every 2–3 years.)
And so I decided ..
- No more Wildebyte Arcades books this year. I released 2. The other 3 have already been fully written. But, as explained, I lack the time to even edit them, and I surely don’t want to ruin the books by publishing them without any more edits or a proper cover.
- I will finish this Saga of Life cycle. Because the Saga of Life has become the “core” of my shared universe of stories. It’s too important, it has too much momentum, and I don’t want to slow it down. I kept the stories shorter, more focused, easier to finish and edit. But I wanted the full cycle done this year because of the reason stated above.
In summary: the webshop is simply top priority right now. I need an income. We’re at a point where we’ve crossed the line and I just can’t keep writing books that don’t earn me (enough) money. As stated, the Wildebyte Arcades already has many more finished books and a solid plan, so I fully intent to keep it going. But for now, priority has to be given to the webshop, which means putting basically all other work on hold for the foreseeable future.
The Big Fat Website Update
I do one large website update per year, usually around the summer. This time, the update was far larger than it ever was before. It ended up taking many weeks … and will take several more weeks next season.
Why?
- I really want my other websites to be polished and “done”. I have to direct all my time and attention to the online store, so I can’t have a list of small bugs, small unfinished sections, small “would be nice to have"s for all my websites that caused me to start “the big fat website update” in the first place.
- I really want the other websites to become “marketing” for the online store. They should be so polished and offer so much that people trust my store and want to try/check out its products. The biggest part in that machine is Pandaqi Games, which was a downright mess until I spent weeks rewriting the entire code and updating all games to be part of the new system.
This was, honestly, terrible. It was a huge pile of boring routine work, but it still had to be done. Even so, I had to completely remove several games from Pandaqi because they were just too old and badly coded to take them with me to the new system. (It could be done, but it would take one or two entire days per game, which is just too much.)
After getting the bulk of the Pandaqi work done in 2 weeks, I decided to take a break again before going insane. The last bit of work—probably another full week—will be done some time later. But at least before the online store launches. Because the redesign of Pandaqi is much much much better in all possible ways, and it would make the website a true testament to the quality of games I can make.
Hopefully, hopefully, I can now stop doing these big updates. All my major websites have clean code and structure now, everything works as intended, and adding something later should not take a lot of time or cause issues.
Anything Else?
I’m not sure how much I’m allowed to say about the renovation. There are legal battles happening now; it’s mostly out of our hands. But the short version is that our home is basically unlivable, and has been for a while. No heating (or air conditioning) at all for years. Wouldn’t make much sense too, because we literally have huge holes in our house where windows should’ve been placed. No space. No certainty of electricity, wi-fi, water, etcetera. Only a single place for all utilities, in a home of 8 people, which is a small box standing in our backyard.
And all of that because the builder who took up the project lied to us, never showed up, never did (proper) work, and then, after extracting as much as he could from my parents, literally disappeared and pretended to be out of money.
So, yeah, not great. Another reason why I’m all in on the online shop. It’s a thing I can still make, even in these circumstances, and I really need to start earning solid money to either get out of the house or help my parents pay to fix our house.
And so I will quickly make the usual statements!
- Recording music is not possible now. (Though I am talking with friends about using their space once in a while.)
- More technologically intense projects (such as creating video games again, editing videos, etcetera) are not possible now.
- Basically anything else I might want to do is not possible now.
Really, after all those years, I’m used to it. Like everyone else here. We shrug, we buckle down, we continue working hard.
The final update of this year likely won’t say anything different. I will have finally finished all my “level 1” products for the online store. I will hopefully take a bit of a break around the holidays.
As it stands, the plan for next season is …
- Create the final 2 “math” topics in Level1 (moving towards finally using numbers and addition and such) + several “Social” and “Physical” topics such as exploring emotion for young kids. This “finishes” Level 1 in the sense that every single topic exists and has its core products, but there are certainly more ideas to be made here.
- Finish the Big Fat Website Update so all my other websites are ready to support the online store.
- At least keep Saga of Life updated and on pace. As explained, other non-webshop projects are optional.
- I see I had written down some small writing contests and themed ideas (such as for Christmas) during this time, but those are very optional.
And then, next year, you can all finally gaze in wonder at the beauty of an online store I launched ;)
Until the next update,
Tiamo