New Stream Archive, In Which We Ring In The New Year With An Old Family Tradition Playing Galaga Until

new stream archive, in which we ring in the new year with an old family tradition – playing Galaga until the ball drops! this year @harmonyfriends and i played both the original and Galaga '88 on Switch, ending with the New Year's countdown in Animal Crossing 🎉

BONUS: here's the raw audio that i YTP'd into the trailer above! there's a few extra lines in here that aren't really audible in the trailer because, uh, You Know.

now you, too, can make me say bad words like "fuck"!

Friday: FROSTY FEST FRIENDZONE

(🔊 sound on! 🔊)

with sincere apologies to @notquiteapex @somethingwittyandweird @qixils

2023 Accomplishments In Review

can i toot my own horn for a moment? 2023 was a BANGER year for me in terms of getting creative work done. i don't think i've ever consistently accomplished so much in one year of my life! it's been a long time coming, too, as previous years have been defined by health issues, family problems, anxiety attacks, burnout, a pandemic, working full-time, and just plain Growing Up. so after years and years of fighting… i'm so proud to be standing on a new summit. 💙

but i wouldn't be here without y'all! and it's not just some platitude – i mean you, the person reading this. chances are you're one of my friends, somebody who touched my life, somebody who loved what i made as much as i loved making it. you made so much of what i'm about to list possible!

so let's go over some of what made this year special, together:

2023 was the year of Retrush

i finally finished the nine-year-long journey of completing my Mari0 level pack, Retrush, and i'm SO happy to finally have it off my plate so that i can start 2024 fresh. i spent all of January through April working nonstop on level design so that i could release it on my birthday, resulting in one of my best birthdays ever as y'all played it and streamed it and shared your experiences – thank you so much! 💖

but more than just level design… i also released 6 trailers for an entire pre-release hype cycle, made more complex sprites than i've ever attempted before, and even made a whole website to host it on! then after its release i played through the whole thing, one level at a time, and wrote detailed developer commentary on each level with screenshots and GIFs. so even long after Retrush was finished, it was still on my mind through the end of the year.

2023 was the year of streams and videos

this milestone victory would not have been possible without my partner, playtesters, and friends, so i'd like to give one last shoutout to everyone listed in the Retrush credits. thank you all so much for your help and support 💖

in the first half of this year alone i've released more videos on my youtube channel than ever, as i played through several of my Mari0 mappacks, made two new highlights videos, and even experimented with new styles like throwback thursday and other youtube shorts! then in the back half of the year alone i streamed on twitch more times than i have any other year, beating my previous record in 2017 and completing multiple games that have been on my backlog for years.

but it wasn't just records for me – y'all showed up this year too! y'all subscribed more than ever (peaking at 18 subs!!), showed up to my most viewed stream ever (when i revisited my very first level pack), and even clipped more than ever, including my new most-viewed clip of The Rupoor Incident. thank you very much for enjoying what i do 💖

2023 was the year of the blog

once again, i've posted more on the blog this year than any of the 10 years i've been on tumblr, and i don't just mean all those stream archive posts – this is also the most i've ever written in one year. the Retrush developer commentary spanned a grand total of 38 posts (!!!), in addition to the shorter series and snippets i wrote like my top 5 games that i played in 2023. i'd also like to draw attention to all of the video descriptions and social media copy for every single video and stream archive this year… some of it got a little tedious, so i'm proud of writing all that too!

and let's not forget Now U Know Gaming: not only did i get to finish posting all of the original material early this year, but i also wrote plenty of new material that i started posting at the end of the year! i'm happy that the new material consistently lands just as well as the old – the new "emergency meeting" post is even the top NUKG post of all time! so thank you for enjoying the fun with me – sharing all of the posts and even pulling the webhook channel into your own Discord servers. it means so much 💖

i've been trans for 3 years now and i've been putting off hormones due to big medical anxiety problems... but it's something i want and i'm tired of being afraid! it's time to pursue my dreams

keeping my new years resolutions simple this year. in 2024:

🏳️‍⚧️ i'm finally gonna start hormones! 🏳️‍⚧️

"so how'd you spend your new year's, sky?"

have to cancel this... i shut down HARD about an hour after posting it, and i have not recovered enough to stream. sorry for the double rug pull!

still no stream tomorrow since i won't have time, so we'll find some other time during the week to fit it in. maybe the evening of the 26th?

i won't have time to stream kirby tomorrow... so we're doing it tonight instead! plan is to finish the extra modes in one big sweep and clear out the rest of the game

as usual, the vod will go up tomorrow morning for anyone who can't make it 💙