When people look back on the year 2020, their first collective thought will undoubtedly be “Wow, Ryan sure got a lot done that year.” To facilitate this sort of reminiscence, I here present my YEAR IN REVIEW.
JANUARY
In January, my friend Zach and I completed The Complete Guide to Koholint, a 256-episode daily podcast describing and analyzing The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening in excruciating detail. (The final episodes would air in February, but we were ahead of schedule for most of the project.) Is it difficult to release 256 podcast episodes in 256 days? Not if most of them are three minutes long!
FEBRUARY
February was an extremely busy month:
- I organized the Second Quadrennial Ryan Veeder Exposition for Good Interactive Fiction, in which eight entrants created fourteen works of interactive fiction for me (and me alone) to judge. I also made a bunch of cute dolls to give out as prizes.
- The Gallagher Bluedorn Performing Arts Center put on its second Get Smart trivia night, for which I served as Quizmaster. I designed seven rounds of multimedia trivia/puzzle excitement, including Pictionary with human canvases, a selection of urban poetry, and a crash course in computer hacking.
- I also served as Quizmaster for the Family & Children’s Council of Black Hawk County. This was the tenth trivia night I designed/hosted for this organization! Some of the rounds in this event were Worms, Amounts of Caffeine, and Death By Charades.
MARCH
In March I wrote most of the first text adventure game I’d release this year, MUD WARRIORS. But it wouldn’t be released until April.
APRIL
In April I released the game MUD WARRIORS, a work of interactive fiction in which I indulged a decidedly unliterary taste for stats-based partially random combat. It is a game about children throwing mud at each other after school.
MAY
In May I did a bunch of work for the county election office, which isn’t very interesting.
I also pulled an old unfinished interactive fiction project out of a creaky old metaphorical drawer. The name of that unfinished interactive fiction project was: Chalk Game (working title).
JUNE
In June I returned Chalk Game to its metaphorical back burner in favor of a new and exciting project called Crocodracula: The Beginning. This text adventure would not be released until July but when I look back at my notes from June they are all about Crocodracula.
JULY
In July I released Crocodracula: The Beginning and straightaway returned to Chalk Game, which somewhere around this time was christened A Rope of Chalk.
AUGUST
I spent all of August working on A Rope of Chalk. Good grief. (It ended up being 76,911 words of source code. That’s why it took so long.)
SEPTEMBER
In September I finished A Rope of Chalk well ahead of the IFComp deadline and began working on an entry in EctoComp, to be titled…
OCTOBER
Several Other Tales from Castle Balderstone! This was the third Castle Balderstone game.
I also did a lot of work for the Black Hawk County election office in preparation for the presidential election! I trained all the election workers on how to use the pollbook software.
NOVEMBER
The results of IFComp and EctoComp both came out in November. Several Other Tales from Castle Balderstone took second place in its category (out of seven). A Rope of Chalk took seventh place (out of 103).
My creative work in November was mostly the invisible kind where you stare at the wall and brood about what your next masterpiece will be.
DECEMBER
In December I have been working on another game—the fifth game I will make this year—but it’s going to be exclusive to supporters of my Patreon. Sorry to end this on a plug, but that’s where we’re at!
Have a lovely 2021!