2024 Retrospective

It's been a weird year. A lot of promises needed to be kept, but new obstacles arose, so it was hard to move forward. And I still have some work to do!

• Including Swor'nament Episodes, there were 107 new episodes of Swords this year; as well as 46 new episodes of Stars. That's about 1 new episode every 2.4 days, which is hardly my best effort to date, but not terrible either.

• The Bread Knight became the King of Hiltshire! We haven't seen much of him lately...

• The connection between The Monster Magician and one of the Demon Swords was finally confirmed...

• Harpe, Joyeuse and Cutbert went on an adventure to slay a Demon Sword, with a cliffhanger ending...

• And Jest Sprout was unleashed...!

• The second part of the Patreon Swor'nament happened, finally bringing all 16 fighters into the fold. It's been a long time overdue and filled with logistical challenges, but now there are 4 fighters remaining and we can finally crown a champion in 2025.

• We launched 3 Makeship plushies - Kargob, The Everstabbed (Glow in the Dark event) and a return of Pest Sprout (Time Warp event). I quietly think Kargob might be my favourite design yet.

• Swords: Cut the Deck went into overtime and money got tight, but I still think we ended up with a better product thanks to having more time to streamline the rules and polish things up. Behind the scenes there was a ton of work re-doing box art, tokens, dice, playmats and making lots of the card art better too.

• I have an entire expansion for the game arted-up and ready to go, when the world decides its ready for more cards

• Swords was a launch title on the new webcomic platform Fables

• We have our first God of Patreon!

• The SwordsComic Patreon has risen from #53 to #43 among Comic artists [per Graphtreon]

• Hundreds and hundreds of people in the Annual Survey asked for a Chronological Order

• We began stocking Swords merch at Caffeinated Dragon and BeaDnD Games in Wellington, NZ

• I started taking Sticker Club much more seriously, increasing the quality and presentation of what was on offer each time. I'm enjoying the learning curve and I hope I can keep surprising people.

• We took preorders for and printed the first Quest Sprout comic books! Shipping them out by myself was a lot of work! I'll be ordering more in January.

• There was an attempt to revive Merciless Dungeon and get it shippable, but it ended up back on the to-do shelf when more pressing things came along.

• I prototyped quite a lot of other stuff too... maybe I'll share some soon...

Looking forward, some things I want to commit to in 2025 are:

An awesome Cut the Deck launch!

The resolution of most of Swords errant plotlines on the road to episode 1000

A cleaner, clearer online presence, so everyone knows where to find what they want

A conclusion to the Patreon Swor'nament

Some STARS goodies in the next Sticker Club

Reaching 1000 paid Patreon supporters!

I hope you have a great New Year! See you soon!