It’s that early part of the New Year where us game developers are returning to work. It’s a good time to take stock and double check that plans for 2024 are still reasonable!

In 2023 our company focus was ‘Improve’, which meant that most of our efforts went towards to enhancing the games in our catalogue. We did well in many ways with great updates to our catalogue especially multi-player support for The Golf Card Game (LINK) and our new content for Magic Towers Solitaire (LINK).

Our technology base is now more efficient, our support for advertising providers is greater, our games have increased stability, and we overhauled our GPDR Consent Manager for our games which worked out better for both our players and our bottom line. It’s got to be said that 2023 had all the hallmarks of an industry correcting after pandemic and revenue was starting to drop. For us to reverse declines when the mobile games advertising revenue throughout the industry went down as much as 20% is something we can take heart from. It points out that sometimes the best thing a game developer can do, is to work on what they’ve got.

Supporting our previous games and making that our main mission in 2023 was a good choice even if all of us here agree it meant our workdays were a bit on the dull side. However, we’re all in the games industry to make games, not just service them! That means that our focus for 2024 is to ‘Create’. We’ve got one game in art development, and several more designs and concepts that we can move forward with once we’ve wrapped up the tail end of our work from 2023.

Our Pirate Themed Hidden Objects game is continuing to progress, but having course corrected early in 2023 we find ourselves discovering an epic art requirement to do this game justice. With some hurdles overcome the game is certainly shaping up and should hopefully be released by the end of 2024.

Next, we have a solitaire game. We know how to make good ones (our reviews average close to five stars for a reason) and we expect this to be an easy-ish game for us to make which will round out our catalogue further. It won’t dilute our art efforts much from our pirate themed hidden objects game, so timing wise, it’s a perfect fit.

After the solitaire game, we have a word game (or actually, maybe two to choose from). Although our previous word game Word Play World, sadly didn’t find an audience, we learnt a great deal from making it and we’re hopeful the next one will resonate with the players. Of course all game developers say that, who wants to make a game that no-one plays?

Finally, there is our biggest improve effort that still needs to be completed, which is multiplayer support for our Mexican Train Dominoes games (LINK). It’s well loved by its fans, but multiplayer support in time for the seasonal holiday moments where many families spend time together would be an awesome addition. If we can expedite the delivery of that, we have another game idea for a dominoes variation.

The idea is that 2024 is the Create year, meaning that in 2025 we will be back to an Improve year. Even though these overlap somewhat in our small company, this demarcation of focus and effort is one that seems to be working for us. We’re excited for this year, and maybe one of those new games will be another hit, something that our players will keep on returning to play.