2026 Goals
For once in my dumb life I want to actually plan my next year in advance (though as we all know, "No plan survives first contact with the enemy"), and part of that is actually writing down my goals somewhere that will keep me accountable. Also, if I did what I did the last two years and write it down in my iPhone's Notes App I will inevitably lose it in the shuffle of all my grocery lists that I mainly use that app for. So without further ado I present:
My 2026 Goals
- Start One Game Made on Raspberry Pi 500+ Every 4 Weeks Challenge.
- Prototype E-Ink Text Adventure Game Console.
- Journal twice a week, via physical EDC Journal or Blog.
- Pull back on smart devices, relying more on physical or hand made solutions over my smart phone.
- Finish Coin Flip Game
Will I elaborate on these? Maybe.
Okay, fine. Here we go:
Start One Game Made on Raspberry Pi 500+ Every 4 Weeks Challenge
I have briefly discussed this on my last post, but I have been wanting to steal this idea from Ben "Yahtzee" Croshaw for a while now, where I make a game roughly once a month(really four weeks). My clever spin on this is that I want to do it on a Raspberry Pi 5 model, which I believe has the minimal computing power that can be used to make fairly modern 2D games or lofi 3D games. I am taking the approach of limitations will lead to at least some creative thinking, as well as the fact that the low spec Pi 500+ will also force me to ignore distractions whilst I work. Furthermore, I want to prove you don't need a $5000 workstation with a 5090 graphics card, 16 core CPU, and 128 gigs of RAM to make good games. There is a good chance that this will not finish this year, just for the simple fact that the Pi 500+ is currently in back order and I don't know when I can start. I just know I will start it in the first quarter of 2026. Hopefully. Hardware market is a little weird right now.
Prototype E-Ink Text Adventure Game Console
I have had an idea for an E-ink based reader for Twine Text adventures for a while. In my opinion the fact that my Kindle can't already do this kind of perturbs me. I especially wanted to get on this after seeing somebody else try to make one this past year but filled the whole thing with AI slop. I think we can do better. This one is the one goal I expect might go the most sideways, not because its particularly difficult or out of the scope of my abilities, but because it is a time consuming project that amounts to a full time job.
Journal twice a week, via physical EDC Journal or Blog
I do a lot of my writing by hand, especially for my Twine and other text adventure games. It is mostly distraction free, and I don't feel the need to alt tab my way into either a social media or YouTube rabbit hole when I do it. My preferred tool has been forever the yellow legal pads, but they are starting to get cumbersome in my life. Storing them have been a pain and I don't really have a good organizing structure for them as well. Which is why I have been looking into the whole Every Day Carry(EDC) or Traveler's Journals, that will fit in my bag or pocket. They are also refillable and can be easily stored and labelled, so it fits really well into an everyday use case for me. I can use them to plan projects as well as write my blog posts on so that I spend more time writing long form versus on microblogging platforms like BlueSky and Mastodon. This also ties into...
Pull back on smart devices, relying more on physical or hand made solutions over my smart phone
I really have a distraction problem. Both my Pi 500+ challenge and my quest to find a journal really tie into me trying to find a solution to this nasty habit of being addicted to both YouTube and Social Media. I am most certainly not the first person to express this, there are countless videos about reducing your time spent on screens by going low tech or no tech. This is kind of a catch all for a lot of miscellaneous goals I have this year. One example I want to emphasize is that I want to get away from algorithmic streaming from companies like Spotify, and directly support artists on platforms like Bandcamp. To do this I plan on buying a new Digital Audio Player, partially so I can listen to FLAC files, but mostly because my iPod Nano only has a 4 GB capacity and is nowhere big enough to contain my music library. Other examples include using my digital cameras more, use physical instruments more often to make my music, etc.
Finish Coin Flip Game
This is kind of a spill over of 2025 work here, but what started as a joke port of Heather Flower's Unfair Flips has become kind of a small project in of itself. Probably the only advantage of the 12 Games in 12 Month Pi Challenge being stalled by waiting on the Pi 500+ is that I can finish this game first. I want to release this sometime in February or March, but don't take my word on that, these things tend to slip. As we all know, The Red Duke promises are tempestuous falsehoods.