2025: Year-in-Review

Happy New Year everyone!

This year was such a journey—and one that wouldn't have been possible without my wonderful team of artists and this lovely community 💛

Thank you for the love, the patience, the feedback, the fanart, the messages, the quiet support, and the hype at exactly the moments I needed it most. Sending you all so much love & gratitude.

2025 Highlights

Merry Crisis Visual Novel

The VN's officially out there in the world! Still feels a little unreal, to be honest :')

• Trailer & Demo release as part of the Choose Wisely Festival's Selection (and on itch.io)

• 1,500+ units downloaded and 1,200+ wishlists in the first month, streamed by 12+ creators on Twitch/YouTube (so fun & unexpected!)

The text-based game also had 2 chapter updates (4, 5), bringing it very near completion. There were also some extra snippets released.

• Nat, Qiu, Shay sneak peeks

• Halloween snippet (Nat)

College Tennis: Origin Story

CT:OS crossed the 1 mil word mark, and had 3 chapter updates this year (1, 2, 3) plus some bonus scenes!

• G POV snippet (F/M)

• Halloween bonus scenes (all)

• G POV #2 (F/M)

• Winter snippets (Rayyan and G)

Community growth

Monsoon Games, CT:OS and Merry Crisis communities on Tumblr continue to grow :) We've expanded to other platforms too—you can find us at: official website, and on instagram, bsky, itch.io!

2026 Roadmap

Things will inevitably shift as the year unfolds, but for now, my goal is to move at a steady, sustainable pace every quarter:

• At least 1 CT:OS update*

• 1 Ko-fi/Patreon snippet per quarter

• Work on both Merry Crisis text-based & the VN versions^

*Except Q4, which will be mainly geared towards shipping both the Merry Crisis text-based game and visual novel!

From here on, Merry Crisis progress will be a bit more behind-the-scenes — aside from VN demo releases and possibly a play-test/exclusive beta of the text-based game (more on that soon 👀). We’re getting very close to the finish line.

I know this sounds ambitious (RIP to my last roadmap), which brings me to…

Some exciting news

After six years working full-time as an urban planner—and writing / making games on the side, I’ve finally reached a stable enough place to take a year-long sabbatical. It's been my dream for a while now, and I'm so excited to make it a reality very soon!

So, for at least till the end of 2026, I'll be:

• Focusing on writing and game development

• Exploring, learning, trying new things, and actually chilling

• Moving to be with my partner (we've been long distance for the past year)

Systems I'd like to build

To support this shift, there are a few things I’d really like to establish or improve next year.

Monthly dev log

• Continue these dev logs as a way to update you guys and share plans for the next month.

• Stretch goal: I’d love to do more business/game dev/writing content (guides, advice, post-mortems) if there’s interest.

Community time

• I'm not the most naturally social-media-y person (my friends will attest to this 😅) but I'd like to be more intentional about this through: Community Thursdays (an hour of answering messages every week)!

• Stretch goal: I'm thinking about bringing back the old google forms (iykyk) to provide a platform for you guys to provide feedback on what you loved and what you’d like to see improved.

Ko-fi/Patreon snippets

I’ve said this forever, but I genuinely love writing bonus scenes and snippets — they’re a fun, low-pressure way to experiment with ideas that may or may not ever make it into the main games. I want to do more of these in 2026.

Full-time Game Dev schedule

For at least three quarters of next year, I intend to treat writing/game dev as an almost full-time practice.

Interact-IF (stretch goal)

I’d also love to invest more time into Interact-IF in 2026 — whether that’s moderation, events, interviews, features, or even advice columns. We’ll see what the year has space for.

Final Note

Thank you! Whether you’ve been around since the early days or just joined this week: your support gives me so much joy and honestly makes me excited to turn on my laptop every day!

Here’s to an even better 2026! ✨