So, 2025 has come and gone. And now that it’s New Year’s Eve, the traditional end-of-year retrospective must be written. Thus:
Darr’s 2025 Retrospective
Flopped into bed after finishing my Super Hit Post.
Received the people’s energy and made a bug fix that still had too many bugs. It ended up placing 9th overall.
Did a small bit of work on War of Lovers on and off in January.
Hosted SIGURD, third in the series: it went pretty smoothly, all things considered.
Revamped the hack directory, as the previous one had filled up. I still need to add plenty of hacks to it - you can too!
IHRD had grander plans, but they fell through. Instead, my patch was an FMV of Super Smash Bros. Melee’s opening edited to be Fire Emblem themed.
Cleaned up a bit of unfinished business in terms of SHPC research.
Booted up Touhou 1 as part of this unfinished business.
L’Arrangement was announced, and I rushed out a chapter for it, Lethal Emblem.
Went off on a holiday and spotted lots of trains.
Came back and started work on War of Lovers again.
Actually developed a Touhou addiction instead. Defeating Yukari and Flandre are the biggest feathers in my cap.
Submitted the FEE3 trailer: so far, so good.
Slowly made progress on War of Lovers, but not overly quickly.
Learnt from my mistakes and did not release a War of Lovers update for FEE3: it wasn’t even close to being ready.
Chipped away at Lethal Emblem like, once a month.
Actually finished Fire Emblem Engage: should have done that in 2023! War of Lovers script needs some tweaks as consequence.
Realised it was Christmas and decided to finish Lethal Emblem.
Write the retrospective, glance at the War of Lovers repo, and see it’s almost ready… to be playtested. I’m not getting that 2025 release. Damn.
2026? I don’t make new year’s resolutions, and I don’t really keep plans. Ideal things I’d do?
War of Lovers Act 3, maybe Act 4. Silly contest entries, if any pop up. Get more RPGs off of my backlog. Organise the Choose Your Legends thread and hope Sigurd wins this time. Actually make a decent April Fool’s hack. Not procrastin… nah, that’s just in my DNA. Motivation ebbs and flows, so just go with the flow.
Finally released Ambition’s Call: Silver (‘s demo) after slapping my head against it on and off for 3 years, so I’d say that’s a pretty big achievement.
I think getting half of Dawn of Medeon done and released is a pretty big milestone. And having 1.1 with all its rebalances and changes almost done helps too.
Other than that, it’s been a rather quiet 2025. I honestly hope 2026 can be that quiet too tbh. And maybe actually finishing Dawn of Medeon by then.
My github history shows that I’ve been doing stuff this year, though I tend to make much smaller commits than I used to, so I’ve probably done less this year than previous ones. My projects are done and I’m not really in a rush anymore. I’m just taking it easy and chipping away at hacks sometimes.
I’m a pretty quiet person online, but for me, my retrospective was.
Worked on Shantaemblem and posted updates around every three months.
Realized that I had to get serious with portraits to meet the FEE3 deadline.
Did commissions for a while to raise capital for that. Its something I wish I could continue but burn out set in way faster than I hoped. As such, I wasn’t able to get to everyone. Once Shantaemblem is finished, I think I may go back to that.
Submitted by FEE3 trailer which was met with lots of excitement from within and outside the community.
I made around 30 or so animations this year. Less than previous years but that’s because I don’t have many left to make.
Considering that next year will be the last year I will work on Shantaemblem, I’m more than happy with everything I accomplished this year.
Please think about your project’s credits while you’re working on it.
For International Hack Release Day, I created axe.com, which shows a chapter-by-chapter slice of FE7 units’ social media feeds for the fictitious website.
I don’t do much things online, even if these recents years were the most I’ve ever been involved on the internet, but for my retrospective for this year is:
Starting the year poorly due to thinking I could be funny while failing a spot check (if you know, you know)
Being further dismotivated due to trying to be optimistic at a situation that happened in the FE repo.
Mostly getting out of my funk and still aiming at getting better at making portraits.
Ended up being more mature thanks to exceeding too much my phone usage.
Finishing my college career, but went to a posgraduation career due to failing a difficult graduation exam. At least I still went to classes with all of my previous classmates.
Went to improve my physical health at the months I was free of any type of classes, mainly by fixing my back pain. It still aches up from time to time, but compared to last year it has now pretty much healed, especially if I remember to exercise and sit properly.
Ended up improving a good amount of portraits I did in the past, mainly of the first characters I did a FE portrait of.
Went to a vacation in Puerto Peñasco, Sonora when it was summer. Conversely, right before we were going there, a stye on my eye started to form and ended up lowering the enjoyment I could get from the vacation. I guess it beats being sad however.
Played a good amount of games together with my brother, some of which being of genres he never played before.
Feeling like I did more portraits than the previous year, so I guess I can say I ended up getting better (would check how many I actually did, but I’m a bit lazy to do right now lol).
Overall, the start was a bit BAD, but over the course of the year it ended up improving for me. Let’s hope the next year is even better
