- So far me and my wife's family, friends, and myself have survived the pandemic knock on wood. There's some people with risk factors, including myself, so I'm

- So far me and my wife's family, friends, and myself have survived the pandemic knock on wood. There's some people with risk factors, including myself, so I'm pretty happy about that. I did have a coworker who died of it, though :(. Hopefully we can avoid it until at least getting the vaccine. - Wrote about 60,000 words in my journal/game design diary this year, although that's down from 123,000 last year, but at least it's better than nothing. Made sure to record observations about the pandemic periodically during it, for reflection on in later years. - One of my game designs was selected as a finalist for a prestigious board game design contest (this is the third year I tried), and then the same game was selected as a finalist for a sellsheet contest later that year, which allowed me to do a virtual pitch of the game to 20+ publishers. One publisher offered to brainstorm ideas with me for ways in which to add more to the game that it might find a publisher. - One of my earliest board game designs had been shelved for the past 3+ years and I suddenly realized how to add an interesting hook and make the game more thematic at the same time, which ended up fixing a major problem with the game. Had a productive playtest with other game designers a few weeks ago as well. Currently trying to get it polished up enough to enter into a game design contest in January. - Finally got over my hesitation to make 3D video games (instead of just 2D) and self-taught myself just enough Blender to make some functional 3D models to include in a game I'm working on, and started again from scratch in 3D, and I think that was a smart move. Looks about the same but nice 3D animations that are easier to get working than 2D (i.e. I don't have to draw them), and handling multiple resolutions is easier. - Got more into puzzle creation and design. Might have come up with a couple novel pen and paper logic puzzles. Still need to dig into it more. - Started using monte carlo simulations to help design board games. In particular I used it for one abstract game design to discover what combination of variables I needed so the game wouldn't have a first player advantage and was guaranteed not to have ties, which I wouldn't have been able to tell without a ton of manual playtests otherwise. Didn't even occur to me how I could use code to help me design until this year. - Came up with about 15 ideas for new game designs, as well as ideas on how to improve or fix the issues with four existing designs. - Wrote a short story I'm pretty happy with that's getting published in an anthology for a local writer's group, about a broker who protects and manages secrets from corporations (secrets being things like credit card numbers and maiden names and the like). - We explored a few State Parks we wouldn't have known existed in the area if it weren't for the pandemic. But we ended up cancelling our planned trip to Yellowstone and Glacier National Parks this year, so it's a poor substitute. Other than that, just about everything else was shitty this year. And most of this stuff would have probably happened without the pandemic anyway.