My blog posts have been sparse this year. It’s not that I am lacking in ideas, it’s that obstacles are ever present and they do hinder my ability to get things done. 2026 continues to be a challenge, but there are things that are finally starting to yield fruit, so lets get on with the anniversary post.

Being a game developer is a lot of work, and also being a publisher heaps even more work in the form of marketing, taxes, legal stuff, etc. It is a long road before things start to make sense, but this year has revealed opportunities, a noticeable increase in sales and because I don’t know when to quit, a lot of new conventions.

2026 started as it usually does with Game-itoba in a miserably cold January, and while I didn’t get to run as many events as last year, I successfully released Essence of the Arcane, a game that has been in development for longer than my company has existed and the booth saw record sales, leading me to …almost break even on the event.

The Westman Gaming Expo was another nice surprise. While sales were not overly impressive, the Manitoba Game Designers went from the small booth we had last year to hosting the board game area. Going forward we will be doing this every year, which offers a great deal of exposure and makes the event a little more affordable for us as well.

April took me out of province to ToonCon is Saskatoon, where I was able to take part in the first year of SaskaTune Your Game, which is a great sub-event to helps indie developers market and play test their games.
this is absolutely going to be a regular thing, as the community was great and I desperately need to branch out.

Another surprise was the first ever WPG RPG Con, which was fairly small, but has a ton of potential to grow. This is an event that hopefully grows into something mush bigger and I do suspect a larger turnout next year, as several people mentioned that they planned to skip the first year.
This weekend also marked the official launch of The Curse of Nefer Ka Tet, a 1920s pulp adventure for Reanimated.

Being invited out to GameCon Canada in Edmonton by the Logomancy crew gave Lytha and myself a great opportunity to make some new connections that will hopefully lead to us doing more events out of province, including FallCon in Calgary, which I am trying to get lined up in my already hectic schedule.

The year is already more than half gone and events like KeyCon and PrairieCon are now behind us, but there are still a ton of things coming, including Ai-kon later this month, where I will be pushing the prototype for Soku Meshi.
August may have me in Calgary for FallCon, and September is ramping up to be a big month with the first ever Winnipeg Horror Con, The Morden Pop Culture Expo, and Minitoba.
Finally the is Winnipeg ComicCon on Halloween weekend, where Lytha will be hosting a stage TTRPG one shot.

Online connections are also important. Earlier in the year I was part of a Slice & Dice livestream with The Eclectic Goat and I will be coming back on the show again in August.

As for new releases this year, the two I did earlier are likely all for 2026, but there are some things planned for 2027 to continue to expand my offerings, which seems to be what people want.
For this year I am already tired, and being tired is how you start making mistakes.

If you happen to spot me at any of the many conventions I attend, be sure to come over and say “Hi”.
I am easy to spot. I am the big hairy guy that is ready to collapse, but I am always happy to talk to fellow gamers and I usually have some type of prototype to show off.