2018 Year End Wrap-up (with Bundle Download)

Wow! Can you believe that this the second one of these? It's now been two years on Patreon! Okay, technically it's been a little less... Last year covered only a little more than half of the year. But that's good news, because it means that this year's bundle is EVEN BIGGER.

(If you don't want to wait through the whole post, download the patron bundle here: 2018 Patron Asset Bundle .zip)

As always, I can't thank you enough. I don't want to get sentimental, so I'll keep the thanks short and sweet. None of this would be possible without the continued support of my patrons.

I hope that I am able to provide value to be worth this support. I put in a lot of time and effort to make your sponsorship worthwhile. I've always been up-front that I want to earn your patronship by providing real value, and our tremendous growth this past year has proven to me that this is the right approach! Thanks for working on this project with me.

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2018 Patron Release Highlights

I want to take some time to highlight some of this year's releases. 

I narrowed this down to a top five. This doesn't mean that they are really the best-- but rather that these showcase something special and/or have something cool to say.

(All of these graphics are included in the bundle linked at the end of the post.)

5 - The Demon King

The Demon King is special not only because of its size -- but because I iterated and expanded on it based on patron ideas. It originally started as a single-direction idle sprite, but I expanded it with a huge battler image and then later on into a full four-direction walking sprite.

I revisited multiple releases to expand on them based on patron suggestions-- even something like the special zombies animation from a couple of weeks ago -- I think this new approach is something that that helped me grow as a creator this year.

4 - NPC Actions

These NPC Action Animations (and these ones!) are some of my favorites because they can add so much to a game while being so simple. This even includes further updates like these NPC Down/Dead Sprites.

A lot of my releases this year were focused on expanding what already exists -- giving you more options and more ways to use them. Each extra animation or pose makes the previously-released sprites even more valuable.

3 - Transforming Werewolves

These Werewolves are special to me because it's one of the times that I pushed myself to make something beyond my initial plan.

I set out that day to make some simple werewolf sprites -- and I was really happy with how they game out. But then I had the idea to make the transformation animation -- and I went ahead and made it!

The end result is a fun animation that makes the werewolves so much more memorable -- and hopefully something that will be a lot more useful to you too! I always find that extra animations like this give me a lot of inspiration and ideas for characters and world-building. I'm excited to see how you include these into your own games.

2 - Icon Expansions

The middle of this year was defined by these extra icons: swords, wands/staffs, spears and axes, bows and arrows, shields, elemental magic and special skills -- there's a huge amount of icons here, all based on patron suggestions, that expand on the simple icon set that I originally released.

Ongoing projects like this are great because there is always a place for them. I released a LOT of these extra icons this year -- and I plan to do more in 2019!

1 - Beast Tribes

The Beast Tribes character pack is maybe my favorite single release of the year-- though with the amount of content in it, it does have a significant advantage. ;)

I pumped out this pack in one week on a whim -- I may have gone a little overboard that week, but I'm hugely proud of the end result. Not only are there are ton of new characters, but this collection went the extra mile and included side-view animated battlers for a bunch of them. Ultimately, this little release ended up being an important addition for the Time Fantasy series, and I was very proud to release it as a new patron incentive.

Reception for this release has been really positive, and it gives me so many ideas going forward. I might not always restrict myself to as rigid a regular schedule, and give myself the freedom to work on little projects like this one -- the Beast Tribes release was something out of the box, and hugely rewarding for everybody.

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Other Releases

Of course, we also had plenty of other large releases along the way! Notably, we hit a few major goals and I was able to expand on the series of free-release goal tilesets.

The Ashlands Tileset, Ruined Dungeons, and City in the Clouds were all special reward tilesets that were released as goal rewards. Each one was voted for by patrons!

I also expanded a little further two two holiday-themed compilation releases: one for Halloween and one for Christmas. These were made up of graphics made for patrons and I thought it would be a lot of fun to release them as special freebies.

And of course, there were a few bigger releases too...

The Side-View Animated Battlers and the Pixel Animations pack were two of this year's major releases. If you were a patron at the time of these releases, you got a free copy.

And the big one-- Omega Modern-- was only released so far for patrons. The full release was pushed a little bit because of the publisher-- but that doesn't matter to you guys, who have had your hands on it for a few months already!

 (The reward tilesets and the large releases are not included in the 2018 bundle. If you haven't downloaded them yet, you can get them on itch.io using the links above.) 

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2018 Patron Bundle Download

Anyway -- this is what you really want: this is a huge .zip file that includes everything that was released for patrons this year. 

If you've been downloading everything as I released them, there's nothing new here. But if you might have missed something, or you're a new patron-- then it'll be a valuable resource to expand your collection.

Download:

• 2018 Patron Bundle

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I want to thank you all for a WONDERFUL and productive year! 

2018 has been absolutely incredible for me.  On top of all the great releases that I've talked about here, I took a massive personal step this year, when this summer I bought and moved into a house of my own.

None of this could have been possible without you.

I look forward to an even better 2019! 

See you soon!