2022, year of the russian war in Ukraine

Фото: REUTERS/Gleb Garanich.
  • Achievement of the year — launch and lead production of the unannounced F2P mobile game
  • Experience of the year — swimming on the beach with penguins, business class flight with Qatar Airlines
  • Decision of the year — leave Ukraine, when it seemed that a big scale war is imminent. That was in 2016, the war followed in 6 years.
  • Discovery of the year — the mysterious world of sex toys thanks to series How to Build a Sex Room
  • New activity of the year — regular donations and remittances to Ukraine for arms and military equipment
  • Challenge of the year —  carry on with life and work during the war in Ukraine
  • Success of the year —  taking over mobile game bought from the original developers and eventually onboarding a new producer for it; company-wide internal playtest of the multiplayer features in the upcoming F2P mobile game 
  • Failure of the year — changing mobile measurement partner (MMP) in the mobile game without a thorough planning
  • Event of the year — Carry1st corporate meetup in Cape Town
  • Addiction of the year — war news channels in Telegram, coffee 
  • Team of the year — Team1st
  • Book of the year Ukrainian Foundations, essays on Ukrainian identity collected by Valery Pekar & Olexander Rashkovan
  • Movie of the year — Avatar: The Way of Water; Dune
  • Animation of the year — Arcane (Netflix series)
  • TV Series of the year — Stranger Things vol. 4; maybe Wednesday (but I didn’t watch it yet)
  • Music of the year — explosion of Ukrainian patriotic songs, i.e.  Yarmak – My Country; Surface Tension – We Will Kill You All; Masha Kondratenko – Van’ka-Vstan’ka; Kalush Orchestra – Stefania; and many more.
  • PC game of the yearSongs of Conquest, early access (Lavapotion), TBS like Heroes of Might & Magic 1-3
  • PS5 game of the year — Horizon: Forbidden West (Guerilla Games), action adventure
  • PS5 game of the year for 2 players — It Takes Two (Hazelight Studios), action adventure
  • Hybridcasual mobile game of the year — Survivor.io (Habby), roguelike action
  • Casual mobile game of the year — FurryFury (Demibug Studio), slingshooting battle arena
  • Midcore mobile game of the year — Marvel Snap (Second Dinner), CCG
  • Games news of the year — Microsoft’s attempt to acquire Activision Blizzard
  • Mobile app of the year — Grab
  • Social media of the year — Mastodon
  • Website of the yearNV.ua, Koloua.com
  • Blog of the yearNexta Live in Telegram
  • Newsletter of the yearAxios Gaming
  • Trip of the year — Cape Town, South Africa
  • City of the year — Gyeonggi-do province – Seoul and the surrounidng area, South Korea
  • Beach of the year — Boulders Beach with African Pengiuns, Cape Town area, South Africa
  • Hotel of the year — The Capital 15 on Orange, Cape Town, South Africa
  • Restaurant of the year — Eat, Pray, Love – Phu Quoc, Vietnam
  • Taste of the year — iced Vietnamese coffee with condensed milk (cà phê sữa đá)
  • Brand of the year — American Tourister (cool backpacks)
  • Purchase of the year — backing Heroes of Might & Magic 3: Board Game at Kickstarter (my first ever pledge on Kickstarter)
  • Entertainment of the year — playing with sons in whatever they come up with
  • News of the year — War in Ukraine
  • Person of the year — Volodymyr Zelensky
  • Quote of the year… no, even of the decade, of the century! (but was it said for real?):

The fight is here; I need ammunition, not a ride.

PC/Console games backlog

To be true, it’s a retirement backlog. The time for playing all those amazing games won’t come sooner.

  1. Strange Horticulture – herbalist trader sim, January.
  2. Hero’s Hour – TBS inspired by HOMM, March.
  3. Tunic – RPG adventure, March
  4. Lego Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga – action adventure in open world, April.
  5. Songs of Conquest – TBS, modern HOMM with 2.3D pixel graphics, May.
  6. Dorfromantik – area building/puzzle game, full release in May.
  7. Stray – stealth action adventure with a cat character, July
  8. I Was a Teenage Exocolonist – narrative RPG/teenager life sim, August.
  9. Moonbreaker – tactical TBS with figurines. And painting them in custom colors. September
  10. Beacon Pines – visual novel, with branching narrative. September
  11. Sunday Gold – RPG + ponit-n-click adventure. Interesting genre mix and art direction. October
  12. A Plague Tale: Requiem – action-adventure in medieval setting with control of the hordes of rats. October
  13. Potionomics – cute sim of the magic potion shop. October.
  14. LEGO Bricktales – lego-building puzzle. October.
  15. Marvel’s Midnight Suns – Xcom with Marvel superheroes. December.
Recap of the previous seasons: