
- 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 year — Songs 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 year — NV.ua, Koloua.com
- Blog of the year — Nexta Live in Telegram
- Newsletter of the year — Axios 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.
- Strange Horticulture – herbalist trader sim, January.
- Hero’s Hour – TBS inspired by HOMM, March.
- Tunic – RPG adventure, March
- Lego Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga – action adventure in open world, April.
- Songs of Conquest – TBS, modern HOMM with 2.3D pixel graphics, May.
- Dorfromantik – area building/puzzle game, full release in May.
- Stray – stealth action adventure with a cat character, July
- I Was a Teenage Exocolonist – narrative RPG/teenager life sim, August.
- Moonbreaker – tactical TBS with figurines. And painting them in custom colors. September
- Beacon Pines – visual novel, with branching narrative. September
- Sunday Gold – RPG + ponit-n-click adventure. Interesting genre mix and art direction. October
- A Plague Tale: Requiem – action-adventure in medieval setting with control of the hordes of rats. October
- Potionomics – cute sim of the magic potion shop. October.
- LEGO Bricktales – lego-building puzzle. October.
- Marvel’s Midnight Suns – Xcom with Marvel superheroes. December.