A Look Back at 2025 And What’s Next

I’m current writing this at 39,000 ft on my way back from Seattle (though posting it later), and I’ll be heading back to Seattle in another 7 days.  Last year was a busy year and this year feels like it’ s starting very much in the same way.

I left the job I’d been in for nearly 10 years, landed a new one at a company I’ve wanted to work at for years on a brand I’ve loved for decades, and shot 28 games. 

On average that’s just over 2 games per month which for a side project is a lot.

I’ve shot some great games though, and got to play a bunch of games I otherwise wouldn’t have done. 

Going all the way back to the start of the year with Storyburg, which now has some of my favourite images, massive games like Terraria and Re:Act, and indie gems like Sakana Stack, Flower Cards and Muster. 

Games like The Rat King, Don Quixote and Crumbs let me play types of games I’ve never really leant into where-as games like Crown of Ash, Timber Town and Cozy Cat Cafe kept me in the kinds of games I do usually play. 

But all told, it was a lot of games and, I have to say, probably too many for the time I have and the aim I was originally going for with Rising Dice.

And as a result I’m spending the next few weeks assessing the Rising Dice offer to make sure it provides what I set out to do.  It’s still a passion project, that's what it was and what it still is, and I want to make sure I’m still offering board game shoots for free to those who will get the most out of them.

But it’s likely I’ll start to offer paid options as well. 

I haven’t decided how to approach this yet, but it will likely be based on a number of images above a free amount, the types of images, an express turn around period, or other offers that start to cover the kind of work I was doing that took it outside the realms of a passion project.

One thing I have decided though is I can’t do with any complexity in this, so it will be simple, it will be black and white, and the perpetual commercial licence will still stay.

I have a few projects that are from the tail end of 2025 I’m still working through but once I’ve finished those I’m hoping to be able to start rolling out these additional options for future projects.