In December, I worked on a game called My (Magical) Best Friend! which is a visual novel inspired by anime (especially Madoka). It turns out that a youtuber made a Let’s Play Video of it.

It’s really great to see your game be played by someone who you don’t know, who plays games for the sake of playing games (unlike other Ludum Dares where people play your games so they can get votes as well.) I’m grateful for Spotco for leading the whole project as programmer & game designer and Kelsey for doing art and pushing the story along with me. I was able to contribute pretty minimally (some programming, initial draft of the script, story) but it feels great to see a game I contributed provide entertainment for others.

In other news, I’m still having lots of fun tackling various engineering and meta-engineering problems at Zynga. I’ve been embedded in New Words with Friends to specialize in making sure their ads work, adding new ad placements, etc. It’s exciting to see the impact of the changes I make in terms of revenue and UX.

I am also working out, doing Stronglifts 5x5 and making minute changes to my diet. The goal is to be “visibly muscular and strong”.

Dota wise, I’m still stuck at 2.4k MMR but I’ve gotten pretty good at playing carry spectre. I tried Medusa today and it ended horribly. Hopefully I can get to Ti6 and enjoy it more than I enjoyed Ti4 (I enjoyed Ti4 very much.)

2015 has been a loaded year: Graduating Berkeley, starting work, going to Hawaii with work, taking CodePath, winning 1st place on CodePath, etc… I hope 2016 will be just as great!