Greetings Blogmonauts,

Welcome to our very last festive blog post.

Door 24 opens on a scene of stockings hung by the chimney with care, in hopes that Saint Nicholas soon will be there. When Fay drew this scene she was imagining that idealised middle-class family home that's pictured in greetings cards and other imagery this time of year, and made a point of featuring some of the friends we made along the way from the other doors of the calendar - how many did you spot?

As for us, our dev duo has been hard at work in the kitchen all day today, creating delicious Michelin-star food which we will enjoy when we host Christmas dinner for a couple of close relatives tomorrow, because in the UK, the big Christmas dinner is early afternoon  on the 25th, not in the evening of the 24th, as it is celebrated in much of Europe.  We're ahead of the game, with home made gravy ready for action, and every single dish prepped, dressed and cling-filmed waiting for its moment in the sun (or the oven) tomorrow.  

We hope you've enjoyed this journey with us Blogmanauts - since about 4 people have actually bought Festive Finds, even though it's only a dollar (it's 80 cents in the sale!), this has certainly been an experience. Putting sales (or lack of) aside, making the game was a little bit of a Christmas gift to ourselves really; after we released our debut game Shindig, which took us two years to make, we fell into a bit of a post-launch depression, and the only thing that seemed to help was working on making something again. We're really proud of Shindig, and put our hearts and souls into it, making it as polished and well-crafted as we possibly could - heck, it's fully voiced! - and it was made from scratch by just the two of us, Fay and Martyn. When you've worked so hard and so long on making something exactly what it should be, there's always the worry that you won't recapture the same magic, or that when it doesn't sell you won't be motivated to create again, or that you'll be pigeon-holed as making only that kind of game forever, and you sure better be able to make something that high quality again. We were really down after Shindig came out,  and it flew under basically everybody's radar, despite our best efforts. But it's kind of heartening that the only thing that really helped was to create something else. 

Like this is where we are meant to be. 

And so came our little advent calendar game. And it came together in about 6 weeks, and while basically nobody bought it, that doesn't change anything about the fact that

WE HAVE NOW SELF PUBLISHED TWO GAMES

Moreover 

WE HAVE NOW SELF-PUBLISHED TWO GAMES WE ARE REALLY PROUD OF

So the gift that we give ourselves this Christmas is defeating the sophomore slump, and the knowledge that even though our games haven't found their audiences yet, there are people out there who really dig what we're doing, and if we just keep on making things that we believe in, that make people think, make people feel, and make people smile, we'll be doing the very best we can to make the world a better place. 

Which is exactly where we're meant to be.

We hope that wherever you are, that you're safe and warm and surrounded by love and laughter this Christmas.  But if you want to escape into the computer, our little games are all on sale now. Either way, we hope you have a great Christmas.

Love always,

Fay & Martyn

Imaginary Friends Games