2025 Year in Review

2025 was a big year for me in tabletop. Writing a summary of the year helps me mindfully acknowledge my accomplishments and reflect on my game design journey.

Here are the highlights of 2025:

Rebrand as Glyphtide Games

I quietly registered Glyphtide Games as a sole proprietorship back in 2024 to handle all my game design-related finances. I had waffled back and forth about publicly bringing all my games under a label separate from my own name, but after much thought, I decided it was the best move, for a few reasons:

Separating Ethans: While my name is still out there on the interwebs and on my games, I’m appreciating the additional level of removal that the name Glyphtide Games brings to my private and professional lives. Additionally, there’s less desire to put my personal identity out in the public as a “game designer.”
Quality Mindset: A logo and cleaner website assisted in shifting my mindset towards “leveling up” my game design and production value. Each game I bring to print will be done with more intention and push my creative boundaries. However, I will continue to release experimental, “less polished” games digitally on glyphtide.itch.io.

Chain×Link

I released Chain×Link at Gen Con, co-published with Plus One Experience as part of their RPG Zine Club. While the core mechanic and premise of the game had not changed since inception, the game rules and text changed significantly throughout development. I wrote a series of blog posts about the design and my incredible experience working with Tony Tran and Andrew Beauman on the visual direction of the game. I am so proud of the final result!

PREQUEL

PREQUEL was my first foray into crowdfunding, and it would be an understatement to say I was intimidated. Luckily, I was going through the journey with my co-creator James Quigley, who had gone through the crowdfunding cycle a number of times before. With the help of the folks on the Atopia discord server, we were able to handle all the project management and logistical challenges we encountered. Completing this project “in-house” was a significant goal of mine–I am incredibly happy with the game we designed, the funds we raised, and fulfilling the game by the end of the year.

Having tasted the apple of temptation that is crowdfunding, I plan to take future projects out for crowdfunding. I’d like to aim for faster turn-around times, meaning that my future crowdfunding projects will occur only after my games are essentially complete (e.g., art commissioned and game fully laid out) and with modest crowdfunding goals raised over a two-week time frame to cover print runs. I think this approach will limit crowdfunding-induced stress while maximizing the value of the platform as a marketing tool.

A Hymn for the Odd-Host

In typical One Page RPG Jam fashion (for me anyway), I wrote and released A Hymn for the Odd-Host in less than a week. My one page RPGs tend to be extremely experimental in design, and this game was no different, featuring an asymmetric play structure where each player of the two-player game was given their own set of rules while figuring out the other players’ rules only through play. I appreciated how I melded aspects of both board game and roleplaying game mechanisms.

Freelancing

This year, I decided to focus on my personal projects, which meant that I freelanced less this year than in previous years. Even so, this year was a milestone year for me freelancing, with multiple “big-name” publishers hiring me for projects that I cannot yet reveal, and perhaps, may never see the light of day (as can be a fate of all freelance projects). Projects released this year that I worked on include Ghostfire Gaming’s Enchanting Emporiums, Grim Hollow: Player Guide and Grim Hollow: Campaign Guide, and Wet Ink Games’ Garbage & Glory: TrashCo’s Digest for Dumpster Delvers.

Media Appearances

This year was also a big year for me in terms of appearances on podcasts. Somewhat contrary to my stated goal above in reducing my public persona, I was a guest on a number of my favorite podcasts. The majority of these interviews were about PREQUEL, so I won’t list them all, but I was able to slip in some thoughts on other game design topics as well:

Games Played

Thanks to attending conventions and my fortnightly game group, I was able to try out a few new board games and tabletop roleplaying games this year:

Measuring “Success” for Me

Game design is my creative outlet. For now, I have no plans to turn this hobby into a part-time or full-time endeavor. As such, financial metrics are only important to me so much as that I am ideally able to cover the costs of my game design-related activities through the profit generated from my games. This year, through a successful crowdfunder, freelancing projects, and saving costs by traveling to one less convention than routine, I was able to achieve that.

Upon reflection, I realize what fulfills me, after designing games, is to see others playing and talking about my games. It can be a double-edged sword, but as long as comments about my work, both positive and critical, are given constructively, I am grateful to receive the fruits of someone’s time.

If I can inspire others to create or to have meaningful thoughts and experiences, then I consider what I’m doing a success. The goal is to have my work listed in the inspirations or acknowledgements section of games designed by folks I respect, to have my games discussed on the merits of their design philosophies and execution.

As such, some highlights I’ll cherish this year include:

Idle Cartulary’s Review of Chain×Link: It is an incredibly humbling and grateful experience to have your work reviewed by a fellow game designer. I relish the opportunity to hear how differing game design philosophies interpret my work. I’m intimidated by the line, “This is the game Spire should’ve been.” but I am no less grateful for such praise.
Adam (Adam Bell Games) and Nick (Deep Dark Games) playing A Hymn for the Odd-Host: On their own volition, Adam and Nick played A Hymn for the Odd-Host. I admit I was somewhat scared that these designers whose work I admire would soon discover me a fraud. But from what I could tell, they both had a fun time playing, and were gracious enough to provide me with some feedback should I ever feel compelled to revise/expand the game!
Kind words from a stranger at Gen Con: While working a booth for a friend in the exhibition hall, someone came up to me to tell me they were a fan of my work, and encouraged me to keep making games. The sheer surprise of someone telling me they played my games and enjoyed my work out of the blue was more than enough to propel through the rest of the convention.

What’s Next?

It’s not flashy, but generally, I’m aiming for “doing the same as this year, but more of it.” What I mean is that I’ll continue designing and self-publishing games, supplementing with freelance work. Now that I’ve proven to myself I can deliver a crowdfunder, I plan to crowdfund at least one game next year, with the goal of delivering a zine-sized game in a timeframe faster than PREQUEL.

I plan on being more proactive with marketing my games. With four in-print games under my catalogue, I need to be more intentional with reaching out to game stores and connecting them with my co-publishing partners (Plus One Exp and Pandion Games) and distributors.

All in all, 2025 has been another incredible year for me in the tabletop space. Year by year, I continue to grow in my game design and production skills and meet incredible folks in the space. All of this would not be possible without all the family, friends, and fellow creators who support me.

I’ll keep doing this as long as it stays fun.