4 Mystery Gaming Goals For The New Year
A guide to help anyone set and achieve their goals in the year ahead!
Happy Mystery Monday — and welcome to a new year!
Let's kick off the year with some tips that'll help you all the way to the next one.
It's January 1st, which means you're probably thinking about all the things you wanted to accomplish last year but never got around to actually doing.
So, what better time to share a guide on setting and accomplishing goals?
Do you have a massive backlog of mystery games you just don't have time to play?
Are you hoping to connect with like-minded people and make new friends?
Are you looking to sharpen your skills of deduction?
Do you want to learn how to make your own mystery game?
All of these are valid goals for the new year.
If you struggle with any of the above, today's post will help you out!
Every year is a new chance for us to learn and grow into better versions of ourselves.
And time is our most precious resource, so I encourage everyone to use it effectively.
Spending just a few minutes at the start of the year to think about where you want to be at the end of the year will absolutely help you get there.
So it’s important to consider your goals for the year ahead.
Below are 3 components that define successful goals:
1. The goal has a realistic scope.
What is the goal?
If a goal seems too big or beyond your ability, break it down into smaller goals that you can actually handle.
Is the goal something that you could reasonably accomplish within the next year? Assume that everything will take twice as long and will be twice as difficult as you expect.
2. The goal has a proper plan.
How will you achieve the goal?
Write it down step-by-step. It often helps to work backwards. But if you can't explain how you'll do it, it just won't happen.
Set aside time every day to make progress toward your goal. Measure your results against your plan, and adapt the plan accordingly. Always be prepared for your plan going wrong!
3. The goal is inherently rewarding.
Why do you want to achieve the goal?
Celebrate small victories with rewards. Ideally, just making progress toward the goal motivates you.
Hold yourself accountable to prevent yourself from missing deadlines and giving up too soon. Friend groups are great for holding everyone in the group accountable and providing support when things get difficult.
Your 2024 mystery gaming goals
With all that in mind, it should be a lot easier for you to identify goals that you can actually accomplish over the next year, and to avoid chasing goals that will waste your time and energy.
Now let's get into the specifics for each goal I mentioned at the beginning.
1. Clearing your gaming backlog
It’s easy to snatch up tons of mystery games at a low price during a Steam sale.
But if you’re like me, you end up without any time to play them.
A goal like "play 30 mystery games this year" sounds reasonable at first, but there are some problems with such a vague statement.
Out of all the games out there, which 20 should you choose to play?
And how will you make enough time to play all of them?
Here are some tips for choosing the right games to play:
Prioritize games based on length. It's much easier to meet your goal of 30 games if they're 4 or 5 hours long each, as opposed to games 40 or 50 hours long each.
Prioritize games based on recommendation. Instead of setting a goal of 30 short games, set a goal of playing 15 longer games that your friends recommend playing. Quality over quantity.
Prioritize games based on release timing. Don't even think about old games — just note the upcoming releases this year and play those as soon as they become available. Maybe you'd rather play demos than full games, especially since you can get through demos a lot faster.
This is especially relevant for Early Access games like Your Turn to Die or Methods: The Canada Files. Just like watching a serialized TV show, playing Umineko as each game released over the course of 4 years (and before the answer was revealed) was an incredibly unique experience for me personally, and it's something that can't be experienced in the future if you missed out when it happened.
2. Make new gaming friends
If you want to make new friends, you'll need to engage in mystery game communities.
I wouldn't recommend setting a goal like "make X number of friends" because you just can't control external factors (and again, quality over quantity). Instead, focus on what you can control.
As mentioned above, if a game is in Early Access or has just released, a lot of people will be talking about it, and these strategies will work best with popular games that people are talking about.
You can make a lot of friends just from theorizing about a game's mysteries or helping each other solve puzzles.
You can also make many friends from sharing your passion for each game. Creating things like fan-art, fan-fiction, or even fan-games will bring you into contact with other passionate fans.
If you like to watch videos about mystery games — don't just like and subscribe, but actively engage in the comments as well. Maybe even make your own videos!
And the most obvious tip is to join the Discord servers for your favorite games and interact with the other fans you’ll find there!
Keeping these things in mind, you can set goals like "draw 20 pieces of fan-art" or "write 100 comments" or “interact in the Discord once a day” and you'll organically meet new people and make friends as time goes on.
3. Sharpen your detective skills
Playing mystery games keeps our brains sharp.
Just like with any other kind of game, you'll want to seek greater challenges the better you get.
Try keeping score of how many mysteries you correctly solved this year.
And, if the mystery game allows it, try playing on the hardest difficulty setting — or invent your own challenges to further test your skills.
You should also try different subgenres to test your deductive skills in different environments. You might be great at whodunnits, but horrible at escape rooms, so you could resolve to "solve 5 escape rooms in record time (for you)" this year.
The skills you learn from playing mystery games are highly transferable to solving mysteries in the real world, so the more you can train your brain, the better!
4. Learn game development
Last but certainly not least, I know a lot of you are curious about making your own games!
Some goals for those of you just getting started might include:
releasing your first game
setting up your first Steam page
releasing your first demo to the public
If you'd like to teach yourself a new skill, your goal could be:
make a game using [programming language]
draw 5 sprites using [drawing software]
compose 10 songs using [music software]
For more experienced developers, you might try making a different subgenre of game, or if you're feeling lucky, making a new game with a bigger (but still reasonable) scope.
Mystery gamedevs working full-time might choose to set a goal of "selling 1,000 copies of my game", but again let's focus on inputs, not outputs.
Instead, try these goals:
contact 100 influencers
contact 20 publishers
attend 3 networking events
That way, regardless of the results, you’ll know that you’ve done your best.
Final thoughts
Whether it’s to make new friends, improve your skills, or create your own game, hopefully you’re now motivated to commit to some kind of long-term goal for the year.
As a final note, please remember that it’s still okay if you don’t meet your goal!
Sometimes plans change, or emergencies come up, and things don’t go as planned no matter how hard you tried.
Maybe you realized that the goal you set just wasn’t for you, and that’s fine too.
But if you still want to go for it, you can use the experience you’ve gained to make even better progress next year!
Thank you for reading!
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