Re-Stop and Survival: Plans and Ideas for 2026!
- Christina Lopez-Hidalgo
- Jan 14
- 5 min read
Happy New Year 2026!! I hope your holiday season went well!
As I'm sure everyone is currently, I'm looking back on 2025, reflecting, and thinking of what I wish to continue into the New Year and things to improve upon:
A Quick Review of 2025
Not going to lie, 2025 was rough. In some ways rougher even than Covid was in my household (though I didn't have to take my kids out of school for this one! Yay!). I healed more of my DID, bringing the alter count from the original 15 in 2013 down to just me!—which, seeing as I've had several alters basically for my entire life, was downright terrifying and I did end up regressing back to me plus one manager alter named ChrisS.
But, admittedly, seeing as part of the terrifying experience was that I am officially upgraded to Bipolar Type 1 after having my first ever full Manic episode about 2 weeks after full integration happened—which terrified even my husband—I'm going to take the fact that I have a single shred of sanity and only 2 personalities to deal with as a total win for the year!
And then I tried going back to work... Hooo boi...
All I will say about that here, is that we learned a lot about myself and my neurodivergent physicality limits, mistakes were made, we know now that our children are not mature enough to be left home alone unsupervised for several hours of the week yet, and that the Bardificer was an absolute trooper despite his siblings' acting out due to missing me and he was well compensated for his efforts! Xan and I seriously couldn't have tried it without him, and we are deeply grateful for his support.
Project wise, I followed through with my threa—I mean, obsses—I mean, enthusiastic support of 3PleaATV's original interactive novel game Re-Stop that he started on Discord with me and another friend, teaching myself how to use Twine Harlowe and CSS and starting on the enormous task of making it into my first REAL GAME Production!!!! 3PleaATV is still the writer, and I am "merely" doing the art, UX design, and coding side of things, but by the close of October and my employment, I had a working MVP Alpha Demo that co-workers I shared it with were excited about (and asking for a timeframe for the Steam release so they could play it for real) and we had a rough cut game music clip from Xan's musician friend, Black.Star.Muzic, that met 3PleaATV's vision of post-apocalyptic cyberpunk!
October thru December the whole thing was put on Holiday Hiatus so that we could each concentrate on family and personal life without adding any more stress to our lives. Xan and I hosted Thanksgiving for the family with resounding success, I had to cancel the Roguebarian's Birthday Party due to him breaking one of our neighbor's car windows (thankfully he has learned that the satisfaction of seeing the glass break was not worth the consequences that followed, so mission success!), and then I got it in my head that, this year, I wanted to crochet a holiday themed VK Sweater Dress for myself. It didn't go as I had planned XD:
Speaking of Videos!!!! I can't talk about 2025 without bringing up the masterpiece that is Justin Crew's latest Music Video: Shutdown!!! I helped Justin to produce it, with both the Bardificer and I making appearances in it, and I just have to say, that having a team of people who actually know what they're doing and have a passion for it was an absolute treat! Special shoutout to Lauren Davidson for taking all of our editing feedback and turning it into this:
I love it so much TuT
What's on the Horizon for 2026?
1. Re-Stop Or at least, Re-Stop: The Rave Demo. My goal for 2026 is to get all of the macros, art, and UX design completed, and have a fully working, fully finished Demo to put up on Steam by the end of September, with a fully fleshed out Twine template that I can hand over to 3PleaATV so that he can start creating the many branches of The Prologue of the real game in 2027 (or sooner! Sooner would be nice, but probably unrealistic) without him having to reveal all of his cards and secrets to me yet (I know maybe 10% of the lore despite rolling many Nat 20s on it, and he is enjoying my suf—I mean, guessing and anticipation of what more goodness there is to reveal XD)
2. More Music Videos
Justin is still making music, which means he still needs Music Videos, so I will inevitably be enjoying the fun of helping him to produce said video(s) that he decides to embark on this year ^^
3. More Crochet Projects
I honestly forgot how much I enjoy doing it, and I already have some inspiration for a couple I want to try.
4. Some Sort of Revenue Stream
While this last job didn't fit our family's needs, having an extra paycheck every week to pad out what Xan brings in relieved a lot of stress and made home life much more enjoyable overall when we were all home, so I want to find something that will allow me to still contribute financially. Ideally, it would be through streaming me doing the other things on this list, or maybe through a membership system or kickstarter for early release access to Re-Stop, but I know that would involve a lot of work on my part and I haven't really thought it through fully yet, so stay tuned!
5. Book Illustration
My sister is currently writing a first draft to a novel, and I've agreed to do the cover art and some illustrations for it, so hopefully that will be finished and published by the end of the year ^^
Beyond That...
Just the usual annual events of birthdays and holidays with a house full of 3 very imaginative children, surviving the crazy fascist takeover political environment that the United States is steeped in currently, and making it alive around the sun to 2027 (gotta make it to my goal of 81 years old and I'm only 38.5 currently so let's go!).
Oh! And more than just this blog post for the year XD I want to try to do at least quarterly review announcements, but I'm not going to commit to a weekly update, because I'm not a big Game Studio paying people to do it for me XD
I hope 2026 is a productive year for all of us! Ganbatte on making it through this one everyone!
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