2024. A Year in Review
Salutations! As the dust settles on another year, I thought it’d be nice to take a stroll backwards through the mists of time, and reflect on the year that was. Grab yourself a nice tea, coffee, or mulled wine - why not, I’ve got one, nobody’s watching - and let’s review the year in the rear view mirror…
April: Death Crown & Pantaloon’s Revival
After a few month’s of hiatus at the start of the year, having grown too quickly to sustain our partnerships, we redesigned how Pantaloon was going to operate.
We adopted a more sustainable model, created some new technology to deliver our games, and changed a whole bunch of other things in the back-end. There were some initial gremlins, but it paved the way for iteration and improving our service as the year progressed.
We re-opened the doors to the newsletter in April by giving away Death Crown, a minimalist strategy game about death, revenge, and domination. Fittingly bizarre for our newly rebooted newsletter, this set the precedent for the ten games that would follow later in the year…
(April also saw the debut of our first-ever Pantaloon Puzzle; a throwaway bit of fun that I didn’t think all too much of at the time. This ended up becoming one of the most popular aspects of the operation, and an integral part of where we’re at today.)
May: Penrose—A Text Adventure That Played With Time & Space
The follow up to Death Crown was the opposite in almost every respect. Rather than striking 1-bit visuals, we adopted a game with no visuals at all. Doublespeak’s Penrose is an innovative text adventure that twisted words into entire worlds, forging a mind-bending narrative that delved into quantum-mechanical subject matter.
With Penrose, Pantaloon established a theme that the games we put on our pedestal could be any size, shape or genre — and this discontinuity would be continuity in of itself.
June: Interactive Art-piece KIDS, by Playables
June was a special one. Somehow, we managed to partner with the incredible Playables - a studio I’ve always admired - getting existential with the notable interactive art-piece, KIDS. The game is short but perfectly formed, forcing questions around the meaning of life and why everyone’s jumping into that ominous hole…
July: Getting Trolleyed with Supermarket Times
July brought with it possibly our most bizarre offering yet: Supermarket Times; a deliciously odd adventure game that turned grocery shopping into a surreal descent down the most peculiar of rabbit holes. Perhaps more than any other game over the course of the year, I’m so happy this one just exists.
August: Outshine Your Typing Skills
Adding further texture to the games we were dropping into your inboxes, August saw us throw our weight behind a typing game. And without a doubt the fastest, sexiest typing game you’ll have ever played. Outshine was a perfect reminder that smashing keyboards can be both productive and cathartic.
September: The Debut of Puzzletrunk
September was a risky month where everything could have gone terribly wrong. Not only did we put out a game nobody had ever heard of, but it had also been made in three weeks, hadn’t been tested at scale, and was about to release with two versions right off the bat.
Puzzletrunk is our own dedicated puzzle-launcher— Pantaloon’s first original release. This treasure chest of riddles, ARGs and challenges meant that we were no longer shackled by the limitations of the web-based puzzle format we’d adopted up until this point. I felt that the simple URL + password style of thinking was going to get stale before long, and realised that we could be offering something far deeper.
This is still the beginning for Puzzletrunk, which will grow and evolve over time. The game has already seen much iteration since its first outing, in fact, and we carefully collate your feedback each month to improve the puzzle the next.
More on the future of Puzzletrunk soon…
October: Classical Absurdity with Four Last Things
For October, we gave you Four Last Things by Joe Richardson - a developer whose work we’ve championing for some time. A point-and-click renaissance masterpiece dripping in irreverent humour, FLT was the perfect fit for delivering on our mission of platforming bold and bizarre games. We managed to time the partnership shortly before the release of Joe’s latest game - and the third title in the Immortal John Triptych - Death of the Reprobate.
November: Celebrating Sokpop’s Ninth Anniversary
November marked a milestone not just for us but for the indie scene at large, as we celebrated Sokpop’s ninth anniversary as a studio with not one but THREE of their delightfully quirky games - White Lavender, Luckitown and Bamboo EP.
Oh, be sure to check out our interview with the Sokpop lads by the way - some gold in there.
December: Into the Cold with Kona
Finally, bringing us right back to present day, we’re wrapping up the year with Kona; Parabole Games’ chilly atmospheric mystery set in 1970s Quebec. Equal parts exploration, detective and survival, it’s a perfect ‘cosy’ game for Winter, despite ‘cosy’ being the antithesis of Pantaloon’s brand.
2024 in Numbers
3,811 subscribers going into 2024
24,618 subscribers going into 2025
11 Game Partnerships
19,500 Game Keys given
$187,968 worth of games given away in total
10,000+ Puzzletrunk players
On 2025…
Next year will see a gear shift that will take Pantaloon into exciting new territory, and I can’t wait to talk more about it. For now, though, know that nothing will change with respect to Pantaloon’s mission to platform the peculiar, and shining a big obnoxious spotlight on the work of talented developers.
See you next year x