January 2026

Happy New Year. I hope this to be the beginning of a long-running monthly blog. I’m interested in keeping a creative diary of sorts, here. A place where I can log all of my learning, ideas, and inspirations as I progress through my various projects. Some of my favorite artists and creatives do this kind of thing, and I love it. Sometimes the behind-the-scenes stuff can be as cool as the work itself, whatever it may be. And I’ve definitely got some work ahead of me.

I spent the last six years or so writing books. In that time, I self-published one novel, three novellas, and amassed about a dozen other manuscripts that remain in various states of completion. I love writing, and I still have stories to tell, but I think I’d like to take a step back from fiction, at least for now—and pursue some other things. Namely, game dev.

I’ve been a gamer for basically my entire life. Raised on the Wii, DS, Xbox 360, and Steam, I can look back at almost any period of my life and pair it with what I’d been playing at the time. A creative outlet as much as a well for inspiration, games have long been linked to my identity and development as an artist. It was a game that inspired me to write my first book, and I must have spent hundreds of hours over the years recording, editing, and uploading gaming videos for various YouTube endeavors. For all of my creative synergy with gaming, however, game dev is one thing I never really got into. Until now.

One of my oldest friends put me onto Lethal Company this month. I also played through David Szymanski’s Iron Lung in preparation for the Markiplier adaptation. Top it off with a night spent revisiting Monstrum with some buddies over drinks and pizza, and January ended up being a pretty awesome month for indie horror. Call it the perfect storm, or call it a lifetime inevitability, but I think it finally happened. I think I finally got bit by the game dev bug.

I named the three games I played in January, but really I can point to a lot of different influences in this. The major one being that we’re currently living in what I’d describe as a retro video game renaissance. Not only are there more ways than ever to experience legacy games and consoles, but people are actively ditching what’s new in favor of what’s old. Some of this may be due in part to less-than-popular trends in the modern gaming industry, but I think a lot of it is just pure nostalgia. People—especially those in my generation (Gen Z)—are absolutely aching for the early 2000s. Be it physical media, Y2K fashion, scene culture, or the indie web, it’s all on the rise again in 2026. And gaming is no different. Just look at how many games are being deliberately made with low-poly art styles reminiscent of early 3D graphics. These days, if a game looks like it might have originally been released on the GameCube or PS2, there’s probably as good a chance that it actually came out within the past couple years on Steam. There’s too many to list them all, but some of my favorite examples of these kinds of games include Crow Country, Tower of Tears, and DUSK. I can’t tell you how much I love this style trend. I believe it to have been instrumental in luring me down the game dev rabbit hole. Maybe it’s just me falling for the nostalgia bait, but something about those retro, rectangular spaces just scratches my brain right. I want to live in them. I want to make them my own. But first, I need to make them real. So here’s my plan.

I’ll admit that this may sound like a circuitous order of operations for eventually getting back to game dev, but stay with me. I’ve decided to start my journey by learning music. And I don’t mean I’m going to start by learning some kind of DAW, but rather the actual guitar. Maybe the piano too. Again, stay with me. This is kind of a two-pronged goal for me. It definitely relates to game dev, but it’s also just something I’ve wanted to do independent of making video games. I figure, if I take the time to learn a couple of instruments and familiarize myself with what goes into being a musician in the traditional sense, my thinking is that it can only end up helping me when the time comes to actually compose my game soundtrack. This may sound strange, but I’d like for my game’s music to be one of its strongest features. Or at least, a strong feature amidst a game full of them. I guess I really just don’t want it to be the weak point. I want my game’s OST to be memorable. To be worthy of adding on Spotify, even. I’ve certainly added some game songs to my own playlists—sometimes even from games I’ve never played. Such is the nature of great video game music. It has the potential to become bigger than the game itself, and I love that.

Guitar will be my initial focus. Learning chords, learning my favorite songs, and going from there. I’m a complete beginner, so I have a long road ahead of me, but I’m excited to see the progress I’ll make just by putting a little bit of time in each day. Besides that, I plan to keep my writing skills sharp partly through this blog, and partly through manuscript revision. I mentioned before that I have a number of stories in various states of completion. Well, a few of those are pretty damn close to completion. Like, one or two editing passes and that’s it, close. I know I said I was planning on putting writing on the back burner this year, but with the extra time I currently have in my schedule, it almost seems silly to not see these last few projects through. I think I’ll continue at the pace I’ve kept for the last four years—one project published per year, with a fourth novella being this year’s release. I’ll talk more about that when I’m closer to the finish line, but as it stands, I’m about half way done with the final draft, with about 7500 words written and the same to go. Another short one, like my last, but I think it’s pretty cool. Stay tuned.

If I find anymore time in between those two ventures—and realistically, this will probably have to wait until Book #5 is fully completed—my next order of business is the website. I’m interested in overhauling it completely. As it currently exists, kieranwiesenberg.com was designed entirely in Squarespace’s site builder. I’m happy with how it turned out for a first go-around, but ever since discovering Neocities about a year ago, I’ve become enraptured with the indie web and the idea of creating my own little digital homepage fully from scratch. Some super talented artists have been able to make some really cool stuff with their sites and I’d love to do the same. I’m not sure if learning HTML, CSS, and JavaScript will help me when I eventually dive into coding for games, but I’m hoping it won’t hurt.

So yeah, a lot on the horizon for 2026. I feel that I am at a turning point in terms of both my life and my creative pursuits. Perhaps it is only natural. I’ll turn 25 this year, and with a quarter of my life nearing completion, perhaps there is no better time in which to embark upon a new journey. I’m excited to see where it takes me. Thanks for reading.

A screenshot from my first night playing Lethal Company