Development Recap 2025
2025 has undoubtedly been a year of outstanding development. I'm very happy and thankful what I've accomplished this year. This blog post will cover the most important milestones throughout the year. To sum up, some longstanding projects have recieved many more updates. Some projects have been discontinued. Some things have changed. Let's dive into this years review!
Table of contents
HortusFox
HortusFox has recieved many great updates. Overall I'm extremely happy how the project has evolved. We can safely conclude that HortusFox is a professional project with a number of cool features. I really have to say that I'm very proud of this leafy project. And the fact that it's an open-sourced project under the MIT license makes it even better.
To me HortusFox is the perfect interconnection between nature and computer technology. Of course, the project will remain open-sourced under aforementioned license. I'm so happy of what I've accomplished with the project. And I want to thank everyone who contributed and supported the project. I'm thankful to everyone who donated. And of course I'm happy for everyone who uses HortusFox to manage their leafy friends.
Meanwhile the project has over 1.2K stars and more than 800K docker image downloads. It has been growing into an entire ecosystem consisting of the app, website, theme repo, an advertisement game, and a discord bot. There are even some managed self-hosting app providers who added the project to their catalogue.
I also got the opportunity to pitch HortusFox during a workshop event at the FrOSCon 2025. This was a very great experience to talk to other developers in-person and tell them a bit about the project. You can see a list of all pitched projects here.
AquaShell
AquaShell has matured a lot in the recent time. This has eventually led to the fact that I've been using it as a replacement for Cmd and PowerShell since quite some months now. And I have to say, it's really great to use a self-made scripting shell along with a self-made programming language.
In 2025, I've published some cool updates to AquaShell. I also created useful administration snippets as well as a few complex scripted applications. Imagine having your app project open in VS Code, consisting of a well-structured app layout and various complex script files. A very motivating feeling indeed!
I also tried to push the limits a bit when I created a small asteroids game using AquaShell. But what I liked more was when nostalgia walked along the way, and I created a Counter-Strike Retroboard in AquaShell. This was not only a cool ride down the memory lane, but also a fun experience to create such a project in my own programming language.
Casual Desktop Game
Casual Desktop Game recieved two major updates this year, one of them just this month in december. It's amazing to recall that the project originally started somewhere around 2018. The Full Release on Steam happened during february, 2020. 5 years later we celebrated the 5-year anniversary. And this month another big update has been published.
I'm really amazed how the project grew over the last years. It got many new tools, features, bugfixes, workshop items and there are frequently screenshots being posted.
To me, this game is a nostalgic tribute to the original Desktop Destroyer by Miroslav Nemecek, a czech engineer. I played the original Stress Reducer over 20 years ago when I was a teenager. Back in the days, there were many software toys, showing vast creativity. Desktop Destroyer (originally simply named "Desktop Games") was one of my favorite ones. And at some point I wanted to recreate it with a modern approach. Which I did. I'm very thankful and happy that Casual Desktop Game is so well recieved. I'm convinced that I've successfully managed to honor the original game with my creation.
Misc projects
I also want to mention miscellaneous projects that I worked on through the year. These are merely some side-projects, but worth a mention. One of these side-projects is Krepagotchi, a virtual pet game where you take care of a Krepa (depicting a Minecraft Creeper). It's a cute lil' pal for your pocket. If you want to experience tamagotchi nostalgia combined with Minecraft, you should check it out. Another one is the previously mentioned Counter-Strike Retroboard. It's similar to a soundboard, but it provides quite some more features, hence the name. Play iconic CS sounds, view cool configuration scripts, dive into long forgotten custom CS maps and shoot around with weapons. You can also throw flashbangs and plant/defuse the bomb. Furthermore, you can also use spraylogos. Another retro project I re-created is ApocServ, a server-side hack for GoldSrc engine based games, specifically Counter-Strike 1.6. It was another time of going down the memory lane and was fun to make. I've also made some more scripted applications in my own programming language. Furthermore, RedHotSubs - the free NSFW client for Reddit - has been made public, so you can create your own work off of it.
Game Jams
In 2025, I also hosted two game jams, namely the Virtual Pet Jam 2025 and the NPD Awareness Jam. The former was a cool nostalgic experience. There have been a lot of participants and a neat amount of game submissions. I really like it when younger folks create games that really catch the nostalgic feeling of past pixelish virtual pet games, with a modern flavor. It was fun play-testing all the submissions, and for the sake of appreciation I commented constructive feedback on every game I played. The latter game jam was especially designed to raise awareness for NPD (Narcissistic Personality Disorder). As you may know, I've been diagnosed with NPD and I really detest how public media, pop-psychology and wannabe influencers portray this recognized mental health condition as the "asshole disorder". These people do also paint pwNPD as villains who prey on the weak and well-meaning. This couldn't be farther from the truth. That's why I did my part in hosting such a game jam to show people that NPD is not what most people want it to be. I also put scientific information in the jam description so people can educate themselves. A shout-out to Dr. Mark Ettensohn, one of the very few people who openly educate about NPD in a compassionate and understanding manner. Thank you!
Discontinued projects
Some projects have been discontinued and I want to give them some credit here. The production instance of HelpRealm at helprealm.io (and later helprealm.net) is one of the projects that I shut down in 2025. The project was running for about 5 years. It was my first bigger web development project using Laravel, and it helped me landing my first job as a software developer back in the days. I'm really greatful on how it served me all the time. Granted, originally created as a practice and portfolio project, there are many things that I'd be doing differently nowadays. Updating it turned out to be a hassle. Also not many people were using it, so I decided to cancel the domain. Of course, you can still view the sourcecode on GitHub. Steamwidgets is also one of the projects that I shut down. This was because I haven't had any use for it anymore and people using it were mostly fluctuating. Given a lack of feedback, I eventually decided to cancel the domain and package. Generally, it was a cool idea to create such a project, but not all things get enough traction, you know. But you can still view the project on GitHub and host it yourself as your own instance.
Conclusion
So, that's the recap for 2025. I hope you enjoyed reading it. I'm looking forward to 2026 which will definitely bring more updates, feature additions and maybe even some more projects into existence. I hope you all have a great New Year's Eve and I'll see you all in the next year. If you like my work, please consider sponsoring me on GitHub, buying me a coffee and following me on BlueSky or join my Discord server. Cheers!
