2025 in rabbit holes

I prune my photo gallery at the end of every year as best as I can, to avoid having to upgrade my iCloud plan. My favourite part of this is reminiscing about the rabbit holes I fell into at different points of the year, based on the numerous photos or screenshots I'd have about that subject. My 2025 in rabbit holes:

Print and play games

Pictured: Fantasy Food Truck, Shallow Regrets, Ark Minima, Stew, Sprawlopolis and Food Island Chain.

I upgraded my print and play crafting tools early in the year, primarily swapping a pair of scissors out for the highly recommended Fiskars® Recycled SureCut™ Paper Trimmer (12 in.) . It's as good as everyone says! I made a bunch more games, packaging and started a little binder for one-pagers.

A game I really enjoyed from this phase that's not pictured is One For Sorrow . I played it when the designer was refining it for Board Game Geek's 2025 In-Hand Game Design Contest . When looking for the entry to link, I learnt that it won Best Solo Game. Deserving!

Tim Burton

I visited both the Barbie & Tim Burton exhibitions in The Design Museum one Saturday afternoon. I already went down a Barbie rabbit hole when the movie came out and emerged with the Barbie Fashion Designer CD-ROM box set , so fixated on Tim Burton this time.

New to me:

Sewing

I'm new-ish to sewing so my goal for the year is to finish an outfit that I can actually wear outside, and I did it! I finished 2 tops, a pair of pleated pants and a skirt. I love having a practical skill to work on. It's so obvious to me at the end of each project, how much better I am at sewing than when I started.

D.O.N.A.L.D.

During a one-shot of Beakwood Bay , another player mentioned that Donald Duck was huge in German. I looked this up and found out about Deutsche Organisation der nichtkommerziellen Anhänger des lauteren Donaldismus (D.O.N.A.L.D.), which roughly translates to the German Organization of Non-commercial Devotees of Pure Donaldism.

Study group where we read through the scholarly work of Donaldism , anybody?

Tabletop miniature games & kitbashing

My partner plays Warhammer 40k so miniatures are a big part of our hobbies. I'm neutral about that setting though, so whenever we feel like spending our together time on miniatures, we explore what else is out there. Highlights:

Salute 52 and its Kitbash Korner, particularly Veronica Levin 's creations

Exchanging ideas for our seagull vs goons game when hanging out in Brighton

Played the quickstart version of Space Gits . Managed to get it to the table fast because we already had painted orks lying around. It was a blast, I'm looking forward to playing a full game someday. Apologies to our paint-stripped Hotwheels that are still waiting to be turned into Mad Maxesque vehicles. We will get to you someday!

X'treme Runtherd: A Warhammer 40k x Neopets minis game that my partner designed for me!!!

Gaming cons & Netrunner

Other than Salute 52, I also attended:

Beachhead Tabletop Games Expo

Mini Dragon Meet

UK Games Expo (UKGE)

Spiel Essen

Dragon Meet

Pickup Con (Online)

Big year for gaming cons!!

At UKGE, my partner and I played both Null Signal's System Gateway and Earthborne Games' Hubworld: Aidalon and couldn't get enough of the genre. Unfortunately, System Gateway was sold out and Hubworld: Aidalon isn't out until 2027 so we settled for a FFG's Android Netrunner Core Set in the Bring & Buy. We got a tremendous amount of gameplay out of it in the month, literally played multiple games every night for 1-2 weeks straight.

We also read this guide at some point in this phase, and I enjoyed connecting the dots between what it recommends and what I was already doing in-game, even if I had never articulated why.

Venus flytraps

In my mind, the garden centre sells tulips, soil and vegetable seeds. I did not realise you could rock up there and buy a venus flytrap for £5. The first time we saw it trap a fly... dang!

Cats (and a dog)

Big year for cats that are not ours. The one in front is Bells. Bells moved in early this year and would waltz through our garden every day and occasionally enter the house. She paid no attention to Luca, the other cat in the neighbourhood who pines for her. Bells moved away a couple of months ago. We miss you, Bells!

Also shout out to lil Norman, a wire fox terrier that we applied to adopt though did not get.

Procreate

I borrowed my sister's iPad for a few weeks and drew these lil marine creatures. A few weeks later, I got my own iPad and have watched a whole bunch of Youtube tutorials, downloaded a dozen packs of brushes and drawn more than ever this year.

Custom Sylvanian Families

IG served me this photo and opened my eyes:

It's a mod of the Fennec Fox family. I love crafty girlies!

Looking up resources on how to customize these critters reminded me of the good old days on Craftster (RIP).

I have grand plans to do one based on Wednesday. I've made a couple of test outfits but working at this scale is sooo tricky.

Paper engineering

I've followed Kelli Anderson's work for years now and have always wanted to dabble in paper engineering. I've collected a bunch of inspiration and resources over the years. Happy to say that this is the year I finally did the thing!

I learnt some common folds and why they work, then made pop-up Christmas cards with my partner to send out. This channel was helpful:

The Pop-Up Channel

Share your videos with friends, family, and the world

Tabletop roleplaying games (TTRPGs) & making them

Given the amount of time I've spent on them, TTRPGs probably warrant their own post. TDLR: 2025 was my first full year of playing TTRPGs. I played dozens of games, ran some, made my own games, joined jams and even made money from them. The coolest thing happened a couple of days ago, when someone posted a play through of my holiday drawing game on Youtube!! Like what?? Kinda bonkers, considering that I only played my very first game in November 2024. So rewarding to see someone else experiencing something I made.

Looking forward to falling deeper into some of these rabbit holes in 2026, and finding new ones.