Happy New Year, all! But also, happy new era, DarkRula Media. Yes, photography being added to the site was working toward this new era. DarkRula Media Trifecta, named for the focus I’m giving to all three sections of the site. Articles, stories, and photography. This has been reflected with a change to how the site navigates, most noticeable with the sidebar.
Gone are the category labels linking to the articles of the site. Instead keeping it simple with the same page links to each section found on the home page. History and quick links remain, as those two have not seen a change in navigation. Articles and Stories now have pages of their own. For articles, the latest article list has been moved there. For stories, both buttons are found in there, along with the story universe list.
In terms of growth to the site, 2025 has been the most successful year yet. Over 5000 views and 4000 visitors across the year. The stats might be a bit skewed thanks to some bots that came trawling, but I still see that as a win. After all, if the bots are finding me, it means my visibility has never been higher. And part of that success comes from the articles I’ve published.
Most of the articles people have been finding come from 2024, with my thoughts on New Star GP and Sonic Prime being some of the top viewed. Not counting the ever lucrative Hotel: A Resort Simulator, which has more views than even my landing page. Some articles from 2025 have managed to find themselves among the most viewed, such as the experiences article on Orcs Must Die! Deathtrap and the first impressions of Easy Delivery Co..
For this year, I am wanting to see those numbers grow more. While I’m not going to spoil all of the plans I’m thinking of to do that, I will say that I’m hoping the event months will utilise all three sections of the site to make them the most successful yet. Away from the event months, I’ll still be doing my best to bring great new articles, stories, and photos for all to enjoy.
The month of January is where the journey starts, with the usual look ahead to the year for both games and TV and film. There’s some great games coming across the year that we already know about. Not least the two 6s of GTA and Forza Horizon. Star Wars returns to the big screen with The Mandalorian and Grogu, but there’s some other great TV and film content coming which I’ll also be highlighting.
There’s already been talk of a Developer Direct for Xbox, where Forza Horizon 6 and Fable are set to feature. I’ll be providing thoughts on the things that interest me from that. If any other announcements interest me across the month, I’ll be sure to give them some attention. Just the same as any games I might find. Whether new ones or not. At present, I don’t have anything I’m eyeing up, but definitely want to get at least one experiences article out.
And lastly, Mario Kart World. While I’ve already talked about its open world previously, there’s a few more things I want to talk about with it now that I’ve had plenty of playtime on it. And speaking of playtime, I was doing a lot of tracking of that last year. Using Exophase to get right down to a monthly count for each game I played. And so I want to present those figures to see what it reveals about me. I had excluded Steam games from that, but do want to at least highlight a few from across the year.
