With games like this we think about difficulty as thematic link to suffering and struggle. And it works, even in silksong. But an obtuse puzzle game can be seen as a way to feel joy -- for that moment of brilliance. The way we interpret difficulty can be very genre-prescriptive.

really happy with art practice progress, even if there's nothing i can show

It's orb pondering hour

i was curious what had happened with them and.. i guess @futureclub.dev is just gone now? sadness.

speaking of migraines if these morons outlaw tylenol i'm joining the resistance

as someone who gets migraines and in particular tends to be strongly affected by them during summer, i have to admit i did not have 'summer gets more powerful every year' on my bingo card for making them worse. it's finally below 70s and i am making efforts at being a functional human being again.

Some hand sheets I made for the animation team! I looked at how Dana drew hands a lot and coupled it with my own anatomical knowledge of hands. #KnightsOfGuinevere

alabaster dawn is outrageously pretty and i'm going to be studying that pixel art for sure

I used to play fighting games competitively, but it was more to prove to myself that I understood and was correct about things than it was to win. (which is kinda why I lost interest immediately when I peaked out lol) I tend to be pretty chill outside of self-improvement in any games these days

this is a good diagram. i sit squarely in the feel stupid zone but also DROD erasure!!1!1 chart invalidated

My weigh-in on game difficulty discourse is that difficulty, too, is aesthetic in nature. Everything in game design is about crafting an experience, including giving the players a struggle time; to make them feel hardship in a controlled environment. It's totally a valid way to make a game.

work work wark wark

I've been seeing a lot of pixel artists struggle with Bluesky's image compression, so I'd thought I'd share how to get clear, crisp pixels on the site! Share to help a fellow pixel-artist! #pixelart #tutorial

#GodotEngine 4.5 has finally arrived! 🎉 With this new release, we made meticulous efforts in order to amplify what is possible to do with our engine, guided by our goal of making gaming and game development for everyone! godotengine.org/releases/4.5/

🐈️

i 100%ed mimic logic after like well over a year doubt is the hardest category by far

had an epiphany about my struggles improving my shading process when drawing and now i'm staring at all my work differently and going "ohhhhhh" now to put it into practice....

wow! today is also the 8-year anniversary of the release of PC LOVE LETTER, the vaporwave EP i recorded in a week back in 2017, which is now $0 or pay-what-you-want :) esselfortium.bandcamp.com/album/pc-lov...

This is a powerful stream schedule

Few things have thrown my brain into fits lately like the idea of being stuck cleaning up other people's code again. Like, feeling actual anxiety attacks broiling up from below at the thought of it. More reasons I think I need to get away from programming in the future, even as I'm good at it...

Cirno Day

doing a bunch of anatomy drawing practice lately. i figure if i fix enough of the mistakes i make, eventually it will be only mistakes that i will notice left

is this where i say i never played the original hollow knight either

Yoshi-P wants to remind fans that developers are also people too He says that harsh words and non constructive criticism can potentially demoralize developers that they don't want to make games anymore and as a result gamers could miss out on that next great game...

I had some leftover rainbow filament left, so here's my daughter's build.

also still planning on adding some sort of commissions thing for spritework doodles. I found that doing these little things was simultaneously relaxing and also people liked them way more than I expected them to. won't be doing _a lot_ of them but a few here and there sounds nice.

simple collage of my recent #ffxiv sprites; drawn for friends or for hobby. Mostly 24x tile base jrpg-esque sprites, with some variations. all were done with reference and are shared with permission~

arting journey continues today by: staring at feet

simple collage of my recent #ffxiv sprites; drawn for friends or for hobby. Mostly 24x tile base jrpg-esque sprites, with some variations. all were done with reference and are shared with permission~

pretty happy how that turned out. going to be practicing more going forwards so expect more random doodle things...

i had the random idea of "what if i draw my xiv chara as a megaman x sprite" for no reason other than practice my friend wanted a cookie so i drew one for her. another friend suggested it should help shoot things like an option that floats around you i learned a fair bit about the sprite style

i had the random idea of "what if i draw my xiv chara as a megaman x sprite" for no reason other than practice my friend wanted a cookie so i drew one for her. another friend suggested it should help shoot things like an option that floats around you i learned a fair bit about the sprite style

My variant on this is that judging something as being “interesting” rather than “good” should be normalized. There are lots of polished, fine-tuned products that I find bland as hell, and there’s lots of poorly-made, incomprehensible media that is utterly fascinating!

completely laid out by like a ten degree shift in temperature today. so anyway hi I've been kinda quiet on socials lately but I've been around and busy.

Shiren 5 (Tower of Fortune) is a gorgeous videogame and, so far, I still like it more than 6 overall. Absolutely worth playing that.

@iiotenki.bsky.social you somehow made this happen

blue revolver sales help keep a roof over my head so if u like the game (or my work in general) please buy n share it with ur mates👍 store.steampowered.com/app/439490/B...

the sense of being permanently right on the edge of shipping suddenly makes any changes to the game's scope higher stakes, arguments far more stressful. Over years, that kind of stress melts even what should be a relatively healthy dev environment into a place that burns people out.

Like a thing that can happen is you have a deadline, and the deadline gets extended, and extended, and as a result you're _always_ in that 6-months-from-deadline period so rather than being able to take your time or genuinely plan ahead, it's always like "just this last stretch. no this last one"

my take on "the dream of 7 year development" is that while it's nice to have a steady income for that long, a lot of times that length of development means the game is in dev hell and the uncertainty that causes can add up in really stressful ways.

you ever just be like "i'm gonna make a gigantic vat of mac and cheese. and corn bread. and kielbasa" because i sure was today

rain is so nice

It is incredibly disappointing to see people make up pure fiction to justify themselves, but you also need to take responsibility for interrogating what you post and repost. You are not immune to misinfo. Be credulous and discerning and will find it much easier to not completely embarrass yourself.

itchio ain't the enemy here, people

One of the things I'm really thankful to my JP knowledge for is how many art tutorials it opens up. Particularly ones that _aren't_ videos. I really feel like a lot of English language resources are just video only these days...

coding opinion: games are state machines all the way down and trying to write them as if they're _literally anything else_ is just making more work for everyone involved

Good luck? I'm fighting for my life out here.

void stranger made me wonder if i should go _even more_ for sickos for addlemoth than i already have

I think that as an indie game dev without a large publisher, your target audience is not gamers in general, it is sickos. It's hardcore sickos that will be diving the depths of your genre and finding your game, and it is sickos who will be spreading it. Please the passionate, not the masses.

a few days of work on the tilesets later, i think this stage select fits the Spooky Cave aesthetic nicely #Addlemoth #gamedev