I went to PIG Con by @pigsquad.com this weekend. (My firm was even a sponsor!) I spent almost the entire time on Saturday on the show floor playing games and talking to the developers. Here's some of the highlights of what I got to check out.

The Wyndfinder is now Coming Soon on Steam! Would be so thankful if you would consider adding it to your Wishlist, and sharing with your friends! #indiedev #gamedev And, I mean, the art by @teammlcstudio.bsky.social . My goodness! store.steampowered.com/app/4671110/...

Good points. A multiplayer game is as hard as your opponent, one game or genre is not inherently harder than any other, it just emphasizes different skills. A lot of this is very applicable to fighting games.

We were on KOIN 6 AM Extra this morning to talk about PIGCON! Lots of little shoutouts in here :) www.koin.com/am-extra/gam...

I have finished Expedition 33. Game is good, go play it. I say that as someone who really doesn't enjoy most RPGs, even the ones I know are very good. If you have friends who are playing it, check in on them from time to time to make sure they're okay emotionally.

Thanks to everyone who made it out today! #SF6 🥇 @jacobvela.bsky.social 🥈Crocoswine 🥉Oma #2XKO 🥇 @jaxas.bsky.social 🥈 @jaredtheho.bsky.social 🥉 @jacobvela.bsky.social #KOF13 🥇Bahn Yuki 🥈 @tarrakhawes.bsky.social 🥉Orochi Clark 🎥 www.youtube.com/playlist?lis... See you next time!

One of the big dangers of generative AI isn't that it's bad at tasks, it's that it pretends to not be bad at those tasks and then gaslights with so much confidence that people believe that it can in fact do those things. When you have people increasingly relying on it you run into problems.

My wife referred to a "diss track" as a "defamation song," and I don't know if that reflects more on her or me.

I wish that there was more room in the current game landscape for games to be moderate successes instead of either massive games or shutting down. I am a bit disappointed to see the internet dunking/memeing on this (or any) game though, if only because I know that people worked hard on it.

I have been saying for years that Castlevania has to be one of the easiest franchises to resurrect. Literally just give it to some indie studio that's capable and let them cook. In that same thought, I've also said that Evil Empire/Motion Twin is the single most obvious pick to do it.

I have genuinely tried to get generative AI to help me do things for work. But it gets so much wrong and is so confident about what it gets wrong. This is in things that it should be very good at. The best way to see that LLMs really aren't that great is to ask it about something you know about.

It's a good way of looking at it. While I do think that looking at the "video game industry" as a single thing can be useful in some places, it's not as much when you're looking at what is competing with your game for their player's time.

Support your local tournament organizers. (by inflicting unnecessary distress to the ones that are fans of Metroid like @jaxas.bsky.social)

So let me get this straight. OpenAI needs a license to Disney characters but not any of the other copyright-protected material in their dataset? What's the distinction here? Just those who have the resources to sue them? Got it. Really not helping the "copyright for big corps only" allegations.

This is from a Sonic game, allegedly. What excites me the most about these crossovers in games is the business deals that have to go on between companies to make them happen, and that says something about me.

Star Rift Saga is part of the Metroidvania Fusion Festival on Steam! Get the game for 20% off and the soundtrack for 10% off until November 10th. You can also discover other metroidvanias of all sizes during the event. store.steampowered.com/app/2158690/...

It was a fun bracket, my final set went to game 5, final round. Always a good time with @salemfighters.bsky.social.

I find this fascinating for a few reasons. It shows how games can't easily cater to both players and market speculators. Their interests in the game are directly opposed to one another. Which is a big reason why I think that crypto/blockchain has no good place in games. 🧵

One of my biggest gripes with the way that fighting games are monetized (paid game+DLC characters each year) is that the goals of the game's balance and profitability are at odds. Is the new DLC character overpowered at launch? Maybe, but the incentive is there to make it strong so that it sells.

Group that makes cool remixes purely because they love creation and the game music that inspired them says AI is antithetical to their core values because of course it is. The problem is people who want to pretend to be artists and get the credit without actually doing the work to learn the skills.

It might be because I played a lot of Hades so I was a lot more familiar with that game (and had more upgrades), but Hades II feels a lot harder. Which it could be, since this game is aimed at people who already played and beat the first one. Game is very good though.

(Epilepsy warning, probably.) I think I won Maze Mice.

Price increase for Xbox consoles in the US "due to changes in the macroeconomic environment." Look, if you're going to be vague about it, you're part of the problem. Just say what it is, tariffs being imposed by the current administration are increasing the price in the form of an import tax.🧵

Star Rift Saga is on sale for 20% off for a week long deal on Steam! You can also pick up one of the bundles on the store page for an additional discount on other items.

Mike made a pretty bold assumption here about my brain not exploding, but I do appreciate being called an indie dev daredevil. I was on Mike's podcast where I talked about the basics of what indie devs should know about the law. Give it a listen so I can do it again and talk about other topics.

Work has begun on Star Rift Saga's 1.1 content update. Here's a preview of a new robot that will appear in translocator rooms.

I came across this trailer last night and I have rarely needed a game beamed straight into my eye holes so immediately as this one. The opening made me think Star Fox, and the gameplay confirmed everything I look for out of that. Hey @chuhailabs.com, I need a release date ASAP.

Okay yeah, Kirby Air Riders seems like it's building on that prototype. It sure is Air Ride, but again. And more. Which is what fans have wanted. I have my reservations, but game looks solid. Love how many of the visual effects were seemingly pulled straight from Smash. Efficient.

Hot take: I think the original Kirby Air Ride is only alright. It's still fun, but mostly a good prototype for different ideas rather than a great game on its own merits.

I have no idea how Game Changer is going to get any wilder for their next season, but I'm excited to find out.

Rivals of Aether II is a good game. It's a platform fighter like Smash Bros but designed intentionally and has an online mode that actually works. Character designs are super cool with everyone doing some very neat tricks. It is free to try and on sale this weekend for Evo. Go try it out!

As a reminder, Star Rift Saga's launch discount ends tomorrow at 10 AM! Pick it up at a discount before then!

Calling any game that is complete and/or not receiving new updates dead or obsolete is unsustainable and dumb, but Apple codifying such a fallacy as policy is bad for the industry as a whole, but especially for small devs. Let games be complete works without the constant need for new content.

I think that the most interesting part about this thread is that is shows how different score systems can encourage very different feels for your game. The score system here creates a tension and release rather than requiring you to play your best at all times.

I feel like there should be more fanfare on the Steam interface when you release a game, but here we are.

I'll be releasing Star Rift Saga TOMORROW. I've cut together a preview of the entire soundtrack created by @vincentcolavita.bsky.social.

After some time with Mario Kart World, I think that it's a lot of fun, but flawed. However, I think that updates could be done that would make it much more fun without being huge to develop or changing the core vision for the game. Note that these changes are purely focused on offline modes.🧵

Sometimes I think about game design quirks or challenges, or think about specific game's designs or problems and I want to post them somewhere but they're too long for a thread. Maybe after I release Star Rift Saga (next week!) I'll start writing blog posts about game development and design.

Star Rift Saga releases in just two weeks. I'm both excited, and terrified. store.steampowered.com/app/2158690/...

While I wish law school taught you how to be a lawyer, practice looks so different for different lawyers, even within the same practice type, to the point where it would be hard to teach much. My law firm, Argo Law, looks and functions very differently from most law firms, and that's by design.

Been getting back into digital painting a bit so I did some (unofficial) key art for Arc, the main character of Star Rift Saga!

I've been a proponent of RCV for a while now. It's just good game design- if the players aren't playing the way you'd like them to because the game incentivizes it, change the rules of the game to encourage the player behavior you want. The "players" here are both the candidates and the voters.

Last week I searched for information on when a game was coming to consoles. Google's AI summary was a release window as though it was fact. The source was a Reddit post that speculated on when it might be based on dev's comments. Probability says this answer is fact, because facts are written down.

It turns out that billionaires do fund media passion projects, they just end up taking some degree of creative control when they do. (Pictured: Cristiano Ronaldo in SNK's COTW. SNK is majority owned by the Saudi crown prince. CR played for Al-Nassr at the time, the Saudi football club.)

Not going to lie, the Final Fantasy set in Magic sort of makes me wish I had more tolerance for RPGs. There's a lot of cool flavor and allusions here that I feel like I'm only getting a bit of.

Star Rift Saga is part of Steam Next Fest, and the demo is playable now! I've been working on this for a long time, so it's something of a relief to be so close to the finish line. Go check it out now!

The perception of cheaply made games by like 1 dude minus all the contractors that blow up hurts us because when we ask for a real budget, someone says "well I saw an article that this other game cost $60K to make and sold 1 million copies" and that ends the convo

I've been thinking about this a lot lately because Star Rift Saga is releasing *next month.* I have worked on it for a long time alone, but at the same time @merlinthewizard.bsky.social and @vincentcolavita.bsky.social (among others) were instrumental in creating the art, sound, and feel it has.

Fun fact- Steam emails you if your game has issues to be addressed, but doesn't notify you if your game has been approved. They just drop a green button on your dashboard.