You know who turns up, every single time we have yet another extreme climate event? Not the government. Māori. Every single time. And this govt just keeps kicking them in the teeth? Nope. Enough. #OneTermGovernment #nzpol #NZ

Starting to feel like this thing might actually become a game. Surreal to be putting an actual authors writing in my game...surreal but truly delightful! #indiedev #adventuregame

Got a little side-tracked today and decided to figure out if I could make the dialogue text appear in a nicer way. Turns out, yep. The letters in the second bit of dialogue appear to zoom into place slightly, which I think feels nicer #indiedev

Next up: Durandis 🧡🤘

Not sure if any of you are amateur magicians (Sidenote: there is a surprising cross-over between game-devs and magicians...I'm sure there is some psychology to analyze there), but I just did a double-lift that fooled myself, so that's a great start to the week! #magic

Thanks to @majormcdoom.bsky.social for the hints about different viewport settings in blender. They really make things clearer when editing models (original on the left, with changes on the right). Edges and faces are clearer, and its easier to 'feel' how the model looks #indiedev

Once again gushing about these Blender viewport settings for low-poly modeling. My weird brain viscerally rejects the default shading - it feels like working with sheet metal. Now I get things done because it feels like carving marble. #b3d #gamedev #indiedev

I’ve made lots of progress made on my cozy building game: 🌳🏡Island Architect🏡🌳. Therefor time for a new gameplay collage for #screenshotsaturday! #indiegame #gamedev #indiegamedev

This is the HEART of Aotearoa/New Zealand - a cyclone threatening us by tomorrow and already marae are ready and willing to welcome anyone. They have such value and deserve the rest of us to support them.💜 #AoNZ #marae #Māori #cyclone

Make a tiny change in Blender, reimport, and voilà! suddenly your character is squished as though they have a mini black hole where their, well, hole would be! (how she should look on the left, after doing almost nothing on the right) #indiedev #gamedev

We could just... fix everything, starting right now. www.emilywrites.co.nz/a-two-bedroo...

I've wished for Arab-made games about Arab mythology for so long, and despite assisting on the project I still can't believe there's one swinging for the fences this hard. House of Hikmah is something very needed in a time where the world would rather erase us. www.youtube.com/watch?v=HZTu...

We don't actually have to put up with this! It's time we grabbed these lunatics by the armpits and frog-marched them off to their overdue punishment, detailed here: www.emilywrites.co.nz/a-two-bedroo...

Even though I am 46, and have been a dad for 24 years, cooking a meal for family and extended family is still deeply satisfying and joyful

I was chatting today about how I build my indie game characters out of smoothed cubes.

This is so, so well-articulated.

I'm a big fan of 'building to the camera' in our indie games.

Block this account and send a message.

Bombshell reporting here on the Julian Batchelor defamation case against TVNZ. A must read: www.1news.co.nz/2026/03/27/o...

Must read team 👇 #nzpol

Could I get some support from fellow devs and creatives? We got a negative review on Steam for AI use... despite there being absolutely *no* AI use in our game. TL;DR? Give a chance to show that AI wasn't used, or you'll be harming the very same artists you claim to be helping.❤️

I was asked to give my thoughts on generative AI usage in games - here they are!

The sky was really putting on a show this morning 🌞 #sunrise

A little behind the scenes peak. One of the things I like about game dev is how similar it is to theatre or film production, or even magic (one of my other hobbies). Its all smoke and mirrors and doing more with less #indiedev #gamedev

Hmmm...fluctuating year, what could that mean...#indiedev

Time to get creative with the wealth of feijoa...this time its feijoa and apple crumble #nz #feijoa

weird: we choose to let the world’s most stupid venal and sociopathic people rule weirder: we could stop choosing this at any moment

For those wondering, this is how #Nechromia stuff starts existing XD Make it first, perfect it later right? hahah

Sometimes testing means you just use "Charlie Brown Grown Ups" voices. Im pretty sure this is what I sound like to my kids! #indiedev #gamedev

You’re welcome. Happy day! 😆

I'm mostly still too ashamed of the way my game looks to show it to the non gamers I know irl The gamers I know largely understand there is more to life than graphics and games are complicated, but non gamers it just looks like pixilated kids drawings

POV: You trust the process Wishlist: store.steampowered.com/app/3241560/... #gamedev #indiegames

Managed to get a cloudless night for the lunar eclipse down here in NZ. Made the 14 and 15yo get up to have a look. Not entirely sure they were impressed! #lunareclipse

I've set up a Patreon where you can subscribe to get all sorts of extras around my books, podcast, live shows. I was squeamish about doing this but, well, *I* support various artists this way, and I've been taken advantage of a lot in life, and I'm nice, so why not? www.patreon.com/MarkWatsonWo...

First feijoa of the season. Delicious! Must be heading in to autumn down here #feijoa #nz

All the ways we accidentally procrastinate Here is a non-exhaustive list of the ways I procrastinate on all sorts of things, and how you probably do it too

Slightly shameless dad promo here, but you should check out this song by my eldest (even though it was 6 years ago) - cool lyrics, awesome voice, nice guy...super proud of him! #indiemusic youtu.be/ZlzC7aDB-1o?...

Kia ora everyone! Still working on the new game. Lots of behind the scenes. The latest is lip syncing to give the characters that 'attempting to look like they are talking' feel! I have a system that is not too hard to set up and also gives an acceptable result, so that's a win! #gamedev #indiedev

New science shows there's a brain region that governs procrastination. But there might just be some other stuff going on too.

My podcast is back tomorrow. It's a mystery story with all sorts of other aspects. Many comedians are in it. It's always under 40 minutes. The arguments for you listening to it are stacking up, here.

These echo chambers are made by recommendation algorithms, by social connection (and rupture), by our own biases, and by deliberate propaganda machines. They seem impenetrable.

Does anyone have any idea how we break the echo chambers? No Trump voter in my family will ever know what actually happened to Alex Pretti or Renee Good. They will believe the officers were justified. They will watch Fox News and that will be the end of it.

One other Earth Must Die thing from the archives - because I love seeing other people's WIP stuff, and I think it's good to expose what a mess games are for the longest time: Here's what EMD looked like when @mikerose.bsky.social agreed to give me money, and how it looks now. Never give up.

I've been running an indie games studio for 15 years now, and it felt like a good time to boil down what I've learned into 4 pieces of advice: www.pentadact.com/2026-01-08-1... I hope it's of use, not least because goddamn I forgot how long blog posts take to write.

I'm really happy that The Bad Newsletter has a new home at Emily Writes Weekly, and really unhappy that my first piece is about the ultra-munted weirdness that the Chaos Coalition is doing to the new school curriculum www.emilywrites.co.nz/what-the-hel...

WOW. *Wow*. 😡

More things maybe only game devs will find interesting... My 'hints' menu now shows hints in this order: - hints for the current level - hints that apply across levels - hints for other levels It also scrolls & other levels hints are on separate pages that you can switch between #gamedev #indiedev

Sometimes I forget how nice the NZ countryside is. This is taken on my way home from work today #newzealand

Something I find difficult with making a game as a passion project is that progress can often look like going backwards! I've been working on a hints/to do menu for a couple of weeks. It's sooo much better 'behind the scenes' than it was, but unfortunately it looks like this 🙄 #indiedev #gamedev