In April 2024, Spotify implemented a new scheme: songs with less than 1k streams per year would no longer receive royalties. The data for 2025 was just released via Luminate, and 88% of songs have been demonetized. Read it again: 88% of songs on Spotify have been demonetized.

Here's the thing, see. There are two types of narrative game. There's RPG and there's adventure game. That's it. Only the names are all wrong. RPG isn't RPG. It's second-person. You do this? Great. Now you do that. Adventure is the other kind. Third-person. You there! Do this! Now, do that! End of.

i feel exactly the same about all these points

btw indies, you should really hire @thisisstar.bsky.social if you can for trailers - her trailer for TR-49 is up on GameTrailers where it has 10x the views of anything released around the same time (except, I think, Warhammer). And for a game which is *really* hard to trailer too...

Game of Scrabble and a Wether’s Original, presumably

This is a great idea

I’m so excited about one of these I can’t sleep properly but at least that’ll be over soon

There's a new puzzle adventure coming on January 21 from @inkle.co: "A World War II computer. An archive of lost books. A world-changing secret." We've gotten to try TR-49 already... Let's just say you'll want to wishlist this one ASAP. #indiegames punishedbacklog.com/inkle-tr-49-...

fantastic insights into how to open a game (or even, broadly, a story), with examples that are delightful to unfold and a love for the craft of writing and storytelling that is infectious and propulsive (ingold's specialty).

In case you missed it: inkle's next game will be out in less than two weeks. If our account disappears between then and now, this trailer is why.

A short post on the opening lines of a game: how they work, and what they can do. (With examples. Possibly indulgent, but I think the topic is interesting.)

I have no idea really what the standard setup for voice acting heavy games is, but for A Highland Song we did one session where we recorded scenes as though it was a play - two actors, working off each other. (It was for the goshawk sequences, and if you played the game you’ll know why.)

TR-49 is out on 21st Jan!!!! It’s the product of the wonderful @inkle.co team and a truly genius idea - but that’s classified for now… But seriously, I loved working on this last year with @jon.inkle.co and @paulwarren.bsky.social 😊 and from the bits I’ve heard, @pabosher.com is brilliant too!

Review of The Flood - “Well written, engaging, melancholic and elegiac without being hopeless, it lives up to the first part of the story and leaves me eager for its conclusion”

i got an ecard like this once in 1999

Oh yeah this review gets me <3

!!! TR-49 trailer is now live !!!

🚨⚠️ Release Date Disclosure! ⚠️🚨 TRAILER: VIDEO EVIDENCE, see below. Please watch, assimilate and share. DESIGNATION: TR-49 GENRE: NARRATIVE DEDUCTION / AUDIO_DRAMA DATE: 21st JANUARY PLATFORMS: iOS / PC / Mac / Deck This is what we know, so far.

Just got off the phone to the lawyer. It's all official. A cup of coffee, and then -- details. As many as we're allowed to give.

At @adventurex.bsky.social I gave a talk on creating stories from scratch: from idea to full outline, in 25 minutes, with jokes. Enjoy!

Making games is a LOT easier than getting eyeballs on them, lemme tell ya! Speaking of... our weird bird deckbuilder has a great new free playtest build out: 🦜 Daily flights! 🦩 Tutorial! 🦚 2 playstyles! 🦆 So… many… birds!!! Join us! Or tell a friend! store.steampowered.com/app/3473440/...

Wondering which games The Point 'n Clicker is looking forward to the most this year? Take a look at this 2026 adventure game anticipation post! @inkle.co @losttoken.bsky.social @sparrowland.bsky.social @trueascension.bsky.social @postmodernadv.bsky.social @arumastudios.bsky.social

Aged 9. Built a “trap“ in the garden - a plank over a pivot with a stone on one end, the idea being a burglar would step on the far end and thus catapult the stone into their head. Decided to test it. It worked great. Woke up on the sofa; my mother saw me drop and had carried me inside.

2026 beginning of the year cleaning up files on my PC and found this one a friend send me when working on some code. Every developer can relate. #solodev #indiedev #development

inkle, one of the best to ever do it in narrative games, tackling the deduction game space makes me very excited

"Narrative deduction meets audio drama, from the creators of Heaven’s Vault, Overboard! and A Highland Song." Well that's eye-catching.

Inkle are an underrated studio and Pendragon is their most underrated, understood game. A thoughtful, ultra-heavily branching tactics retelling of Arthurian legend where your *actions* in combat matter as much as dialogue choices. Just moving aggressively towards someone can be read as a threat.

Huge if true

Struggled through Oppenheimer, one of the dullest films I've ever seen, and it's all built to end on a fairly obvious double meaning. Can't wait for the final line of the Odyssey. "When you've been to war, coming home can be hard" ? "Strength is a wooden horse, it's what inside that counts" ?

NarraScope call for proposals is open! We're at the University at Albany, June 12-14. Now accepting: - Talks - The Showcase (games) - The Experience (new this year!) blog.zarfhome.com/2026/01/narr... narrascope.org

It's finally here: Eurogamer's 50 best games of 2025, ranked https://www.eurogamer.net/the-50-best-games-of-2025-ranked

Playing Samsara was what made us approach Meghna for 80 Days. Wonderful thing.

I loved The River Has Roots by Amal El-Mohtar. It’s a poetic and lyrical fairy tale wrapped in folk songs. The audio version performed by Gem Carmella is amazing. It’s a book whose themes are sisterly bonds and the audiobook’s background music is also performed by the author and her sister🎶 5⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

"Once there was a mirror with two faces..." Heaven's Vault - Book 4 - Coming 2026

Stronger argument for talking to plants, tbqh

Holiday coma leaving you sluggish? Why not try to figure out the release date for our next game by joining things up with bits of red string. www.inklestudios.com/tr-49/pinboa...

what would help me find the fun and take risks again is 0.001% of $190bn

Been playing through Inkle's Sorcery games, and I think they're the only adaptation that is a complete, unilateral improvement on the original. Preserves all the beautiful art and evocative writing from the book but makes the story much more enjoyable to experience

Make a Bond film casual From Primark with Gloves

Not the onion

Did a silly seasonal thing for the @aghotspot.bsky.social Christmas video

Hey folks, Jack here. On behalf of Adventure Game Hotspot, I wish everyone a Merry Christmas/Happy Holiday-of-choice! Enjoy our (revived) annual video filled with personal season's greetings from many top current and/or legendary game developers. adventuregamehotspot.com/feature/5749...

i just tried the machine we built and out of nowhere it did this

2nd favorite game of this year. Making multiple play throughs mandatory was fun.

Essentially, I think that LLM-generated dialogue only makes sense if you believe that the product of writing is words. But the product of writing isn't words, any more than the product of justice is prisoners, or the product of love is weddings. The product of writing is meaning.

i got to rant about LLM chatbots in games + my fears about the dead future that tech oligarchs want for all of us, alongside some very clever + thoughtful folks. thanks so much @samuelhorti.bsky.social for giving me the space & time to articulate all of this

I've seen some of the articles for @jon.inkle.co's Narrative Kaleidoscope and wow, there are some smart, funny people in games, go figure