Sick this week, so I finally started F1 Drive to Survive. It's good but there are a lot of smug young men in it and so far only one of them has been put in the bin.

The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck v0.1: When you try to walk into a brick wall, your way is now referred to as being blocked by some brick, not a brick.

My favourite fact in ages, via @lucyjames.games on the Besties: Widow's Bay (which is great btw) was created by the overdressed Babadook from this historic tweet.

Mana orb: do not drink until overcharge pfx finish Health orb: do not drink (candle)

After a length of development that - if I truly, deeply thought about it, I would instantly go insane as if I'd opened some Lovecraftian skin-bound tome - our narrative city-builder Generation Exile has launched out of Early Access into full 1.0 today! store.steampowered.com/app/2963240/...

Deadloch season 2 was great again - truly Australia's answer to The Thick Of It in the swearing Olympics. As before, the mystery is juicier and better told than you expect from a comedy. And it has a knack for making fun of eccentricities without feeling unkind.

Thinking about this quote from Persepolis creator Marjane Satrapi again.

The 2 minutes and 5 seconds from the moment @memoriamatters.bsky.social spies an oddly tall horse in @manbearcar.bsky.social's Horsey Game are the hardest I've laughed in weeks. www.youtube.com/live/4Wr8J4S... .

I think this April fools was amiably aimed at anyone who's over-attributed our games to me alone, but God it's so deadpan even I start to worry if I was serious at points.

I can't speak to their overall cultural impact, but I do think if Dickens had come up with "Hi it's me you're all in danger" before Charli XCX, A Tale of Two Cities would have opened very differently.

Ominous seating arrangements.

Discovery: cats can toggle their legs.

We have a Discord now! It's been lovely so far. Today in the Heat Signature channel, someone figured out how to do a Hijack mission (take out all crew and deliver the empty ship) without breaking their Ghost Vow (never be seen or harm anyone) and we were all like what. discord.com/invite/3M8pf...

Good morning! I wrote a book! @flantz.bsky.social called it “the definitive history of procedural generation in video games” which is just about the best thing that can happen to a book. Tell your friends, enemies and book-loving acquaintances!

I'm having a lovely time coding our next game in Godot, so I did a little devlog about some of the coolest things I've discovered, and some of the systems I've built so far that I'm excited about. www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mj56... .

Tip for balancing wizards: keep buffing them til their attacks visibly illuminate your face. youtu.be/TBELTya013I .

This is what gaming is all about

The Killing Stone is OUT NOW in Early Access 🃏 Occult Card Battler 👺 17th Century Occult Horror Mystery 📖 Modern and 17th Century English 🎙️ Starring @emmagregoryvoice.bsky.social & @voiceofobrien.bsky.social Can you beat the Devil at his own game? store.steampowered.com/app/2781470/

Are we doing trailers for bins now

Met a very high resolution rabbit tonight, and a very sweet drawing of a rabbit I did not meet tonight.

The Forgotten City is a game about going back to Roman times, so when it came time to choose a name, I decided it was worth becoming someone I hate in return for also ruining the game.

Accidentally summed it up.

A new website about PC games, from me, @brendyc.bsky.social and @jonhicks.com. Reader-supported, which means no ads, no guff, and lots of games blogging about delightful things to play. If you liked our work on RPS, we think you'll like @jank.cool.

My eyes are bad but I won't ruin the vibe with a flashlight.

The brains are in the grenades: How enemies think in Tactical Breach Wizards youtu.be/gEFfBXQAtYE I'm not going to GDC this year, so here's a little talk for free - on a thing I want to share before I forget how it works.

I just woke up from a nap and somehow while I was asleep, everyone on the bus has figured out we are not going to the right place

Day 3 of being woken up by a long, low foghorn-like sound: It strikes me now that - given I live near the water and the weather has been foggy for 3 days - the explanation for this phenomenon may be closer to hand than previously realised.

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.

My post-layoff professional hiatus has come to an end and I'm looking to rebuild my contact book. If you're in need of: ✏️ Fiction! Produced entirely by my human brain and hands! 🧙‍♂️ Narrative design, worldbuilding or creative direction! 🎺 Comms, bizdev or marketing support! ...then get in touch!

Goddamn, I only just saw the Resetera thread for @breachwizards.bsky.social has the best strap I've seen in all our coverage: www.resetera.com/threads/tact... Rites in Tight Spaces.

Love this bit, when your Christmas License to Indulge has expired but your New Year's Obligation to Live Sensibly hasn't started yet. Feels like a loophole.

I'll add: if the other game is out, that's a gift. You get to play a finished version of your idea, see how it feels, how it sold, and what everyone thought of it? That's incredibly powerful information to make something that builds on it.

This season, give yourself the gift of giving us less money: 🧙‍♂️ Tactical Breach Wizards is 35% off! store.steampowered.com/app/1043810/... 🕵️ Gunpoint is 75% off! store.steampowered.com/app/206190/G... 🚀 Heat Signature is 75% off! store.steampowered.com/app/268130/H...

This is absolutely batshit, and I'm so glad I was able to capture the effect on video, because I was feeling completely insane. Full story in the alt text. Anyone know what's going on here?

It was only a few months in, but our next game was feeling like it might be a long, hard, and not super fun road to make. So I started tinkering with something else, and it clicked much faster, and we like it more, so we're switching! More thoughts, and a little glimpse: youtu.be/GYJGmX5iGbw .

Apps are always asking me 'mute? block? report? don't recommend? downvote?' when the only option I want or need is "Imagine I am your grand vizier and I have yelled "ENOUGH!" without explanation."

Omw to tell the headstrong protagonist to drop it, he's out of his depth. Reckon that should do the trick.

Dug into the buildcraft of Slice & Dice - what works about it and what's weird: www.youtube.com/watch?v=N1Eh... .

Turning up Rain Sounds For Sleep 10 Hours so I can hear it over the rain outside.

For about another 21 hours all our games are suspiciously cheap: 🕵️ Gunpoint is 80% off! store.steampowered.com/app/206190/G... 🚀 Heat Signature is 80% off! store.steampowered.com/app/268130/H... 🧙‍♂️ Tactical Breach Wizards is 40% off! store.steampowered.com/app/1043810/...

It’s time for this starship to take flight - Generation Exile has launched in Steam Early Access and is available right now! store.steampowered.com/app/2963240/...

Tactical Breach Wizards is 40% off in today's Daily Deal! The cheapest the wizards have ever allowed us to price them. To celebrate, we've added a community missions pack, featuring some great ones players have made since launch. store.steampowered.com/app/1043810/... .

I almost can't believe this but the game we've been working on for a, uh, frightening long time now is launching into Steam Early Access NEXT WEEK! November 4th, 9am PT Wishlistin' plz and thank: store.steampowered.com/app/2963240/...

This is great to read. Letting players turn off permadeath in Heat Signature was sacrilege, design-wise, but trivial effort-wise - so we did it. Hearing how much it let someone truly click with the game really shows the value of letting people engage with your stuff on their own terms.

Aw, very kind! 🙏 And yeah, undo is so useful at dev time too. Check if the crazy thing you just saw was a bug or just a counter-intuitive rules interaction - and either way, study it in captivity.

Just an absolute cat pretzel. At my *funeral* I won't be this relaxed.

Looks like I'm looking for work. If anyone out there happens to have a lead or principal level design gig in Austin or remote, I'm all ears.

"OK, we've got nothing to brag about on quality or price, so what's our selling point?" ... ... "Well, if you're standing right outside..."