Releasing a game with an iframe dash...? In a post-Silksong world....? That's kinda archaic isn't it

Dunno who needs to hear this but I'd def not recommend diving into game design theory during active dev. It's like begging for creative paralysis. Doing it between projects and at the start of them when everything's really malleable is the only healthy approach IMO.

Wrote a post explaining a poorly documented Final Fight mechanic www.patreon.com/posts/139784...

Taking one more time to share this. Disaster Arms releases next Friday - if you stream or write in any capacity, and have time for a 1-2 hour boss rush, please reach out to us for a code at this link: docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F...

I'm a huge fan of Psyvariar and am dreading this. Visually I feel this has completely lost the plot - if u look at Psy 1, Psy 2 and even Sanvein you see this slow evolution of slick stylish sci-fi presentation over the course of the series but this seems incoherent stylistically

"Runbacks are bad cuz they interfere with practicing the boss" is interesting cuz the follow up question should be "practice for what?" Thats the root of the problem, for the vast majority of players theres nothing to practice FOR besides a single victory. And its not clear if that can be changed

As tiresome as wading through modern games can be, they are generally so bloated & unfocused that if you're into any sorta game design analysis/crit, playing them is like christmas cuz you can find a way to talk about nearly any topic in nearly any way and have a lot of examples to point to.

In an age of insane delusional hype and FOMO, haters have a valuable and noble social purpose. They save you money & time 🙏

Yooo are we back??? A faithful sequel in this day and age?????

Does anyone know some sorta good writeups about what makes game exploration good or bad from a mechanical POV? Preferably beyond "the game guides newbies"

sonicfangameshq.com/forums/showc... This demo is fucked up. Do NOT trust the cute visuals and Zelda inspired style, this is an actual arcade style game on Very Hard

Announcing Hyper Bun Buster: Rocket Hammer Action! A top-down bump combat action game about a bunny girl who uses her huge hammer to send enemies flying into other enemies. Coming 2026 Steam: store.steampowered.com/app/3605570/...

Another post on Silksong, this time clarifying the boss design, why it feels Souls-like & what I think people mean by "the dance" www.patreon.com/posts/139239...

I feel like this is a consequence of a complete lack of balance in modern games and how hard the more open ended sandboxy approach to challenge won. In older games, esp arcade ones but early console ones too, there was a lot less leeway to trivialize challenges so "cheese" was just strategy

Wrote a post about Silksong's enemies, how they follow in the footsteps of beat 'em up enemies (probably incidentally, idk) and why that's a good thing www.patreon.com/posts/139192...

Ok I feel like I'm going insane seeing Silksong discussions online. Have I stepped into an alt timeline where Souls doesn't exist or have people exclusively played with summons all this time? Even the runbacks are like the typical Demon's/Dark Souls 1-2/Bloodborne boss runback, including Bilewater

I promise I'll stop complaining about Silksong cuz I do like the game but it often feels like it parodies the idea of "friction is good" cuz it LOVES slightly inconveniencing the player for no reason. It doesn't commit to a lack of "teleporter rooms" but it'll not include them in every relevant area

Silksong made it even more abundantly clear that I no longer have the sauce for long-ass games where you hunt down optional content with a wiki in hand like it's a boss fight collectathon. As much as I love the actual bosses, it's rly draining to play compared to if it was just a normal gauntlet

Really though this what game designers should have on their desk for inspiration

Hearing the discourse about Silksong's difficulty you'd think people are talking about some Deathsmiles level 999 mode equivalent or something instead of just a somewhat beefed up Hollow Knight

Silksong has better enemy AI/design than practically every new beat em up............

Second dev log after *check notes* an year... 20 min read that covers hitboxes and hurtbox design in Fighting Games. #gamedev #indie #game #fgc #fightinggame #indiegames #gamedesign blog.crowsneststudio.org/posts/hitbox...

Been thinking a lot about how much redundancy in terms of pros/cons there is in action games and how it's celebrated. Idk if I'm too hyperfixated, but SO MANY GAMES reinforce what are already good actions with better rewards and nearly no unique risk/cons. Stuff like attacking enemies building meter

Browsing wplace a bit it's kinda nice to see how relevant millennial online culture still is for zoomers. Sometimes it feels like due to the net culture moves at an insane pace but then if you look at what zoomers like, a lot of it is a big soup of the same type of shit I was into as a teen

Gamer twitter beefs recreated in the style of Oniisama E

There's a lot of talk about player expression in the new Shinobi & it feels like the convos don't even have to come to being pro or anti player expression. Instead it's easier to talk about WHERE said player expression comes from & how well integrated it is. Peep : www.youtube.com/watch?v=ne97...

So many indie game publishers are fucking vultures dude. Devs gotta stay the fuck away unless they're gonna get funding or need something extremely specific like a console release and can't do it in any other way

Kinda surprised there's no rogue-esquelite-style subgenre of games with static player toolkits but randomized stages/enemy layouts. There are some games like this and some games with low impact player toolkit variation but if u want pure games like this, u just gotta play select arcade games

While NOT a metroidvania Magenta Horizon has the backbone of Hollow Knight, combat of Ninja Gaiden, a DMC-like combo system and the unique artistic madness of solo-dev @maddisonbaek.bsky.social #PitchYaGame #Silksong #PitchYaVania

Natsume Atari has filed a trademark for Shatterhand in Japan: chizai-watch.com/t/2025097921 Shatterhand is a 2D action game originally released for NES. The trademark might suggest a remake or sequel is in the works, a la Shadow of the Ninja Reborn or Pocky & Rocky Reshrined.

Why do you keep reframing this?The convo wasnt about difficulty but enforcement of it-a game can be easy while enforcing engagement,and a game can be difficult while failing to enforce engagement eg skips that are hard to pull off.I brought up that ppl KNOW why this is a problem,hence these comments

good morning

Action games that only challenge the player if they use self-imposed rules are like horror games that only scare players if they go out of their way to seek out all the spooky stuff off the beaten path

Something I love in cute/chibi mech design is when they use a lot of detached-feeling and bendy parts to create a feeling that they're flimsy & barely holding together. Like a poorly built assembled toy. That really brings a lot of these cuter designs to life IMO

This is prob just me but over time I'm losing interest in scoring systems that follow naturally from fundies/survival and am more interested in scoring systems that provide something that cannot be integrated into survival. eg quick kills are always good survival wise, but milking almost never is

www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nclh... Game design gore

Being able to scroll the screen backwards was a mistake of game design

TRESPASSER RPG, a sequel built on our previously released Art/lore booklet is finally out! Check it out! planeta-polilla.itch.io/trespasser-rpg

People focus too much on the math of bullet hell pattern making and not enough on the artistry. Playing Like Dreamer & Fox Flare Night demo makes it really clear how incredibly skilled the dev is cuz there's so many awesome & varied patterns both on a visual & functional level

The Electric Underground posted a vid on Gradius defending the value of GRADIUS SYNDROME aka checkpoint recoveries. I've always thought this was an awesome and under-explored style that deserves a revival www.youtube.com/watch?v=Va0Q...

Wow, can’t believe they found the person behind steam tagging system !

www.polygon.com/roguelike-de... At last, I truly see

Making nasty little guys and seeing them be assholes ingame in novel ways has gotta be the best part of game dev for me. And the #1 reason why I wanna have beat em up esque enemies in shmups. I always think how GnG started with red arremers, not Arthur or any of the mechanics ENEMY EXPRESSION GAME

store.steampowered.com/app/3639510/... Oh SHIT finally something I've always wanted to see - Trauma Center inspired indie games! About time. Now we wait.

Nightreign's lack of practice mode really reinforces its main theme/focus as a synergy builder rather than an action game. It feels like they want you to view bosses as just a build check, rather than a proper challenge. And as a result shift focus towards the optimizing the days themselves

[ ! ! ! ANNOUNCEMENT ! ! ! ] Disaster Arms is releasing on...

All these IP based beat 'em ups and somehow finnish devs still haven't made a Ginga Nagareboshi Gin bmup. What gives?

circa-1990s reviews asking why Panzer Dragoon can't fly in 360-degrees always stick in my mind as the most heinous example of this

I rly wish players were less intolerant of mechanical limitations but with that being the case I think the goal for devs is to make sure that the answer to the question "why can't [character] do [thing]?" is "are you stupid? Look at them."

For some reason I never consciously registered that Outrun came out in 1986 until today. That's a year after Gradius 1 & Super Mario Bros, goddamn