100% of Blender tips are like "press ALT + home + x" and they all fail 100% of the time

Saw people complaining about the state pension rise and I thought it was because of how small it is but no apparently it's because the bad old people have all the money or something - very impressive how we've managed to fuse vanilla British callousness with some bastardised historical materialism

I first learned of the existence of Zendaya via Zendaya is Meechee and thus she remains forever Meechee in my understanding

Extremely happy with this as a post which garnered zero responses - I will now bring it up constantly at every opportunity

I enjoyed talking to Francisco for this and I'm grateful there's writers creating space to talk about these topics in a depolarised, non-antagonistic way. Sometimes it's good to just say "this appears to be a thing that is happening" without immediately stamping an ethical designation onto it.

Amberspire is out May 6th! 🌇 Build a science-fantasy city atop an abandoned mausoleum 🎲 Roll dice to collect resources and keep your city running 🏠 Grow your population and influence 👥 Earn the favour of off-world factions 🌧️ Manage the unusual ecology Wishlist on Steam!

No Truce With the Furies is a better name than Disco Elysium

just typo'd "super mead boy" and that is the most "fantasy / American faux-medieval themed game music cover band at PAX in 2012" type phrase possible

Wow incredible! Thanks to @groundshatter.bsky.social for letting me try something a bit different with the Knights soundtrack - very cool to be recognised like this

The team behind Amberspire have played a lot of city builders between us, and that research came in handy when developing our own. See how it turned out when Amberspire releases on May 6th! Available to wishlist on Steam now 💫

It me!

almost every bit of game dev advice just reduces down to "make the player have a big emotion somehow". I think people worry about subjectivity and taste a huge amount but this is also where the "strong flavour" thing comes from - the only response that is *actually* a problem is indifference.

"The science fantasy mode that Amberspire is in is communicated through the art, and it looks best in 2D. Hand drawn, irregular, illogical, equally playful and sinister." City builders range far and wide in terms of art style, so how did we decide what Amberspire's would be? ⬇️

Reminder to share with your friends who love a Weird City, and to the rest of your friends who just don't know it yet

There are some devs who just intuitively get that commercial trailers need to be high emotional arousal and some who apparently just can't conceptualise it. It always stands out to me when I see something that is just turning the dials up to maximum store.steampowered.com/app/4328440/...

Yes but Disney IP as placeholder is a truly terrifying sight knowing some of the absolute nonsense which can randomly creep into a release build and suddenly pop up

One of the absolute worst things in British culture is our relationship to ambition

Residents are a vital part of any city building game. During Amberspire's development, we experimented with a few different ways they could work. Here's what we eventually landed on! 👤🌇 Wishlist Amberspire on Steam, out on May 6th!

"By making dice such a central factor in Amberspire, I am actively embracing messing around." Amberspire is a city builder that incorporates the unpredictable nature of growing settlements and populations. But how does this affect gameplay, strategy, and end goals for the player? ⬇️

Normalise insanely huge skyboxes

Ever wondered what a city builder looks like before all the art goes in? Here's a peek at what Amberspire looked very, very early in development compared to now!

This was very cool. Dance is perceived as pretentious and elitist but it is fundamentally about dynamics and those dynamics can really make the big guns go bang good. www.gamedeveloper.com/design/using...

Ok this is the best one

It's good that we have people like Tommy and @aiandgames.com who are willing to take the conversation beyond purely grandstanding while also being massively empathetic towards the very real concerns of devs

If there's one thing Americans love it's ambiguity around who is the winner so I'm sure there won't be any Oscars discourse about that whatsoever

This is a very strange video. The three pillars for a successful game he gives here are "Gameplay", "Brand" and "Model". The elision of that stuff is confusing and doesn't really go anywhere actionable imo

Eldritch nightmare

Bring back Austin GDC.

Read this - pure gold. "Just do these things to increase your chances significantly" information is rare and ultra valuable.

Now that IGF and GDC is over I finally got around to writing up my postscript on IGF submissions and some of the issues we ran into in 2025. If you plan to submit your game in 2026 I recommend reading this, tbh. auratriolo.com/blog/2026/03... Here's a little spoiler:

Huge thank you to everyone who attended our GDC session this afternoon - it meant at lot to us and I'm very grateful for the positive response. If you want to do something in games, aim squarely for it and pick the right people to go along with you. The experiences you have will carry you through.

Stats chat has had an exclusively negative effect on my career and I'm starting to question the value of it at all for indies: modecollapse.substack.com/p/i-dont-car...

Construct buildings, manage resources, and build a city in harmony with an alien ecology. AMBERSPIRE is out May 6th 🌇 Wishlist now on Steam!

The Only Accepted Narrative about LinkedIn on here is that it's an accursed spigot of hustleslop but here's my feed if I look right now: - Company I helped out launching trailer in a showcase - Useful post about pitching games - Friend changing jobs - Interesting synth plugin - Indie studio launch

If you'd like an interview or have me on a podcast or whatever, get in touch! I like doing that kind of thing.

This is buried in a reply to a different post but I have never read any prose which is a stronger evocation of the year 2005

this game is GENUINELY great, if you like weird exploration/collection platformers and silly humor it's a must play imo

Showing a game absurdly early and having it resonate never gets old

Giving the tip jar a cursory shake - once again, this is NOT out of survival need. I'm good for rent, bills & food! Every penny goes into picking up more obscure indie stuff for research. If you like the work I do and want me to do it a bit easier (and have excess money), I always appreciate it!

In a crazy coincidence, we chose to launch our game Piece by Piece, in the EXACT SAME WEEK that the studio @neonpolygons.bsky.social are launching their game called... so naturally, we had a good laugh about it, and now we're going to be in a Steam bundle together

Good points but equally...that's quite an important platform health metric right? And also the ultrapessimist narrative for the last *decade* has been that the number of releases means that there is less chance of big success when it seems like that chance is at least stable (see below)

Many of Amberspire's features first came together on paper. We went through a *lot* of ideas figuring out how dice would work in a city builder, and finding the right balance between too-low stakes (boring, predictable) and overly-harsh penalties (frustrating, progress-halting).

Writing and presenting for the IGF's this year was exceptionally good - stellar work @karriebear.bsky.social @robdubbin.bsky.social @teddydief.com et al

Sitting at the back of the IGF's every year until I get the chance to work on a game that's nominated again at some point in my career (Year 1)

If anyone is willing the share the following, I would be so grateful! We just launched Piece by Piece on Steam 🎉🎉 It's a cozy repair shop sim, you play a woodland fox who inherits his grandfather's store. You fix up items with your hammer and paintbrush 🔨🖌️🦊 store.steampowered.com/app/3179050/...

Game studios in 1990 were called something like "Crystalline Aesthetics." Game studios in the 2000s were called something like "Brutal Iron Games." Game studios in the 2010s were called something like "MOON/flower"

Me: I'll just have a diet coke please Tavern Keeper, disdainfully: I can serve you: * **Local Ales:**