this event at my dad's brewery on Monday looks amazing "Showcase your amazing & queer single friend in a 3-5 minute presentation" dcbc.com/event/pitch-...

u know what are taken for granted in games? good ladders. everything has to be so exact and the animators, artists, and coders gotta all be on the EXACT page with em else ur characters is gonna look entirely wrong on em.

📈🚀📈🚀📈🚀📈🚀 Hey come check out some experimental clicker / idle / incremental games! 👇📈👇📈👇📈👇📈👇 For their final projects in my 'economics for game designers' class at @nyugamecenter.bsky.social, students made some awesome incremental games, so I wanted to do a thread sharing their work! 🧵⤵️ 1/~15

Can of Words 🪱 #39 06-12-26 • canofwords.xyz

Can of Words 🪱 #31 06-04-26 • canofwords.xyz

"Videogames may often overwhelm and titillate our senses, but relaxation comes instead from withdrawal and placidity. To relax through a game requires abandoning the value of leaning forward and focusing on how games can also allow players to achieve satisfaction by leaning back"

just played 5 nonstop rounds, great fun @brin.town .....def will beat this at lunch! hs: 77 (so far) 🔵🔴🟢 beepyeah.itch.io/dotful-dodger

new level design theory: "horizontality", kinda like "verticality", how the scale / wideness / density / footprint of the level affects player movement... the further away your camera, the more horizontality you likely need to accommodate camera clipping + faster player movement + claustrophobia

Can of Words 🪱 #18 05-22-26 • canofwords.xyz

i hate this, last fall and now—it happened to me with Membrane (no where near the fan base i know) but my rep at Ninty told me to, still sold poorly at launch. Money is tight for us all & Mina is gonna be GR8 but it just sucks true DIY indies will forever suffer to triple III and triple AAA

Sundays in Can of Words are “Semicolon Sundays” and feature a double definition hidden in the puzzle! 2 weeks of puzzles in the archive if you need to catch up! canofwords.xyz 🪱🪱

Can of Words 🪱 v 3.0 is out featuring an archive of past puzzles, new tutorials & UI tweaks! Thx to @bridawg.bsky.social & @torcado.com for feedback! Fri/Sat/Sun puzzles moving forward have some playful twists so great time to dive in! canofwords.xyz 👈🏻👈🏻👈🏻

Can of Words 🪱 v2.0 is out now! Thanks to @brin.town @mantafsh.bsky.social & @lawofgamedesign.bsky.social for their input! PLAY HERE: canofwords.xyz

looking for some light play testing for a new word game i’ve been kicking around for the past week——if you are at all interested shoot me a DM thx.

realizing why i fell in love with this game 3 weeks ago…..it’s basically Suikoden 2 meets Super Mario World meets Shadow of the Colossus all added into the BotW blueprint

fwiw if you can go in blind to Crimson Desert I wholeheartedly recommend—-for some reason recently i’ve been eyeing it but avoiding ALL coverage. I had expectations but it’s the most i’ve felt awed by a game since 2017 & BoTW—which is one of the most memorable opening 10 hours of a game ever.

DLSS 5 is FINALLY going to give Goldeneye 64 the recognition it deserves!!!!!!

My narrative-minigame-dad-sim, Bundle of Joy, is going to be one year old on March 25th! I blogged about things I've learned in the past year and some "advice" for solodevs and indies releasing their first commercial product. www.essay-games.com/blog/a-year-... Hope folks find it useful ^__^

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:

GDC…..more like Great Dads (parents in general) Consider playing this game

Usually "hidden" elements can bother me in games, but in this case it elevates the freedom and fun I find in every run and allows me to just playyyyy w/o overthinking. Nice work Tom!

(pun intended) bee is on 🔥 with this one

for a lot of reasons it’s gonna be hard to top this movie for me in the near future

Here is an excerpt from my conversation with @perfecthatgames.com about PONYO for The Complete Catalog: Studio Ghibli. Links in quoted post!

so @ettletodd.bsky.social is one of my fav people to talk to about literally anything—-such a kind hearted, funny and brilliant mind. Check this episode out and follow for more lovely content! 🙌🙌

cant wait for the full release but dang this will do 😍

We just released the 2025 Impact Report for Game Devs of Color. It's 39 pages of what we accomplished in 2025, since founding, and priorities for 2026 and beyond. Grateful to work with such a brilliant team. The 2026 GDoCExpo is Sep 22 - 25, with speaker & game applications opening late Feb!

This is from the NYT masthead editorial about the murders of Renee Good and Alex Pretti. The highlighted line invalidates not just the editorial, but the very idea of newspaper editorials crafted by the consensus of a board. Better to publish nothing at all than to publish a line like this.

Video games wield such a weird position culturally, because they can have the capacity to be just a fidget toy for the most childish people on the planet, and also have the capacity to be the most peak form of art to ever exist, if done well.

not my house, but i know my way around @hinterland.bsky.social

Over the last few years, I’ve been cooking up custom arcade games for brands all over the country. (one collab w/the super rad @kleeb.bsky.social) I’m ready to hit “Start” on a few new games. 👉 Tag someone that neeeeds their own custom arcade and let’s make something awesome!

🦷🦷🦷🦷🦷🦷🦷🦷🦷 MOLAR👅MAYHEM 🦷🦷🦷🦷🦷🦷🦷🦷🦷

Perfect day for leftovers and some High Tide 🦃🐚🌊 such a good game by @marcelineleiman.bsky.social

never been more offended

made a little #pico8 game for a halloween project today! 🎃 PUMPKICK 🎃 get candy, kick pumpkins. 8 breezy puzzles. 🍬 beepyeah.itch.io/pumpkick

Jen has been in the hospital most of October. These hospital stays and the recovery are the most challenging her Myasthenia Gravis has ever been. If you’re able to share this post / donate we would be forever grateful. Thank you again for all of your help ❤️ gofund.me/f6a578450

👀 look at our 14th annual lineup for Nov. 22, making some new games JUST FOR YOU (if you come here) Jana Romanova @nicole.pizza (Crush House, etc) & @okremiok.bsky.social (Pikuniku, etc) @alt254.bsky.social & @chouxsalad.bsky.social (Metagaming, Triforce, etc) Julián Cordero (despelote, etc)

chillin' by the thermal vent #gamedev

@artbutmakeitsports.bsky.social gotta be something here right??

Unfortunately it’s actually really good. Judging a game solely on lootboxes when you paid zero dollars for the game is comical to me. At one point ANY sort of paid DLC sure was tough to swallow but like, it’s optional, it’s how the gamesworld has evolved.

Baby Steps is out! store.steampowered.com/app/1281040/...

perhaps the most important piece of journalism i've ever written.

IMO allowing players freedom does not coincide with making things difficult, skillwalls are an instant turn off for me in games—-let me choose to make the game more difficult if i want to challenge myself but making it mandatory is lazy and a cheap way to pad average playtime

We simply cannot live in a country where the death of hate mongers is a tragedy and the death of everyone else only warrants a shrug.

i get it, but people moving a release dates for a game because of another game is depressing af to me—the industry (not just games) is so bleak.

Pikmin 3 The Long Dark Wingspan NFL Blitz Spelunky 2

Just got the same warning from the Google Play store this week for my games that are perfectly up to date for all current OS’ and potentially being removed for no reason 🤷🏻‍♂️🤷🏽‍♀️🤷🏼

My latest Paper Apps™ game is up on Kickstarter! LABYRINTH is a CYOA type game with a randomized maze and encounters, based on retro DOS dungeon-crawlers. www.kickstarter.com/projects/bri...