#game dev blog

[akabaka-dev]

Double art reveal day? Yeaaaah double art reveal day ✨️

Aka has been COOKIN' this week 👀

Hh'eily, the Color out of Space 🌈

[bioware]

We asked the game team what jobs our #DragonAge companions would have if they worked at the studio. Check out where our devs thinks their favorite heroes would fit into the BioWare family!

[brightatmidnight]

Hey Tumblr, do you want to live out your space smuggler fantasies, piloting your very own ship in a galaxy full of adventure? Do you enjoy casts of diverse oddballs and misfits with lots of heart? Do you like Star Wars-esque universes and the writing style of Kid Icarus: Uprising? Do you want to support two queer game developers? Then we have the perfect game for you!

The Chaser's Voyage is a 2D single-player space flight adventure game where you have to pay off your debt to a notorious pirate lord before it's too late. Shake off hostile pursuers while transporting clients to earn money. Pilot your ship while also managing your systems to survive your voyage!

Cool things our game has: • Random Runs! Your clients and encounters are procedurally generated, so no two runs are the same • Fun and lovable characters! Fully voice-acted and with lots of backstory • Cool, creepy, and cute aliens who all have a story for why they need your help • Multiple difficulty modes for gamers of any and all skill levels (Including one-life modes for those seeking a challenge) • Tons of written lore, split up into over 300 entries, complete with crew commentary • 23 unlockable modifiers that drastically change how the game plays • Complete control customization for gamepads and mouse and keyboard • Customizable ship colors • An escalating war between two galactic factions • Asteroid fields, ship graveyards, minefields, and other obstacles await • Face bloodthirsty pirates, ruthless bounty hunters, and more!

Buy the Chaser's Voyage on Steam now!

[carnyx-int]

The wait is over! (Finally) Introducing Carnyx Interactive, a BRAND NEW game development studio made up of queer and neurodiverse game and art industry powerhouses. Founded around the goal of amplifying voices hushed by colonialism, our games emphasize the innate worth in every being. 

As a studio, we are passionate about making the games we want to play, and driven by the lightning-in-a-bottle feeling of experiencing our favourite games for the first time. We’re very intentional about the stories we tell and choose the genres and gameplay that will best support those stories, rather than the other way around. This allows us a flexibility to creatively explore all ideas and the constant ability to grow our skills, game after game. 

The third pillar of Carnyx is mentorship - each of us is coming in with a unique set of experiences and skills, and we strive to create an environment where we both play to our strengths and leave space to mentor and be mentored in return. We grow best when we grow together. 

This ethos drives every part of our business - from the stories we choose to tell, to our approach to research, to the way we treat our coworkers - every person is worth the space and time they occupy. To this end, we strive to create and uphold an environment of compassion, where every voice and idea is considered equitably.  We’re very excited to share our journey with you! Stay tuned for our first two project announcements (one launching this year) and check us out at https://www.carnyxinteractive.com/ and https://carnyxint.itch.io/ for more information and dev blogs.

Also! Join our Discord!

[omeletcat]

I have had this joke stuck in my head for weeks now and i finally decided to crudely draw it i'm sorry y'all this is the peak of my comedy skills.

[larkingame]

Hiring Community & Social Media Manager (CLOSED 12/3)

Hello!

My name is KC Malik and I'm hoping to hire a Community & Social Media Manager for the commercial text-based RPG "Larkin". As of right now Larkin is being worked on by a small team of creatives and we would love for you to join our team.

Larkin is a Vampire-Western that focuses on romance, religious-horror and complex family dynamics. It's rated 18+ for violence/horror and sexually explicit content. It will be released in an episodic format on itch.io, Steam and the Google Play Store.

Here is our website.

Intro Post

I'm looking for people with specific proven experience in social media platforms like twitter/X, discord, twitch, tiktok and instagram, especially those with an interest in indie game development and an understanding of interactive fiction/visual novels/dating simulators and the communities that surround them. Traditional degrees are less important to me than demonstrable work experience.

Your main responsibilities with this position will be:

Helping grow Larkin fan communities on platforms like Discord, Twitter, Tumblr and Instagram

Moderating communities like Discord/Reddit/Tumblr Community

Engaging with community members & building a relationship (examples: helping answer asks/questions, replying to messages, etc.)

Social Media Posts/Planning - using social media strategies and timelines to produce growth in terms of audience & reach

Payment will be done via Paypal at the applicants usual asking rates.

Traditional Applications Are Welcome, But Please Be Sure to Include:

Estimated Pricing

Examples of previous work (like posts, accounts, something demonstrable that you've done.)

Links to your social media/website/somewhere else your work can be found.

Work experience, if applicable

Confirmation you'll be able to work on the project for an extended time frame (10+ Months)

If interested, please email the above information to:

larkininteractivefiction@gmail.com

While a more traditional "job post" will be made along the usual avenues in a few days--I wanted to reach out here first as Larkin's tumblr audience is what fostered it's initial growth <3

Thank you and Reblogs are very much appreciated!

[last-sprout]

Last Sprout Dev Diary - Nov 22, 2024

Hello sprout folks! I'm Valerie, or @oneominousvalbatross, and I've been working on Last Sprout since July, and I'm wildly excited to share some of the things I've been working on with y'all.

Ignore that Twiggs' hat falls off that's natural.

I'm aiming for a Dev Diary once a week on Fridays, and I'm just gonna be giving a brief look into making a game! I'm learning how to do a lot of this stuff live, so I'm sure there'll be a ton of massive rewrites and changes. I have probably a dozen huge systems that are already built that I'm not going to be getting into in this post, since I'm already half a year or so into development, but I'm sure I will find space to include them later!

XP

I spent most of my time figuring out exactly how we wanted to represent XP in the world. We were pretty certain that we wanted XP to exist physically as a substance you picked up, so I started with a system from a previous build.

In that version, we just created a bunch of XP objects and scattered them into the world, then had some code that scooted them around. Of course, that means that we're tracking an individual unity GameObject for every single instance of a point of XP which is, uh, slow.

This is what we call 'suboptimal.'

So obviously we needed to not instantiate an entire transform every time we needed to spawn XP. Even if we re-used objects that would just be prohibitively expensive for an object that really just needs a position.

I'm not going to go over each step in the process, but after experimenting with GPU instancing to just draw a bunch of XP objects at once, eventually I landed on extending Unity's particle system, since it has a lot of the settings I wanted access to.

To make the XP move how I wanted, I wrote a pretty simple process that iterates through all the little blobs and checks how close they are to a designated collector, then uses an exponential decay function (with thanks to Freya Holmér) to make them move towards Twiggs.

I think every game should have an action that can be best summarized by making the noise 'SHWOOOOOP.'

Parrying

Parrying was a good deal simpler, but it still has its issues. Essentially, all a parry needs to be is a hitbox and an animation, with some callbacks to enemies to let them react to the parry. Whenever an attack hitbox intersects with either a Parrybox or a Hurtbox, it checks its tags to see if it's interacting with the appropriate entities, to makes sure enemies aren't hitting or parrying each other constantly. If it passes the test, it calls GetParried() on the intersecting object.

GetParried(), idiot.

For the basic behavior, parrying just interrupts the attack in progress and knocks the enemy back by a set amount, but there's room in the system to add all sorts of neat effects, which I'm sure we'll be taking advantage of in the future. It's been a challenge to juggle the various kinds of hitboxes, but it'll definitely be worth it going forward!

Of course, between all these bits there were a ton of bugfixes and little experiments, but that's a topic for a later dev diary!

[necroticspider]

Hi everyone. I've just created this page. Here are some screenshots from the game i am making in Godot.

Wishlist Dungeons of Blood and Dream on Steam

[darren-douglas]

Little Astro Bot looked a whole lot different in the beginning!

I just added more early Astro concept art to my website https://darrendouglasart.com/

[bellamby]

TFP DATING SIM?????????????? I AM ON MY KNEES IT SOUNDS SO COOL IN IN TEARS

do you have aby plans where it will be available????? :33

Heya! I'm planning on adding it to itch.io when it's finished, and updating it with the different episodes weekly!

Still in early stages right now, but progress is looking good!

As a rough timeline, planning on finishing it over the Summer, but (if work gets in the way) expect it more towards the Winter months. I want to make sure it's the highest standard that it can be.

(P.S. if this part takes off, I'll add a whole second part for dating the Decepticons 👀)

- bellamby

[ourloveiselectrifying]

OLIE MONTHLY UPDATE!!! :3

Hello everyone, sorry have been busy, I'm not going to be answering many asks because I wanna focus on the game! But I'll answer a few here and there until the updates out, then I'll just answer everything if I can >:))

Stuff I've been working on (Spoilers!!)

THAT DINGO IS ANIMATED !!!

I've mostly just been replacing the old sprites with the new ones! It's really neat! The old sprite was just a ton of different images that take up a silly amount of space and makes it tedious making new slightly different sprites as Kevin has two forms, 5 outfits, a helmet, will have various bodily fluids on him, ect. SO the new sprite is a composite, every similar to the MC customiser! We playing dress up with him :3

It's also great because I can quickly take any expressions or outfits and easily update them in the future when my art abilities improve!

Kevin's sprite is much more dynamic and expressive now :3 Have some happy Kevin wagging gifs

Most of the fav animals are in the screen/not hidden within other animals now!

Added a few small additions to the sprites

Sketching out new BGs & CGs

Updated a few keychains that I was unhappy with, here is two of them!

New logo/presplash that's a lil' animated!

Side images! Have a look it moves! (Only on the first sentence and then is static until Kevin's face is in shot/final sentence, then it hides!) Also bonus Kev upside down because idk how to code

Writing the routes and figuring out the story some more!

Working on the dream buddy a little more!

New textbox character icons

[akabaka-dev]

Aka has been noodling on concept characters for SFL 3

Meet Nan'si and Yan'si, the Twin Blasphemers🕯👯‍♂️🕯

Based on Nug and Yeb, the spawn of Shub and Yog-sogoth and parent(s) of Cthulu

"As for little Nug and Yeb (only ten feet in diameter when in their average form), they are a bit destructive sometimes, though it's only a playful, good-natured roughness. I like to have the little fellows about (even though they sometimes do dissolve visitors and passersby, and cause occasional troublesome enquiries), for they are basically very friendly and companionable"

- HP Lovecraft

[azidraws]

Been a looong time since I've updated here!

First, I had been working as the Art Director/Lead Artist on Rift of the NecroDancer since 2021-ish. I developed the game's overall art style, developed the game modes alongside the Director, and 95% of the characters. Unfortunately, 1.5 years ago, 50% of the studio were laid off, and I was part of that group. Development on Rift continues without me, and it is what it is.

On the upside, since then I have had the absolute pleasure to work on BEASTIEBALL with Wishes Unlimited as the Lead (human) Character Artist. Beastieball is a creature-collecting volleyball RPG that is available NOW on Steam in early access. It is fully playable from start to finish, and the team is absolutely moved the reception. A huge thank you to those who have supported us! And if you haven't done so yet, check it out!

I would like to make more Beastieball posts here in the future, going over some of the dev process on my end. There's something like 100~ unique characters and NPC's in the game made without any kind of character creator besides the playable main character. Please look forward to it!

I'm still semi-active on X (Twitter), but I've been migrating to Bluesky for the sake of my sanity.

Twitter: https://x.com/penciltest Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/ccezra.bsky.social

[blackblooms]

The stepping stone, an irredeamable post mortem

A big challenge when making any creative product is being overwhelmed by the sheer amount of ideas you want to express. It can be very difficult to decide what will be part of the first story and what will have to remain unknown. Irredeamable was a particularly difficult case as i wasn`t only trying to make a cohesive world for the game itself, but the first building block of a greater setting that require its own lot of setups. In such conditions, everything felt important and it took a lot of restraint to cut things down until only a tease of the true scope remained. Overall, it was a huge mess to work out, but I'm happy with the result and i feel a lot more free and focused in the pursuit of my future projects now that the foundation has been set up to build upon and i can use the previous reveals to do a lot of foreshadowing with very little.

[gothbingarbage]

Welcome, purveyors of the Goth.

We are Goth Bin Garbage, and we're about to unveil a glimpse into the abyssal world we've been conjuring over these past few months.

Prepare to enter a realm of shadows and intrigue with our upcoming point-and-click adventure, featuring the Gothic cast from @chemicalsushiart's haunting series, Freakshow 13. Dive into the horrible and mundane existence of Liraz Blackpool as she navigates through haunting locations and grapples with enigmatic puzzles that she doesn't want to do.

Our dumpster of creators, including @orbitaldot, @shoppncart, and @vitimesthree, have been slaving away at the arts to bring this vision to life. Care to tread this unholy path with us? Follow us on the path to the dreadful day this trash releases... We'll meet you in the abyss, if you dare. ⚰️🌑

[omeletcat]

I drew Fireboy and Watergirl in my pixel art style!!!!