A Glade In A Forest. The Man Below The Tree Has Passed.

Redid all the level backgrounds for my game Crazy Critters Attack!

Finally working on this project again after 7 months! I think I'm committing myself to finishing this now, I've put everything I have left to do into GitHub issues and I've started working through it all.

We’ve redone engines to be shader based meshes. Given them much more animation and similar while also optimizing them a fair amount.

Check it out! I’m very proud of it!

New game is out! Go to itch.io to play Portallusca - a game me, @smallbuggames and MachineSelf made in 72 hours for Mini Jam 175!

A short puzzle game about black holes, which you use to travel through space. To do so, you must construct superstructures around black holes to siphon their energy and create a wormhole that will take you to the far reaches of space!

(I’m too lazy to take screenshots right now so enjoy some asset art instead)

Clouds by Sally Gottschalk

"How do you find all these small/weird/indie games??"

Ask your friends for recommendations

Follow forums/blogs/youtubers whose job is to talk about videogames and play the games they talk about

If you play a game that you like, look up the developer and play whatever else they've made

MOST IMPORTANTLY: ACTIVELY browse storefronts like steam and itch.io YOURSELF and play/buy the games that seem interesting to you. Relying on bloggers and youtubers should only be the start of your exploration

Post about the games you play

The main campaign's now playable to completion, with me having spent a couple weeks going through and testing it all to make sure its broken ass scripting was no longer ass or broken.

Total playtime to complete the main quest (and this is with me rushing through it) was about 11 hours. Note this is just making sure the draft works, the final campaign will obviously need more effects, voice acting, full cutscenes, etc.

Here’s that game I mentioned finishing yesterday!

From its Itch page:

Monster Parlor is a game in which you run a beauty parlor for monsters, where you have the privilege to make them into something a bit more charming! Strike up a conversation, convince them of your ways, and earn some charms of your own.

itch.io

Monster Parlor by MetaphysicalMonsters, Small Bug Games, Twelve Pens, CoByte

Make monsters beautiful

Made in a 72 hour game jam (2023 Winter Melon Jam) by me, @cobyte @smallbuggames and dogoryx!

Bonus fanart for my own game

Viewfinder is a mind-blowing perspective-based puzzle adventure that does things you won’t believe are possible!

Read More & Play the Beta Demo, Free (Steam)

I'm a big fan of wizards-as-programmers, but I think it's so much better when you lean into programming tropes.

A spell the wizard uses to light the group's campfire has an error somewhere in its depths, and sometimes it doesn't work at all. The wizard spends a lot of his time trying to track down the exact conditions that cause the failure.

The wizard is attempting to create a new spell that marries two older spells together, but while they were both written within the context of Zephyrus the Starweaver's foundational work, they each used a slightly different version, and untangling the collisions make a short project take months of work.

The wizard has grown too comfortable reusing old spells, and in particular, his teleportation spell keeps finding its components rearranged and remixed, its parts copied into a dozen different places in the spellbook. This is overall not actually a problem per se, but the party's rogue grows a bit concerned when the wizard's "drying spell" seems to just be a special case of teleportation where you teleport five feet to the left and leave the wetness behind.

A wizard is constantly fiddling with his spells, making minor tweaks and changes, getting them easier to cast, with better effects, adding bells and whistles. The "shelter for the night" spell includes a tea kettle that brings itself to a boil at dawn, which the wizard is inordinately pleased with. He reports on efficiency improvements to the indifference of anyone listening.

A different wizard immediately forgets all details of his spells after he's written them. He could not begin to tell you how any of it works, at least not without sitting down for a few hours or days to figure out how he set things up. The point is that it works, and once it does, the wizard can safely stop thinking about it.

Wizards enjoy each other's company, but you must be circumspect about spellwork. Having another wizard look through your spellbook makes you aware of every minor flaw, and you might not be able to answer questions about why a spell was written in a certain way, if you remember at all.

Wizards all have their own preferences as far as which scripts they write in, the formatting of their spellbook, its dimensions and material quality, and of course which famous wizards they've taken the most foundational knowledge from. The enlightened view is that all approaches have their strengths and weaknesses, but this has never stopped anyone from getting into a protracted argument.

Sometimes a wizard will sit down with an ancient tome attempting to find answers to a complicated problem, and finally find someone from across time who was trying to do the same thing, only for the final note to be "nevermind, fixed it".

store.steampowered.com

Underspace on Steam

The spiritual successor to Freelancer with a Lovecraftian, sandbox RPG twist. Explore a vast handmade universe that includes online multipla

Want to play Underspace?

NOW YOU CAN!

We've got a demo out on Steam for Next Fest, and more so we've got a livestream coming today at 3PM CST/1PM PST. Come chat with the developers and watch an extended deep-dive into the many many many many many many many many many many many aspects of the game!