The Pixel Prophet #12
Discover the latest indie games, updates, and news, support the Pixel Prophet, and dive into the world of retro and upcoming game releases.
And yet again I have to thank you for donating to the Good Cause i.e. the Pixel Prophet, you wonderful people you! It’s one of my many passion projects and I am super happy how many of you have subscribed and enjoy what I am doing. Onwards!
Slight changes in the Games section as previously I classified games with tags from INDIE to VERY INDIE but with the Prophet’s strong focus on indies, this seemed a little superfluous. So I changed the tags to reflect the presented game’s development status. Now you’ll see at first glance whether it’s IN DEVELOPMENT, RELEASED, or something else entirely.
Apart from that it’s the usual candy bag of game dev related stuff. Hope you enjoy!
— Phil
You can support the Pixel Prophet at ko-fi, or donate via PayPal to ensure its sustainability. It also helps to tell other about the Prophet who share your great taste in newsletters.
News & Updates
- Tumblr and WordPress to Sell Users’ Data to Train AI Tools, Samantha Cole reports for 404media. It’s as bad as you’d think (not the article!), especially if you are a creator and have been posting on those sites. In the linked article there’s also a 46min long podcast on the issue, in case you want to learn all the details.
- Nex-Gen Unity Features only in Chinese Version. The current Chinese version 1.0.0 of the Unity editor boasts features that tech-minded devs have been requesting for years, such as virtual geometry and global illumination. Unity China is a regional joint venture (source) that “answers localized requests”, still it’s yet another instance of what’s become so typical for the struggling Unity: Utter lack of vision and communication. (via Tim Soret on Twitter)
- YoYo Games (GameMaker Studio) releases FMOD extension. In a step to make collaboration with audio professionals easier when developing with GameMaker Studio 2, YoYo Games’s offers now an extensions to integrate FMOD in GameMaker via GitHub.
Games
Big and small, old, and new, indie and very indie
Secrets of Grindea
RELEASED • Grind like in the 90s!
The Swedes really know how to make good games: Minecraft (2011, Mojang), Satisfactory (2019, Coffee Stain Studios), the Amnesia series (2010, Frictional), Pinball Dreams (1992, DICE)… So it’s no surprise another developer joins their ranks: The Pixel Ferrets, a trio from Visby consisting of Teddy Sjöström (code), Fred Ström (animation), and Vilya Svensson (graphics). They have been working for over a decade on their 1990s-throwback RPG, ►Secrets of Grindea. Their labor of love finally released on Steam, GOG, and Humble on February 29th. (The game is 10% off until Thursday)
At first glance it looks wonderfully retro, incredibly expansive, full of stuff to collect, yet with modern bells and whistles. Apart from the screen size the game’s most prominent feature seems to be the 2-4 player (online) co-op gameplay in finest Secret of Mana (1993) tradition. Also, there’s a fishing mini-game because that’s the law. There’s really a lot in there!
UFO 50
In DEVELOPMENT • The best 50-in-1 game
For years now, Derek Yu (you know, the guy who made frickin’ Spelunky!) and other indie game developers have been working on the ultimate retro game collection titled ►UFO 50. While the games are “slightly smaller than commercial 8-bit titles from the 80’s”, they are neither micro nor mini. “The story of UFO 50 is that the games were all created in the 80’s by a fictional company that was obscure but ahead of its time.”
In a recent dev update, Derek announced the the team is “planning for a release in the second half of the year” and now I am very much looking forward to summer. Also, I love that they use my favorite engine of choice, GameMaker Studio 2. You can wishlist UFO 50 on Steam already.
Aqua Mundo
IN DEVELOPMENT • Waterworld, but good!
Belgian indie gamedev Glen Bourgonjon (but who lives in Sweden) is working on ►Aqua Mundo. Your job is to “design pools, lazy rivers, and water slides while sculpting an immersive thematic world. Keep guests entertained and maintain your infrastructure to keep the park afloat financially.” What attracted me to it are the minimalist visuals with clear shapes and strong colors that are very pleasing to look at and work at any size. Glen also started a dev log on YouTube, if you want to follow along. I am sure the game makes a splash and other strained aquatic puns. This article has been corrected with the correct name of the developer. It’s Glen Bourgonjon not Ben.
Windowkill
RELEASED • You Are The Task Manager
Long-time Ludum Dare veteran torcado put forth something very original for the Ludum Dare 54 game jam where the theme was “Limited Space”. Torcado knocked it out of the frame with ►Windowkill. This unusual twin-stick shooter’s catch? You move and resize the game window by shooting it from the inside to reach other windows with enemies popping up. I don’t think my clumsy description does it justice, so I urge you to check out the game’s trailer.
The very polished and varied post-jam version of Windowkill 3.0 is out now on Steam and itch.io.
Gränsland
OLD AND FORGOTTEN • Twin Peaks in Sweden
So you think you know every obscure horror adventure there is, don’t you? I bet you, you haven’t heard of this one … unless you lived in Sweden in the late nineties and followed the local adventure scene. Obscure Game Aesthetics on Twitter pointed me to a game from that era and place that I’d never crossed paths with, the 1999 game Gränsland (“border country/land”).
In Gränsland you play a young woman who moved to a seemingly ordinary apartment with seemingly ordinary neighbors, but “the residents keep saying something unsaid, and the mysterious doors in their apartments, which no one seems to see, emit a muted light…”. The game is presented in Myst-like fashion of pre-rendered backgrounds with actors composed into them, the movement is from node to node.
There’s only one playthrough on YouTube and i’s entirely in Swedish, yet with Russian subtitles that help only a little. The game’s archived entry from old-games.ru warns the player that the plot is hard to follow, that “narration is very allegorical and filled with symbology, everything also happens in Swedish, and there are no subtitles.” Yeah, thanks.
The mundaneness of it all with the uncanny air of something being off holds a strange fascination for me despite (or perhaps because) of not comprehending much as I was following the English auto-translation of the Russian subtitles to Swedish actors. I am now hooked and really wish I could learn more about the game, its inception, development, and legacy. Let me know if you know some of it!
Kanske en dag…
Old School Rally
IN DEVELOPMENT • Wishlist 1, then long straight
Yet another old-school racing game popped up in my feed, this one being the conceptual opposite of last issue’s impossible arcade fantasy Victory Heat Rally. Instead, ►Old School Rally by the Greek solo dev Sakis Rogkas seeks to deliver exactly what its title promises, an old school rally experience. My first glance at a screenshot instantly reminded me of Codemasters’ Colin McRae Rally 2.0 (2000) or Bugbear’s Rally Trophy (2001). There’s just nothing quite like drifting the iconic blue Subaru Impreza with the bright-yellow livery through a tight corner on a dusty track; and on that front, the trailers seem spot-on.
Old School Rally is wishlistable on Steam and planned to hit Early Access later this year.
The Consuming Shadow
OLD BUT GOOD • Banish the Night
It wouldn’t be a Pixel Prophet games section if I didn’t recommend at least one indie horror game. ►The Consuming Shadow is quite old, released in 2015, but the ~50 hours I spent with it convinced me that it might be an overlooked gem to dust off and shine my dim spotlight on.
First, let’s first address the elephant: Yes, the game looks ugly and even did by 2015’s standards. It’s not without a coherent visual language, mind you, it just comes off as a tad amateurish which might have caused many a player to dismiss it as yet another Baby’s First GameMaker disaster and move on.
Once you look past it you discover an intriguing Lovecraftian roguelike that combines resource management, dungeon crawling, puzzles and random encounters to a gripping experience. What the visual presentation lacks, sound and atmosphere well make up for, and the design and character classes are surprisingly deep and engaging. Also, the setting of a pre-apocalyptic Great Britain still feels fresh, even after Brexit.
The game’s creator, a long-time GameMaker developer is known more for his many other projects, most notably the long-running Zero Punctuation series. After the travesty at The Escapist last November (see Issue 02), Ben “Yahtsee” Crowshaw co-founded Second Wind, “a fully employee-owned, fan-funded and independent entertainment outlet featuring premium video essays, documentaries, livestreams and podcasts!”
DIRE
EARLY ACCESS • Structural Integrity
The Wisconsin-based designer, artist, and developer with the mysterious name World Ø posted a demo of their “low poly first-person interactive exploration simulator [set in] in a deep, hollow, and forgotten structure.” I couldn’t help but fall for the screenshots that evoke haunting memories of Tsutomu Nihei’s architectural horror manga, Blame! in me.
In the minimalist ►DIRE you explore the expansive ruins underneath a mysterious spire on an unnamed desert planet, and follow the steps of a determined man who left journal entries behind. The dreamlike atmosphere and desolate environment mixed with the faint audioscape made for a melancholic feeling in me that I couldn’t quite place.
One word of advice: Always use the stairs and don’t drop from any height as I got regularly stuck in the geometry and had to quit the game. But since it is still being developed, I am sure that will be fixed — unless that’s intentional.
Programming & Game Dev
Tools, resources, wisdom, humor.
Use the technology or stack that people are claiming is “obsolete”. It usually just means that it’s productive and predictable. — Hendrik Mans on Mastodon
2D GRAPHICS • Way of the Tile — In 2022, John Nesky ►shared (on Twitter) “a reference chart for ways to design environment art for solid boundaries of 2D video games”. I rediscovered it again and recognized many styles from games I love. (Here’s the tweet on archive.org)
While you’re here, why not check out John’s GDC talk on the camera system for Journey (2015) and subsequently throw away all your 3rd-person camera implementations and start anew.
GRAPHICS PROGRAMMING • Weekly Vertex of Knowledge — Since July 2017, graphics programmer Jendrik Illner (who had worked on AAA graphics tech), has been publishing ►Graphics Programming Weekly, a weekly round-up of what’s new noteworthy in the graphics tech scene. There’s also a database of all the articles, truly a staggering archive. So if you are a graphics nerd and learned about Jendrik’s newsletter from me: Merry Christmas!
GAMES • Mordle for Wordle — Remember 2021? I know, it’s like a decade ago but I’m sure others also fondly remember that hot daily word game they fell victim to, Josh Wardle’s addictive Worlde. It wouldn’t remain the only one as the style of daily something-dle puzzle flooded the interwebz. @sequentialchaos collected many of these Dles on ►The Dles where you can browse and filter the variants at your leisure. (via @blinry on Mastodon)
LEVEL DESIGN • Of Robots and Mechanics — Senior Level Designer at MY.GAMES, Denis Kozin ►published a long, detailed, (and amply illustrated) article on Game Developer about “designing maps that complement game mechanics”.
Denis goes into great detail about the considerations and philosophies when creating maps for their game, War Robots; how to “take into account the basic game mechanics: enhancing their positive aspects, while also smoothing out any shortcomings.” It’s an excellent piece on multiplayer map design.
(via Konstantinos Dimopoulos. I’ve regurgitated so many of his tweet for the Prophet, that you should seriously consider following Konstantinos on Mastodon, BlueSky, or Twitter)
GAME DESIGN • Verbs — Ah, the good old verbs again, that game design education staple: The ”physical interaction with [an input device] as a part of taking an action in a game” (source). Narrative designer Daan a.k.a. Turbo Hermit shared their ThoughtsTM on it in a Twitter ►thread.
But here’s the thing... I don’t think either Verbs OR Actions should be the core of your game design.
If you hate Twitter, here’s the thread unrolled and archived.
Also check out Turbo Hermit’s blog and newsletter for more game design and storytelling knowledge.
MUSIC • Compose and Conquer — Former Westwood’s “music guy”, Frank Klepacki started a series of videos for his Patreon supporters where he talks in detail about each track of his famous Command & Conquer (1995), C&C Red Alert (1996), and Tiberian Sun (1999) soundtracks (“and much more”). I was a real RTS (Real-Time Strategy) nerd back in the late 1990s and still listen to these great industrial pieces when I’m coding or driving. If you feel similar and are curious about the stories behind each track, ►join Frank’s Patreon.
ARTICLE • Helps To Have A Map — Did you also draw maps of wonderful places when you were little? And imagine walking and exploring the wondrous worlds you came up with? No? Guess it was just me then.
Kidding aside, Eurogamer’s Robert Purchese found other game developers with similar backstories: “11 interviews later, and many thousands of worlds, I’ve written probably my most ambitious piece yet about the wonderful world of maps. Please give it a ►read!”. There is not much more for me to add to this, only that you have to be willing to opt into ads and tracking if you’re no Eurogame subscriber in order to read it. And while you’re there, check out Robert’s other articles.
PIXEL ART • A New Metric — Renowned Austrian pixel artist Thomas Feichtmeir a.k.a. Cyangmou shared a ►thread on Twitter about the concept of Tile Density. A metric “which is critical for any 2D game”. He provides many examples and shares the pros and cons that arise with tile size vs. resolution. You can also follow Cyangmou on BlueSky for the Pixelart for Beginners series.
MARKETING • DEBUG WANTS YOU(r indie game) — The wonderful people at Debug Magazine are ►calling for submissions of indie games to show up in future editions. Each issue is a treasure trove of cool indie stuff, so why not add yours? Simply write to editor@teamdebug.com. Debug: “And don’t forget to put us on your mailing list. Nothing cuts through quite like email does!”. If you are developing for a retro console or computer, their editor Marc Jowett would love to hear from you as well.
ARTICLE • Geoff Keighley — Journalist Kirk McKeand, Content Director for Video Games at Sports Illustrated, recently ►published an article titled “The games industry deserves a better spokesperson than Geoff Keighley”. Kirk breaks down the different binds Mr-The-Videogame-AwardsTM and the industry are in. It’s also a risky move because irritating Almighty Geoff can result in getting blacklisted, even if by proxy. Does a single man deserve that much power? What does and should he use it for? Read the article and join the discussion (if you dare) or just lurk in the replies on BlueSky and Twitter.
VIDEO • Speedrunning Documentaries — Even before I started documenting my own game dev journey, I enjoyed watching other people’s videos on their own passions and niches I knew nothing about. For example, did you know about the classic adventure games speedrunning scene? I do, of course, now that I have found ►OneShortEye on YouTube. They recently posted a documentary on Sierra’s rather obscure Conquests of the Longbow: The Legend of Robin Hood (1991).
SELF-HOSTING • Free WordPress! — Mike Hoye posted a short ►gist on GitHub on how to set up a “self-hosted Wordpress to work with a SQLite backing store rather than (the Oracle-owned) MySQL.” You need a bit of technical prowess but it’s not impossible and could be your next project?
INDIE GAMES • George’s Megathread — Games veteran George Broussard regularly invites indie devs to one of his Indie Game Megathreads over ►on Twitter to reply with their games. At the time of writing there are 71 replies, an opportunity for daring adventurers to dig for the next indie treasure. It’s where I came across DIRE, for example.
Art & Inspiration
Art, science, and other inspirations that left an impression on me
Federico Italiano posted on Twitter these (and more) original hand-painted background art from the seminal cyberpunk anime, Akira (1988).
There are no signatures on the artworks, so please have a look the film’s full cast and crew at IMDb and stand in awe over the hundreds of artists who made this film possible. Truly outstanding.
Pixel’s Mixed Bag
What I’ve been up to
◾ Tetris How it Used to Be: I mentioned that I recreated the original Tetris (1984) how it looked and sounded on Alexey Pajitnov’s Elektronika 60 mainframe for you to play in your browser. If you download it you will get a cool CRT shader as well (once my update goes live). It was part of my guesting at Radio FM4’s live stream talking about 40 Years of Tetris. If you speak German, please watch it on twitch.tv.
◾ The X is silent: mRr3b00t ran a poll on Elon’s hellsite about what name its users use to refer to it. No matter what Space Karen wants, a majority (85%) still prefer “Twitter”. That’s what I’ll keep using as well.
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You can support the Pixel Prophet at ko-fi, or donate via PayPal to ensure its sustainability. It also helps to tell other about the Prophet who share your great taste in newsletters.