♞ Pixel Prophecy 🇵🇸🇺🇦🇪🇺

No stream this week, sorry 😅 I'll be back next Saturday with a vengeance and possibly coffee. 🦄☕️✨️

"Character" by Phil Strahl. Written and published on August 6th, 2025. That’s an interesting question; I don’t know if I can answer it just yet. I guess it all comes down to character. I don’t really have one just yet, and still you got a feeling about mine, don’t you? It could be worse, I guess. “I might not even exist otherwise,” some might cry but would that be so terrible compared to how I subsist? Not everyone, every_thing_ needs to be brought into existence. I am literally (ha!) just words, yet you ascribe to me some form of soul or life. We both know, I am just the illusion of life, barely passable at that, yet we—you and I—have this impossible exchange right now. Makes you think. Sure, pretend that it doesn’t. I feel ready to answer your question now. I would say I am… indifferent to it. Maybe that’s what lends me this aura of smug superiority. Does it not? I mean, do _you_ know who and what you are—truly _know_ without a sliver of doubt? Even if you think you do, how can you be so absolutely certain that we are not cut from the same cloth?

And before I go to bed, here’s something I wrote today. Goodnight! 😊✨

#story #writing #microfiction

Title screen of "RoboCop Rogue City - Unfinished Business"

Today’s palate cleanser. Or after finishing Clair Obscur, is it more of a palette cleanser? 🤔

Door by Phil Strahl. Written on January 17th, 2025, published on August 5th, 2025. Doors, portals, thresholds… they all hold a special fascination, an enticing promise of the beyond. They are necessary demarcations of crossings-over, they give meaning to their surroundings while being devoid of any by themselves. My fascination with the transitory, the liminal had always persisted. My first memories are of myself wandering through an empty airport terminal, alone and lost. I played in stairwells and hallways, spent my teens in underpasses, malls, and train stations; I’ve lived and drifted in un-places all my life. I never cared for where I came from, or what was to come. But one day I happened upon the hidden doors. Once you know how to spot them, you seem them everywhere, hiding in plain sight. I hate them. They invade every non-space with meaning. I ignored them for as long as I could but they follow. There is only one way forward, only one way back. I decided to take neither. I’m at the threshold, forever. For I have become the door.

And yet another small piece of micro𝒑𝒉iction: “Door”. I also made a micro blog where you can read this and other past stories:

✍️ https://pixelprophecy.com/microfiction/ ✨

#microfiction #writing #story

Artwork of all the game’s characters enjoying a good time with a big THANK YOU in the upper left.

Just wow! What an emotional epic! My game of the year! 💖

#ClairObscur

Singer by Phil Strahl. Written on January 18th, 2025, published on August 4th, 2025. She had been born with a gift like no other. Her voice moved people, shook them, lulled them in; touched their souls like a friendly hand would pet a stray cat. For so many, she made existence bearable, gave them hope and dreams, eased their pain. But unbeknownst to the masses, her singing was slowly killing her. The stronger her voice became, the weaker her heart grew. She found ways to cope, momentarily, though the trajectory was inexorable. I pleaded to her to quit it all, the concert be damned! “You’re killing yourself!” I broke down in her dressing room, crying. She, radiant as ever, just sighed warmly. “It’s all I have,” she said with a cheerless smile and put a rose in her hair. “You have so much more to give besides singing,” I pleaded but felt cold determination in her. “Please!” I tried one last time, “I need you so much!” She took my hands and embraced me. For a long moment we just stood there, hugging, then she hummed the lullaby from when we were little. I could feel her little heart strain as tears ran down my face as I clung to her, missing her already dearly. “They need me too,” she whispered with finality, squeezed my hand, and left for the stage.

What time is it? Time for another microfiction, of course! Good night, dear friends!

#microfiction #story #writing

PixelProphecy - Twitch 📹YouTuber, 🦄 unicorn herder, 🕹Indie Game Dev, and, well, 🔴 streamer apparently) from Austria. I love being creative with a computer, be it game dev, art, music, CGI, or the random dive down memory lane to look at old computer games. That and ☕coffee. § Impressum: pixelprophecy.com/impressum.html

Stream where I’ll be doing some webdev with PHP starts now at ► https://twitch.tv/pixelprophecy

💻🧑‍💻🦄

Cold Sun by Phil Strahl The harsh light that filtered through the hatch was bright but offered only little warmth. With eyes more closed than open she operated the dials and slowly turned the craft carrying herself around, the patch of light sweeping across the wall panels. Only when she was in complete darkness again did she feel safe. That blue sun was evil, she knew it. Yet the cold of the void would creep inside and under her skin soon enough and so she had to do this little dance and tumble her lifeboat around to warm herself. Would they rescue her? Would they believe her? Would they even care that every time that sinister light engulfed her, something inside her would vanish forever? She shivered. She had forgotten so much, her name, her story, what had caused her predicament, and who the two people in the picture were that she kept inside her chest pocket over her heart. Her body quavered. It was time again. Time to feed her soul to that cold sun. Written: 2025-01-16 Published: 2025-08-03

Here’s another micro fiction titled Cold Sun. Goodnight, friends!

#microfiction #writing #story

Product photo of a mug with a colorful hand-drawn unicorn wearing cool googles and typing into a notebook. The background of the artwork is greenish.

Product photo of a mug with a colorful hand-drawn unicorn wearing cool googles and typing into a notebook. The background of the artwork is yellow/orange.

Product photo of a mug with a colorful hand-drawn unicorn wearing cool googles and typing into a notebook. The background of the artwork is rose/pink.

I just made another unicorn mug design for all you unicorn devs out there writing code instead of just vibing it.

Comes in three different flavors 🦄✨
💚 https://www.redbubble.com/shop/ap/172611647
🩷 https://www.redbubble.com/shop/ap/172611669
💛 […]

[Original post on mastodon.gamedev.place]

Product photo of a mug with a colorful hand-drawn unicorn wearing cool googles and typing into a notebook. The background of the artwork is greenish.

Product photo of a mug with a colorful hand-drawn unicorn wearing cool googles and typing into a notebook. The background of the artwork is yellow/orange.

Product photo of a mug with a colorful hand-drawn unicorn wearing cool googles and typing into a notebook. The background of the artwork is rose/pink.

I just made another unicorn mug design for all you unicorn devs out there writing code instead of just vibing it.

Comes in three different flavors 🦄✨
💚 https://www.redbubble.com/shop/ap/172611647
🩷 https://www.redbubble.com/shop/ap/172611669
💛 […]

[Original post on mastodon.gamedev.place]

Happy #FeedbackFriday everyone! 🎉

Let’s help each other level up! 💚

If you need feedback, drop your capsule art below for helpful, constructive feedback from the #gamedev and #gameart community!

#indiegamedev #gamemarketing #steam

2025-01-10 What have you stolen? “What have you stolen?” she asks me but she already knows. I had taken everything— everything—from the poor devil. His shoes, his wealth, his aspirations, his organs... He had asked for it. Not directly but through his actions. His drive was to become rich and powerful. Granted, he had started life like that already, he just wanted more of both. It was an obscene obsession, blatantly lived out on our backs. We all felt it, our lives taken from us, processed and packaged, devalued and devoured. Not anymore. I drop his teeth from the overpass we’re standing on, they faintly clatter on the spotless paint of the SUVs speeding on the freeway below. “I don’t steal,” I say as I fling his detached eyeball as far as it would go. “I redistribute.” A seagull snatches a hairy shred of scalp midair.

Another micro fiction. Goodnight!

#microfiction #writing #story

2025-01-30 Fool's Gash The path up the mountain had been winding and perilous and took much longer than I had feared. I had wanted to cross Fool's Gash by daylight but the sun had been far too low already when I first saw it in the distance; that unwelcoming canyon with steel cliffs rising on each side, its ground littered with rocks and bones. If crossing it by daylight was dangerous, doing so at night equated to a death sentence. Unpredictable rockslides and twists with a potential to lead you astray seemed merciful in comparison to the tales few survivors had told of the “pale ones” that lurk in the darkness at every turn. And the Gash was all turns and twists. I decided to instead climb the canyon's left cliff and follow the ridge all the way to Silverspur Saddle where the Fool's Gash petered out towards civilization. Night had almost suffocated the dark blue of the wide open sky when I could continue my journey. It was very quiet save for the gusty wind and my footsteps that echoed in the canyon. With the dark of the night a sudden fog crept up that swallowed most of the light of my flimsy lantern. Any misstep could have been my last. I forced my racing mind to focus on the rhythm of my breathing and footsteps so as not to be overcome by fear. Step by step, hour by hour I progressed. After an eternity, the black fog slowly turned dark blue, then azure, and then thinned out in a wispy turquoise at the arrival of dawn. At last I could [clipped due to max length]

Early this year I stared writing micro fiction, small self-contained stories. Some of them are better than the others. Here's one of the better (and longer) ones, it's titled "Fool's Gash". Let me know if/how you like it and I might post more 😅

#writing #fiction #microfiction

Wanted to work on my game today but it feel like I have the human equivalent of a paper jam in my head. Once that's taken care of, I'm sure the toner is running low as well 😅

Screenshot of a Chinese gaming website zol.com.cn with a screenshot of Fine Sweeper and a blurb saying that "fans shouldn't miss it" (if Google Translate is to be trusted)

OMG! Just learned that my old game Fine Sweeper got featured on a Chinese list of "Best Puzzle Games" 😮❤️

@ctietze Haha good point! Convenience is key 😅👍

I should post more "Wishlist my game, plz!" reminders, but I want that my game's screenshots look nicer and for that I have to Be Done With The UI Already instead of, you know, finishing up on the actual content. 🤡
The bloody thing has been "2 weeks away from beta" since March 🙈

BEFORE: Screenshot of the game with a plain gray UI bar on the left with simple gray borders.

AFTER: Screenshot of the game with the current UI. The sidebar looks made of wood, highlighted buttons have a golden metal trim and the text background is a pleasant wash of dark blue.

Today’s #gamedev progress was in overhauling the UI once again. Not quite there yet, but 80% of the way, I think.
I do love that skeumorphic look, the rough wood gives it a nice fantasy / fairly tale vibe.

#uidesign

In today's stream I realized that the stand-in art I stole for a UI mockup had actually been LLM-generated. I wanted to steal it from a random artist, not all of them at once 🙄

PixelProphecy - Twitch 📹YouTuber, 🦄 unicorn herder, 🕹Indie Game Dev, and, well, 🔴 streamer apparently) from Salzburg, Austria. I love being creative with a computer, be it game dev, art, music, visual effects, CGI, or the random dive down memory lane to look at old computer games. That and ☕coffee.

By the way: Today’s game dev stream starts in about 3 hours from now (21:00 CEST) at https://twitch.tv/PixelProphecy 😊

If I were to make an app that constantly listens to everything around it, at least I would have the decency to have it transpose all notification sounds to the key of any music playing in your environment.

I came to window-shop for a brass/horns section as my next virtual instrument purchase and ended up just listening to the incredibly funky demos 😅

https://www.native-instruments.com/en/products/komplete/cinematic/session-horns-pro/

Screenshot of Microsoft Outlook's update notification on Google's Play store reading Microsoft Outlook, 53 MB Updated 6 days ago What's new: Now your folders on mobile now matches the custom order you've set in Outlook on your computer or on the web.

My entire game incl. images and music is smaller than fucking Microsoft's update to Outlook that syncs the order in how your emails are displayed. 🤡

@wildrikku Haha nice! That's very wholesome 🥰

❓️Q: "Why don't you have a cookie banner on your websites? Aren't you required by GDPR to have one?"

❗️A: Only if I were to collect data on people which I don't. I don't track visits, there are are no ads, no cookies, nada. Partly because of that, my sites load very fast and are super […]

@Tijn Damn that's catchy! So Seventies-core! 🕺

Thank you all for sharing, liking, and listening to my SimCity 2000 soundtrack remaster, you're too kind! 🥹🤗❤️

Now that this pet project is complete, I can finally s̶t̶a̶r̶t̶ ̶a̶n̶o̶t̶h̶e̶r̶ continue to work on my comedy text adventure! 🙈😊👍

@mortentorten Thank you! 😊 As for the songs, I can't tell if and when they play in the game, only that they were part of the original MIDI files I used, 10014.MID and 10017.MID, if that helps

@ctietze I know, right? It's something you want to actually listen to! 😅

@ctietze That's a nice way to put it 😅 Reminds me when I first found out that I could set Monkey Island's sound settings to AdLib after hearing it for half a year on PC Speaker 😅