Jordan

time to make a home server for hosting all my projects now, I guess :/

gotta love when a perfectly good product turns hostile against its dedicated users in the endless capitalism-fueled pursuit of More™

My personal GOTY for 2024 is hitting the Switch! A lot of the games on here are worth the $25 alone (looking at you, Mortol, Rock On! Island, and Porgy...)

Seriously, play this game if you haven't already, it's kind of impossible to not fall in love with at least a few of the games in here.

Screenshot of the number of entries for the GMTK Game Jam 2025 totaling 9,737!!

Side note: almost 10k games (!!) were created for this game jam?!?? WHAT

Super inspiring to see Godot almost eclipsing Unity for most used game engine for #GMTKJam! I'd be surprised if it didn't surpass it in 2026.

Cyclus by jordansmithsgames, Johnny Delgado, Ana Thomas Loop your way through cyclical mazes!

I made a game with some friends for this year's #GMTKJam! It's called Cyclus, and it's about drawing loops to navigate through puzzly circular mazes, inspired by Nintendo DS games.

🖊️♾️: jordansmithsgames.itch.io/cyclus

#gmtk #gmtk25 #godot #gamedev #indiedev

A screenshot from the game Stardew Valley of the fishing mini-game

What about the bar from the Stardew Valley fishing minigame? Taking a mechanic a lot of people kind of dislike and making it central to a game could be fun.

ngl a gun that shoots blanks but has an insane stun-inducing muzzle flash on enemies as compensation would be pretty fun. maybe you stumbled upon a feature if silly guns have a place in your game??

ay yo the LIGHTING?? y’all are cooking

reminds me of the Burrower archetype from @mossmouth.bsky.social's blog!

www.derekyu.com/makegames/ar...

It’s firmly up there in the list of soundtracks I’m putting on frequently for focused work, among other greats like the excellent TUNIC and Celeste soundtracks.

Yes, @doublefine.com’s PsychOdyssey is amazing and wonderful and deserves all the praise. Please go watch it if you are at all interested in how the sausage is made for video games, it’s free on YouTube. But goddamn, the soundtrack by @orangedrinkmusic.bsky.social slaps pretty hard on its own.

Very excited to be going to AWE this year! I hope to meet a lot of VR engineers so I can pick their brains on how they are pushing this medium forward in their own way. ✨

in the timely manor. straight up “blueing it” and by “it” , haha, well let’s justr say. My pirnce

indie dev is interesting because you have to make something for yourself, something laser targeted at your inner sicko, because trying to do it for anyone else will hollow you out, and then when it's done you have to turn around and lie to everyone that it was actually for them all along

Anyways, I think I'll try to internalize the articles' advice to:
- finish the vertical slice of the game asap
- keep the project engine/tools locked at the beginning, no take backsies
- know that "perfect is the enemy of good"
when tackling current and future projects.

Logically, I know that engine updates don't warrant a project port/refactor unless the gap between versions is wide and meaningfully different. But I got shiny object syndrome pretty bad for engine updates, it's pretty annoying.

I also think I often fall into the Loop of Restarting covered in the second article, triggered particulary with package/game engine updates. For whatever reason, whenever a Unity/Godot update comes out, the urge to update my project(s) to the latest engine version is STRONG.

Most projects that I shelve nowadays typically have a neat technical prototype at its center, but once I get to that part of development where the work is mostly making lots of stuff as opposed to new stuff (a.k.a. "The Swamp" as Derek calls it), it's a death knell for the project.

The first article covers "archetypes" of indie devs, in terms of what kind of non-finisher you are. Historically, I've been a Daydreamer for most of my life, but slowly I've become an Inventor as I've gotten more and more skilled in programming thanks to my day job.

Been floundering a bit in my game projects recently, so I'm pretty happy I stumbled upon @mossmouth.bsky.social's excellent articles of advice on how to finish games. I think both of them are good reads, even if you feel pretty experienced at shipping (I don't, lol).

a cartoon drawing of a red cube with a blue background ALT: a cartoon drawing of a red cube with a blue background

Just finished TUNIC, found all the pages and everything, thoroughly enjoyed. I haven't spent that much time scribbling notes on paper to figure out puzzles since ANIMAL WELL. No wonder that game has an easter egg for this one, very similar vibe in the late game.

Also the music SLAPS

It’s been a while since I’ve seen a VR game that drew my eye as much as this one, very excited to play this whenever the demo is ready!

New problem: cannot stop playing Balatro to do game dev stuff 😅

Buying Balatro for my phone might be the best idea for staving off doomscrolling I've found, highly recommended!

Happy New Year, everyone! 🎊🎆

Yeah it feels like the future of XR is open, at least from an interaction standard. Pretty exciting!

Man… I think I really needed to see this

Don't get me wrong, Aladdin's Magic Carpet Ride was nauseating at best by today's standards, but I like to think that it helped, in its tiny way, bring VR into the public consciousness years before Oculus was a glimmer in Palmer Luckey's eye. It sure had an impact on me!

I'm rereading The Art Of Game Design: A Book Of Lenses again, and all the references to DisneyQuest's immersive experiences make me wish they didn't close DisneyQuest all over again. :(