David Szymanski

Winnie the glue
Winnie the glue
Bottle of adhesive that
Makes things sticky

It was really fun to be a part of this project. Watch to see me frantically try to explain Cruelty Squad in under 2 minutes!

Still available for pre-order 👀 @andrewhulshult.bsky.social @duskdev.bsky.social

lnk.to/dusk-vinyl

Games did emulate Half-life but it didn't cause a genre-wide movement. Many different games were trying things in many different directions, up until the modern military shooter formula blew up.

I've heard this opinion before and I've never felt the actual history supports it. Arguably the most creative and varied period for FPS occurred from the late 90s to the later 2000s, and the modern shooter formula wasn't codified (pun intended) until CoD4

I'm aware. Boomer shooter is the term that's caught on, however. There's a chain of memes that led to it a few years back.

YouTube video by Dark Vector Half-Life: Element 64 | Announcement Trailer

We are excited to announce our latest project - Half-Life: Element 64!

Find out more:
dark-vector.com/games/elemen...

Watch trailer:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=sOIr...

PLAY DEMO NOW!
store.steampowered.com/app/1625220/...

#gamedev #indiedev #halflife

Half-Life: Element 64 on Steam Jump into the fray of Element 64 and save the world from an alien invasion in an action adventure inspired by the classic shooters of 1990s, all set in the award-winning universe of Half-Life. It's da...

This is a very specific type of wonderful heresy. Half-life 1 as a boomer shooter!

store.steampowered.com/app/1625220/...

There's a demo and it's pretty fun

And the FINAL new creator to announce for the "100 Indie Games YOU Should Play" Charity Project is @duskdev.bsky.social!

See you all at 6pm EST...

(See pinned post for more details)

Yeah I wanted to do a demo for Dusk and was similarly dissuaded from it. It's really ironic that just a few years later the presiding wisdom completely reversed and now demos are everywhere lol

Yeah I mean I'm a survivors-like fan, so I don't think it's inherently bad for a game to tickle the lizars brain part, but sometimes it feels like even some AA/indies exist primarily as an addiction and false reward mechanism with not much else going on

I don't think it's quite that overt or exploitative, it's just more that the focus seems tipped toward big numbers and how to get big numbers. Which I get, and critically examining the market isn't a bad thing at all, but... like I said, there's just an undertone that's weird to me.

Oh, what was Windwaker's approach?

I think the first priority always has to be making something that's genuinely worth peoples' time and money. Not just something that's capable of taking peoples' time and money.

Again nothing against dopamine loops in games or viral success or w/e, it's just... idk.

Especially whenever I've stopped in at game dev communities on Reddit and YT lately, it's like... idk. I believe the kids would say "the vibes are weird"

I have nothing against developers wanting to make a ton of money, because we all want that, but there's gotta be more behind it.

I'm starting to feel kind of grumpy about how some indie and AA games copy so many of the practices that harm AAA. Like, dopamine loops and such can be compelling in a good way, but when we're implementing fomo shops, daily grinds, etc just like big companies... idk it feels wrong to me.

I mean that seems like a lot of extra work vs just taking smart phone pictures and photobashing

wat

Oh for whatever reason I haven't searched itch.io much for stock assets. I should look into that more.

So did we find any good alternatives to textures . com after its rapid enshittification? I've been scraping by on source photos I already have but idk if there's a better option.

"There's nothing in the rules that says a dog CAN'T inherit great wealth and vast estates."

Heir Bud

WHAT fall???

21 days so far! Going pretty good. Still haven't worked up the courage to deal with the whole music software thing tho.

That sure is true yeah. The Bunker is so good

There's a bunch of those right now though aren't there?

I'm mostly worried that the deluge of survivors games is gonna leave people burnt out on the concept of killing lots of swarms of enemies, regardless of what the wider context is, so I'm trying to get a sense of what my audience specifically is wanting in shooters atm.

To clarify why I care, the game I'm working on (Bugbite) has arcadey over-the-top combat but also a focus on world/atmosphere/story, combined in a way which I *think* people will resonate with in 2027 when I'm expecting to release it, but idk for sure.

I'm actually working on exactly that sort of game!

I have opinions but I feel like this is something I might have lost touch with so I'm curious to hear what others think.