Caryn Vainio

Wordy Rain - Wordy Rain 1.4 is out! - Steam News New dictionary, new save for some game modes, new scene, and new Wordy Drop!

I've made an update to Wordy Rain! 1.4 has a new & improved dictionary, the ability to save the non-competitive modes in progress, a new background scene & a new Wordy Drop word find! And to celebrate, Wordy Rain is 40% off until Feb. 19th! store.steampowered.com/news/app/376...

It’s ridiculously and delightful non-convenient, but I feel like I’m giving money to artists again.

We’ve gone back to analog hard in this family. We got a nice turntable set up and have been buying up vinyl left and right. The 14yo has gotten into cassettes. Spent his allowance on this recently:

Been working on a series of ink monotypes that are a sister body of work to my current acrylic series. The question of what direction this work needs to go in is consuming me but I don’t know the answer yet. Only making more work will tell me.

Jamie Oldham - Blackbird.
Oils.

YouTube video by Meredith Gran Perfect Tides: Station to Station - Release Trailer

It's time. Perfect Tides: Station to Station is out on PC and Mac.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=ESUK...

No. 1 Steam demo Launch Data.

Mega Data Dump: Forbidden Solitaire Demo Steam Launch (Patreon post)

www.patreon.com/posts/148758...

Spry Fox is a wonderful team building a beautiful game!

Steam Publisher: Grey Alien Games All games that Grey Alien Games has created or published.

It's the last day of the Steam Winter sale! If you feel like seeing in 2026 in a chill way, check out Regency Solitaire II, or Shadowhand Solitaire for something more swashbuckling.

store.steampowered.com/publisher/Gr...

Every year tiny worlds spring up on my neighbor's fenceposts. They look like adventure maps. Someone is DEFINITELY throwing a ring into the Great Chasm in pic #3.

I can't believe it's taken me this long to work on a game that lets me indulge the thing I love doing: vector art where I hand-edit every vector point to be lovingly slightly askew. <3 (I think I have too many bushes here, but I gotta make it exist before I make it good.) The brown box is temp.

I really hate Duolingo’s negging methods. It turns me off the app.

Family drama, comedy, turn-based fantastical battles with your exes, skating, and cooking tasty dishes! Thirsty Suitors is 50% off on Steam. Here’s an overview. If you played it, please leave a review! store.steampowered.com/app/1617220/...

YouTube video by join-indie-io The Abbess Garden | Release Date Announcement | indie.io

The Abbess Garden has an official release date! The game will be available on Steam on March 2! :)

New trailer to celebrate ^^
www.youtube.com/watch?v=qrpj...

Other announcement, we have partnered with @join-indie-io.bsky.social! They'll help us with QA & marketing :)

#indiegame #cozygame

For our Playdate game based on Firewatch, we wanted some collectible Forrest Byrnes posters with a creepy and threatening 60s-70s Smokey Bear aura. Scaring kids into not starting fires.

So I made these.

A painting of a landscape, in which the viewer stands on a forest path. The colors are odd: bright teal and yellow-green for highlights, mauve and purple for midtones, umber and forest green for shadows. The path is illuminated with bright green light, dappled with purple shadows from the trees. The path leads toward a cluster of trees, all bathed in yellow-green light.

#ArtAdventCalendar Day 18
"Forest Path"

Trying to push myself out of my color palette comfort zone, and limited myself to 6 pre-chosen colors for this one.

It's kinda like "here, we only have these 6 weird markers" GLHF!

As always, painted by a human. 💚

#digitalpainting #landscapeart #forestart

Because you gotta visit the state fair at least once in your life, right?

Also, you have to eat a corndog when you're there. Which the alpacas have as an optional objective. (It's already working in the prototype. I can't wait for you to play it!)

I've loved doing wacky off-kilter vector illustrations for years so I'm realizing this leans into the very thing I like doing already. I was rather chuffed when I stepped back a bit from the monitor and looked at the State Fair marker I had created for the Adventure Map.

I've had the art style for Alpacas on Vacation in my head for a while and it's definitely inspired by Noble's work. I've had some anxiety about being able to pull it off, but over the last week it's starting to come together.

It turns out that one guy in particular was responsible for most of the backgrounds in the iconic Looney Tunes cartoons, the best ones, done by Chuck Jones. That guy was Maurice Noble. Among many pieces, probably his most famous is "What's Opera, Doc?"

Like most people my age I loved Looney Tunes. There was something that struck me as amazing that normally shouldn't stand out: the backgrounds. Partially abstracted, clearly inspired by jazz and modern art, filled with crazy line drawings mixed with shapes mixed with wacky perspective. I adored it.

I'm working on the UI style for Alpacas on Vacation and thought I'd talk about it a bit because I'm really happy with where it's going. This is just a piece taken out of a larger bit of UI (the Adventure Map). (🧵)

I paid for all of these out of my own money so you are getting a fair rating!

Because the alpacas are on vacation in my next game and you can’t go on vacation without buying a tourist tee!

Why is the alpacas wearing a T-shirt? Because if you 5-star a level in Alpacas on Vacation, you of course get a tourist item to wear from the gift shop!

Despite 15+ years of alpaca ownership, I’m only now just asking myself this critical question: how would an alpaca wear a T-shirt??

My highly scientific survey of asking on a Discord channel reveals that #3 is the funniest because it’s the most ridiculous.

Some very rough concepting for the alpacas in Alpacas on Vacation. The idea is that the player can mix and match topknot styles, mouth shapes, and body widths to customize their herd. I’m liking that bottom center guy a lot.

The Dr. Seuss version of an alpaca is…just a regular alpaca.

I always consider it a good sign when, during a playtest, the tester's kid starts backseat playing. "Wait, you gotta get the balloon...okay YESSS you got it"

One of my favorite parts of early game dev is subbing in 10s hand-drawn sketches until you have the real deal, like this tutorial popup in Alpacas On Vacation.