Aaron San Filippo

YouTube video by join-indie-io The Abbess Garden | Launch Trailer | indie.io

My historical gardening game is out on Steam!

If you're feeling for spy plots, queer romance, discovering plants and caring for real plants, you can now join the Abbey and embody Agnès! 🌿

store.steampowered.com/app/3411970/...

Launch trailer: www.youtube.com/watch?v=k9Ev...

#cozygame #indiedev

SOME GENERAL TIPS FOR STEAM GAME DEMOS
(from someone who has played so many of them)

Note: These tips also apply to games in general! They're good tips!

Meme showing hot peppers saying "evolution can you give me capsaicin to deter mammals? I want birds to spread my seeds?" Evolution, rendered as a DNA double helix, asks "to deter mammals?" and the peppers reply "yes, to deter mammals, that is precisely what I said." Then it shows two cavemen excitedly yelling "mouth hot" at some peppers, to which the peppers say "wait what the fuck?" and the final image is a bunch of hot sauces and dishes, again captioned "what the fuck?"

It's one of my favorite topics to teach in sensory physiology-- how plants likely evolved capsaicin as a deterrent to keep us from eating them and that didn't work out so great for them (or did, since we now lovingly grow and cultivate them):

Hell yeah this could totally work as a night walk

I’m not sure whether this is semantics or not. IMO, mentorship is about experts dedicating time to newcomers, usually on an occasional call or scheduled meeting, to help them with their own goals and projects. Internships are about showing up like you would for a job with assignments+expectations

The best possible scenario for an internship would be working with established experts on commercial games, getting actual shipped games under their belt, credits in games, and time with mentors who are doing EXACTLY what they want to do. And this is not usually the environment indie teams offer.

Again, I don't mean this as a dig. I've been in the industry for 20 years, and shipped 12+ games. I would not take on an unpaid intern, especially if they are aiming to enter a field I'm not an expert in, like art. IMO - their time would be better spent making a game on their own.

Have you shipped commercial games before Chantel? If so, do you have the experience (and time) to mentor and manage the average beginner in their desired area of expertise (art, production, business, etc.)? If the answer to both of these isn't 'yes', I question the relative value of interning there.

Perhaps - there's definitely been a shift away from unpaid internships in the US.

I think the value of unpaid internship work is largely dependent on how well equipped the organization actually is to provide real value to the interns... Unpaid internship at Blizzard? Probably super valueable.

And I think in like 99% of cases, it's much, much more useful for those individuals to just go make their own games, contribute significantly to shipped products, and to avoid the overhead of "working" with scrappy remote part time teams.

Time and again I see people volunteering for small, unfunded teams, often remote, part-time, often teams that have no track record of shipping. More often than not, they get little useful things on their resume, and little in the way of useful mentorship from industry specialists for their role.

Chantel I mean this will all the love in the world:
I think you may be overestimating the value YOU provide interns or anyone doing things for free on your team, particularly if your commitment is to not use their work in a shipped game.

Nothingness - PlayFly That creepying feeling...

One Page Horror Story:
Nothingness

www.playfly.games/ugc/b703ddd3...

🌴DEMO ANNOUNCEMENT🌴 Surprise! I am thrilled to announce that the demo for Ourlands, my cozy island builder, just went live! Take a break from, well, everything, and go craft your perfect slice of paradise.

Enjoy!

s.team/a/2074470

Reminder to other indie dev teams especially new teams. Most of us are happy to share advice and give feedback on publisher/funding/platform deals and terms. There are some shady predatory biz weasels that will take advantage of you as soon as your game starts to pop off. Please reach out.

I think it probably is, but here it's five bucks and *shiny and visible*

(My DMS are open! I'll need to get you access to the beta for creators if you want to give it a try!)

Yesss send them all my way please! This platform is in early beta so they'll need to reach out to me to get access to create an account (for now), but I'm happy to help onboard them!

Thank you for the shout-out!

Don’t Feed The Stray - PlayFly Play this creation on PlayFly

Anyone want to try your hand at writing a One Page Horror Story with a simple tool I’m helping create?

Here’s an example:

www.playfly.games/ugc/cb293558...

This is super interesting because you'd think that on an individual game level, you'd do better if your game has tons of longevity. But the genre health depends on games *not* having longevity? Huh.

Ahh yeah, that’s the feature I really want - pause, inspect as a form of debugging live

Oh, sweet!

Yeah that felt like a major missing feature to me as well, coming from Unity.

Tech support is my passion

One page horror story: Don’t Feed The Stray

Read the whole thing here:

www.playfly.games/ugc/cb293558...

Post from r/crochet that says "mods are gone. All hail Mr. Nipples" and its a picture of the most disgusting crocheted doll/creature thats pink and has a creepy smile and horns and big pink nipples. It's truly horrifying

I need everyone to know that on the crochet subreddit the mods made a big post about how they're taking a week off because there was too much fighting/political posts. so there's currently no mods on r/crochet and people are being absolutely insane

I love teaching the *Designing Cities for Video Games* course, love the lectures & workshops, and love looking at the mind-blowing cities learners create.

The new cohort is starting on March 4. Find out more here: www.d6learning.com/course/gamec...

[use coupon ASOCIALCITY10 for an extra 10% off]

Oh yeah. Those guys are also convinced California is a shithole that’s completely falling apart

Honest question: Which Americans are saying this? Everyone I know is pretty focused on our own little shithole haha