Everstrange Games

Adding markdown for obfuscating links is one of the stupidest things Discord has done, can't change my mind.

How to hide faces and scrub metadata when you photograph a protest How to remove faces and metadata from your protest photos.

Hey folks don't do the surveillance apparatus' work for it. www.theverge.com/21281897/how...

Hooded Horse publishes a pretty sizable number of the games I play on a regular basis, so this is genuinely very gratifying to see (and unsurprising, having seen their interactions with devs over the years). Seconding the notion that they're one of the best in the game right now.

Speaking of titles, it feels superstitious to wait on picking one until a project gets to critical mass, but it feels like if I title something too soon it's doomed to fizzle.

It feels like coming up with an actual title is one of the hardest parts of a new project

"Emolga", not "Emilia", in the first alt text. Autocorrect my beloathed.

QRP with some pieces from 2025 that you're really proud of!

Only one of these was officially for any tabletop thing that we put out (three guesses which lol) but practice is practice, and I'm looking forward to doing more proper illustration in 2026!

where i create from

If we’re going to get really no quarter about genAI usage, I’m going to need people to learn the difference between AI and genAI real fast.

War Stories by Everstrange Games A Forged in the Dark Supplement for Lancer RPG

War Stories Playtest v0.4 is now out! It features Rival mechanics and a new free time action, along with more accessible and nicer-looking tables, and a multitude of clarifications and other smaller edits.

everstrange-games.itch.io/war-stories

On the bright side, War Stories v0.4 tonight!

I'm hoping this won't be an issue once I get everything switched over to Affinity, and it's definitely incentive to expedite that process

Unexpected TTRPG design hurdles: having to manually recreate 120+ PDF bookmarks on a version update because exporting from GDocs doesn't render all the characters properly and Print-as-PDF doesn't carry over bookmarks

A cross stitch that says "a woman's place is in the Gundam" with Gundam Aerial's head

Finally finished this (⁠✯⁠ᴗ⁠✯⁠)
#crossstitch #finishedcrossstitch #gundam #gundamaerial #gundamcrossstitch

Playtest v0.4 Progress, Accessibility Updates Hey everyone! We're rapidly approaching the v0.4 updated playtest release, so I wanted to give a quick update on how that's coming along. The main new features (Rivals, Rival-focused playbook abilitie...

New devlog for War Stories is up! Tl:dr — playtest version 0.4 very soon, with new mechanics and some accessibility improvements.

everstrange-games.itch.io/war-stories/...

big wet fart sound

I feel like the worst part about the current use of the word "indie" is that it means:
- "solo bedroom dev jobs by one trans lesbian furry in her bedroom"
- "15 people went to a publisher and got money to make a game"
- "this game is made by ex ubisoft employees and 500 other people"

Sorry your pet is catslop. You only like her because she's small and very cute with big eyes and soft fur and delightful sounds and behaviors

I have nothing good to say about any GenAI, but chatbots are objectively the worst manifestation of it in terms of real world outcomes. 20/20

As an addendum, none of this applies to GenAI chatbot output, which has a litany of inherent, inescapable issues in addition to any listed above, including that there are several documented instances of it getting people (including children) killed or encouraging them to end their lives. 19/20

But encourage others to build on what you make, because as much as what you make is yours, it's built on everything you've ever experienced, everything that came before it. And if we all create, then we're all the richer for it. 18/20

So: Support independent artists. Support creative communities. Find that spark of creativity in yourself and make something, and share it with the world. It doesn't have to be the best. It doesn't even have to be good. It has to be *yours*. 17/20

The problem with GenAI art is that it's soulless, meaningless, a splash of pixels meant to fill a gap on screen or page, not a meaningful work meant to fill a gap in heart or mind. 16/20

Because that's what it's really about when we get down to it, isn't it? The problem with GenAI art isn't one of job loss—that's a problem of capitalism. The problem with GenAI art isn't one of property theft—that's a problem of capitalism. 15/20

But I think it's also not enough to eschew AI; a commodity-game built by human hands is still a commodity-game, something made to be consumed, not something meant to inspire that same spark of creation in others. 14/20

Admittedly this is something I feel pretty strongly about because I'm also an indie developer, not of video games but of TTRPGs, but I try to live this and bake it into my work. War Stories doesn't use AI and never will, and the same is true of all of our other work at ESG, current and future. 13/20

What matters is community, not commodity. If the industry is rotten, we shouldn't keep buying into it. Corporations won't save us, corporations won't edify us, and even if they do manage to produce something that makes us feel something, what's the cost? 12/20

But my broader point is this: The battle for keeping GenAI out of games at large is lost, even if we don't realize it yet, but it's not the battle that ultimately matters. What matters is supporting small, indie artists who do take a stand and produce their own art, in whatever form that is. 11/20

But the indie market always has been, and I have Strong Thoughts about art as a commodity anyway, so the market angle isn't exactly the most compelling for me to begin with. 10/20