Claire Blackshaw

His site is stephandybus.de
Like many hyper stylised gallery artists he seems to hide his process and specific tools which I've found is a trend. Also I can think of a few modeller artists who specifically keep their use quiet because they feel it gave them an edge. Esp if their output is 2d

Regardless of what happens to my little indie studio, I hope to always be able to talk about why. I'm trying really hard to avoid pieces of paper that say I can't. Stuff within a timer on, I don't mind as much, but permanent silence will never be a thing I choose.

The biggest #gamdev career regrets I have are things I really cared about and really tried to push forward and was passionate about and for some reason or another it didn't happen and the worst part is I can't talk about it.

If your interested in tech but especially breaking new ground with it then I can highly recommend Kelly's Breaking Through Bytes is now available in audio. Give it a listen. #xr #metaverse #audio

www.amazon.co.uk/gp/aw/d/B0FV...

Hey Penguins, Hotfix update is going live today on all platforms.
Fixed Daily Challenge collision bug stopping some players from accessing puzzles.
Fixed VR Sky Shader for headsets without passthrough capabilities.
Details: flammablepenguins.com/augmental_pu...

End of the day I'm making VR games with my indie studio because I love them and I can afford to fund our first two titles. My mission is to get us to sustainability because the funding calvary sure doesn't feel realistic.

Back to #gamedev

The State of Video Gaming in 2026 by Matthew Ball / Epyllion — MatthewBall.co In 2025, video gaming had more revenue and cultural weight than ever. Why, then, is growth (and even revenue ) so elusive? Why are player counts retreating across much of the developed world? And why...

Great report, doesn't feel actionable.
Too much outside my control from short form video to gambling. Though some of it is in my control. Playing in the tiny puddle of VR feels like the ocean tides are massive and my biz choices have to just focus on the details.
www.matthewball.co/all/presenta...

top down shot of playing table with the cards of a for my queen game

This game of For My Queen is still living rent free in my head @groundhoggoth.itch.io @5ftkaiju.bsky.social

Lazy Sunday: Feedback Screens, Viewport Bugs, and Giving Back to Godot Lazy Sunday: Feedback Screens, Viewport Bugs, and Giving Back to Godot TLDR: After shipping Augmental Puzzles on Meta (Feb 3rd) and Steam (Feb 13th), I spent a lazy Sunday porting our XR screenshot c...

Crazy week. Enjoying lazy sunday hitting small tasks.
#Godot needed a better #XR screenshot for our feedback system. Small but useful change.

We wrote one, shipped it, then ported it back as a PR for the community.

Wrote a blog post:
claire-blackshaw.com/blog/2026/02...

The Lounge The Lounge is a self-hosted web IRC client for the modern world.

I mean technically I know matrix is the modern answer to IRC and discord but damn it I kinda love the simplicity of IRC though it really isn't built for average person if you have to setup bouncer ect...

Though apparently thelounge.chat and soju.im are the new IRC bouncer self host hotness

I do love a good #IRC client, people forget until quite recently Twitch chat was an IRCv3 backend (and the biggest IRC network in the world)

So what is your fav client setup + bouncer for?
Where are we with Netsplit these days?

Crazy thing is this is also how "Dave at the pub" or certain discords work. The brain is so hackable through language centres. More AI / Tech people need to read the work of linguists like Chomsky or do social studies.
Best thing I ever did was accidentally fall into a philosophy degree.

Heart shaped Sudoku puzzle

With our steam launch yesterday I wanted to celebrate Valentine's Day. One of the advantages of all our puzzles being handset. So I made a heart shaped #sudoku for Augmental Puzzles daily challenge today. Also because I knew we would have new players it's a nice easy one. 💘

Crazy thing go all the way to movie quality rigs. Less bones more muscles & skin
Saw Weta talk. Basically trained an ML system of face muscles powered by some simple controls because animating all the details gets too complex.

At some point you got to ask, does it make a better game

That mood when you push your first indie game live on steam on Friday the 13th for the meme.

TBH: 13 is my lucky number 🪄🧹

LIVE ON STEAM
store.steampowered.com/app/3389740/...

Omg such a milestone we are live on the two biggie EA platforms now so it feels like we are OUT OUT. Also I set a 16x16 for today but I'm super chuffed for tomorrow's daily challenge as well. Thanks for all the support 🥰

#gamedev #godot #vr

While the new John Wick game looks cool it saddens me that its existence to avoid brand confusion has likely led to the delisting and attempted erasure of the more interesting earlier licenced tactical game by @mikebithell.bsky.social 😞

Being able to get full access + solid samples or helper libs tends to help a lot. And while it does mean say late stage PS3 most were using the wrapper libs those who wanted to could still get elbow deep into the SPU pipe.

Feel like the console API are in a nice place.

Also so dumb I didn't even think to include it. If your running your game engine on server. WHY!
Have you really thought why you need server sim.
Can you use group trust and audit?
Have you boiled that sim down to the fucking bones.
Seriously most of networking is accounting

My networking advice for #gamedev
Networks fail: 5sec/min/hours what happens to player
YOU ARE NOT GOOGLE
Design for low CCU
"Microservices" have 1 node/db dep that makes them monolithic in practice
Be creative, get data increase sample size
Single box can do a LOT!

It's how I first read burning chrome was an alt. BBS post. Rushed out to consume the entire Gibson world.
I use to have a folder of books as txt files I would read on my old crt. Terrible experience but I had also read the entire fantasy/sci-fi section in school library by that point

might not even be a social network. Might be they all watch the same 3 youtubers, go onto a specific forum, reddit or read a specific magazine.
Organic discovery is largely dead on social networks you need to really drill in. Though best speak to a marketing person it's a job for a reason :P

Bsky is deffo quite niche in terms of traffic but again it depends on your audience. It's not where is the best place for all indie games but the best for yours.
1. Who is your audience (be honest)
2. Find out where they hang out
3. Be there, and write for them

UK #gamedev the deadline is 15 Feb
Part of London Games Week
www.instagram.com/p/DUnMh14iAz4/

Best part is once this deadline is finished and we are live on the store on Friday I will take some time to clean up the code and make a PR to make godot better. People will help polish and the future will be better for everyone else using godot. #OpenSource #gamedev win

But we control our engine branch and its open source so not only do the other XR devs jump in to help me solve the problem but also improve godot. Still debugging but making a VR friendly capture last FULL frame (not cropped viewport)

Why #godot makes go 😡 to 😍
Augmental Puzzles EA we want an ingame feedback menu, Best way ( Charlie convinced me years ago ). Problem OpenXR viewport capture for screenshots is busted. @mux213.bsky.social has potential fix but it's not merged and our engine is from older branch #gamedev

An illustration on a light pink background featuring the text "BUILDING THE BIZ CAN BE HARDER THAN THE BYTES" in large brown letters. To the right, a woman with dark hair in a bun, wearing a teal dotted shirt and yellow pants, holds a red watering can. She is watering a pot sitting on a purple table; the pot contains a small cactus and the purple Flammable Penguins game logo. A black and white cat sleeps on the edge of the table. modified from: https://pixabay.com/illustrations/plant-watering-cat-sleeping-cat-8486960/

Building company between people, paperwork, process and every other problem. Never thought getting biz to shipping would be much more work than getting an executable into shipping state.
Good news only setup company once and take care of it so it grows #gamedev

Sadly being early is almost as bad as being wrong in business.

Though in art, science and technology being early is the most important work people can do.

I enjoyed working in that area both on Dreams and Modeller and I fundamentally disagree with the conclusion. In a world of AI/Photogrammetry and cheaper and better XR tools I see something like Modeller to be the future not the past.
I would argue for more AI retopo and VR focus