Ragnar Tørnquist

Three polaroid pictures with screenshots from Dustborn. 1. Theo knitting. Caption: Theo is his element. 2. Sai talking to Betty. Caption: Sai fangirling over Betty. 3. Noam with their arm around Pax. Caption: Maybe someday.

Polaroids from the road with Pax and the crew 🚌💨

#dustborn

RE that RT.. it’s wild how steam reviews are still so damn important to getting visibility. If you play and like indie games, the most generous and helpful thing you can do is spend an hour popping positive reviews onto anything you like with <500 or so reviews.

The market is a complete and utter nincompoop.

Okay just starting playing #Dustborn and this has the most interesting narrative design I've ever seen 🤩🤩

8.5/10 so far would get my character brainwashed again

Guy in a car, eating a slice of pizza with the caption "Little Caesar's taste so good when you ain't got a bitch in ya ear telling you it's nasty."

I think this might be one of the wisest things uttered on the internet in the past decade. Applies to just about everything, including (especially?) games.

Cultivate your own tastes. Filter out bad vibes and groupthink. Like what you like and don't be afraid to say it.

I love America, I love the idea of America. I lived there for half a decade. I have family there, friends. It's such a vibrant, exciting, beautiful country. I would love to return, someday. But not this year, and probably not next year.

I’ve cancelled my GDC travel plans. I know I'm not alone.

This is partly about safety — but more importantly about solidarity with those at greater risk than I am of harassment, detention…and worse.

I’m not among the most vulnerable, but even setting security aside, it doesn’t feel right to go.

Definitely a “spiritual successor” in more ways than one, and a way for us to return to that kind of universe and storytelling.

The best games of the decade (so far) Yes, we know it's not over yet

So I'd reposted the @jank.cool announce from @grahamsmith.bsky.social earlier but I'm gonna instead suggest reading their first big post - a "best games of the decade so far". If you find yourself nodding along & grinning like I did, perhaps go support them!

www.jank.cool/the-best-gam...

Oh yay genuinely excited about this! Smart people making good websites about interesting PC games is exactly what the world needs right now.

Thank you ❤️

It's REALLY hard to justify sticking around in a place that allows (even encourages) users to undress women and children — not to mention lacks any form of content moderation, good taste, and ethics…and invites literal Nazis to join their platform.

If you read this you're already following us on Bsky (probably) but we're also active in other places, and we're growing our community team — so I recommend following us in ALL the places for Maximum Brand Coverage™ www.redthreadgames.com/links

Screenshot from an X.com post by @RedThreadGames. The post reads: "We're no longer on X but there are still plenty of ways to keep up with the studio and stay connected! Find all of our links here: https://www.redthreadgames.com/links"

We've finally said farewell and good riddance to "X" and to our 10K followers — many of whom are Excellent People. I wish we'd left sooner, and I hope other studios + creatives do the same. It's a deeply toxic place, and we need to build better communities, if we hope to turn the tide.

Screenshot of a Bluesky post. The post text reads: “Wait, the reason people were so down on this game was LITERALLY because of blue hair and pronouns?” It quotes another post from the same user saying: “Finally getting round to playing the most controversial video game of all time.” Below is an image from the game Dustborn: a stylised car driving down a long desert highway toward the horizon, with the Dustborn logo floating above the road in bold orange letters, under a pink and orange sky.

Defeating disinformation, one player at a time.

Thanks for playing and writing a review — we appreciate it, and we're happy you liked it! ❤️

If you're living somewhere outside the USA, one thing you can do is pressure your leaders to boycott World Cup and Olympic events here.

Donate to Support Gene Park's Cancer Surgery and Treatment, organized by Gene Park Hi, my name is Gene Park. I’m a games critic at The Washington Post, and I’… Gene Park needs your support for Support Gene Park's Cancer Surgery and Treatment

hey guys, just to confirm this is my fundraiser. i didn't want to ask for help, but i do need it.

my cancer is back. i am going through a lobectomy next week, the same surgery Walter White undergoes. i can't express how grateful i am. thank you so much everyone.

www.gofundme.com/f/support-ge...

time to clock in for my shift at the worrying factory

damn what is wrong with me, i am having the hardest time concentrating on work, i lament as i compulsively refresh live feeds of unspeakable horrors

Let’s move it to Canada. Canada is real nice and they’re not trying to start a war with us.

If I don’t feel safe going to GDC this year, just imagine how someone who doesn’t look like me feels.

Concept environment art for Dustborn. This is for the Chicago location.

Concept environment art for Dustborn. This is for the Alpine Visitor Center.

Concept environment art for Dustborn. This is for the LaTorre location.

Worldbuilding is at the heart of Dustborn. Here’s a look at concept art for three locations, by the brilliant Jeffrey Chew 💛

Would love to hear your thoughts — good, bad, in between. We’re always looking to improve our work!

Tweet by Jatin @jatinkmalik The reason why RAM has become four times more expensive is that a huge amount of RAM that has not yet been produced was purchased with non-existent money to be installed in GPUs that also have not yet been produced, in order to place them in data centers that have not yet been built, powered by infrastructure that may never appear, to satisfy demand that does not actually exist and to obtain profit that is mathematically impossible

I'm always encouraged to see people discover, play, and (hopefully) enjoy Dustborn on their own, after everything, without the dissonance and baggage. Love it, hate it, be conflicted — the honest emotional response is why we keep doing this, even when it feels Sisyphean.

A timeline visually representing the advice from my post, emphasising how dramatically and reliably having more time, with a testable build, converts to your game being better and your studio being safer.

I've been running an indie games studio for 15 years now, and it felt like a good time to boil down what I've learned into 4 pieces of advice:

www.pentadact.com/2026-01-08-1...

I hope it's of use, not least because goddamn I forgot how long blog posts take to write.

Can’t wait for them to discover the shocking truth behind sound effects in games.

That's the best case scenario for licensed music! Reaching new audiences and adding to the game's overall vibe and mood.

That's just how music licensing works, unfortunately. To be clear: the licensed tracks are not part of the game's official soundtrack, they're just in the game…but yes, the monetisation part is complicated, often unfair, and entirely out of our hands.

On Dustborn we had a composer who worked on the game for multiple years and made literally hours of original music — you can check out the official soundtrack to hear his work. Licensing some tracks to be used as diegetic background music (e.g. for radio broadcasts) is absolutely normal in all media