@oscan.net.bsky.social
Lead programmer at Gambrinous. Writing all the bugs for Guild of Dungeoneering, Cardpocalypse and Eyes of Hellfire
The Séance of Blake Manor is part of the Steam Next Fest. Check out the demo if you haven't already.
The game is launching on the 27th of Oct!
Play now: bit.ly/47Pm8XA
#indiegames
A new blog post, in which I ramble about the process of directing a 400,000-word narrative game (along with 7 other writers) over a 5-year development period...
www.psychicsoftware.com/2025/designi...
What a fantastic, in-depth article from RTE exploring the inspirations and intricacies that led to Eyes of Hellfire: www.rte.ie/culture/2025...
09.10.2025 08:11 — 👍 19 🔁 6 💬 1 📌 0welp, time to try and remember weird build requirements for projects I haven't touched in years...
03.10.2025 14:26 — 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
You've heard of nepo babies but have you heard of a nepo daddy? 😆
Article in Variety just went out about our game!
variety.com/2025/gaming/...
Very nice to see Eyes of Hellfire hit 'Very Positive' on Steam today with our 50th review. Thanks for playing everyone!
23.09.2025 10:45 — 👍 37 🔁 10 💬 1 📌 1
Today's the day, Mars Attracts hits Steam in a few short hours!
15.09.2025 08:37 — 👍 24 🔁 9 💬 1 📌 2I have no idea what you’re talking about @blumhousegames.com I’ve never taken a shady deal in my life 👀
But also Eyes of Hellfire is SO fun!!
We have a Steam page for our game! It's a mahjong-inspired deckbuilder with A LOT OF BIRDS! If you have a Steam account and hit the wishlist button - you will have my eternal gratitude 🙏
store.steampowered.com/app/3473440/...
Thank you to @oghamsmith.bsky.social for getting us across the line!
#irishgamedev #speirghorm #irishcreatives #gamedev
Steamworks site not loading. Is it Silksong O'Clock again?
05.09.2025 16:39 — 👍 2 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0AaaaaAAaaaAAAaaAAAAaAAAAA!!!
04.09.2025 17:04 — 👍 888 🔁 185 💬 21 📌 0
A screenshot from the game No Man's Sky, showing a planet with a randomly generated name called Frank
No Man's Sky might be running out of names. Planet Frank.
02.09.2025 21:42 — 👍 7 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0
A nice preview of @blakemanorgame.bsky.social on The Guardian website today.
www.theguardian.com/games/2025/a...
We released a game!
You can play the game!!
Your friends can play the game with you for free!!!
*Deep breath* #EyesofHellfire is officially in EARLY ACCESS. You can play it RIGHT NOW. Can't begin to express the immense pride I have in our indie team. To create something and release it is such an achievement.
Support Indie Games. Play Eyes of Hellfire!
store.steampowered.com/app/1724030/...
Today is the day our game, Eyes of Hellfire, launches in early access. 🎉
To mark the occasion I thought I might share a bit of a thread 🧵 plotting some of the milestones of development of the game from a narrative design perspective.
Delaying the game 10 minutes because of Silksong
27.08.2025 12:04 — 👍 10 🔁 1 💬 1 📌 0Love when devs share some of the behind-the-scenes progress of a project. Can't wait for folks to play Eyes of Hellfire later today! store.steampowered.com/app/1724030/...
27.08.2025 08:07 — 👍 7 🔁 2 💬 0 📌 0Whilst I'm the eternally anxious sort that will never be happy that the games we make are in a state to release, I'm proud of what the team has managed to put together with the resources available.
Hopefully we'll have many more development adventures to come.
An image of a player characters incorrectly rendered normal map, resulting in psychedelic rippling patterns.
Being something I was tinkering with on and off, I managed to get this all working by Nov '24... eventually.
24.08.2025 14:24 — 👍 4 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0I solved this by rendering the character off screen then applying that render to a sprite, which can sort with the scene.
From that render I also pull the real-time normals from the character and use that for the 2D lights shading.
Not advisable for your first 3D project? 😅
In June '24 I experimented with 3D characters. There were some... teething issues.
Doing 3D in a 2D world presented some sorting issues. Also 3D models don't work with unity's 2D lights, which we were using with sprite normal maps for directional shading.
At first we tried 2D animations, in Feb '24.
Character animations rendered out to sprites, for 8 directions (although we just did 5 and flipped horizontally).
Being a '2D studio' this is what we were most comfortable with, but it'd be a massive asset headache to deal with and not very sustainable.
By Dec '23 we decided to try out free moving players within room sections, which was an obvious improvement. But this would require animations that we weren't initially planning on.
24.08.2025 14:24 — 👍 8 🔁 2 💬 1 📌 0
Screenshot from Tabletop Simulator of an early prototype for Eyes of Hellfire, using room tiles from Mansions of Madness
We started out with static characters, just teleporting from section to section. Very tabletop.
Because that's how we started prototyping, in Tabletop Simulator. Here's a shot from back in June '23, using Mansions of Madness room tiles.
We're releasing Eyes of Hellfire in early access this week.
To quiet the internal screaming of "OMGITSNOTREADYTHEBUGSTHEBUGS!!" I've been looking back at the progress of development. Here's the first video of a playable prototype I have saved, from Oct '23.
A lot has changed but the core is there
Eyes of Hellfire Early Access Roadmap graphic featuring steps for what's next, coming soon and future additions including more monsters, two more scenarios, save games and languages.
ARGH! I can't believe that our Irish game #EyesofHellfire is going into Early Access NEXT WEEK! But what a thrill to reveal our EA Roadmap right now 😱
It all feels SO REAL.
#gamedev #ireland
Screenshot showing icons on a Slack thread. From left to right: Open in a new window, AI summarise thread, and Close thread
I think Slack purposely put the dumb AI button next to the close thread button so you are more likely to click it by mistake
20.08.2025 10:06 — 👍 3 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0Lovely article from Lex here, exploring Eyes of Hellfire’s roots. Pleasure to chat to you!
19.08.2025 17:08 — 👍 11 🔁 7 💬 1 📌 0
