The indie showcases highlight the many games we check out each week on the channel. Games shown are either press keys, demos, or from my (Josh Bycer’s) own collection.
Owner of Game Wisdom with more than a decade of experience writing and talking about game design and the industry. I’m also the author of the “Game Design Deep Dive” series and “20 Essential Games to Study”
This year it’s happening between Saturday and Sunday, October 25-26. That’s the day after tomorrow! There’s an unusually good roster this year, and I don’t just say that because I helped find speakers for it this year.
We’ve already had a preview event with a couple of great talks, including a real star, Jon Perry, who created two of the best games in UFO 50, Mini & Max and Party House. While I spent a lot of time with Mini & Max uncovering its many secrets, it’s but a small fraction of the time I’ve played Party House. (If you want to hear Jon Perry’s talk, from September, you can find it here, as well as Ezra Stanton’s talk on Synergy Networks in roguelikes, and Alexei Pepers’ Designing for System Suspense.)
Mixing Hand-Crafted Content with Procgen to Achieve Quality
1:30 PM 10:30 AM 7:30 PM
Max Sahin
Stuff: The Behavioral Science of Inventory
1:45 PM 10:45 AM 7:45 PM
Florence Smith Nicholls
Roll for Reminiscence: Procedural Keepsake Games
2:30 PM 11:30 AM 8:30 PM
Alexander Birke and Sofie Kjær Schmidt
Hoist the Colours! Art Direction and Tech Art in Sea Of Rifts, A Naval Story Generation RPG
3 PM Noon 9 PM
bleeptrack
From Code to Craft: Procedural Generation for the Physical World
3:30 PM 12:30 PM 9:30 PM
Zeno Rogue
The Best Genre for a Non-Euclidean game
4:30 PM 1:30 PM 10:30 PM
Cole Wehrle
Play as Procedural Generation: Oath as a Roguelike Strategy Game
5 PM 2 PM 11 PM
Jeff Lait
Teaching Long Term Consequences in Games
6 PM 3 PM Midnight
Ray
A Mythopoetic Interface Reading of Caves of Qud
6:15 PM 3:15 PM 12:15 AM
Johnathan Pagnutti
Wait, No, Hear Me Out: Simulating Encounter AI in Slay the Spire with SQL
6:30 PM 3:30 PM 12:30 AM
Jamie Brew
Robot Karaoke Goes Electric
7:30 PM 4:30 PM 1:30 AM
Stephen G. Ware
Planning and Replanning Structured Adaptive Stories: 25 Years of History
8 PM 5 PM 2 AM
Tyriq Plummer
Scrubbin’ Trubble: The Journey to Multiplayer Roguelikery
8:15 PM 5:15 PM 2:15 AM
Andrew Doull
Roguelike Radio 2011-Present
Sunday, October 26th
Time
Speaker
Talk
12:45 PM 9:45 AM 6:45 PM
Ada Null
Dyke Sex and Ennui: Generating Unending Narrative in “Kiss Garden”
1 PM 10 AM 7 PM
Younès Rabii
We Are Maxwell’s Demons: The Thermodynamics of Procedural Generators
1:30 PM 10:30 AM 7:30 PM
Dennis Greger
The Procedurality of Reality TV Design – An Overview
4:15 PM 1:15 PM 10:15 PM
Paul Dean
Picking up the Pieces: Building Story in a Roguelike World
4:45 PM 1:45 PM 10:45 PM
Patrick Belanger and Jackson Wagner
Hand-Crafted Randomness: Storytelling in Wildermyth’s Proc-Gen World
5:15 PM 2:15 PM 11:15 PM
Nifflas
Music algorithm showcase
6:15 PM 3:15 PM 12:15 AM
Seth Cooper
Building a Roguelike with a Tile Rewrite Language
6:30 PM 3:30 PM 12:30 AM
Quinten Konyn
Anatomy of a Morgue File
6:45 PM 3:45 PM 12:45 AM
Alexander King
Don’t Pick Just One: Set-Based Card Mechanics in Roguelike-Deckbuilders
7 PM 4 PM 1 AM
Brian Cronin
Playtesting Process for Ultra Small Teams
8 PM 5 PM 2 AM
Mark Gritter
Sol LeWitt, Combinatorial Enumeration, and Rogue
8:15 PM 5:15 PM 2:15 AM
Dan DiIorio
Luck be a Landlord – 10 Lessons Learned
8:45 PM 5:45 PM 2:45 AM
Liza Knipscher
The Form and Function of Weird Li’l Guys: Procedural Organism Generation in a Simulated Ecosystem
If some of these talks seem like they’re spaced closely together, some of them are “lightning talks,” very short. Those have their titles in italics in the above list.
If you follow indie gaming circles, there are a fair number of exciting speakers among the talks! Jeff Lait (homepage) has made twenty highly interesting roguelikes, many as 7DRLs. Nifflas of course is the creator of Within a Deep Forest, the Knytt games, Affordable Space Adventures and others. Dan DiIorio is the creator of the oft-mentioned (at least in my hearing) Luck be a Landlord, and Zeno Rogue makes the long-lived, and brain-bending, HyperRogue.
And make sure to have a look at the Redbubble and Steam links too! In this year’s Steam selection, MidBoss and Shattered Pixel Dungeon are already on sale.
It’s your annual reminder that adamgryu’s Ghost Town Pumpkin Festival is online and live again, through and a couple of weeks beyond Halloween.
Log in, carve up a gourd with the easy mouse-based controls, and submit your new orange child to reside on the shelves for people to gawk at and wonder over.
My contribution for 2025
And some of the pumpkins that were up when I logged in this year:
Owner of Game Wisdom with more than a decade of experience writing and talking about game design and the industry. I’m also the author of the “Game Design Deep Dive” series and “20 Essential Games to Study”
Our weekly indie showcases highlight the many games we play here on the channel (Josh Bycer’s Game Wisdom). Games shown are either press keys, demos, or from my own collection.
Owner of Game Wisdom with more than a decade of experience writing and talking about game design and the industry. I’m also the author of the “Game Design Deep Dive” series and “20 Essential Games to Study”
Owner of Game Wisdom with more than a decade of experience writing and talking about game design and the industry. I’m also the author of the “Game Design Deep Dive” series and “20 Essential Games to Study”
The weekly indie game showcases cover the many games we (Josh Bycer and friends) play each week on the channel. Games shown are either press keys, demos, or from my own collection.
Owner of Game Wisdom with more than a decade of experience writing and talking about game design and the industry. I’m also the author of the “Game Design Deep Dive” series and “20 Essential Games to Study”
Owner of Game Wisdom with more than a decade of experience writing and talking about game design and the industry. I’m also the author of the “Game Design Deep Dive” series and “20 Essential Games to Study”
Owner of Game Wisdom with more than a decade of experience writing and talking about game design and the industry. I’m also the author of the “Game Design Deep Dive” series and “20 Essential Games to Study”
The decades of video gaming history there has now been have had many companies, developers and studios that have went under, due to one thing or other. Many of those names are revered, and their vanishing have left lacks in the world of vidyagaems that are felt to this day. A few of those: Atari (the current one has improved greatly lately, but it’s still not the same), Midway, Bally, Williams, Lucasarts, Rare (in its non-Microsoft incarnation), Telltale, SSI, New World Computing, and many more if I cared to dredge them out of the muck of my mind. And that’s just Western companies, there were plenty more in Japan, I just wanted to narrow the field down a bit.
One of those companies probably isn’t Acclaim. They were one of the biggest third-party publishers in the NES era, and they lasted to around the N64 era, but although they did put out some Premium Quality Entertainment (thanks Murderbot), they also put out a lot of what in Yiddish is called drek. Towards the end it felt like the drek percentage was getting pretty high, and it didn’t help at all that they kept pulling some dodgy ad stunts. They ran a context where they offered to pay couples to name their kid Turok, another where they tried to put ads for Shadowman on tombstones in cemeteries, and the less said ab0ut BMX XXX, possibly the game that destroyed the company, the better.
Well nostalgia certainly sells, even for the less savory publishers, and so it is that some people have decided one of the brands we needed to once again be subjected to is Acclaim. They released a promo video yesterday that unveils their initial releases, here it is (relevant portion 13 minutes):
The games shown:
GridBeat! appears to be a hacking-themed maze/puzzle/rhythm game.
Basketball Classics is a stylish retro-themed sports game that’s refreshing for being a new game based off of real players that didn’t come from the corpulent corporate cube of EA Sports. I’m pretty impressed they’re making this, it’s probably the game here I’m most interested in.
Ground Zero Hero is a cartoony action shooter that seems to take inspiration from Vampire Survivors and Nuclear Throne.
Pixel Washer is a retro-themed cleaning game that reminds me a bit of Powerwash Simulator, but maybe that’s because I’ve been playing that again lately.
Talaka is a combat platformer with sketchy graphics.
Toss Down I couldn’t get a strong read on, it seems to be an isometric shooting game in urban environments, with tornadoes around, maybe with a bit of classic 2D GTA in it?
The Prisoning: Fletcher’s Quest appears to be a kaizo-style 2D retro platformer. I’m sensing a theme with some of these games. I don’t have anything against retro styling myself, mind you, it’s like one third of this site’s entire reason for being.
HyperYuki: Snowboard Syndicate is a snowboarding game, obviously. It’s 3D, but has stylish and colorful low-polygon, cell-shaded graphics. I might have to follow this.
Katanaut seems to be a dark pixel-art sci-fi combat game.
The question remains, why did they feel like they needed to resurrect the Acclaim brand and logo? Having a leg-up from obscurity is enough reason I guess, but none of the new games are based on and of Acclaim’s old IP. Maybe they could revive Extreme-G, Turok or Wizards & Warriors, but they haven’t yet.
Owner of Game Wisdom with more than a decade of experience writing and talking about game design and the industry. I’m also the author of the “Game Design Deep Dive” series and “20 Essential Games to Study”
This snuck up on me, and in fact I had thought I’d missed it, but it turns out it’s tonight! Roguelike Celebration‘s main event isn’t until October, but they’re having a preview event tonight with two long and one short talk. The schedule is here. It kicks off at around 3:00 PM Pacific time, which to convert is 6 PM Eastern, around 10 PM Greenwich, and Midnight CEST.
(EDIT: I had the Eastern times too late by an hour. The event will begin at 6 PM Eastern time.)
Tonight’s show is being done for free, but you still need a (costless) ticket for it, which you can get here. As has been usual the past few events, there will be a live MUD-like chatroom to participate in during the show, for interacting with other audience members, for submitting questions to the queue, and just for bumping around and exploring. The doors open a little before the talks begin, to let people get used to the space, and as a buffer against lateness.
I hope you can make it! Tonight’s talks are:
3:15 PM Pacific / 6:15 PM Eastern / 10:15 PM GMT / 12:15 AM CEST – 45 minutes
Fireside chat with Jon Perry: Host Alexei Pepers and Jon Perry will chat about game design and his contributions to UFO 50 such as Planet Zoldath, Party House, and Mini & Max! (Personal note: this is not one to miss. I have been obsessed with Party House, enough to write a gigantic strategy guide for it.)
4 PM Pacific / 7 PM Eastern / 11 PM GMT / 1 AM CEST – 30 minutes
Building Synergy Networks for better Roguelike Deckbuilders, with Ezra Szanton: Roguelike Deckbuilders live or die on the quality of the drafting decisions they present. When a player chooses between 3 cards, what is going through their head? This talk is about how to achieve deep but accessible drafting decisions which result in memorable games that excite players. Synergy Networks are a helpful lens for creating sets of cards that achieve these aims. Modeling the synergies between cards as a network allows us to use ideas from network theory like path length, density and hubs. Digressions will include characteristics of synergies, broad types of synergies useful for brainstorming, and why anti-synergy is just as important as synergy itself. This talk is informed by my work designing Hellscaper and Mr Magpie’s Harmless Card Game, two roguelike deckbuilders.
4:30 PM Pacific / 7:30 PM Eastern / 11:30 PM GMT / 1:30 AM CEST – 45 minutes
Designing for System Suspense, with Alexei Pepers: The host will give a talk which she gave at GCD and had previously been trapped inside the GDC Vault.
