Open World RPG Design With ArdenFall Developer Interview

For this Perceptive Podcast, I’m speaking with Joshua Steinhauer who is the lead designer on the game Ardenfall — an open-world RPG to discuss building the game, RPG design and more.

ZOR: Pilgrimage of the Slorfs Developer Interview

For this Perceptive Podcast I sat down with Righteous Hammer Games’s Clint Jorgenson to discuss the work on his deckbuilding survival tactical game Zor: Pilgrimage of the Slorfs. We talked about going from AAA to indie, and the many challenges indie developers face.

Games of GamesCom stream Night 2

Games of Gamescom Spotlight Stream Night 1

For each night of Gamescom, I streamed my entire plays of demos and these video parts are the collections of them.

Indie Game Showcase 8/27/22

The indie showcases are all about the developer submitted games and demos we play from indie devs. If you would like to submit a game for a future piece, please get in touch.

Indie Dev Stream Archive

And for more indie game coverage, here is the archive of my stream last week showcasing a variety of indie games.

  • 0:00 Spellbook Demonslayers
  • 25:43 Mech Shuffle
  • 45:24 Endling Extinction is Forever
  • 1:20:57 Ginger the Toothfairy
  • 1:28:51 Lightsmith
  • 1:43:13 Myth of Mirka
  • 1:48:50 Supernova Tactics
  • 2:00:55 Fabled Lands
  • 2:16:01 Kokoro Clover Season 1

Indie Dev Showcase 8/12/22

The showcase videos highlight the developer-submitted games and demos we play each week. If you would like to submit a game for a future piece, please reach out.

Indie Game Showcase 8/6/2022

Each weekly indie dev showcase highlights the many games we play here on the channel. All games shown were either key submissions for demos covered. Please reach out if you would like me to cover your game in a future piece.

Nintendo Indie World Announced Games

In the style of huge corporations in the year 2022, Nintendo has announced a slate of upcoming indie games in the form of a video instead of a sensible text page. It fell to The Escapist to give us a nice text-form rundown of their impending offerings.

In the spirit of reducing things even further, the games on tap, with each game’s segment cued up for easy perusal, are:

  • Ooblets, from Glumberland, aggressively cute farming/monster sim.
  • Batora: Lost Haven, from Team17 and Stormind Games, sci-fi narrative action-RPG.
  • ElecHead, from Nama Takahashi, pixel-art puzzle/platformer that he started working on as a student, and started life as a game jam project.
  • Soundfall, from Drastic Games and Noodlecake, co-op rhythm action combat game. (Released today!)
  • Wildfrost, from Chucklefish and Deadpan Games, a “tactical roguelike deckbuilder.” (We have our own opinions as to what roguelike means.)
  • Totally Accurate Battle Simulator, from Landfall Games, a humorous physics-based combat simulation sandbox that first made waves on Steam.
  • Gunbrella, from doinksoft and Devolver Digital, a Wild West-themed “noir-pink” pixel-art Metroidvania. Not available until next year, though.
  • We Are OFK, from Team OFK, a episodic “indiepop music biopic” game (a lot of scare quotes this post, I admit) based on a band.
  • Silt, from Fireshine and Spiral Circus Games, an aquatic puzzle/exploration game with a monochrome silhouette aesthetic.
  • Mini Motorways, from Dinosaur Polo Club! A sequel to Mini Metro, I did a Q&A with its developers over at Game Developer! (For some reason it’s attributed to “staff,” but I assure you I wrote the questions for it.) It’s a strategy simulation game about laying out roads. (Released today!)
  • Wayward Strand, from ghost pattern, a narrative adventure game set in 1970s Australia with a time management element.
  • Cult of the Lamb, from Devolver Digital and Massive Monster, a cute procedurally-generated town-building game with action elements and dungeon exploration.
  • Another Crab’s Treasure, from Aggro Crab, which actively calls itself a “Souls-like” in its trailer, an action combat game about a hermit crab out on a quest. Hermit crabs find shells and other objects to serve as their home in real life, and this game incorporates that fact into the gameplay. Not out until next year, though.

At the end, there were a few short clips of other upcoming games: One Shot: World Machine Edition, Gibbon: Beyond the Trees (releases today), Idol Manager, Card Shark, Cursed to Golf, A Guidebook of Babel, and OPUS: Echo of Starsong: Full Bloom Edition.

Last-minute addition, here are Kyle and Krista, formerly of the Nintendo Minute and now with their own thang going on, reacting to the games: