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.

• The Game
• Follow Josh
• Follow Ardenfall

Josh Bycer

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”

game-wisdom.com/

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.

• The game on steam
• follow the studio on twitter

Josh Bycer

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”

game-wisdom.com/

• 0:00 Mirror Forge
• 30:42 Prim
• 47:48 How to Say Goodbye
• 54:32 I see Red
• 1:02:50 What Lies in the Multiverse
• 1:16:52 Conscript
• 1:50:38 Bullet Casters
• 1:56:35 Clem
• 2:16:55 Amber City

Josh Bycer

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”

game-wisdom.com/

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

Josh Bycer

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”

game-wisdom.com/

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.

• 0:00 Evertried /
• 3:36 Sands of Aura
• 5:52 The Shore
• 8:53 Infraspace 
• 11:14 Rogue Spirit
• 13:32 Ruin Raiders 

Josh Bycer

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”

game-wisdom.com/

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

Josh Bycer

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”

game-wisdom.com/

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.

• 0:00 Ancient Gods
• 1:55 Critadel
• 3:29 Deiland: Pocket Planet
• 6:15 Monster Tribe
• 8:16 Zoeti
• 10:36 Printersim

Josh Bycer

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”

game-wisdom.com/

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.

• 0:00 Mahokenshi 
• 2:16 Gastova The Witches of Arkana
• 3:51 Castle Cardians 
• 5:51 Transiruby 
• 7:45 Vesper Ether Saga
• 10:19 Mystery Game

Josh Bycer

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”

game-wisdom.com/

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:

rodneylives