Games

It has been well over a year that I decided to learn Unreal so that I can bring my vision of “reviving” BlueSuburbia to life. This was a crash course in Blender, 3D animation, modeling, Unreal, scripting, textures, volumetrics… what any of these things even mean and how to do them right. I still have a long way to go, but I’m proud to be able to finally share an early look at this new BlueSuburbia. The demo was posted on itch.io the other day: https://alienmelon.itch.io/bluesuburbia I already payed for the Steam store listing and will be working on getting...

Idyll is a small social world designed around kinder forms of online conversation. That description alone couldn’t come at a more meaningful time. I’ve been eagerly watching the development of it over Twitter, and have been looking forward to writing about it when it releases. I think it is a profound thing to put into the world in the shadow of “losing” Twitter… with friend groups scurrying to other social media spaces, and overall how things like this tiny game-thing contrast against the more popular online social spaces that we must inhabit. I think it goes without saying that each...

I’ve been thinking a lot about the creative (mostly narrative) direction of my current 3D game, BlueSuburbia. How do you approach building a large thing, without disappearing into the development void forever? These long projects can eat a lot of time, life, energy… and even relevance because it’s all you do for the next few years… how do you manage that? Sometimes I feel like I’m banking everything on a gamble, because it’s such a beast of an endeavor. When you’re a solo-developer, you have to constantly think about scale. If I make this too big then it might never...

There is no greater joy as a game developer (and general fan of video games) to just browse random game jam submissions and get lost in a sea of work. There is so much stuff being released every day, you could isolate all releases for just one month and it would probably take a lifetime to play through everything. From all that, only a small sliver is ever really seen. I don’t think that’s bad. I think that abundance is brave. “Amateur” work is and always was at the heart of video games. I say this because browsing random jam...

~ tiny literature capturing forgotten moments, queerness, silly illustrations, and random poetic thoughts ~ It has been a good while since I last shared anything to do with the Electric Zine Maker, so I thought I should highlight some of the work people have made in it recently. Making an art tool is a humbling experience. I’m constantly blown away by the beautiful work people make in it and the fact that they would choose the Electric Zine Maker to make something in the first place. Many of the zines use the tools in unique ways that surprise me. I...

I just came back from visiting New York City to attend the opening for MoMA’s newest exhibit all about video games, interactive art, and the “@” sign. The exhibit is also accompanied by a book in the MoMA Design Store. In case you haven’t heard, “Everything is going to be OK” was one of the games that the museum acquired! MoMA’s journey into acquiring (and effectively preserving) video games has been an effort they announced back in 2012. This was met with much controversy in the art space, as most notably captured in the Guardian article titled “Sorry MoMA, video...

A lot of exciting tool related developments have been happening in the indie game space since my last post. Go get lost checking out all The Tool Jam 2 submissions… also my Cool Tools itch.io collection is at its 400th addition as of today! When I started writing about tools, and putting together that curation, I thought I would stop at maybe 30… or 100 if I felt like doing too much work. I only got into paying attention to all this because of the Electric Zine Maker, and I wanted to highlight other exciting work done in this space....

As you probably know from following me on either Mastodon or Twitter, I’ve been working hard on my next “game” (the appropriate label for it is still undecided)… built in UE5. This post is an excuse to share a bunch of screenshots! There have been points where I wasn’t sure if what I was making would even run on any other computer, but I tested it today on my work laptop… omg it runs! Smoothly too! When I started I didn’t completely understand performance, or settings, or all the fancy things Unreal lets you do with optimization… so it was...

I’ve been meaning to write this post for some time, but held off to wait for The Lovely Estate to release a patch that would fix the walking issue. It’s fixed. This game is tremendous and you must give it a chance! Talking about this game here was important to me because it captures everything that I love about atmospheric games. It has a MOOD. – The Lovely Estate “You’re here to get someone. They’re here to breathe until they can’t anymore. Mind the fumes. Explore the secrets within these stained walls and find something before it finds you.” The...

I’m finally able to share some incredible news that deserves a blog post all on its own… “Everything is going to be OK” was accepted into the permanent collection in MoMA (New York)!!! I am honored to be able to announce that. It will be part of the Never Alone exhibit this September… Never Alone Video Games and Other Interactive Design Sep 10, 2022–summer 2023 “Everything is going to be OK” is a work that I’m probably most proud of. It has everything from me, poetry, animation, meaning… I’m honored that it has meant so much to so many people,...

Featured image from “space for black hair zine” by starybri A while ago I noticed that my itch following grew quite a bit (now over 5k followers!), but I don’t nearly follow enough people there. I think it goes without saying that itch.io is a wonderful platform. The way they let you follow creators there, and handle notifying you, has been invaluable to me in terms of finding those hidden gems. I have an unsorted growing curation-monstrosity called “the good stuff” that I mention any chance I get. So… I put out a call for people to share their projects...

So here’s a dream come true for my work, and I’m dedicating an entire blog post to this very cool news… My work is on Rhizome again! Artist Profile: Nathalie Lawhead By Ryan Kuo https://rhizome.org/editorial/2022/feb/01/artist-profile-nathalie-lawhead/ Everything is going to be OK Rhizome Artbase https://artbase.rhizome.org/wiki/Q12199 “Everything is going to be OK” was recently included in the Rhizome Artbase. They put out a call for submissions for their executable poetry project. It seemed perfect. “Everything is going to be OK” very much fits that description because it features so much poetry. Then Ryan Kuo asked if I wanted to collaborate on an...

I have been heavily invested in learning Unreal and Blender. I announced that I wanted to make a 3D game, so this is my trajectory for the foreseeable future. I’ve been keeping a development update thread on Twitter. It’s fun to track it! update: i finished modeling a bunch of trees (enough for variety) and finally got the procedural forest running.it's so cool and spooky!! i was right too. the god rays + trees are intense. the light effect is amazing too. i love this.can't wait to get some good fog into this… https://t.co/E6OeK0h3Wz pic.twitter.com/DjqcVh9vcv — Nathalie Lawhead (@alienmelon) January...

~ This post is my epic roundup of recommendations for 202x! ~ When we talk about games, especially the indie game space, most of the games we suggest are ones with lots of critical acclaim, playtime, and that demand plenty of involvement. Playing a game these days feels like as much of a financial investment as it becomes a life investment. I find myself drawn more and more to spelunking itch.io for tiny hidden gems… getting lost while diving into all the developer pages filled with all these odd little works. Browsing itch or GameJolt has become almost as rewarding...