Graeme Borland

Graeme Borland

@graebor.bsky.social

⭐️ Game Developer / Artist / Programmer / Person 🎮 Founder of Shining Feeling (@shiningfeeling.bsky.social) 💼 Previously: Gameplay Director @ Owlchemy Labs 🇨🇦 🕹️ More games: graebor.itch.io 🎨 Art: @gbsketch.bsky.social‬ / sketch.graemeborland.com

244 followers 104 following50 posts

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@graebor.bsky.social

I’m proud to announce that I’ve started my own company! This is something I’ve wanted to do for a long time, and now it’s really happening. Things are just getting started, but work is already underway on some fun stuff, so stay tuned…

Shining Feeling@shiningfeeling.bsky.social

✨ Hi there! ✨ Shining Feeling is an independent game studio founded by @graebor.bsky.social. We’re on a quest to create vibrant, handcrafted games with heart. We’ve got some fun stuff cooking, so keep an eye on this space for announcements! Can’t wait to share more 👀 🔗 shiningfeeling.games

@graebor.bsky.social

🌟📡 TWILIGHT BEACON 📡🌟 Play: graebor.itch.io/twilight-beacon #LDJAM entry: ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/59/twilight-beacon My #LD59 entry is a frantic radio tower game that will test your focus. Intercept as many signals as you can before the beacon is overwhelmed! #indiedev #gamedev #godotengine

@graebor.bsky.social

Time again for #LDJAM, I think I have an idea...

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@graebor.bsky.social

The difficulty curve in this game is controlled by 4 values, so the game just walks through this array of Vector4s, a different one for each difficulty level. Maybe a little eye-melty, but it made it easy to quickly iterate on the pacing!

@graebor.bsky.social

Sound design is something I want to improve at, so I tried to make things satisfying and mix ideas together rather than just using janky foley like I usually do for jams.

@graebor.bsky.social

Time again for #LDJAM, I think I have an idea...

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@graebor.bsky.social

Dinnertime update - there's a bunch more sound design I want to improve and a few loose bits n pieces to fix, but it's getting there!

@graebor.bsky.social

Home stretch today! It'll be a bunch of pretty minor tweaks, so here's my "design doc" for now. Had to cycle through a few ideas before latching onto this one.

@graebor.bsky.social

Time again for #LDJAM, I think I have an idea...

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@graebor.bsky.social

It's been this kinda morning 👀

@graebor.bsky.social

It's looking more juicy now✨ Still a bunch to do, but lunch first!! #LDJAM

@graebor.bsky.social

Time again for #LDJAM, I think I have an idea...

@graebor.bsky.social

Progress! It's a bit difficult, but in a fun way (I hope...)

@graebor.bsky.social

Last #LDJAM update for Saturday! Still some bits of gameplay to finish up tomorrow, but mostly I'll be working on art next ✨

@graebor.bsky.social

Excited for this 👀

Pedalboard Games@pedalboard.games

WHEELJAM RETURNS MAY 4-8 2026, THIS TIME WITH A TWIST. itch.io/jam/wheeljam-2 Trailer Credits: 3D Animation, Music and Editing - @colin.how Graphics and VFX - @tavee.ca

@graebor.bsky.social

Surprise! Sort the Court's had a big update! 👑✨ It's now playable on mobile, with a new "quests" feature, and - thanks to the awesome team at @riotloc.bsky.social - it's now in French, Spanish, Brazilian Portuguese, and Japanese! This new version is available on @poki.com: poki.com/en/g/sort-th...

@graebor.bsky.social

It's hard to believe it's been over 10 years since Sort the Court's initial release. I've had a great time working with the folks at Poki to put together this update to revitalize it and bring the game to a new audience.

@graebor.bsky.social

Riotloc did an amazing job on the localization. The amount of silly jokes, wordplay, and strange dialogue in this game is huge - but they were up to the challenge, and the fact that more folks can now enjoy all of that in their native language is really exciting.

@graebor.bsky.social

✨🧙‍♀️ VAULT OF STARS 🧙‍♀️✨ Play: graebor.itch.io/vault-of-stars #LDJam entry: ldjam.com/events/ludum... Made in <72 hours for #LD58. It's a short puzzler with a mini-narrative based on the theme of "Collector". This was so fun to make, and I'm really proud of the result 😊 #gamedev #indiedev #godotengine

youtube.comVault of Stars (Jam Game Trailer)YouTube video by Graeme Borland

@graebor.bsky.social

I'm in for #LDJam / #LD58! Doing another project in #godotengine. It was a bit of a struggle to get some momentum started, but I'm enjoying where it's at now! I got sidetracked by art tinkering today, so it looks farther along than it is... Tomorrow's all about content/functionality! 👀

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@graebor.bsky.social

The fact that you can instantly run the current scene instead of the entire game also saves SO much time testing. I set things up so each puzzle/cutscene works on its own, and my main node just sequences them. Having no distinction between prefabs/scenes makes this so much cleaner!

@graebor.bsky.social

I can't wait to get more familiar with #godotengine and learn more. It's just a joy to work with, and iteration time is so fast - genuinely couldn't have pulled off this jam project without it! ✨

@graebor.bsky.social

I'm in for #LDJam / #LD58! Doing another project in #godotengine. It was a bit of a struggle to get some momentum started, but I'm enjoying where it's at now! I got sidetracked by art tinkering today, so it looks farther along than it is... Tomorrow's all about content/functionality! 👀

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@graebor.bsky.social

Working with Godot is making me realize how jaded I am from being exclusive to Unity for so long - when I find a built-in solution my instinct is to be skeptical and assume it'll be clunky or have lots of gotchas. But I'm finding 99% of the time in Godot things really are as simple as they seem.

@graebor.bsky.social

Another example, the built-in tween system is SO GOOD, and the fact that you can easily tween any property and manage/group tweens with different targets and settings is BEAUTIFUL. Never before have I so enjoyed peppering in little tweens everywhere.

@graebor.bsky.social

I'm in for #LDJam / #LD58! Doing another project in #godotengine. It was a bit of a struggle to get some momentum started, but I'm enjoying where it's at now! I got sidetracked by art tinkering today, so it looks farther along than it is... Tomorrow's all about content/functionality! 👀

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@graebor.bsky.social

There's so many little things in Godot that make life easier... For these mute buttons, they brighten based on mouse events from a Control node, and since you can set the modulate colour on the parent (or ANY 2D node) and it propagates through all its children (!!!) it was super clean to set up.

@graebor.bsky.social

I wanted to do parallax backgrounds and assumed it was going to be a hassle, but NO! Godot's built-in Camera2D and Parallax2D nodes work SO WELL just out of the box, and the settings actually make sense so getting your desired behaviour is so intuitive 🤯

@graebor.bsky.social

I'm in for #LDJam / #LD58! Doing another project in #godotengine. It was a bit of a struggle to get some momentum started, but I'm enjoying where it's at now! I got sidetracked by art tinkering today, so it looks farther along than it is... Tomorrow's all about content/functionality! 👀

@graebor.bsky.social

Can you tell I stayed up all night designing puzzles?? #LDJam

@graebor.bsky.social

I hadn't really messed with #godotengine tool scripts yet, but I made a couple for this game, including this nifty one to quickly scale/position the elements of my dialog boxes based on one shared "size" value. Being able to make small tool scripts like this with only a few lines of code is so fun!

@graebor.bsky.social

⭐ NXTWPN10 is out! ⭐ graebor.itch.io/nxtwpn10 This is a #godotengine remake of my first ever Ludum Dare entry, which was way back in 2013! I had a lot of fun re-creating and making some tweaks to this old idea to give it a bit of new life ✨ #gamedev #indiedev

Graeme Borland reposted

@gbsketch.bsky.social

I've reached my 🎊5000th🎊 consecutive daily sketch! Every single day since January 1st, 2012, I've posted an original piece of art. You can find all of them on sketch.graemeborland.com ✨ #artsky #art #digitalart #conceptart #speedpaint

Graeme Borland reposted

@gbsketch.bsky.social

Ships and clouds ☁️🚀✨ #speedpaint #conceptart #art #illustration #digitalart

@graebor.bsky.social

Pro tip: If you do the introductory #godotengine and #b3d tutorials at the same time, you'll unlock the "Godonut"

@graebor.bsky.social

Sketch of the Day is going to hit Day 5000 in September, so to preemptively celebrate I'm getting a couple of its social media accounts back up and running. gbsketch.tumblr.com is back too - just not with every single daily, only my own site will have those.

gbsketch@gbsketch.bsky.social

Hi! I do art daily over at sketch.graemeborland.com. I've been going since Jan 1st, 2012 - almost at 5000 days! I won't be posting every daily here on Bluesky, but I'll be using this account for occasional roundup posts, plus extras like prints and videos. Cheers! ✨ #art #digitalart #illustration

@graebor.bsky.social

Looking back at the sketch archives again, these are all from March 2024. #art #digitalart #fantasy #illustration

@graebor.bsky.social

⚔️♻️ BLADE & WHEEL ♻️⚔️ graebor.itch.io/blade-and-wh... Created in a week for #WHEELJAM. Check out my interpretation of the wheel as a battle system and exploration mechanic. This idea's been lodged in my brain almost since I heard about the jam, and it was a joy to build it out! #gamedev #indiedev

@graebor.bsky.social

🛞 #WHEELJAM time! 🛞 Here’s a thread where I’ll attempt to post a few status updates. Very excited about my idea so I hope I can execute it well 👀

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@graebor.bsky.social

The other half of this idea is using the wheel to traverse the world. You travel along a set path towards a boss fight, but your wheeling affects the likelihood of random battles and treasure along the way!

@graebor.bsky.social

Was it worth staying up until 5am to make an unnecessarily dramatic battle entry sequence? Yes. Will I actually be able to finish this thing before the deadline on a couple hours of sleep? Uh...

@graebor.bsky.social

🛞 #WHEELJAM time! 🛞 Here’s a thread where I’ll attempt to post a few status updates. Very excited about my idea so I hope I can execute it well 👀

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@graebor.bsky.social

Which has started to take on a bit of a life of its own now. Did this mockup as a culmination of all my mulling over the past while leading up to the jam - and it's feeling like something I think would be fun! Now to see if I can execute 👀

@graebor.bsky.social

Today's #WHEELJAM update - it's rough and pretty hard to follow what's going on, but the bones of the combat system are working!

@graebor.bsky.social

🛞 #WHEELJAM time! 🛞 Here’s a thread where I’ll attempt to post a few status updates. Very excited about my idea so I hope I can execute it well 👀

@graebor.bsky.social

An early idea was this kind of wheel-driven dungeon crawler, where you move in the direction of the chosen quadrant, moving more spaces depending on how full it is. I feel like there might be something here, but I couldn't quite get it to click for myself so I moved on with brainstorming.

@graebor.bsky.social

The wheel is a mini puzzle to figure out the optimal way to use a small set of actions by thinking a few moves ahead, which is conceptually pretty close to something like Slay the Spire, so I started thinking about a kind of mashup...

@graebor.bsky.social

Some favourite dailies from back in February 2024. I post original art every single day at sketch.graemeborland.com (4815 days in a row and counting)! #art #digitalart #fantasy

@graebor.bsky.social

New jam game! 🌻👿 SLAUGHTERING CAN 👿🌻 Made in a weekend for #PEGJAM 2025. The theme was "An Unconventional Weapon", so I tried to make a watering can feel like a satisfying weapon. It's a small, loud, and silly little project. Try it here: graebor.itch.io/slaughtering...

@graebor.bsky.social

Here's some art from the past couple of months so this isn't just a blank space 👀

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