thomas "noio" 🏔️ vandenberg

Officially announcing my new game: GARBAGE COUNTRY. A lonely road trip through the ruins of a forgotten world. feat. vast wastelands, tower-defense battles, upgrades, mysteries, & lots of driving.

the mood: water

not game related

hey everyone! i've been trying to be more active on other channels as well, give us a follow there if that's your thing! (also experimenting with different video formats for the game) TikTok: www.tiktok.com/@noio.games Instagram: www.instagram.com/noio/

trapped!

sorry for the hiccups 🥹

i gave up on using Pixel art fonts in the UI for CJK.. There are GREAT fonts, @hicchicc's DenkiChip, Zpix, and many more. But finding combinations with contrasting *weights and styles*, at 12px height, is just impossible.

particles are so fun

Garbage Country is at Tokyo Game Show!! Swerve into our demo at our publisher EdCorp's booth, located below. 📍 Hall 9 - Indie Arena, 09-E53

TOKYO GAME SHOW!! It's our next pit stop. Say hi and test drive Garbage Country's demo from September 17 to September 21 🫡 #GarbageCountry #indiegamedev #indiegames

ok.. mean!

GAMESCOM DAY ONE 💪 Did you spot us? 👀 #GarbageCountry #indiegamedev #indiegame #gamescom2026

BEEEEP! Garbage Country is at gamescom 🛣️ Take our demo for a spin around the block and say hi! Find us in in the Indie Arena Booth: 📍 Hall 10.2 Indie Arena Booth 13 See you soon! #GarbageCountry #indiegamedev #indiegame #gamescom2026

*this* is the classic fake interior.. ALSO used in this project!

OMG! GARBAGE COUNTRY won the Grand Prix Prize at BIC festival 😭🥹 We’re so honored 💕💕 Thank you to BIC and also tysm to all the players who stopped by and played our demo!!! We’re headed to gamescom next, so we’ll see ya’ll soon :) #GarbageCountry #indiegamedev #indiegame #gamedev

Garbage Country is at Busan Indie Connect this weekend! Come take our demo for a drive 🏎️. ݁₊ ⊹ . ݁˖ . 🗓️ August 14-16 🚗 Booth D052 And if you can't make it to Busan, check out the online showcase ➡️ store.steampowered.com/sale/bicfest... #GarbageCountry #indiegame #indiegamedev

trippy

post your favorite color

blam!

look at all those crazy triggers

i like this spot

Garbage Country will be at Gamescom in the @indiearenabooth.de, from August 26-30 🚗 💨 Come play our post-apocalyptic exploration sim's new demo and say hi! P.S. Wishlist here ;) store.steampowered.com/app/2530870/... #GarbageCountry #indiegamedev #indiegames #pixelart

the car doesn't really have a "gearbox" but sometimes you do want to drive carefully! So it has a single 'low gear'.. what do you think of this UI ? #indiegames #gamedev #offroad #garbagecountry

drive slow. who knows what's up ahead? #indiegamedev #pixelart #indiegame

just a place

exploded

I struggled a bit with adding bloom to the UI (with the camera stack and everything). But now that it works I'm liking it a lot! having a larger range of perceived brightness super useful for drawing attention to things!

Take your time. Drive. Explore. Wander. #pixelart #indiedev #indiegame

rendering particles into a wind map.. oldest trick in the book but still cool

so happy with "EasySpline", the little layer I built atop of Unity Splines to make for easier editing. You don't usually want to fiddle with control points, you want to edit a more abstract shape and then go "ok but now:... - make it sag - rounded corners - just smooth etc.

birds obviously also Shuriken

i am only rendering ONE "planar reflection" for water (otherwise it would eat too much render time: it's a full scene render) but that means different water surfaces have to share a reflection so I'm doing a quick sneaky lerp when you look at a different body of water

our in-game note taking tool is truly the MVP it even works on Steam Deck! 1️⃣ Notes are included in save file 2️⃣ steam cloud syncs them back to dev machine 3️⃣ we have a tool to batch-extract them from saves and import 'em into their respective scenes

see this is one of those situations where it is confusing that if a threshold is "the minimum", you apply that using "max()" which is why I resorted to calling it the "At Least" value. is there a better name?

big wall

look at him go

letting us customize icons for scripts was a mistake (all this time that could've been spent on the actual game)

Seemed appropriate

looks cool paused

GARBAGE COUNTRY has a publisher! Making a game is.. intense.. (a big game even more so.) For years you just work and the doubts and anxieties can really creep up on you.. it's so great to have someone in your corner 🥰

always amazed about how few building blocks you need to make things.. these couple shapes make up all the VFX in the game

did some better VFX for these trails.. are we liking this? 🤔

I'll be at AMAZE today showing GARBAGE COUNTRY! Come say hi! (at the Saftladen booth, until 16:00 😊)

good particles

built this 'cheat/debug panel' that automatically assigns hotkeys to actions based on the name (if available) It's hooked up with just an [Attribute] in code. Super useful, those single keystrokes become second nature when testing

. @amazefest.bsky.social is taking place on May 13-16! We'll be present in the Village area with a selection of 13 (!) projects, including: 🔸 @ohapollogame.bsky.social 🔸 GARBAGE COUNTRY by @noio.games 🔸 Big Dig by @hjalte.bsky.social & @danschumacher.bsky.social 🔸 @roguevoltage.bsky.social

blockouts for all the different towers in the game