Alex Lemley (Rocketlex)

#Indiegame clones have been a constant issue for over 15 years and I don’t think this changes the calculus at all. At the end of the day, you’re making a worse version of a game that’s harder to market. There’s no gold to be rushed for here.

Rushing out a cheap clone of a viral one-mechanic game has always been easy. But you’re not selling those games to confused grandmas who can’t tell Bubsy from Sonic. You’re selling to an audience that knows what you did and saw the original game go viral. It doesn’t work.

This is a genuinely excellent discovery feature. It’s basically what the Discovery Queue should have been from the beginning. I’ve bought a bunch of very small indie games this year thanks to this.

NEW MEAT UPDATE: Barring a few possible tweaks, the first new ending is now COMPLETE! And um... ...Yeah, I dunno if you're ready.

I agree! It could work exactly like and it would be great for smaller indies. I’d love to see an actual study, but just from my own experience, I feel like for small indies a free-with-tip or pay-what-you-want structure can be just as lucrative as a price tag overall.

Contrary to what you might expect, people actually love giving independent creators money, even (and perhaps especially) when their product is on offer for free. The more frictionless and transparent you can make it, the better. Tips should totally be a standard option for these platforms.

OKAY! FUTURE CRISIS AVERTED! I've got my backup drive online and automatically backing up everything on my computer's apparently-failing SSD. That means everything New Meat-related should be completely save (and all my other projects, too.)

Randomly played a little Wuchang Fallen Feathers after getting it on PS+ a few months back. And as I suspected it’s “Dark Souls, but we stapled six more mechanics to it so it will seem original. Have fun remembering what L3 does!”

New Meat Update: I've actually taken today, tomorrow and Friday off work to lock-in on finishing this next update. Without spoilers, today was spent putting together a few rooms, a boss fight, and a fairly long cutscene (by this game's standards, anyway). #indiedev

Today was spent finishing the second ending, creating and playtesting a VERY cool new boss fight that's been in my head for literally half a decade, and making the last-minute choice to split this ending into TWO endings based on your actions. Yep, the Redacted update adds THREE new endings, now!

So, unfortunately, it seems like my computer's hard drive might be in the early stages of dying. I've ordered a new backup drive which will arrive Saturday and then I'll look into what getting the main drive replaced looks like.

New Meat Update: I've actually taken today, tomorrow and Friday off work to lock-in on finishing this next update. Without spoilers, today was spent putting together a few rooms, a boss fight, and a fairly long cutscene (by this game's standards, anyway). #indiedev

Today was spent getting the first ending feature complete, wrestling with RPG Maker being very inconsistent about asset aspect ratios, filling in a bunch of details, and finally creating this update's official announcement image! Coming soon, New Meat's wildest update ever, THE REDACTED UPDATE!!

Tonight I picked up a new roguelike #indiegame and it really surprised me. Hungry Horrors! It's a game about fending off creatures of British Isles mythology by tossing food at them, matching their tastes and cravings, and building huge combo chains. It all works super well!

New Meat Update: I've actually taken today, tomorrow and Friday off work to lock-in on finishing this next update. Without spoilers, today was spent putting together a few rooms, a boss fight, and a fairly long cutscene (by this game's standards, anyway). #indiedev

The funny part about this is that Block Blast has an Apple Arcade version, which I’ve played, and in my experience it just kind of randomly decides how nice it’s going to be to you every time you play. Kinda want to see THAT reverse engineered.

So recently Neon Abyss 2 hit 1.0 and I've been playing quite a bit of it. This might quietly be the best roguelike of the year. It doesn't seem like too much of a leap beyond the first Neon Abyss on the surface, but the systems are SO much deeper and more considered. Plus the aesthetic still rules.

The "salvage" system is probably the game's best new innovation. Any equipment piece you find that doesn't fit your build can be broken down into resources to give yourself a small (or large) power boost. No dead drops! It's so simple, but it really "solves" the Binding of Isaac loop.

Deadlock seems like fun but by the time it's publicly available it's going to have a playerbase with months of institutional knowledge that will be spread across a litany of irritating youtube videos and poorly-formatted wikis and this is why I hate multiplayer games.

I don't like having to consult outside sources to understand a game, and when I pick up a multiplayer game at launch I don't usually need to, since I'm learning along with everyone else. But Deadlock's mechanics have been on display for public scrutiny and analysis (if not play) for months.