Teddy Dief

7 Sept 2025

Hi new Bluesky friends 👋 I’m Teddy - a game designer/director who co-led games like Hyper Light Drifter, Peabody Winner/pop group OFK, and the LA collective Glitch City! I’m working on some new games about action, music, life, fashion… I’ll get to talk about them soonish. For now, I’ve got fries.

Heh heh I’m in. delighted to join BAFTA as a full member 🖤 Excited to judge this year’s BAFTA Games Awards! @baftagames.bsky.social

Sad day for Gravity Well. I saw 1st-hand how well the C-suite communicated through the rollercoaster of fundraising. I've never witnessed that level of transparency & trust. I'm moving on, but I'm OK! If you see Gravity Well resumes on your desk, know I'd be happy to vouch for people. Reach out 🤍

Gravity Well@gravitywell.games

I'm proud to say I got to design a game with Gravity Well for over a year! This week is my last with this lovely AAA studio, born from the team who made Apex Legends, Titanfall 1 & 2. I've been there as a Principal Game Designer, responsible for the design and creation of all player characters!

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Bonus thanks to Cosmo Fumo & Pauline Gepilano, cut from my same cloth, who helped me feel I fit in with this studio full of people from all professional backgrounds. I hope we helped each other do the best work possible

What a wild experience and kind team. More news from me pretty soon about future projects... Thanks Gravity Well 🤍

I joined to get out of my comfort zone: learning from the best in AAA. As an indie generalist in my 20-year career, I've developed action games during our creation of Hyper Light Drifter and directing at Square Enix etc, but never have I gotten to engage so deeply a design of this scale

In particular, grateful to Griffin Dean: designer of 6 of 8 Apex Legends launch characters(!). He taught me tons on the topic of combat design & affordances. I spent the best moments of my time at the studio siphoning off his insights, and applying them to the characters I designed.

guys they’re gonna pass Final Fantasy

My friend hand-carved a Sherman to match my Peabody Award 🥹 @liamhawley.bsky.social

GOT IT! Minted fresh, the official Nobuo Uematsu biography by @milkman.bsky.social

14 Sept

PRE-ORDERED 🤍 Can't wait to devour this - a must-read for us Final Fantasy diehards. Also plan to charm @milkman.bsky.social into signing it 👍👍👍

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14 Sept

Name a non-LOTR character who could resist the one ring.

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Sad about SUICA Penguin? Me too! BUT FYI: This is Chiharu Sakazaki, the artist who designed SUICA! She kept the rights to SUICA Penguin, and the license deal is expiring. Perhaps they couldn’t agree on a fee. BUT heres more about her…

Chiharu Sakazaki also designed Chibi Godzilla!! And has done one collab with Pokemon!

That’s all I know! Sad about SUICA Penguin, but it gave me a little kick to learn about the artist, and feel some happiness that her penguins live on… on planes not trains

You may have seen that Haneda airport just announced a new Penguin mascot, ALSO designed by Chiharu Sakazaki lol I’m sad to lose SUICA Penguin, but I’m glad she found a way to keep the spirit alive. It’s also a hilarious move to announce the week SUICA announced the replacement mascot designs

about her: “”” Chiharu Sakazaki graduated from Tokyo University of the Arts, Department of Design. She worked as a designer for a stationary maker production room. Active as a freelance illustrator since 1998, with her work appearing in picture books, magazines, advertisements, and other media

8 Sept

support New* Indies @timoflegend.bsky.social @karriebear.bsky.social

kickstarter.comAmnesia Fortnight 2026, Indie RebootA Double Fine Productions Game Jam, Documentary, and Kickstarter Campaign

@doublefine.com Kickstarter is up now!! www.kickstarter.com/projects/dou...

8 Sept

What’s an example of perfect casting?

Chris Plante@plante.bsky.social

What’s an example of perfect casting?

8 Sept

Overheard at PAX: “if you pee in the pool the pee goes back up in you and turns you into a zombie”

send in the Clouds

The Aggies by @aggrocrabgames.bsky.social @megacrit.com the hot new non-recurring award show @smashynick.bsky.social host divine. @karriebear.bsky.social stunned the red carpet. @jenn-svedberg-yen.bsky.social finally won an award for Clair Obscur. The AggroCrabs let me snap them

5 Sept

SPY PARTY is very back at PAX! @checker.bsky.social is coding on the floor as you have come to expect

4 Sept

Same Photo @aggrocrabgames.bsky.social @smashynick.bsky.social

3 Sept

HELLO PAX Mostly here to see old friends, talk about new stuff, haunt the FF7 panel and hope they notice me

3 Sept

Unrelated to being at PAX I am finally playing CrossCode and hey it’s a delight! I’ll always have a soft spot for ARPGs, cousins of our Hyper Light Drifter. The genre has so much left in it 🤍

youtu.beBlood Dungeon: Release TrailerYouTube video by messhof

25 Aug

NEW GAME from my dear friends and the creators of NIDHOGG!!! Goes hard.

Messhof@messhof.bsky.social

Blood Dungeon is OUT NOW on Steam, Xbox Series, Windows Store, Game Pass, Switch 1+2, and PlayStation 5! RTs very much welcome. I love you. #boneup blooddungeon.com youtu.be/rmbXDEdb6Y0

Teddy Dief reposted

Karrie Shao

@karriebear.bsky.social

24 Aug

I had a great time picking @caseyyano.bsky.social’s brain about originating a whole genre with Slay the Spire! Tune in to the Game Maker's Notebook for the conversation 🎧

Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences@official-aias.bsky.social

This week on the Game Maker's Notebook, @karriebear.bsky.social chatted with @megacrit.com Co-Founder @caseyyano.bsky.social! Together they talk about developing the Slay the Spire series, the deckbuilder genre, design pillars, what they added to the formula in Slay the Spire 2, and more

24 Aug

whom will I see at PAX 🤍

5 Aug

Welp, our game We Are OFK was just banned from Steam in Russia... presumably for queerness.

HEAR ME OUT

OK Too Gay to Play Bundle might be coming together. Get fucked putin

5 Aug

Welp, our game We Are OFK was just banned from Steam in Russia... presumably for queerness.

5 Aug

Sad for the Russian folks who might have felt seen by our game. Someone in their government may have just done a sweep of the LGBTQ+ tag on Steam and issued bans. Here's hoping more of you don't wake up to a ban 🤍

2 Aug

Beautiful performance tonight of Apotheosis from the modern classic Journey! Bravo @awintory.bsky.social @tinaguo.bsky.social 🤍

gdcvault.com'Hyper Light Drifter': Secrets of Kickstarter, Design, & PizzaJoin Creator Alx Preston and Design + Code Teddy Dief as they take you deep behind the journey of creating their indie success, from the design to business of 'Hyper Light Drifter'. Hear untold secre...

24 July

Got asked again today about Hyper Light Drifter, how we built our own custom Level Editor~ I gave a demo of it at GDC that's free to watch now! (Demo starts 13:00) gdcvault.com/play/1024062...

24 July

I still love our child

24 July

You can get Small Yourself from the Small Worlds exhibit in Odaiba, Tokyo! @karriebear.bsky.social

13 July

Multibowl by AP Thomson & Bennett Foddy is a wonderful reminder of the variety of games, and that we should sample more of them, more often. Never not forcing my friends to play my copy 🤍 @apthomson.bsky.social @foddy.net more: www.foddy.net/blog/2016/08...

mightyvision.blogspot.comadvice on how to write about indie gamesInstead of "this game is niche" try saying "i like this game because..." Look, "niche" is not a property of a game. It's a recess in a ...

8 July

Very smart and will help you talk about games better

Michael Brough@smestorp.bsky.social

blog post - advice on how to write about indie games mightyvision.blogspot.com/2026/06/advi...

3 July

Happy Independence Weekend to my Chrome Cloud Strife, a mini immortalization of our boy who fought so hard to win independence from the Shinra Corporation and its subsidiaries

24 June

To celebrate my birthday please also celebrate the N64, born on the same day with the same sunshade energy

22 June

a normal thing I was not scared to see in the Tokyo subway

20 June

my OFK BitSummit performance is on display in the same building as Square Enix’s Shibuya office 🤍🥰

20 June

“I saw your photo up on the wall in the Square Enix building” was not a sentence I actually expected to be real

15 June

Honored to join this STACKED lineup for the Post Games EGOTYs show! Please I dare you to tell me my choice is not a game

Chris Plante@plante.bsky.social

Announcing: The 1st Annual EGOTYs The Earliest Game of the Year Awards June 12 on Patreon.com/PostGames June 15 on all podcast feeds Subscribe for free now and get the show as soon as it's live! pod.link/1815131711

15 June

@plante.bsky.social I just saw this from Japan! It’s totally a time zone thing

12 June

dreamt that Channing Tatum opened a coffee shop where he makes artisanal pastries and serves them to you personally, named Channing Cafétum