tykenn (Trees Hate You)

27 Aug

Yesterday, we finally announced a release date for Trees Hate You: November 16 Thanks #FutureGamesShow for featuring our trailer at #gamescom! #indiegame #TreesHateYou

I just want to be clear that I don't use generative ai. Not for graphics, audio, code, translation, ideas, placeholders, cover/promotional art, or anything else. If I can't do something, I learn how to do it, get help from other humans, or just don't scope for it.

Just a few more weeks until launch... #ScreenshotSaturday #TreesHateYou #gamedev #indiegame

Reminder that most of the next fest slop gets buried after the 2nd day. Every time everyone freaks out like it's the death of steam, and then it goes back to normal. Don't let 2 days of Steam turning off its usual algorithms make you think the slop is winning.

Oh cool, Littlelands is releasing the same day as Trees Hate You. Finally I have a rival! (Not really. They're very different kinds of games. But I did initially intend to do an art style similar to Littlelands, before quickly realizing that my art skills are not at the level needed for that yet)

I'm finally working full time on Trees Hate You, with about a month left until release. At this point it'll mostly be polishing what we already have, but I'll probably throw in a few more last-minute dumb jokes. #screenshotsaturday #gamedev #indiegame

A cool thing about making a game that's basically just a series of absurd gags is that I keep remembering random stuff I made for previous projects that I can now reuse, as long as I reframe it as another way for trees to be horrible.

(Yes, this too is the trees' fault. It'll make sense in context.) #treeshateyou #screenshotsaturday #gamedev

I'm adding something extra evil to the game right now

Minor change I noticed in the OoT remake: they moved the A button prompt. It caught my attention because for my own games, I once tried to do button prompts the old OoT way and quickly learned why games have largely moved away from this.

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Echoes of Wisdom and the Link's Awakening remake have the prompt hover close to your character, which is most similar to what I ultimately went with, although I have it above the other object or character. It's probably what works best for a camera of this angle and distance.

Also, I love the way recent Zelda games show the whole diamond to highlight one button. Super helpful when I regularly use both Switch and Xbox controllers and mix up which button is which. It makes it clear even when my instinct is that A is down, that I should press the button on the right

Nobody looks in the corner to see how they can interact with whatever is in front of them. OoT at least has the blue hover icon to show there *is* an interaction. I didn't even have that in my own project, so some testers would just assume nothing was interactable.

It feels obvious in hindsight, but it seems like a good general rule to show related information close together. The Zelda series did corner prompts for a few other games like Wind Waker and Minish Cap, but now they usually put it around the bottom-center, close to the interaction itself.

12 Sept

I've been redesigning the main menu. Still a WIP, but I think it's at least more interesting than the vertical lists of buttons for everything that I had before. #screenshotsaturday #treeshateyou #indiegame #gamedev

10 Sept

Nov 5: Ocarina of Time (Nintendo) Nov 16: Trees Hate You (Steam) Nov 19: GTA6 (PlayStation/Xbox) I was kind of hoping OoT would join us on the same week, but at least we get to share a month

7 Sept

I added fishing...kind of #gamedev #indiegame #TreesHateYou

We're getting Trees Hate You before GTA6

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Trees Hate You is actually releasing on Monday, and it's a short game, so you could play and finish it in time for GTA6 on Thursday. But I suspect even the biggest game release ever won't be the *only* game anyone will play or talk about that month, especially when it's not even releasing on Steam

Or I could be completely wrong, and I'm setting my little joke indie game up for failure. I guess we'll find out in November!

We're getting Trees Hate You before GTA6

This may likely change as we get closer, but so far Trees Hate You seems to be the most wishlisted Steam game announced to release that week (3rd most for the entire month). I guess GTA6 scared most people off.

25 Aug

I found one of my earliest attempts at game design. In elementary school, I would draw these "mazes" that were more like puzzle platformer levels, with keys, gravity switches, teleporters, trampolines, and slingshots. I invented strict movement rules so you could play the whole thing on paper.

25 Aug

It was basically my version of doodling in class. Crazy looking back and seeing this as the start of something I would stick with for decades and eventually turn into a career.

24 Aug

I'm probably going to regret giving this hat a collider. #gamedev #TreesHateYou #indiegame

23 Aug

If your first game doesn't succeed, don't give up! Every dev's first try is bad. It takes years of practice to make a game so stupid that it makes everyone say "*I* could've made *that*!" (They're actually talking about it)

15 Aug

My recent dev focus has been on secret late-game stuff, and people have expressed worry that I'll spoil too much of the game. So for this #ScreenshotSaturday, I'll just confirm that I'm still alive, development is still progressing, and the trees still hate you. #gamedev #TreesHateYou #indiegame

15 Aug

One of these things is not like the others... #gamedev #indiegame #gamescom #FutureGamesShow

@futuregamesshow.bsky.social

15 Aug

I'm honored to be part of this showcase. It just feels crazy to have enough momentum behind my joke of a game to even be considered for something like this.

tykenn (Trees Hate You) reposted

Future Games Show

14 Aug

We are excited to announce that the Future Games Show will feature a new trailer for Trees Hate You, a comedy adventure where every leaf and branch are the enemy!🌳 @tykenn.games Set a reminder to watch here: www.youtube.com/live/OfJj_tV...

25 July

I've been converting the sisyphus level to a desert theme. Gotta invite all the pedants to point out that technically cacti aren't trees #ScreenshotSaturday #TreesHateYou #gamedev #indiegame

14 July

Trees Hate You just reached 300,000 wishlists. It still feels so strange to be able to mention the dumb little joke game that I'm working on to a random stranger and have a chance that they've already heard of it.

12 July

Today I discovered blend shapes and felt compelled to make a new kind of trap #ScreenshotSaturday #gamedev #TreesHateYou

4 July

Working on another dumb axe idea #ScreenshotSaturday #TreesHateYou #gamedev

youtube.comSteam Next Fest - June 2026 Edition: Official TrailerYouTube video by Steam

16 June

Trees Hate You is in the official #SteamNextFest trailer: www.youtube.com/watch?v=U4fj.... It's also on the event's Top Demos chart (for now at least). Of all my projects, I never would've guessed that it would be the dumb joke game with mean trees that would get this far. #indiegame #gamedev

13 June

Trees Hate You will be in Steam Next Fest (June 15-22). Might be a good time to try the demo if you haven't already and you want to suffer. #SteamNextFest #TreesHateYou #indiegame

5 June

The trees are horrible and want to ruin your day. Be the victim of relentless tree bullies, fall for many traps, maybe find an axe, and try to escape this awful forest. There's a demo if want to start suffering early: store.steampowered.com/app/4171850/... #PitchYaGame #indiegame #TreesHateYou

29 May

Me in 2025: "My games are too hard to explain and classify. I should make something that's more familiar and actually fits a genre." What I ended up making next:

Ross Burton@rossburton.bsky.social

We recently updated Game Oracle to introduce a more stable and accurate Uniqueness Score. You can read all about it in our latest blog (see the comments below 👇️) but I wanted to highlight the most unique outlier on our new outliers leaderboard: Trees Hate You by @tykenn.games

23 May

Added some extremely bouncy coconuts #screenshotsaturday #treeshateyou #gamedev

16 May

Finally starting to animate the hand tree + going back to glasses flying off your face when you're hit. #treeshateyou #screenshotsaturday #indiegame #gamedev

18 May

A couple more hand tree attacks

10 May

I'm thinking of maybe adding some fake checkpoints... #treeshateyou #gamedev #indiegame

tykenn (Trees Hate You) reposted

Templo

@templomedia.bsky.social

7 May

Our rage game + 3 indie rage games we’re loving right now: 🔥Hellbound Inc 🌲The Trees Hate You 🛶Paddle Paddle Paddle 🗻A Difficult Game About Climbing Got any other rage-inducing indie games we should try? @tykenn.games #indiegane #gamedev #ragegame

@alphabetagamer.bsky.social

27 Apr

People keep asking me about it, so to clear things up: *None* of 10(?) apps on the Play Store with the Trees Hate You title and an AI-corrupted variation of the cover art were put there by me, even the one with >100k downloads. The *only* places I've published the demo so far are Itch and Steam.

tykenn (Trees Hate You) reposted

Alpha Beta Gamer

26 Apr

Why do trees have such a deep cedared hate for this poor guy? Trees Hate You is a tree am-bush indie game where all the trees are out to get you! Demo out now on Steam: store.steampowered.com/app/4171850/... Gameplay Video: www.youtube.com/watch?v=TfhM... by indie dev @tykenn.games #gaming

store.steampowered.comTrees Hate You Demo on SteamHike through the worst forest full of the most horrible trees. Do not trust them. The trees will trick you. They will bully you. They will hurt you. If only you could find an axe...

25 Apr

Sorry it took a couple weeks after it really blew up on Itch, but the demo for Trees Hate You (including a new challenge mode) is finally on Steam! store.steampowered.com/app/4307190/... #TreesHateYou #indiegame #ragegame