Balatro dev gives look at first prototype, Joker Poker
Game Developer
MAY 29, 2024
LocalThunk shows how 2024's breakout deckbuilder evolved in the course of its three-year development.
Dev Game Developer Prototyping 
Game Dev Glossary: Prototype, Vertical Slice, First Playable, MVP, Demo
Ask a Game Dev
MARCH 29, 2024
Prototype - A playable example of a single gameplay system to prove out the concept. Examples might be character movement, a combat combo system, or a specific game mechanic. The above screenshot is from the Breath of the Wild systems prototype - wind, fire, etc.
Prototyping 
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Tales of Kenzera dev Surgent Studios 'on hiatus' as leaders look for partners and funding
Game Developer
OCTOBER 18, 2024
The developer has put its staff on notice for redundancy as it shops around a prototype of its next project to potential business partners.
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Solo dev Tuomas Auronen (Redbeak Games) “Hardest part is financial uncertainty”
PreMortem.Games
MARCH 20, 2024
Solo dev Tuomas Auronen , operating under the name Redbeak Games , looks pretty relieved three days after the launch of his game Mortal Glory 2. When his last game, that he spent 17 months working on, flopped, Auronen felt the pressure to make enough money to support his family. What’s your creative process? “It’s
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Solo dev Jason Nicot on his new project Sanctua “A more mature party game”
PreMortem.Games
MAY 24, 2024
Jason Nicot , a French solo game developer operating under the name Choose Red , recently announced his latest game Sanctua. In this co-op multiplayer game a group of players have to work together to escape a cursed tomb. He went into transportation management, but game development never really left his mind.
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ID@Xbox launches new acceleration program to empower underrepresented devs
Game Developer
MARCH 21, 2023
The program will focus on key areas including porting, information, and prototypes.
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Solo dev Michael Cosio of Terror at Oakheart “Allow yourself the time to recharge, laugh and love “
PreMortem.Games
MARCH 27, 2024
In the 2D side scrolling horror game Terror at Oakheart players follow a diverse cast of characters that are all destined to die gruesomely at the hands of a psychotic serial killer known as Teddy. The game is developed by Californian solo dev Michael Cosio, working under the name of Tainted Pact.
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Solo dev Jason Larabie of Rodent Games works after hours on Artificer’s Tower “I live a dual life”
PreMortem.Games
MARCH 13, 2024
When the allure of game development clashes with the necessity of a traditional job, the only choice is to juggle both endeavors simultaneously. I simply couldn’t shake off my passion for making games. So, I ended up living a dual life, working my day job and moonlighting as a developer. This is a tricky question.
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Oscar Salandin, developer of BOTSU Ridicuous Robots: “Solo dev can be lonely”
PreMortem.Games
JULY 29, 2024
Oscar Salandin , known as Peculiar Pixels, received a major validation for his debut game, BOTSU Ridiculous Robots , by being named the Overall Winner at the Develop Indie Showcase Awards 2024. The English solo developer began his journey right after the Pandemic. Inevitably, I’ve gone over time and over budget,” he says.
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20 New Year’s Resolutions for Board Game Devs in 2020
Brand Game Development
DECEMBER 30, 2019
Need help on your board game? Join my community of over 2,000 game developers, artists, and passionate creators. With that in mind, I want to help you come up with some New Year’s Resolutions of your own, ones specifically related to board game design. Just go out and make a great board game for fun.
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Solo dev Almar works on debut game Repunk “I’ve had some darker moments”
PreMortem.Games
NOVEMBER 17, 2023
For some, the idea of developing a game alone is daunting. Yet, for indie dev Almar, it offered an escape from the corporate rat race he felt trapped in. Sadly, the reality of the business showed me that the type of games that pay the rent weren’t the type of experiences I wanted to create”, he says.
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What are game development jobs that most people have not heard of?
Ask a Game Dev
JULY 6, 2023
Prototype Artist - an art generalist who specializes in putting together usable art for a game prototype. They know the quick and dirty hacks and key knowledge to get what’s needed into the game and working, rather than focusing on finishing out production quality assets.
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Board Game Development – Wait Like a Champ by Using Downtime Wisely
Brand Game Development
JUNE 30, 2017
Dev Diary posts are made to teach game development through specific examples from my latest project: Highways & Byways. Last week in the Dev Diary, I talked about how board game development is a long, ongoing process with a lot of different stages. Need help on your board game?
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Kazakhstan-based Goodwin Games takes us on an emotional adventure in Selfloss
PreMortem.Games
OCTOBER 28, 2024
.” Epic MegaGrant Developing a game in Kazakhstan poses its own set of challenges, as Khoroshavin explains. The indie game development community here in Almaty is almost non-existent,” he says. Games that are intriguing based solely on their concept and a simple game loop.”
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Makhoba Kamogelo: “Don’t let fear stop you from reinventing yourself”
PreMortem.Games
NOVEMBER 13, 2023
Now, she’s navigating the world of game development, where each day brings new challenges and exciting discoveries. Let’s take a trip back memory lane and find out when the seed of game development was planted and how each part of Kamo’s past adds up. This knowledge helps me create architectural designs in games.
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Solo dev ansdor loves his total creative control: “I don’t like too much planning”
PreMortem.Games
JUNE 20, 2023
As far back as solo developer Sandro Luiz de Paula (aka ansdor) can remember he always wanted to be a game developer. But that didn’t discourage him at all: “I wouldn’t feel comfortable working on a game if I had to just follow someone else’s ideas.” What’s your creative process? “I
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How to Diagnose Failure & Move Forward as a Board Game Developer
Brand Game Development
MAY 14, 2018
Need help on your board game? Join my community of over 2,000 game developers, artists, and passionate creators. Failure can involve missed deadlines, lost clients, scrapped prototypes, controversial public statements, or no-show events. Were there physical issues that made the game difficult to play?
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Addendum to cut content: people find remnants of cut content in game files often enough. So/but is there any even rough estimate you could give of cut content that’s dug up versus cut stuff that could never be found?
Ask a Game Dev
APRIL 10, 2024
Some cut content never goes beyond existence in documents, let alone a prototype. Most gets a few iterations on a prototype before the plug gets pulled, often because we can't find the fun in the idea within the time we've allotted to it. The other thing is that cut content often comes in various degrees of completion.
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Crack the case by chatting with GPT in Uncover the Smoking Gun by ReLU Games
PreMortem.Games
JULY 10, 2024
AI is increasingly being utilized in game development, not just for automation and cost reduction, but also as an innovative gameplay feature. Various games now incorporate versions of Chat GPT to enhance NPC interactions. One notable example is Uncover the Smoking Gun by South Korean studio ReLU Games.
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Two engineers build the physics-driven engineering parody The Enjenir
PreMortem.Games
OCTOBER 9, 2023
We effectively combined our love for gaming, our skills in the Unreal Engine, with our engineering profession. What originally started out as a treehouse building simulator prototype, slowly evolved as the duo gradually added different mechanics. “It Does it improve the mechanics of the game? And it resulted in The Enjenir.”
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In regard to the vertical slice. Do studios work on/produce it to pitch a game or is it used as a milestone to reassure the money people that the game is progressing? (or both)?
Ask a Game Dev
MARCH 27, 2024
The vertical slice is a big milestone in a game's development because it shows the entire game coming together in a cohesive play experience. Since it shows all of the major systems in the game working together, it naturally answers most questions about how the game will play. Call of Duty, Pokemon, Madden, etc.).
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5 Lessons I Learned at a Play-Testing Convention (Protospiel Atlanta)
Brand Game Development
OCTOBER 27, 2017
Dev Diary posts are made to teach game development through specific examples from my latest project: Highways & Byways. Last Saturday and Sunday, I attended my first board gaming convention – Protospiel in Atlanta. Prototype of a beach volleyball game by Julio Nazario. Need help on your board game?
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You Are Not Alone: Common Pains for Game Devs & How to Overcome Them
Brand Game Development
MAY 15, 2017
Whenever I saw a complaint from a game dev pop up on my Twitter feed, I recorded it in Excel. Need help on your board game? Join my community of over 2,000 game developers, artists, and passionate creators. So many of the struggles that we deal with in game development are shared by others in the industry.
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You have talked about certain things young designers can do that will set them up for failure, namely not studying in college, not prototyping ideas, and trying to burn themselves out by working to hard at the beginning and then slowing down later. What are other common early mistakes that will make a game developers job harder?
Ask a Game Dev
FEBRUARY 16, 2024
One common mistake I see with young devs is that they invest too much of their identities into what they do for work. I was the game dev. I worked on famous games that most people had played, or at least heard of. I would caution young devs to avoid this. The game doesn't sell well and there's layoffs.
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The One Thing That Can Sink Sales for Board Games
Brand Game Development
OCTOBER 13, 2017
Dev Diary posts are made to teach game development through specific examples from my latest project: Highways & Byways. This week, I posted A Crash Course on Selling Board Games , which is my way of helping demystify that which terrifies many first-time game developers. Need help on your board game?
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Board Game Fulfillment & Why it Matters on Day 1 of Game Development
Brand Game Development
FEBRUARY 25, 2019
In fact, fulfillment often determines how big games are and how many components can be included. Many game developers think about fulfillment only after their project is complete – and you can certainly get away with it! Need help on your board game?
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Godot Engine receives $120,000 grant from game development studio Kefir
Mircosoft Game Dev
FEBRUARY 10, 2021
We are delighted to announce that the game development studio Kefir is giving the Godot Engine project a USD 120,000 grant to fund further development of the engine. Thank you Kefir for supporting our free and open source game engine! Many thanks to the Godot team for their incredible contribution to game development.
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Dean Gichukie’s studio Kunta Content delivers authentic African stories
PreMortem.Games
OCTOBER 30, 2023
In 2021, Kunta Content won at the Africa Game Dev program, a game development training initiative sponsored by Epic MegaGrants and run by NetInfo. Subsequently, they entered the Spielfabrique program, a Franco-German accelerator for young game studios, securing funding from Ubisoft to enhance Hiru’s prototype.
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From Music to Games: Dominique Gawlowski’s journey to shaping Free Lives’ culture
PreMortem.Games
AUGUST 2, 2024
This warmth is a hallmark of Free Lives, the South African indie game development studio behind Playtopia. Playtopia Festival 2023 Makers Massive provides a space with computers for aspiring game developers to work on their projects, engage in talks, and meet like-minded individuals.
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How to Play a Lot of Board Games with Little Time and Little Money
Brand Game Development
SEPTEMBER 8, 2017
Dev Diary posts are made to teach game development through specific examples from my latest project: Highways & Byways. This week with Highways & Byways , I’ve been making little improvements to the game to make it more usable and easy-to-understand. Need help on your board game? Click here.
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Rami Ismail • Find your USP by describing the game in one or two sentences
PreMortem.Games
APRIL 15, 2024
This article is part of the game-dev advice newsletter Levelling the Playing Field by Rami Ismail. If you want to know more about the art, craft and science of game development, subscribe here. The newsletter is free but you can support the existence of LTPF with a small subscription fee.
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Staying alive is all the victory you can hope for in The Forever Winter by Fun Dog Studios
PreMortem.Games
JULY 5, 2024
Fun Dog Studios was founded when a team of 30 veteran devs came together to build their own dream game. Team members have worked on games like The Witcher 3, Horizon: Zero Dawn, Mass Effect and other well-known triple A titles. The Forever Winter is the studio’s debut title, but far from the first game for its developers.
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When it comes to copy writing (for press and pitches) forget the fluff and start to BLUF
PreMortem.Games
FEBRUARY 19, 2024
This article is part of the game-dev advice newsletter Levelling the Playing Field by Rami Ismail. If you want to know more about the art, craft and science of game development, subscribe here. The newsletter is free but you can support the existence of LTPF with a small subscription fee.
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How to Make a Tabletop Simulator Demo of Your Board Game
Brand Game Development
MARCH 2, 2020
Join my community of over 2,000 game developers, artists, and passionate creators. I’d like to explain to you exactly how to create a demo of your board game on Tabletop Simulator, but first let’s discuss what I perceive as its five main benefits: 1. It saves you a ton of money and time on prototyping.
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How Many Blind Play-Tests Does Your Board Game *Really* Need?
Brand Game Development
DECEMBER 22, 2017
Dev Diary posts are made to teach game development through specific examples from my latest project: Highways & Byways. I even blind play-tested it at a game design convention. Need help on your board game? Join my community of over 2,000 game developers, artists, and passionate creators.
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The Art of the Paper Test: Catching Accessibility Issues Early
Brand Game Development
MAY 19, 2017
Dev Diary posts are made to teach game development through specific examples from my latest project: Highways & Byways. prior to and during its Kickstarter campaign, but it is also my favorite rapid prototyping tool. Still, Tabletop Simulator is just one form of digital play testing for board games.
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How to Order and Test Samples of Your Board Game
Brand Game Development
MARCH 12, 2018
Board game development is a very individual process. Every single developer has different methods for creating their games. This article is the last of a 19-part suite on board game design and development. Need help on your board game? Ordering Print-on-Demand Samples for Prototyping.
5 Alternatives to Kickstarter for Your Board Game
Brand Game Development
MARCH 22, 2021
Yet I want to make it absolutely clear that Kickstarter is not the only, or even necessarily the best, way for indie board game developers to self-publish their work. Need help on your board game? Join my community of over 2,000 game developers, artists, and passionate creators.
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What’s the point of board game reviews?
Brand Game Development
MAY 1, 2017
One of the most jarring experiences for new game developers is the process of getting their game reviewed. Drama aside, it truly is difficult at first because you have to identify reviewers, send prototypes, make sure your game is ready enough, cross your fingers, and hope they like it. You can keep a dev diary.
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How to Create Specs for Your Board Game Artist
Brand Game Development
FEBRUARY 12, 2018
Board game development is a very individual process. Every single developer has different methods for creating their games. This article is the fifteenth of a 19-part suite on board game design and development. Commissioning art can be one of the most daunting parts of the game development process.
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4 Clever Ways to Market Your Board Game Online for $30.00
Brand Game Development
SEPTEMBER 22, 2017
Dev Diary posts are made to teach game development through specific examples from my latest project: Highways & Byways. Need help on your board game? Join my community of over 2,000 game developers, artists, and passionate creators. The post 4 Clever Ways to Market Your Board Game Online for $30.00
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Talking Without Words
Brand Game Development
JULY 21, 2017
Dev Diary posts are made to teach game development through specific examples from my latest project: Highways & Byways. This week, in Start to Finish: Publish and Sell Your First Board Game , I released Five Levels of Communication through Game Development. Need help on your board game?
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How to Tell When Play-Testing Feedback is Useful or Not
Brand Game Development
SEPTEMBER 1, 2017
Dev Diary posts are made to teach game development through specific examples from my latest project: Highways & Byways. Play-testing is so critical in board game development that I’ve dedicated several articles to the subject. ” Need help on your board game? Click here.
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The Final 100 Play-Tests: How to Put Final Touches on a Board Game
Brand Game Development
DECEMBER 8, 2017
Dev Diary posts are made to teach game development through specific examples from my latest project: Highways & Byways. This is a process I follow to ensure a game’s quality. This method may not be appropriate for every developer, every team, or every game, but it is one I like. Click here.
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