April 2025 Newsletter (Patreon)

April is many things. It's the fourth month of the Roman calendar, the month of fools, and the first full month of spring. It's also the English word for "Avril", which happens to be the name of one of my more embarrassing teenage celebrity crushes. But most importantly, it is the month of our first full game jam as an official Internet Community in the year of 2025 Anno Domini.As spring sprouts and the birds careen noisily through the brightening heavens, I want to climb a mountain and sing passionately about CollabJam25. I want to yodel tuneful praise for the 224 brave souls who have officially joined the jam, and the dozens of mysterious mercenaries yet to join. And yet, I must quiet myself, mostly to avoid replicating information which exists in other places. Yes, it would be better just to link you all to the jam itself on itch.io for more details. If you're not part of our Discord, please use the community tab over there to post any queries, or to meet up with potential collaborators. There's also a new FAQ covering some of the topics which have come up a few times when we've been discussing the jam both on itch and in the Discord. CollabJam is going to make April a strange month for the YouTube channel; for one, I may have to cancel our usual end-of-month community playtesting stream to focus on streaming games from the jam. Which brings us onto the topic of content formats and streams vs videos. You may have noticed that in recent weeks I've been doing a lot more YouTube Lives. To explain this in the most cynical terms possible; I've found that playing slightly more well-known games occasionally helps to get new people looking at the channel, without losing our focus on indies. But there's a more community-focussed reason for it too. Making content which is more lead by the whims and wonts of the handsome and intelligent members of the chat also generates a really interesting mix of content, from commentary on the specific game (like this review of Bloodthief) to stuff like this impromptu career advice and things like this spare-of-the-moment workshop on Steam page copywriting and screenshot selection.

I'm not going to stop doing longer form video essays, but I do think that being more streaming-led allows me be more responsive to the needs of the community, and given that this is a fan-funded enterprise, those of you who are in the Discord and who are able to show up to stream and chat carry a lot of weight in terms of determining how I operate (pun intended 🔪🩺). I also think that Indies Under the Knife might eventually switch to this format, allowing me to cover 3 or 4 games, weekly, in the time it usually takes me to do a deep-dive on one. I know many of you reading this appreciate the deep-dives, and this won't stop those happening, but as the Patreon grows and gains more support I need to work out ways to speed through the review backlog. One of my big concerns about Indies Under the Knife is that some developers have been waiting a while for reviews, and I might be playing very out-of-date builds, giving feedback which is no longer relevant.

I love being able to construct commentary on-the-fly, because it means I'm more directly following what you folx need. It also makes me look like I know my stuff, which is helpful - especially as we enter a time when more and more of the longform video-essay content on YouTube is going to be authored by thieving little robot bastards.In May, you'll get the first episode of Game Dev Library. I think we covered this already in a previous newsletter, but to give you the run-down once more - each month we'll be reading a book about game development, starting with Derek Yu's book about Spelunky. This first episode will feature community member Tom as my co-host (creator of the wonderfully Fulpian Castle Croak) and we have lots of interesting combinations of host and book lined up for the following months. There's already a bookclub-podcast channel in the Discord forum, where those of you who are keen to read-along can discuss the book before the podcast airs. Game Dev Library will come out monthly, covering books about game design, and adjacent disciplines like narrative and character design. And now for the big fricken' wildcard;I'm also happy to (tentatively) announce that May will be METROIDVANIA MONTH on the YouTube channel. Why? Well, there are two reasons. The first is to do with the gamedev community at large. MetroidVanias are one of the "heartbreaker" genres; often attempted, rarely succeeded at. So this means we have a wealth of games to look at and wonder "what could the dev have done to make this game not so stinky-poopy?". I intend to play a mix of abject flops, plus some of the more successful indie darlings, and the odd smattering of OG commercial 'Vanias for comparison (provided you promise to not show up in the chat and yell at me for playing Capcom games on an indie games channel). The second reason for MayTroidVania (name pending) is that later in the summer I'm likely starting some freelance design work on a game in this genre. So I want to do some genre-specific research leading up to that, to get a sense of what I do and don't like in these kinds of games. It's been a while since I played one which was interesting to me, and to be honest I think we use the genre too broadly and in a way which doesn't really capture the nuanced differences in appeals that can come from differently mixing exploration, secrets and puzzles and flair-based combat. I loved CastleVania: Symphony of the Night as a kid. It totally blew my mind. As an adult I've completely bounced off of both Hollow Knight and Blasphemous. On the other hand, Rogue Legacy 2 surprised me with some of the most varied and delightful side-scrolling combat in recent years.  So, my quest for the month of May is to find out what makes a 'Vania work for me (personally) before diving into the trenches of designing one. And as we work through these streams, I'll start to work out how to catalogue my likes and dislikes about how various games in this genre work (or don't).I hope this newsletter has satisfied whatever demonic urge possesses you to read such a thing. I always sit down not knowing what to write, and finish by thinking "maybe there is too much here". For that reason, I won't tell you about the other podcast I have planned for another month or two yet.Thanks, and remember to take your vitamins.