March 2026 Newsletter (Patreon)

Hey folks!

I hope you're all well. I'm still recovering from illness, hence the slightly late newsletter. Here's a brief lowdown on what's happening in March on Indie Game Clinic.

Video Essays and Podcasts

• Friday 6th - Playtesting Methodologies video goes live (ALL paid members can see it early here)

• Game Developers' Library podcast episode on Tynan Sylvesters' book "Designing Games: A Guide to Engineering Experiences" is due in the next few weeks. I'll be adding my notes to the Podcast Notes collection just before. Podcast notes are a little bonus for everyone on 🔵 tier and higher.

• Joe and some other community members have started some initial explorations into something we're tentatively titling One More Run!?. OMR will be a monthly play-and-crit podcast about run-based-games and roguelikes... we'll be using it to revisit some of our favorite games in the field, and some recent gems which might have slipped us by.

Streams + Live Reviews

In the month of March (MARS) we have a general war/fighting theme. That doesn't mean I'll ignore all shooty-punch games for the rest of 2026, but it does help us to clear a big glut of related games from the backlog in one go, and to draw comparisons between games and genres. I'm also trying to alternate between action based and more "thinky" genres each week, in the interest of fairness.

• This week's Indies Under the Knife was about 3rd person action games.

• Week 2's IUTK theme = autobattlers.

• Week 3's IUTK theme = horde/wave defense games.

• Week 4's IUTK theme = tactical turn-based- combat

If you're not a Patreon member, you can submit games to Indies Under The Knife via the form on indiegameclinic.com. I don't play 100% of games submitted, but it's close to 75%. Please note that I do not accept: - games which can't be played on a standard PC (no mobile or VR). - games which can only be played multiplayer. - games with visible AI assets. - games which have already been commercially released.

If you are a Patreon member, you can submit whatever you want (within reason) to the Community Playtest Stream. The CPS will be on Wednesday 11th and 25th this month. The submission form for the Community Playtest is pinned in the Playtesting & QA channel of the IGC private Discord server. I don't always play 100% of the games every time, but these Wednesday streams are a perk of membership and get your games seen much sooner than via Indies Under the Knife.

Have a great month!