May 2026 IGC Updates (Patreon)

Hello folks!

Hope you're all doing well. The first couple of weeks of this month will be dominated by our two-week CollabJam, starting on Sunday 3rd. Watch out on here and YouTube for an announcement/explanation of the special rules just before the jam officially begins.

If you're a free subscriber, you've got a couple of days to get 50% off your first month by using code COLLABJAM26 before May 4th.

Game Recommendations

I know a few folks who follow the channel more for the games than the gamedev, so here are my personal and highly biased recommendations for "ones to watch" based on what I played in April.

♟️Strategy: Northanda Chronicles [Deckbuilder], Into the Depths [Deckbuilder, Tile-Based, Boardgamey]

🔫 Action: FriendOS [3D Platformer/CoOp], Omelet You Cook [Arcade Physics Deckbuilder], IGTAP [Incremental Platformer], Dwarf Legacy [Arcade / Roguelite]

🧩 Puzzle: Avoid the Void [Deckbuilder Platform Puzzler], WOIM [Puzzle]

📚 Thematic: Bitcrush [Microgames About Romance]

Upcoming Playtests

If you've been waiting for your game to show up on Indies Under the Knife, the titles this month are as follows:

May 7: Holo & Veil / Valerie / Spring Escape / Climb Out of Hell

May 14: Current / Planet Surf / project_Structure_01 / Explosiovania

May 21: Sparrow Warfare / Space Cat Solitaire / Real Time Chess

May 6th and 20th will be the usual games from Patreon supporters. If you are new to the IGC Discord, you can find the form to submit your projects for playtesting in the #playtesting-and-QA channel.

May 28: TBC

Podcast Updates:

The book Tom and I are covering on the Game Developers' Libary is Anna Anthropy's Rise of the Videogame Zinesters. Those of you with with subscriptions above the Green tier [🔵🟣 and 🟠 tiers] will be able to see my podcast notes in the relevant collection in the next week or so. These are usually things covered in the pod itself, but I post them for folks who might find them interesting (or who would rather skim-read a summary than hear a 60+ minute convo!).

In Episode 2 of One More Run! we're playing the very funny Omelet You Cook. For Bluesky users, we also have a little competition where you can have a chance to win a Steam key for the game (gifted to us by the developer) by showing us an omlette you've made.

The next IGC video essay will be on the concept of difficulty, balancing, and "designing challenges". I'll be starting to write it in May, but given that we have a heavy month with CollabJam, don't expect it until mid-late June. Thanks to everyone who has already helped shape the video by discussing it in the Discord... the "upcoming video topic chats" we have are super helpful for making sure I cover the things you see as important.

New Stuff for Pro/Epic Tier Patrons

I've also started posting "archived" videos as an additional bonus for Epic [🟣] tier supporters, as and when I can. These are basically videos that I feel no longer have a place on the main YouTube channel, but people might find them either helpful or interesting. Recently I've taken quite a few videos down which I felt were too explanatory and didn't match the channel's generally more playful tone. Unfortunately I did a few of these via deletion, but I've saved a few which were just delisted, and I'll upload these gradually into the "Behind the Scenes Archive" folder.

There won't be regular new "archive" videos, but I suspect we'll hit various points where I "redo" an old topic and the old version will go in here [an example would be this video on Ideation Methods, which feels like it has about 3 videos-worth of stuff in it]. So see it less as an Archive of Lost Wisdom and more of a place where you can go to laugh at my old haircuts and webcam quality.

It's quite difficult to find bonus content for those of you in the 🔵 and 🟣 tiers which won't produce something which shouldn't be behind a paywall. I have an idea for a new monthly Q&A [discussed recently in the Discord #community-development channel] which we'll probably start in June or July. The loose idea is that Pro and Epic level patrons (🔵 and 🟣) will submit the questions, but folks in the green tier will get access to the Q&A videos where I answer them... this feels like a nice way of honoring folks who support at the higher tiers while making sure the output is for everybody. To de

ICYMI in April:

Thanks to everyone who watched and commented on the Game Design Theory: A Guided Tour video. You can get the "finished" (sort of) version of the Ludorum Designatio map here along with a long essay about academia and game design teaching.

Episode 1 of One More Run! seems to have been generally well received and people felt we struck a decent balance between a casual entertaining chat about a game, and a deeper discussion of the working of its design. I started this pod because I wanted a nice reason to play a game for longer than 20 minutes each month, to get into some of the games I'd missed out on, and to start bringing more voices onto the channel as well. Thanks so much to Cabbage, Cheese, and Dan for giving it a go and being so fun to make things with!

Oh yeah, and we hit 40k subs! Nice - thanks for that one!

Thank you for allowing me to keep doing this stuff. And if you have friends who might appreciate our Discord community and some of the extra stuff on this Patreon, give them a poke about the COLLABJAM26 Discount code [expires May 4th].

Lots of Love - JBW