June 2026 IGC Updates (Patreon)

Hello folks!

May was mostly all about the jam, and I'll be putting together a follow-up video on that soon. Thanks to everyone who sent me some reflections footage for the video.

Here's what's coming up in June 2026, and some in-case-you-missed-it stuff about last month.

What's Coming Up in June

We continue to do Indies Under the Knife streams at least once a week but usually more.

This will be our first full month using the new game scheduling system for IUTK. From your end, it still works the same: members of the public submit games with this form, and patrons submit games on a separate form, in the playtesting_and_qa channel of the private Discord.

But I've developed a new way of assessing public applications and pairing games up, so if you want to learn more about that go and check out the other blog post on that topic: How I Pick What To Play on I.G.C. Playtest Streams.

If you're a free member and just want some tips on what makes content creators pay attention to your emails and applications, I'd advise checking out that post too. Or you can simply jump the queue by becoming a channel supporter.

Also in the works, still, is the big upcoming video on game difficulty. I've already had some really helpful conversations with many of you on the Discord about what you want to hear covered in this video, and I suspect some of the same thinking will flow into the book I'm working on, too.

Game Recommendations from May 2026

We've been a little bit lighter on the usual Indies Under the Knife streams this month because of the Jam, but out of everything else I played, here are my recommendations for folks looking for new games to check out:

🐔Sparrow Warfare sets out to be a card-battling deckbuilder with a funny theme and a different approach to how cards are drafted (i.e. during encounters rather than between them). I wasn't so keen on the overall aesthetic of the game, but I think the core gameplay is fun and it's definitely one to watch if you like deckbuilders with tactical combat.

💥Explosiovania is a neat first-person platformer with some rocket-jump driven movement shooter stuff, and a very N64 aesthetic.

🦘I also gave a couple of 2D platformers a try, and can recommend both Valerie and Spring Escape as being pretty great examples of the genre.

🛕I also spent a bit of time with Amberspire - and hope to return to it soon. It's a really good example of things you can do with boardgame mechanics in a digital game where you're not concerned with making a game which multiple people can actually play around a table.

🐣And although our team on One More Run! were quite mixed about some aspects of it, I cannot recommend Omelet You Cook more. It's just a really fun little score-chasing game, and a great example of what 2 devs can do with relatively simple art, a charming setting, and lots of ways to score points.

Discord Housekeeping

I've updated the Community Playtesting Stream application form slightly. Those of you who are new to the Discord server - or considering joining - can find this pinned under PLAYTESTING AND QA. I try to keep this form very short and easy to complete for members, compared to the large amount of hoops requires for the regular public playtesting form. But just to keep things running smoothly I've added the following;

Request for your membership level; this won't be used most of the time, but I want to make sure that members at 🔵 level or higher get priority when we are very busy. Server mods will also get priority, as a thankyou for the great work you do keeping the community friendly and functional.

A request that you always leave a URL to view/access the game. I've had a few people just leave steam keys and this leads to a few problems, namely

I can't quickly see the game without going through Steam and activating the key, and this makes it hard to quickly pair it up with other games for the stream.

If I've already played/streamed it and want to go back through my archive of submissions to find it later on, I only have the key... which Steam will tell me is "already claimed"... but not what for. ( Thanks, Gaben! /s )

I'd also like to encourage more of you to feel ok submitting greybox/early prototypes. I wouldn't normally recommend this from random members of the public, but I think when it's from folks who regularly interact with eachother, it can be more more productive. More on that distinction over in the other blog post: How I Pick What To Play on I.G.C. Playtest Streams.

Podcast Updates:

This month in the Game Developers' Library we are reading Mike Cook's "Next Level: Making Games That Make Themselves" which is a book all about different kinds of proc-gen. It's really readable and structure in a way which introduces programming and math concepts and then shows you how they've been used in various games - really really worth a look at if it overlaps with your areas of interest at all.

Last month we played the very excellent Omelet You Cook over on the One More Run! podcast. There's a shortened version of this on YouTube which is neat if you want to see and learn about the game, but if you're listening more for game design thoughts than to learn about the game, I'd recommend the audio podcast version, which is much longer. We'll probably continue to experiment with lengths/formats for this show as we go forward, but for now just assume the YouTube version is a little bit more streamlined, which means you might miss some deeper-dive design convo there. For episode 3 we're playing Voidigo from 2023, which I can already strongly recommend to anyone who likes action roguelites like Binding of Issac or Nuclear Throne.

Thanks for your continued support!

- JBW