💜💜💜💜💜
not astonishing cos y'all amazing haha ✨🥰

Level Up Tasmania was astonishingly good and I'll write more about it when I've recovered good grief I'm tired but my heart is full

two images of the human body's circulatory system. One of them with good cable management

The human circulatory system, before and after proper cable management.

Thank you as well! I really loved your talk. Tech art is so interesting and I thought you had some really great Australian / indie specific takes on it :D

Leaving Hobart with a full heart 🥰💖 The huge success of @screentasmania.bsky.social's Level Up TAS is a sign of the strength and health of the incredible Tasmanian gamemaking scene. Y'all have so much to be proud of 💕💕

And finally, the Level Up Awards!

Presented by Amelia

⚡️Emerging Innovator - Shaun Hatten / AFK
🎤 Peoples Choice - Bree Ratten / Soup Weather
🙏 The Tee-Posey Award - Paris Buttfield
🍺 Tasmanian Games Champion - Oli Potter

Signal boosting!!

If you make games or like supporting local games now is the time to ADVOCATE for that via the National Cultural Policy!

Submit a statement - tell them you make/love games and WHY it’s so important that games be supported. I’ve attached a link!

www.arts.gov.au/what-we-do/n...

Then we had a Screen Agency Q&A from @jasonimms.bsky.social @maarlzipan.bsky.social Dakota Barker and @ollipotter.bsky.social 🎤

Very informative and grounding!

Our talk at GDC 2026 is up on the Vault for FREE!

⭐ Game Funding: Lessons from Outersloth ⭐
- What survival means as an indie
- The origins of the fund
- Our process for evaluating games
- The Outersloth contract and explanation

Watch now: gdcvault.com/play/1035853...

Back to Basics: Translating Your Invisible Marketing Foundation into Visibility Many devs love to skip all the behind-the-scenes marketing prep work that no one publicly sees. Traditional marketing best practices can seem obtuse or even useless when you do not understand the bene...

The GDC talk I did with @dtrebella.bsky.social about the foundational “boring” behind-the-scenes marketing work is FREE on the Vault! 🎉

gdcvault.com/play/1035767...

LETS GOOOO

Yipppeee!

Best news this Friday afternoon!!! TGIF! (Thank god it’s FREEPLAY)

So excited to post this 🥰🥰

☆ﾟ. * ･ ｡ﾟ FREEPLAY FOREVER ☆*:・ﾟ

Freeplay | The Shape of Games to Come talks and games and friends

Announcing: Freeplay is here to stay. Parallels 2026 is coming and we're advocating for games to be funded as art. Read more and get involved: freeplay.net.au/posts/freepl...

The panel for "Business & Marketing in the indie space"

"Business & Marketing in the indie space" panel discusses wishlists, lengthy dev cycles, events, social media, community, how you can't do everything in marketing, the changing games media landscape, content creators and how the dredge demo was designed to "hook" players (Jon notes he went there)

"Canberra: what makes us special and what do we need" panel

The panel "Canberra: what makes us special and what do we need" features Ed Orman of Uppercut Games, @deanw.xyz of Blue Manchu, @markschramm.bsky.social , Kieran Schmidt of Branno and Michelle McPartland of @sledgehammergames.com moderated by @canberra.games Vice President & ub4q lead Ruqiyah Patel

It truly takes a village; but in our case, the village is super weird, surrealist, whimsical, earnest, witty, optimistic, creative, warm, human, and brilliant! 😊

yo Aussie gamemakers - have you got sick new demos in the current Next Fest? Lemme know about them so I can check em out! 🔥👀

Key Fairy - Return of the Demo - Steam News The new demo is a snapshot of the full game. If you do buy the full game, you will keep your save from the demo!

We have made a new demo for Key Fairy!

We took the demo down right before release, to make it easier to do patches and stuff on the full game!

But we like demo's, and we want people to be able to taste the game before they commit to it!

store.steampowered.com/news/app/287...

Our next event will feature 5 amazing games and teams from our industry in NSW!

@patnaoumgames.bsky.social | @liamflannery.bsky.social | @hariedwin.bsky.social | @chrismarcatili.bsky.social | @kitkat5100.bsky.social

We're thankful to feature these new games at our upcoming anniversary event ❤️

Really sad to hear today that Freeplay Independent Games Festival is likely coming to the end of its adventure in 2026 after 22 incredible years. Freeplay has been pivotal to my own career and I have some complex, straight out contradictory feelings about the announcement I wanna try to articulate.

This is actually devastating. Please respond to the survey and rally behind Freeplay to see if we can support the ongoing org and its team to continue delivering pivotal events and connection points that we so desperately need.

terrible news coming out of Freeplay. I really hope it & Parallels can continue.

"Of the 81 arts organisations supported by Creative Enterprises in the 2026-2029 funding round, none are games/interactive arts organisations." (freeplay.net.au/survey2026)

This is so supremely fucked

This sucks! Freeplay is such an important event and cultural space - hugely influential to how I think about and make games. I hope there's a way to continue that legacy, in whatever form.

It's not just the games themselves that are suffering in the current funding drought, it's so disheartening to consistently be seeing the lack of financial support for events and organisations that provide support to the wider local industry.

Use your voice and give feedback!