“I dislike social commentary. Like… I really hate it. When I’m reading a book, I just want to be entertained, not preached at by the author. Plus, it ruins the wonder of the story if I know the author has a political or social axe to grind. I no longer speculate about all possible outcomes of the story because I know for a fact that the universe of that book will conspire to ensure that the author’s political agenda is validated. I hate that,” Weir said. “I put no politics or social commentary into my stories at all. Anyone who thinks they see something like that is reading it in on their own. I have no point to make, and I’m not trying to affect the reader’s opinion on anything. My sole job is to entertain, and I stick to that.”

Incredible how a specific brand of smart people can be this dumb sometimes. You don't hate social commentary - you hate social commentary that doesn't conform to your own, and you're normative enough that you don't have to worry about reminding people you are human.

gizmodo.com/andy-weir-st...

Design decisions when building games using ECS II This is just the second part to the “Design decisions when building games using ECS” since I have new patterns that I want to share.

It's been a while since I do a semi technical blog post but here I am, sharing my second part of the "how I use ECS in my games" series (in 2.5y I will write the 3rd part xD):

arielcoppes.dev/2026/03/29/d...

If you are using ECS, would love to hear your thoughts.

Thanks for reading!

Ship Shaper steam page screenshot showing that the big demo button is not enabled

The big demo button is not enabled, its only the tiny side one present, took me way longer that I am proud to admit to see it.

You are being misled about renewable energy technology. YouTube video by Technology Connections

Let's do this.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=KtQ9...

Placing a layer of algorithmic recommendation on speech does not make speech less free, but it does pervert it.

Algorithmic mediation turns speech into a resource extracted from human behavior.

Platforms do not value speech because it is protected, they value the service it provides them.

Save 10% on Cleared Hot on Steam CLEARED HOT is a nostalgic helicopter shooter with satisfying physics and light tactical elements. Shoot, dodge, move your squad around the battlefield, and pick up almost anything with your rope and ...

Huh. Looks like Cleared Hot - a modern successor to EA's old Strike series of helicopter shooters - is doing great. 1000 user reviews in a few days, 98% positive.

Right now it's just Episode 1 (defending Texas against corporate technocrat takeover), shareware style, with the others coming later.

It has been amazing working on this game with Colin and the team at @notknowingcorp.bsky.social

Everyone in the team is super talented and thankfully players seem to be having a great time.

This begins a new chapter with the game live, and I hope we can all enjoy the journey even more.

How poor leadership slows down game development No tool—AI or otherwise—can speed up game development if leaders don't rise to the occasion.

How poor leadership slows down game development

After years of building, it’s finally happening 🤯

Cleared Hot launches into Steam Early Access on Nov 20, 2025!

Can't believe I just typed that. Only 3 weeks away 😮 Any help sharing is appreciated ❤️

🎯 Wishlist on Steam: store.steampowered.com/app/1710820/...

This weekend I tried for the first time making a game with Bruno, my 5 year old son. It was an awesome experience for both of us, he was super excited, and I loved it.

We entered LudumDare 58 with our game PirateCopter

Play it here !!
rubeng.itch.io/piratecopter

#ludumdare #ld58 #unity

I've just released the Demo of Ship Miner! Weeeee!!!🍻

Ship Miner is a relaxing mining game with some elements of combat. Explore procedural generated asteroids to collect minerals, survive threats and improve your ship.

Play the Demo Now on Steam! 🚀

Its not an issue with putting values in code, its usually an issue when reading input, like parsing a json file, or reading some user input.
It uses the current locale by default, instead of using InvariantCulture.
I have seen this bite devs in several engines and programming languages.

When working in unity or any .net project, it by defaults parses using the current machine locale, so it will interpret the decimal separator as "." or "," depending on locale.
This will make loading data that was saved with the other locale parse completely off.
This could be the same thing.

Australia Did It - Reveal Trailer YouTube video by MysticForge

It's been a while.

Glad to be announcing a new game, and happy that it is something experimental and weird: a tiny, tense, turn-based strategy game about merging units into spectacular combinations, and then watching them evaporate thousands of bugs.

store.steampowered.com/app/2396130/...

HERDLING is coming out in just a few hours, so there's just enough time to go through some other fun tech-art stuff 👀

Here's another behind-the-scenes 🧵 with various other interesting tech-art stuff featured in our vast and furrious game ✨

6 women giving a panel at GDC

Longest-running diversity panel at @officialgdc.bsky.social #1ReasonToBe is looking for panelists for 2026

We are looking for underrepresented women in video games living in the U.S., or from abroad, who normally attend GDC, due to the challenges of entering the country

forms.gle/QWSK8wPjLu5t...

Why Demos are so critical with Tomas Sala YouTube video by How To Market A Game

I sat down with Chris Zukowski for his subscribers to discuss how vital demos are to current day steam success, as well as a variety of tangents. Turns out this was a very appreciated video with his audience , so much so he put it public for everyone. Enjoy :)

youtu.be/0oYXQLdggHw?...

My game has a Steam private Playtest now!!

Ship Miner is a sci-fi twin stick 1bit pixel art mining game.

Explore, gather minerals, upgrade and survive!

Cleared Hot on Steam CLEARED HOT is a nostalgic helicopter shooter with satisfying physics and light tactical elements. Shoot, dodge, move your squad around the battlefield, and pick up almost anything with your rope and ...

Would love to see what you think of our game Cleared Hot a nostalgic helicopter shooter with satisfying physics and light tactical elements.

store.steampowered.com/app/1710820/...

Not even a month ago, it was scary thinking about everything that still needed to be done to get the demo we wanted out.

In the end, we finished something we are super proud of, with an awesome team, exceeding all our expectations.

Hope you like it!

Doing Marketing for Ship Miner After a year of working on how to market my game Ship Miner I want to share part of my experience and learning about it.

After a year of doing "marketing" for Ship Miner I decided to write a blog post from my experience: arielcoppes.dev/2025/05/18/d...

This is Ship Miner, a 1bit pixel art twin stick miner game in space.

For those interested, I wrote a blogpost with a roadmap for having a Demo in Steam here arielcoppes.dev/2025/03/29/s... where I explain the state of game and what the game needs for the demo.

Hope you you like it.

Screenshot showing how the email text is white on white background when trying to subscribe

Hi, just subscribed, but noticed that the email input has white text on white background making what you are typing invisible.
Tested on chrome and firefox. I am using windows 11 in dark mode.

🔥 Kingdom of Cards demo is here for Steam Next Fest! 🃏✨

Step into a world of strategy, discovery, and endless card combinations! Play the brand-new demo, shape your kingdom, and take on powerful foes.

⚔️ Explore. Combine. Conquer.
🎮 Play now: store.steampowered.com/app/3367090/...

Don’t miss it!

It seems the Early Acces debate is back on, I did a GDC talk on this last year, (It seems sadly it wasn't recorded or didn't make it to the vault). For various reasons Early Acces is very dangerous for Indies specifically.

Your EA product being reviewed as a your launch was one vulnerability.

Independent Games Summit: Releasing an

Is this the talk you mention?
gdcvault.com/play/1034434...

🚨🚀 TOSSDOWN IS NOW ON STEAM 🚀🚨

Run, jump and dash through chaos, dodging hazards and enemies as you deliver packages. It’s Crazy taxi meets Jet Set Radio!

Wishlist it on Steam now!

store.steampowered.com/app/3241560/...

RTs highly appreciated!

#gamedev #indiedev

I just published a recap blog post about what happened in 2024 for Pixel Core Games and Ship Miner, like winning an innovation award, and my plan for 2025.

arielcoppes.dev/2025/01/12/r...

Hope you like it.

Btw, here is Ship Miner in case you didn't see it before.

🎉 Exciting news 🎉

We're thrilled to announce that the demo of our upcoming game, is now available on Steam and Itch.io!

Play the demo and let us know your thoughts—we’d love to hear from you!

LINKS IN THE COMMENTS.

We can’t wait to hear what you think. Thanks for being part of our journey!

It would be awesome to also be able to apply a mask or fixed overlay, like the ones Crashlands 2 has on some of the steam gifs and other games also do