Mark's Month - May 2025

Hello Patrons!

It's time for another edition of Mark's Month. Here's what I've been up to in May.

Guadalindie in Malaga

I was honoured to be asked to go speak at the Guadalindie conference in Malaga, Spain. This is an event that started life as a game jam - before evolving into a full on conference with demo booths and talks. So I was there alongside Victoria Tran, Sam Barlow, Freya Holmér, Keita Takahashi, and many more!

It's a pretty cool event, especially for only being in its second year. I got to play loads of upcoming indie games and talk to the developers behind them. It's fascinating to see which games are currently inspiring indie devs the most - I played a bunch of games that take influence from Vampire Survivors, Inscryption, and Balatro (more on that one in a second!). But each is doing its own thing and pushing the design forward.

My talk was about the lessons I learned while making Mind Over Magnet and releasing it on Steam. Basically: everything I screwed up about the production pipeline and how I would improve it for a second game. And so I'll be looking forward to sharing that with everyone in future episodes of Game Dev 101.

You can catch a recording of the talk on YouTube, here.

I also just got to enjoy the sun and sea of Malaga. And the area's signature dish - the Campero. It's basically a big round sandwich, filled with meat and other ingredients, and then toasted. Pretty good, actually!

Blue Prince GMTK Mini

I've been super focused on making Word Play these past few months, but I decided to come out of hiding for a quick mini on the game Blue Prince.

And that's because this game is just so dang weird. It's a 3D adventure game with keys and riddles and maps and items. But it's also a deck-building roguelike with random elements, synergies and strategies. It's a very strange mix - it's really potent when it works well, but utterly aggravating when it doesn't.

So I just had to get some thoughts out there on GMTK - and provide a place for people to discuss its design in the comments. Lots of thoughtful chats in there!

Word Play

Okay, so this month I finally revealed my "secret" to the world. Despite saying that Mind Over Magnet would likely be my one and only video game... I immediately got started on a second game!

So in May I showed everyone my upcoming, Balatro-inspired, word-based roguelike Word Play - with a video announcement, a Let's Play, and a free demo on Steam!

The response has been fantastic. People dig the art style and the concept, and they're keen to play the final version. In fact the game has almost got 25,000 wishlists - and it's gathering them much faster than Mind Over Magnet.

It was actually kind of a last minute decision to release a demo for the game. I was thinking I would drop the demo during Next Fest... or perhaps not at all! Just release the game! But in retrospect I'm glad I released the demo when I did. Because I was able to get a lot of great feedback from those early demo players - feedback that I have already implemented into the game.

Like, for example, people were frustrated that you couldn't spell words that were longer than 10 letters. So I changed that. People wanted to be able to sort the tiles alphabetically. So I added that. People wanted to see the letter bag and grid during the shop screen. So I added a button for that. Seeing these requests come up over and over again really pushed me to add those features.

I did struggle initially with gathering feedback, though. People were giving me ideas, requests, and bug reports across the Steam forums, Bluesky, Discord, and the comments sections of two different YouTube videos... it was too much to deal with. So in the end I made a big forum on the GMTK Discord and had everything point towards that. That made things way more manageable.

But the most overwhelming piece of feedback was a simple one: "the game doesn't let you spell [Word]!".

Yep - people tried to spell words like WAIFU, VAPE, EMOJI, and INTERNET and the game would reject it - and then those players would hunt me down on the internet and tell me to add the word. Agh, it was too much!

So in the end I decided to add a couple features to the game. For one - the first time you spell an incorrect word it explains that proper nouns (like place names, people's names, company names etc) aren't included. But also - there's a button in the game that lets you petition for that word to be added to the dictionary.

It goes into a massive database courtesy of Unity analytics (pictured). And then I can go through once a week and pick out the words that should be in the game's dictionary.

I've already added a bunch of words - some are a bit silly (RIZZ, BAZINGA, YEET, POGGER) but I think it's more fun and delightful if the game accepts a surprising word.

Anyway - the upshot is that while this was all a bit mad and overwhelming for me, I'm glad I did it all before Next Fest (which starts on Monday) and the game's final release (in July). Better to solve these teething issues early.

I can now spend June finishing up the final game (it's about 95% complete) and promoting it!

Other stuff

Mind Over Magnet was in the Cerebral Puzzle Showcase on Steam - and was also in a bundle with Arranger, Isles of Sea and Skies (a Weekender pick!) and Elechead. It was such an honour to be part of both things. And it boosted sales nicely. The game sold over 1000 copies in this time, and made about $10,000 (before anyone has taken their cut). It's a great reminder that having a game on Steam is a powerful extra revenue stream.

Uh... I made this Lego Mario Kart set. That was a lot of fun.

I did a talk in Cambridge for some students.

I had two lovely meet-ups - one for indie devs and one for YouTubers. I am very much straddling those two worlds!

Some moron on YouTube trained an AI on my voice and used it to create a voiceover track for their crappy video. You can read more about it here. Thankfully YouTube heard my plight and has removed the video.

I just got the Switch 2 and have been enjoying Mario Kart World so far. It's just so jam packed with little references, treats, musical callbacks, and more. It's lovely. The online service is also surprisingly robust for a Nintendo platform. The camera and screen share boxes at the bottom of the screen are actually a really nice touch.

And so yeah! That's been my month. And that's not even including some crazy personal stuff that I won't go into... let's just say that this month has felt like it lasted approximately 3 years. And I don't think I'll be able to rest until Word Play is finished. So I guess I better get back into Unity!

Speak soon

Mark