GMTK Digest (May 2025)

Hello GMTK fans! Thanks for your support this month.

Things have been a bit wild for me - I've been to Spain, released a demo, and... well, there's plenty of stuff I can't talk about yet until various NDAs wear off. But amongst it all... here's what's been happening in the world of games.

Sorry, I've still not been able to play much myself! (Other than hundreds of rounds of Word Play) Hopefully when things calm down...

New Releases

Played: StarVaders

It came out right at the very end of April, but I'm counting it! This is a very enjoyable deck-building roguelike - with hints of Slay the Spire, but with a smart grid-based layout that leads to all sorts of new strategies and synergies.

In each encounter you've got to stop enemies from marching towards the bottom of the screen, and so have to use various attack and move cards to stop them in their tracks. There are endless cards - and each one can be upgraded, powered-up, or used in creative ways. There's also a smart heat meter where you can squeeze just a little more out of a turn - but at your peril.

It's already become the hot new game for those still not sick of deck-builders. I've very much enjoyed my time with it so far. Reminds me of Might & Magic: Clash of Heroes...

Played: DOOM: The Dark Ages

In some ways DOOM has travelled very far away from the game I fell in love with in 2016. In that game, the Doom Slayer would smash a computer halfway through a Zoom call because he was bored of conversation and just wanted to murder demons. The game was clear: this isn't about story, this is about combat.

But Dark Ages has full on cutscenes, with characters and lore and realms and politics. What happened to smashy computer man?

Luckily the combat is still a lot of fun. Though, again, very different from the previous two games. This time it's all about the shield, and using it to parry incoming attacks and throw at enemies ala Captain America. It's a little strange to be on the defensive - again, DOOM 2016 feels completely different as you would never wait for an enemy to strike first.

But I don't mind the change here. Fights still feel dynamic, breathless, exciting, and full of lightning fast decision-making.

Also this month...

I've heard good things about Despelote, a coming-of-age story about an eight-year-old soccer player. It's an adorable story game with an arresting art style.

My weekend game will be Pipistrello and the Cursed Yoyo - a top-down Metroidvania all about yo-yos.

Keita Takahashi (Katamari Damacy, Noby Noby Boy) has another weird, charming, and silly game - this time about a boy stuck in a T-Pose. It's called To a T.

I met Droqen (Starseed Pilgrim) at GDC, and he told me his plan was to "kill gameplay". I had no idea what he meant. This month he released a game called The End of Gameplay. I am no less confused.

Headlines

EA Cancels Black Panther Game, Closes Cliffhanger Games - The third round of layoffs at EA this year claims the life of its big single-player super hero game, Black Panther. Iron Man is still in development at Motive... but those developers must be getting nervous. This comes off the back of reports that EA cancelled a third Titanfall game at Respawn. How long can this go on for?

Lies of P is getting difficulty options to make the Soulslike more accessible - Game director Jiwon Choi says "we wanted to make sure a wider audience of players could play the game". The game will get new difficulty modes - both easier ones, and harder ones for the hardcore player who have already finished the base game.

Giant Bomb is now 100% independent - Giant Bomb was on the verge of destruction thanks to editorial interference from its parent company, Fandom. In May, the writers purchased the site from its publisher and will now run it as an independent entity.

Grand Theft Auto VI is Now Coming May 26, 2026 - The biggest game of the year... is not coming out this year. Rockstar pushes the billion dollar epic into 2026 "to deliver at the level of quality you expect and deserve".

Palworld had to remove game features because of Nintendo lawsuit - Your Pals will no longer come out of a thrown "Pal Sphere", for starters.

Reading List

Design

Watch (17 mins) - Doom: The Dark Ages' Designers Think You're Dumb - "[We] delve deep into Doom: The Dark Ages to ask the question.. Do its devs think their players are stupid?".

Read - Movement abilities will always be the best abilities in games - "We see this pattern a lot in games: they establish the rules of movement and then start offering you abilities you can break or bend them with".

Watch (9 mins) - Every video game has a parry now - "Every game has a parry now. Is it too much?".

Read - Parrying Is The Best Thing In Video Games - "See also Parrying Is The Worst Thing In Video Games".

Read - Space is not a wall: toward a less architectural level design - "It's reasonable to assume that good level design requires an architectural understanding. We're doing so much work that looks like architecture".

Watch (8 mins) - How we design 2D platforming levels that are actually fun - A level design devlog from the creators of Tethergeist.

Development

Read - How Video Game Sex Scenes Are Made - "Game developers use intimacy coordinators, velcro, and juicy oranges to make better sex in games".

Watch (18 mins) - The 6 Years of Engineering Behind The Nintendo Switch 2 - "Discover how Nintendo initially wasn’t sure whether to iterate on the original Switch’s design or make something completely new.".

Read - Making Video Games in 2025 (without an engine) - "People frequently ask how I make games and are often surprised (and sometimes concerned?) when I tell them I don't use commercial game engines".

Read - "We cough up a chunk of our soul": 32 game devs explain what people get wrong about games - "There are a lot of misconceptions about how games are made. As a result, a lot of people who love games set themselves up for disappointment or frustration with skewed expectations or assumptions".

Watch (21 mins) - Dear Creatives, I Bet You Can Relate. Let's fix it! - "Creative people tend to juggle way too many projects at once. How do you choose which projects to prioritize and work on? How many projects should you have and how much is too much? Let's figure it out".

Culture

Watch (28 mins) - Nobody understands gambling, especially in video games - "Strategic deck-builders like Luck Be A Landlord and Balatro have both been hit with high age-ratings by app stores and ratings boards, because the games are associated with gambling".

Read - Kaizo Mario Was My Physical Therapy - "Every day after work, I would load up different Kaizo Mario games and attempt to make it inches further than my previous best".

Watch (1 hour, 24 mins) - How Counter-Strike Took Over My Life - NakeyJakey tries to become a top tier CS player.

Watch (20 mins) - Are you a Master or a Performer? - "Today, we talk about something called “goal orientation” to uncover why you might play the way you do".

Watch (43 mins) - I Captained a £4,000,000 Starship Filled with Actors - "Quinns and Chris take some friends and a small film crew with them to play Bridge Command, a "highly interactive theatre experience" set aboard the bridge of an elaborate starship".

Watch (27 mins) - The Best Games Are Kinda Bad - "Game design is a business of trade-offs, and in this video I spend some time discussing the broad scope of that".

Watch (30 mins) - The "MMOs" That Were Made to Die - "A real MMO or online game isn't created with its own death in mind, but these fictional ones were made to die. Join me as I journey into abandoned game worlds filled with horror, conspiracies and digital relics of humanity".

Artistry

Watch (16 mins) - What Makes These Animations Good? - "Let's break down some gameplay animations from Astro Bot, Luigi's Mansion and Tactical Breach Wizards and see what makes them good!"

Read - A Video Game Trailer Maker’s Take On The Grand Theft Auto VI Trailer - "If this was a better trailer, then people would be that much more hyped. They would feel, they would care".

Watch (12 mins) - Why SEGA created Modern Sonic - "developers within Sonic Team had been pondering how to make SEGA's mascot feel current, fresh, and trendy again after a brief period of absence".

Read - SUPERHOT VR's Story was Removed. What? - "SUPERHOT VR released in 2017. Then in 2021 the game’s entire story was removed".

Watch (19 mins) - Why Does This Music Sound Untrustworthy? - "The Case of the Golden Idol is a great puzzle game with some very puzzling music. It sounds suspicious, hiding a creeping darkness behind a bright mask".

Read - Iconic Pokémon Logo Creator Reveals His Early Design Drafts - "Meet Chris Maple, a Seattle-based designer who unwittingly stumbled into creating one of the most iconic logos in the world".

History

Watch (20 mins) - BULLY 2 - Investigating Rockstar's Cancelled Sequel - "Following the release of Bully Scholarship Edition in 2008, the studio in charge of the remaster would be tapped to develop a sequel".

Watch (16 mins) - Lemmings: How DMA Design Redefined Puzzle Games - "In this episode we take a look at Lemmings and how it changed the industry".

Beyond Games

Watch (25 mins) - The Last of Us HBO is a Disney Remake - "It's been a while since I've watched anything quite as empty".

Watch (34 mins) - Closed captions on DVDs are getting left behind - "Clearly a lot of people forgot about those pesky captions".

Watch (21 mins) - The secret history of font piracy - "The infamous anti-DVD-piracy PSA turns out to have used a "pirated" font".

Watch (8 parts) - Source to Sea down the River Thames - I really enjoyed this 8 part series about a charming British chap making his way down the entire Thames. It's a wonderful watch and a great advert for Britain as a place, I reckon. Here's part 1, the finale launched in May.

Watch (21 mins) - They Remade the Battle of Helm's Deep in a Hospital Show, and It's Insane - "The new hospital show The Pitt is unlike anything I've ever seen, and I realized it's because its story is not structured like a typical hospital show".