Indie Game Clinic

🗣️ SATURDAY SHOUTOUT (and a discount code for Patreon/Discord)

This Saturday's shout out goes to Tylers aka tier.5.

Tylers joined the Discord a few weeks ago and has quickly become one of the most active members.

Recently, Tylers helped to create a Discord bot which posts prompts from Jesse Schell's Deck of Lenses to a "design prompts" channel. Some of our members use these to reflect on their current projects; it's how Schell's card-based framework was meant to be used!

For those of you who have been thinking of joining but haven't taken the plunge, October is the perfect time. Between Oct 4th and Oct 25th you'll be able to get 50% off of your first month of membership. Just use the code "OCT50" when joining (valid on the lower 3 tiers, not on 1:1 mentoring).

Patreon memberships support this channel better than YouTube memberships, but either will get you access to our Discord - a friendly, prosocial environment for indie devs to share ideas and support eachother.

1 day ago (edited) | [YT] | 37

Indie Game Clinic

🗣️ SATURDAY SHOUTOUT (a new thing for when I remember to do it)

This Saturday's shout out goes to elladisenchanted elladisenchanted.itch.io/

Ella is one of the most active members and community helpers on our Discord server. She's been working on a very cute cooking deckbuilder Goblin Gourmet, and I recently checked out the smaller but just-as-charming cat-based card game In Boxes.

I really like how much character Ella packs into games with a very minimalist and geometric art style. I think they're worth checking out if you like goofy and cute themes, or if you want to see a good example of simple, characterful game art done well.

Thanks for being part of our community!

For those of you who have been thinking of joining but haven't taken the plunge, make sure you've unlocked the FREE tier of Patreon membership. There may be a sale coming up in the next month and when it comes, I'll announce it on there first. www.patreon.com/indiegameclinic. Patreon memberships support this channel better than YouTube memberships, but either will get you access to our Discord - a friendly, prosocial environment for indie devs to share ideas and support eachother.

1 week ago | [YT] | 37

Indie Game Clinic

🗣️ SATURDAY SHOUTOUT (a new thing for when I remember to do it)

This Saturday I want to give some massive props to 🧀‪@cheeseoncheese‬🧀, who is one of the most active members of our discord. He helped me out with a first round of playtesting for my game, and is constantly a source of helpful feedback for other people on the server.

Cheese has been working on a very charming game called Zebratables which you may have seen me stream a few weeks ago. It's a game of logic puzzles based around zany Bojack-esque animals doing crimes to each other. I really love it and can't wait to play a new version. You can check the alpha out online here: zebratables.com/

2 weeks ago (edited) | [YT] | 49

Indie Game Clinic

Tomorrow’s video is about demos. Or tomatoes. Who knows.

This will probably be the closest to a “games business” video for a while. I’ve decided to ride the spiral which takes me toward increasingly unhinged videos on “pure design” stuff. A couple of vids a month, with more gags, more visuals, more interesting edits, and less attempts to pander to the Get Rich Quick gang.

Trying to create dryer, straight ‘advice’ material doesn’t really work with my personality and therefore it’s not really a sustainable option for me as a content creator… it also doesn’t sit well with how I think other people should be encouraged to seek out and use information.

More provocations and perspectives. No more gurus (but also buy my Patreon).

Thanks for all your support.

2 weeks ago | [YT] | 82

Indie Game Clinic

Thanks to my partner (and podcast co-host) Ibi for this IRL golem. I have banished him to the other side of the room for his own safety because I have a tendency to flail with my headphones and controller and knock things off of my computer desk. Long-live the tiny golem.

2 weeks ago | [YT] | 98

Indie Game Clinic

Tomorrow is my weekly GameMaker stream. I’ll be doing them every Tuesday for the foreseeable future; occasionally more often but I’m keeping Tuesday in the calendar as a self-discipline thing.

Hope to see some of you folks in the chat!

2 weeks ago | [YT] | 42

Indie Game Clinic

This week’s upcoming video is going to be about how game genres evolve (or die out) over time… and how you can study these changes to understand how to make interesting innovations.

Next video essay after this will be about common demo mistakes, and what a sales demo actually needs to achieve compared to a prototype.

This week - as a trial run - my Patreon supporters will get the video a day or so early… I’m not doing this for YouTube members because I don’t like the way YT gives non-subscribers the hard sell on memberships… as soon as I set anything to members’ only it’s plastered all over the place for non-members!

The whole point of using a viewer-funding platform like Patreon to fund content on another platform is that the folks who want to contribute can, and those who can't aren't made to feel like they are missing out on anything.

I will probably turn the memberships off eventually for this exact reason (current members will keep your Discord access though).

Thanks for understanding, and don’t go digging up any graves; it’s just a metaphor. 🪏💀

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3 weeks ago (edited) | [YT] | 92

Indie Game Clinic

This evening’s adventures doodling in Procreate (rewarding myself after 3/4 hours of trying to fix collision code with only partial success).

I know I need to eventually make Lem look less like Squirtle, but I’m quite wedded to the bright turquoise and brown combo.

I want them to be sort of androgynous and baby-like; maybe some sort of robe? IDK.

Send your Lem fit/glow-up ideas and I will throw them into the cauldron when I wake up tomorrow. 🌀

1 month ago | [YT] | 54

Indie Game Clinic

Well done to everyone who took part in MVG Jam! The playable music videos are now all up on the itch.io jam page. I know this was a strange jam theme/constraint, and I'm looking forward to seeing how you all tackled it... I'll be checking them out on a stream closer to the weekend. See some of you there!

itch.io/jam/mvg-jam-2025/entries

1 month ago | [YT] | 49

Indie Game Clinic

Episode 12 of the Say It Like You Play It Podcast is now up, and we're talking about Blue Prince.

This is quite a spoiler-heavy episode, so you might want to skip it for now if you still intend to play the game sometime soon. That said, the game is so dense in puzzles and story that I think we only scraped the surface of it here. We talked about;

💬 How the game uses puns and word-play in its puzzles and for humour.
💬 How the game-worlds' politics and game mechanics are linked by colour semiotics.

💬 The (un)translatability of the game (due to blending of linguistic and visual clues and puns).
💬 "Sign versus noise ratio" in puzzle-game design.

Hope you enjoy and find the conversation insightful, particularly those of you who are working on puzzle games.

Have a great rest of the weekend!
- Joe

1 month ago | [YT] | 9