Recent content on Blendo Blog
Some time ago I was checking out Nightdive’s Quake remaster, and trying out the splitscreen coop mode. I thought the player model looked pretty great, and appreciated how it retained the beautiful low-rez low-poly look of the original Quake. Here’s how it looks: Opening the PAK I was curious to see what tweaks were made to the player model. So, I opened up the game’s .PAK file:…
During the level design process, I try to put a lot of emphasis on “readability.” For me, readability comes down to: what information is the level conveying. Not all information is intended – sometimes the environment, lighting, layout, etc, will convey something the designer did not intend. To be clear, I think unintended information is fine! I am a big believer in happy…
I released a new tool: Blendo Localizer Download it: here Source code: here What does it do The purpose of this tool is to help manage localization text assets. It reads CSV or JSON files. Once a project reaches a certain amount of text assets, you may need a way to search/browse/verify all of it. It’s hard to sort through thousands of text strings, so this tool is intended to help with…
Generally speaking, Steam Deck verification is something you do pretty late-ish in a game’s development. However, if you don’t make some specific decisions early on, you may end up in a situation where it’s very difficult (or practically impossible) to retro-fit your game to fulfill all Steam Deck verification requirements. So! I thought I’d write about some of these…
It’s Atom Zombie Smasher ’s 15th anniversary! 🎉🎉🎉 To celebrate: 1. Launch of the Blendo Games merch store Video games are very digital & intangible, so I thought it’d be fun to make some Blendo Games physical items. We’re happy to announce the Blendo Games merch store ! Live and open for orders. Wear a cool shirt! Slap a sticker on your laptop! Featuring designs from:…
Skin Deep was nominated for the 2026 IGF Excellence in Design award! Skin Deep’s designers were: Suzanne Will ( site | bsky ) Tynan Wales Brendon Chung ( site | bsky ) Click here to see full credits. Skin Deep had a pretty long and winding design process, with a lot of iteration and experimentation. Suzanne and Tynan were incredible collaborators and were a non-stop font of great ideas,…
I thought I’d gather up some year-end writeups that include Skin Deep : PC Gamer: Best Immersive Sim GamesRadar: Year in Review 2025 GameSpot: Best PC Games of 2025 GameSpot: Best Cat Game Green Man Gaming: 10 Best Indie Games of 2025 Slant Magazine: 25 Best Video Games of 2025 GamesRadar: Year in Review 2025 The Guardian: video games you may have missed in 2025 EDGE Magazine: PC Game of the…
I recently got a NAS up and running. And it’s pretty fantastic??? It’s kinda changed how I use my computer (in a good way). This kind of stuff has been around for a very long time, but it’s new to me! I’m enjoying it greatly. What is NAS I think different people have different uses for it. Our use case is: it’s a big shared hard drive. (In this case,…
I released a game today: Antibody One Antibody One is a short 10-20 minute experience about being different kinds of cells inside the human body. The game can be purchased here . Enjoy! What is this??? Antibody One exists largely because of a few reasons: 1. The human body is crazy The complex clockwork world that exists inside our bodies is crazy. It’s so elaborate and I’ve always…
Over the years I’ve accrued an informal list of miscellaneous gotchas and pitfalls for game releases & game maintenance, but I’ve never actually written them down… until now! This is straightforward stuff and likely things you already know, but perhaps there’s tidbits you may find helpful. I hope it helps. 1. Keyboard layouts Some keyboards use WASD keyboard layouts. Some…
I’m one of the co-founders of Glitch City from back in 2013. And as of today, I’ve retired from helping run the space! 👋 For those unfamiliar: Glitch City is a community space here in Los Angeles, aimed toward artists and independent game developers. In the space we run community events, workshops, co-working, and more. I’m excited I now get to experience it as a normal…
Blender is primarily known for 3D modeling, but for years I’ve also been using its Video Sequencer to make trailer videos, promotional videos, YouTube videos, etc. I think it works pretty great. And it’s free! I thought I’d write a short primer on how to get started in Blender’s video editor. (Note: this writeup uses Blender v4.0. However, I believe these steps apply to any…
Papercraft Cats I made a Skin Deep papercraft cat and you can too. Here’s Palanka sitting on my desk: Download here: https://blendogames.com/files/skindeep_papercraft_series01.zip This package includes cats: Palanka Little Lion Fortinbras What are the instructions? There’s different ways to approach it. Here’s what I do: Get these papercraft images printed at a print shop or…
Here’s a short writeup on how enemy behaviors work in Skin Deep . Goals The goal was to make humanoid “space pirate” enemies that were fun to encounter and mess with. The general vibe of Skin Deep’s enemies is inspired by: The air pirates of Porco Rosso (1992) The air pirates of TaleSpin (1990) As you may guess from the images above: Skin Deep’s enemies are intended…
Density Today I’ll be writing about the “density” aspect of Skin Deep’s art. What do I mean by this? In this context, density means: how busy or detailed something is, and the game’s approach toward the concept of detail. Example: Low density I’d describe the art in Caravan Sandwitch as “low density”: Large swathes of flat colors Texture and model…
Vignettes Internally, we called our story-focused levels ‘vignettes’. These levels are focused on progressing Nina’s adventures and various woes, and the player cannot die or fail in a vignette level. Skin Deep’s narrative director Laura Michet has written about the process we used. During this process, we translated Laura’s written script into a playable vignette…
Interested in making mods, or taking a peek into how maps are constructed? Today we’re releasing the Map Kit , a Steam workshop item that consists of a bunch of sample maps for Skin Deep. What’s the deal This is a collection of small sample maps, that demonstrate a specific thing in Skin Deep. For example, airlocks, doors, windows, fuseboxes, etc. The maps are all playable, but the Map…
Happy to announce the source code for Skin Deep is available here: https://github.com/blendogames/SkinDeep What is this? This the engine source code for our game Skin Deep . The underlying engine is idTech4 (otherwise known as the Doom 3 engine), and we used the source port Dhewm3 as our starting foundation. Like idTech4, the Skin Deep source code is released under the GPL license . This basically…
Launch Day! Very happy to announce that Skin Deep is NOW AVAILABLE: Steam Epic Games Store Learn more about Skin Deep at its website . To view all posts in this series, click here . People made this I wanted to talk about the people who made Skin Deep. In the past I’ve usually worked either by myself or with 1-2 collaborators. For Skin Deep, I partnered with Annapurna Interactive . This…
Skin Deep will be released April 30, 2025. That’s 2 days from now!!!!!!!!! Reviews of the game are now out: Eurogamer - 4 ⁄ 5 - “Skin Deep, though, is a perfect genre piece. It’s immersive and it simulates.” PC Gamer - 88 ⁄ 100 - “Skin Deep is peak improv problem-solving unmarred by the dour dystopias this genre is built on.” Gamespot - 8 ⁄ 10…
Skin Deep will be released April 30, 2025! In the following weeks, I’ll be writing about the processes and development of Skin Deep. Wishlist Skin Deep here! To view all posts in this series, click here . Skin Deep stresstester This week I’ll be writing about a robot we wrote to help break the game. Skin Deep has a lot of moving parts in it. One of the challenges was making sure the…
Skin Deep will be released April 30, 2025! In the following weeks, I’ll be writing about the processes and development of Skin Deep. Wishlist Skin Deep here! To view all posts in this series, click here . Skin Deep accessibility This week I’ll be writing about some of the accessibility features in Skin Deep. Game For gameplay, we have options to: Toggle blood effects : toggle blood…
Skin Deep will be released April 30, 2025! In the following weeks, I’ll be writing about the processes and development of Skin Deep. Wishlist Skin Deep here! To view all posts in this series, click here . Skin Deep on Steam Deck Skin Deep is now officially Steam Deck Verified ! ✔️ What does this mean? Basically, it means the game has been confirmed to play well on the Steam Deck. In addition…
Skin Deep will be released April 30, 2025! In the following weeks, I’ll be writing about the processes and development of Skin Deep. Wishlist Skin Deep here! To view all posts in this series, click here . Blendo Localizer Today I’ll be writing about the Blendo Localizer tool. Here’s what it looks like: Context For context: in Skin Deep, strings assets have 2 components: the…
Skin Deep will be released April 30, 2025! In the following weeks, I’ll be writing about the processes and development of Skin Deep. Wishlist Skin Deep here! To view all posts in this series, click here . Skin Deep BuildPackager Today I’ll be writing about the Skin Deep BuildPackager tool. Here’s what it looks like: Yes, this is yet again a tool that has one button . To set…
Skin Deep will be released April 30, 2025! In the following weeks, I’ll be writing about the processes and development of Skin Deep. Wishlist Skin Deep here! To view all posts in this series, click here . Blendo Build Machine Today I’ll be writing about the Blendo Build Machine tool. Here’s what it looks like: Yup, it’s one huge button. “Create build.”…
Skin Deep will be released April 30, 2025! Some wonderfully talented folks and I have been cooking up Skin Deep together for a while, and are thrilled people will be playing the game soon. Play the limited-time Skin Deep demo Add Skin Deep to your Steam Wishlist Read lovely Skin Deep writeups from: PCGamer RockPaperShotgun GamesRadar Aftermath In the following weeks, I’ll be writing about…
During 2020 and 2021, Laura and I made some games together, including: Tall Bagel Tall Bagel 2: Avocado Hardtack Here’s Laura’s thoughts on it , and here I’ll be writing about the tech behind our Tall Bagel games. Engine We jokingly referred to our tech as BagelTech , but we ended up saying the the term BagelTech so often that it became the de facto name. BagelTech is primarily…
Some time ago I watched a fantastic DevOps talk by Seth Coster , and it inspired me to make my own set of automation tools. Here they are! Blendo Build Machine What does it do : Allows teammates to get the project’s latest source code and compile a new build with the click of one button. How it’s useful : This tool removes me as a bottleneck for new builds. Teammates can generate a new…
I wrote up a list of programs I use daily, partly to share what tools I use, and partly to have a backup list in case I need to do a fresh dev install on a computer that exploded. (Which is to say, my computer exploded yesterday) Enjoy! Notepad++ For editing text files. I get a ton of use from the LocationNav plugin that records the history of the text cursor, and allows you to navigate this…
I recently organized and ran a (very small & very simple) online film festival for the art collective I help run, Glitch City . It was a live event, with folks chatting and watching videos together. It turned out well! The goals were: Keep it simple. I have a fulltime job and wanted to keep the scope of this project small. Keep it quick and snappy. Since this was a live event, I wanted things to…
In 2010 I made a game called Flotilla and today on its 10th birthday, I’m releasing its source code. Enjoy! The game is fun but the code is a bit of a mess and embarrassing! Source code: https://github.com/blendogames/Flotilla Flotilla was basically my first game as a programmer. I had previously coded bits and pieces for my mod projects , but nothing to this scale. There’s a ton of…
10 years ago to this day, I founded Blendo Games , a small independent games studio. 10 years and still going! What the heck! If we want to dive further into time: Prior to starting Blendo Games, I worked at a large game studio for 5 years. And prior to that, modding and level design was my hobby for 12 years. So I guess I’ve now spent about 27 years in Games World. That seems like a long…
In the #changelog channel in the Blendo Games Discord , it displays this: It’s a live log of my source control changelog messages for Skin Deep . That means: whenever I check anything into source control, my changelog note gets displayed here. I made this for a few reasons: I’m sometimes asked what I work on in a typical workday. Well… here ya go! I want to help demystify what…
I recently watched The Long Goodbye , a wonderful film. After watching any movie, I like to read about its development history and the people involved. During this, I learned The Long Goodbye’s screenwriter, Leigh Brackett , wrote the first draft of The Empire Strikes Back . What! I definitely wanted to learn more about that. The draft is a great read. All of Empire’s story beats are…
I built Flotilla in 2010, using the XNA framework . XNA is great! However, XNA is no longer supported or updated, and Flotilla was having technical problems on some systems. Enter FNA ! FNA is a clean & modern reimplementation of XNA, and is made by Ethan Lee. Ethan previously ported the Quadrilateral Cowboy digital artbook and Atom Zombie Smasher , and I was very fortunate to have Ethan work on…
I was inspired by Alan Hazelden’s annual log of media he consumed and decided to try doing the same. Seeing the entirety of my list was a real trip. I’d like to continue doing it this year. Try it yourself and see if it works for you! 🎥 = movie 📺 = TV 🎮 = game 📕 = book/comic ✈ = on airplane JANUARY 2018 🎥 CHiPS ✈ The Way Way Back ✈ Phantom Thread The Foreigner Paddington 2 📺…
I was thinking about carpets. Specifically, the beautiful shag carpet in Event[0] : When I played Event[0] , this carpet mesmerized me. It looked so fluffy and soft. Glorious. It is the bar to which I compare all carpets. Right now I’m building Skin Deep . A few days ago I had a sudden realization: my game has carpets. I get to make carpets. This was extremely exciting. FINAL RESULTS…
Today I announced the development of Skin Deep , a game I’m unbelievably THRILLED to be making. Watch the Blendo Twitch channel every Tuesday + Thursday at 10AM PT to see Skin Deep get built. There’s now a Blendo Discord channel . Join in! If you like what you see, please wish-list Skin Deep on Steam ! I can’t wait for you all to play this thing!
I was invited to a cool bar to demo Flotilla 2 – it had a great turnout, and the venue was wonderful. I met a lot of great folks, and as usual with events like this, there was a metric ton of helpful feedback on the build. I’ve done a fair amount of expos/conferences/showings for my past projects. VR demoing, however, is a whole other ball of wax. I found the sheer amount of equipment…
Quadrilateral Cowboy turns 2 years old today! Happy birthday to this video game. To celebrate, I thought I’d do a little writeup about its early development. DECK The first thing I did was get the deck up and running. It worked! It felt great to type on a little portable computer. A lot of the project depended on this interface, so I was glad it worked well. Behind the deck you can see some…
Last year I switched this blog to a static site . It’s been great! However, one cumbersome thing was the process of uploading site changes. So! I made a little program to streamline that. DOWNLOAD BINARIES & SOURCE CODE 1. LOGIN This is what the program looks like. The important thing here is the local filepath and remote FTP filepath fields. local filepath : the folder on your hard drive…
I recently announced my new project Flotilla 2 , and wanted to share what I do when I announce a game. This is the task list I wrote for the announcement: The task list program I use is Workflowy . It’s a bulleted list that can be updated from your phone, desktop, tablet, wherever. I like Workflowy because of how bare-bones it is. You can find a ton of similar task list programs…
I’m excited to announce I’m working on a new project! My new game is Flotilla 2 , a VR game about big battleships in space. Flotilla 2 is a single-player turn-based tactical game. Combat revolves around maneuvering, flanking, and hitting the enemy where their armor is weak. This is a sequel to the original Flotilla , and expands on the combat systems explored there. However, unlike the…
I was having some fairly consistent problems with my blendogames.com blog/news page getting hacked and infected. It became very annoying! All the security and safety measures I attempted just weren’t working. So! After a particularly nasty database problem I decided to just nix the page and convert it into a static site. It’s now more secure, simpler, and I have more control over it…
I often describe Company of Heroes as the RTS that has made it difficult for me to play any other RTS. There are a lot of things that make Company of Heroes special to me. Here are some of them. World state Something memorable in Bungie’s Myth is in how bloodstains and scorchmarks are permanent: The marks exist as a chronicle of sorts. Every moment stains the battlefield, ensuring you…
My dad and I made a bench. Here’s the final result: We started with a paper plan: We cut a 2x4 to make the four legs: The little slot in each leg was shaved out with the radial arm saw: The legs and supports were joined with biscuits . We’re testing the fit here: And here, a dry test to see if all pieces fit together: The fit looked good. We applied wood glue, then attached clamps to…
Blendo Games turns seven years old today. Thank you all for the love and support.
I wrote a list of my top games of 2016 for Giant Bomb. For my number one pick, I drew a little illustration. Enjoy!
This entry is a continuation of Work Archeology, Part 2 For a quick recap on what source control is, please read Work Archeology, Part 1 Quadrilateral Cowboy Now that Quadrilateral Cowboy has shipped, I thought it would be interesting to take a look at its source control patterns, from start to finish. Monthly The graph tracks how many source control check-ins were made per month. There are a lot…