Blog of independent game and app developer Matt Sephton. Featuring vintage Macintosh, game development, digital artwork, Japanese esoterica, video game reviews, hacks and tips, and much more.
Back in 2024 I posted a few of these on Twitter ( thread reader ) after digging out old photos from the dot-com boom . I was working in London at a digital agency called Blueberry . Please take a seat for peak translucent plastic frutiger aero aesthetic, long before the term was coined, and some period flashbacks if you were working on the web at this time. I’d come from graphic design agency Form…
A playlist for all seasons, just for kicks. 🌱☀️🍂❄️ feat. Cassius, Bebu Silvetti, Phoenix, The Blue Nile, Cocteau Twins, XTC, The Style Council, Chicane feat. Justine Suissa, Tears For Fears, Lifeformed, Josh Rouse, Guillemots, Prince, and Merz. Playlists Apple Music Spotify
Fukio Mitsuji (三辻富貴朗)—known by his nickname “MTJ”, squeezed from the consonants of his surname, Mi-Tsu-Ji —was the game designer behind Bubble Bobble , Rainbow Islands , Syvalion , Volfied , and Magical Puzzle Popils . Surely one of the greatest to walk these hallowed halls. In the late 1980s he also wrote a column for the Japanese arcade magazine GAMEST called ゲームデザイン入門— Introduction to Game…
This blog post assumes you have played BELTRUNNER, the game whose design it discusses in detail, or are familiar enough JC4880P433 360 400mhz revisionwith video game design and history that you don’t need to play it. Last week I shared a look at an arcade-faithful version of Asteroids to demonstrate the totally new way of making games that I’ve been working on. It’s called Jinks and it’s a…
Jinks is a lightweight multi-platform game engine, an interactive development environment, and more besides. I’m building it around one wonderful idea: write the engine core once, then run it everywhere—and have it behave identically wherever it runs. As with everything I make, it started with a personal need. I make games, mostly the arcade sort, and I want them to run on the machines I care…
Since my trip back from Japan in February (literally—the idea popped into my head waiting for takeoff) I’ve been working on a new way to make games. I forced myself to think about the future and asked “how might games be made in the new world?” (some may say the post-ai world? perhaps a not-so-distant future?) It took a lot of work but I’ve done it! Since then I’ve been recreating many old arcade…
Happy World Emoji Day ! 🎉 Did you know it’s celebrated on 17th July because it’s the date shown on the calendar emoji? 📅 To mark the occasion, something fun: lots of people are certain they remember a seahorse emoji. They can describe it in detail—small, with a curled tail, usually facing left. But there has never been an official one. Not in Unicode, not in the famous SoftBank (1997) or NTT…
I just wired this up for my own build folder—where my current project is quietly piling up data—and figured it was worth writing down. The same trick works on any big codebase, a pile of assets, or a crowded /Applications folder. I generally use it on folders that don’t have frequent churn, but do have large or compressible things added to them often enough. It relies on transparent file system…
The Japanese Mega Drive ports of T&E SOFT’s New 3D Golf Simulation series are my favourite golf games, and recently I’ve been living inside their ROMs. As with all the craziest ideas, it began with a “I wonder if I could”… In the early hours of one April morning I managed to pull a single course out of the game—its terrain and flyby data—and reimplement it in a viewer of my own, written in…
Here’s a quick tip for passing the infamous Cloudflare Turnstile captcha checkbox pages: press Tab key, to focus the checkbox (I use my index finger) press Space bar, to select the checkbox (I use my thumb) …no mouse movement or clicking needed! ✌️
A mix of music with arpeggios in, just because I thought it would be an interesting constraint. 🎛️🎚️🎛️ Listen on MixCloud . Timestamp Artist Song (Link) Year 00:00 Kasper Koman Loco Motif 2018 04:21 Fakear feat. Alex Metric Carrie 2020 08:30 Nox Vahn Walking with Giants 2019 10:55 Kiesza Hideaway (Zac Samuel Remix) 2014 14:21 Rhythim is Rhythim Strings of Life 1987 21:07 KC Lights feat. Niki &…
Shipping software is hard . My secret to doing it successfully is a combination of careful scoping, with strict avoidance of feature creep. But even then, it’s still insanely difficult to ship something. Shipping multiple pieces of software one after the other in quick succession would be an even more gruelling task. Nobody in their right mind would choose to do such a thing… right? Right? I must…
TV’s TV was a four-hour late-night television program broadcast in Japan on Fuji TV from 01:55 to 05:55 on Saturday, March 14, 1987. It was a televisual predecessor to a book that I also discuss below, and an early sign of the experimental programming that Fuji TV would formalise later that year with its JOCX-TV2 late-night brand—a slot explicitly created to give young creators room to experiment.…
I spotted Fresh File Explorer , a VS Code extension, on Hacker News and loved the idea—a file sidebar that only shows recently modified files. The default file sidebar in an editor shows everything , which in a large project is mostly noise. I thought it would be fun to have something like this for Nova , so I reimplemented the concept from scratch using only the OG repo readme as a reference. No…
If you’ve ever wondered about the sheer size and majesty of Mount Fuji, I took this photo of the Tokyo metropolis from the window of JL43 bound for London Heathrow yesterday. It was quite a sight! I’ve just spent a week in Japan for Tokyo Design Forum , and to give my eldest a memorable first trip outside of Europe. Our time away delivered on both counts: we returned home hugely inspired and in…
Today I’m releasing a demo of my new game: Serenity. It’s available for both Mac and Windows, and the final game will also support Linux. Download: store.steampowered.com/app/4309910/Serenity_Demo/ The Universe Provides The story of this game is a strange one, so perhaps worth telling. I was about to add online play to a different game project and wanted a smaller game to test PlayroomKit , the…
I’ve released a native macOS app that does all this script can do and much more! Read all about it: gingerbeardman.com/apps/localmost/ Sometimes I want to run local web servers for projects I’m working on. Usually more than one at a time, or at least over a short space of time. So I thought it would be cool to have a controller for those local servers in my menu bar. Sounded like the perfect job…
I’m releasing my WebGL CRT Shader as open source. It creates a CRT/vintage TV effect so could be used in games, emulators, apps, demos, visuals, etc. It’s not a simulator just something that gives the same general old school vibe. As a WebGL shader, it runs on the device’s hardware GPU in the browser and renders to a <canvas> (or offscreen canvas). I currently use it with Three.js, and the demo…
2025, eh? What a blast. This year saw an incredible burst of creativity and exploration. I started the year shipping a multi-player arcade racing game for Sega Dreamcast , coded in bed making games on iOS using Love2D , made a little game that won at a PC gamejam thanks to Atari & Jeff Minter , and created everything from browser games to number one DJ mixes . One big milestone was my Macintosh…
I’ve released a new extension for the Nova editor. It’s called Remove Comments and it …removes comments from the current line, or selected lines, in your code. That’s it! Oh, I’ve tried to support as many comment/syntax formats as I can think of. Sadly it’s not possible to get the current comment formatting from the Nova API, so I had to roll my own logic and heuristics.…
As we complete another lap around the sun, I take stock of what has happened this year and filter my favourite music from the thousands of tracks I’ve listened to throughout 2025. Let’s go! Suspended in a beam of sunlight After my 2024 year end DJ mix (which I listen to a lot and am really proud of!) I produced a handful of other mixes throughout the year . I use the fantastic DJ.Studio app and a…
It’s been a year since October 2024, when I released my last game on the Playdate Catalog . Over the course of that month, I became increasingly concerned about an undercurrent of threatening and antisocial behaviour from one particular developer in the community—my frequent reports of which went unanswered. Eventually—exactly a year ago today—that tension surfaced as a campaign of targeted…
A little DJ mix of music and collabs by one of my favourite Japanese electronic musicians. Listen on MixCloud . Timestamp Artist Song (Link) Release Year 00:00 Mameyudoufu Starting Up Boot Loader 2021 01:23 Mameyudoufu & 藍月なくる One Step Closer single 2022 04:34 Mameyudoufu Safe Space single 2024 07:53 Mameyudoufu Approximation Stream Friendly 01 2022 12:25 Mameyudoufu feat. Exobolt Everyday Things…
Many years ago, while working at Apple and running a lab at WWDC, I met a guy who was using a piece of Apple software designed for creating interactive ads to design a Car Play user interface for a popular US car manufacturer. I was impressed by his ability to think outside the box and told him so. I mentioned to him how human interface designers at Apple were using Keynote to rapidly prototype…
I’ve released an extension to add Three.js completions support to the Nova editor. The coolest thing about this extension is that most of the code is automatically generated straight from the Three.js TypeScript files. This means there’s the potential for less errors in the data, and I can easily update the extension whenever a new release of Three.js comes out just by running a single command.…
In late 2024, I spent some time improving my tools by building a set of extensions for Nova editor to streamline some time-consuming tasks I encounter during blogging and game development. This week, I released major updates to many of them with enhancements and new features: Bookmarks Version 2.0.0 Adds sorting, the ability to bookmark folders, marking of missing items, and other improvements.…
For the past several months I’ve been working on a pixel art app for macOS, with the goal of making it as much of a first class citizen and great Mac-like experience as possible. To that end it is fully native and built using Swift and SwiftUI, with a tiny bit of AppKit. As with all the macOS apps I build, they start with a personal need. This one was to replace the aging and unsupported Piskel…
Surprise! My latest game, Wormhole, is included in the Comet web browser from Perplexity . It started as an idea to replace the Chrome Dino game and grew into something a bit more sophisticated and fun, and a lot more on brand. Big love to Henry Modisett and the great team over at Perplexity. And to Soleio for the hookup—thanks sensei! 🙌 The development of this game was very typical for me and my…
My favourite DÉ DÉ MOUSE tracks seamlessly mixed together with great pleasure! Also featuring hitomitoi, AZK, TANUKI, DENONBU, Aki Shirokane, Yuka Nagase, Shin-ski, Kakeru, and more. High-energy feel-good vibes to fill even the rainiest day with rays of sunshine. ✌️ Listen on MixCloud . Time Artist Release Song Year 00:00 w/ Milk Talk single Beautiful Criminal 2024 04:11 w/ Yumenokessho ROSE…
An interesting side-effect of iOS Low Data Mode is that it shows you the exact size of an app update for your device, often a tiny fraction of the listed app size. This is because (delta) updates contain only the files that have changed. Even a first-time install is smaller due to app slicing/thinning containing only what is needed for that device. The larger size is the universal app size…
I’ve decided to donate all of my Playdate earnings (my personal take-home, after Panic and payment processor fees) to The Cybersmile Foundation , starting July 2025. Cybersmile is a multi-award-winning nonprofit dedicated to digital wellbeing and combating all forms of cyberbullying and online abuse. It’s registered as a charity in the UK and as a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization in the US. Having…
My latest mix comprises Japanese ambient music. Some related non-Japanese tracks also in there, just for kicks. 🔰 Listen on MixCloud . Timestamp Artist Song Year 000:00 Susumu Yokota Blue Sky and Yellow Sunflower 2004 003:34 Masakatsu Takagi Marginalia #5 2018 012:08 Hiroshi Yoshimura Green 1986 016:56 Satoshi & Makoto That’s All 2017 019:46 William Orbit Pure Shores (Backing Track) 1999 023:17…
An hour of songs with “Moai” somewhere in the title …for no reason other than it sounded like a fun challenge. And because Moai are cool. Why? Why not? ✨🗿✨ Listen on MixCloud . Timestamp Artist Song (Link) Year 00:00 Maria Usbeck Moai y yo 2016 03:03 Saphileaum Moai 2025 07:27 Seotaiji Moai 2008 10:40 Fila Brazillia The Moai 1997 13:54 Bala Moai 2007 19:56 Jestofunk Moai Message 1995 26:41 Yosuke…
Note: these days I mostly let App Store Connect manage version numbers. There are many ways to do automatic build version number incrementing in Xcode. I don’t know of any really easy universal way of doing it, so this is simply my preferred way of doing it. I just added it to a new project so thought I’d document if only for my own future reference! 1. Create a .xcconfig Add a file…
After years of unsuccessful attempts to find the name of a long-forgotten app through Google, I tried pasting my query into Gemini: “Back in my teens I saw a software demo for a Mac/Windows app that tracked what you were doing and offered to complete repetitive tasks for you. Like renaming all files in a folder it would interrupt after a few and offer to do the rest. Maybe late 80s or early 90s.”…
Here’s a 30 minute vocal drum’n’bass DJ Mix, all but one tracks are from Jan to May 2025. Plus a few little surprise samples for you, the listener. Photo of Sean Young as Rachael in Blade Runner (1982). Listen on MixCloud or via the alternatives below. Timestamp Artist Song (Video) 00:00 Mameyudoufu Literally 1998 03:45 Fred V & Nu-La Sparks 06:50 Mallrat Hideaway 09:35 London Elektricity, BCee &…
I was looking through Comptiq, Vol. 41, April 1988 and spotted an illustration showing the relative size of 2” floppy disks —used in some word processors at the time—compared to more common floppy disk sizes at the time: 8”, 5”, and 3.5”. Which got me thinking about the ever decreasing size of storage and how it might make for a nice illustration on a T-shirt. So I created technical drawings of…
I neglected to blog about this in October 2024, so here it is now. Monokai Pro Vibrant is my fork of the unofficial Monokai Pro theme for Nova editor, by Tony Keiser. My fork has a few quality of life changes: Theme Vibrancy is enabled, making focused and unfocused windows more distinguishable Colour tweaks improve contrast when highlighting found instances of search terms Comments are now…
Back in November 2020 I was exploring the PC-98 back catalog, and stumbled across a strange game called Band-kun . Strange in that it’s a 1-bit black and white game on a platform that was capable of colour, and also because it’s a hybrid adventure/management/music/rhythm game. I was smitten . The Idea I was already developing for the Playdate , a modern 1-bit platform, and it struck me as the…
I order weird old stuff from Japan a few times a year: old magazines, CD-ROMs, digital watches, strategy guides, video games, playing cards, books, artwork and any other old tat that takes my fancy. The way this is usually done is by ordering through a proxy service that receives the goods on your behalf and combines and ships them to you at your convenience. There are many such proxy services,…
So, my game HERD NERD is a winner in the “ I, REBEL ” game jam, hosted by Atari and Jeff Minter. We are delighted to let you know after hours of play and deliberation - Jeff Minter himself chose your game as THIRD PLACE WINNER Your game stood out in all the right ways: creative, clever, weird and totally nailing the theme. The team (and the judges!) were blown away by your take on the theme and…
On September 30th, 2023, I was sitting in the cinema waiting for an anniversary screening of Talking Heads “ Stop Making Sense ” to begin when I got a message from Panic . They asked if I was familiar with Sensible Soccer. Naturally, I was—I’ve played it since its release in 1992, as man and boy. Back in 2000, I’d even made my own arcade-style take on it called Simple Soccer, and in 2002 I…
I plan to occasionally list abandoned projects that I’ve decided not to take any further. This one is a prototype for a “firework builder” puzzle game. I was calling it Hanabi, the Japanese word for firework, but I’m not sure I would have stuck with that for the final name. It’s a visual programming-based puzzle video game along the lines of Human Resource Machine and influenced by block-based…
You may or may not know that I run the website moai.games which features a catalogue of screenshots showing Moai appearances in video games. At the time of writing there are over 1000 games listed going all the way back to the early 1980s. ✨👋🗿✨ Tokyo Game Life reached out and I chatted to them a bit about all of that cool and nerdy stuff. Listen in your usual podcast app or using the embedded…
For almost six years, Playdate (a little handheld gaming device with a crank input and 1-bit screen) was a space where I did some of my most creative and personal work. I embraced its quirks, shipped over twenty releases, and explored what a tiny, constrained device could do. It brought me joy, challenge, and a sense of purpose. But over time, that feeling changed. Following a difficult incident…
I recently wanted to track my heart rate and sleeping patterns, but do not want an Apple Watch. So I ended up buying a cheap Amazfit Band 7 from Decathlon sports store. The one I bought was reduced because of a damaged box—I love a good bargain! It’s a cool little thing and goes for an unbelievable 18 days on a single charge with default settings. Since I bought it I’ve had to charge it once! Even…
I’m releasing an expanded version of my game Shark Turtle for macOS and Windows. Grab it at itch: gingerbeardman.itch.io/shark-turtle-desktop/ The result is a feature-rich, native desktop version of SameGame with fast calculation, animated block removal, mouse/keyboard control, incremental scoring, variable grid sizes each with their own high score table, multi-level undo, lots of options, and…
After reaching 1 million files in my Macintosh Magazine Media project , I thought it would be cool to post about something I found recently in those discs. I get a real buzz rediscovering something like this after more than 30 years have passed. It’s a sweet little point and click adventure game for Classic Macintosh called “ Station: Travel Through the Four Seasons ” by Mitsuo Isaka, about taking…
I am proud to announce that my Macintosh Magazine Media project has surpassed my self-imposed goal of 1 million files, an achievement that fills me with both immense satisfaction and slight bewilderment. And if you were to decompress those files the total would be 30 million! Woah. If you’ve never heard of it before: it’s an archive of vintage media containing mostly Macintosh files sourced from…
This is an expanded version of a post I made to the MPU Talk forum . Visible Those I often need to interact with: Bartender (menu bar item manager; old version) Dato (alt clock and calendar with timezones; old version) iStat Menus (network speed; old version) xBar (custom menu items powered by my own shell scripts) Proxy Status Software Sales Stats GitHub Issues Eject Volumes Caffeine (used to set…