Hi and welcome to this post

I was just wondering if anyone else (besides me) is currently interested in the indie web and also in extension 88x31 Buttons.

I have a small (and very much in-progress) website that I mostly coded myself. I started sometimes 2 years ago, so in 2024. And through that time it has gone through so many iterations. My site only consists of HTML and CSS and some minimal JavaScript. So I was just wondering if anyone also has an interest in the indie web and more importantly also has some buttons?

The idea or goal with this post was to just find some more people to add as neighbors because I find it somewhat scary to just ask people out of the blue or email them.

I also made my own if anyone wants to link it to their site please let me know.

This is my button:
https://postimg.cc/xqYQ8dJr

<a href="https://luna-uwu.nekoweb.org"><img src="https://luna-uwu.nekoweb.org/button-luna.png" alt="Luna's Button"/></a>

I guess the link to the site is this:
https://luna-uwu.nekoweb.org/ (I think i posted it before)

I guess that's about it. I hope you have a nice time of day wherever you are.

As a proud husband, I wanted to share that my wife's new book is officially released today! We both knew nothing about publishing books before this journey and now she is independently publishing her 5th book and first in a new series. She writes romance, so not my normal choice of material, but I have read all of her books and really enjoy them. There is just something cool about seeing my wife bring characters to life, especially since I do not consider myself a creative.

She did have a photography business before Covid, which fell apart thanks to the lockdowns. That's when she got into bookstagram and eventually decided to write her own books. Its been a wild ride since and she has met a ton of great people. It sure doesn't pay the bills, but that seems pretty par for the course. AI slop isn't helping that either.

Anyways, if you have Kindle Unlimited you can read it there for free. Or you can find her book on Amazon if you want. Sadly, its the best place left for indie authors.

Hey everyone!

I know there are some people on Tildes who like making games as a hobby. I’ve had a long-standing passion for game development, but I never managed to finish a project. About a month ago, I decided to push myself to finish a small game and publish it somewhere, and finally that day has come! Orb Sweeper, a 3D minesweeper puzzle on a sphere, is now live on the Google Play Store. Just as a disclaimer: it’s free, has no ads, and works offline by default, so I’m not earning anything from it. I just genuinely wanted to share my first finished project, along with the joy and relief I feel now.

Honestly, I’ve always been more ambitious when it comes to game mechanics. I’m a big fan of strategy games, especially TBS games over the years, so of course I always dreamed of creating a grand 4X strategy game of my own. Over time, I implemented many different systems and mechanics that are complex on their own: generation of realistic and interesting maps, pathfinding, economic models, different variations of game AI, and so on. But since these kinds of projects are huge, I was never able to finish one as a solo developer, or even bring it to a properly playable state. I burned out relatively quickly.

Over time, I realized what motivates me to continue: when somebody else is also working on the project, and when you can quickly see the results of your work. Both things are difficult to achieve. First, it’s hard to find people who are ready to spend a lot of their free time developing a big strategy game while following the same vision. Since it’s a hobby and I cannot pay for development, I also have to spend a lot of energy motivating others, not just myself. The longest I managed to keep a small team of two enthusiasts together was one month.

Second, with complex games like strategies, there are only a few big and impactful mechanics that bring the game to the state of a playable prototype, but getting there demands a ton of polishing. Graphics, sounds, small animations, 3D models… a lot of work that is almost invisible on its own, but contributes enormously to the overall look and feel of the game. Sometimes I feel like I’m drowning in these small fixes, and that also leads to burnout.

So I decided to make my projects progressively smaller until I could realistically complete one from start to finish. It’s a bit sad to see that only a Minesweeper-like game survived this approach, but I feel like it’s an important starting point. Seeing my game actually published gives me a bit more motivation to finish other projects.

But then… it’s Google. All interactions with its platform make me feel a bit frustrated. It’s surprisingly difficult to publish such a simple game. I even had to hire paid testers just to satisfy their entry requirements for closed-test user engagement. There are so many policies regulating data handling that even if your game does nothing in terms of transferring data, handling accounts, or showing in-game ads, you still have to go through all these bureaucratic procedures anyway. I guess it’s probably the same with Apple, but their famous support still hasn’t helped me with account verification after a month, so I’ve yet to experience that side of things fully.

Anyway, I’m glad that the game is available somewhere at least. And I actually play it myself sometimes on my phone. I know some people here are going through similar obstacles, so I have a question for you: what motivates you to continue working on big, complex games? And more generally, how do you avoid burning out on long-term projects?

I recently came across an interesting-looking indie game, Idols of Ash. Basically, you have to use a simple grapple-and-swing mechanic to descend through an eldritch underground complex while being pursued by a dangerous "murderpede" monster.

I first played it on what I thought was the official site, idolsofash.fun. It's a pretty spiffy design, with a playable web version, extensive FAQs, strategy guides, and embedded images and video of the game. But I ran into some bugs while playing -- no sound effects, weird lighting. When I mentioned these flaws on the developer's Itch.io page, they responded that they had nothing to do with the site.

Turns out it has a disclaimer at the very bottom: "Unofficial fan site. Not affiliated with or endorsed by Leafy Games." Buying and installing the actual version solved my tech issues. And in playing the game more, I noticed that the various guides on the site were subtly wrong in a lot of ways. The About page claims it's maintained by a big fan of the game, but in hindsight the whole thing seems AI-written and full of hallucinations.

Thing is, I don't get the angle here. There's no advertising on the site. It prominently links directly to the game's official Steam and Itch pages, so they're not trying to deliver malware or intercept the developer's sales. I assume the glitches are from a poor decompilation and rehosting of the original Godot engine game, but there's nothing to be gained from that. The presence of images and video suggests some level of human involvement in the site design, meaning it's not some cheap fire-and-forget thing. The URL and content are far too specific to flip into something else after gaining SEO rank. It presents (and acts) exactly like a non-commercial labor-of-love fansite (albeit one that shares the paid game for free in a broken state).

Could this be a genuine, if misguided, attempt by an actual fan to share the game using AI tools? Or is there some kind of scam I'm not seeing? Is this sort of fake AI fansite with embedded versions of the game a widespread problem with indie titles now?

Definitely a well deserved GOTY. I haven't gotten around to it yet, but my friends have been raving about it!

Lots of indie games nominated this year. Really feels like we're in a golden age of indies.

Virgin

This album is a banger. Very different in character than her earlier work, much more mature and introspective. I enjoyed her earlier music in the "oh, if it's on the streaming mix I will listen to it" but this album is something else.

I connect to most songs first through the lyrics, then through the music, so here's a lyrical sample.

From Hammer, opening song:

There's a heat in the pavement,
my mercury's raising
Don't know if it's love
or if it's ovulation
When you're holding a hammer,
everything looks like a nail

Bonus, two songs from her previous album. Solar Power that I love, though I feel Virgin is stronger as an album.

Stoned at the Nail Salon

Well, my hot blood's been burnin' for so many summers now
It's time to cool it down, wherever that leads
'Cause all the music you loved at sixteen, you'll grow out of
And all the times they will change, it'll all come around
I don't know
Maybe I'm just
Maybe I'm just stoned at the nail salon again

Secrets from a Girl (who's seen it all)

Welcome to sadness
The temperature is unbearable until you face it
Thank you for flying with Strange Airlines
I will be your tour guide today
Your emotional baggage can be picked up at carousel number 2
Please be careful so that it doesn't fall onto someone you love
When we've reached your final destination
I will leave you to it
You'll be fine
I'm just gonna show you in
And you can stay as long as you need
To get familiar with the feeling
And then when you're ready, I'll be outside
And we can go look at the sunrise
By euphoria mixed with existential vertigo?
Cool

Recently, I discovered a desire to play some small, easy-to-pick-up, not-demanding-on-hardware video games with short gameplay sessions that also require some skill to master. Many years ago, I played a few games that I liked very much. But now their online lobbies are dead, so I have to discover something new. So, what indie competitive games do you play?

I spent a lot of hours on CS2D and Altitude. CS2D is like Counter-Strike, but with a top-down view. It simplified the necessary skills for a shooter but was still fun to play. This game had all the modes from classic CS, but with small additions. I liked two modes the most: capture the flag and deathmatch with lasers. CTF mode had quite long sessions, even lasting for hours when teams were balanced. It was also fun to build turrets, walls, and spike traps, which made it possible to play a completely new class compared to CS — the engineer. The mode with lasers was fast-paced chaos that actually had its charm.

Altitude was a 2D shooter with airplanes and a side-view. I played a lot of the soccer mode. In this mode, two teams spawned on a football field with two goals at each end of the pitch. The ball was magnetic, which helped to catch it, and you could shoot it, allowing you to pass. I liked how each class of airplane was pretty well-balanced for this mode, allowing players to fill specific roles on the team and enabling dense and fun gameplay.

I'm looking for something similar that I can run occasionally on my laptop and that has an active community.