Clouds By Sally Gottschalk

A Closer Look: Vertebrates Chordates

First order of business, turns out coelacanths are not vertebrates, which are what I’ve been basing my hexapodal polypodes (Sniffers, Bees) off of. So, to cover this group we’re switching from vertibrata to chordata (at least for this post, vertebrates still exist)!

The Chordata clade can be split into 3 main groups: neomammalia (new mammals) and brachipteryxus (wing-armed) - the vertebrates; as well as polypodus (many-footed) - their distant six-legged cousins.

Examples of chordates: Dolichocerca leo, the ocelot (neomammalia); Lepidoscelus igneamantis, the strider (brachipteryxus); and Neopolypodus flavitta, the bee (polypodus).

Neomammalia and brachipteryxus are both notable survivors of Primordial Death, the mass-extinction event that eliminated the majority of life in the realms prior to the players’ entry. Neomammalia in particular had many surviving members, and has since continued to diversify.

A chicken (Myriapinna polynativas) and a sheep (Lanatumorphus myriachroma), both survivors of Primordial Death.

Polypodus is considered a lazarus taxon - a group of organisms that was considered extinct, but reappeared later. Bees were discovered first - long after the players’ emergence - and defined the previously unknown polypodus taxon. It was believed they were the only extant polypod, until ancient sniffer eggs were discovered - and miraculously hatched.

A snifflet (juvenile Anchipolypodus aeternovis).

Return to full tree.

Rah I forgot to post this last week. These are some of my favorite monsters that I had the pleasure of designing for the 2023 Winter Melon Jam. The theme was “charm” and we ran with the idea of making a monster parlor, where your objective is to make these creatures more charming.

Our game “Monster Parlor” was made within 72 hours by me, @puddleorganism , cobyte, and smallbuggames!

(From left to right: Squid, Rug, Hera, and the Vinegar Twins) there are 9 monsters total!

On another note, I’m superrrrr interested in the idea of making speculative biology/species out of some of these guys tbh.

Below there is the link to our game if you’d like to check it out.

https://metaphysicalmonsters.itch.io/monster-parlor

itch.io

Monster Parlor by MetaphysicalMonsters, Small Bug Games, Twelve Pens, CoByte

Make monsters beautiful

Redid all the level backgrounds for my game Crazy Critters Attack!

Finally working on this project again after 7 months! I think I'm committing myself to finishing this now, I've put everything I have left to do into GitHub issues and I've started working through it all.

The main campaign's now playable to completion, with me having spent a couple weeks going through and testing it all to make sure its broken ass scripting was no longer ass or broken.

Total playtime to complete the main quest (and this is with me rushing through it) was about 11 hours. Note this is just making sure the draft works, the final campaign will obviously need more effects, voice acting, full cutscenes, etc.

Am I loosing because this level is poorly balanced, or am I just bad at this game?

"How do you find all these small/weird/indie games??"

Ask your friends for recommendations

Follow forums/blogs/youtubers whose job is to talk about videogames and play the games they talk about

If you play a game that you like, look up the developer and play whatever else they've made

MOST IMPORTANTLY: ACTIVELY browse storefronts like steam and itch.io YOURSELF and play/buy the games that seem interesting to you. Relying on bloggers and youtubers should only be the start of your exploration

Post about the games you play

luna

scroll for more! ⬇️

store.steampowered.com

Underspace on Steam

The spiritual successor to Freelancer with a Lovecraftian, sandbox RPG twist. Explore a vast handmade universe that includes online multipla

Want to play Underspace?

NOW YOU CAN!

We've got a demo out on Steam for Next Fest, and more so we've got a livestream coming today at 3PM CST/1PM PST. Come chat with the developers and watch an extended deep-dive into the many many many many many many many many many many many aspects of the game!

Completely reworked the in-game UI of my game Crazy Critters Attack! I chose a more industrial style for the UI with big metal buttons, caution tape and LCD screens. I also docked the level progress to the left side of the screen instead of leaving it as a weird tab below everything else. Lastly, I picked some new fonts! Before I was just using one of my computer's built-in system fonts, and now I'm using Rubik and IBM Plex Mono.