Stray update! We’re almost at the month mark, and she’s gained roughly 0.8 lbs since being found. Progress! Her coat, especially around her neck, was pretty threadbare, but it’s filled out a ton—and her energy level is super ninja spastic. She was just spayed last Friday. The actual spay went smoothly, her bloodwork looked solid, but holy shit, she was mad AF about getting the blood drawn. Kinda funny to us, because our boys are super solid and unflappable. So right now she’s on lockdown to let the incisions heal, heads back in Monday for suture removal and to get her booster.
Peep her fantastic and fashionable threads. (Much classier and less stress-inducing than THE CONE.)
Creator Stack
Coffee & Code
How to price your game in 2025 and beyond
See How to Create and Animate a Horse Using ZBrush and UE5
(Which, actually, kicked me off on a tangent of looking at horse assets, and this seems neat AF.)Replacing Unreal Engine's Grass with GPU PCG Shows 4 Times Better FPS
Developer Explains How He Tripled the Performance of His Game in Unity
Argentum Studio has been putting out some interesting YT guides!
If You Want Production-Ready Results, Get This Surface Painting Tool for Unreal Engine
Talk about Steal This Tactic, but the Road to Vostok dev has been fucking crushing it lately. Obviously, there’s the crazy amount of wishlists:
Then there’s the absolute firehose of info he keeps dropping. His Patreon has been popping off with updates for paid backers, and a good amount of teasers/news make it into his Discord. He also recently released a graphic detailing the final demo for the October Next Fest, as well as the changes/additions that will come when the game shifts to Early Access.
It is a very sexy graphic.
Hashtag Last Week
Site Tweak → “Game Reviews” got the axe. Everything’s under Radar now, cleaner and easier to find.
Patreon Post → Extra thoughts on some New Cycle drama, plus other stuff.
Hold Your Breath / Another Day to Die → Not grim, just upcoming.
Jenga Article → Sometimes survival is stacking blocks and questioning life choices. (This is an article about development, though.)
Gaming
Oh, signs of life from Outbreak Island again, I guess. Catching fish by hand is a neat addition, but tbh the rest of the game has gone a bit off the rails, so who knows.
Gentlymad Studios is closing. (Pst, they made Endzone: A World Apart)
Outbound | Dev Diary #1 | Journey's Beginning: Crafting and Resourcing
The developer of ANGST mentioned a demo should be released “soon”, I want to plaaayy now!
The developer of Hiraeth has launched a weekly bulletin on Steam.
Curator Updates (Link!)
Additions: Another Day to Die, PolyZ, No One’s Island, Dream Garden
Updated: Subsistence, Hold Your Breath
Musings
From the developer of The Apocalypse (link to follow along at home):
Most survival games love dumping you in the woods/ocean/lava with nothing but your fists. Sometimes you spawn there, and sometimes you fall out of a plane. Somehow it’s always without luggage or passengers? (Maybe it’s a Frontier Airlines flight! Would explain the missing bags.) Point is: start from scratch, scrape by.
Not every game does it that way. The Long Dark drops you into scavenging (food, clothes, tools) and only really pushes you into crafting once the good stuff breaks or runs out. (NOT TALKING ABOUT MISERY OR LOPER RIGHT NOW.) Same with DayZ or SCUM: crafting is rare, scavenging is the loop.
I don’t buy the “skip the basics” idea. (And for the record, punching trees in 7D2D is fucking stupid; has no one heard of a branch??) Removing that initial hustle and scrounge feels like another generic OpenBox exploration game. IDK. Thoughts?
Quick support plug:
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Running A Video Games Publisher AND Marketing Agency Sounds Absolutely Exhausting
I walked 10,000 steps a day with a weighted backpack for a week – here are five reasons I’m not stopping
Hey, you know who else rucks?! ME! I actually really enjoy it: it’s a great way to level up stuff you’re already doing (walking the dog, jogging, chasing down morons) and make it more effective. GORUCK makes some of the best bags out there, but if you’ve never bought a fancy EDC bag before, brace yourself for sticker shock. (Upside: their gear comes with a Scars Lifetime Guarantee, and it’s bombproof and handy for plenty besides rucking: travel, everyday carry, whatever.)
They do run sales! Black Friday’s solid, and their “Christmas in July” drops can be steep. Sometimes random deals pop up too. You can also go secondhand, but stick to quality FB groups (Carryology, The Perfect Pack) so you snag something that’s been babied. Otherwise you’ll end up with somebody’s sweat-soaked gym beater. Ewww.
(My daily carry for work is actually my Goruck M23!)
Best Patch
Happy 10th issue!
Some housekeeping news! First and foremost- thank you to everyone who participated in the newsletter drawing for the free HIRAETH keys last week! Keys have been emailed to the winners, and I hope they enjoy the game! I’ll do another email newsletter specific drawing in the future, when I get some keys rounded up. I thiiink I have a spare key for As One We Survived somewhere, but I gotta dig. Any giveaways or email newsletter-specific notes will always be in the box located below the opening paragraph(s). (If you’re reading this on the web and don’t see the box, it’s because MAGIC.)
I’m leaning towards shifting the newsletter to Tuesday evening instead of Monday. (He says, scheduling the newsletter to be sent today, a Tuesday.) I thought I could use Monday to plow through framing out/writing each issue, but things on the weekend - and some Monday nights- keep screwing shit up.
I may as well stop fighting it!
Till next time!
- Jordan
