Before we start…

Let’s address the elephant whale shark in the room ocean. (No, not the Subnautica shit. Well, not first at least.)

Everything is currently brand new: a different platform, a different email, and a different look. I’m also alive after a small break. (If you’re a Patreon sub, check out this post for more details.) I’m trying out the free Beehiiv plan, given that Kit has been pissing me off with breaking things on the public profile page.

So, on the one hand, Beehiiv has a lot of nifty shit under the hood. As a negative, though, they apparently removed the public home page for free accounts sometime last year? So that threw a wrench in me being able to link the archive. Womp womp. But, hey, if we can get four or five new signups for the Patreon we can afford the Scale newsletter plan and then go from there!

ICYMI: There’s currently a lot of drama going down with the fate of Subnautica 2. Krafton (the publisher) fired the studio leadership, and now both Krafton and the (now former) Unknown Worlds devs are engaged in a very public fuck-tussle as they alternate between finger-pointing and attempts to woo the community to their side.

The community is losing its shit on a variety of platforms, a co-founder of Unknown Worlds has confirmed they’re suing, Krafton is polishing their stance with the press, and everyone wants to know what happens with the $250 million bonus, since many feel that’s the real reason behind the delay and leadership change.

I have no fish in this race, since I’m not a fan of the Subnautica IP. I think it would actually be fascinating if it turned out that the developers had fucked up and been released for something justified. (Thus, absolving the mega publisher as the villain of the story.) What would their community do? Continue to defend, or abandon?

Growing Pains

Paleolith bills itself as “a hardcore survival simulator set 40,000 years ago. Hunt, craft primitive tools, build fires, and endure the brutal winter. No technology, no magic – just nature, instincts, and the fight to survive in prehistoric Europe.”

It’s one of a handful of titles I’m tracking that leans into friction and consequence instead of just tossing in zombies. Development seems to be moving along, though the team is small, and they’ve been sharing early prototypes of different mechanics and animations over the past few weeks. I’m seeing some interesting stuff—and a few quirks I hope get addressed.

1. Spearfishing and Reactive Water: This is crazy early days, so commentary is meant in the spirit of just reacting to stuff. The way the water is responding to the fish seems excessive, unless it’s supposed to be one of the main indicators of it being a fishable area?

2. Sleep and Wake Up Mechanic: I have two gripes with this: the rate at which food decays compared to water is cray, I feel like it should be reversed. And I don’t like this “wake up when you reach critical thirst” idea. If water is above 25%, let the player sleep without interruption — just wake them up with penalties (low stamina, mood hit, etc.) instead of forcing a hard wake-up. 🤔

3. Oh yeah, have a game trailer if you haven’t seen it already.

Dev Log Envy

Fingers and limbs crossed that one day I’m experiencing the angst & anxiety of creating a Dev Log for a game that Becca and I make. Until that day, I’m trying to take note of the formats and vibes I like when it comes to games that post video development updates—listed two of my favorites below with their most recent videos. Anyone else strike your fancy

Dev Work

Creating Indie Games

Maybe I’m late to the party (though I can’t be that late, since the channel is relatively small), but I kinda dig this Indie Game Clinic guy. And not just because of the awesome ‘dev log’! He’s got a decently sized cache of videos, and Becca and I find some of the viewpoints and info pretty interesting.

Helping Hand!

Under a Rock released some combat footage today, irrelevant to this email except that they name-dropped the studio they hired or collaborated with for the animations, so I checked them out. MLC Studio does some nice stuff! And apparently they’ve been hands-on with a lot of fancy shit, to boot.

They also have a bunch of stuff aimed at giving indie devs a leg up, including this Game Budget Builder, which is a free tool to estimate your game’s development budget.

Gaming

Tick Tock

Time is running out to check out Bushcraft Survival - the demo will be removed on July 17th.

Mod Squad

Frostpunk 2’s throwing down a mod contest with a $10,000 prize — so if you’ve ever wanted to freeze to death your way, now’s your shot.

Speaking of mods, did you catch my article about modding? I’ve got a pretty neutral stance on it (leaning “mod if you must, but don’t patch the soul out of it”), and the comments section had some very solid takes. Worth a scroll!

Random Reads

• TIL there’s a Woke Content Appreciator Steam curator, apparently in response to a Woke Content Detector curator. [TheGamer]

• A Pokémon fan got the Pope to sign his Popplio card. [Polygon]

• GameStop is auctioning off its infamous stapler, which damaged numerous Nintendo Switch consoles on the launch night of the Nintendo Switch 2. [IGN]

• Sea of Thieves paid subscription...but custom servers. Hmm. I’d have to see the server settings.[Rock Paper Shotgun]

So far I like Beehiiv — the editor’s clean, flexible, and doesn’t fight me every step of the way like some other platforms (cough). Putting this together didn’t feel like a fucking chore!

As always, feel free to hit me with replies — I think you can click “Read on web” and leave a comment there, or just respond to the email and it’ll show up as a comment thread? (Check near the top of the email, maybe.) I’m still a little hazy on what works in the free tier vs. the paid magic, but if it lets you yell back at me, I’m all for it.

Keep rollin’ 🙂 

- Jordan