Screenshot Saturday Mondays: Please, is anyone there, is anything left

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Screenshot Saturday Mondays: Please, is anyone there, is anything leftThinking about the future while Twitter burns

Thinking about the future while Twitter burns

Image credit:Jacob Potterfield

A strange lobby in the yet-untitled new game from Jacob Potterfield.

Hello? Hello? Is anyone out there? If you’re reading this, you must be. If not, hell, I must try to keep on living even if no one’s observing. I’ve not seen my friend’s cat in three days. I don’t know if my friend has a cat anymore. I don’t know if I have a friend anymore. All I know is that Twitter’s collapse has accelerated. But this was once a weekly column highlighting attractive and interesting indie games fromTwitter’s #screenshotsaturday tag, and maybe it still is, or maybe it will be again. For now, come check out these games, if you can.

Over the weekend, Twitter introduced caps on how many posts you can see each day,supposedlytemporarily and in response to “extreme levels of data scraping & system manipulation”. Different types of user (new accounts, established accounts, and rubes) have different limits. At one point, unregistered people couldn’t see tweets at all. I’m not sure where all that stands now. Twitter also went down for several hours.

Happy#screenshotsaturday!A small overview of our wip watercolor painted islands in Echo of the Waves :)#indiedev#indiegame#gamedev#watercolorpaintingpic.twitter.com/iU4FRdyoTl— Adri & El👩🏻‍💻👩🏻‍🎨 | Oneira Games (@OneiraGames)July 1, 2023To see this content please enable targeting cookies.Manage cookie settingsPretty underseascapes in watercolour-painted adventure game Echo Of The Waves

Happy#screenshotsaturday!A small overview of our wip watercolor painted islands in Echo of the Waves :)#indiedev#indiegame#gamedev#watercolorpaintingpic.twitter.com/iU4FRdyoTl

I have no idea how you, reader dear, are currently seeing this post. I don’t know for certain what’s there nor how it’s presented to you. I don’t know how you might see this post three hours, three days, or three weeks from now as Twitter’s troubles continue.

Summer vacations 🌅Playing in the pool 🤽‍♀️Lying in the grass 🌱Chilling on the balcony with your friends 🍹It’s time for#ScreenshotSaturday! 📸pic.twitter.com/bZmgt55PD9— Été (@impossible_dev)July 1, 2023To see this content please enable targeting cookies.Manage cookie settingsWatercolours are back out for Été (coming to Steam), a game about a painter on summer hols in Montreal

Summer vacations 🌅Playing in the pool 🤽‍♀️Lying in the grass 🌱Chilling on the balcony with your friends 🍹It’s time for#ScreenshotSaturday! 📸pic.twitter.com/bZmgt55PD9

✨Just like our game, even our title screen was crafted with love - enjoy the elegant calligraphy and feel free to walk around and explore. ✨Wishlist now:https://t.co/p5CACiTE3q#UnrealEngine#gamedev#indie#indiedev#gameart#gaming#screenshotsaturdaypic.twitter.com/PYUCh39T1m— Flawless Abbey 💜 (@bed_head_games)July 1, 2023To see this content please enable targeting cookies.Manage cookie settingsAnd Flawless Abbey (coming to Steam) is evidenly both hand-painted and hand-cranked, a delightful little sequence

I’ve been thinking about Twitter problems and this column for a while. Some game developers had already been branching out into new social networks even before Elon Musk arrived with his sink full of bright ideas. Several Mastodon servers have sprung up to house devs, and #ScreenshotSaturday happens there too. I’ve skipped Mastodon so far in this column because I’ve seen a fair bit of crossposting and almost everything was still on Twitter anyway. I wasn’t convinced it was a good use of my time. I’ve said before that I would reevaluate this stance over time and yeah, I’m doing some reevaluating alright.

information for finding your way#screenshotsaturday#indiedevpic.twitter.com/hLxCWuAypI— JacobPotterfield (@potterfield_art)July 1, 2023To see this content please enable targeting cookies.Manage cookie settingsI still don’t know quite what Jacob Potterfield’s latest is, and I’m still so into it

information for finding your way#screenshotsaturday#indiedevpic.twitter.com/hLxCWuAypI— JacobPotterfield (@potterfield_art)July 1, 2023

information for finding your way#screenshotsaturday#indiedevpic.twitter.com/hLxCWuAypI

Mastodon instances are not permanent either, mind. They rely on the time, money, effort, and emotional work of community hosts—demands which increase as a server grows. One niche Mastodon instance I joined in 2017 shut down due to (I think) a combination of admin infighting and users' frustration with the server sliding away from its intended purpose. Everything posted on it was lost.

Alongside Twitter’s troubles, I’ve just seen that GIF hosting site Gfycat is closing. It’s had technical troubles for months without explanation, and now the operators have casually dropped a shutdown noticeon its site. All its content and data will be deleted in September. We’ve often used Gfycat on RPS to demonstrate little things in games, and a number of great posts won’t make sense after that dies. Now I need to find an alternative for that, and hopefully find time to fix old posts too.

In The Secret Ties of Strandcliff you can order and ready daily newspapers. As game heavily relies on information sometimes it’s vital to be in the know. Even if it costs a few spare coins.#screenshotsaturday#UE4#storytellingpic.twitter.com/8vLLPi1VGQ— Ties Of Strandcliff | #IndieGame (@Strandcliff)July 1, 2023To see this content please enable targeting cookies.Manage cookie settingsI like the sound of The Secret Ties Of Strandcliff (coming to Steam), where you play as a barkeeper in a small-town tavern who can learn secrets, solve mysteries, and use information to manipulate people for good or bad

I couldn’t tell you how many friends and colleagues have permanently lost years of work after the sites they wrote it for broke, shut down, or changed direction.

Sneak peek at another enemy type you’ll fight in Interlopers! This thing recklessly chases you down, which is something you can use to your advantage.#retrofps#indiegame#indiedev#screenshotsaturdaypic.twitter.com/8eIKIMTAsR— Interlopers Game (@InterlopersGame)July 2, 2023To see this content please enable targeting cookies.Manage cookie settingsSwish weapon animations in retro-inspired FPS Interlopers (coming to Steam), though honestly I can understand why the big wheel is angry when your rifle is seemingly built from the technobones of its young?

Happy#ScreenshotSaturday! What do you think of this music? Does it suit the vibe? 🎶Show us your#indiegame!🦐LIKE🐠REPLY🍥RETWEET⛵️FOLLOW#indiedev#indiegamedev#gamedev#steam#gamedevelopment#game#indiegames#madewithunitypic.twitter.com/2EIelba3AD— Aquamariner (@AquamarinerGame)July 1, 2023To see this content please enable targeting cookies.Manage cookie settingsI suppose it’s inevitable that a generation of retro-styled games will echo the stylings of Windows 95 desktop games, or at least that’s what I see in the UI of “relaxing” fishing game Aquamariner (coming to Steam)

Grassboxx.com experienced a brief rebirth when a link farm nabbed the abandoned domain name to advertise Top Online Casino Casinos Casinoes For Grass Lawn Lawnmower Turf Strimmer Outdoors Dad Father’s Day Gambling. That too died. Grassboxx.com now exists only as a single promotional wooden ‘swag’ crate forgotten in the shed of a Sunday Times columnist. A lush bluegrass/fescue mix sprouts from the cracks in its lid, the roots cradling branded socks and caps now too decomposed for you to read the baffling slogan, “Grass, grass, or grass, nobody rides for free.”

ロボデメキンのデモをPatreonで公開しました。New RoboFish demo now available.➔https://t.co/v1VEVKEtWo#screenshotsaturday#indiedevpic.twitter.com/GPiPX1EVMc— Masataka Hakozaki (@m_hakozaki)July 2, 2023To see this content please enable targeting cookies.Manage cookie settingsI always enjoy seeing this developer’s pretty work on virtual goldfish tanks, though you’ll need to subscribe to the Patreon to play with these new robofish

ロボデメキンのデモをPatreonで公開しました。New RoboFish demo now available.➔https://t.co/v1VEVKEtWo#screenshotsaturday#indiedevpic.twitter.com/GPiPX1EVMc

I mean, grassboxx.com never existed, but I did enjoy thinking about it for two minutes while writing that. Maybe fleeting joy is the best we can hope for online. Twitter’s collapse as a social hub isn’t a new thing, I’d just forgotten how this feels.

Summer days at the beach! 🏖️#gamedev#indiedev#screenshotsaturdaypic.twitter.com/UotJSbIth8— Ewoud (@Ewoud3D)July 1, 2023To see this content please enable targeting cookies.Manage cookie settingsI am enjoying imagining the rhythm in my fingers to hop these posts in Schim (coming to Steam), a platformer where you jump from shadow to shadow

Summer days at the beach! 🏖️#gamedev#indiedev#screenshotsaturdaypic.twitter.com/UotJSbIth8— Ewoud (@Ewoud3D)July 1, 2023

Summer days at the beach! 🏖️#gamedev#indiedev#screenshotsaturdaypic.twitter.com/UotJSbIth8

When I first got online in the late 90s, almost everything was doomed. Community-run communities would spring into existence, grow, thrive, decline, then die. Some lasted months and others years but everyQuakeserver, IRC channel, and messageboard I once called home is gone. And long before I started surfing the information superhighway, earlier internauts had already lost many of their newsgroups, BBSes, and MUDs. If anything, it’s weird that I’ve been able to hang around the same site for 16 years.

After a few improvements, I took the old boat for a spin.#ShakedownGameearly#screenshotsaturdaypic.twitter.com/YO0isrOvio— IVAN32_LEAN_AND_MEAN 🌲🏎️💨🌲 (@Nothke)June 30, 2023To see this content please enable targeting cookies.Manage cookie settingsRetro rallying in Shakedown (early work-in-progressavailable on Itch)

After a few improvements, I took the old boat for a spin.#ShakedownGameearly#screenshotsaturdaypic.twitter.com/YO0isrOvio— IVAN32_LEAN_AND_MEAN 🌲🏎️💨🌲 (@Nothke)June 30, 2023

After a few improvements, I took the old boat for a spin.#ShakedownGameearly#screenshotsaturdaypic.twitter.com/YO0isrOvio

Megabucks from investors can create the illusion of stability, certainly more than your cyberpal sneaking a server onto his university’s network, but eventually they lose interest or demand too much and it ends (untilcool teenagers save the future using NFTs, obvs.) Maybe living online is a choice between gruelling self-sufficiency or surrendering yourself to the whims of fate and accepting everything will die over and over. Twitter is even experiencing a painfully familiar cause of online community death: an admin lost to their own cult of personality.

Happy#screenshotsaturday! Not much to show except that I tried to improve the readability of the font and trying to add some intro scenes to set up the story.#gbcompo23#pixelart#horror#pointandclick#indie#indiedevpic.twitter.com/KkFHuNBt1w

Since#screenshotsaturdaywas botched due to Twitter updates, this morning I’ll post my “Doom E1M1 as the pool rooms” graphics test I did a while ago.#indiedev#gamedev#doom#poolrooms#liminalspacepic.twitter.com/D66z2j8G1c— Backrooms: The Project (@BackroomsTP)July 2, 2023To see this content please enable targeting cookies.Manage cookie settingsDoom collides with the popular Internet horror fiction setting of The Backrooms in this little experiment from the maker of Backrooms: The Project (coming to Steam, with a demoout now)

I feel for the indie devs who already struggle to spread word about their games. Building and keeping a following is difficult. Risking losing touch with fans and potential players then needing to try again in five different places at once sounds horrible.

Who need some action on disco? 🔫💣Just wanted to share my passion project with you all. As a solo developer, I’ve been working on COP BASTARD, an intense FPS game set in Japan in 90s.Wishlist:https://t.co/Gj7d5elSx3#screenshotsaturday#gamedev#indiegame#madewithunitypic.twitter.com/E5RMhe57K8— targim. | wishlist COP BASTARD on steam (@TARGIM6)July 1, 2023To see this content please enable targeting cookies.Manage cookie settingsCop Bastard (coming to Steam, with a demo there now) certainly is a name

In my personal life, I have the same stance as probably most people: I’m waiting to see if one network ‘wins’ as Twitter’s successor. Twitter’s presence in my life has grown pretty small so jumping on trying Mastodons, Bluesky, Cohost, and other alternatives is not a priority for me. Professionally, I should rethink. I will continue thinking about ways this column might need to adapt. I should start thinking about what I’d do to keep the spirit of this going if adaption is not possible. In the meantime, hey, enjoy these games!

What else caught your eye this weekend, reader dear?