Dave RupertTop Front-end Bloggersread at source
Tupo
“Triple Threat” Josh Collinsworth has a brand new daily puzzler game called Tupo . On it’s surface it looks like a simplified 4×4 Sudoku block but with colored squares. That is the foundation for a simple ruleset: Every row and column contains each number exactly once Every row and column contains each color exactly once Every number + color combination appears exactly once Mini Sudoku with colors. Got it. How hard could it be? Hahahahahahahahahaha. You naive bastard. It’s deceptively difficult and then right when you get the hang of it, it jumps to a 5×5 grid on Friday. Simple yet complex is a difficult design concept to achieve and Josh did a great job. I got a sneak peek of the game a couple weeks ago and it quickly earned the top spot in my daily puzzle playlist. Before Inkwell Games , before Clues by Sam , I play Tupo. If you’re a fan of daily puzzlers, try Tupo. It won’t disappoint. → Play Tupo
Dave RupertTop Front-end Bloggersread at source
How Many Dudes?
If I’ve been missing from the internet it’s because I’ve been spending my evenings grinding on a game from Butterscotch Shenanigans called How Many Dudes? Hot off the heels of the release of their massive multi-year sequel project Crashlands 2 , the family+ operation at BS turned a little game-jam style prototype into a “Featured on the Apple App Store” game in under a year. How Many Dudes? seeks to solve ancient internet riddles like: How many toddlers could you take on in a fight? Would you rather fight 100 duck-sized horses or 1 horse-sized duck? Who would win: 100 men vs 1 gorilla? The premise is pretty simple. Build a team of fighters with different abilities and power-ups and enter the arena to fight different enemies and bosses. For me this game has it all: Balatro -level of power creep Impactful decision making So much economies Great art style and hilarious copy A proper amount of gore Enjoyable difficulty curve RNG, but not too much Those characteristics all lead toward a game with great replay-ability. Mastering lower tiers unlocks characters and power-ups in higher tiers creating a perfect “loopback” system where I want to 100% the lower tiers before moving on. A full round takes around 20 minutes but you can stop and start it effortlessly like a good casual game. I could go on forever about the power stacking economies in this game but it’s the little bits that impress me the most. Like how the characters don’t have proper walk animations and instead rotate and bob as they shimmy their way across the screen like a paper cutout on a popsicle stick. This may seem like corner cutting but on a screen with 1000+ combatants, particle effects, blood splatter, and explosions… I bet limiting characters to a single low-frame combat animation cycle is a critical ingredient for good performance. Then there’s the characters themselves. With nods to other game franchises, movie tropes, and popular (but litigious) dungeon crawling tabletop systems, the game about memes builds on cultural memes to add depth. And even though these characters don’t talk, interact, and you don’t technically control them, the hilarious copy hidden within the power-ups and item pick-ups gives a game with a lot of characters a ton of character. I will confess some bias; Butterscotch Shenanigans is one of my favorite gamedev studios and I’m internet friends with their CEO Adam Coster ( he’s even been on my podcast ). It didn’t start like that. Before knowing Adam, I watched their GDC talks and mentioned their studio in a post I wrote about a GMTK video essay . I like their approach to prototyping a lot but what I like most about Butterscotch Shenanigans is that they have that old-world #indieweb ethos of sharing what you know . They have a blog for detailing their process , a podcast, and offer open source tools for GameMaker on GitHub. If I ever pivoted to gamedev, I’d want to build a studio like theirs. A big inspiration for me. Anyways, that’s my review of How Many Dudes? If you like deck-building rougelikes or button mashing power fantasies, I think you’ll like this game. And here’s my Dude tier list in case you’re wondering…
Dave RupertTop Front-end Bloggersread at source
I wish you the best in the Offline
A handful of people I follow and know about have announced their recent departure. Not from a job (although plenty of that going around), but from social media, AI usage, or in more extreme cases the Internet entirely. In Goodbye, Forever, Probably , Salma announced her retirement from the internet. She makes a sound case for leaving DevRel, a demanding job with mushy metrics that struggles to find a home between product and marketing, because community building is neither of those. I could see why Salma wanted out of the metric chasing and the daily requirement to be a public face. Salma foreshadowed this move for awhile, there was a palpable discontent with the industry in her online voice. And she did it. She made the jump to the Offline and she’s been dark on the internet since her post. I haven’t talked to her personally, but I hear second-hand she’s making good on her word and laying low at a good company as an individual contributor. I wish her the best and that the detoxing process goes well. Then there’s Chad Whitacre who announced his retirement with a typewriter-written letter . His plan? Lay low and make a zine about religion. That seems like a charming project but I get so curious about people’s financial situations when they’re able to make such asymmetrical moves like that. He lives in a rural town near Pittsburgh, does selling $10 zines afford that lifestyle? What about healthcare? Does he have a trust fund? A recent inheritance? Bitcoin? Years of an early retirement strategy paying off? I shouldn’t ruin the anti-capitalistic vibe with such trivial capitalistic questions but I love it and my brain jumps to trying to make the math work for myself. Either way, I wish him the best in the Offline. Brett Codes shared his post I’m done using AI (and video ). It caused a stir on the algorithm. Based on followup videos, Brett seems happy with his decision which perhaps comes down to the fact that he’s a person who stands by his convictions –he’s a vegan, uses a dumb-phone, etc.– and I think he finds fulfillment in eschewing the social norms. But I admire his perspective as someone who used AI but ultimately decided to let it go. Betting your career against the thing (it seems) all companies are hyper-scaling towards is a big bet. Either you’re right and the world will always need people who know how software works, or you’re wrong and you’re left in the dust… or we’re all steam rolled by the errant contraption. Either way, I wish him the best unplugging from the machine. I know of other stories but because three is a magic number that people find harmony in, I’ll cap it here. There’s a sad irony when someone jettisons from social media, they’re gone from our Online worlds but I’m so happy for them. And I mourn what we don’t get to hear from them. We don’t get to hear about how wonderful they feel, how beautiful their skin is now, and how they restored their mental health. We don’t know if they make more money or less money. We don’t get further inspiration from them to leave the Online. But being able to observe the Offline from the Online might ruin the magic and mystery hidden there. It’s a door hidden in an old wardrobe that you have to pass through to fully understand. Anyways, should you leave us and follow those who have gone ahead, I wish you the best in the Offline. I hope to join you there soon.