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Shard / Halfwheel Games (DEADBEAT out on Steam!)

@mkfshard.bsky.social

1K followers 1K following 810 posts

Joseph Hartman (he/they) - Writer of upcoming fantasy novel Dragon Descent, and developer of soulslike RPG Deadbeat! https://linktr.ee/jahartman

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Shard / Halfwheel Games (DEADBEAT out on Steam!) @mkfshard.bsky.social · Jan 13

Welcome to the sea of noise.

Welcome to the Hereafter.

DEADBEAT, the AFTERLIFE SOULSLIKE, is OUT, RIGHT NOW!!!

GET IT ON STEAM: store.steampowered.com/app/2067430/...

#gamedev

#indiegames

#indiegamedev

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Shard / Halfwheel Games (DEADBEAT out on Steam!) @mkfshard.bsky.social · 18h

I think it should remain

Shard / Halfwheel Games (DEADBEAT out on Steam!) @mkfshard.bsky.social · 1d

I would go to one of those star-gifting companies and buy every single visible star in the sky.

Shard / Halfwheel Games (DEADBEAT out on Steam!) @mkfshard.bsky.social · 1d

I am glad that Discord is at least progressively adding forum features...

Reposted by Shard / Halfwheel Games (DEADBEAT out on Steam!)

Russ @russmedia.bsky.social · 2d

very scary quote from a proponent of three-cueing: "The purpose is not to learn words...the purpose is to make sense." That idea prioritizes looking like you understand versus actually understanding. It's the same idea behind corporate buzzwords. This is teaching children buzzwords, not English.

doctober @docseuss.bsky.social · 2d

remember that article that explained why this was happening?

www.apmreports.org/episode/2019...

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Shard / Halfwheel Games (DEADBEAT out on Steam!) @mkfshard.bsky.social · 2d

Genuinely, what is the point of people like this? What is their vision of the future?

Why would anyone go through all the effort of breaking free of the boxes imposed on them by society, just to build a new set of boxes?

Reposted by Shard / Halfwheel Games (DEADBEAT out on Steam!)

Blue Heron Farm @blueheronfarm.bsky.social · 3d

Happy Indigenous People's Day

BOOOOlioraptor, PhD (spooky version) @biblioraptorphd.bsky.social · 3d

Janet saying: Fun fact: Columbus is in the Bad Place
because of all the raping, slave trade, and genocide.

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Shard / Halfwheel Games (DEADBEAT out on Steam!) @mkfshard.bsky.social · 3d

#gamedev #indiegame

In the Lost Places of the world, it's advisable to scout ahead when you think you may not be alone.

(More progress on Endless Descent! Working on basic gameplay loop before I get lost in the fun weeds of fleshing it all out.)

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Reposted by Shard / Halfwheel Games (DEADBEAT out on Steam!)

💀 SkeletAnn Lemay 💀 @annlemay.bsky.social · 3d

To every young or aspiring dev out there, look, some free advice. (Older devs, you know better. 💀)

For any game you are going to work on that has any GLIMMER of possible localization. Or editing. Or anything involving writing really...

DO NOT HARD-CODE THE VO/NON-VO/UI TEXT STRINGS.

💀 SkeletAnn Lemay 💀 @annlemay.bsky.social · 3d

"Hard coded text strings."

(My villain origin story.)

🏰meg⚔️ @Birthright Audiobook! @impavid.us · 6d

In honor of spooky month, share a 4 word horror story that only someone in your profession would understand

I'll go first: Six page commercial lease.

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Reposted by Shard / Halfwheel Games (DEADBEAT out on Steam!)

Jeff VanderMeer @jeffvandermeer.bsky.social · 4d

This heartfelt and meaningful statement by Portland resident and author Cristina Breshears on another social media platform bears reposting here. I don't think the intent is to idealize Portland but to remind all of us what is important and why. (Posted here with permission.)

For nine nights now, the steady thrum of Black Hawk helicopters has circled over Portland. The sound is constant, invasive; a low mechanical beating above our homes. It’s expensive. It’s intimidating. And it’s unnecessary.

Our protests have been largely peaceful. There is no insurrection here. Yet this federalized military presence makes us feel like we are living in a war zone (the very kind of chaos this administration claims to be protecting us from).

The irony is painful: it is only this occupation that makes Portland feel unsafe.

Each hour of helicopter flight costs taxpayers between $2,000 and $4,000, depending on crew, fuel, and maintenance. Multiply that by multiple aircraft over multiple nights, and you’re looking at hundreds of thousands (if not millions) of dollars burned into the sky.

Meanwhile, the Woodstock Food Pantry at All Saints Episcopal Church — which feeds working families, elders, and people with disabilities — has seen its federal funding slashed by 75%. How can we justify pouring public money into intimidation while cutting aid to those who simply need to eat?

This is waste, fraud, and abuse in plain sight:
* Waste of public resources on military theatrics.
* Fraud in the name of “public safety.”
* Abuse of the communities that federal agencies claim to protect.

Portland is a Sanctuary City. A sanctuary city is not a fortress. It’s a promise — a living vow that a community will protect the dignity and safety of everyone who calls it home. It means that local governments and ordinary people alike will refuse to criminalize survival. That schools, clinics, churches, and shelters will remain safe spaces no matter who you are or where you were born. But the term reaches far beyond policy. It’s an ethic of belonging; a refusal to criminalize need, difference, or desperation.

Sanctuary isn’t weakness. It’s courage. It takes moral strength to meet suffering with care instead of punishment, to believe that our neighbors’ safety is bound up in our own, to insist that safety is not achieved through force but through community, inclusion, and trust. It is living Matthew 25:40 out loud and in deed. It is an act of moral imagination and moral defiance. To hold sanctuary is to say: you belong here.

When we hold space for the most vulnerable — refugees, the unhoused, the undocumented, the disabled, the working poor, the displaced — we become something larger than a collection of individuals. We become a moral body. We do more than offer charity. We offer witness. We declare that the measure of a nation is found not in its towers or tanks, but in its tenderness.

Sanctuary cities are not lawless; they are soulful. They represent the conscience of the nation, a place where the laws of empathy still apply. To make sanctuary is to affirm that the United States is not merely a geographic territory, but a moral experiment: a republic that must constantly choose between fear and compassion, between domination and democracy.

A nation’s soul is measured not by the might of its military, but by the mercy of its people. When helicopters circle our skies in the name of order, while food pantries struggle to feed the hungry, we are forced to ask: What are we defending, and from whom? The soul of a nation survives only when we make sanctuary for one another. Not through walls or weapons, but through compassion and collective will. If we allow intimidation to replace compassion, we will have traded our conscience for control.

Please know that despite the hum of war machines overhead, the conscience of our city — whimsical, creative, stubbornly kind — can still be heard.

Portland is not the problem. Portland is the reminder. A reminder that a city can still choose to be sanctuary. That a people can still choose to be human.

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Shard / Halfwheel Games (DEADBEAT out on Steam!) @mkfshard.bsky.social · 4d

Cue the arrival of one such higher power, in the guise of a normal person. They have supernatural powers in this world, including the power to heal people by touching them, and eventually saves the day by sacrificing himself to defeat a great evil and ascending back to the world he came from...

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Shard / Halfwheel Games (DEADBEAT out on Steam!) @mkfshard.bsky.social · 4d

Well, without the framing device...

It's about a comically Evil authority oppressing a populace for their explicitly religious beliefs and trying to falsely assert the higher power they believe in doesn't exist.

The ones that refuse to renounce their beliefs are forced into gladiatorial combat.

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Reposted by Shard / Halfwheel Games (DEADBEAT out on Steam!)

Gillian Brockell @gbrockell.bsky.social · 5d

Hard to find a more obvious example of the journalism adage “If someone says it’s raining outside and someone else says it isn’t, your job is not to quote them both, your job is to go outside.”

David Corn @davidcorn.bsky.social · 5d

A classic case of irresponsible both-sidesism from the NYT. The story is that Trump and MAGA propagandists are lying about Portland to incite a conflict, not that there are different views of the matter.

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Shard / Halfwheel Games (DEADBEAT out on Steam!) @mkfshard.bsky.social · 5d

I think there can be a distinction between accessibility that accommodates the requirements of anyone who wants to engage with something, and the sort of accessibility that shaves away perceived inconveniences and absolves you of having to learn anything to function in a space.

Shard / Halfwheel Games (DEADBEAT out on Steam!) @mkfshard.bsky.social · 5d

Something I think about how the internet has become way more accessible, and how that's a good thing.

But I also think about the volume of extremely stupid people out there who refuse to grow or educate themselves. And how an internet that was a smidgen harder to navigate might've kept them off it.

Reposted by Shard / Halfwheel Games (DEADBEAT out on Steam!)

strigix @sovereignbeast.bsky.social · 19d

It's pretty wild to me that investigators have uncovered that anti-trans campaigns are largely funded by the fossil fuel industry, and that the presumed motivations are pretty directly to redirect the public conversation away from climate change... and that this isn't bigger news.

Brooke @brooklynmarie.bsky.social · 20d

Fossil fuel billionaires are bankrolling the anti-trans movement

An investigation shared exclusively with Atmos and HEATED finds that 80% of anti-trans organizations receive fossil fuel funding.

heated.world

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Shard / Halfwheel Games (DEADBEAT out on Steam!) @mkfshard.bsky.social · 5d

I always thought the first TRON was a thinly veiled christian persecution fantasy :y

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Shard / Halfwheel Games (DEADBEAT out on Steam!) @mkfshard.bsky.social · 7d

…romance narc[TRAIN NOISE]…romance narc[TRAIN NOISE]…romance narc[TRAIN NOISE]…

Shard / Halfwheel Games (DEADBEAT out on Steam!) @mkfshard.bsky.social · 7d

One more looming crisis that we can all see coming, obviously and with a clear solution, that the people with the capacity to enact said solution will completely ignore and then act flabbergasted when it arrives.

Reposted by Shard / Halfwheel Games (DEADBEAT out on Steam!)

Keith W. Dickinson @keithwdickinson.bsky.social · 8d

Today is a day when arts degrees are worthless, but the product of those degrees is so valuable it would kill an entire industry if they were made to pay for it.

The Verge @theverge.com · May 26

Nick Clegg says asking artists for use permission would ‘kill’ the AI industry

Paul McCartne, Elton John and others signed an open letter.

buff.ly

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Shard / Halfwheel Games (DEADBEAT out on Steam!) @mkfshard.bsky.social · 8d

Longing for quality YTP but unable to name it, these young digital castaways scrawl crude imitations on their cave walls. They struggle to produce grim laughter as, deep within, they know something is terribly absent in their souls...

In their souuos.

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Shard / Halfwheel Games (DEADBEAT out on Steam!) @mkfshard.bsky.social · 8d

Why the hell can’t people in charge of a website be decent for once?

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Reposted by Shard / Halfwheel Games (DEADBEAT out on Steam!)

André Cardoso @andremc.bsky.social · 9d

Recently had the opportunity to build 3 demos to demonstrate the power of game feel!

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Shard / Halfwheel Games (DEADBEAT out on Steam!) @mkfshard.bsky.social · 9d

From what I've been forced to know about this numbskull and his AI, they'd be more likely to tweak it cause it isn't grinding out *enough* racist garbage.

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Reposted by Shard / Halfwheel Games (DEADBEAT out on Steam!)

ENTRY-LVL @entrylvldev.bsky.social · 9d

Our Indie Zone Showcase is live! October's featured title: Blanksword by the amazing team at @blanksword.bsky.social! ⚔️🤍

Take on the role of BLANK, a fallen Angel with no memories, and rebuild your brain from scratch in this story-rich, turn-based roguelike #indiegame!

🔗 Indie Zone Showcase

Blanksword ⚔️ Kickstarter live NOW!! @blanksword.bsky.social · 28d

⚔️TIME ⚔️ TO ⚔️ RECLAIM ⚔️ YOUR ⚔️ BRAIN⚔️

Blanksword's Steam Demo & Kickstarter Campaign just launched as of RIGHT NOW!

Play the Demo on Steam: store.steampowered.com/app/3484670/...

Preorder the game on Kickstarter: www.kickstarter.com/projects/283...

Join the Discord: discord.gg/ftmCfsupyv

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Shard / Halfwheel Games (DEADBEAT out on Steam!) @mkfshard.bsky.social · 9d

This one! :D It's nostalgic, back from the time when the main way I could play music was to play the sound test from my GBA or DS :y

Lunar Knights Music - New Culiacan

YouTube video by MSX