May ended roughly a week ago and it was a great month: a new game, yet another update to my setup and a successful video launch, let’s get into it.
We made a game, go try it!
First off, the reason why this update is a bit late is that I wanted to wait for the game jam I joined in may to end. We teamed up with Tibo and Pierre to join the thatgamecompany × COREBLAZER GAME JAM 2025. The theme was “Generosity” and we decided to go for a bird simulation where you have to take care of yourself and your peers before the migration.
What’s cool is that you can try the game right now here! https://gtibo.itch.io/bird-society
It was the first time I participated to a game jam in a team and it was really interesting and informative. It’s a bit tiring to be a solo game dev because you rarely talk about your work with anyone, and few people talk to you about your field. This game jam was great to learn how other people work, to share ideas, etc.
I had a great time but 3 weeks was a bit too long for my liking, it’s a bit hard to dedicate as much time to a project that’ll just be released for free, when it’s so tricky to even make a living as an indie game dev. That’s one of the reason why I don’t do a lot of game jams anymore, the other one being that it feels like it reproduces the crunch culture.
Anyways, I was glad to meet Pierre and be able to work alongside him and Tibo, I think we made a nice little game that we can be proud of.
Updates to my setup:
1) A cheap macro pad
I bought a little NumPad and made a python script to do whatever I want with the buttons. I started using it to have access to usual keyboard shortcuts I need in when using my graphics tablet without breaking my shoulder.
But things escalated quickly because I started creating different modes, for instance, a mode for editing videos in Kdenlive.
Then, I found a way to also use it as a normal numpad easily. It was quite easy to make one of those modes be “just be a numpad”. What’s cool is that I was now able to use a smaller keyboard since I didn’t need the numpad part anymore! You can see how much space it frees for my mouse!
I love this little thing and it was only 13€. The only downside is that it’s too customizable so I have to stop myself from tweaking it all the time!
2) A tablet?
Yes, I bought myself a tablet, a Tab S6 Lite. I never thought I would buy a tablet, but I want to draw more digitally and drawing at my desk is not fun. I found this one second hand at 130€, and it comes with a stylus. I spent a lot of time setting it up without any of the google or samsung online services. I mainly use it with krita and it’s a really great experience.
I think I’m going to create a dedicated account on mastodon and on bluesky to share my art progress, I’ll let you know 🙂
The NorthernLion react was a success
Last month I published my react to Northernlion’s let’s play of my game and it was a success, it got 60k views, 3k likes and some people subscribed to my channel. A lot of people in the comment asked for me to also react to Northernlion’s second video so I did it, but I still have to edit the video, I did not have much time to do it with the gamejam. You can expect to see that video pretty soon on my channel.
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That’s it for my work for this month! I also started, and finished the game Outer Wilds. At the time of its release, I heard about how good it was and I was a bit suspicious, but no, now that I tried it, it’s true, it’s a masterpiece.
June already started but I’ll try to make the most out of the remaining days, see you for the next update!