Nextlevelbanana @ home

@nextlevelbanana

indie dev | PIGSquad org team | currently building a park ranger sim in Godot 🌱 nextlevelbanana.itch.io nextlevelbanana.live

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Nextlevelbanana @ home@nextlevelbanana· 4d

Having a garage sale and game store pop-up this weekend! Swing by and help me pay off my new tooth!

Photo of a computer game set up next to a little grid wall of stickers

Nextlevelbanana @ home@nextlevelbanana· 17d

Me: ok, really gotta lock in and be frugal for awhile until I pay off this surgery Craigslist:

Screenshot of a Craigslist ad for "vintage 1980's Pepsi Neon Sign - Excellent Condition" and a photo of the lit up vintage Pepsi sign

Nextlevelbanana @ home@nextlevelbanana· Jun 13

VGMF is pretty chill so far

A selfie achieved by taking a picture of a CRT displaying the Game Boy Camera

Nextlevelbanana @ home@nextlevelbanana· May 31

Alt control stage is back today, come on through!

Me standing behind and pointing at my game setup

Nextlevelbanana @ home@nextlevelbanana· May 30

Too busy to post but come by the stage and play my game!

Nextlevelbanana @ home@nextlevelbanana· May 26

PIGCON build complete and I'm SO stoked with how it turned out

Nextlevelbanana @ home@nextlevelbanana· May 25

I wrote up how I got Godot to control LEDs in one of my alt control games. Is a hack? Probably! Is it easy? Sort of! nextlevelbanana.com/blog/reactiv...

A photo of a glowing green orb on a table. Part of the big button controller from the game Guess Hue can be seen in the background.

Nextlevelbanana @ home@nextlevelbanana· May 24

The tutorials available for alt control

Nextlevelbanana @ home@nextlevelbanana· May 17

Mainframe online (Notice it's not a cardboard box anymore. Also don't notice the computer, because it's ✨ inside the enclosure ✨)

A photo of a black box sitting in front of a monitor. The box has a row of 5 LEDs and under them a row of toggle switches. A glowing white metal push button is centered underneath. On the front face there's a smaller, red metal push button. A binder next to it is labeled NLB/9 terminal interface manual. The monitor is cyan text on a black screen, showing menu options.

Nextlevelbanana @ home@nextlevelbanana· May 13

Today I realized you can just put jump rings through pin backs and convert a pin into a pendant

A selfie showing off a King of All Cosmos pin being worn as a necklace

Nextlevelbanana @ home@nextlevelbanana· Apr 25

Upgrading my terminal interface for PIGCON. Aka, adding a billion LEDs. (Hopefully it won't be living in a cardboard box for much longer either! But one thing at a time)

A back box with five toggle switches. Above each switch is an LED, growing green/white/blue/white/green. Below the toggles is a metal button with a glowing ring around it labeled SEND

Nextlevelbanana @ home@nextlevelbanana· Apr 20

My new alt control game, Nuclear Logistics Bureau's Typing Challenge, is coming to PIGCON! Come on by and flip some switches (and please try to avoid ending civilization). tickets: pigcon.pigsquad.com

Screenshot of the top of a document labelled NLB/9 Char Map. It shows 2 columns of letters with the five-toggle configurations. All down is A. Down Down Down Down Up is B. Down Down Down Up Down is C, etc.

Nextlevelbanana @ home@nextlevelbanana· Mar 19

I know no one will be half as excited about this mirror as me, but I'm posting it anyway. I found a mirror for my dining room.

Nextlevelbanana @ home@nextlevelbanana· Mar 9

Come play my typing game!

A photo of the game's login screen on a tv monitor. In front of it, on two colorful little tables, are the controller, a black box with five toggle switches, and a black binder labeled NLB/9 terminal interface manual

Nextlevelbanana @ home@nextlevelbanana· Mar 2

I made an alt-control typing game! Toggle 5 switches to talk to an old mainframe 1 character at a time. Also playable with a normal keyboard if you don't have an NLB/9 terminal at home. Be sure to download the PDF, you'll be lost without it. nextlevelbanana.itch.io/nuclear-logi...

Nextlevelbanana @ home@nextlevelbanana· Feb 27

Making sure all the paths lead somewhere. My jam game has seven endings

A sketchbook page showing a messy map of numbered nodes. Some paths are highlighted in different colors. Terminal nodes are colored in.

Nextlevelbanana @ home@nextlevelbanana· Feb 23

I'm writing my jam game as a web game, using HTML/CSS/JS (React). I can't get over how effective this super lazy "CRT effect" is. background: var(--black); text-shadow: -2px 0px 2px var(--pink), 2px 0px 2px var(--darker-cyan); color: var(--cyan); That's it!

A screenshot of ASCII art spelling out in large letters "NLB/9", followed by the text "Next level business machine rev 9. Login? (y)" and a cursor prompt. The letters are cyan on a black background, slightly blurry/fuzzy due to the pink shadow on one side and the blue shadow on the other side.

Nextlevelbanana @ home@nextlevelbanana· Feb 16

I am also doing a solo jam project this week because I had this idea and now I have to see it through. Made this controller yesterday. You use it to "type", one character at a time.

A diagram labeled NLB/9 char map, with a series of diagrams showing the toggle positions for each letter of the alphabet. All down is A. All down but last up is B. DDDUD is C. Etc.

Nextlevelbanana @ home@nextlevelbanana· Feb 14

It totally works. Not as a keyboard though. I removed its brain. It is now only a tilt controller d pad. I'll glue the 2 back on later, probably

Inside of keyboard, showing a mat with the numpad section cut off and replaced by an Adafruit Circuit Playground.

Front view of num pad. The two key has been removed and a piece of the new board is sticking up through the hole. That's where you would plug in a battery iirc

Nextlevelbanana @ home@nextlevelbanana· Feb 14

The Build Your Own Game Jam has started and I just got the dumbest idea for our controller. Gonna try to shove an accelerometer into a keyboard, let's see if it works

Photo of sacrificial keyboard. It's cheap and already missing a key

Nextlevelbanana @ home@nextlevelbanana· Feb 2

New devlog up on my Patreon: crafting a crafting system www.patreon.com/posts/149534... (I'm making a farming sim! It's called Repairia!)

Nextlevelbanana @ home@nextlevelbanana· Jan 13

Now THIS is a power glove. #rhythmgames

Photo of a hand in a white cotton glove, which is worn to play rhythm games at the arcade

Nextlevelbanana @ home@nextlevelbanana· Jan 9

oh hey, shout out to the event photographers for capturing me in my natural habitat (the rhythm arcade)

Photo of me playing the Groove Coaster machine

Nextlevelbanana @ home@nextlevelbanana· Jan 9

#agdq2026

I should buy a boat meme, with text "I should buy a maimai dx cabinet"

Nextlevelbanana @ home@nextlevelbanana· Jan 6

Let's goooooo (to bed because I only got three hours of sleep before my flight)

Nextlevelbanana @ home@nextlevelbanana· Jan 3

The GDQ break channel that @marlowedobbe.com and I made for a jam just got merged! If you're watching #AGDQ this week, keep an eye out for it. I think it turned out really fun. Donations reduce the HP of the foe, and when defeated, a new one spawns. So stoked to see it in action!

Screenshot of the break channel. Styled like a retro RPG, the GDQ character Velocity is on the left with sword and shield, facing off against Softlock, a cloud creature shaped like a lock. A text box in the middle says "Chat donated for 195!"

Nextlevelbanana @ home@nextlevelbanana· Jan 1

Day job: * Made a virtual pet for my hackathon project and put it in production * FINALLY got promoted to senior engineer * Survived absolute organizational chaos while dramatically increasing our NPS score * FINALLY shipped a big shiny feature users have begged for since 2021 * Got laid off 🙃

Coworkers playing my MAGFest game during our annual in-person week

Nextlevelbanana @ home@nextlevelbanana· Jan 1

Travel: * Visited National Harbor, Phoenix, Dallas, Seattle, Maui, Bahamas, Dominican Republic * Flew private for the first and likely only time * Spent the night on the train (while trying and failing to go to GDC) * Went camping exactly once, didn't get ticks, breathed a sigh of relief

View from the interior of the private flight (not a jet. definitely not a jet), featuring me and 2 former coworkers

Nextlevelbanana @ home@nextlevelbanana· Jan 1

Some bucket-list-worthy 2025 highlights (🧵) Game Dev: * Showed a game at MAGFest * Showed a game at Portland Retro Gaming Expo * Gave a talk about alt control * Fulfilled a Kickstarter * Built a custom arcade cabinet * Rented an actual office for coworking with gamedev pals

Nextlevelbanana @ home@nextlevelbanana· Dec 17

I like yule log videos, but every year the options get more and more drowned out by AI slop. The good internet does still exist though: Today I found a whole channel of Norwegian campfires. www.youtube.com/@NorwegianFi...