Wander

@wanderbot

Actually Human. Indie Game Curator, Artist, & Essayist (He/Him) 🚫No AI

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Wander@wanderbot· 10d

What if Blue Prince, but it's a TTRPG dungeon crawl?

A TTRPG dungeon made out of modular tiles in the style of Blue Prince.

Wander@wanderbot· 14d

Loaded up Hellslave 2 for a video and immediately ran into a beautiful "No AI" symbol right on startup. Absolutely love to see it, and would love to see more developers follow suit. store.steampowered.com/app/3399900/...

Wander@wanderbot· 19d

A tale in two parts, told far too often for my tastes. I know they probably think nothing of the ethical, legal, and environmental concerns, so my reaction might seem mean... but at the same time I've put up "DON'T SEND ME AI GAMES" in as many places as possible and they just keep sending them.

A snippet from Gmail that pops up after blocking someone. "Move to spam" is about to be clicked.

Wander@wanderbot· 20d

Test print turned out shockingly well too! Some of the framing elements got cut off on the bottom + sides, but the actual content of the zine was unaffected, looks great, and is surprisingly legible for an 8pt font size.

Wander@wanderbot· Jul 17

Made this for my Appendix N Game Jam submission. Since the whole zine is limited to two sides of a single sheet of paper, I figured I'd also limit my illustrations to a very limited palette + a fixed line weight. The whole project was a lot of work, but it turned out better than I expected!

The cover illustration for a tri-fold Mothership adventure module, featuring a man partially frozen in ice crawling towards the viewer, his hand outstretched through the frame of the illustration. Above is the title "The Still of Touchstone Station" with a semicircular line linking three O's in the title.

Wander@wanderbot· Jul 10

Man YouTube Music's suggestion algorithms have gotten way dumber over the past year or two now that they're probably packing AI into its backend. I have been listening to a lot of The Megas recently, but this? This is just goofy.

Wander@wanderbot· Jul 9

After picking up Mothership during FreeRPG day, I decided to try my hand at making a small tri-fold adventure, and did a test print to check for bad cropping & make sure the text is legible. This is how it turned out. I could not have asked for a more perfect (cursed) outcome than this.

A fragment of my Mothership TTRPG tri-fold adventure test print. For some reason all of the text is garbled unicode nonsense layered over itself repeatedly. Low printer ink banding adds an extra layer of cursedness to the document.

A page from my Mothership TTRPG tri-fold adventure test print. For some reason all of the text is garbled unicode nonsense layered over itself repeatedly. Low printer ink banding adds an extra layer of cursedness to the document.

Wander@wanderbot· Jul 7

I just realized I've completely forgot to post about the boardgames I've been playing! This one's Metro Runner, which is 50% pick up & deliver contract fulfillment, 50% pipe dream hacking puzzles. I like it a lot more than I expected? There aren't many Cyberpunk games, and this one was fun.

A player board, character card, & completed contracts in Metro Runner.

Wander@wanderbot· Jun 28

Went to my local game store for Free RPG and picked up this small haul. I’d been dancing around whether or not to pick up the Mothership box for ages, but the temptation today was too strong. His Majesty the Worm was an unexpected find since it’s sold out online, so I snagged it instantly.

Wander@wanderbot· Jun 24

Have you had "the talk" with your significant other yet? #makeaterriblecomicday2026

A small comic with a small cartoon robot called Wander sitting amidst a massive jumble of implied boardgame boxes.

From off frame: "Do you think we have too many boardgames?"

Wander: "No."

Wander@wanderbot· Jun 23

Apparently the Pinball Maker Jersey Jack might be a maga chud though? Might be worth looking into.

Wander@wanderbot· Jun 18

I don't think it's unreasonable of me to assume, considering their numerous uses of "hand-crafted", "100% human-made", and "zero GenAI" that there should have been no expectation of a goddamn LLM built into the game. And that not disclosing it is dishonest if not outright deceptive. Right?

A snippet from an email saying: "The game is 100% human-made and features endless hours of content, a deep narrative in a post-apocalyptic world, and a one-of-a-kind text command mechanic that we’d love to share even more widely with the indie games community.

But first... we know that the unique text-based prompt/command mechanic might seem a little "iffy", especially when we read the word "prompt". I am happy to say that zero GenAI was used in the creation of this game and what you see was instead created through the work of their small team of engineers, artists, and storytellers. We mention this because sometimes people miss the AI disclaimer on the Steam page, and we think it's important to highlight it."

A follow-up email, stating: "Around 1:04 you mentioned the automatons and how they don’t use AI. In order to clear up any confusion, we’d like to make sure we provide some clarity:
The Command System sends your prompts through an LLM that is hosted across the developer’s own servers. It’s done this way so that the system can parse your instructions and understand what you’d like to do.

However, we want to reiterate that zero GenAI was used in the creation of anything related to art, visuals, dialogue, narrative, textures, models, etc. That’s still correct - only humans here!"

Wander@wanderbot· Jun 18

Well today sucked. I had a sponsor reach out for a video, write two whole paragraphs explaining how their game doesn't use GenAI and is 100% human-made. So I record a video complementing them for not using AI. Get back feedback: actually this game relies on an LLM on the dev's servers.

Wander@wanderbot· May 31

Grabbed this pile of boardgames from the swap day at my local game store. My collection is fairly filled out so I wasn’t expecting to find anything worthwhile, but I’m glad to be wrong.

A collection of boardgames, from the top left: Life in Reterra, Explorers of Navoria (with an expansion and giant mat), Metro Runner, Age of Galaxy, Pagan: Fate of Roanoak, Dark Souls: Thr Card Game, & Underwater Cities

Wander@wanderbot· May 20

Seriously, how the hell did this get past your filters? This is so comically racist that the mere fact that it made it onto Steam in the first place makes the company look terrible. Even the most basic automated system should have caught this. Let alone a human with eyes and a brain.

A Steam Mature Content Description

The developers describe the content like this:

In this game, you will be whipping black people to keep your farm productive, If you whip your black person too much, they will die

Wander@wanderbot· May 2

I looked away for one single day and came back to 8 extremely solid new releases + 4 incredible demos, plus a handful of other games that I haven't added to my library yet. For all that's bad in the industry, the indie hits just keep comin' and they show minimal sign of slowing down.

A screenshot of a 12 incredibly solid steam games launched in one 24-hour period, consisting of Die in the Dungeon 1.0, Rogue Voltage 1.0, Folder Dungeon Playtest, Terratech Legion, Forbidden Solitaire, Dungeon Clawler 1.0, Starseeker BETA, Heroes of Might and Magic Olden Era, Monster Crown: Sin Eater, Topdeck Automat Demo, Runeveil Demo, and Mini Tank Mayhem

Wander@wanderbot· Apr 28

If you pitched Sean Astin's family situation as a movie, it would get rejected for being unrealistically wholesome. In a world where a significant amount of actors' children & child actors have terrible lives, it's a bit mind-boggling that his turned out so well.

An excerpt from Sean Astin's wikipedia page on his early life & education:

Astin was born in Santa Monica, California, on February 25, 1971, the son of actress Patty Duke (1946–2016) and Michael Tell (1944/1945–2025).[4][5][6][7] At the time, it was incorrectly reported that entertainer Desi Arnaz Jr. was his biological father. Tell was a writer, music promoter, and publisher of the newspaper The Las Vegas Israelite. When Duke became pregnant, she was unsure whether Tell, Arnaz or actor John Astin was the father, and Tell offered to marry her as a way out of the scandal.[8] The marriage lasted only 13 days in 1970, ending before Astin was born.[9][10][11]

In 1972, Duke married John Astin. When the wedding guests were invited to speak, 18-month-old Astin looked at John and cried, "Daddy!", to which the Episcopal priest performing the ceremony remarked, "Well, that about does it!"[12] John subsequently adopted Sean. In 1973, Duke gave birth to Astin's half-brother Mackenzie Astin, who also became an actor. Duke and John Astin divorced in 1985.[13] Duke married Mike Pearce in 1986,[9] and they adopted a son, Kevin, in 1989.[13] When Astin was 14, Duke told him that Arnaz was his biological father. Almost a decade later, in 1994, Astin met Tell's niece, who suggested that Astin get a paternity test. Tell was found to be his biological father.[14] Astin developed close relationships with all three, saying: "Desi Arnaz Jr. loves me, and I love him." Astin considers John his father, as John raised him. Astin is also close to his stepfather, Mike Pearce, saying, "I can call any of them on the phone any time I want to. John, Desi, Mike, or Papa Mike ... my four dads."[9]

Wander@wanderbot· Apr 27

"100% USDA Prime Human" my ass. The only thing human about games made with GenAI are the bits of real people who were cannibalized to feed the models- and trying to pretend that it's anything else is revolting.

A Steam AI Generated Content Disclosure:

The core concepts, rules, and gameplay mechanics of The Bone Yard are entirely my own original creation. Because this is a solo passion project, I utilized generative AI as a development assistant to help bring my vision to life. AI tools were used to help brainstorm visual design elements, which I then curated and integrated into the game. I also used AI to assist with coding and text localization. The heart of the game, how it plays, how it feels, is 100% USDA Prime Human.

Wander@wanderbot· Apr 25

And after 25 years, I finally beat it. Machinedramon was a banger final boss and I feel kinda bad for pummeling him to death with cheapshot megaton punches. I'm still kinda shocked we haven't seen some indie games that try to recapture this game's magic. A DW1-style life sim would go hard IMO.

Wander@wanderbot· Apr 11

But hey, my microphones aren't working either! Well, they are, I can see the meters going up and down on the Rode- but nothing's reaching OBS so I can record. After a while of poking, I discover that Windows added audio enhancements. Disabling them re-enables my mic output. I'm so tired man.

A snippet of a Windows Microphone Settings, with Audio enchancements: Voice Clarity and Voice Focus: Automatic turned on by default. Turning them off solves some audio issues, and pushes back the inevitability of switching to Linux by at least another month.

Wander@wanderbot· Apr 11

Eventually I find out that the latest update for the Rodecaster Duo firmware added new audio filters, and enabled them all by default. As usual, there's zero explanation for what any of these things mean. Depth? *Sparkle*? Punch? No information at all. Turning them off fixes everything.

More Rodecaster UI. On the left is a basic dB meter and info telling the user to Select RODECaster Duo Main as the output device on your computer. On the right is "processing", with three greyed-out circles: Depth, Sparkle, and Punch. Below them is a circle next to the text Processing. If disabled, the noise demon haunting your music goes away. Probably.

Wander@wanderbot· Apr 11

I spent the better part of an hour tonight trying to figure out why the heck my audio was sounding like this. If you're unfamiliar with Citizen Sleeper 01: Density by Amos Roddy, the song does not normally sound like it's being played in a giant aluminum warehouse nor does it cut out constantly.

Wander@wanderbot· Apr 11

Mobile style UI and iconography for anything other than a phone's main/app screen should go die in a fire. I die a bit inside every time I have to do tech support for smart devices, because every one of them insists on having tons of icons with zero labels nor explanations anywhere.

The Audio Setup UI for the Rodecaster Duo. Despite being named "Audio Setup", this screen is primarily for dragging audio sources onto preset mixer tracks. To make things extra confusing, many of these icons are new with the current version of the software, don't seem to do anything, and aren't properly explained anywhere in the online tutorials, which are several years out of date.

The Device Configuration > Routing page for a Rodecaster Duo. Every single UI element is completely unlabeled, so you have to guess what icon means- mess up and suddenly you've got whatever you're listening to blaring out of every single speaker imaginable, with an uninterrupted stream from your microphone picking up your desperate clicks as you try to ascertain why turning on the bluetooth meter has summoned a noise demon in your PC and how to shut it off.

Wander@wanderbot· Apr 2

The sheer degree of gall I keep seeing in these Steam AI disclosures makes my head spin sometimes. Why would anyone want to buy an OST that's 100% AI Slop, just because the proceeds from its sales (just the soundtrack, not the game) will go to an unnamed charity?

A Steam AI Generated Content Disclosure

The developers describe how their game uses AI Generated Content like this:

GAME STUDIO will be donating 100% of proceeds from soundtrack sales to music-based charities, because although we paid suno.com for the "Pro Plan" to generate music for the game, we want to make sure money reaches actual musicians. As artists & musicians ourselves, we support paying artists and musicians at all levels.

Wander@wanderbot· Mar 26

For people in need of a new reaction image:

An injured Gabumon tied up on a crucifix from ep 38 of the 2021 Digimon Adventure 01 remake series.

Wander@wanderbot· Mar 23

I'm so sick of seeing AI disclaimers like this. The solution to not having the budget for voice acting isn't to use AI, it's to not have voice acting at all! Games don't need VO to be good! By jamming in slopvoices, you're not making your game better, you're making it worse and reprehensible!

A Steam AI Generated Content Disclosure

The developers describe how their game uses AI Generated Content like this:

AI-generated voiceovers for ingame characters. This is a indie no-budget production. Sorry :-'(

Wander@wanderbot· Mar 5

I made 3 AM Corned Beef Split Pea Stew, it smells so dang good. We made corned beef for reubens earlier today, and rather than throw out the dregs after removing the meat, I threw in split peas, carrots, celery, and potatoes, plus a tablespoon of bouillon, and kept it cooking.

Wander@wanderbot· Feb 27

Isn't that 1:1 the vault sideplot in the Fallout TV show? Where this one guy is so middle-manager-pilled that he wants to preserve/create a master race of managers... and ends up as a brain in an exceptionally stupid roomba?

Bud Askins from the Fallout TV show, reduced to a brain in a romba with a grabby claw.

Wander@wanderbot· Feb 26

So I started playing Digimon World 1 for fun + nostalgia and managed to get Metal Greymon as my first Ultimate. Dude was so tanky he cleared 80% of the game in the span of a few days, so I figured I should actually draw him. Blue Metal Greymon > Orange Metal Greymon, any day, every day.

A fake PS1 cover with an illustration of Metal Greymon roaring at the sky with a tiny, cheering Wanderbot standing on its back.

Wander@wanderbot· Feb 26

We picked up the Battletech Alpha Strike starter set to see how it plays and had a weirdly rough time with it. I had two big clonkers and completely steamrolled Chelle’s squad of four, largely because I kept rolling 9+ and she barely got higher than a 7. She was not happy.