Brenden
@brendengibbons
Senior Game & Narrative Designer (Lucky Punk, Oddsparks: An Automation Adventure, Say No! More, Minute of Islands, Last Day of June, etc) - He/Him - Avatar by Viv Schwarz Portfolio: brendengibbons.me
All you nerds and game devs coming to gamescom, to my turf?? 👋 Hiii. If you need some recs from a local, ask away.
Hi! I'm the designer of @greenparrotgames.bsky.social and we're working on Lucky Punk, and we specifically call it out on our Steam Page that we are anti gen-AI. store.steampowered.com/app/4508290/...
Insane UX at this old train ticket machine in Strasbourg that confused almost everyone who went up to it. With this kind of iPod-ass controls, it must be, what, 20 years old?
At Guadalindie, an indie game fair in Malaga! There's indie games, a little artist's alley, and talks (including @itsquinns.bsky.social)
In 2019, I was asked to write my advice for people, especially fellow people of colour, who are interested in games as a career. Here it is. My opinion has never changed. I always reply to any student cold-contacting me, I've mentored a bunch of times. We do this together and help each other.
We're making a /punky game/. Using AI on something that claims to be punk would be like... oh, I don't know, having sex with a condom on and then stealing a baby from the hospital to parade it as yours. store.steampowered.com/app/4508290/...
On my way to A MAZE! I'll be showing off Lucky Punk on the Open Screens, Thursday 14:00-17:00. Let's hang! amazeberlin2026.sched.com/event/2N9v0/...
Reading online about someone who uses AI to generate bad ideas so they can work from there to solve their game design problems and I'm like... buddy. I don't need a machine that turns energy into bad ideas. I'm a human:
Anyway, my mood is this. The Asylum Demon was German Paperwork, and I'm about to be carried by the giant crow into pre-production, and blighttown is the steam forums.
Quick announcement! 🎉I'm co-founding an indie studio!🎉 Say Hi to Green Parrot Games. I'll be working with Tom Bockhorn and @laburrini.bsky.social , and supported by @thomasroessig.bsky.social & everyone else at Fourth Moon Games. Please enjoy this not-at-all-cheesy album cover, I mean team photo.
Also I guess I will now be Posting?? since I have to start using social media again to talk about things. Anyway, I now have proof that InnuendoStudios Ian Danskin played Say No! More, and it helped him say No, which I'm very glad of. Marius & I wrote some real evergreen advice for the game, tbh.
Hi! I'm Brenden Gibbons, a queer British-Indonesian and this is #WhatAGameDevLooksLike. I've been in this industry for 10+ years as a game and narrative designer, which just means that I'm always deep in flowcharts and spreadsheets. I'm busy working on something that I'll announce in a few days~
Oddsparks 1.0 is out on PS5 & Xbox Series! 🥳 🟢 www.xbox.com/en-US/games/... 🟦 store.playstation.com/en-us/produc... and it'll be out on PC at May 27th, 7pm Central European Summer Time! ⬛ store.steampowered.com/app/1817800/...
We've worked hard on making the genre approachable and accessible without dumbing it down. Like, we spent a lot of time making our Logic tools understandable, and we see folks talking about using it with their kids! Use our game to teach yourself or your kids how an OR gate works!
We love this subgenre and we wanted to crack it open for people. Stardew Valley can be calm and cozy AND get people to pull open a spreadsheet to rush year 1 community center. We wanted to toe the same line and from the reviews, I think we did pretty well, especially since a few has 500+ hours!
The World Ends With You on the DS also made great use of unusual hardware. It was a fantastic JRPG that asked you to juggle two fights with different controls. The writing was a bit cheesy but I loved the combat system and its thematic focus on self-expression throughout the story and mechanics.
I love games with weird hardware and interactions. Boktai: The Sun is in Your Hand is a GBA game where you're a vampire hunter and the cartridge has a solar sensor and you being in the sun powers up your solar gun. It was SO COOL.
I like Roguelikes but folks nowadays think that means Hades. Hades is great, but I mean Berlin-Interpretation, Was-Once-Only-Available-In-ASCII, "games like Rogue" roguelikes such as Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup for opaque, turn-based nonsense. Yes, I am planning to pick up Caves of Qud 1.0.
I play a lot on my phone, and atm it's Balatro but everyone knows about Balatro. Slice & Dice is a dice-based roguelike where every character and enemy has a dice with all their abilities. The way that this game explores the depths of its own systems to absurd endings is incredible. It feels great.
Oxygen Not Included is a base building game where you task little guys into making an asteroid into a comfy home. It tickles my brain the right way and gives me lots of "aah!" moments with its interlocking systems, and then everyone dies due to overheating. Or germs. Or starvation. Rip little guys.
Jet Set Radio was pretty formative for me. The amazing OST, the cel shaded style, the world and story felt like a holistic vision that showed what videogames could be. The controls are now dated though. I haven't tried it yet, but I hear Bomb Rush Cyberpunk delivered on being a modern JSR.
Final Profit: A Shop RPG is a really interesting exploration of the non-combat parts of JRPGs. You dethroned yourself from being queen to run shops and climb up the corporate ladder to destroy capitalism from the inside. It's made with love and care, with a lot of depth. Try the demo!
Writing good teen dialogue is difficult. You have to flip between awkward anxiety and earnest exuberance, toe that line where nothing and everything matters. Butterfly Soup knocks it out of the park. It's sweet, silly, queer, and can be played in an afternoon.