Jagriff

@jagriff

Solo dev of open-world penguin puzzler Gentoo Rescue (steampowered.com/app/2830480/) Other interests: 1v1 AFPS, RTS, platform fighters, cs+math (PhD), ergo keyboards, PC hardware, baseball, piano, Esperanto, and cats

678 Siguiendo1982 Seguidores1563 Publicaciones

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¿Es tu perfil?Reclámalo y jagriff.dirty.social es tuyo.Reclamar perfil

Jagriff@jagriff· Jun 29

I did it! I've never had higher than a 4-bagger before, so 7 in a row was surreal.

My bowling high score of 229:

63, X, X, X, X, X, X, X, (7)-, 9/9

Jagriff@jagriff· Jun 26

Why 21%? The major patch last month included a super endgame challenge puzzle that is unlike the rest of the game. It connects each of the game's 21 worlds.

Gentoo Rescue hint menu, with hints 1 and 3 revealed. They read:

1: [Redacted] This puzzle is unlike the rest of the game and is not included in completion stats.
2:
3: Each world contains one such [redacted] for a total of 21 [redacted] corresponding to 21 worlds.
4:

Jagriff@jagriff· Jun 26

Here's a look at more refined versions in-game. Not sure this will actually happen, so the number of keyholes has no meaning for this test.

Screenshot of GR with 3 adjacent locks. From left-to-right, the locks have 3, 2, and 5 keyholes.

Jagriff@jagriff· Jun 26

Gentoo Rescue is 21% off for the Steam Summer Sale! store.steampowered.com/app/2830480/... I don't have anything else to say or share, so here's some random work in Blender...

Lock meshes: one with 1 keyhole, one with 2 keyholes, and so on, up to 6.

Jagriff@jagriff· Jun 25

I went bowling again to chase my first 200. I almost had my first clean game ever while missing the pocket almost every frame, so I was proud of my spares. Later I was hitting the pocket consistently, but missed 3 easy spares. Any of which would have given 200. Bowling is hard!

168, almost clean game with:

9-, 7/, X, 9/, 1/, 7/, 7/, 8/, 8/, 8/X

I beat this score multiple times tonight, but this game I was especially good with spares.

190, choke game on 3 different 1-pin spares.

X, 9-, X, X, 9-, 9-, 9/, X, X, X72

This was my highest score of the night and second highest ever. If I can continue to hit the pocket like this, then I'll have that 200 game very soon.

Jagriff@jagriff· Jun 22

I just set up a bot in the discord server that will share a screenshot of the level when prompted. For a game with 300+ levels, this is very nice! For example, typing "!show Hook" in chat will have the bot reply with this image of Accumulation.Herrings.Hook:

The puzzle Hook, which is in Herrings (which is in Accumulation) Gentoo Rescue.

Jagriff@jagriff· Jun 4

I bowled my best game ever tonight! I choked a couple of times and *almost* recovered in the 10th. I will get that 200 game one day...

Bowling score of 198 with the following frame by frame scores:

X, X, X, X, 9/, 8-, X, (8)1, 7-, XX8

Jagriff@jagriff· May 31

I updated the screenshots on the store page for this update. This new puzzle is easily in my top 3 overall. Try head solving it! This is a nice *knowledge* puzzle since players can stumble onto it fairly early, but will have no idea how to solve it until later. #ScreenshotSaturday #puzzlegame

The new puzzle Distant in Gentoo Rescue 1.2.

Jagriff@jagriff· May 22

Gentoo Rescue is now 1 year old! 🎉 I hate to do the announcement of an announcement thing, but *hint* Thinky Direct *nudge* is coming up 🐧 There's also a Steam announcement: store.steampowered.com/news/app/283... #puzzlegame #announcement #anniversary #indiegamedev

Gentoo Rescue key art with a poorly drawn birthday cake housing a single candle

Gentoo Rescue is an official participant of the upcoming Thinky Direct

Jagriff@jagriff· May 12

I just wrote 12 hints for one of my favorite puzzles that will be added to Gentoo Rescue in the next update. That's favorite overall, not just favorite among the new puzzles being added. That's the most hints for a single puzzle! And it's actually quite simple, despite requiring some ingenuity.

Hint menu in Gentoo Rescue showing unrevealed hints 8-12, indicating that this puzzle has 12 hints total.

Jagriff@jagriff· May 2

I finally reached Diamond in Rivals of Aether 2!

Jagriff@jagriff· Apr 26

Yay, a new review validates my design goals!🧵🧵🧵🐧 Despite winning "Best Challenging Game", GR is not meant to be *that* difficult - only as difficult as it needs to be to encourage discovery. It's certainly not easy, but I don't think it's anywhere close to the likes of MPD, B&N, SSR, or even BIY.

Quote from translated (from Simplified Chinese) Steam review:

"The game won the 2025 Thinky Awards - Best Challenging Game award, but the actual experience is not so difficult (compared to the Maxwell monster in the bundle), the focus is on the breadth of the rules. The game has a total of more than 90 rules, players need to find rules one by one in the process of puzzle solving, each level will only use up to a dozen rules, the level will not make it difficult, but on the small chessboard to inspire the player to discover the use of props or interactive laws. The difficulty curve is flat[...]"

Jagriff@jagriff· Apr 6

Custom biome editor is coming along nicely! #puzzlegame #UGC

Jagriff@jagriff· Apr 1

Penguins predominantly live in the southern hemisphere, so the camera in Gentoo Rescue is all wrong! The next update will fix this.

Jagriff@jagriff· Mar 25

Ice sliding in puzzle games is one of the most hated mechanics, and for very good reason. My game uses sliding as a base, but is more about other things. Many reviews are of the form "I usually hate ice sliding, but ..." It's 20% off for another 19 hours: store.steampowered.com/app/2830480/...

Several positive reviews of Gentoo Rescue that complain about their previous experiences with ice sliding puzzles.

Jagriff@jagriff· Mar 8

I can't believe my game is only 5 reviews away from 200, and moreover that it sits at "100% positive". The puzzle game community has been so supportive!

Steam page of Gentoo Rescue showing the capsule art, short description, and review info showing 18 recent reviews with 195 all-time.

Jagriff@jagriff· Feb 24

Here's the beginning of what will become a several thousand row localization spreadsheet. I'm surprised by so many tiny pieces of text lurking in the UI! It's nice being able to Google translate (in RED) placeholders for font and size estimates. There's a long road ahead, but so far so good.

Spreadsheet for Gentoo Rescue localization. Column A has a key string, Column B has the English text, and Column C has the Simplified Chinese text. Some cells in Column C are shaded red, which indicates they're placeholders using Google translate.

Jagriff@jagriff· Feb 18

I just had a very fun time solving the custom level *Teleports to Void* by GaryGoh884. It was very satisfying to work out the penultimate setup using paint. Here are the scribbles. (Bonus points to anyone that can tell me what the x in the 8+8x expression represents)

The starting state of *Teleports to Void*, but with a lot of red/green/blue lines with some numbers, algebraic expressions, and other markings.

Jagriff@jagriff· Feb 17

The finalists included Glowkeeper by @oolimry.bsky.social . Also Ooo, Spooky Express, and Lab Rat.

An image showing the 5 nominees: Ooo, Gentoo Rescue, Spooky Express, Glowkeeper, and Lab Rat.

Jagriff@jagriff· Feb 16

I'd really like this to be visible from a glance, if only for my own benefit in custom levelpacks with crazy structures. I take your point that adding a symbol to the lock draws disproportionally too much attention to this behavior. So I'm playing with a "partially raised lock" instead of a decal.

Gentoo Rescue world with 3 varying lock heights marking: unvisited, previously visited, and currently visited.

Jagriff@jagriff· Feb 16

Is there a better icon I could use? Right now I'm leaning towards a map pin icon, like this.

A red map marker pin icon, which is annulus (or ring) on top of a triangle with the point down.

Jagriff@jagriff· Feb 16

I have this white spiral in my game that represents "warp" menu, which is just a fast travel system that lets players easily go back to levels they've already seen. This includes completed levels and levels that the player has visited but not completed. Incomplete levels have the spiral on the lock.

Spiral icon, with text "Warp to visited sublevels"

Two locks, one with spiral and one without

Jagriff@jagriff· Feb 11

What a coincidence?! Me too!

Jagriff@jagriff· Feb 9

I swear every other reviewer mentions how they usually hate sliding puzzles. Although I understand why, since I also groan a bit when playing a custom levelpack and I find an "only" sliding puzzle.

Positive review for Gentoo Rescue that reads:

"I can't believe I paid money for ice sliding puzzles. Incredibly, impossibly, the devs took my least favorite puzzle mechanic and made an intense, excellent puzzle game. It's one of those puzzle games where you keep thinking you know all the rules, only for the game to bake your brain in some new and twisted way. Great, and maddeningly complex for a game with such simple basic rules. Thumbs up. "

Jagriff@jagriff· Feb 7

Patrick showed me this circle game. It's a fun way to burn a few minutes! neal.fun/perfect-circ... My high score:

Jagriff@jagriff· Feb 6

I'm honored to have Gentoo Rescue showcased next to such great and successful games by @blueprincegame.bsky.social and @potipoti.studio . But it also feels kinda like this 😂 #puzzlegame

Jagriff@jagriff· Feb 4

Gentoo Rescue won Best Challenging Game! 🎉Thank you so much for the support from the community and @thinkygames.com 🐧 A new patch just went live, and it's 20% off on Steam to celebrate: store.steampowered.com/app/2830480/...

Think Awards "Best Challenging Game" graphic with "Gentoo Rescue" key art.

Jagriff@jagriff· Feb 3

The Thinky Awards artwork has some nice detail. Can you spot the representation for each of the GOTY nominees? 0Player, Blue Prince, Gentoo Rescue, Lingo 2, LOK Digital, Ooo, Spooky Express, Strange Jigsaws, The Roottrees are Dead

The 3rd Annual Thinky Awards promotion image with the date "February 4, 2026" and a bunch of thinky creatures with representations from each game

Jagriff@jagriff· Jan 29

I want to give a special shoutout to this level *fishy* in the custom levelpack Breakout by JoWovrin. I might have to analyze this for part 3 of my puzzle design "series" on YouTube. #indiegamedev #puzzlegame

Gentoo Rescue custom level with 3 penguins, magnet, fish, mask, and hammer.

Jagriff@jagriff· Jan 20

TL;DW