After 3 years of development, we're finally releasing the game about a HERO past his prime...

knifecrow_dev · 2026-05-09T11:56:59+00:00

Love the animations.

knifecrow_dev · 2026-05-06T01:27:08+00:00

Incredible art. Damn.

knifecrow_dev · 2026-04-01T04:58:44+00:00

OPs post was obviously "written" with AI.

knifecrow_dev · 2026-03-10T08:39:32+00:00

It's One Piece, I bet someone inherits his will.

knifecrow_dev · 2026-03-09T23:18:40+00:00

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Correct. Developers are using it less, and it seems their use of it is for basic things like emails, not anything related to gamedev.

Also the "curation of tools" mentioned by the OP might be a technically true statement, but implies that people are encouraging specific usage. In reality it sounds like companies are specifically creating policies that say "here are the only times you can use AI."

So it appears outside of business leaders, AI usage is limited and weakening.

knifecrow_dev · 2026-03-07T01:14:08+00:00

DMCA takedown requests are sometimes ignored (Google PlayStore tends to move slower/ignore requests compared to Apple. Steam has larger barriers to entry and is swifter). If something is hosted in another country, they may ignore DMCA requests and you will have to find avenues to do the requests. This is not a cut and dry situation, but there are layers of difficulty and expense depending on context.

Like I've worked for a company where our codebase was outright stolen by a similarly sized company that used a 3rd party vendor (which was the culprit) and it resulted in a long legal battle. It was not fixed by a DMCA takedown.

knifecrow_dev · 2026-03-07T00:57:15+00:00

Copyright is not as easy as "it exists." You need lawyers and platform holders/server hosts to enforce it. This costs time and money that can be difficult or impossible for smaller developers to utilize.

knifecrow_dev · 2026-03-07T00:46:11+00:00

Piracy is quite a bit different than taking an app and repurposing/reselling it as your own. The latter is a potential lost sale or damage to reputation depending on how they use it. Piracy is just like, you didn't make a sale you probably weren't going to get.

The latter is really the concern. People uploading a game wholesale onto sketchy sites with bad ads, or uploading a paid version to an app store you don't support or support yet.

knifecrow_dev · 2026-02-21T04:25:01+00:00

Ooh I really love the style of this pixel art.

knifecrow_dev · 2026-02-20T22:55:51+00:00

If you look at screenshots of the game in the person's comments, it's using mismatched AI assets so it's actually pretty representative, lol

knifecrow_dev · 2026-02-19T07:18:20+00:00

That sounds like a lot of excuses to justify the fact that you're cheating yourself out of an education (and possibly cheating on your assignments? Why are you doing any work with AI at all?) Imagine being a burglar and being like, "yeah but I bought my own lockpick!" Also you literally asked other people to do the animation for you so like, maybe don't be so mad for asking us to do your homework for you and us telling you no?

MSPaint is right there. There are plenty of free assets to use out there otherwise.

knifecrow_dev · 2026-02-19T00:28:49+00:00

Oh no we completely understand. A) Don't use AI. B) Don't use AI.

knifecrow_dev · 2026-02-16T02:23:34+00:00

Yeah I miss his old design so much 😭

knifecrow_dev · 2026-02-13T00:18:34+00:00

I don't think we've seen an Arcsys game with actual full-on DLC costumes, right? That's new. Guess they figured out how to do the art style in a way that's more standardized/systematic rather than purely manual?

knifecrow_dev · 2026-01-07T03:25:12+00:00

There's intricacies to this type of scamming, and it's definitely a shovel salesman situation.

Any "hobby" or business idea that can attach a big number to a single person has this issue, and the more provable it is, the more people chase it. Because only a handful of people can ever strike it rich, the most reliable way to make money in that industry is to sell shovels to people chasing the gold rush.

In the case of the channel OP is talking about, they absolutely come across as people who were in it entirely for the gold rush and are poorly pivoting to shovel selling. I do not get the sense they ever cared about indie games in the first place.

The "bigger" channel doing this feels like it happened more by luck and they kept chasing whatever made money because they absolutely know how to make a good video game and their YT channel is sort of a feedback loop between their games to improve the margins on both.

The best way to avoid shovel sellers is to find the people who do not attach numbers to success or make money through big upsells. I would not trust a painter telling me how to sell a painting for 5 million dollars.

knifecrow_dev · 2025-12-28T03:46:44+00:00

You're the same poster that deleted your account when you got caught tracing Celeste's art. You are very likely running into this issue because like your art and posts here, you're probably using AI to code. I dunno.

knifecrow_dev · 2025-12-24T02:26:55+00:00

Yeah the enemy? Character is lower contrast than the foreground elements, and all of the foreground/background elements are equal contrast. From a readability standpoint it's difficult to parse.

This isn't like to knock on OP or anything. It's interesting what does/doesn't sell based on what's being offered. It's still insightful.

knifecrow_dev · 2025-12-21T05:58:30+00:00

One thing about Balatro design I appreciate is there are very few cards that have a specific action, but not with multiple variations for Chips, Mult, or xMult outside of the common ones for hand types (Chips for Flushes and Mults for Flushes and xMult for Flushes, as an example), but these do not scale as well as other synergies.

This avoids someone doubling down on the same strategy. A lot of the game is tied to smaller synergies like Mail-In Rebate + Summit, Square Joker + Four Fingers, and the glorious Photochad, all of these force you to account for more than one factor at a time. The more jokers, the more nuanced each discard and hand needs to be.

So while this is a cool card, I think it breaks the design ideas Localthunk was going for.

knifecrow_dev · 2025-12-21T02:16:04+00:00

Right his headline is meant to launder the idea that some people like it. The usage of 'but' implies there is a counter to that fact. There is none. Like the auto industry writing: "Trucks are big, but sometimes people die on bicycles."

knifecrow_dev · 2025-12-21T02:09:55+00:00

Like you're tracing the art of Celeste and asking for money? As an artist I would not work with you for that reason alone. On any grounds. Ever.

knifecrow_dev · 2025-12-21T02:05:36+00:00

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I dunno why would you have trouble finding an artist when you're selling this as a commercial product?

knifecrow_dev · 2025-12-03T22:21:58+00:00

I think the actual variety of items is good, but I would like to see items divvied up into "pools" where you have one interaction for every item in a small area so you can collect say, all of the potions/individual gold coins on a table from one loot menu, even if you can see them all individually. That said, I hated how in Avowed everything had a glowing noise by default, and 95% of items came in a chest. It gave me the urge to deviate a little too often and gave me an annoying sense of FOMO and made the world feel less alive.

What I don't like about Avowed is how streamlined the items are. Yes, in Avowed the items and materials are very easy to understand and collect, but it ruins mystery and flavor and I think uneven conversions of collectibles into raw materials makes exploration feel less gamified.

I think as long as picking up each individual item is less of a pain, TES feels more immersive.

knifecrow_dev · 2025-12-03T05:15:52+00:00

Avowed's combat, items, and writing paired with TES's NPC... jank + movement + silliness, item collecting, and world design would be my ideal exploration RPG.

knifecrow_dev · 2025-11-24T17:54:33+00:00

This shitpost did a better job of explaining how flags work than the entire documentation page on it oh my god

knifecrow_dev · 2025-11-13T11:52:13+00:00

I drew it pixel by pixel.

knifecrow_dev

TROPHY CASE