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I made and posted this 7 years ago back on Twitter. I don't go to as many parties these days so not quite as true for me as it was back then... but still, I remember.

Graphic design is my passion.

If you are a student attending a GDC roundtable, please keep in mind there are seniors, leads, directors in the room with you. If you want to hear what these folks have to say... don't dominate the conversation yourself. You are allowed to sit and listen, you are not obligated to monologue.

Eldest Child: "Here's a thread where people are explaining the plot of a videogame poorly, but I'm not sure what game to pick for my post." Me: "You should do Promise Mascot Agency, even if you explain that plot well it'll sound like you're explaining it poorly."

While I didn't see anyone using LLMs as a mechanic this year, I did see more disclosures of using them during development, mostly during early-stage concepting/prototyping to try out high-risk designs, art direction, etc. at much higher speed and lower cost than the traditional methods.

Just to give folks a sense of the competitiveness of IGF, I personally rated 108 games (about 3/day over the one-month judging period!) and nominated 48 for at least one category, out of about 700 total submissions. This all gets boiled down to about 6 finalists + some Honorable Mentions per cat.

Every time, I see a few games saying why I should vote for them. While I personally chalk this up to people just misunderstanding the instructions, it does come across as pretentious (the dev telling the judge how to do their job). This is the judge's determination to make, let them make it. (2/2)

Here's a tip for what NOT to do when submitting your game to festivals. When writing up your game's description, don't try to make the case for why the game deserves an award nomination in each of several categories. Think like writing a cover letter: state your strengths as a candidate. (1/2)

IGF judges and juries will absolutely roast your $250M 400-person-dev-team AAA game, it will probably not get recognized even if production values are great because too many ppl will say it violates the spirit of IGF and should be in GDCA or TGA instead. Not naming names, you know who you are. (2/2)

The way IGF works, in particular, is they'll be happy to take your game's $75 entry fee without checking to see if you fit the eligibility criteria for entering in the first place (especially, making a judgment on "but are you actually Indie"). Anyone can enter. However... (1/2)

Ooh, this year's Polaris Reports are up. Probably at least one or two things there of interest to any game designer. polarisgamedesign.com/reports/

ReportsREPORTS 2022 2023 2023 Understanding Systems Suspense Why is it fun to learn the rules of a videogame? Not just to play the game, but to learn it; to travel from the state of unknowing to knowing, to ...polarisgamedesign.com

As a whole, IGF entrants seem to have figured out that LLMs tend to be terrible as a game mechanic. "RPG where all the NPCs are chatbots" or "adventure game where an LLM is building the map in real time" or whatever just don't work well. I saw a few of these in 2023-24, virtually none in 2025.

Judges also need to have enough faith that you'll be able to actually pull it off based on the demo. Otherwise the reaction will be "enjoyed this, looking forward to seeing the full game, hope they resubmit next year with something more complete so I can actually nominate it." (2/2)

IGF always gets a lot of pre-release "demo" submissions each year, but know that in IGF, it's VERY hard to get recognition at the demo level since you're going up against MANY quality full releases. If your game isn't complete, you MUST bring enough that judges instantly see where you're going.(1/2)

Example: If you're making Roguelite Pinball, your pinball table should be well designed, the physics snappy; if your pinball doesn't have top-tier game feel, the Roguelite elements will not be enough to save it. Ditto for Roguelite Mario Kart, Roguelite FPS, Roguelite Beat-em-up, you name it. (2/2)

Also regarding Roguelite / Vampire Survivor-likes: when combining with another genre, you have to really NAIL that other genre perfectly, to the point of being a stand-out game in that genre even without the other stuff, if you want to be recognized for it. (1/2)

Another thing: There's starting to be some fatigue with Roguelite / Vampire Survivor-like mechanics and progression. It feels kind of like the contemporary version of what "indie platformer" felt like ten years ago - everyone is doing it and people are starting to roll their eyes a bit.

First: The Roguelite / Vampire Survivor-like space is VERY crowded now. Just saying "let's add run-based progression to Genre" doesn't count as innovative anymore, five other indie teams are doing that same exact thing, so you really have to be outstanding to, well, stand out. (2/2)

Okay, so I've kinda run out of IGF games from this year to post daily (what, did you think there were 365 of them that were that great?). But I will drop a few comments on trends and lessons learned. (1/2)

Today's indie game: War of the Western Deep (sunsgrove.games). Currently just a demo on Steam, but a competent old-school LucasArts style graphic adventure, with gorgeous art. For people nostalgic for those days, this is one to keep an eye on (among many other graphic adventures in IGF this year).

Sunsgrove Studiossunsgrove.games