iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

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Clara Gale ✈️ NS 0.4.1 out now! @claradoth.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

The fade to black after the cutscene at the start of each #NovaSquadron mission is kind of a buzzkill. So I'm getting rid of it.* #gamedev #indiedev #screenshotsaturday *(heavily WIP and the Editor gave me frame stutters at the worst possible times)

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Sani @sanikkat.bsky.social · 23/03/2025

making shaders is not my forte.

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Sani @sanikkat.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

Adjusted the new death effects to be a bit more "realistic", but more importantly i've made the weapon tracking camera much more cinematic.

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robin @crowwmonarch.bsky.social · 19/09/2026

Take notes on this one, Geoff is actually the most important character in the lore trust me I would never lie on the internet

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Clara Gale ✈️ NS 0.4.1 out now! @claradoth.bsky.social · 12/09/2026

I'm finally replacing the crappy placeholder cutscene system I rushed in for #NovaSquadron 0.1.0 5 years ago. I take my job very seriously. #gamedev #indiedev #screenshotsaturday

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Sani @sanikkat.bsky.social · 09/09/2026

Added a small detail that i think adds a lot to aircraft movement. Shader based wing wobble. I'm surprised AC8 doesn't do this with how easy it is to do....

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JoCat 🔜 Spokane Ren Faire @jocat.net · 09/09/2026

Samus viciously choking/absorbing something while staring angrily through her cracked helmet is the hottest thing I've ever seen in my life

Screenshot of the scene described from the newest metroid ravenous trailer

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Clara Gale ✈️ NS 0.4.1 out now! @claradoth.bsky.social · 05/09/2026

Introducing Meline, another of your wingmen in #NovaSquadron! She's from the free city of Olympus Mons and obsessed with its fashion culture, so do NOT get her talking about clothes or she'll never stop. Or do. I mean, there's dialogue options for a reason. #gamedev #indiedev #screenshotsaturday

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Moonwell Games @moonwellgames.bsky.social · 02/09/2026

Our reveal trailer for Last Ditch Effort, a narrative-driven action-adventure with expressive, stylish combat and smooth pixel-art graphics.

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Clara Gale ✈️ NS 0.4.1 out now! @claradoth.bsky.social · 02/09/2026

Just for clarity, if I ever stop posting for 2 months, it’s because I’ve been secretly invited to work on a game I couldn’t resist like, I dunno, the Mega Drive port of Aggressors Zero: The Prequel That Takes Place After the Main Game: Remastered: Uncut: Director’s Cut

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Clara Gale ✈️ NS 0.4.1 out now! @claradoth.bsky.social · 29/08/2026

Portraits in #NovaSquadron 's briefings, debriefings and dessert chats are now animated! (ssshhh don't look at Storm Chaser overlapping the UI, nothing to see here) #gamedev #indiedev #screenshotsaturday

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Clara Gale ✈️ NS 0.4.1 out now! @claradoth.bsky.social · 22/08/2026

Another one crossed off the bucket list: I wrote a pixel art animation system from scratch and now Storm Chaser can do this! ... #NovaSquadron is still a game where you fly a plane and shoot lasers on Jupiter I swear #gamedev #indiedev #screenshotsaturday

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Clara Gale ✈️ NS 0.4.1 out now! @claradoth.bsky.social · 18/08/2026

my favourite part of the last #NovaSquadron Screenshot Saturday was this surprisingly clean jump down the mag-railway to get from one furball to another #gamedev #indiedev

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Clara Gale ✈️ NS 0.4.1 out now! @claradoth.bsky.social · 16/08/2026

You might be wondering why it's taking us so long to put 0.5.0 together... Well, I scaled the patch preview text down to 25% size, and I STILL had to cut a bunch out to fit it all on one screen. #NovaSquadron receives its biggest update EVER this December! #gamedev #indiedev

0.5.0 - The Ice Cream Update. Coming 12/2026.
- Work with your allies to fill the Air Superiority Gauge
- Higher unit density (more stuff to shoot! More missiles in the distance!)
- Each wingman's score is tracked separately - optimize their loadouts
- Shorter, leaner runs - Sceptre Squadron show up on mission 3, not 4
- Select a region once every 3 missions, instead of every mission
- Each region now has unique visuals, bonuses and penalties
- Missions have different difficulty ratings and rewards
- Both the Valkyrie and Phoenix are more manoeuvrable by default
- Enter low orbit to fly with reduced drag
- Re-enter the atmosphere to go very, very, very fast (and be on fire)
- More interesting tutorial opening cutscene
- Smoother, slicker tutorial flow
- Complete render pipeline replacement
- Rebuilt cloud, sky and aurora system
- Leave the atmosphere! Look at Jupiter's moons!
- Bullet, laser and missile upgrades
- New explosion system
- Fully overhauled cutscenes
- Send messages to your fellow pilots and officers
- Buy them ice cream (?????)
- Earn Favors you can equip during runs for an extra boost
- Two playable characters: Fenrir and Perigee
- Different dialogue and romance(?!) options for both characters
- yes we have straight, gay and bi options
- Replaced Starting Parts with Favors
- No Part limit - hold as many as you can find in each run!
- Prototype Upgrades are now visible from the start (no pick-1-of-3)
- Upgrade Menu hexes are now grouped by type
- Full font replacement
- Buttons go all fizzy when you hover over them
- Reworked main menu, New Run menu, and Mission Select menu
- New Debriefing Screen with score and earning breakdowns
- Chat log in the Pause Menu for when you miss dialogue!
- Ultrawide screen support
- New BGM for Dogfight and Naval Escort (now with 2 guitar solos)
- Dynamic BGM for the new tutorial
- Smooth synthwave for while you're eating ice cream

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Clara Gale ✈️ NS 0.4.1 out now! @claradoth.bsky.social · 15/08/2026

The army-wide score bar in #NovaSquadron 's Dogfight/Naval Battle that fills itself up even if the player doesn't do anything? Gone. Introducing my Evil Plans: the Air Superiority bar. Which lets me turn missions into the biggest, dumbest furballs ever. #gamedev #indiedev #screenshotsaturday

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Clara Gale ✈️ NS 0.4.1 out now! @claradoth.bsky.social · 13/08/2026

ok yeah you’re gonna like the next Screenshot Saturday a lot quick disclaimer though: it’s literally only the first mission of the game, the Big Dogfight Moment is mission 6, all relations to places named “Bering Strait” or “Comona Base” are accidental

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Clara Gale ✈️ NS 0.4.1 out now! @claradoth.bsky.social · 08/08/2026

Laying the groundwork for my Evil Plans with some minor #NovaSquadron changes: - each plane's score is now tracked separately (you'll still get paid for all of them!) - infrastructure is now highlighted as targets - mission completion progress bar?! #gamedev #indiedev #screenshotsaturday

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Clara Gale ✈️ NS 0.4.1 out now! @claradoth.bsky.social · 01/08/2026

ok so you’re not gonna believe this but you unlock that later in the game

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robin @crowwmonarch.bsky.social · 01/08/2026

i'm up to some shenanigans again

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robin @crowwmonarch.bsky.social · 18/07/2026

Giving me this power was in fact a mistake

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Clara Gale ✈️ NS 0.4.1 out now! @claradoth.bsky.social · 04/07/2026

I needed a break from UI stuff, so I let my hair down and, uh, completely remade #NovaSquadron 's missile VFX. The usual ~1 minute video wouldn't do this insanity justice, so here's 3 minutes of the INDF and CLE absolutely wrecking each other's navies. #gamedev #indiedev #screenshotsaturday

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robin @crowwmonarch.bsky.social · 28/06/2026

Besties I'm gonna do so many silly things Giving me this much power was a mistake

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Sani @sanikkat.bsky.social · 24/06/2026

Shatter part 2. I need to fix a few things such as: Making sure chunks buildings are water tight. Better particles. Optimize it a bit more. Sound effects. Sometimes the whole building doesn't come down. But this won't be a common occurrence in regular gameplay, and it's kind of awesome.

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Sani @sanikkat.bsky.social · 23/06/2026

shatter :) (super wip but im happy with this so i will only post it here)

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Clara Gale ✈️ NS 0.4.1 out now! @claradoth.bsky.social · 20/06/2026

I'm still working on the #NovaSquadron narrative tooling overhaul, but that's not all I'm cooking. For your listening pleasure: the WIP new background music for Dogfight missions! For your viewing pleasure: me making extremely bad evasive decisions! #gamedev #indiedev #screenshotsaturday

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Clara Gale ✈️ NS 0.4.1 out now! @claradoth.bsky.social · 13/06/2026

@crowwmonarch.bsky.social asked for a tiny extra feature in #NovaSquadron 's narrative system, so, naturally, I am 70 files into refactoring the entire system, and have to scratch-build a new UI because Unity doesn't support the new format. Looks nice though! #gamedev #indiedev #screenshotsaturday

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Sani @sanikkat.bsky.social · 11/06/2026

Prototyping a cinematic camera. There's a lot to refine about it and I'm not happy with it yet. But it's also looking cool. I haven't been working much in aggressors however due to working on related things + planning on making a public version of my cockpit tool.

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Jay Axer @jayaxer.bsky.social · 30/05/2026

Be certain, as is always the case with things such as this, that ANYTHING can be considered sexual and can end in a blanket account shadowban under this. It is easily weaponized it is determined by an AI moderation system. There is no accountability or recourse. you probly can't read this.

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Clara Gale ✈️ NS 0.4.1 out now! @claradoth.bsky.social · 01/06/2026

Happy Pride Month! Most of #NovaSquadron 's roster is already openly gay/bi/ace/lesbian, but we do have something for you: The Valkyrie strike fighter has come out as gay. ...We have a team of mechanics working round the clock to try and figure out what that actually means. #gamedev #indiedev

The Valkyrie, one of the two playable aircraft in Nova Squadron, painted in bright rainbow colours. The shark-mouth decal painted around the nosecone minigun seems pretty happy about the whole thing.

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Clara Gale ✈️ NS 0.4.1 out now! @claradoth.bsky.social · 23/05/2026

No, this isn't a late April Fools' joke, we're actually adding "the ground" to #NovaSquadron! Introducing the secret fifth region, the Crystal Highlands, where freezing temperatures condense rare minerals in the clouds into huge pillars. #gamedev #indiedev #screenshotsaturday

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Sani @sanikkat.bsky.social · 19/05/2026

haven't had much time to actually sit down to work on aggressors but here's an aircraft model WIP. plane that makes really loud fart like sounds out of it's gun and people think it's cool for that.

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Clara Gale ✈️ NS 0.4.1 out now! @claradoth.bsky.social · 16/05/2026

So the CLE has nailed a bunch of gaudy yellow SAM facilities to the Pillars, and I've told them to shoot at anything that moves. I forgot to tell them to stop. #gamedev #indiedev #screenshotsaturday #NovaSquadron

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Clara Gale ✈️ NS 0.4.1 out now! @claradoth.bsky.social · 15/05/2026

I might have taken the description of the Pillars of Origin a bit TOO literally. …Tune in tomorrow for the horrors. #gamedev #indiedev

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devon giehl🐀ratmaker @devongiehl.bsky.social · 11/05/2026

i have so, so many furious things to say about this but just to scream about one: when corporations declare themselves able to decide what art is or not made specifically for getting off, they are absolutely going to use that power to target even the tamest of queer art first.

screenshot of kickstarter's guidelines on adult content, where "projects created specifically for sexual gratification" is listed as prohibited

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Clara Gale ✈️ NS 0.4.1 out now! @claradoth.bsky.social · 09/05/2026

This week is the sixth anniversary of #NovaSquadron starting development (never say something will take "maybe a year"!), and it's crazy to look back and see how much the game's visuals have improved over the years. I will not be stopping. #gamedev #indiedev #screenshotsaturday

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Clara Gale ✈️ NS 0.4.1 out now! @claradoth.bsky.social · 02/05/2026

The prototype Pillars seemed to work, so I've started experimentally texturing them. Yes, environment texturing. In #NovaSquadron. I've never done this before in my life... ...but what if I did #gamedev #indiedev #screenshotsaturday

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Clara Gale ✈️ NS 0.4.1 out now! @claradoth.bsky.social · 25/04/2026

Welcome to (the early prototype sketch of) the Pillars of Origin, a region named after, well, the gigantic pillars everywhere. These were the first colonies floated into Jupiter's atmosphere back in the 22nd century, and they're still used today! #gamedev #indiedev #screenshotsaturday

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Sani @sanikkat.bsky.social · 22/04/2026

Did more to the map generation, added huge fields of trees, although I need fix the shader a bit as they vanish when I turn the camera. But at the same time, it looks really good as is! I might also to make the altitude warning optional as its annoying me lol

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Clara Gale ✈️ NS 0.4.1 out now! @claradoth.bsky.social · 22/04/2026

The trailer for @yoyoyollie.bsky.social's DELIVERY MUST COMPLETE is finally out, and it came with an official release of Jose Pavli's fantastic main theme. So, naturally, I had to do something with it. Presenting DLMC's main leitmotif, butchered in the style of NS's menu music. #gamemusic #vgm

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Clara Gale ✈️ NS 0.4.1 out now! @claradoth.bsky.social · 18/04/2026

Alright, back to our scheduled tour of #NovaSquadron 's Jupiter! Welcome to the Regio Obscurus, an area around the north pole permanently shrouded in a blue aurora. It'd be beautiful if only it didn't mess with your plane's sensors. #gamedev #indiedev #screenshotsaturday

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Clara Gale ✈️ NS 0.4.1 out now! @claradoth.bsky.social · 11/04/2026

Wait for it, wait for it... Behold, the moons of Jupiter, coming soon to #NovaSquadron. #gamedev #indiedev #screenshotsaturday

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