iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Dee-Kej | Vending Machine game in progress @decaying.games · 30/09/2026

Getting it down to just 9 games is hard, but today this is the list I end up with. Out of these, Vending Machine game definitely picks up on a few things from Rollercoaster Tycoon 2, as well as The Neverhood and Starship Titanic, surprisingly enough.

A three by three grid of nine games that defined me. The games are Riven, The Neverhood, Whiplash, Pokemon Red, Zelda The Wind Waker, Rollercoaster Tycoon 2, Atlantis the Lost Tales, Starship Titanic, and Splinter Cell Pandora Tomorrow.

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Dee-Kej | Vending Machine game in progress @decaying.games · 17/09/2026

A fair few number of people did, it looks like steamframeout.com

a poll result showing the amount of waitlists versus reservations that exist for the Steam Frame. It reads 6991 waitlists and 5646 reservations. The poll is entirely community-driven, and still updating.

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Dee-Kej | Vending Machine game in progress @decaying.games · 31/08/2026

A new account for a vending machine company just added me as their second followed account, with the official Bluesky account being the only earlier one. I will take this to mean that I'm doing something right here, at least? 😂

Screenshot of the "follows" section of a new account. The earliest followed account listed is Bluesky's official account, and the next one is my account (@decaying.games)

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Dee-Kej | Vending Machine game in progress @decaying.games · 13/08/2026

I want to add a photo mode to the Vending Machine game, but I have too many other things to prioritize first. It's definitely on the "Maybe" list though. Might be something for post-launch.

Nice Desu Ne meme image from anime Kill Me Baby

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Dee-Kej | Vending Machine game in progress @decaying.games · 12/08/2026

too much cloudage sadly, but alas. Maybe I'll make an effort to catch the total eclipse next year. 😄

cloudy sky with an evening sun barely shining through it

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Dee-Kej | Vending Machine game in progress @decaying.games · 23/07/2026

Been a bit sick the past few days, but this had to be picked up by today so I braved the outside world despite it not being the best idea atm.. Excited to get stuck in to these in due time, both for play and dev.

boxes for the Steam Deck and Steam Controller

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Dee-Kej | Vending Machine game in progress @decaying.games · 29/06/2026

Sending out the playtest prototype today, and immediately got a request for a Linux build. Trying very hard not to hurt myself facepalming, as the only mention in Epic's documentation of building for Linux inside the engine is basically "press the Package button". GEE, THANKS.

dumb documentation from epic about pressing the obvious button, but not what to do if the button doesn't work.

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Dee-Kej | Vending Machine game in progress @decaying.games · 22/06/2026

Going to try to get it to make sure the Vending Machine game runs as well as possible on it.

screenshot of confirmation of steam machine 2 terabytes with controller

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Dee-Kej | Vending Machine game in progress @decaying.games · 05/06/2026

Hey #PitchYaGame So I am currently making a game where you are a Vending Machine. But the thing is that we're not fully announcing it until October, so we don't have anything fancy to show you yet. You can however follow along here if you want to see it grow during early development. ❤️🧃🥤☕️🍱🍜

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Dee-Kej | Vending Machine game in progress @decaying.games · 20/05/2026

If you were a video game character, what would your health pickup be?

One portion of a Sandwich Cake aka Smörgåstårta

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Dee-Kej | Vending Machine game in progress @decaying.games · 08/05/2026

I'm thinking I maybe didn't import the animations between Blender and UE5 correctly. Just a hunch.

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Dee-Kej | Vending Machine game in progress @decaying.games · 08/05/2026

Apparently next to the Outliner you have another dropdown that only Outliner has that lets you choose more options, one amongst those being Unused Data! In there!!!!

screenshot showing the Display Mode dropdown inside the Outliner Panel in Blender 4.3

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Dee-Kej | Vending Machine game in progress @decaying.games · 19/04/2026

Eyes, eyes, eyes... Don't look too closely; still very much at the "Make it exist" part of the character process.

3d model of the head of a character in Blender, with 6 separated cut-out meshes to the side that explores different styles of eyes

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Dee-Kej | Vending Machine game in progress @decaying.games · 17/04/2026

Planning ahead the road to proper announcement of the Vending Machine game, and we've made a schedule to be able to fill in where we're otherwise busy. Right now it has the most important stuff, like birthdays and.. *checks notes* ...Anime Nights.

calendar entry, showing a big bright red box that says "Anime Night" in white text

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Dee-Kej | Vending Machine game in progress @decaying.games · 12/04/2026

Resharing, because other devs keep saying that they find this useful once they hear about it. Here's sort of what our narrative sketching page looks like for the vending machine game, for reference. (old screenshot, but you get the gist of it)

screenshot of a page in an Obsidian project, showcasing a Canvas layout, without most of the details readable.

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Dee-Kej | Vending Machine game in progress @decaying.games · 08/03/2026

Beat the main story of Pokopia earlier tonight, and been messing around with the endgame at bit. Not putting this down anytime soon, I think.

Still of Doctor Strange in Marvel's Avengers movie saying "We're in the endgame now."

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Dee-Kej | Vending Machine game in progress @decaying.games · 07/03/2026

Given the game I'm making, I gotta shout out the vending machines in Pokopia.

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Dee-Kej | Vending Machine game in progress @decaying.games · 05/03/2026

Pokopia continues to be a ton of fun, as expected. Soooo much more to do than I thought. Would share more screenshots, but it's still release day so I'll wait a few days. Found the Snorlax from the trailers tho!

Screenshot from Pokemon Pokopia showing the player character taking a selfie with a moss-covered Snorlax

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Dee-Kej | Vending Machine game in progress @decaying.games · 27/02/2026

As a dev, I'm picking up on the more advanced lighting they've added, including the shadows! That Tropius shot is glorious! And the hint of a glow/light source from pokemon in the lava biome?? UGH! AND THE WATER???? Overall good progress on the visuals from them, excited to see more!

Tropius in Pokemon Waves and Winds trailer showcasing shadows through the Tropius' leaf wings

Screenshot from Pokemon Waves and Winds trailer, showing Sizzlipede's front and back casting a small glow on the ground inside a cave with two small lava flows in the background.

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Dee-Kej | Vending Machine game in progress @decaying.games · 27/02/2026

Out of all the Pokemon games, FireRed/LeafGreen are amongst the few I never actually played, so today's release on Switch is neat! Starting with Charmander in FireRed, of course (I got Red when I was a kid, my little brother got Blue).

In-game screen of a pokemon battle between Charmander and Rattata in Pokemon Fire Red

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Dee-Kej | Vending Machine game in progress @decaying.games · 29/01/2026

I already know that this is a thing that's happening in games marketing since long ago, BUT it's not often this noticeable, and really am curious to see what kind of data they have that guided the decisions for which characters to show in the thumbnail for each region.

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Dee-Kej | Vending Machine game in progress @decaying.games · 11/10/2025

We had a brainstorm about our UI yesterday evening, and while I'm not going to properly make that into proper setups yet, I wanted to check if I could setup our tech tree like we wanted. And it looks like yes! (nodes are dynamically connected based on their prerequisite upgrades)

7 white spheres seemingly floating in mid-air. The bottom three are serially connected by white lines to the next/previous node.

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Dee-Kej | Vending Machine game in progress @decaying.games · 11/10/2025

Getting this set up better, but now running into next problem; how do I enable sort of a dialognal line between the render target images. There has to be a masking thing of some sort, surely...? Maybe in the material itself?

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Dee-Kej | Vending Machine game in progress @decaying.games · 10/10/2025

Starting to dabble with dual-view cameras for the dialogue system in Vending Machine Game (title TBD) Still just trying stuff out, but honestly thought I'd have a harder time getting to even this point.

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Dee-Kej | Vending Machine game in progress @decaying.games · 09/10/2025

(The talk was mainly about translating lessons learned from VR into things that any project can benefit from)

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Dee-Kej | Vending Machine game in progress @decaying.games · 05/10/2025

I think this is the first time I've seen a big indie hit take off and then getting recommended the devlogs for that same game on Youtube? I was wondering when this would start to happen more broadly, given the increased amount of devs documenting their work like this.

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Dee-Kej | Vending Machine game in progress @decaying.games · 03/10/2025

It's been A WHILE since I drew... anything really, but as long as it's good enough for me to start modeling from, I guess it's fine 😆

digital sketch of a older woman in a jump suit. She holds a rake and has a trash bag to her right.

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Dee-Kej | Vending Machine game in progress @decaying.games · 27/09/2025

Making some late-night sketching with mouse input because I can't be bothered getting my drawing tablet hooked up right now 😅😴

crude sketch of an example frame for a story interaction in a game concept. A badly drawn face is in the lower left corner, with a gaping mouth, and on the other side of a thick black separating the two is a angled zoom in to a vending machine. Lines that are supposed to represent action lines are spread out near the entire border of the whole image, to convey something.

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Dee-Kej | Vending Machine game in progress @decaying.games · 26/09/2025

One of the cats appreciated the new prototype merch being laid out in a way that must have looked like an impromptu bed for her 😅

cat laying curled up on a sofa on top of a pile of black tshirts

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Dee-Kej | Vending Machine game in progress @decaying.games · 22/09/2025

If anyone of you are at Unreal Fest, look for the really big guy in an oversized black tshirt that looks like this and say hi! I don't bite, but I might give you a prototype to playtest haha

DK in an oversized black tshirt wearing an event badge for Unreal Fest Stockholm 2025

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Dee-Kej | Vending Machine game in progress @decaying.games · 22/09/2025

T-shirts arrived!! Just in time! The bigger backside image is so pixelated hahahaha But I know I'm the one to blame for that, not the merch company 😂

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Dee-Kej | Vending Machine game in progress @decaying.games · 21/09/2025

Starting to set up a post-level-summary screen after some feedback. Let's see if I can make it good enough in the next ~4 hours.

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Dee-Kej | Vending Machine game in progress @decaying.games · 17/09/2025

Going to have to figure out the proper title one day, but for the quick and dirty prototype this will have to do for a "start screen"

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Dee-Kej | Vending Machine game in progress @decaying.games · 14/09/2025

speaking of doing things before I need to, just having the company logo as the app icon instead of the default unreal one just makes it feel a tad better when checking it there haha

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Dee-Kej | Vending Machine game in progress @decaying.games · 14/09/2025

there we go. Part of the problem was that a node pointed towards the wrong array when getting data! Also discovered and fixed some other misc bugs in the process, good stuff.

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Dee-Kej | Vending Machine game in progress @decaying.games · 14/09/2025

Finally got around to adding a slot selection visual (the white square), so people testing actually know which slot they're selecting 😅

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Dee-Kej | Vending Machine game in progress @decaying.games · 14/09/2025

Got around to making something along these lines hahaha This kind of camera swooshing could get really fun when I have time to put in more effort into this!

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Dee-Kej | Vending Machine game in progress @decaying.games · 14/09/2025

Most of today has been about breaking out the UI from one widget to one per submenu (so to speak), allowing the different menues to be moved in 3D space. Next up, I think it's time for some exploratory work on better camera transitions... 🎥

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Dee-Kej | Vending Machine game in progress @decaying.games · 14/09/2025

Cooked up a crude ticketing system for them as well, so they don't try to move to where someone else is currently moving to/standing. Still PLENTY to do regarding avoidance, them actually doing idle things while at a point, adding paths for NPCs just walking past, etc. Still, progress!

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Dee-Kej | Vending Machine game in progress @decaying.games · 14/09/2025

Minor thing to start off the day, but set the cutout (aka not-important) NPCs to face towards the active camera, to get closer to the original inspiration for them 😆

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Dee-Kej | Vending Machine game in progress @decaying.games · 13/09/2025

Very small thing added today (among other things), but it's part of letting players do something while the NPCs walk about doing their thing.

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Dee-Kej | Vending Machine game in progress @decaying.games · 08/09/2025

Slowly chipping away on the project this evening. Amongst other things, I finally added so players can see the funds being changed as NPCs buy stuff!

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