iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Reposted by MarxMustermann

Plabs @plabs.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

Of Mice & Mechs @marxmustermann.bsky.social "Survive in a dead world. Fight, scavenge and rebuild until you control a base and its workers. Collect all 7 glass hearts and claim the throne." store.steampowered.com/app/4564040/...

store.steampowered.com

OfMiceAndMechs on Steam

Survive in a dead world. Fight, scavenge and rebuild until you control a base and its workers. Collect all 7 glass hearts and claim the throne.

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MarxMustermann @marxmustermann.bsky.social · 18/08/2026

... expand your base, explore, set up production chains, produce upgrade items, defend your base and delve dungeons until you rule the whole world." Feedback and improvement advice would be much appreciated.

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MarxMustermann @marxmustermann.bsky.social · 18/08/2026

Please give me you opinion on the new capsule text for my game: "Enjoy a combination of traditional roguelike, base builder and factory builder. You explore a broken and hostile world RPG-style, but you are also the boss of a crewed base. Fight, manage workers ...

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MarxMustermann @marxmustermann.bsky.social · 17/08/2026

Here is more music wattmo made for my game. I use that loop in a single place in the endgame dungeon (glassed city). I also used the music as background music in my gamedev stream and noticed an increase in viewership ^^ www.youtube.com/watch?v=33-q... #games #music #indiedev #ambient #indie

youtube.com

Wattmo - Reach (From "Of Mice And Mechs")

YouTube video by Wattmo

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MarxMustermann @marxmustermann.bsky.social · 16/08/2026

To reduce user confusion, the game now shows the most basic interaction keys as a message next to the player. This happens once, when such an action makes sense. I hope this will help especially in the early minutes of the gameplay. #games #gamedev #indiedev #indiegame #ui #game

a screenshot of a game showing the text "press h to chat" bellow the player character

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MarxMustermann @marxmustermann.bsky.social · 15/08/2026

Since i already do have a main theme i will use as music loop for certain places in the game. It will be used for religious places to be specific. It is a bit too happy for my tastes/game, so i will play a darker version of it in bad religious places.

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MarxMustermann @marxmustermann.bsky.social · 15/08/2026

I got a music donation for my game :-) www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gllg... It is made by wattmo and a new take on the games main theme. I like it a lot. Contact wattmo, if you need music for your project as well: www.reddit.com/r/INAT/comme... #gamedev #music #indiegame #games #creepy #indiedev

youtube.com

Wattmo - Lamoa (from "Of Mice And Mechs")

YouTube video by Wattmo

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MarxMustermann @marxmustermann.bsky.social · 15/08/2026

right :-) The game Dwarf fortress doesn't have the matrix based view at all in the game for that reason. It only is added in by mods like dwarf therapist. The spreadsheet style is really useful, if you want to do serious "work" on your base though. So i'm happy to have it both ways.

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MarxMustermann @marxmustermann.bsky.social · 14/08/2026

Having a menu for one NPC is a less powerful option, but that makes it feel more personal and less overwhelming :-) The big matrix version looks like this. Each line corresponds to an NPC and each column represents a duty type. The number is the priority for the duty.

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MarxMustermann @marxmustermann.bsky.social · 14/08/2026

I added a new feature to my game: You now can talk to the NPC directly and change their work priorities. Changing the work priorities has been in the game for quite some while, but it was only done in a huge matrix for all NPCs at once before. #gaming #gamedev #ui #basebuilder #ASCIIgame #game

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MarxMustermann @marxmustermann.bsky.social · 11/08/2026

Playing my game yesterday i was bringing an inventory full of loot back to my base and saw one of my NPCs strolling by. That gave me an idea and you now can stuff your items into your allies inventory and they will put them into storage. #gaming #games #gamedev #indiedev #indiegame

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MarxMustermann @marxmustermann.bsky.social · 09/08/2026

I'm sure society is just in a really good mood lately :-P

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MarxMustermann @marxmustermann.bsky.social · 09/08/2026

Basically the squint test for me resulted in every capsule looking similar. So every capsule looked brownish or white. So i followed a recommendation to combine white and brown. I am pretty happy with that. I will probably use that capsule, but i'm not sure yet.

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MarxMustermann @marxmustermann.bsky.social · 09/08/2026

Thanks for the feedback. I tried mixing the white and #10. And i like it a lot!

9 variants of the same capsule art with different colors

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MarxMustermann @marxmustermann.bsky.social · 09/08/2026

I do have #10 currently set on the steam page. store.steampowered.com/app/4564040/... And i only just have done the squint test (making the capsules smaller and squinting at them). I have to agree that doing that everything starts to look the same except for the white/silver ones. Thx for that!

store.steampowered.com

OfMiceAndMechs on Steam

Fight, survive, subjugate and destroy. Build and fortify a base, establish production chains that turn raw scrap into finished steel, and command your workers to keep it all running. Your brain implan...

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MarxMustermann @marxmustermann.bsky.social · 09/08/2026

After some work on the steam capsule, there now is main design and i got several colors to choose from. What color do you like best? Any feedback on the capsule design itself would also be appreciated. #indiegame #indiedev #gaming #gamedev #capsule #logo #steam

9 versions of the capsule with different font colors

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MarxMustermann @marxmustermann.bsky.social · 08/08/2026

I'm adding text highlights in my game currently. The idea is to highlight the most important parts of a dialog or menu with a yellow color and to somewhat hide non important parts with a grey. #gamedev #gaming #games #indiedev #indiegame #UI #screenshotsaturday

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MarxMustermann @marxmustermann.bsky.social · 03/08/2026

Today i'll bring my game to a physical play testing event in germny/bavaria/Fürth. It is called pizza playtest @pizza-playtest-mfr.bsky.social and it has been pretty nice and productive so far. So come and test if you are nearby :-) #fürth #fuert #Nuernberg #Erlangen #pizza #gamedev #playtesting

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MarxMustermann @marxmustermann.bsky.social · 31/07/2026

I'm doing a lot of twitch streams lately. So visit me there if you want to me gamedev. www.twitch.tv/marxmusterma... I'm currently streaming all my dev activity. #twitch #streaming #gamedev #devstream

twitch.tv

marxMustermann_ - Live on Twitch

gamedev - OfMiceAndMechs - coding playtesting bugfixing :-) - ep23 | Streaming software and game development.

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MarxMustermann @marxmustermann.bsky.social · 13/04/2026

i'll be at a playtesting event again today: events.games-bavaria.com/event/%F0%9F... The event is organized by @pizza-playtest-mfr.bsky.social So thanks a lot for the effort of organizing it! (and the pizza obviously) I get that this is a bit too much of a short notice to drop by, though.

events.games-bavaria.com

🍕 Pizza Playtest Mittelfranken | April - Games/Bavaria Events

Hallo liebe Gamedevs und Pizzafreunde! Ab sofort gibt es den Pizza Playtest auch in Mittelfranken! Wir laden euch ein, beim Pizza Playtest eure Spiele(-prototypen) von anderen Teilnehmer:innen ausgie...

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MarxMustermann @marxmustermann.bsky.social · 16/03/2026

The channel is probably very small, but i'm pretty hyped about it. it will be very good to think about how to produce such a showcase. They even offer voice acting :-)

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MarxMustermann @marxmustermann.bsky.social · 16/03/2026

I got invited to a showcasing event on youtube. I basically can record 3 minutes of whatever i want to showcase my game and the channel will show it. That means i now need to build that 3 minute video, but that will be an ideal preparation for an actual trailer. #gamedev #indiedev #marketing

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MarxMustermann @marxmustermann.bsky.social · 15/03/2026

don't. ^^ Well, it really depends on what your goal is. Are you aiming to have a hobby, to get rich, have a career, be famous, etc? Like i have been working on a hobby game for 8 years and it has been fun to work on the game, but the aproaches are really different depending on what your goal is.

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MarxMustermann @marxmustermann.bsky.social · 15/03/2026

Since i got negative feedback, i made the scrap darker, because it took too much visual attention.

A comparsion between:

dark scrap on the left, light scrap in the middle, ASCII scrap on the right

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MarxMustermann @marxmustermann.bsky.social · 15/03/2026

Indeed, thx for the suggestion. I'm starting to have some color constants and use that to paint things instead of using colors directly. That is basically color groups and i plan to work toward using a color palete as well. Here are one of the most important items in the game. Very yellow ^^

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MarxMustermann @marxmustermann.bsky.social · 15/03/2026

The Scrap piles in my game got tiles now 🙂 So far they have been ASCII only so far. I thnk it is now way easier to see what parts of the scrap fields are walkable and what parts are not. An outline gets added during runtime #gaming #indiegame #gamedev #indiedev #game #games #art

A comparison of tile based scrap to the left and ASCII based scrap to the right

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MarxMustermann @marxmustermann.bsky.social · 14/03/2026

It basically tells you what to do down to the keystroke. People complained about it being railroady and dominating. Like even i noticed how you turn off your brain and just follow the instructions. That fits well into the game, but is a gameplay issue, so i'm looking to reduce that.

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MarxMustermann @marxmustermann.bsky.social · 14/03/2026

Based on feedback i added a cooldown to the implant. The implant is basically the tutorial function in the game, that explains how things work and are interacted with. I'm really not sur, if that is a good idea or if i'll keep it. Feedback welcome. #gamedev #indiedev #gamedesign

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MarxMustermann @marxmustermann.bsky.social · 14/03/2026

Soi guess i build myself software shaders by doing a search and replace on PNGs -_-

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MarxMustermann @marxmustermann.bsky.social · 14/03/2026

thx for the suggestion. I did not work with GPU shaders, because i started out useing a font rendering framework for showing stuff. I should get into that, though. I can quickly change colours of tiles and sutff, because the tiles are black and while and the colors get replaced from code.

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MarxMustermann @marxmustermann.bsky.social · 14/03/2026

In general i'm considering using the tileset as exclusive for a paid steam version. I'll need to offer something special or people who paid will feel cheated. But it feels bad to not release the tiles as open source. Any ideas/thoughts on that?

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MarxMustermann @marxmustermann.bsky.social · 14/03/2026

I started experimenting around with tile based edering for my game. I'm not sure about what style i'll choose and if i'll keep moving forward with it. Also some things are a bit to bright now. #gamedev #indie #indiedev #gaming #opensource

a screenshof of my game showing tile based rendering of the starter base

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MarxMustermann @marxmustermann.bsky.social · 13/03/2026

Naming stuff is stupid sometimes: In the tutorial mausoleum there only available weapons are simple metal Rods. I now want to teach the player how to upgrade items arrived at the name: RodHardener Somehow i feel that item wont be taken seriously... #gamedev #indiedev #gaming #indiegame

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MarxMustermann @marxmustermann.bsky.social · 13/03/2026

looks good, but damn is it dark in those mines ;-)

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MarxMustermann @marxmustermann.bsky.social · 13/03/2026

Thanks for the feedback! I got the feedback to reduce the brightness of the blue lines as well. It kind of looks depressing now, but hey the game is basicaly a horror game so that kind of fits ^^

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MarxMustermann @marxmustermann.bsky.social · 13/03/2026

I darkened down the walls in my game a lot. It was requested by a bunch of people, because you should keep the unimportant thing dark and the important things bright. I think it works quite well. The attention gets drawn to the rooms content now. #gaming #gamedev #roguelikedev #games #indiedev

3 variants of how the walls are rendered 1.) bright. 2.) darkened 3.) darkened with removed background.

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MarxMustermann @marxmustermann.bsky.social · 12/03/2026

I got interviewed about my game "OfMiceAndMechs" and the video is available now: www.youtube.com/watch?v=oXFF... Check it out! I basically recommend checking out the whole series! #gamedev #roguelikedev #youtube #itch_io #gaming #interview #indiegames #indiedev #indygame

youtube.com

Interview with MarxMustermann – Developer of Of Mice And Mechs

YouTube video by Eddy Games

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MarxMustermann @marxmustermann.bsky.social · 11/03/2026

The interview itself and contact was pleasant so i recommend reaching out and getting some practice in. I have not seen the actual result yet, but the other interviews on the channel were pretty well done.

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MarxMustermann @marxmustermann.bsky.social · 11/03/2026

I got interviewed by a small youtube channel about OfMiceAndMechs yesterday! The channel does a series called "Indie Neighbor" and looks for game devs that publish games on itch.io The recruiting post on reddit: www.reddit.com/r/itchio/com... #gamedev #indie #indiedev #itchio #roguelikedev

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MarxMustermann @marxmustermann.bsky.social · 10/03/2026

Next up is making the game easier to use. That was the third big complaint from testplayers. i'd be happy if you'd check it out! An tbh i like the tiles better than pure ASCII by now, so another win for listening to testers.

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MarxMustermann @marxmustermann.bsky.social · 10/03/2026

I released a new version of OfMiceAndMechs with tile based rendering as default. After adding the ability to change the rendering menu i felt confident enough to update the itch page with the new version: marxmustermann.itch.io/ofmiceandmec... #gaming #gamedev #itch_io #ASCII

marxmustermann.itch.io

Tile based mode released

OfMiceAndMech now has a new look! Now the game has full support for tiles and i'll be slowly adding them in. Not everything has a tile yet, but the support for it is in the game itself now and is acti...

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MarxMustermann @marxmustermann.bsky.social · 10/03/2026

I'm not sure if the tester deleted the files or an antivirus deleted them for some reason. I'm very sure that the files were there when the zip left the server. This is the second time something went wrong with unzipping the archive. We agreed to continue testing when steam is ready.

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MarxMustermann @marxmustermann.bsky.social · 10/03/2026

Today a testplay failed, because the game didn't run on the testers device. After some debugging (thx) it turned out that very important parts of the downloaded zip were missing. I'm not sure if the tester deleted the files or an antivirus deleted them for some reason. #gamedev #steam #itch_io

a screenshot showing the zip with and without the missing files

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MarxMustermann @marxmustermann.bsky.social · 09/03/2026

I further tweaked my games UI: Since enemies were hard to spot sometime, now characters have an indicator on them showing that they are characters. The character indicators are the litte red triangles on the "st". For allies that triangles are blue. #gamedev #roguelikedev #uidesign #gaming

A room showing some enemies with the red enemy markers

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MarxMustermann @marxmustermann.bsky.social · 08/03/2026

I tweaked how menues are shown based on feedback i got. As requested i made the background fade out a bit, when a menu is open and made the menu border more greyish. The idea is that the stuff the player should is the brightest thing drawing focus towards it. #gamedev #roguelikedev #ui #uidesign

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