iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

mickey sanchez @mickeysanchez.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

I am once again asking you to leave a review for Order Automatica on your platform of choice - especially phone players! I, mickey, am asking you casually to do so, but creepy cat man is being weird about it!

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mickey sanchez @mickeysanchez.bsky.social · 19/09/2026

Got an Editor's Choice award on iOS : ) Thanks Editor!

Screenshot of editor's choice award, reads: "In Order Automatica's tactical battles, cats and mimes fight alongside zombies and demons. Strategically place them on the grid to set off epic chain reactions."

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mickey sanchez @mickeysanchez.bsky.social · 15/09/2026

at least this will be a positive review for many 😭 mostly stings because this is the one review that dropped the game below 90% positive

A screenshot of a Steam review that just says "Leftist politics".

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mickey sanchez @mickeysanchez.bsky.social · 12/09/2026

also hanging out with some of the greats for now 😅 (top paid games in "card" category)

Screenshot of App store Top Charts for the Card Category. Order Automatica is #5. Notable others are Balatro at 2, Slay the Spire at 3, Cloverpit at 4, Luck be a landlord at 9, and Dream Quest at 10.

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mickey sanchez @mickeysanchez.bsky.social · 11/09/2026

getting some love from bob apple : )

Screenshot of app store. Heading reads, "Indie Games We Love, Small developers, big fun". Order Automatica is first on the list. Also shows Rise of the Golden Idol and Linkshift.

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mickey sanchez @mickeysanchez.bsky.social · 07/09/2026

my numerology sensors are off the charts!!! (give me more reviews tho plz)

I screenshot of a steam widget for Order Automatica. Text says "93% of the 33 user reviews for this game are positive."

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mickey sanchez @mickeysanchez.bsky.social · 20/07/2026

halo halo at cathedral bridge jazz festival

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mickey sanchez @mickeysanchez.bsky.social · 15/07/2026

today in game dev i made this bad mockup and made the game not save so much for cert reasons

end end screen with a bunch of stats and a poorly drawn thing that says "Total Overkill - 666" with three stars underneath

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mickey sanchez @mickeysanchez.bsky.social · 26/06/2026

This is the one that really got me hehe

Homer's info screen from the Simpson's arcade game. Show's his age as 35.

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mickey sanchez @mickeysanchez.bsky.social · 01/06/2026

Added some automated testing to Order Automatica inspired by listening to some interviews with Mewgenics devs. Adding a bunch of random units, giving them random items/cell effects/indulgences and let 'em go at it. Mostly looking for run-stopping bugs that fully stop the flow of the game.

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mickey sanchez @mickeysanchez.bsky.social · 31/05/2026

Got interviewed for my birthday today.

Hiro Mortia asking Tamawashi if he feel he's getting old.

Tamawashi says he doesn't have time to worry about his age.

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mickey sanchez @mickeysanchez.bsky.social · 25/05/2026

Got this gorgeous final piece of art for Order Automatica : ) Artist is Mr. Pekinczyk (not on bsky)

A pixel art portrait of a dilapidated golden throne room with a snake theme.

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mickey sanchez @mickeysanchez.bsky.social · 18/05/2026

Appreciation post for www.deviantart.com/pekinczyk who is making all the art for Order Automatica. Look at these beautiful backgrounds : ) He likes cats.

Pixel art. A run down ancient library. A cat in the corner says "Aezakami"

A big church hall with candles and a red carpet.

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mickey sanchez @mickeysanchez.bsky.social · 26/04/2026

Feels wild to look back after a while at all the stuff I've implemented in this game : )

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mickey sanchez @mickeysanchez.bsky.social · 05/04/2026

went to an fka twigs concert last night, it was fucking cool

Dancers on stage with a giant person projected behind.

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mickey sanchez @mickeysanchez.bsky.social · 26/03/2026

Order Automatica is at PAX on this #TurnBasedThursday Check it out if you're there : ) Thanks @rogueduck.net for hosting. Order Automatica is a weird intricate strategy game inspired by auto battlers and tactics genres. store.steampowered.com/app/2105840/...

A screen with candles in front of it. The banner behind reads "Order Automatica".

A screenshot of Order Automatica where each grid is filled to the brim with units and stuff!

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mickey sanchez @mickeysanchez.bsky.social · 09/03/2026

It's come to the point where I'm doing full game play-throughs of Order Automatica to test the overall balance and working on Steam Achievements. Smells like the end : ) I'm pretty proud of what's there and I surprise myself with how much stuff is going on.

A screenshot of Order Automatica. Two grids full of weird little guys and icons galore.

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mickey sanchez @mickeysanchez.bsky.social · 06/03/2026

Participated in a trend! Almost gave up when I couldn't add Eternal Cylinder - had to include "the" in their search bar. I tend to include games that grow in my mind over time.

Grid of 9 games made on my9games.com: Eternal Cylinder, Into the breach, arctic eggs, space team, super Mario world, baby steps, dune: imperium, if found, katamari damacy reroll

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mickey sanchez @mickeysanchez.bsky.social · 28/02/2026

Pretty happy with this "Battle Won" screen a spent like all day making and remaking until I liked it 😅

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mickey sanchez @mickeysanchez.bsky.social · 16/02/2026

Order Automatica has worked on Steam Deck for a long time, but here's proof : ) Also the newest demo has quietly been made live 🤫 store.steampowered.com/app/2105840/... and newbeings.itch.io/order-automa...

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mickey sanchez @mickeysanchez.bsky.social · 11/02/2026

buffs upon buffs with my mime/fish build

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mickey sanchez @mickeysanchez.bsky.social · 11/02/2026

you can kill fascists in my game... wishlist now! store.steampowered.com/app/2105840/...

A white gloved hand hovers over a unit and a tooltip reads: "Fascist: When Battle Begins, Deals 1 damage to all locked units"

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mickey sanchez @mickeysanchez.bsky.social · 09/02/2026

I've been pushing to get Order Automatica ready for Steam Next Fest. I'm going to try posting about it a bit more to get some practice talking about it. Why is this game special? I really tried to do something weird and different with auto battlers - something emergent, with physicality.

A screenshot of 2 stone grids surrounded by stone UI and gold in the upper left. Colorful people and animal characters all over the place. Lots of UI elements in icons all over the place.

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mickey sanchez @mickeysanchez.bsky.social · 01/02/2026

And then it was done : ) This isn't the full picture, and I've glossed over some things for brevity's sake, but hopefully this is interesting! To finish, here's a video of me playing through the completed level.

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mickey sanchez @mickeysanchez.bsky.social · 01/02/2026

Almost a YEAR later I came back while I was doing a full content pass of the game to place bugs, flowers, and bunch of poop under water... because it's a sewer.

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mickey sanchez @mickeysanchez.bsky.social · 01/02/2026

We put the level aside for awhile, and then Robert came back and did a general beautification pass. @saphizzle.bsky.social did actual models for the vertical and horizontal spinning things, and @jlorp.bsky.social came in it at some point and did touch ups as well. @tomaeusd.bsky.social added music.

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mickey sanchez @mickeysanchez.bsky.social · 01/02/2026

Meanwhile I kept working on the second half of the level, gently nudging it towards it's final form. There was a feeling that there weren't enough tongue interactions in the level, so I made the first version of some doors you needed to pull open before the rotating platforms.

Cement platforms in green water. A ladder and a mesh door.

Green platforms in Cement platforms in green water. A ladder and a mesh door.

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mickey sanchez @mickeysanchez.bsky.social · 01/02/2026

At some point, Robert came in and did a pass at another iteration on the stealth section after he had done a bunch of stealth sections for an earlier part of the game. It was cool, with more verticality. Unfortunately, we decided to cut this whole section from the final game for pacing reasons.

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mickey sanchez @mickeysanchez.bsky.social · 01/02/2026

Meanwhile the second part of the level got enclosed, and went through small iterations. We don't have many moving platforms in the game because most of our level geometry attempts to be semi-realistic. We thought of this level as some kind of sewage treatment area to make sense of these shapes.

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mickey sanchez @mickeysanchez.bsky.social · 01/02/2026

In this level, you've just been flushed down the toilet by the main antagonists. The original idea was that you were escaping the sewers as guards searched for you. Here's my second iteration on that moment, which I tacked on to the beginning of the level. I did my best to sneak in some grinding.

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mickey sanchez @mickeysanchez.bsky.social · 01/02/2026

At some point we had a meeting to go over all of the individual moments we liked, and then I moved them into the Sewer Entrance and Exit scenes. You can see here some very rough versions of areas that made it into the final game.

Level geometry floating in nothingness. Rough scene layout.

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mickey sanchez @mickeysanchez.bsky.social · 01/02/2026

Here's the actual very first version of the level. I made these simplistic mock ups for every desert level. It was partly housekeeping: have all the scenes with scene doors set up and ready to go. But it also let us run through the world and get a sense of the connections as we added more and more.

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mickey sanchez @mickeysanchez.bsky.social · 01/02/2026

Case in point: here's another goo ball beat that didn't make it into the game. I'm a grinding enthusiast doing my best to express myself. Small detail, but you can see here that the timing on the original goo balls was a bit different than in the final game.

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mickey sanchez @mickeysanchez.bsky.social · 01/02/2026

The reason I chose this level is because I have a strong memory of prototyping the ideas and feeling like I was really phoning it in that day 😅 I was like, "uhh, how about some spinning cylinders?" In retrospect, there were a ton of times where it turned out my simpler ideas worked better : )

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mickey sanchez @mickeysanchez.bsky.social · 01/02/2026

🧵 Big Hops Sewer Exit Level Design Deep Dive Thread 🧵 Inspired by @radiatoryang.bsky.social's excellent Big Hops level design blog post and encouraged by Chris @luckshotgames.com, here's a thread where I dove back through the commits to look at our iterations on a single level in Big Hops.

A sewer in Big Hops with a big yellow rotating platform surrounded by waterfalls.

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mickey sanchez @mickeysanchez.bsky.social · 27/01/2026

I'm doing a push for Order Automatica right now, and I was just taken aback by this screenshot. It looks really cool! There's so much info on screen 😅 The game has come a long way, and I'm just feelin' good about it : )

A screenshot of an auto battler game. Two 3x3 grids side by side covered in units. Units and items along the bottom are for sale.

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mickey sanchez @mickeysanchez.bsky.social · 23/01/2026

wow, Tall Trails is a beautiful game in every aspect!

A photo of a TV playing Tall Trails. A pink golem with glasses and horns stands in the foreground, and a big purple golem and geometric tower are in the background.

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mickey sanchez @mickeysanchez.bsky.social · 08/01/2026

Order Automatica is the auto battler ritual game for a secret society 👁️ It's got emergent gameplay and interesting synergies to discover, and I'm adding new stuff every day. It will come out this year! #TurnBasedThursday store.steampowered.com/app/2105840/Order_Automatica/

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mickey sanchez @mickeysanchez.bsky.social · 05/01/2026

a clip in which a a fish slaps a knight with a crimson glove

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mickey sanchez @mickeysanchez.bsky.social · 04/01/2026

Latest version of my jam game for #CorgiJam is feeling solid now : ) Added multiplicative tiles that make really high scores possible, and it feels more like a real arcade game. newbeings.itch.io/make-nines

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mickey sanchez @mickeysanchez.bsky.social · 01/01/2026

I spent this morning updating the game a bit. Made it look worse to make it look better. Also made the SFX a bit less annoying and balanced piece generation a tad. Officially a multi-year project now 😂 Also I used the pico-8 color palette in honor of the jam.

An old screen shot of the game. Numbers and shapes in a grid. Too clean!

A new screenshot of the game. Numbers and shapes in a grid, but this time it's wonkier and better looking and the colors are nicer.

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mickey sanchez @mickeysanchez.bsky.social · 29/12/2025

If I ask you to play Street Fighter 2, this is what I'm talking about.

Mickey playing a colorful pinball machine that reads "Street Fighter II"

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mickey sanchez @mickeysanchez.bsky.social · 22/12/2025

Got some beauty this weekend. Saw a nice rainbow : )

Sea, sky, sand. Clouds and a blue sky. A rainbow.

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mickey sanchez @mickeysanchez.bsky.social · 05/12/2025

oops i posted the wrong video! Well here you can see an example of JUICE ITERATION.

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mickey sanchez @mickeysanchez.bsky.social · 05/12/2025

Working on my unlock screen for Order Automatica today after being inspired by Sakurai's unlock screens in Kirby Air Ride : ) Gotta keep juicin' it, but it's a start! store.steampowered.com/app/2105840/... #TurnBasedThursday

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mickey sanchez @mickeysanchez.bsky.social · 23/11/2025

my publisher @bettergamingpro.bsky.social is showing order automatica at weplay expo in Shanghai this weekend. I think that's pretty cool! also, we localized the title and google translate tells me it says "9 grid life and death battle" which I think is a great title hehe

Someone playing order automatica on a computer and a banner with chinese text

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