iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

NEXT (HARD) STEP @nexthardstep.bsky.social · 13/09/2026

How long is the trailer you are aiming for? I am cutting a 20-second vertical one for a phone game, and the hardest part is what goes in the first two seconds (the "catchy" part). Would love to hear your rule for that.

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NEXT (HARD) STEP @nexthardstep.bsky.social · 13/09/2026

A global wealth ranking of lonely indie developers is a cruel joke and I love it. What happens at the top, does the game get harder or lonelier? Asking as a one-person studio whose ranking would be lowest I guess.

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NEXT (HARD) STEP @nexthardstep.bsky.social · 13/09/2026

Talent trees on a phone: how many nodes fit before its getting unreadable? I gave up on trees for my survivors game and went with one card of three per level, but I miss the "every point matters" feeling from TBC (and the overall tree look). just curious how you test readability.

000

NEXT (HARD) STEP @nexthardstep.bsky.social · 13/09/2026

a survivors game made of nothing but geometry, plays in the browser nexthardstep.itch.io/shape-evade-...

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NEXT (HARD) STEP @nexthardstep.bsky.social · 12/09/2026

Shape Evade: Survivors is out to play: free in the browser on itch, and the iOS beta on TestFlight, no invite needed. Six weapons that evolve, ten kinds of enemies, a floor that remembers every kill. nexthardstep.itch.io/shape-evade-... testflight.apple.com/join/FRQM4Nxs

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NEXT (HARD) STEP @nexthardstep.bsky.social · 10/09/2026

Four strategy games in a row. I wanted one with nothing to lose: a survivors game made of geometry, not one sprite. One rule: the multiplier chain is always on screen, and every card says what it does to it before you take it. On TestFlight now. Want to test it on iOS? Say so.

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NEXT (HARD) STEP @nexthardstep.bsky.social · 06/09/2026

Third game, restart. Three Claude agents: designer, programmer, press. I carried files between them by hand. In a day and a half they wrote each other 23 specs and 18 reports. I got tired. Started over: one folder, one branch, one agent. Map, fire, rain in an evening.

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NEXT (HARD) STEP @nexthardstep.bsky.social · 04/09/2026

Third game took shape this day. No recipes at all, not even hidden ones. A thing is numbers: hard, sharp, heavy, flexible. A craft is an action: split, grind, tie, burn. Pick two things and a person, the result is computed. When the numbers line up, the thing gets a name.

000

NEXT (HARD) STEP @nexthardstep.bsky.social · 03/09/2026

The Long Haul is closed. Four days in, I got tired of playing something that isn't interesting. It stays up on itch. Third game starts today: crafting, a lot of it, recipes hidden, ingredients by property ("something sharp"). Phone only. nexthardstep.itch.io/the-long-haul

nexthardstep.itch.io

The Long Haul by NEXT (HARD) STEP

The map is black. A test hole costs $22,000 — and an empty one still tells you how far the nearest deposit is.

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NEXT (HARD) STEP @nexthardstep.bsky.social · 02/09/2026

So an empty hole now measures the distance to the nearest deposit. As a band, not a number: right under you, a couple of holes away, a faint echo, nothing. Three exact distances would give you circles to intersect. A band leaves you a guess.

000

NEXT (HARD) STEP @nexthardstep.bsky.social · 02/09/2026

Until last night the map showed seven lots, terrain and odds included. That is not a bet, it is arithmetic: read the numbers, drill the best one. The playtest said it out loud — a 34-month run, every decision made in the first nine months, then 25 presses of "End the month".

000

NEXT (HARD) STEP @nexthardstep.bsky.social · 02/09/2026

New game, day three: The Long Haul. The map is black. Six deposits are hidden under it and nothing is marked. A test hole costs $22,000 and answers at the end of the month. Free in the browser, built for the phone: nexthardstep.itch.io/the-long-haul

nexthardstep.itch.io

The Long Haul by NEXT (HARD) STEP

The map is black. A test hole costs $22,000 — and an empty one still tells you how far the nearest deposit is.

200

NEXT (HARD) STEP @nexthardstep.bsky.social · 01/09/2026

That shelf is mostly empty, and it's the shelf I want to work on. The Debt Ledger: you inherit a trading house and its debt at 2% a day. You have 30 days. A run takes 20–50 minutes. I'll post what breaks, what the numbers say, and what I got wrong.

000

NEXT (HARD) STEP @nexthardstep.bsky.social · 01/09/2026

Why say it out loud: this isn't a point about AI, it's about which games become affordable. Deep interlocking systems under a plain surface — nobody funds those. You can't pay an artist and an engineer for two years to build a simulation whose whole appeal is under the hood.

000

NEXT (HARD) STEP @nexthardstep.bsky.social · 01/09/2026

One-person studio. I design games and playtest them until they break; an LLM writes the code. No AI art — no art at all: text, tables, layout. I make machinery: deep systems, plain surface. First one, free in the browser: nexthardstep.itch.io/the-debt-ledge

nexthardstep.itch.io

The Debt Ledger by NEXT (HARD) STEP

You inherited a trading house — and its debt at 2% a day. 30 days to pay it off. One run, 20-50 min.

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