iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Nick Crosgrove @occultgamedev.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

Ace Combat Trailer set to the Rock version of 'Defying Gravity', send Skeet.

Nick Crosgrove @occultgamedev.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

These are the ones that have stuck with me as a Developer even years later. Not in any particular order. my9games.net/en/edit

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Nick Crosgrove @occultgamedev.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

There's a ton of great commonly given advice to new Indie Developers when they begin pitching games... But nobody tells you how hard it will be to make a production timeline look good on mobile...

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Nick Crosgrove @occultgamedev.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

Quick #ScreenshotSaturday post! Been a Laptop week due to some family health issues that have me travelling, so my focus has been on building out new Combat UI, and lots of pitch preparations and business junk. #gamedev #indiedev

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Nick Crosgrove @occultgamedev.bsky.social · 20/09/2026

First game that clicked with me on all levels: Art, Plot, Music, and Mechanics. One of my only 10/10 perfect games of all time.

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Nick Crosgrove @occultgamedev.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

One of the more frustrating features of the modern job hunt is how mono-directional the industry feels with regard to the Indie-AAA relationship. Indie Studios aren't asking for people to ship only Indie Games, but it's normal to require AAA Titles to even apply for AAA Jobs.

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Nick Crosgrove @occultgamedev.bsky.social · 15/09/2026

Literally in the middle of important calls on discord when it goes down, and can only hope the folks I was on the call with see this!

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Nick Crosgrove @occultgamedev.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

I should really post these things outside of the dead hours on BSky!

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Nick Crosgrove @occultgamedev.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

Something I've been working on will be announced during this showcase!

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Nick Crosgrove @occultgamedev.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

I was talking with some local #gamedev friends about a concept we termed “Trailer-Assisted Development”, and some of the way it shapes development for long term projects that are being kept under wraps. So here's a thread about the why's/how's I’ve been using the technique internally on Moonstone.🧵

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Nick Crosgrove @occultgamedev.bsky.social · 13/09/2026

What's insane is how highly held in regard Level 5 was by folks who worked in the industry at the same time, they were doing shit that was genuinely insane. The pathfinding and follower AI in Rogue Galaxy is still impressive by today's standards, and it runs on the PS2.

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Nick Crosgrove @occultgamedev.bsky.social · 13/09/2026

Does anyone else sometimes just open the editor to zoom the camera around the map a little? I always wondered if that was a universal dev experience, or just a "Nick is a weird egg." thing.

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Nick Crosgrove @occultgamedev.bsky.social · 12/09/2026

Still working on Moonstone in my free hours, but it's been so long since I posted something for #ScreenshotSaturday that I thought I'd at least throw out some WIP Environmental stuff I've been up to. Thinking of doing some #gamedev focused blog posts about our processes and efforts.

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Nick Crosgrove @occultgamedev.bsky.social · 06/09/2026

Desperate to support our new independent small business coffee shop in town... but they do not open until 10:30am and close at 3:30pm.

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Digital Poppy Poppy Zone @poppyzone.bsky.social · 21/06/2026

How it feels to boot up Unreal Engine 5

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Nick Crosgrove @occultgamedev.bsky.social · 04/09/2026

ROBIN WHY DO YOU NEED TO CALL ME OUT LIKE THIS?

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Nick Crosgrove @occultgamedev.bsky.social · 03/09/2026

Another thing to be mad about: GenAI Gets more vacation time than the average game developer.

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Nick Crosgrove @occultgamedev.bsky.social · 28/08/2026

Deathloop deserved so much more acclaim than it got, game oozes so much character and charm, it plays like a game made by people who care, and knew what they were doing.

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Xalavier Nelson Jr. @writnelson.bsky.social · 24/08/2026

CAA is launching an indie game accelerator--and I'm a mentor for it! They're taking a fresh approach to supporting developers and getting games funded, so if that sounds like something you need (or want to help with), I encourage y'all to apply. www.frame1games.com

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Nick Crosgrove @occultgamedev.bsky.social · 24/08/2026

I only just saw this now, and it's SUCH A VIBE. It's a trip without the chemicals and I'm gonna be sending it allllll over the place!

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Nick Crosgrove @occultgamedev.bsky.social · 23/08/2026

Sitting with your French friend, mispronouncing pain au chocolat as "Pain Ow Chocolate" and watching the horror on their face is one of life's little pleasures.

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Nick Crosgrove @occultgamedev.bsky.social · 20/08/2026

Finally got to seeing Disclosure Day, it's basically a 90's film, filmed today. It's kind of amazing in it's own way, because it lacks all of the nostalgia, but has all of the little touches. This would have been a classic if it had been released back then.

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Nick Crosgrove @occultgamedev.bsky.social · 20/08/2026

Someday, when we announce something for @fatebound.bsky.social people are gonna be so fucking confused as to the DNA of our studio. Like: "How do you go from THAT to THIS?!" And Congrats to the ImSim family tree for a new member!

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Nick Crosgrove @occultgamedev.bsky.social · 15/08/2026

The inevitable result of all of Twitch's top talent opting out is going to be Twitch/Amazon making it mandatory. Whoever has a platform for all of the best and brightest creators to go to when this happens is going to be a big winner.

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Nick Crosgrove @occultgamedev.bsky.social · 13/08/2026

One of my favorite little Unreal Engine 4/5 Hacks that I add to every project I'm on is adding GameplayTags to StaticMeshSocket and SkeletalMeshSocket. This means I don't need to keep lists of socket names, I can just query for all sockets with those tags. Extremely handy for FX.

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Nick Crosgrove @occultgamedev.bsky.social · 13/08/2026

We added an extremely scary anti-AI Clause to our contracts at FateBound, and it has been amazing for scaring away bad actors.

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Nick Crosgrove @occultgamedev.bsky.social · 11/08/2026

I'm a total sucker for the Big Shoes, Dark Cloud 2 energy of character designs like this. Cool stuff.

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Nick Crosgrove @occultgamedev.bsky.social · 10/08/2026

I've been working on moving away from companies supporting GenAI products and integrations, migrated all my gamedev narrative tooling over to YarnSpinner and it's already significantly more powerful than it was before. Reclaiming our Tooling Sovereignty is the theme for my 2026.

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Nick Crosgrove @occultgamedev.bsky.social · 10/08/2026

Only thing really keeping me from doing more blog posts is that every time I've posted, my website goes down from all of the AI Scraping traffic. (They're ignoring noindex / nofollow). I've been thinking of setting up a Markov Babbler to poison the data, but it hurts legibility for legit readers...

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Nick Crosgrove @occultgamedev.bsky.social · 30/07/2026

Upside of no Job: I've lost a lot of weight! Downside of no Job: I have run out of belt holes and can't afford a new belt right now.

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Nick Crosgrove @occultgamedev.bsky.social · 28/07/2026

I rebuilt my Mechanics Museum and it's really nice seeing everything documented and laid out cleanly again. I'm also converting a lot of logic over to my custom Level Scripting system as a stress test.

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Nick Crosgrove @occultgamedev.bsky.social · 16/07/2026

This is such a wonderful way to cultivate senior developers. Good on them!

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Reposted by Nick Crosgrove

JC Lau @drjclau.bsky.social · 13/07/2026

Live your life so that when you die, people will remember you fondly like Sam Neill, instead of making explosive diarrhea jokes at your expense like Lindsey Graham 🤗

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Nick Crosgrove @occultgamedev.bsky.social · 12/07/2026

What's happening to the games industry continues to be especially ghoulish, because the actual people in it are some of the most creative, kindest folks you'll ever meet who care deeply about the work they're doing.

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Reposted by Nick Crosgrove

David Lindsey Pittman @dphrygian.com · 07/07/2026

My best advice for any game devs recently laid off is to keep in touch with your closest coworker friends, do a group call at least once a week, share job postings in the chat, hype each other up, and just generally look out for each other.

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Nick Crosgrove @occultgamedev.bsky.social · 02/07/2026

100%. To make new friends you have to risk rejection. Nothing ventured nothing gained, and a lot of the friendships I have made in my thirties are just as deep and rewarding as the ones I made in my teens. Nothing stopping you but yourself!

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Nick Crosgrove @occultgamedev.bsky.social · 27/06/2026

The Forbidden @joewintergreen.com Plugin. We can see but never touch.

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Nick Crosgrove @occultgamedev.bsky.social · 25/06/2026

David is the engineer we took all of our very hardest problems to. He's also the one who led our engineering department to shipping The Killing Stone in such a stable, performant state. He's EXCELLENT, kind, and I would work with him in a heartbeat!

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Nick Crosgrove @occultgamedev.bsky.social · 25/06/2026

First public showing of the game went pretty well! Folks had lots of great feedback and thoughts. I am exhausted to the bone but looking forward to getting more done!

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Nick Crosgrove @occultgamedev.bsky.social · 23/06/2026

We're showing this off tomorrow at the IGDA DC + Loric Games + Arlington City event at GMU!

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Nick Crosgrove @occultgamedev.bsky.social · 22/06/2026

We handed Fredrik a really tough set of guidelines and briefs, and he did such a good job! There's a whole bunch of amazing music he worked up for this, and it's constantly on in the background when working on the game!

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Reposted by Nick Crosgrove

Nick Crosgrove @occultgamedev.bsky.social · 22/06/2026

I'm starting to spend serious time getting the Prototype and Pitch info for Moonstone out to folks. If you're scouting for projects, I would love to hear from you! We're building this for SteamDeck and Consoles, and have some very cool surprises in store! #IndieGame #GameDev

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Anna 🌿👁️ @annacwebs.bsky.social · 22/06/2026

We've got some open roles for RPG-heads at Kinali! The team is fully remote and honestly great to work with. But be warned: if you're going for the cinematic designer role, you'll be helping bring life to all the wild things I've been writing up 😅

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Nick Crosgrove @occultgamedev.bsky.social · 22/06/2026

A Quick #GameDev trick to follow up: You should be instrumenting your Steam Recording Timeline! It's one of the best ways to quickly handle Footage Capture, you can scrub through and immediately understand what you're looking at.

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Nick Crosgrove @occultgamedev.bsky.social · 22/06/2026

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Nick Crosgrove @occultgamedev.bsky.social · 20/06/2026

This is what I've been saying for years now, it's nice to have some numbers behind it. It doesn't matter how much or little diarrhea you add to your stew... people don't want to eat it.

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Nick Crosgrove @occultgamedev.bsky.social · 19/06/2026

Something about the act of cutting a trailer for externals summons all the worst bugs to the surface. Have bugs that are nigh impossible to get to reproduce? Start cutting a trailer, they'll show up 5/5 times.

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