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Problem Machine

@problemmachine.bsky.social
71 followers 145 following 77 posts

Artist, game developer, writer, overthinker, etc. Current project is Bound City, a game about a strange dying place that might be a metaphor for something. (He/They)

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Problem Machine @problemmachine.bsky.social · 20/09/2026
Once the model is exhaustively and correctly described, this is the program. It is complete. This is why I personally see relatively little utility for LLMs in programming: If I can describe the model accurately, I've basically programmed it, and if I can't then I still have work to do.
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Problem Machine @problemmachine.bsky.social · 20/09/2026
This is getting a bit of attention so I'd like to expand on it a bit. What the compiler offers to the programmer is a way to a) describe their mental model and b) reify it into a behavior for the executing machine. The process of programming is the process of unambiguously describing this model.
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Problem Machine @problemmachine.bsky.social · 19/09/2026
Quoting myself from a day ago - "The problem is thinking that the product of a programmer is code. It isn't, really, the code is just the final stage. The actual valuable thing the programmer produces is the underlying mental model. Without that, the code is just tech debt"
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Problem Machine @problemmachine.bsky.social · 17/09/2026
A few more why not. Coach (Left 4 Dead 2), Forrest Kaysen (Deadly Premonition), Gizmo (Fallout), Dropsy (Dropsy), Eddie (Silent Hill 2), Doris (Wild Guns Reloaded)
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Problem Machine @problemmachine.bsky.social · 17/09/2026
Realizing belatedly I should be including the name of the game they're from. Probably would have thought of that if I hadn't started with Dave the Diver (Dave the Diver). Anyway: Goldlewis Dickinson (Guilty Gear: Strive), Nonupeipe (Slay the Spire 2), Papineau (Look Outside)
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Problem Machine @problemmachine.bsky.social · 17/09/2026
Papineau
Papineau
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Problem Machine @problemmachine.bsky.social · 17/09/2026
Nonupeipe
Nonupeipe
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Problem Machine @problemmachine.bsky.social · 17/09/2026
Also Goldlewis Dickinson
Goldlewis Dickinson
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Problem Machine @problemmachine.bsky.social · 17/09/2026
Dave the Diver
Dave the Diver
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Problem Machine @problemmachine.bsky.social · 19/08/2026
Almost all of my music writing for the past 5 years or so has been for the game I'm making, so I decided I wanted to spend some time writing a piece for its own sake. Pretty happy with how it turned out! soundcloud.com/problem-mach...
soundcloud.com
The Incomprehensible and Deadly Love Poetry of Stars
It's been a while since I've written any music not intended as soundtrack for my game project. Quite happy with how this one turned out, some fruitful experimentation with frequency band splitting eff
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Problem Machine @problemmachine.bsky.social · 19/08/2026
Almost all of my music writing for the past 5 years or so has been for the game I'm making, so I decided I wanted to spend some time writing a piece for its own sake. Pretty happy with how it turned out! soundcloud.com/problem-mach...
soundcloud.com
The Incomprehensible and Deadly Love Poetry of Stars
It's been a while since I've written any music not intended as soundtrack for my game project. Quite happy with how this one turned out, some fruitful experimentation with frequency band splitting eff
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Problem Machine @problemmachine.bsky.social · 11/07/2026
Grand Budapest Hotel maintains the crown for me but I did love Asteroid City
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Problem Machine @problemmachine.bsky.social · 19/06/2026
9games.pages.dev/s/dhkfnkv7
9games.pages.dev
もっと広めたいSteamゲーム9選 / 9 Steam Games I Want to Spread
同時に自分に合ったゲームも見つかる / Find games that suit you, too.
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Reposted by Problem Machine
Francis Coulombe @frankiepixel.bsky.social · 11/06/2026
Look Outside is now 40% off for the duration of the Devolver publisher sale! Untold horrors await! store.steampowered.com/app/3373660/...
store.steampowered.com
Save 40% on Look Outside on Steam
Look Outside is a survival horror RPG set in a single apartment building. A mysterious event turns anyone who looks out the window into grotesque monsters, leaving the world in absolute chaos. Scaveng...
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Problem Machine @problemmachine.bsky.social · 04/06/2026
I've been playing a lot of banger games recently but I finished Look Outside a few days ago and am still thinking about it. Highly recommended, though be aware it is a somewhat brutally idiosyncratic survival-horror JRPG. store.steampowered.com/app/3373660/...
store.steampowered.com
Look Outside on Steam
Look Outside is a survival horror RPG set in a single apartment building. A mysterious event turns anyone who looks out the window into grotesque monsters, leaving the world in absolute chaos. Scaveng...
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Problem Machine @problemmachine.bsky.social · 01/04/2026
It's fine it's fine, his body is in a bigger box under that box
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Alice Camp @acampwriting.com · 29/03/2026
people say they want narrative games to have a lot of choice but the bigger the choice the less it matters. if you can choose to kill a character then every other world state has to scope for a scenario where that char doesn't exist. even alive they can never meaningfully impact the story again
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The Onion @theonion.com · 25/03/2026
Archaeological Dig Uncovers Ancient Race Of Skeleton People theonion.com/archaeological-dig-unc…
Archaeological Dig Uncovers Ancient Race Of Skeleton People
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Problem Machine @problemmachine.bsky.social · 17/03/2026
Great work, I found the paragraph about the promise of the mob mirroring the promise of AI very interesting and insightful
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Problem Machine @problemmachine.bsky.social · 17/03/2026
Quote from linked article: "Here is the seductive promise of the mob, though: If anything ever goes wrong, the hope is, no one person can be blamed. The mob’s promise is the same as the promise of AI itself: an end to personal accountability, to ever being held responsible for one’s own individual thoughts, actions, behaviors, or freaky-ass desires. For good or ill, thoughts, actions, and even desires are the things that make you individually you. Those are the things to lay claim to, to own. You shouldn’t sacrifice or outsource those to the cloud or the AI or the amorphous mob. Unfortunately, AI can never be held accountable for any harms done because, very much like a mob, there’s no one ‘there.’ Moreover AI cannot give you what you want, only its best neural guess at what it thinks you want. That is to say, AI can only tell you what you want."
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Problem Machine @problemmachine.bsky.social · 06/03/2026
Criminal government, traitors to humanity. I leave it to your discretion to determine what appropriate consequences are for that sort of treason.
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Problem Machine @problemmachine.bsky.social · 09/01/2026
Sounds pretty good so far! (Also: Pleased to see a fellow Reason Appreciator)
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maura quint @mauraquint.bsky.social · 04/01/2026
My whole life, advocating war has been fed to me as “the adult position,” akin to drinking your coffee black or reading the business section of the newspaper. Let’s be very clear — war is the childish nonsense of impulsive destructive idiots playing baby-brained video games with real human lives.
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Chris Franklin @errant-signal.com · 03/01/2026
I don’t know how else to say it: we must be stopped.
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Problem Machine @problemmachine.bsky.social · 03/01/2026
I was honestly not able to get the tilt function working, but I didn't try very hard. Sensitivity seems very solid to me, and comparable to my extremely sparse Wacom experience (a very old Intuos tablet)
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Problem Machine @problemmachine.bsky.social · 02/01/2026
Been using a Huion Kamvas Pro 22 a few years now. Mostly works great - the first pen broke after I dropped it off my desk, but the replacement I got has lasted years (through similar drops). Solid.
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Problem Machine @problemmachine.bsky.social · 17/12/2025
I always heard Dudley's "Corkscrew Blow!" as "Cock Scroobler!" I don't know what it means to scrooble someone's cock but it can't be good.
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Problem Machine @problemmachine.bsky.social · 16/12/2025
I enjoy In-N-Out and I will never go to bat for their fries, their fries suck. It's so weird, you can see them making them and it seems like what they're doing should make okay fries, and yet.
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Problem Machine @problemmachine.bsky.social · 16/12/2025
Some people talk about this as it's missing "soul" or whatever, but I don't like that sort of mysticism. What it's missing is the unexpected texture generated in the process of creation, the fingerprint, the happy accident. It can only ever be exactly as expected and never more.
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Problem Machine @problemmachine.bsky.social · 16/12/2025
This is incidentally why AI generations are not a useful medium. Skipping over this process means you will never develop the eye, the ear, the skill of knowing what is or isn't working and why. Even if you already have these skills, bypassing the process leads to a sterile output.
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Problem Machine @problemmachine.bsky.social · 16/12/2025
Also. Fucking up the thing you imagined is often the first step in discovering something much cooler than you imagined. Creating exactly the thing you wanted might not actually lead to the best outcome. I think far more talent comes from learning how to harness these moments than how to avoid them.
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Problem Machine @problemmachine.bsky.social · 16/12/2025
Not thinking you're good enough... that's part of the process, that's how you get better. Because thinking that you're not good enough means you know a way that you could be better! That's good!
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Problem Machine @problemmachine.bsky.social · 16/12/2025
Occasionally I see an artist frustrated and saying that they'll never be as good as they want to be, so why bother, and, like... No one is ever as good as they want to be? The more one improves as an artist, or as much of anything, the more the scope of what they know is possible expands.
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Aura @aurahack.ca · 05/12/2025
i am begging game developers and musicians who are not putting your soundtracks on bandcamp/ampwall to just... do that... please... i will not be streaming your music off A Music Service. let me actually give you money.
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Problem Machine @problemmachine.bsky.social · 05/12/2025
It's time to face that books simply aren't a good medium for storytelling. Such a dry and linear medium has no way to convey systems or relationships outside of tiny snapshots to the player, or so-called "reader." This will be true until they innovate by adding LED screens and buttons to the books.
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Problem Machine @problemmachine.bsky.social · 11/11/2025
A fake it 'til you make it approach to teaching reading. It might work, if we never needed to read anything besides picture books. But at that point you're not really using the text at all, are you? It's the opposite of learning to read.
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Problem Machine @problemmachine.bsky.social · 11/11/2025
An obsession with form over function -- except that's not right, is it? A belief that form IS function, and once you learn to mimic the form well enough that's the same thing as creating a functional replica. Which maybe works fine until there's literally any change of context.
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Problem Machine @problemmachine.bsky.social · 11/11/2025
www.apmreports.org/episode/2019... This article's been going around and it's very worth reading. I can't help but see parallels with the infection of AI boosting, where solving the immediate task of saying words is superseding the actual purpose of the task -- learning to read.
apmreports.org
How a flawed idea is teaching millions of kids to be poor readers
For decades, schools have taught children the strategies of struggling readers, using a theory about reading that cognitive scientists have repeatedly debunked. And many teachers and parents don't kno...
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Problem Machine @problemmachine.bsky.social · 08/11/2025
Experimenting with using IK solvers to drive enemy movement #ScreenshotSaturday #indiedev #gamedev
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Problem Machine @problemmachine.bsky.social · 04/11/2025
A metroidvania with a strong narrative emphasis. The night never ends, the sea rises, the tower grows. Investigate by fighting your way to the heart of the city and meeting people along the way. A couple years from completion, but a demo is available store.steampowered.com/app/3871260/...
A character leaping over the heads of enemies who are aiming at them in a pixel art styleA battle between a character and a large woman with claws in a pixel art styleA UI screen filled with keywordsA character running across a misty moonlit bridge
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Problem Machine @problemmachine.bsky.social · 21/10/2025
Not specifically game design, but I think my primary principle for art in general: Find the tension, then emphasize it. Some people like to resolve it too. That part is optional though.
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Problem Machine @problemmachine.bsky.social · 19/10/2025
false :(
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Problem Machine @problemmachine.bsky.social · 19/10/2025
...true?
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Problem Machine @problemmachine.bsky.social · 19/10/2025
...true?
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Problem Machine @problemmachine.bsky.social · 18/10/2025
I have made a public demo for my game Bound City available! About an hour long, containing one zone and bits of others. Please check it out, wishlist, tell everyone you've ever met, fraudulently inflate my numbers, etc. Every little bit helps. store.steampowered.com/app/3871260/...
store.steampowered.com
Bound City on Steam
An action-packed and bittersweet adventure in a city of endless night. Explore the dying city and try to find your way to the tower that seems to be at the heart of it all. Nothing is quite as it appe...
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Problem Machine @problemmachine.bsky.social · 18/10/2025
With hunter crest dash attack bounces you up and you can get another hit immediately if you're still in range, so might have been that. I used that combo a lot.
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Problem Machine @problemmachine.bsky.social · 01/10/2025
I've been thinking "Adventure-Platformer" for mine but maybe explicitly calling out exploration is better
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Problem Machine @problemmachine.bsky.social · 20/09/2025
I wonder how much of that just stems from having a talking rather than silent protagonist
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Problem Machine @problemmachine.bsky.social · 13/09/2025
We're stuck with jacking off 1.1 (the internet)
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Problem Machine @problemmachine.bsky.social · 12/09/2025
Dunno if that's my best ever but I agree easily the best in Bloodborne. If we're including Sekiro I might say Genichiro though
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