iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Rats with Wings @rats-with-wings.bsky.social · 18/12/2025

Fun fact: Escape Velocity was also blocked out in lego! It's extremely useful for anything where line of sight matters (sorry about the cat hair)

A grey lego baseplate with bricks on top making a level. There's paper annotations indicating various features.

see alt text 1.
missing a higher-rez version of this one for some reason. There's also a dark maul minifigure standing in as a prop for the level

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Rats with Wings @rats-with-wings.bsky.social · 16/10/2025

Heya! Been working on game stuff when I'm not struggling to get my medication. Anyhow, here's what I'm working on now! It's that purpleish wedge in the bottom center of the map. It's kinda the companion cube for our game. I also built a ziggurat to test it out on

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Rats with Wings @rats-with-wings.bsky.social · 18/09/2025

we're adding sprinting and zooming in to the game this week! no pictures because it's still a heavy work in progress

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Rats with Wings @rats-with-wings.bsky.social · 12/09/2025

Update 4! "Docks" update. Grab mechanics are improved, Purple is in, saves are invisibly different. Patch notes are on Escape Velocity's Steam page: store.steampowered.com/app/3210690/...

store.steampowered.com

Escape Velocity on Steam

An explosive first-person puzzler!

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Rats with Wings @rats-with-wings.bsky.social · 25/08/2025

Working on something new: making the bomb better visually match how it's responding to the bomb-rope. Normally (orange mode) the bomb explodes. If it lands near a bomb-rope, it acts different: it doesn't explode. Instead, it starts a chain reaction in the bomb-rope. Here's how that looks: (WIP)

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Rats with Wings @rats-with-wings.bsky.social · 22/08/2025

KICKSTARTER BACKERS AT THE $100 TIER: CHECK YOUR EMAIL! There's a survey to fill for me to design posters off of

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Rats with Wings @rats-with-wings.bsky.social · 22/08/2025

If you have Escape Velocity installed, you may have noticed it had an update yesterday! On the steam page (and on @itzu.bsky.social) I also posted some patch notes: steamcommunity.com/app/3210690/... Anyhow, there's more behind the scenes than just what's in the notes! Let's talk about Wasteland.

steamcommunity.com

Update 3: "Wasteland" update! :: Escape Velocity General Discussions

Been working on the "wasteland" maps this week so that's what I've called it, even though the wasteland maps aren't in this build...anyhow. Some quality-of-life stuff changed while making new maps for...

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Rats with Wings @rats-with-wings.bsky.social · 11/06/2025

Want a puzzle game like Portal and Talos Principle, with the aesthetics of Halo? Check out our Kickstarter! www.kickstarter.com/projects/rat... #demo #puzzle #gamedev #indie #kickstarter

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Rats with Wings @rats-with-wings.bsky.social · 19/05/2025

Finally, we have capsule art, thanks to the wonderful @foxfaer.com !! They did great work making Gerund (the ant) look great and also really selling the environment! #gamedev #steamnextfest #capsuleart #indiedev #capsuleart

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Rats with Wings @rats-with-wings.bsky.social · 19/05/2025

Made some posters to decorate walls in Escape Velocity! Also because testing feedback indicated we needed to "Ant it up". They look flat because there's a generic "poster multi" in their material that applies folds, wear, and stains ingame (the third image is that "multi")

Multipurpose map for the ant posters. Like a lot of multis, each color channel does a different thing. R is a "roughness" map. G is a "diffuse" black-and-white color map that's re-tinted in-engine. B is a heightmap. The alpha is used for transparency. Wham. Lots of detail in a single texture.

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Rats with Wings @rats-with-wings.bsky.social · 12/02/2025

Working on UI stuff this week! It's a HUGE difference. here's a WIP of a few menus, with before/after shots.

A menu from before the UI changes this week-- notice that it still says "Moonshot" since I made this menu before the announcement and name change. It's a terrible menu but I do miss the little animated burning effect on the blueprint's bottom edge

The current version of the Escape Velocity main menu! A lot more professional looking and more accurate to the game. Also an excuse to show off my favorite effect in the game, the aurora I coded.

Old options menu. The only option is "invert y axis" because one of our testers plays inverted and a ui option is a lot cleaner than adjusting the code every time they came over to test

new options menu! It still has some quirks I need to iron out, but it looks pretty at least.

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Rats with Wings @rats-with-wings.bsky.social · 21/01/2025

Spent last week replacing the kinda awkward arrow arrays with a single laser-like arc. The results look neat! Also a lot cleaner for building levels and puzzles.

A level from Escape Velocity. Lasers shoot from the cannons to show where they aim. This isn't how it'll be in-game-- each laser only shows up when the cannon is triggered-- but for building levels it helps a lot to show where things will go.

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Rats with Wings @rats-with-wings.bsky.social · 10/01/2025

I don't often take pics of the greyboxing for levels since, y'know, it's supposed to be replaced later. But for this last round of maps I figured I'd take at least one before/after shot. Here's level...11? I think? of the tutorial-- Shooting Gallery. #gamedev #indiegamedev #escapeVelocity #antGame

Before image. The walls, floor, and ceiling are the same shader-- I made a greyboxing material that contextually labels itself as what it is (floor, etc.)

Lights float arbitrarily in the room, the critical geometry (rocks in lifts) is occluded by the lift shader, and the floor is gloop. Also the orb is green because for a while I thought green would be a good idea.

The beta room. Everything that was 400x400x10 blocks has been replaced by appropriate geometry, from the floors to the delivery chute to the retaining walls.

The lift shader has been adjusted to show the rocks in the lift better, since they're the actual important part of this puzzle.

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Rats with Wings @rats-with-wings.bsky.social · 25/10/2024

sometimes gamedev just looks plain bad. building a laser pointer and just had to admire how "work in progress" this looks. I love how test maps look and now I see how they end up like they do...

In the top left corner: "LIGHTING NEEDS TO BE REBUILT // REFLECTION CAPTURES NEED TO BE REBUILT"
in the bottom right corner: A gun with an untextured cylinder precariously balanced on the top
in the scene: A floor texture with the word "FLOOR" on it, with 1m increments marked on it

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Rats with Wings @rats-with-wings.bsky.social · 15/10/2024

let's try that again. Our first sketch for an Escape Velocity game icon was a little...dated. The current one fits much better in the steam library, even if it's a bit less colorful

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Rats with Wings @rats-with-wings.bsky.social · 15/10/2024

this didn't make the cut for a game icon but it'd be great for a mid-90's downport

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Rats with Wings @rats-with-wings.bsky.social · 30/09/2024

Escape Velocity, as it currently exists, is split into 4 map files. This represents the tutorial/demo levels-- after the demo is out, I'll be building the next several levels to represent the rest of the game. As of today I'm finally working on polishing up the 4th map file! yay

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Rats with Wings @rats-with-wings.bsky.social · 18/09/2024

Since Bluesky now has video: Announcing Escape Velocity! An explosive first-person puzzler about blasting your way out of a bad situation. Coming mid-2025. Wishlist it today! store.steampowered.com/app/3210690/... #gamedev

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Rats with Wings @rats-with-wings.bsky.social · 16/09/2024

fun fact: the temporary model for our auto-cannon was the beam tower from halo 1. it works real well as a giant tech cannon The current model is much simpler, but fits in the setting and physically into places a lot better. Plus I won't be sued over it

An unlit scene featuring a cannon that looks an awful lot like the beam towers of Halo. This was the temporary asset before I modeled my own.

Auto-cannon that, while not as pretty, gets its function across a lot clearer. It looks like a trackball set in a round treaded base. Arrows of energy and some air shoots out from the grilled front of it.

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Rats with Wings @rats-with-wings.bsky.social · 10/09/2024

Hi everyone! Itzu here. Gonna be sharing random trivia about the game and some WIP things that weren't ready for the announcement trailer. Hopefully it'll give you all a better understanding of what the finished product will be like updates won't be immediate, I gotta get images and stuff

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