Ken

@kaesve.bsky.social

I trick computers into doing stuff

Most complexity in my projects is self-inflicted lol. In Chester there is no sprite sorting—most things aren’t separate sprites. This screenshot the tree, ice cream cart, bushes are all one background image. I wanted to minimize tile and asset reuse and hand draw as much of the park as I could.

A screenshot of chester at the park with a puzzle and some park scenery
Eternal Skies TCG RPG@eternalskies.neocities.org · last wk.

Indie game devs, what is something your game does that is way harder than people think? For me, it's that my card game is stack based. Most people don't realize that instant speed interaction in a card game makes everything 1000x more complicated and difficult. This is exactly why nobody copies MTG

#gamedev is hard, but nobody told me how much work all the other stuff is? Setting up the steam page took _so long_. Made like 100 capsule art versions, and I speedran learning video editing Anyway, here’s a gameplay trailer I cut last weekend for #screenshotsaturday. Music is by my lil bro 💛

Ken@kaesve.bsky.social · 2w ago

The Steam store page for Chester is finally up! Chester at the Park is a #puzzle game with #chess pieces and cute dogs in charming 1-bit pixel art! You should probably wishlist it! store.steampowered.com/app/4074100/... #indie #gamedev #pixelart

I spent all week fixing bugs and now there's NEW bugs? That's not fair 😭 This one is probably the funniest. Sometimes when you reset a puzzle it just.. deletes _everything_, and now you got to watch out for demogorgons? #gamedev

Our June meet-up is in 10 days! We'll also be getting a presentation this month from @kaesve.bsky.social titled "Pun Driven Development: A Side Project Philosophy"! This one will be a bit more developer friendly, though still for everyone. Come through and catch up! lu.ma/d9ls6y2m?tk=...

June 3&3 (featuring Ken Voskuil) · Zoom · Luma

What to expect: Come join us for our monthly virtual meetup and meet other people in the design and engineering industry! Meetups typically last about an hour,…

lu.ma

Tried to draw a #pixelart portrait of old man Bertrand, and while I think it turned out okay, he doesn’t really look like how I imagined him… I’ll probably try again but I thought I’d still try this version

1 bit pixel art of an old white guy, vaguely resembling some mathematician

I’ve been struggling with this tree, but it’s finally getting somewhere I think! For weeks I kept coming back to it, trying to render the foliage in a different way. Finally got a direction I liked while watching the new bridgerton season, and from there it just took two episodes to balance shapes

1bit Pixel art treeVery rough sketch of a different shape of pixel art treeRough sketch of pixel art tree with roughly the final shape, but no consistent rendering of shapes and leaves

Alas, no new #screenshotsaturday, but here’s a poem: Through dark clouds A single streak of light Bishop strikes — Kodok, the Frog He might seem like a grump, but Kodok knows a lot about chess puzzles. If you impress him he may share some of his wisdom—or just more of his poetry 😉

Pixel art portrait of Kodok the Frog

It’s been too long since I shared a #screenshotsaturday! I’ve been working hard on the opening act and all the support systems I needed—dialogue trees, state machines, triggers, npc simulation, … but these screenshots are now actually in-game, instead of just mock ups. A big step! 🎉

A screenshot of Chester at the Park. It shows black and white pixel art, on the left a park with a life sized chess board. On it, a boy is calling Chester, who is sitting next to the board.
On the right side is a ui panel with the name of the puzzle “Opening lines”, and a portrait of the boyA screenshot of Chester at the Park. It shows black and white pixel art. The layout is similar to the last image, but now Chester is also on the board, and an owl is sitting next to the board. The owl says “Go on, select the white pawn over there”. 
On the right side is now a portrait of the owl, and control hints

Don’t normally make milestone posts like this, but this is my 0x100th post, perfectly balanced with my 0x100 followers 🎉

A screenshot of my profile showing 256 followers and 255 posts