Grounded Bird Games aka Chris

I am using Adventure creator for my latest game. Im curious, did you use unity timeline at all, or just AC for cutscenes etc?

Picture of a sunrise. Lots of whispy clouds catching the sun, making the sky various shades of orange and pink

Picture of a sunrise. Lots of whispy clouds catching the sun, making the sky various shades of orange and pink

The sky was really putting on a show this morning 🌞 #sunrise

A little behind the scenes peak. One of the things I like about game dev is how similar it is to theatre or film production, or even magic (one of my other hobbies). Its all smoke and mirrors and doing more with less #indiedev #gamedev

Hmmm...fluctuating year, what could that mean...#indiedev

Dish of feijoa and apple crumble showing the golden crumble top

Time to get creative with the wealth of feijoa...this time its feijoa and apple crumble #nz #feijoa

weird: we choose to let the world’s most stupid venal and sociopathic people rule

weirder: we could stop choosing this at any moment

For those wondering, this is how #Nechromia stuff starts existing XD Make it first, perfect it later right? hahah

Sometimes testing means you just use "Charlie Brown Grown Ups" voices. Im pretty sure this is what I sound like to my kids! #indiedev #gamedev

Scientists discovered a caterpillar that murders insects and stitches their dismembered body parts onto its back as armor

You’re welcome. Happy day! 😆

I'm mostly still too ashamed of the way my game looks to show it to the non gamers I know irl

The gamers I know largely understand there is more to life than graphics and games are complicated, but non gamers it just looks like pixilated kids drawings

POV: You trust the process

Wishlist: store.steampowered.com/app/3241560/...

#gamedev #indiegames

Ah that's a shame, haven't had much luck with celestial events and weather lately so was happy to catch this one. Was bright and clear, but not so big - photos were taken with my phone to the eyepiece of a cheap kids telescope 😆

Slightly blurry photo of the moon. It has a red tint to it caused by the eclipse

Slightly blurry photo of the moon. It has a red tint to it caused by the eclipse

Slightly blurry more close photo of the moon. It has a red tint to it caused by the eclipse

Managed to get a cloudless night for the lunar eclipse down here in NZ. Made the 14 and 15yo get up to have a look. Not entirely sure they were impressed! #lunareclipse

Laptop sitting on a kitchen table

This is where I indie dev.

Or a slightly lower (or higher?) tier and the messages are more obscure/sinister..'Its time', 'tomorrow we find out who rules', '🔴🟡🟢🟤🔵🟣⚪⚫. 3am'

Mark Watson World | Patreon

I've set up a Patreon where you can subscribe to get all sorts of extras around my books, podcast, live shows. I was squeamish about doing this but, well, *I* support various artists this way, and I've been taken advantage of a lot in life, and I'm nice, so why not?
www.patreon.com/MarkWatsonWo...

Close up picture of 4 whole feijoa and one cut in half on a black marble benchtop

First feijoa of the season. Delicious! Must be heading in to autumn down here #feijoa #nz

All the ways we accidentally procrastinate Here is a non-exhaustive list of the ways I procrastinate on all sorts of things, and how you probably do it too

All the ways we accidentally procrastinate

Here is a non-exhaustive list of the ways I procrastinate on all sorts of things, and how you probably do it too

Connor singing Just Chill YouTube video by Chris Zed

Slightly shameless dad promo here, but you should check out this song by my eldest (even though it was 6 years ago) - cool lyrics, awesome voice, nice guy...super proud of him! #indiemusic youtu.be/ZlzC7aDB-1o?...

Thanks - feels like I almost have all the building blocks sorted, so close to getting started on an actual level soon!

Kia ora everyone! Still working on the new game. Lots of behind the scenes. The latest is lip syncing to give the characters that 'attempting to look like they are talking' feel! I have a system that is not too hard to set up and also gives an acceptable result, so that's a win! #gamedev #indiedev

You and your monkey mind Why do anything you want to do, when everything you want also comes pre-packaged with self-inflicted injury and insult?

New science shows there's a brain region that governs procrastination. But there might just be some other stuff going on too.

My podcast is back tomorrow. It's a mystery story with all sorts of other aspects. Many comedians are in it. It's always under 40 minutes. The arguments for you listening to it are stacking up, here.

These echo chambers are made by recommendation algorithms, by social connection (and rupture), by our own biases, and by deliberate propaganda machines. They seem impenetrable.

Does anyone have any idea how we break the echo chambers? No Trump voter in my family will ever know what actually happened to Alex Pretti or Renee Good. They will believe the officers were justified. They will watch Fox News and that will be the end of it.

A very clunky programmer art version of a spaceship interior

One other Earth Must Die thing from the archives - because I love seeing other people's WIP stuff, and I think it's good to expose what a mess games are for the longest time:

Here's what EMD looked like when @mikerose.bsky.social agreed to give me money, and how it looks now.

Never give up.

A timeline visually representing the advice from my post, emphasising how dramatically and reliably having more time, with a testable build, converts to your game being better and your studio being safer.

I've been running an indie games studio for 15 years now, and it felt like a good time to boil down what I've learned into 4 pieces of advice:

www.pentadact.com/2026-01-08-1...

I hope it's of use, not least because goddamn I forgot how long blog posts take to write.

What the HELL is happening with the new school curriculum? Over and over again, I've had emails and messages from parents asking me about the new curriculum. I tried to get my head around it, but just had more questions than answers. So I teamed up with my fr...

I'm really happy that The Bad Newsletter has a new home at Emily Writes Weekly, and really unhappy that my first piece is about the ultra-munted weirdness that the Chaos Coalition is doing to the new school curriculum www.emilywrites.co.nz/what-the-hel...

WOW. *Wow*. 😡

Ahh wheels, fantastic! I hope its as satisfying to roll under the bed as I am imagining!