Aliensrock, ThinkyCon 2025, festivals, and more!
[p]Before getting into everything else, please note that Gentoo Rescue will be 20% off November 3 - November 17 to celebrate all of the below. This will be the biggest and longest sale yet, so don't let your friends miss this opportunity! Also, remember that you can get even deeper discounts by purchasing (or completing) either of the bundles:[/p]
- [p]Gentoo's Demon Wormholes: With 2023 and 2024 Thinky Award winners Can of Wormholes and Maxwell's puzzling demon.[/p]
- [p]Gentookeeper: With 2025's Glowkeeper, which is another underrated title that I highly recommend![/p]
- [p]Aliensrock, a popular puzzle YouTuber, has uploaded an (in progress) playlist of Gentoo Rescue on their channel! Their videos are always entertaining, so it has been a pleasure to watch him play. I want to welcome all of the new players to our Discord server, and encourage everyone to try out some of our amazing community levelpacks on the Steam Workshop once they've completed the main game. Go check out their videos, and share some love with likes and comments, especially to the Gentoo Rescue videos.[/p]
- [p]We're now at 81 reviews, with a quick burst of 15+ from the last few weeks! This is undoubtedly due to the new attention from Aliensrock, so I'm incredibly grateful to him and everyone that has taken the time to leave a review. I think getting to 100 (and beyond) is a real possibility. Hopefully this barrage of events will get us there soon![/p]
- [p]The talks and schedule for Thinky Con 2025 have been released. I will be speaking on the opening day of the conference (Wednesday, November 5) about the puzzle solver I built for Gentoo Rescue. There are many other amazing talks on the schedule, so don't miss it! Okay, it's actually not big deal if you miss it because they'll have all the talks available on YouTube afterwards.[/p]
- [p]Gentoo Rescue will be part of 3 separate Steam events in the next two weeks![/p]
- [p]DevGAMM Awards Celebration runs November 3 - November 9. I don't know if Gentoo Rescue actually won anything, but I'm so proud to see it accepted into this event.[/p]
- [p]Metroidvania Fusion Festival runs November 3 - November 9. Metroidvania enthusiasts are (rightfully) very skeptical about games claiming to be metroidvanias. I designed parts of Gentoo Rescue through a metroidvania (and partially metroidbrainia) lens, so I'm excited to participate alongside more traditional examples in the genre.[/p]
- [p]Animal Fest runs November 10 - November 17. Save the penguins![/p]
- [p]There are so many custom levelpacks on Steam Workshop now that I've decided to start curating my favorites. Check out this collection of Dev picks![/p]
- [p]I started streaming more regularly, and will continue to do so for a few days per week. Give me a follow and come say hi! I've played some puzzle games (including Gentoo Rescue custom levels), some competitive games, and other variety (including talk prep and some game dev). I'll actually be competing in a chill Silksong any% race with a few friends on Saturday, November 8 at (I think) 11am PST, so that should be fun![/p]
- [p]I played around with Godot and made a silly October themed game Witch Cauldron. It's a free puzzly platformer on Itch.[/p]
- [p]Due to all of this renewed interest in Gentoo Rescue, I am excited to say that I'll be returning to post-launch development in November. I have a long list of small fixes to make, so expect at least one more patch this year. Maybe more?[/p]
- [p]The Discord server has grown from all of this renewed interest, so I've started making it more organized. This has involved a few special roles, one of which is for those that have "solved something in-game without any reward". Players can earn this reward by messaging me the secret message. I'd like to give our small community a comfortable home to hang out, so all suggestions are welcome![/p]