Issue #644 - May 8th 2026

Weekly newsletter about Web Game Development.
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Articles:

Indie games have built a thriving economy in territory traditional publishers abandoned or ignored
Godot's growth figures and Steam revenue data show that far from being a sideshow, indie gaming is a slow-burning revolution.
Rob Fahey at GamesIndustryBiz

Google DeepMind partners with EVE Online for AI model testing
Move comes as CCP Games spends $120M to go independent, rebrands as Fenris Creations.
Kyle Orland at Ars Technica

True permadeath: you can never play this game again if you let its immortal snail assassin touch your mouse pointer
The meme where a killer snail slowly but relentlessly pursues you is coming to your desktop.
Christopher Livingston at PC Gamer

'Not-for-profit' biz models can make for better showcases, say Triple-i Initiative organizers
Focusing on covering costs instead of profits can build a better marketing engine.
Bryant Francis at Game Developer
 

Tutorials:

How to publish your web games on Xiaomi Game Center and access a new audience beyond saturated platforms
We’ll explore all the basics of distributing and publishing web games to Xiaomi Game Center and share results after testing 600+ games to give you a hint at which titles are best suited for this platform and what you can expect in terms of revenue.
Pavel Polovinka at Playgama
 

Tools:

Easel with the physics engine with incremental rollback

Phaser Editor v5 is here: AI integration and full Phaser 4 support

Defold 1.12.4 released
 

Demos:

GameBoy

Another world

Dweet of the week: forest with lakes
 

Games:

Tiny Towers

The Red Pearls of Borneo
 

Issue #643 - May 1st 2026

Weekly newsletter about Web Game Development.
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Articles:

'We've been a little bit too romantic:' Ustwo CEO says lowering development costs is now paramount
How the Monument Valley studio will be charting a path forward on PC and consoles.
Chris Kerr at Game Developer

I’m tired of sneaking through tall grass in games
A lot of time in games like Assassin's Creed or Horizon Zero Dawn I'm just rolling from one patch of tall grass to another and I'm getting bored.
Zack Zwiezen at Kotaku

Roblox reports strong Q1 growth, revises full-year forecast due to new saftey measures
Average DAUs rose 35% YoY to 132 million, while monthly unique payers increased 52% to 31 million.
Sophie McEvoy at GamesIndustryBiz

What my zen week with a virtual power-washer taught me about gaming – and life
Some of the most popular simulator games are outlandishly boring. But curiously, it’s satisfying to complete pointless tasks when the stakes are so low.
Imogen West-Knights at The Guardian
 

Tutorials:

Make a block-stacking game with Construct 3
We will make a simple (but very entertaining) game about stacking blocks and knocking them down.
Caleb Cornett at Awesome Inc
 

Competitions:

Almost 500 games submitted to Gamedev.js Jam 2026
 

Tools:

Slowmo - slow down, pause, or speed up time of any web content

Phaser 4 renderer: faster, cleaner, and built for modern games
 

Demos:

Ball pool

Three.js hologram effect

Dweet of the week: Sierpinski metamorphosis - butterfly ant spider angel
 

Games:

John Mambo
 

Issue #642 - April 24th 2026

Weekly newsletter about Web Game Development.
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Articles:

Super Mario Galaxy Movie surpasses $755m globally, becomes highest-grossing film of 2026
Mario animated film franchise has surpassed $2 billion at the global box office.
Sophie McEvoy at GamesIndustryBiz

Microsoft is working to eliminate PC gaming’s “compiling shaders” wait times
Advanced Shader Delivery uses precompiled shaders for “console-like load times” across PC hardware.
Kyle Orland at Ars Technica

Nintendo is being sued by customers seeking tariff refunds
Two consumers based in the United States claim the Switch maker has unjustly benefited from tariffs imposed by the Trump administration.
Chris Kerr at Game Developer

The Bafta games awards showed me again that honouring art over commerce is a win for all
From mega hit Clair Obscur to the genius Blue Prince, the winners at this year’s event help me refocus on why games really matter.
Keza MacDonald at The Guardian
 

Tutorials:

Phaser 4 HTML5 SameGame powered by samegame-engine, a headless TypeScript class
This time I built a headless SameGame engine written in TypeScript, ready for you to get from GitHub, then I launched the Phaser create-game app, let it build the template, updated to Phaser 4 and wrote my new SameGame version.
Emanuele Feronato's blog
 

Competitions:

Gamedev.js Jam 2026 ends in two days

Green Game Jam 2026
 

Tools:

Defold 1.12.3 released

Construct 3 r478 released

CopyPxl - AI bitmap font generator
 

Demos:

Floaties

Submerge

Dweet of the week: 3D vase spin
 

Games:

GOTO Town
 

Issue #641 - April 17th 2026

Weekly newsletter about Web Game Development.
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Articles:

Stop Killing Games delivers 'absolutely incredible' hearing in European Parliament
'There was no [parliament member] that wasn't responding positively.'
Andy Chalk at PC Gamer

What leaked “SteamGPT” files could mean for the PC gaming platform’s use of AI
AI tools could help moderators sift through mountains of suspicious incidents.
Kyle Orland at Ars Technica

Hades devs: accidentally inventing a subgenre was 'surreal'
Did the gods themselves play a role in the success of the Hades series?
Bryant Francis at Game Developer

44% of games industry professionals have considered leaving the industry as a result of redundancies
New report from Skillsearch found that 22% of those surveyed had been laid off within the past 12 months.
Sophie McEvoy at GamesIndustryBiz
 

Tutorials:

Letting bots learn to move like players
How I used input simulation to build navigation graphs for a chaotic multiplayer shooter.
Rémi Vansteelandt at Substack
 

Competitions:

Gamedev.js Jam 2026 start and theme announcement

Ludum Dare 59 lives (me too), countdown to 64
 

Tools:

Phaser 4.0.0 released

Migrating from Phaser 3 to Phaser 4

New ad format supported by Playgama: advanced banners
 

Demos:

Mitosis

Neonoise

Dweet of the week: the spine
 

Games:

Brighten Up

Beam Moo Up
 

Issue #640 - April 10th 2026

Weekly newsletter about Web Game Development.
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Articles:

Video game devs explain how pausing works and sometimes it gets weird
Developers provide some insight into how they all make games stop and start when you press a button.
Zack Zwiezen at Kotaku

How to build a real business on Roblox in 2026
What operators miss when they treat Roblox like “just another platform.”
Deconstructor of Fun

Split Fiction dev Hazelight Studios accrues 50M total sales
It Takes Two is responsible for 30 million of those sales.
Diego Argüello at Game Developer

Playing Wolfenstein 3D with one hand in 2026
Over three decades later, this historical curiosity has more than a few rough edges.
Kyle Orland at Ars Technica
 

Tutorials:

Creating fake 3D characters in a 2D engine
How I've created a somewhat 3D looking top-down shooter without using a 3D engine.
Rémi Vansteelandt's Substack
 

Competitions:

YouTube Playables challenge in Gamedev.js Jam 2026
 

Tools:

Crashcat - physics engine for JavaScript

Pompelmi - file upload security for Node.js

MemPalace - highest-scoring AI memory system ever benchmarked
 

Demos:

Pylon terrain

String theory

Dweet of the week: Easter eggs
 

Games:

Sticker Truck

Rowdle
 

Issue #639 - April 3rd 2026

Weekly newsletter about Web Game Development.
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Articles:

CSS is DOOMed
No, CSS is awesome. CSS is better than ever and it is only getting better. And that is why I built DOOM in CSS. Why? Because I wanted to find the limits of what a browser can do.
Niels Leenheer's blog

Doubling gCPM for a web games portal: Lagged.com case with Playgama
Valeria Svistunova explains how a new distribution and monetization model helped Lagged.com significantly increase revenue per play.
Valeria Svistunova at Playgama

GameBot - AI slop app
All these awful slop apps start off with a promise. The promise that "GameBot" makes is to "Turn Ideas into Playable Reality".
Brian Douglas' blog

Stormgate rushing offline mode after losing server access to an AI company
The Stormgate team is attempting to patch an offline mode before the server provider pulls the plug at the end of April.
Diego Argüello at Game Developer
 

Tutorials:

Make a block-stacking game with Construct 3
We will make a simple (but very entertaining) game about stacking blocks and knocking them down.
Caleb Cornett at Awesome Inc
 

Competitions:

Deploy to Wavedash challenge in Gamedev.js Jam 2026

Build it with Phaser challenge in Gamedev.js Jam 2026
 

Tools:

Announcing Babylon.js 9.0

RetroZone: CRT and scanline effects for HTML5 games

Easel is now an expression language
 

Demos:

Kinetic

Draggable kaleidoscope

Dweet of the week: piano keyboard
 

Games:

Ecaroh and the Invasion of the Dark Slimes

Asterogue launches on Steam
 

Issue #638 - March 27th 2026

Weekly newsletter about Web Game Development.
If you have anything you want to share with our community please let me know by replying to this email, thank you!
 

Articles:

Gamers react with overwhelming disgust to DLSS 5’s generative AI glow-ups
Nvidia’s next frame-gen tech goes way beyond upscaling, and not in a good way.
Kyle Orland at Ars Technica

Organiser of Reboot Develop issued with bankruptcy order, underlining fears over event's future
Dubrovnik venue confirms that celebrated Croatian development conference will not be returning in 2026.
Jon Hicks at GamesIndustryBiz

Fortnite back on Google Play worldwide after Epic and Google settle
The settlement took place in early March, months after a federal court cast doubts on the terms.
Diego Argüello at Game Developer

It's brutal out there: Deus Ex and Unreal composer says he's submitted 50 resumes and gotten one interview in the last year
AI's impact on audio production has, of course, become a hot topic in the game music world.
Wes Fenlon at PC Gamer
 

Tutorials:

How to handle complex logic in GDevelop 5: the finite state machine
This tutorial will show you how to structure your project in a way that encapsulates the logic of your player (enemies or other dynamic objects).
GDevelop documentation
 

Tools:

Wonderland Engine 1.6.0: meshlets and SSAO

Phaser 4 Release Candidate 7: light, noise, and color

Announcing TypeScript 6.0
 

Demos:

Geeko-swaying

Dark cubes reflections

Dweet of the week: 3D gears
 

Games:

Scores

Piroot - wishlist on Steam
 

Issue #637 - March 20th 2026

Weekly newsletter about Web Game Development.
If you have anything you want to share with our community please let me know by replying to this email, thank you!
 

Articles:

Why did Fingersoft use Defold to bring Hill Climb Racing to Poki?
We invited Shiho Kaneko from Fingersoft, to tell us about their adventure with Defold to create Hill Climb Racing Lite for Poki.
Paweł Jarosz at Defold

VR app Meta Horizon Worlds will no longer be playable in VR
Meta's vision of the metaverse is going flatscreen.
Diego Argüello at Game Developer

Nintendo could be forced to shed ine of its biggest anti-consumer practices
An EU law comes into force next year that demands portable devices have replaceable batteries.
John Walker at Kotaku

Parker Brothers canonized the wrong version of Monopoly
The original Landlord’s Game was designed to warn players about wealth inequality. The version that survived did the opposite.
Corey Plante at Polygon

The big debate: what role should AI have in video game narrative?
A games writer and an AI game creator sit down for a serious talk.
Lewis Packwood at GamesIndustryBiz
 

Tutorials:

I built the best virtual joystick for PhaserJS, then went to bed
Lately I’ve been building a lot of games, and for one of my mobile projects I wanted the controls to feel great. At some point I realized I needed an on-screen joystick.
Renato Cassino at Medium
 

Tools:

RetroZone - retro CRT and vector display engine

Mystral Native.js - native WebGPU JS runtime with SDL3
 

Demos:

Box flow system

Bioluminescence

Dweet of the week: win95 dialog colour blank
 

Videos:

Peter Yang: Zero to shipped game with Claude Code in 20 minutes

Tsoding: One formula that demystifies 3D graphics
 

Games:

Blumgi Slime
 

Issue #636 - March 13th 2026

Weekly newsletter about Web Game Development.
If you have anything you want to share with our community please let me know by replying to this email, thank you!
 

Articles:

OpenAI built a tactical RPG with Phaser
OpenAI showcases their stunning new GPT 5.4 model by creating a turn-based tactical RPG with Phaser.
Phaser News

Building a new Flash
I don't know where to start with this but yeah I'm making flash if flash was built in 2026.
Bill Premo at Newgrounds

LEGO's 0.002mm specification and it's implications for manufacturing
A 2x4 LEGO brick manufactured in 1958 will snap perfectly onto a brick molded this morning in Denmark, China, Hungary, Mexico, or the Czech Republic.
Brad Hirayama at The Wave

Creating a successful Steam page is like ski jumping
One colorful metaphor-and plenty of actionable advice-on creating a successful Steam page.
Danielle Riendeau at Game Developer

Roblox and Minecraft players are less likely to play traditional AAA video games
Ben Porter from Newzoo explains that the player base has very little overlap with mainstream hits such as Assassin's Creed: Shadows and Ghost of Yōtei.
Lewis Packwood at GamesIndustryBiz
 

Tutorials:

NoJS 3 - the dawn of Flappy Bird
Making a Flappy Bird clone using pure HTML and CSS, no JavaScript.
Gurveer Arora at Scott Logic
 

Competitions:

Open Source challenge in the upcoming Gamedev.js Jam 2026
 

Tools:

JSNES 2.0 released

Kigen Color Generator
 

Demos:

Highlight

Polygon monolith

Dweet of the week: bulging checkerboard illusion
 

Games:

SN@KELIKE

Now THAT’S a Big Dragon! - demo released today
 

Issue #635 - March 6th 2026

Weekly newsletter about Web Game Development.
If you have anything you want to share with our community please let me know by replying to this email, thank you!
 

Articles:

Computer run on human brain cells learned to play Doom
Cortical Labs hopes neuronal chips will do much more than shoot pixelated demons.
Andrew Paul at Popular Science

Next-gen Xbox console, codenamed Project Helix, will play PC games
Xbox CEO Asha Sharma says hardware demonstrates its "commitment to the return of Xbox".
Sophie McEvoy at GamesIndustryBiz

Slay The Spire 2 is absolutely crushing it with 400,000 concurrent players and a 97 percent positive rating on Steam
And yes, it deserves to be.
Ethan Gach at Kotaku

Google cuts fees for mobile apps and games
Fortnite is set to return to Google Play as Epic settles worldwide legal disputes - though a revised US court injunction settlement is still pending.
Craig Chapple at PocketGamerBiz
 

Tutorials:

A series of tricks and techniques I learned doing tiny GLSL demos
I'll take you along a journey of learning experiences.
Clément Bœsch's blog
 

Tools:

Defold-wave - native Defold extension that simulates waves

Easel Feb 2026 update: galleries, existential coalescing, and slow motion
 

Demos:

Highlight

Deco tile pattern

Dweet of the week: FDTD electromagnetic sim
 

Videos:

Design Diary: 10 ways to improve game feel

Sos Sosowski: How to switch to Linux as a game developer
 

Games:

Stardust Exile

Zero-G update: incursion and the first 1000