Hi there, I'm Russ!

Independent software engineer making games, mostly in Godot

Quick links: Dev Logs | Portfolio | Posts

Welcome to my portfolio and devlogs site, AKA BLOG REFACTOR #74!

Hopefully this one sticks!

It’s been too long! Update: we had a baby and are moving! Leaving New York, heading back to my hometown. :sob: I will miss the big city dearly, but pledge to return often.

The last six months have been a whirlwind of baby and MW Games work - we launched The Loop in March, and have more on the way!

I’ve also been catching up with friends before leaving, and learning they are even more awesome than I realized! Following Mochee’s example, I started a Neighborhood page this morning to share links to other digital gardens. Together we’ll build up a happy little village!

I hope to get back to Dot Hop, Dino, and Beat Em Up City soon - but tbh probably won’t until August (at best). Work and move and baby and all the things are dominating, and we’re staying in the moment while we can.

I’ll keep throwing content up when I can! I moved from docsify to Astro recently, which gives more flexibility - hopefully we’ll have some fun little web pages in here by the end of the year.

A project I was a part of this Summer/Fall wrapped up this month: Zohran’s Run released on Steam on November 3rd, just in time for the NYC Mayoral election.

At the end of September, I started in a new role (Director of Games Engineering) at Merriam-Webster/Encyclopedia Britannica! Check out our latest games, Reunion and Revealed.

My Godot Con Boston talk is finally on youtube! Check it out to see a bit of what Log.gd has to offer!

A small Log.gd release on Friday broke the hard-coded colors out into custom-resources. Now you can create your own LogColorTheme, or just point to the included light or dark one in your project settings.

• Log.gd v0.0.9 Release notes

I cranked on Dot Hop for most of July, ultimately releasing a 1.2 version at the end of the month to all-the-places (Steam, Itch, Android, iOS, and soon Github and Flathub).

Some relevant new posts:

• Steam 1.0 -> 1.2 Release Notes
• Itch 1.0 -> 1.2 Release Notes
• Dot Hop’s All The Places Docs Page
• Dot Hop Rearchitecting Devlog
• Dot Hop Speedrun/Spoilers/Stats Devlog

More coming soon on the Dot Hop docs site.

In the mid 2010s I wrote a bunch of poem-y things on Medium. They’ve since added a paywall, which is very :eyeroll: so I’ve ported them into the ‘Hundos’ section of the blog. Check ‘em out!

• drawing-a-crowd
• straight-up-oj
• would-it-bother-you
• dont-die-pizza
• how-to-fall-asleep
• ill-tell-you
• sometimes
• the-frustrating-moment
• first-thing-this-morning
• in-the-skywaves
• its-for-suckers
• great-owl-circle
• heres-the-thing-cat
• everyone-accept-death
• the-last-place-you-look
• nobodyd-notice
• how-to-write-a-poem

There’s also a very technical post about Haskell’s Lens library:

• haskell-lens-operator-onboarding

I just got back from Godot Con, and it was amazing!! So glad there was finally one closer to me! So many indie devs and indie games to parse!

I wrote a Techsposure post covering most of my interactions here: Post: Boston Godot Con

At Godot Con, I gave a lightning talk about Log.gd. Updates, posts, and a YouTube link to come soon!

Check out my new Dev Logs section for updates on my projects and meanderings.

• DevLog: Zooming In On Dino
• DevLog: Glossolalia Listen Prototyping #glossolalia

I’ve resurrected a bunch of old content, including my 100 word stories, which I like to call ‘Hundos’.

Some ‘new’ “Hundos” (~2025)!

• Writing Hundos Again
• Eventually It’s A Game

Some Old Ones (~2012):

• New Clear Warfare
• Full 4-minute relationship
• Loosing our Minds
• First-Person vs Third-Person

Yee Olde Scribblings

Section titled “Yee Olde Scribblings”

You can find my older (and slowly, some newer) blog posts here.

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• A new version of Carving With Care (a game by Gelatinous Cat Games) shipped in early April. Check it out!

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I released three steam games in 2024, be sure to check em out!

• Dot Hop is a grid-based puzzle game - it’s simple but challenging! github | steam | itch.io
• Dino is a mashup of last year’s jam entries - right now it’s procedurally generated platformer rooms. github | steam | itch.io
• Rapid Eye Madness is a microgame eldritch-horror fest created with The Moonstorm Clerics. itch.io | steam

Check out my games portfolio or my itch.io for more.