Adam Coster

Made it across the finish line! Crashlands 2 was the most ambitious gamedev project I've worked on, by a mile. It took nearly 5 years to make this thing, but we DID IT!

And "How Many Dudes?" is now out! Exactly ONE YEAR TO THE DAY since we started working on it, and it's shaping up to be our biggest launch ever. Thanks so much to everyone who helped with this project. It was sooooo much fun to work on.

Yep. You can still do alright (for now) IF you can get into the mobile subscription services. But directly selling a game on mobile is essentially impossible, unless you have enormous success elsewhere so that enough people search for your game directly AND expect to have to pay for it.

A great way to make an LLM's answer for your search feel useful is to first spend 5 years making your search engine yield worse results so that, comparatively, it is.

Made a simple Google Form last week. It required 900MB RAM and made my CPU fan roar. Maybe there will be some new market opportunities while Big Tech lets all of their software crumble.

We've already seen the consequences of prioritizing quantity of code over quality of code. (See: every piece of Big-Tech software you use today.) The problem has never been not having enough code. The problem has always been code quality, and maintaining it.

Looks like someone is impersonating us to scam recent college grads and others looking for #gamedev work. In the Age of the Scammer you should assume everything you see is a scam until proven otherwise. Stay safe out there! ❤️

"That's just semantics." Oh? Is it? Just WHAT STUFF MEANS? Only that?

This is excellent news. The less subsidized LLMs are the less quickly they'll pollute the commons and destroy creative fields. The next step after usage-based billing is for billing to reflect the actual costs, and that can't come soon enough.

AI is transforming the practice of computer programming from a creative role into an administrative one, the same way that health insurance transformed medicine into billing. Those who love these disciplines the most will burn out and depart the quickest. And then what are we left with?

So GitHub needs to 30x its resources to handle the influx of code and activity caused by LLMs. I suspect most of that activity is in the subsidized parts of GitHub (open source repos are largely free). So it will become unsustainable for them to subsidize open source. And all for what?

This thing is really taking off, and it's such a relief to have these prelaunch numbers from a sub-year dev+marketing cycle.

I'll be at PAX East this time around, maybe I'll see you there? First time I've gone to any convention or conference since 2019... We'll see if I remember how to talk to people IRL

Google Search delisted my site a few months ago. I thought it was because Google had started to require that a robots.txt file exist on a site to index it. Which seemed unreasonable. Turns out it was because of a 500 error. Which is STILL unreasonable.

Discovered that Google de-indexed my site back in August due to an absent robots. txt But the site never did have a robots.txt... I assumed the absence of one was interpreted as allow-all and so never bothered. Was that a recent requirement change by Google? Or am I LOSING MY MIND?

We weren't sure it was a good idea to launch the "How Many Dudes?" demo right before the Steam sale, but we figured no one else would be launching anything... It went better than I'd even hoped!

These developers want to know how many dudes it would take to win in a fight with 100 toddlers https://kotaku.com/how-many-dudes-crashlands-butterscotch-shenanigans-interview-2000652567

The demo for our new game about the "100 men vs 1 gorilla" meme, How Many Dudes, is LIVE! Go play and wishlist on @steampowered.com 👇👇👇 store.steampowered.com/app/3934270 Or via @itch.io & @gx.games bscotch.itch.io/how-many-dudes gx.games/games/8racq4... #indiegame #gamedev #gaming

If you think LLMs are at least as capable of reasoning as you are, you're right.

Too Big to Fail slowly transforming into Too Big to Succeed

The most embarrassing class action settlement I've ever been sent: Park Mobile had a data breach and is giving me ONE DOLLAR. But only 25 cents at a time, for the next 4 times I use it. And only if I do so within the next year. I thought it was a joke, but the "discount" code did indeed work.

Until now, if you lost or broke your phone, your Signal message history was *gone,* a real challenge for everyone whose most important conversations happen in Signal. So, with careful design and development, we’re rolling out opt-in secure backups. signal.org/blog/introducing-secure-backups

Do you know what's scary? Going TOO LONG without a Game Jam! ⚡ (perfectly timed thunder!) MWAHAHAHAHAHA~(maniacal laughter!) stlgame.dev/news/spooky-... #STLGameDev #STLGameJam #STLSpookyJam25

"Context rot" isn't a surprise feature of LLMs. It's just a new term for the old fact that it's better to have smaller amounts of highly relevant data than to have large amounts of irrelevant data... Context isn't a VOLUME game, it's a RELEVANCY game.

Oh hey, Levelhead.io makes a cameo in another upcoming game 💖 Congrats to @orangepylongames.bsky.social on the successful Kickstarter campaign!

Our ridiculous "How Many Dudes" autobattler placed 27th in overall Enjoyment for the #gmtk jam, out of like 9500+ submissions! WILD! We got a new web build up if you wanna try defeating 1,000 toddlers -> bscotch.itch.io/how-many-dudes #gamedev #indiegames @itch.io

My brothers made this silly thing for the latest #gmtk2025 game jam.

100/10

And when they're wrong, it's because wrong things are often written down, too.

We've been COOKIN' on Crashlands 2 since the game's launch, and we're excited to announce the second major updateis coming out on June 24th! Update 1.2: The Hardcore Scramble adds new game modes, new pets, new base-building items, an expanded world map, QOL features, and a whole lot more!

You really gotta keep your head on a swivel when evaluating contracts. Even well-meaning ones!

An claim isn't more likely to be true by virtue of being simpler than an alternative. A simpler claim does, however, have fewer ways it could turn out to be false.

If the CEO of a soda company declared that soda-making technology is getting so good it’s going to ruin the global economy, you’d be forgiven for thinking that person is either lying or fully detached from reality... www.cnn.com/2025/05/30/b...

I've been playing @bscotch.net's Crashlands 2 every evening for weeks! It's such a cheerful and engaging and constantly rewarding game to play. (And while it could have been jam-packed with IAPs, instead it simply has an old-fashioned purchase price.) kotaku.com/crashlands-2...

Had such a great time chatting to these lads! From truly touching moments, to left-of-field indie marketing wins, hard-edged production chatter, and tales of all the college degrees none of them now use, this has every hallmark of indie brilliance in the most perfectly Butterscotch Shenanigans way.

On the #GameMakersNotebook Podcast, @trentkusters.bsky.social chats with brothers Seth and @adamcoster.com of @bscotch.net about their recent release CRASHLANDS 2, how their brother Sam's cancer diagnosis led to the original CRASHLANDS, how they solved a common indie marketing problem, and more! 🎙️👇

A little parable about the importance of taking some time to investigate something in creative ways before deciding that it is or isn't doable.

LLMs do not lie. And they do not tell the truth. Their function has no relationship to fact or fiction. Sometimes they happen to be right, sometimes they happen to be wrong. But all they do is happen to.

Have you noticed that stuff pasted from Google Docs is often bold? When it works like you expect that's because some nice developer fixed it. Here's why it happens, and what webdevs can do to fix it in their own apps.

YEP

only FIVE more needed until funded! 🤩

Seth (our Crashlands 2 game programmer) had a great interview with @scottjohnson.zip! Whether you're into #GameDev or want to hear how Crashlands 2 was made, there's something for you in here.

One nice thing about translated versions of your game is that you can scroll right by a negative review without any emotional damage. #GameDev

Preparing for the future... going to need this word a lot!

The fact that I meet every IPO announcement with a sigh and a search for alternatives should be, I don't know, some sort of signal... #Discord has been such an amazing service, both for our internal gamedev work and to centralize our community. Hopefully the enshitification is slow

Seth Coster of Butterscotch Shenanigans chats Crashlands 2 on the CORE Podcast—smooth launch, smarter design, and why fun > frustration. Dev talk, game philosophy, and laughs. 🎮✨ #Crashlands2 #IndieDev #GameDesign FEEDS, EPISODE and SITE: frogpants.com/core VIDEO: youtu.be/OyXRxKl2Rw8

Flux + Juicebox plushies are heeeere! 🥰 Well, not here yet. One of those limited-time campaign thingies that ship later. So get it now, or get it NEVER!

Flux + Juicebox (+ Wrenchy) PLUSHIE!? Lands tomorrow, so until then all you get is a silhouette, sorry! (it's friggin' adorable though)

The OST for Crashlands 2 by @bscotch.net not only has a buncha chill tunes to listen to, but also a few bangers. Prepare your body.

Huge congrats to @adamcoster.com & @bscotch.net for launching the #1 RPG in the App Store! 🤘 Everyone - download yours on mobile or Steam, plus check out the interview below about the making of the game & studio. #crashlands2 #indiegame #gamedev