If there’s been one theme I’d pick out from the many of these past few years of gaming discontent, it’s the sense of all-out assault on creativity. This is the thing that makes games what they are, that makes them successful, that earns people money and gives people a reason to do the job in the first place, but it’s also the thing that seems to be valued least at so many of those making the decisions. To those people creativity is something to be funneled, moulded, directed or strictly defined. Often, I suspect, it’s just not really something directly thought about at all. At best it’s a nice buzzword to roll out as needed, but rare one that’s even remotely understood.
Obviously that’s bobbins. But that’s the way it’s been going, and I think a great deal of the sense of crushing, down-weighing hopelessness has been a direct result of human creativity, specifically, being the default sacrifice of an industry far too willing to wield the ceremonial knife. But if that’s a source of hopelessness, then in a roundabout way that also means there’s some hope to be found. Because – and sorry, this is going to be cheesy but you’re just going to have to take it – human beings’ creativity is undimmable.
People doing something just for the want of doing it, making something because they had the urge to make, imagining a thing into existence just because they can, is about as inseparable from humanity as it gets. This is just what humans do – especially if those people have found themselves working in a fundamentally creative industry in the first place. Whether it’s for healing or comfort or distraction, or to vent frustration, work through anger, to recharge or clear the mind, people just make stuff.
A lot of the little things we love about games comes back to that fact: that someone thought of that thing, and thought it would be cool, and then went and made it. You can pile all the weight of industry and capital on top of people, squeezing as hard as you like for as long as you like, and ejecting as many of those people as you like out to the sidelines. But they will still just make stuff.
Anyway, often people post this stuff on social media, so I thought I’d do a little roundup. Here is a big list of cool little side projects people in video games have been working on, for all kinds of reasons, but ultimately because of one in particular: nobody can stop them.
And while I’m here: thank you everyone for reading Optimism Week – we hope you enjoyed it!
Dr Holly Nielsen, a historian of play and game developer, made a piece of short interactive fiction during recovery from a heart issue, and hopes to one day put it on an actual heart monitor as an installation piece. “Fort he heart monitor I was noodling with ways to do that,” she said, “and a friend on the board of an art gallery said they were interested but I have yet to have the room (both physical and time-wise) to take the concept into reality. Physical things are hard. But I return to it every few months.” She’s also working on more short-form interactive fiction like this to bring interactivity into academia.
Korina Abbott, a comms specialist at Wolfeye Studios and previously the founder of agency Neonhive, makes pixel art for fun. “A recent mini creative meditation I’ve started is doodling pixel art in Aseprite over my lunch breaks,” she told me. “It’s just been so fulfilling to make time to create a small piece of personal art each day.” Here’s one from just the other day:
Freya Holmér, a tech artist, made this example of “movement in non-euclidean quaternionic space”, which is really kind of the archetype of “cool thing a game dev made that I don’t understand but think is really neat” which passes across my feed from time to time. “Not sure if or how it would grow into something playable but it was really need to see it take form,” they said:
movement in non-euclidean quaternionic space
— Freya Holmér (@freya.bsky.social) 22 July 2026 at 00:03
Rob Shaer, a game and level designer since 2002, built this rather fetching pergola and privacy screen, designing it in Blender:
Not a game project but I recently built a pergola and privacy screen – somewhat creative I guess (designed in Blender) 😁👍
— Rob Shaer (@robshaer.bsky.social) 30 July 2026 at 17:02
John Livingston, a senior level designer at 2K working on the next BioShock, has been chipping away at an entire immersive sim game (“with 2K’s approval™”, he assures me). “I’ve been noodling on a weird take on the immersive sim genre. Inspired by Mosa Lina, Scribblenauts, and LittleBigPlanet (which incidentally is how I got into game dev!)”. Here’s a look:
Hey Chris! I work at 2K on the next Bioshock, but over the last few years (with 2K’s approval™) I’ve been noodling on a weird take on the immersive sim genre. Inspired by Mosa Lina, Scribblenauts, and LittleBigPlanet (which incidentally is how I got into game dev!)
— John Livingston | Drawchemy (@johnwlivingston.bsky.social) 30 July 2026 at 17:06
Ste Curran, a game designer behind a neat puzzle-slash-matching game called Mindset, also made this very cool alternate view for Bluesky call skyspace, that turns it into a version of 2005-era MySpace (and also pointed me towards Maraoke, a library of classic karaoke songs that’ve been rewritten to be about video games – to me this is a bit like how that gaming bar near you does cocktails with gaming puns).
Dr Nic, a technical narrative designer at fenris creations (the studio behind Eve Online formerly called CCP Games), is working on “a combined mecha TTRPG/wargame with my partner and we’re hoping to do another round of playtesting soon!”
Fidel Destro is working on GaleriaLux, an “endless art gallery made of light”. They took a breather from it recently but are looking to get back to it some time soon. Here’s a preview of it:
It’s #ScreenShotSaturday, and this is GaleriaLux, my endless art gallery made of light. This weeks key word is “PERFORMANCE” (all caps) because I finally squashed the horrible freeze at level loading that was causing the camera to spin out. I’ll detail below.
#Godot #Blender #GameDev #SoloDev— Fidel Destro (@fideldestro.bsky.social) 6 June 2026 at 07:44
Ed Lu, who does multiplayer engineering for Mega Crit by day, recently started leaning Quake mapping, and has made two maps for recent jams. “I’m glad I found the community when I did,” Lu said, “in a time when it feels the validity of my profession is being thrown into chaos.”
A developer and writer who goes by GRIM on Bluesky said they’ve been making the Twine Grimoire series of resources, described as tutorials and templates “for people to noodle with and learn from their own projects”. You can take a look at those here.
Fran Vergara, a freelance lighting and cinematic artist who’s worked on games like Sea of Thieves and Until Dawn 2, is currently working on a game cinematic, sharing this screenshot. “I may have been playing Star Fox probably too much this summer,” they said.
Alex Evans, co-founder of fellow Brightoners Media Molecule, pointed to the “crazy high crossover” of developers who turn their hands to making modular synths, “often escalating in[to] a departure from games into the latter.” He gave the example of another fellow Brighton institution in Thonk, a long-running shop that was set up by a developer from Relentless Software – the studio which made the Buzz! quiz games. Evans meanwhile made Plinky during his later years at Media Molecule, while he says “the Expert Sleepers brand is an ex-SCEE [Sony Computer Entertainment Europe] person, there are a load of other examples. So… tldr games people drifting into (audio) hardware via hobby projects seems to be a pattern.”
Meanwhile Joel Auterson, a developer at indie studio Bearwaves, said: “I sometimes work with a poet called Antosh Wojcik to do little interactive versions of poems. We did this one a while back and I’m working on another one now.” The one linked is described as “a game-poem written in the throes of water-based hypochondria” and a “small adventure game, with branching narrative pathways.”
Thomas Keene, an indie developer, made a Godot sample projected with “Wind Waker style polygonal light pools.” He might do a single-light-source character lighting setup next, he says. I’ll be honest, the intricacies of technical things like lighting are far beyond my understanding but I love watching them in motion. Here’s a look at Keene’s project:
Wind Waker style light and shadow stencils using #godotengine 4.5. The source code and sample project are on GitHub now for any #gamedev who wants to try it out. I also added a playable demo.
Source – github.com/tkeene/wind-…
WebGL Demo – koboldskeep.itch.io/wind-waker-l…— Thomas @koboldskeep Keene (@kobolds-keep.net) 23 November 2025 at 21:58
Mike Meyer, who used to work on sports games, has been painting models in his spare time.
A 3D artist who goes by Moth on Bluesky shared this little clip of a once-active game jam project:
have a fun clip of a little game jam project i have since abandoned
— Moth (Comms Open!) (@bloodcrisis.bsky.social) 30 July 2026 at 20:05
Valentine Kozin, a lead technical artist at Rare, has a project that’s “nowhere near ready to share”, but has been “prototyping a small drawing game inspired by Meccha Chameleon’s Art Gallery where everyone has to paint one part of a classical painting, similar to Exquisite Corpse” which you can view here.
Ste Pickford, a developer, told me: “‘Working on’ is a stretch, because I rarely have enough energy left to work on anything else after work, but I’m planning, and have made a small start on, a fanzine of pen and ink drawings of stone circles I’ve visited, with jokes and stories from my dad woven in somehow.”
Abban, who works 4 days a week fundraising for Wikimedia Deutschland, has been working on a UFO game daily for nearly 3 years. “It’s gonna take me forever to finish it but I really enjoy all the learning and creativity it allows me.”
A hobbyist game dev who goes by Pixel Prophecy on Bluesky has been restoring old videos, offering the following example:
Joram Wolters, a developer from the Netherlands, said he “once demoed a low poly space ship for a class and now it’s a hypershort solodev game about choice and self-sacrifice.” He’s also working on “a game about loss of a parent while parenting” with his wife.
Lots of jank remaining for polish, but one of two possible outcomes for the side project game now *exists*
— Joram Wolters (@joramwolters.com) 16 June 2026 at 19:38
A developer who goes by Taconite on Bluesky is “getting a handle on orbital mechanics,” they said. While the goal is “to be able to simulate Kessler syndrome and show why space combat is bad™”. Here’s what that looks like:
Further work on the orbital sim
– Variable step size for improved stability
– Support for multiple gravity wells
– Variable simulation speed for FF and slow-mo
Next steps are to improve the scheduling, it’s still kinda locked to the wall time…
#gamedev #indiegame #solodev #unity3d— Taconite (@taconite.bsky.social) 30 July 2026 at 23:38
Annie VanderMeer, a writer, was recently laid off and is now “doing what I can to freelance – working on a retelling/interactive version of Hamlet in RenPy, resurrecting my YouTube podcast (FrieNDA), and as per usual, fussing in my garden trying to grow HELLA PEPPERS AND TOMATOES (also flowers are nice).” She also hopes to some day make a gardening game – maybe in VR?
An artist who goes by DiceDeeds has turned his backlog of personal art into a “wacky dungeon card game”.
Finally, one developer at a major studio who preferred to remain anonymous sent me this fantastic description of a side project they’ve been working on based entirely on the DualSense controller:
“I wanted to make a game about the care and attention we often don’t afford the small objects in our lives; the things we pay for, have shipped to our door, then take for granted. I had the idea a few years ago when I started making coffee from scratch, and all of a sudden I was paying attention to how my grinder felt, how fast or slow the water dripped through the grounds, the weight of my kettle. I gained a new appreciation for these daily objects that felt meaningful to me.
“Then I realised games are a huge part of my life, but the object through which I experience them gets essentially ignored, designed to melt away as soon as I start playing. I felt ignorant towards it, after all it’s “just a controller”. Meanwhile anyone who requires, say, Microsoft’s adaptive controllers to play a game will tell you how much of a difference the hardware in their hands makes. So I wanted to make something that brought the controller to life, and made it the star of the show. A game that says “isn’t this little object amazing?”. I also liked the idea of treating the controller as if it were alive, with likes and dislikes, and the one thing it lacks in its usual purpose: agency. So I made it real weird:
“The game uses only a DualSense controller and its adaptive sensors to create a sense of intimacy and non-verbal communication with the device – no screen or visuals other than the lights built into the controller. It creates a “desired state” at launch, and (with no further instructions) the player is expected to experiment with all the available sensors until the controller’s desired state is met. The way you’d know you’re doing a good job is by feeling the DualSense’s “heartbeat”. A steady vibration that matches an average resting human heart rate at the start. The closer to the desired state you get, the faster the heart rate. If you press the wrong button, the motors vibrate with a short and very strong jolt, the heartbeat stops for a moment, then returns to its previous value. If you press the triggers too hard, they’ll push back against you. My roommate described it as “an erotic experience with a PS5 controller that makes me apologise to it when I hurt it”. Once you get to the desired state, the heart rate reaches its maximum value, then stops beating and sustains that vibration, only to fizzle out a few seconds later. After that, a new desired state is generated.
“One day when I have more time I’ll release it for free and probably bring it to some local gamedev meetups and demo nights. Mostly to watch other people’s reactions when they hurt an inanimate object.”
That’s a wrap – thank you for reading Optimism Week here on Eurogamer! For all the articles in the series, be sure to head to our Optimism Week hub. Take care!
