gimpedherogames

Small teams | Augmented workflows | Creative vision Integrity | The world is on the verge of an entertainment renaissance | AI | Open Source | Decentralization

[gimpedherogames @gimpedherogames]

Introducing Gimped Hero Games: Born from underdog passion since Dec 15 2023.

Vision: Living worlds crafted with love by underdogs, filled with conflict and soul—timeless stories emerging from your choices.

Mission: High-quality games with customizable depth & max agency, built for a community of creators & vets who keep us humble.

Core values: Love for patrons & craft | Excellence: time, grit & ingenuity | Humility: patron-measured success | Embrace conflict | Seek timelessness: procedural human tales | Integrity: act rightly, reflect rigorously | Kindness relentlessly.

Bio breakdown: Small teams + AI-augmented flows = Creative integrity. We're on the edge of an entertainment renaissance via open source & decentralization. Join the journey! #solodev #IndieDev #GamePhilosophy #Web3Gaming

[gimpedherogames @gimpedherogames]

@ryanlightbourn I've been saying it since 2022 -- we're on the verge of a creative renaissance. Helluva time to have a vision and the drive to bring it to life

[gimpedherogames @gimpedherogames]

ManaBat 0.3.0 is up — and I'm opening cohort 3 playtesting.

Keyboard & mouse are first-class. Spirits teach in-world. Earth spells stay under the canopy, you can cancel a cast, and Morale finally reads as the casing around health — with a small, capped way to get some HP back when you're safe.

Lot of ability VFX updates for visual clarity as well!

https://t.co/S8NBKWDXHc

#SoloDev #IndieGameDev #IndieDev #GameDev #ManaBat

[gimpedherogames @gimpedherogames]

Gimped Hero Games is currently testing my prototype with friends and family before releasing it for public testing -- I'm developing an entire agentic pipeline and https://t.co/AW3sAsuLj0, a marketplace for artists to train LoRAs on their own work and studios to license for ethically sourced AI. I post updates on https://t.co/TliHqreSg2, YT, and my website, weekly -- check it out!

[gimpedherogames @gimpedherogames]

ManaBat 0.2.0 silent playthrough is up — no commentary, just a run of the current build.

Special thanks to Cohort One who's feedback made this next version possible!

And here's to Cohort Two's feedback already making the next version even better!

Progression unlocks abilities and combos, staff finally cleaves, deeper finishers hit harder, mouse/keyboard is real, and the scripted tutorial is off so the game has to teach itself.

https://t.co/fQs57y1m5H

#SoloDev #IndieGameDev #ManaBat

[gimpedherogames @gimpedherogames]

Hey man, thanks for taking a look at my post! They were having a difficult time with the HUD (particularly the resource bars), the weapon attacks, and using the elementals abilities. The HUD I think has been improved and I'm not entirely sure how to improve the others beyond tweaking weapon properties and overhauling elemental ability onboarding. So I've tweaked what I can and will put out a new version for cohort 2 and maybe get some more insight into actions I can take. What tweaks did you make for your player introductions?

[gimpedherogames @gimpedherogames]

ManaBat weekly — the ground finally listens.

Two Sundays in one video:
• Terrain reshape: barricades you can batter down, quagmire floods, lava vents that leave a scar
• Onboarding that unlocks controls as it teaches them
• First play sessions cut the noise — dodge-only, HUD that names what it is

https://t.co/b7KrVsnE8m

#ManaBat #solodev #indiegamedev #indiedev #gamedev #IndieGame

[gimpedherogames @gimpedherogames]

Solid, bad ass. This is the greatest time in the world to have a creative vision...

[Charlie Driscoll @CharlieDFilm]

TALES OF GRIMWICKE — Chapter I is 22 minutes of AI fantasy animation inspired by the many anthropomorphic animal stories I read as a kid, with a dark twist:

The model: Seedance 2.5 (@ByteDanceSeed_ ) via @Segmind_ai. 847 takes generated, mostly 30-second multi-shot prompts, over 5 hours of footage. 127 clips made the cut. About $4.5k in generation, four weeks from first take to publish.

Characters and locations came out of @midjourney. Using MJ for the location plates was a revelation: the cinematography and art direction are a level above, and it renders far better as a plate than Nano Banana or GPT Image. Nano Banana (@GoogleDeepMind run on @fal) did the heavy lifting editing those plates, building anchor frames and turning MJ characters into turnaround sheets. Then I let Seedance do as much of the framing and camera operating as possible. That gave the best results.

A lot of what I do in my Unreal Engine films came with me: a handheld, imperfect camera operator instead of smooth moves, focus hunting, and above all weather and atmospherics. The model does water, snow, smoke and rain really well, and leaning into that is what keeps it from looking like a Temu Pixar film.

The tools I built: a portal (Node on @flydotio) that holds the bible, the refs, every prompt and every take, with a Claude agent (@claudeai) that writes the prompts to the house rules. A Premiere Pro (@AdobeVideo) panel that browses the archive, drops selects on the timeline, versions the project, strips music, and sends fixes back to Seedance. Everything is done in 720p with no upscaling, because it looks terrible. Narration is my own voice through @ElevenLabs speech-to-speech. Music from @Artlist_io.

None of this would exist without @PJaccetturo and @Kavanthekid. Their narrative work, Nexus and Chronicles of Bone, proved long-form AI film was possible, and their podcasts, newsletters and X posts, updated constantly as the workflow changes under everyone's feet, showed how to actually do it.

Chapter II is currently in the works and I will release it initially on my YouTube channel, The Darkest Age (@CharlieDriscollAI). Consider subscribing there to see it as soon as it drops!

[gimpedherogames @gimpedherogames]

@InfinityRisingX That should make hauling back all of my gathered materials a lot easier!

[gimpedherogames @gimpedherogames]

@InfinityRisingX AI has increased my productivity more than any other tool that's been released in my lifetime. In 8 months of 10 hours a week, I've been able to accomplish 2 years worth of full time work. There has never been a better time to be a creative person. Bright & exciting future!

[gimpedherogames @gimpedherogames]

This week ManaBat got a world you can hear, and a fight that can turn on you.

Biome music is in the actual game now. Corruption hops out of a portal, twists an enemy, and that enemy attacks everyone including you. The HUD finally tells you what just happened, and after the scorecard the playtest form is actually in the shell.

Also in this update:
• Combat music that tracks the fight you're in (ordinary battle, mote, Twisted) and hands the biome back when it's over
• Howl you interrupt with steel, not magic
• Pause-mid-dodge softlock, empty spirit slots, and a dead World Tree that wouldn't end the run — all fixed
• 12-question ask after win, loss, or quit. Written to disk before any upload so a dropped connection can't lose a credits name

Day/night cycle got built, then cut. Short run, small world, it was a distraction.

Full video: https://t.co/4Jo1OMYa26
Devlog: https://t.co/tjIIc6Iz7C

#ManaBat #solodev #indiegamedev #indiedev #gamedev #IndieGame

[gimpedherogames @gimpedherogames]

@InfinityRisingX I picked up my group pack -- RA Kiko, CM Aeron, UC Elita, and the Clanker; really looking forward to watching him mop up in combat!

[gimpedherogames @gimpedherogames]

Road to a playable prototype: ManaBat now has a beginning, middle, and end.

It boots to a title screen, generates a fresh procedural five-biome world (World Tree locked dead center), drops you in with the real player character under a proper isometric camera, and builds to a full siege finale on the World Tree — waves of real enemies, a boss, and a Tree that visibly dies as it takes damage.

Also in this update:
• Full weapons pass (three distinct weapons with their own damage identities + status procs)
• Complete game shell (logo, splash, settings, loading, pause, win/lose, run summary)

Everything you see is built at runtime from a completely empty scene. Nothing is hand-placed.

Still pure prototype — placeholder art, no save system yet. Spirit-collection quest is next.

Full video: https://t.co/mQihSWaRk5

#ManaBat #solodev #indiegamedev #indiedev #gamedev #IndieGame

[gimpedherogames @gimpedherogames]

@BCBacker #bcbwasright

[gimpedherogames @gimpedherogames]

@Grummz One of my favorite aspects of using AI in my design process is that it listens to every word without distraction or injection, picks up nuance and detail, and repeats back it's exact understanding when prompted. I've never had a better tool to develop raw ideas in my lifetime

[gimpedherogames @gimpedherogames]

@Grummz 100% agreed. Working together with others is still valuable and I plan on partnering up with other local indie/solo devs and co-working to bounce ideas, inspire, and collaborate with each other on our projects. Pretty much all the fun stuff

[gimpedherogames @gimpedherogames]

The battlefield remembers now 💀

This week in ManaBat:
⛰️ 4th elemental spirit complete — Earth petrifies
🗿 enemies killed while stone stay as statues (shatter them or leave monuments)
💀 corpses persist — fire burns them to ash
👊 every hit flinches, interrupts, staggers

https://t.co/clSCyuo1xH

#solodev #indiegamedev #indiedev #gamedev

[gimpedherogames @gimpedherogames]

@BCBacker Keep being leader and support your family, I hope you're all doing as best you can. The markets aren't going anywhere

[gimpedherogames @gimpedherogames]

ManaBat Combat — Progress Update (6–12 July)

4-Spirit elemental combat slice complete! Fire, Water, Air & Earth each with signature mechanics, enemy reactions & procedural VFX 🔥💧🌪️🪨

Video: https://t.co/OZph5IH6U7

#IndieDev #SoloDev #GameDev #IndieGame