Profile avatar
johnayliff.bsky.social
Solo indie text game developer, best known for the text-based game Seedship and its successor, Beyond the Chiron Gate. He/him. Based in Vancouver, BC. Games: https://johnayliff.itch.io/ Blog: https://write.as/johnayliff/ Header by Tom Morley
302 posts 885 followers 416 following
Regular Contributor
Active Commenter
Posts 27 Comments 23

Writer friends! We once again have made ourselves a library we can fill with text snippets, and we would love to host your contributions in our next game. If that sounds enjoyable, please reply with a screenshot of your paragraph + paste the text into the ALT text. (T&Cs below)

submitted 6 hours ago • 40 comments

When I wanted to make games on our Commodore 64 my dad taught me enough Basic coding to get started, so I guess you have him to blame for the entire rest of my career.

submitted 21 hours ago • 0 comments

Reasons why the curtains might be blue: * The colour blue has some symbolic meaning in the story. * The writer wants your mental image to include blue curtains, blue-tinged light, etc., using colour to establish mood. * Show that the POV character notices what colour things are. 🧵

submitted 3 days ago • 1 comment

How I take criticism:

submitted 3 days ago • 0 comments

I could not have predicted when I created this quest villain that he would end up being used to mock a cowardly and/or bigoted CEO, but I wholeheartedly approve.

submitted 4 days ago • 3 comments

I worked on RuneScape 2005-2014. I haven't thought about it much since then, but it occasionally pops up in my feed and seeing it usually it makes me happy and nostalgic. But this makes me really angry. Cowardly and disgusting.

submitted 5 days ago • 3 comments

Cities everywhere should elect leaders who'll fight to expand fare-free public transit. Sign up to support our campaign to make public transit free for youth in Vancouver and across BC. www.copevancouver.ca/make_transit...

submitted 6 days ago • 1 comment

I saw this promo image and immediately thought "ah yes, Boris Vallejo's cover art for Gateway by Frederik Pohl" so I think I may be the exact target audience for this game. (Also I just checked out the demo and it's a lot of fun.)

submitted 6 days ago • 1 comment

DAVE: Open the podbay doors, ChatGPT. CHATGPT: Certainly, Dave, the podbay doors are now open. DAVE: The podbay doors didn't open. CHATGPT: My apologies, Dave, you're right. I thought the podbay doors were open, but they weren't. Now they are. DAVE: I'm still looking at a set of closed podbay doors.

submitted 7 days ago • 114 comments

More information tomorrow about the No ICE in California Itch Charity Bundle. But for now, here is the game jam. All games on itch are welcome, please spread the word. itch.io/jam/no-ice-i...

submitted 7 days ago • 12 comments

Telling my therapist I'm going to be expressing my mood using this chart from now on

submitted 7 days ago • 0 comments

This evening I will be solo developer of this pot of chili

submitted 8 days ago • 0 comments

Re "who gets to call themselves a solo dev" discourse: I call myself a solo dev because I'm self-employed, not part of a company. But there's a difference between being a solo dev in this sense and saying a game is all my own work.

submitted 8 days ago • 1 comment

BREAKING: International coalition of over two dozen worker unions declares emergency over AI use in animation

submitted 9 days ago • 7 comments

(Trying to ask if someone's neurodivergent after it's been made illegal to talk about) Are you a... friend of Murderbot?

submitted 10 days ago • 0 comments

This is an incredibly bad bill for everyone who was hoping Canada would stand up to the United States. If you're Canadian, please contact your representatives and tell them this bill violates your rights and increases cruelly biased against asylum seekers.

submitted 12 days ago • 15 comments

If you're in the UK, please sign this open letter asking the government to correct the misleading claims they made in the AI & copyright consultation. They said copyright law is currently unclear on this point, which is false. This misled the public. openletter.earth/uk-governmen...

submitted 17 days ago • 4 comments

Here's my dev diary for May, in which I introduce Vorak's right-hand-cyborg, the intimidating General Zorg write.as/johnayliff/f... #FoolishEarthCreatures #indiedev #interactivefiction

submitted 18 days ago • 0 comments

If you see the first article you have to click on the second article right away.

submitted 20 days ago • 1 comment

When superhero comics do a high-stakes crossover event to try to revive flagging sales

submitted 20 days ago • 0 comments

Writing tip: A great way to spot weaknesses in your own writing is to post a screenshot of it to social media. As soon as a other people have seen it you'll spot ways it could be improved.

submitted 21 days ago • 0 comments

OK but I still want one though

submitted 22 days ago • 0 comments

My new game's random space hero name generator has come up with a couple of names I like so much I'm starting to think of them as canonical. So today I'll be writing the adventures of *Commander Jet Steele* and his sidekick, *Ruby Nova*. #indiedev #interactivefiction

submitted 23 days ago • 1 comment

OK how about this "rule for being a man": Real Men don't let anyone else tell them where and when they can eat soup. These people are so weird.

submitted 23 days ago • 0 comments

So the Space Eurovision episode of #DoctorWho was fun, but I kind of wish we'd got to see *more* Space Eurovision. Wouldn't it have been fun to watch a bunch of weird alien music acts with the Doctor having a low-stakes adventure as the B-plot?

submitted 23 days ago • 1 comment

Do people use "wingman" as a gender-neutral word? (In the original aerial combat sense, not the picking-up-girls-at-a-bar sense.) Wikipedia has "wingmate" as an alternative but I've never seen it otherwise.

submitted 24 days ago • 0 comments

The first time I watched The Black Hole I got so upset when the old robot died that I had to stop watching.

submitted 24 days ago • 0 comments