Nathalie Lawhead
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alienmelon.bsky.social
Nathalie Lawhead
@alienmelon.bsky.social
7.7K followers 580 following 3.1K posts
i make experimental games, net-art, and software ~Tetrageddon, Everything is going to be OK, Electric Zine Maker, BlueSuburbia…
🔥 http://tetrageddon.com
🦄 http://unicornycopia.com
🐘 [email protected]
🌈 they/them ⭐️🦜 (nonbinary, most of the time)
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alienmelon.bsky.social
i got this perfect fabric transparency working along with a cloth simulation for the ending... it looks peaceful sad beautiful...
lol i love how transparent fabrics work. it was really easy to do!
(i thought cloth simulation would be harder. relieved it wasn't)
#GameDev
January 11, 2026 at 2:21 PM
alienmelon.bsky.social
the Steam team responded to my support request and said they will not remove the review calling me a liar and ridiculing my sexual assault because of censorship concerns.
steamcommunity.com/profiles/765...
if Steam refuses to enforce their community guidelines and allows harassment, what can i do?
a screenshot of the reply. sorry i’m too upset to transcribe this. a screenshot of the review.
January 10, 2026 at 6:14 AM
alienmelon.bsky.social
update:
the review with the slur was finally taken down, but the one that calls me a liar and references my r*pist is still up.
please help keep reporting this: steamcommunity.com/profiles/765...
i cannot flag it because a Steam mod decided ridiculing someone’s SA is an appropriate review.
screenshot of the review taken down screenshot of the review calling me a liar, still up
January 7, 2026 at 7:40 AM
alienmelon.bsky.social
occasionally log into x so that i don't lose the account (i'd hate to see what people do with it if i lost the handle) and... yeah i guess it's an opportunity to share this again since it's my only clapback to harassment from n*zis or former kotaku writers
www.nathalielawhead.com/candybox/abu...
a screenshot of someone calling me a liar
January 4, 2026 at 2:07 PM
alienmelon.bsky.social
various screenshots that i'm sharing here before deleting them.
#GameDev #IndieGameDev #GameArt
a screenshot of a browser UI with a website. a screenshot from within the tower. the walls are concrete and a spiral staircase is moving up. there's a poem written on the wall. another angle, looking down at the spiral staircase. a poem is written on the wall. light is coming thorugh the windows in the back. a screenshot of a field dotted with dandelion umbrelas. there's a rock in the corner next to dead trees. a pop up notification sits in the center.
January 4, 2026 at 1:45 PM
alienmelon.bsky.social
i finished the entire poetic journey up the tower!
you stop at points where a narration (somewhere in the environment) will read the text. it will be very ambient too.
now i just have to make the ending interaction...
omg gamedev is so much work 🥲
#GameDev
January 4, 2026 at 1:42 PM
alienmelon.bsky.social
please help me report these Steam reviews (that ridicule my SA) made to my games. steam moderators cleared them as acceptable (so i can’t flag them) but i don’t think calling me a slur & bringing up my r*pist is acceptable.

steamcommunity.com/profiles/765...

steamcommunity.com/id/Luceres/r...
a screenshot of the review access denied. this review was cleared by a moderator. a screenshot of the review access denied. this review was cleared by a moderator.
January 2, 2026 at 10:38 AM
alienmelon.bsky.social
this one…
“A women who seeks to destroy other's career made this. It's also very poorly put together. She also probably has dual Israeli citizenship with how pointy her nose is.”

was also cleared by a moderator. if anyone can help report it too i’d appreciate it.

steamcommunity.com/id/Luceres/r...
steam comment access denied
December 31, 2025 at 12:12 PM
alienmelon.bsky.social
for the life of me… how is:
“cringe game. made by a liar…” and bringing up my r*pist an acceptable review for a game that a moderator cleared??
i tried to flag it again but it won’t let me.
steam reviews that are personal attacks, and not at all about the game, are ok? how?
#GameDev #Steam
steam review access denied
December 31, 2025 at 10:19 AM
alienmelon.bsky.social
working on the ending of the game where you travel up the tower, and the very last poem is read on the way up. i love how beautiful it's looking. it's a good atmosphere!
#GameDev
December 30, 2025 at 2:04 PM
alienmelon.bsky.social
screenshots from today.
i'm working on the ending now! the rest of the world is done.
after that i have to do audio and music...
also a big thanks to this video for explaining the missing pieces of procedural content generation www.youtube.com/watch?v=cPWK...
#GameDev
looking down a giant spiral staircase. light glows through the windows. a perfect view down an infinite spiral staircase. windows glow with light. the entry up the tower.
December 27, 2025 at 2:15 PM
alienmelon.bsky.social
i posted about all my favorite games from this year. i hope you will fall in love with them too!
One whole year of video game recommendations: www.nathalielawhead.com/candybox/one...
"The international indiegame scene is full of undiscovered gems. They are waiting for you to find them."
#IndieGames
a screenshot of mini mini golf golf a screenshot of level devil a screenshot of seasonale cemetary a screenshot of cabin factory
December 20, 2025 at 2:48 PM
alienmelon.bsky.social
it is a cool photo 😎🆒
a cool photo of me with the game projected in the back
December 16, 2025 at 9:01 AM
alienmelon.bsky.social
out of context screenshots from today
broken buildings and rubble
#gamedev
a broken building lies in its rubble, surrounded by stars looking down at a broken building that lies in ruin. stars surround the area. it is night.
December 15, 2025 at 3:57 PM
alienmelon.bsky.social
Mapped by our ancestors - a post portem
theunderscore.xyz/t/mapped-by-...
“This is probably the fate of every videogame you’ll ever play. Those universes are alive for a few hours, sometimes a few days […] But eventually, you stop playing them.”
👆 what a beautiful piece of writing this is 😭🥲
This is probably the fate of every videogame you’ll ever play. Those universes are alive for a few hours, sometimes a few days, if they’re well designed they could take years of your time. But eventually, you stop playing them. You do not open the game again, the universe just stays where you’ve left it and never goes forward (and that is assuming the games have a save system, most of my games don’t). The characters in those universes will essentially stop existing. Some of them may be canonically immortal, with infinite respawns, but this here is their death. The player stops playing, the universe is shut down and becomes void of energy. The ADVERSARY has come and caused the END OF TIMES. That is, you, the player, have caused the end of times by closing the game. For those of you who have been a fan of my works for years, maybe this is more clear to you now.
December 10, 2025 at 9:18 AM
alienmelon.bsky.social
gamedev update: progress to that new update is going really good. it’s a massive world with good writing and plays like if a short story was interactive. i love it! i’m going to release it as a standalone because it’s so big… i don’t have much new to show so here’s a photo of my menacing todos 🫣🥲
a photo of a big todo list
December 9, 2025 at 1:21 PM
alienmelon.bsky.social
ok i added it :)
"No AI. All posts thoughtfully and imperfectly written by a human."
No AI. All posts thoughtfully and imperfectly written by a human.
December 1, 2025 at 2:49 PM
alienmelon.bsky.social
i really liked the whole quote but had to condense it due to character count :(
recommended reading... it has good observations written by a human.
“I do think it’s a future where we prize instant answers over teaching and understanding. There’s less reason to use something like blob-util, which means there’s less reason to write it in the first place, and therefore less reason to educate people about the problem space”
December 1, 2025 at 2:35 PM
alienmelon.bsky.social
i know you’re not supposed to read the conversation in the comments but the conversation is depressing and anti-art in all the typical ways to justify censorship… like there’s so much to unpack here especially with how quickly people paint art as “abuse” when it discusses difficult topics.
comment to the article arguing “It's not really a gray zone. It's skirting fettishised child-abuse, which is an absolute no-no. We don't really know what happened here and likely never will, but for all the posts below saying this is about Valve being evil, it's just as possible that they have an internal blacklist for developers who stray way over the line and into territory that's going to be legally very risky in many countries. I can see how the scene as described would do just that. I suspect what we have here is a case of a bunch of artsy types who, trapped in a bit of a creative bubble, don't actually realise how some of this stuff is going to look to "normal" people. They may do well to hire a gray-suited centrist-dad type to act as a bit of an internal nay-sayer and stop them doing stuff like sending scenes where children ride naked people in horse masks to companies like Valve.” comment arguing “Some people don't understand that it isn't always the artist who gets to define what is and isn't sexual and that some artists are weird.”
November 27, 2025 at 10:35 AM
alienmelon.bsky.social
this part in particular seems grim to me…
Steam has recently begun refusing to grant developers keys for their own games. In the absence of clear rules or guidance, Valve led developers for years to believe they could request keys as needed, building communities and businesses outside Steam while still creating value for Steam users. It now withholds keys from indie developers who do not meet undisclosed sales thresholds. Our multiple requests for keys for our previous game, Saturnalia, were denied without any specific criteria we could work toward to resolve it. As a result, we have been unable to include the game in bundles we had planned to help recoup development costs for our next project, HORSES. This policy shift was never communicated and has been applied retroactively to existing titles. Developers and partners are understandably reluctant to speak publicly or challenge Steam, since as a de facto monopoly it holds disproportionate control over our business.
November 26, 2025 at 5:19 AM
alienmelon.bsky.social
people like this loved acting like i was hard to parse or understand (unhinged, hurt, crazy...), but the issue was pretty simple: don't publish details of a rape that was promised to not be published, don't put sources in danger...
they all made it a complicated and convoluded talking point.
November 21, 2025 at 10:23 AM
alienmelon.bsky.social
it's just kinda funny when i see some of the same people that participated in throwing me under the bus to "both sides" or support the journalist that called me a liar... talking about metoo stuff...
x.com/alienmelon/s...
when i posted that i was blocked.
why are the progressive voices here so fake?
November 21, 2025 at 10:23 AM
alienmelon.bsky.social
also… the event took this cool photo of me preforming my playable-essay to a live audience and posted it to instagram. i think it’s a cool photo so im adding it here too 😌
a cool photo of me
November 17, 2025 at 7:32 PM
alienmelon.bsky.social
zine making workshop was a success. good art was made.
a photo of a pile of potatoes with googly eyes. a sign states that they are art and mustn’t be disturbed. zine making equipment in strewn about a work table with a laptop. the electric zine maker projected onto a large screen next to the zine making table the electric zine maker on a large cinema screen
November 17, 2025 at 7:24 PM
alienmelon.bsky.social
selfie from amsterdam. i got a pink spiked collar and now i feel whole. 💕😌
((felt cute might delete later))
me looking at a mirror looking at me looking at a mirror. with a pink collar.
November 15, 2025 at 5:05 PM