Keely (Chicken Scratch)
@keely-brown.bsky.social
630 followers 590 following 330 posts
Game Dev from Canada working on a chicken game: https://store.steampowered.com/app/2267230/Chicken_Scratch/
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keely-brown.bsky.social
In the flip drawing mode - the drawing that you have to copy gets flipped upside down. Players were having some trouble understanding it.

I added this little effect to help make that a bit clearer (rather than just showing the flipped image immediately).

#gamedev #indiegames
keely-brown.bsky.social
AI is so good and cool and definitely good at understanding what is true and correct.

I am so glad that it is plugged into every single fucking thing that I have to interact with against my will.
keely-brown.bsky.social
As a game, it feels like I have most of my features locked down at a core level, but it also feels like I could spend a bunch more time polishing/stabilizing things before committing to NextFest. Bahhhhhh. I should probably just do it but it feels like I also could have a better shot by slowrolling
keely-brown.bsky.social
There's a lot to do right now and I have no time to do any of it.

The prospect of kicking the can again on NextFest feels pretty awful. But I need to make a new trailer and I need to start doing a ton of outreach. Do I wait in order to start building momentum in the winter? This shit is hard man.
keely-brown.bsky.social
BIRDBUCKS GO BRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR

#gamedev #indiegames
keely-brown.bsky.social
behold - a MACHINE

#gamedev #indiegames
keely-brown.bsky.social
.. not that it's a ton of people, but it does feel like it's a non-trivial number.

And again, I can't stress it enough, even if the content is being engaged with - it's not yielding anything in terms of wishlists. But I'm also not actively trying to make that happen yet with the content, so 🤷
keely-brown.bsky.social
I also feel like consistently posting content on a near day-to-day basis is being rewarded with better general results? Which isn't surprising.

In general, I think once I started captioning shorts, adding hashtags and posting consistently - youtube started putting it in front of more people.
keely-brown.bsky.social
Another reason for doing a lot of low effort investigation posts with your content: if you aren't thinking and put a word like "shooting" in your title - youtube won't propagate it to anyone.

Now I'm also taking time to censor swearing 🙃
www.youtube.com/shorts/X230D...

#gamedev #indiegames
keely-brown.bsky.social
It does need better sound effects but also
uh
it needs to actually be hooked up to do something too so that's probably important.
keely-brown.bsky.social
New submit juice - look at it do the thing! Look at it! It's cool!

#gamedev #indiegames
keely-brown.bsky.social
Thanks for the feedback! (:
keely-brown.bsky.social
Super helpful input! I think you're right that it should be clearer what the source of the deductions are/the modifier stuff is a bit too visually small. I probably need to make everything a bit bigger and give that section more visual priority.

The penalties come from taking too long on a drawing.
keely-brown.bsky.social
Been working on upgrading the scoring machine to have a bit more juice and feel more grounded.

Any input on anything in terms of how it works right now?

#gamedev #indiegames
keely-brown.bsky.social
Love that colour palette/aesthetic - it looks great!
keely-brown.bsky.social
A short from the playtest we did last night for Chicken Scratch where I struggled to understand how a pair of pants could actually be a vest:
www.youtube.com/shorts/QyO3s...

#indiegames #gamedev
NO PANTS #gamingshorts
YouTube video by ChickenScratchGame
www.youtube.com
keely-brown.bsky.social
Sounds like I might have put you onto a bad API originally lol. Glad that you managed to figure it out!
Reposted by Keely (Chicken Scratch)
bluepinstudio.com
Our game got third place in the game jam! Here's a post mortem post about it, link is contained within if you wanna give it a try :) bluepinstudio.com/blog/2025-08... #indiegame #gamedev #gamejam #indiedev
keely-brown.bsky.social
Yesterday we ran a table at the Toronto Expo for Chicken Scratch! Went in with very low expectations and ended up spending 11 hours straight showing the game to people. 🤯

Lots of notes for improvements to make and got a lot of positive reception! Super rewarding experience. 😄

#gamedev
Picture of a pair of tired and unkempt game developers at a conference. One of them is holding up an angry crocheted business chicken.
keely-brown.bsky.social
I think that one might be too distracting (even if I agree that it would be very funny :P)

The version of it that I ended up getting working has a pretty similar idea/feel (just less.. motion lol):
keely-brown.bsky.social
The most messed up part about this is that I wasted time debugging things to get this working.
keely-brown.bsky.social
Honestly, now that you say it, totally agree. How about now? Does this seem more clear that the player is running out of time?

#gamedev #indiegames
keely-brown.bsky.social
yeah 100% agree. It definitely feels like I'm trying out different kinds of bait right now like a fisher trying to see what hooks them in :P
keely-brown.bsky.social
And then sometimes also the algorithm decides one of the videos you worked hard on isn't worth distributing for no discernible reason (and obviously they're not going to give you any insight as to why). 🫠
keely-brown.bsky.social
I definitely relate though, it's like you solve one element of the problem, but it doesn't mean anything unless you can solve the other 4-5 other big problems (engagement, followthrough, etc) and figure out how to fit them all together simultaneously lol.