Indie Game Development Videos Hacker News Recommends

talk#50

Juice it or lose it - a talk by Martin Jonasson & Petri Purho

grapefrukt

“Gotta be one of the best talks for anyone trying to make things interactive that also feel good.”

12 HN recommenders · 2013–2025

talk#72

Jan Willem Nijman - Vlambeer - "The art of screenshake" at INDIGO Classes 2013

Dutch Game Garden

10 HN recommenders · 2014–2025

talk#159

Jonathan Blow - How to program independent games - CSUA Speech

Alexandre Franco

“It's about much more than games. To me, it's about identifying and not doing unnecessary work.”

9 HN recommenders · 2015–2026

documentary#160

The Engoodening of No Man's Sky

Internet Historian

“surprisingly a well told, heart-warming (albeit quite long) video telling the story of No Man's Sky”

9 HN recommenders · 2020–2025

talk#260

Failing to Fail: The Spiderweb Software Way

GDC Festival of Gaming

“this talk is legendary and inspirational to aspiring game devs”

11 HN recommenders · 2018–2025

talk#391

Jonathan Blow: Game design: the medium is the message

CreativeMornings HQ

“how the business model deeply corrupts the game through the metaphor of bad 70's TV shows vs HBO”

7 HN recommenders · 2013–2020

talk#482

How we fit an NES game into 40 Kilobytes

Morphcat Games

“Here is my favorite video about 8-bit era optimisations. Makes you appreciate games from this era even more.”

6 HN recommenders · 2019–2026

talk#716

EPC2018 | Wave Function Collapse in Bad North | Oskar Stalberg

BUas Games

“has some great talks on YouTube about how the systems in Bad North and Townscaper work.”

4 HN recommenders · 2020–2024

tutorial#851

Learn Low Poly Modeling in Blender 2.9 / 2.8

Imphenzia

“until this tut by Imphenzia, which made me comfortable in under 2 hours”

4 HN recommenders · 2020–2025

interview#919

Dwarf Fortress Creator Explains its Complexity & Origins | Noclip Interview

/noclip

“This interview with Tarn Adams (one of the creators of dwarf fortress) is amazing”

6 HN recommenders · 2020–2022

documentary#931

Investigation: How Roblox Is Exploiting Young Game Developers

People Make Games

“has a couple of reports that I'd suggest parents consider watching first before going down that road”

5 HN recommenders · 2021–2026

talk#1047

The Making of: ROM City Rampage (Retro City Rampage)

VblankEntertainment

“There's also a fascinating video of him getting the core of the game to run on NES spec constraints”

4 HN recommenders · 2014–2022

talk#1528

PRACTICE 2018: Joseph White

NYU Game Center

“talk about the design philosophy of Pico-8”

2 HN recommenders · 2018–2022

talk#1567

1,500 Slot Machines Walk into a Bar: Adventures in Quantity Over Quality

GDC Festival of Gaming

“They procedurally generated 1,500+ different iterations on top of the same Unity-based slots shovelware using noun/adjective pairs.”

3 HN recommenders · 2020–2026

talk#1863

Let’s go whaling: Tricks for monetising mobile game players with free-to-play

PocketGamerbiz

“Must see video for anyone interested in the topic, from someone explaining how to do these monetizations tactics”

3 HN recommenders · 2019–2026

demo#1986

Hyperbolica: A Non-Euclidean Adventure [Old Trailer]

CodeParade

“CodeParade has been working on hyperbolica for a while now and doing fantastic videos on the process.”

3 HN recommenders · 2021–2023

talk#2018

How to Survive in Gamedev for Eleven Years Without a Hit

GDC Festival of Gaming

“you can redefine your idea of "success" a little and make a comfortable living”

3 HN recommenders · 2017–2024

talk#2032

Animation Bootcamp: An Indie Approach to Procedural Animation

GDC Festival of Gaming

“Here's a video I've enjoyed of David Rosen giving a presentation at Game Developers Conference 2014”

4 HN recommenders · 2021–2026

talk#2047

Diablo: Original Game Development

jon d

“GDC post mortems are amazing, especially the ones on Diablo[0] and Fallout[1].”

3 HN recommenders · 2021–2023

talk#2049

Put Your Name on Your Game, a Talk by Bennett Foddy and Zach Gage

GDC Festival of Gaming

“Great talk on that from the GettingOverIt/QWOP dev”

3 HN recommenders · 2020–2025

explainer#2337

Spherical Geometry Is Stranger Than Hyperbolic - Hyperbolica Devlog #2

CodeParade

“One of the better ones, in my opinion, because it has "normal" objects in it”

3 HN recommenders · 2021–2026

talk#2350

Zach Oakes - Making Games at Runtime with Clojure

ClojureTV

“here is his presentation on this subject at the last Conj (great talk)”

2 HN recommenders · 2015–2017

interview#2744

HandmadeCon 2015 - Pat Wyatt

Molly Rocket

“good interview with him talking about screwing up Diablo and doing a good job on Guild Wars”

2 HN recommenders · 2016–2023

demo#2991

Creating Prelude of the Chambered

Nizzotch

“show them Notch's time-lapse in the background on projector”

2 HN recommenders · 2015–2026

interview#3057

How Localizing Return of the Obra Dinn Nearly Sunk the Game | War Stories | Ars Technica

Ars Technica

“combining one of my fave video series with one of my fave gamedevs.”

2 HN recommenders · 2020–2023

demo#3110

How I implemented MegaTextures on real Nintendo 64 hardware

James Lambert

“James is like Kaze”

2 HN recommenders · 2023–2026

commentary#3169

The Next Major RTS Will Fail. This Is Why.

GiantGrantGames

“makes a compelling case for why single-player campaign and mod-development experiences are often overlooked”

2 HN recommenders · 2023–2024

demo#3184

Making Metagun

Nizzotch

“show them Notch's time-lapse in the background on projector”

2 HN recommenders · 2010–2015

talk#3492

Antichamber: An Overnight Success, Seven Years In The Making

GDC Festival of Gaming

“I really recommend watching it”

2 HN recommenders · 2016–2024

demo#3536

Is a round Minecraft world possible?

Jeija

“A minetest developer just recently published a sphere-shaped planet version of minetest”

2 HN recommenders · 2016–2025

demo#4114

Notch Coding Minicraft!

simme337

“Watching `notch` live-code is also very popular.”

1 HN recommenders · 2012–2022

talk#4226

IRDC US 2015 - Brian Bucklew, Data-Driven Engines of Qud and Sproggiwood

Logo “ND” Surströmming

“If you're interested in how Brian thinks take a look at this video”

1 HN recommenders · 2022–2024

talk#4320

Crafting A Tiny Open World: A Short Hike Postmortem

GDC Festival of Gaming

“You might want to watch this for inspiration”

1 HN recommenders · 2020–2022