Dingbat Labs / games, for the joy of it

Mostly stardust. Partly dog.

A small software lab with an unreasonable standard and two labradors in charge. Four games are falling toward release right now, at exactly the speed of causality.

Scroll to fall in 65,536 particles · 2 good dogs
§ 01WorkFour bodies

Four games in a stable orbit.

Each one was done when it was ready, not when a roadmap said so. One is approved and waiting on a launch date; the other three are unreleased, their names classified until launch day. None of them is out quite yet. They are arriving.

    § 02The labManagement

    Run by a thunder god and the moon.

    Dingbat Labs is a small software lab that makes games for the pure joy of playing them, slowly and on purpose. The humans write the code. Two yellow labradors set the standard, and neither of them has ever lowered it for anyone.

    ϟ The thunder god

    Zeus

    Bigger, blockier, paler. Always happy. Signs off on every build with his whole tail, including the ones that crash, which is why he is not the last line of review.

    Mass
    Considerable
    Mood
    Delighted (constant)

    ☾ The moon

    Luna

    Smaller, finer, warmer gold. Clever, and a little OCD. Appraises every frame as though it owes her money. Nothing ships until she stops staring at it.

    Orbit
    Tight
    Tolerance
    0.0 ms
    House rulesNon-negotiable
    1. 01

      Tested on real hardware.

      Simulators lie about frame time. Every build runs on the hardware it ships to before anyone calls it done.

    2. 02

      Every board proved before a human sees it.

      Puzzles are generated, then solved by machine. If it can't be finished by logic alone, it doesn't exist.

    3. 03

      120 Hz where the screen allows.

      Motion is half of how a game feels. We spend the frame budget like it's ours, because it is.

    4. 04

      Fun by the third playtest, or it goes.

      Several ideas didn't make it. They were good ideas. They are now very dense, very small, and very quiet.

    04games falling toward the App Store
    171photographs hidden in grids of numbers
    12bosses, every one of them disassemblable
    10biomes, and one of them is always collapsing