#hypnogenesis

A bit more Hypnogenesis footage. Another level with feedback & level design by Allen Riley

Peering through the noise is a key game mechanic. This might look completely impossible to parse, but it's easier than you might think while still remaining challenging.

I love that the UI gets caught up in the feedback.

Exciting news: Allen and I will be showing Hypnogenesis at the Experimental Games Showcase at GDC next month!

We'll be talking about using video synthesis techniques to make video feedback a core gameplay mechanic. After the showcase we'll host a live demo.

Working on an attract mode for Hypnogenesis today. I wrote a little AI that does a reasonable job of playing the game. Enough that I can drop it into any room let it do its thing.

Bonus is that the title plays with a lot of the game feedback in a fun way.

Check it out here: https://store.steampowered.com/app/4545390/Hypnogenesis/

After the positive response that Allen and I got at GDC we decided to make a home version and this is the first step!

I think we're the only game on Steam that mentions Nam Jun Paik in the description but I could be wrong.

A vision of video feedback hell appearing at the end of Hypnogenesis.

Allen Riley deigned all of the video art and levels (which are synonyms in this game!) and I worked on the engine.

I'm a little late to this one, but I figure it's good to get something down! I'm currently home after an amazing MAGFest which has left me with a bad case of Con Crud, so it's a perfect time to lay low and gather my thoughts on what I worked on this past year.

As always, the process of putting this together has reminded me just how much I got done, even though I had relatively few things that felt like big releases. This has been a year of working on ongoing projects for me. Along with some big projects that aren't quite out the door yet, I did make a number of small things, so I'm going to break this whole post into big and small items.

This post is also available on the EMMA Blog.

Big Projects

EMMA

I cannot talk about the work I've done without mentioning the EMMA Technology Cooperative. We've entered year 5 and I remain thrilled that my day job is to work with the brilliant Ramsey Nasser and Gwen Pasquarello at a worker-owned coop that pays the bills and aligns with my values. As we continue to work, we are always updating our systems and structures. It is a major collaborative learning experience.

If you need a creative technologist, hit us up!

Hypnogenesis

I've been working with Allen Riley for literally years now on a psychedelic, Robotron-inspired shooter that uses analog video feedback as a core element. Sometime in 2017 he pointed out that andrei jay's VIDEO WAAAVES used openFrameworsk (a C++ frameworks that I'm familiar with), and might be adaptable to an arcade game. This year we got serious with it. I flew out to Allen's home in Santa Cruz twice to work on the game. While it is not done yet, it has now been shown publicly twice (at Video Sync in portland and MAGFest just a week ago). Reception has been very positive and I'm really excited to get back to work on it to finish it up. Keep your eyes peeled for Hypnogenesis in 2026!

Here are all of my Hypnogenesis posts.

The Indomitable Rocket Dog

My brand new project that isn't so new any more. I'm getting itchy to kick this one out the door, but I can't deny that it is looking and feeling so much better than it did this time last year. I've gotten a lot of help from my partner Jane on the look of the game and I've recently done a ton of work to make it arcade-friendly, including making a small arcade console to test with and a lot of work on larger, procedural levels (inspired in no small part by Hoverburger and Black Emperor). I love creating procedural levels, so even if it isn't 100% what the project needs, it's a very fun way for me to work on the game!

This Mastodon thread remains the most up-to-date documentation for the game. I also have a bunch of posts on this tumblr.

Skirmish Society 1.05

This was my first big update to Skirmish Society (released 2023). I'm hoping it's my last! A lot of bug fixes and changes to how voting events work to make it more in line with player expectations. Although this game is not exploding in popularity, it makes me very happy that I am in a position where I can work on games I love without an expectation that they make money.

I played two rounds of Skirmish Society this year and enjoyed them immensely. You can play for free at skirmishsociety.com!

Flip Out Jam

Last year was the first official alt control jam that I hosted with Matt Lepage and Scott M. The goal was to give participants a simple parts list so they could build a custom controller with non-standard inputs. The resulting games were shown at MAGFest 2025. It was a huge success despite some difficulty with the console at the event, so we returned with another jam this year! This time around we used toggle switches as our input. Jammers communicated on the Arcade Commons Discord which resulted in more people becoming a part of our community there as well!

Check out the jam page on Itch and get ready for another alt-control jam this coming year! Given the popularity of it, we plan for this to be a regular part of MAGFest.

Smaller Things

Like every year, I did a bunch of little things that I can easily forget about.

In general, I post this stuff on tumblr and then I track it more permanently on a little just-barely-a-website that I call Little Things, but there were a few things that I realized weren't even there!

Run Run Run

I've been making fewer tweetcarts this year and missing writing small code-art, so I was thrilled when Nick Montfort invited me to submit a code poem to a small journal of computer-generated text. The code and output needed to fit on a single page and I am very happy with the lava-lamp texture created my code (which was featured on the page for the booklet!).

Check it out here. I believe you can still order a copy!

Tattoo

Early in the year I got my once-per-decade desire to get a tattoo! I wrote a P5.js sketch of what I wanted, and included a bunch of sliders so I could work with the artist (Mert in Brooklyn) to make sure it was something that would look good on skin. We spent about an hour tinkering and about 3 hours on the actual tattoo. I'm very happy with how it came out!

More info on how I developed this image here.

I'd love to get more tattoos but it takes me ages to decide on anything.

Franly Chewed

A few years back, I crowd sourced 100 answers each to a bunch on weird Family Feud questions I thought of ("Name parts of a dog", "Which Mario character would be good in bed?" "Who's judging you?" etc). I made a little game for a trip with friends and then sort of forgot about the whole thing.

This year I decided to dust it off to show at some parties as well as a festival coming up next month. My favorite part of the software is that every time you return to the menu it plays the Family Feud theme again (on top of all of the existing instanced), creating an awful cacophony.

Oath Tokens

Here's a little gimmick I made for Burning Man this past year: Oath Tokens.

I got a bunch of laser etched tokens that say "you swore an oath, now you have to do it." I had a great time asking people to come up with goals for themselves and then asking them if they were prepared to swear an oath to do the thing they said. Some said no, which I respect. If they said yes, I shook their hand, sliding a token into it as I did.

I had a bunch left over, so the whole second half of this year, when I've gone to a party I've brought a few oath tokens just in case. I love having a gimmick and this one really resonated with folks!

Taper 15 - Burning the Candle at Both Ends

View it here.

I love Taper, the digital poetry journal where all entires are pure HTML using 2kb of source code or less. I've submitted many times and I am particularly happy with this entry from the end of the year.

I was stretched fairly thin between several exciting projects when I made it and it was a nice release for that energy.

David Byrne Costume

For Halloween I decided to Stop Making Sense. I don't go all out every year, but I did some planning (and some engineering with the help of my mother in law!) to make a big suit and a portable lamp.

Having a prop is great fun, and I might start carrying a lamp with me to events.

More photos and a video of this costume here.

For good measure here are two other costumes of mine that were hits.

Pivop 1K

Created for the Pico1K Jam, this was a demake of an older webgame of mine, Pivop. It's a Pico-8 game where the source code is under 1kb!

I like to make new games for these jams, but I couldn't come up with anything that excited me, so I decided to take on the challenge of crunching down an older game of mine.

You can play Pivop 1K here.

Fishin' 500

Another size-coded Pico-8 jam, this one required me to make a game in just 500 characters of source code!

You can play this gentle (and tiny) fishing simulator here.

XCOM 2 Long War of the Chosen Guide

I'm an absolute sicko for the Long War of the Chosen total conversion mod for XCOM 2. It takes an already hard game, and adds a ton of strategic depth (and a whole lot more difficulty to go a long with it). After playing several Ironman campaigns at the highest difficulty, I released a guide of all of my notes that I took during my many campaigns (most of them ending in failure). This is easily the best place to learn the explosion radius of an Advent Purifier.

You can read the guide here.

I am happy to report that my guide was well received by some of the best players of the game and I've had quite a few newer players credit the recent successful runs to some of my insights.

I am just about done with another campaign and will be updating it soon!

Next Year

In 2026, I want to finish several projects. I have a few arcade games that are nearly done and I am hoping to come to MAGFest next year with several exciting things! I have to resist the allure of shiny new projects!

I hope you all have an exciting and creative year as well!

Over at Wonderville doing some more CRT work with Mark Kleeb to get Hypnogenesis (my video feedback game with Allen Riley) ready for MAGFest

Hypnogenesis isn't ~just~ interactive video art. It's also a nasty arcade game, so of course Allen Riley and I added a high score screen.