October 2025 Update
Hello Indies!
The Summer is coming to an end, and the Long Dark will soon be upon us. What a perfect time to cozy up inside and work on some games or sit down and catch up on any or all of the talks from SLICE that you may have missed. We just received the final edits from our friends at Tenacious Ventures who were behind the cameras filming the action all day at SLICE and we are rolling them out on our YouTube channel over the coming weeks. Subscribe to our channel to get notifications when the new videos get posted or keep an eye on the #social-media channel on our Discord for announcements when new videos are posted. We also have the SLICE playlist that we’ll be adding the videos to.
SLICE was a huge success with over 850 attendees and 25 sessions featuring panels and workshops on all things indie and small studio related, marketing, managing small teams, Q&A sessions with platform holders, and so much more. It was a celebration of our community and the start of a brand new annual event that we look forward to growing and building with and for you in the years to come. We are still seeing positive feedback and stories of outcomes from connections that happened at SLICE on social media and it is encouraging and validating for the future of the event, our community, and the local industry.
Spooky (and rainy) season is just starting and we have a lot of events this month to help keep you dry and safe, read on to find out more.
Mark your calendars and sign up now for the annual Games and Education Industry Collider! The Collider returns on November 10th at our new venue Cornish Playhouse (just across Seattle Center from PacSci). The Washington Interactive Learning Alliance (WILA) co-founded by Seattle Indies, Seattle EdTech Meetup, foundry10, UW and Perfect Day Games, is teaming up to bring you a classic Collider evening event featuring a fireside chat with Portal creator Kim Swift, a panel discussion with industry leaders in the space, breakout roundtable sessions and our usual expo floor. You will also get to hear an update from the WILA sponsored capstone project team at UW last year and the exciting tool they created to specifically help game developers and educators think about building games that are classroom ready.
The focus of this year’s Collider is making games classroom ready and to prepare everyone for the brand new Games and Education Game Jam that will be happening the following weekend on November 14th and 15th at DigiPen Institute of Technology across the water in Redmond. We are also working on a possible venue in Seattle for folks lacking transportation to the East Side so stay tuned for that. This game jam will bring educators and game developers together to build prototypes of games that are classroom ready to teach concepts for a wide variety of subjects, mostly aimed at the K-12 demographic. The game jam has been a long held goal of this collaboration and we’re excited to see it finally come to fruition.
IndieCade Festival is coming in September. “Horizons connects diverse and highly qualified students with one another, industry representatives, and to a worldwide community. These future industry leaders are the pipeline to change, diversity, and to the future for the industry. Through our first-of-its-kind conference and showcase, Horizons amplifies new student work and emerging talent from games programs to industry, one another, and the broader public.”
The leading games industry conference is back in Helsinki for two action-packed days of networking, learning, and deal-making. Pocket Gamer Connects will unite over 1,500 professionals—including a high concentration of developers and decision-makers—for expert talks, matchmaking, and unique networking events.
Connect in advance with key players via the MeetToMatch platform and gain insights from 150+ speakers covering mobile, PC, console, XR, web3, and AI in games. Plus, take part in standout events like Investor Connector, Publisher SpeedMatch, and the legendary Global Connects Party.
Part of Finnish Games Week 2025, this unmissable event sits alongside the AI Gamechangers Summit, Big Screen Gaming Summit, Beyond Games: Transmedia Summit, Leadership Day, and W Love Games.
Book your tickets now: https://www.pgconnects.com/helsinki/registration/
Learn more about Finnish Games Week: https://www.pgconnects.com/helsinki/finnish-games-week/
Use the code SLICE20 for 20% off of passes to PGC Helsinki: www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/1137675360629/?discount=SLICE20
Seattle Indies will be at Sekai Beyond Con, an anime and gaming convention at the HUB ballroom on the UW Campus!
Fill out this form if you want to show a game: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSfVfoIYGs42EyOJGyxK7K1smo9oM8mQYssGW9xeuDYChZwAMA/viewform?usp=header
Design your own monsters, or color and cut your own from provided outlines! Hosted in the Community Convention Center (directly next to Burlington inside the mall), this event is for all ages. Here’s the Meetup Page.
If you want to get a list of all upcoming game event shows and get ready early, The Indie House has published this fantastic list of upcoming festival that’s exactly that. Well worth a bookmark!
This month’s Seattle Indies Spotlight features not one but two developers from our community, the wonderful Bob and Andrea Roberts of Wonderbelly Games, developers of SIX 2020 Nominee Roundguard and SIX 2025 Nominee and the upcoming Arcane Eats!
Bob: Both of us started in games by testing at Nintendo back when they were preparing to launch the Wii. I moved into an entry level QA role on FEAR 2 at Monolith and spent 13 years working my way up there. I became a producer, then switched to design and led the design team for the Shadow of Mordor games. Then in 2019 I quit Monolith to finish Roundguard full time with Andrea and keep making indie titles as Wonderbelly Games.
Andrea: After Nintendo, I used my linguistics degree to land a game job at Microsoft editing the English translations of some of their Japanese games like Ninja Gaiden and Tenchu Z. I moved from there onto the narrative team working on the Fable franchise, and then into design on some interesting Kinect projects, before ending my run there on the UX team working with partner games like Tomb Raider. Throughout our careers, Bob and I developed and shipped tiny hobby games with our friends after work, and I had always had a dream of going indie one day. When we had our first kid, I quit Microsoft to found Wonderbelly Games and our next hobby project, Roundguard, got more ambitious. Roundguard shipped on every platform you can think of, and after a few years of support, we’re now working on our next game, Arcane Eats!
What inspired you to become a game developer?
Bob: We loved playing games as kids, and once we met each other we loved playing games together as a core shared activity. We always loved overanalyzing everything in games together.
Andrea: One day shortly after we’d both graduated college, we signed up for a paid focus group for the game Elebits. It was the first time the thought occurred to us that making games was actually a job that could pay people.
Bob: Which is weird cause I majored in music and was trying to figure out how to make a living with that, which is similarly creative but even more impractical!
What is one important lesson you have learned in your time as a game developer?
Bob: There’s the cliches around scope and finishing: Always target way smaller than you want to. Just finish things and learn what finishing is like. 80/20 rule, etc. All very valid. But maybe a less well broadcast lesson I’ve learned is that while ideas are cheap and everyone has lots of them, you have to find a way to identify the truly important core ones that make your game special and cling to them throughout the storm of development. And it’s dangerous because you’ll feel really attached to lots of ideas throughout the process. It’s easy to get initially excited and overly bound to an idea, but you have to develop strategies for forcing some distance between you and the idea and then reevaluate it to see if it still feels important once you’ve broken free. The danger is how easy it can be to tell yourself nothing is good enough, and thus never finish anything. So striking that balance is the challenge! Playtesting is a great tool for gaining perspective, but especially early in development it can still require you to really hold on to the ideas you know are important even though they’re not coming through in the game yet.
What is the one piece of advice you would share today with your younger self before you started your career as a game developer?
Andrea: I always wanted to be a designer, but so does everyone else. Especially early on in my career I’d emphasize getting really good at something else, then bridge to design rather than hoping to come into a design role early.
Bob: Yeah, I learned a lot from QA and production before building enough of a reputation that I could bridge into an official design role.
I would also tell myself to lower my expectations and level of intimidation about what experts the grizzled veterans are. Not to say that experienced folks don’t have tons of juicy knowledge and hard won instincts that are really valuable (especially around estimating and finishing!), but when I started I was just way too intimidated and it made my expectations unrealistic as well as made me less comfortable just diving in to learn things myself. I wish I’d internalized earlier that everyone is constantly learning because our industry is so fluid and quick to evolve with technology, so I can just dive in and learn with them rather than assume I couldn’t do something cause I didn’t go to school for it or already have 10 years of experience or something like that. Also, just be more generous to everyone about everything!
How has the game developer community had an impact on your career?
Andrea: Roundguard exists because of the Seattle Indies “show and tell” meet ups, where we got our first feedback and encouragement from other developers. When we showed Roundguard at SIX, that was when we knew for sure that it was a game we wanted to finish. It was very motivating!
Getting to know other developers along the way has endlessly provided us with valuable advice, support, feedback, resources, contacts, etc. Being an indie developer can feel very small and isolating, but the indie game development community is incredibly generous and helps us feel like we’re part of a larger team. Helping each other overcome technical hurdles and marketing questions and sharing useful data to help ground expectations so you can make reasonable decisions. It’s amazing what an open and helpful community we have, and I can easily connect our success as Wonderbelly Games directly back to the wonderful people we’ve met along the way.
What is something interesting and unexpected that people would be surprised to learn about you?
Bob: I used to occasionally tour the US playing drums and/or bass in various bands (and even toured Japan once!) before my game dev career started to solidify and I couldn’t take that much time off anymore.
Andrea: I’m actually the original Roberts – Bob took my last name when we got married. My last name Roberts comes from my great-great-grandfather Robert Sulkanon of the Nooksack tribe, so my local Seattle roots run deep.
How can people follow you and your work?
Join our Wonderbelly Games newsletter or Discord or follow us on any social platform you prefer. All the info is on our website: https://www.wonderbellygames.com/
Here’s our Meetup Page with all future upcoming events.
The Seattle Blender User Group is happening on Oct 4, 10am to 1pm at Academy of Interactive Entertainment – Seattle Center Armory – Suite 405 (305 Harrison St, Suite 405 · Seattle, WA). Seabug’s goals are to help beginners learn Blender, create Blender opportunities in the Pacific Northwest, showcase advanced Blender tools and projects, and celebrate open source graphics in all forms.
Seattle Indies Board Game Meetup is on Oct 5 at 5pm at Phoenix Comics and Games. Come play board games with Indie Game Developers!
The Pierce Country Social is taking place on Oct. 6, 5:30pm-8:00pm at 7 Seas Brewery and Taproom on 2101 Jefferson Ave · Tacoma, WA. Kids are welcome until 8pm as long as they are within arm’s length. Main tap room is first come, first served!
Feedback Circle is back on Oct 7, 7pm right on our discord. It’s time to stop coding, animating, making art or audio or adding that amazing new feature you thought of while you were falling asleep last night and come to Feedback Circle to get some real responses to what you have been working on from game creators in our community like yourself.
An In-Person Writer’s Group will take place at Hugo House on Oct 8, 6:30 PM. For anyone interested or working on projects in game writing, narrative design, voice acting or more– swing by Seattle Indies’ In-Person Writer’s Group! Bring your narrative games, scripts, flowcharts, character bibles or any other story materials for sharing and feedback.
The Northside Social takes place Oct 9, 6pm-9pm at Watershed Pub & Kitchen (10104 3rd Ave NE · Seattle, WA). It’s time to get together and swap stories. Put down your keyboards and brave the outdoors. Let’s meet for some food, a drink, and some good conversation!
The Eastside Meetup is taking place on Oct 14, 6:30pm at Northwest Brewing Pint & Pie Public House. It’s time to get together and swap stories. Put down your keyboards and brave the outside world. Let’s meet for a drink, a bite to eat, and some good conversation!
The Game Club is happening on Oct 15 at 7pm right on our Discord, focusing on Strange Antiques. What a book club is to a discussion of literature, this event is to a discussion of game design. Every month, we agree to play a game, then meet to discuss and analyze its design and presentation.
Seattle Indies Social takes place at Stoup Brewing (formerly Optimism) on Oct. 21, 7pm. Join us for some well-deserved mingling, drinks, and socialization! Make some new friends, catch up with old ones, and find out what the community’s up to.
The Olympia Social is happening on Oct 25, 12pm to 3pm at DEACAY (Diverse Events And Creative Arts Yard), located on 402 Washington ST NE · Olympia, WA. Come join us for some great conversation and some fun!
Southside Social is taking place on Oct 27, 5:30pm at Logan Brewing Company, 510 SW 151st Street, · Burien, WA. It’s time to get together and swap stories. Put down your keyboards and brave the outdoors. Let’s meet for some food and friendly discussion!
Kitsap Social (Bremerton) Join us every last Tuesday of the month (Oct 28) at Ashely’s Pub at 6:30pm to meet for a drink and some great conversation! Feel free to bring what you’re working on. We may have a room reserved for the public event. Dogs allowed. Outside food allowed.
Indie Co-working Support Group in-person will take place every Saturday, from 1:00 PM to 6:30 PM PST, at the Academy of Interactive Entertainment. Seattle Center wifi will be available for use. Please bring everything you need to be productive. We will be meeting every Saturday of the month at AIE going forward. We have also added a Co-working voice channel in Discord for people to use any time they want a quiet space to work alongside their peers.
Seabug Study Hall is a new series of events taking place every week on Thursday, 9pm to 11pm, right on our Discord! Join others from the Seattle Blender User Group for a lo-fi chill out online study hall. Bring a project, just chat, and have a good time with some unstructured project sharing and Q&A.
Kaimatten shared that they released their game after a 3 year long journey. Check it out here!
Carlos C. shared that Night Vale hit retail and was in the museum showcase at the Strong! Take a look!
Sam shared a brand new Steam page for their game. Go Wishlist It Here!
KrayonBachs also shared their Steam page, together with a Demo. Play it here!
Ekpap shared their game as well, releasing in October. Take a look and wishlist here!
Victor released the Few Shall Return Demo – play it on Steam!
Dire Kitten Games shared that their game is just two months out from launch now! Take a look and Wishlist Here!
Grits shared a new tool LoopKit – a session replay tool built specifically for indies. Take a Look!
corinne share that their game’s demo just went live! Take a look here!
Luke DaWorm made a clickbaity YouTube video about a small horror game the released for free on itch.io, check it out!
Harassment Policy, AAPI, Black Lives Matter, and Resources
Seattle Indies stands with the AAPI community. We are here for our members who have been affected by the rise in anti-Asian hate crimes both locally and nationally. For further resources to educate yourself on the issue and how to take action, here is a useful link: https://anti-asianviolenceresources.carrd.co/
Seattle Indies believes the stories of the victims of sexual harassment and assault in the games industry that have been shared. We strongly condemn the actions by people in power preying on the dreams of vulnerable people trying to make their way in the industry. We strive to build an inclusive community that welcomes all minorities to provide a safe environment and a better vision for the game industry.
While our code of conduct states a zero-tolerance policy for harassment of any kind, we are especially sensitive to the daily challenges faced by womxn due to the ingrained sexism that has existed in the structure of the games industry for far too long. We are actively working to build a better community of game developers, and we all need to do better.
Additionally, Board Member Angel Mero has offered to be a personal resource for anyone who needs help, someone to talk to or some guidance on next steps if you have experienced harassment in the industry either at our events or elsewhere. She can be reached at angel@seattleindies.org.
Our friends at Take This Org have compiled valuable resources for anyone in immediate need of professional help for their situation.
Lastly, Seattle Indies and Diversity Collective+ support Black Lives Matter. Here are some resources compiled by Diversity Collective+ for how you can offer support, whether this is financial, contributing to petitions, preparing for protests, or getting informed. If you have additional resources, comment below and we will add them.
As always, keep an eye on our Discord for any last-minute news and discussion, and let us know about any projects you’re working on that you’d like shared on our Steam or Itch collections or follow us on all of our social media platforms.
If you want to join our mailing list to get this update sent to your inbox monthly you can Subscribe on LinkedIn.