Lóa Gunnars

At Reykjavík Game Summit 2025, @loa-gunnars.bsky.social, game designer and adjunct instructor at Reykjavik University, shared a refreshing perspective drawn from her experience teaching game design and working with students.

New Ólífur Ragnar Grímsson just dropped

Three faces look out over a swirling racetrack over a warm atmosphere. An orb like vessel sits at the front

completely forgot to post this Phantom Spark commission I did a while ago, extremely neat game

Today’s @puzzmo.com crossword is an example of how puzzles express the identity of the constructor. I was so happy to see it’s the work of @loa-gunnars.bsky.social and Auđur Ákadóttir. Clues like “advanced degree of a game designer” and “surface of many games” show the personal imprint. Congrats!❤️❤️❤️

I made a crossword that’s available for just today!
Celebrate Iceland National Day by trying it 😄

Also check out all of Puzzmo if you haven’t already!

Whooooa! It looks so good! Look forward to playing!!!

The heartbreaking statement from Jonathan Joss’s husband about his death.

Had an incredible time at @amazefest.bsky.social. It was my first time and I’m encouraging all indie developers to make this their conference of choice next year over GDC.

Það fer klárlega eftir samhengi. 90% pylsa. En til dæmis er asnalegt að segja sjoppupylsa. Mun ljúfara að segja sjoppupulsa.

Hmm! Coming to terms with is more negative than I meant? Discovering, realizing, untangling, de-self-prejudizing, self-glimpsing, etc. etc.

I accidentally wrote an article yesterday about coming to terms with being trans and some of the facts I discovered in my years of research.

It was originally on Facebook but I wanted to share it with my connections here.

I've taught many people new to gamedev from kids to adult, from a practical educator lens I believe the main difference people credit to kids learning faster or easier than adults is they aren't yet consciously trying to avoid temporarily looking like a beginner at something

adding alt text to help

I’m seeing a lot of negative reviews on games along the lines of “this isn’t exactly what I wanted, even though it was exactly what was promised”.

I can’t overstate how much more joy you will have if you allow art to unfurl in front of you, instead of demanding it be what you imagine you want.

Maybe people think the first trans person in Congress was going to get to operate like the first gay dudes that came out? Having established themselves already and gotten buddy-buddy with some Republicans, they could use their clout to advocate for gay rights

So proud of this bunch. Congratulations!! 🎉 ❤️❤️❤️

😬

Rás 2 fékk Utanríkisráðherra til að kommenta aðeins á þetta eftir umfjöllun www.ruv.is/utvarp/spila...

Þetta er allavega á radarnum og ég vona að það sé stutt í þessa viðvörun.

It’s an unusual feeling for me so I don’t know where to direct it!

I genuinely hope all my friends and colleagues have a great time and drink a 🍹 in my name and stop by the board game lounge to play a board game!

Then maybe we can convince GDC to rotate between countries for the next few years?

Got a notification on my phone that my flight was about to board and suddenly all the bad feelings of cancelling my GDC trip hit me.

I had somehow packaged them neatly away as a normal thing, but after all the convos I’ve had this week I finally realized I’m in the right to be pissed/sad about it.

I had to cancel GDC plans this year along with many other game devs. It’s surreal that the US just isn’t safe enough anymore.

Hyun Sook and I have officially canceled our 4 month trip to the US.

We have planned this trip for years, I was about to announce events across the country, and Hyun Sook resigned from the job she loved and held for a decade so she'd be available.

But the US is no longer a safe place to travel.

Yesss :(

Yes, me. I had flight tickets, hotel and pass all lined up and decided to cancel last week due to the possibility of being turned around at the border for being trans. Which according to a recent memo can be considered fraud.

Are you able to link to the warning? I'm curious to see it.

To me, "tuning" describes the tweaking of numbers and other design dials to create the desired game dynamics. And it feels like fully 50% of my job as a game designer. It just feels so critical. I've had prototypes where the system itself appeared to be a failure but the issue was actually tuning.

Even before patch it was only those first couple of tutorial missions that had autofail/back to checkpoint.

Maybe the title is clickbait but I think Leap Year, Vampire Survivors, etc. are far from "about rectangles".

IMO it's far from clear that scaling up leads to better games, if anything just the opposite. SokPop, Punkcake, and the Minit crew are the model for indies to follow; real, *special* games.

a good game can turn into a great game if it sucks a little bit in an interesting way

Break a leg!