Unreal Engine 6 has finally been properly unveiled! Previously it was just a teaser but now it's a full blown announcement, and with that comes a bunch more details, along with a very controversial decision.

They defined a very clear direction, they want Unreal to become much more like a Roblox-style ecosystem.

The big idea is to merge traditional Unreal Engine with UEFN (Unreal Engine for Fornite), so developers can build powerful Unreal games but also publish into connected ecosystems like Fortnite. That means more focus on interoperability, creator economies, shared assets, and games that can live inside larger platforms instead of only being standalone releases.

They are also pushing AI much harder, with the goal of making game creation faster and cheaper. On this the vocal response has been very negative which is always a very interesting dichotomy. On the internet it seems people hate AI, but on the GDC Surveys there is quite a lot of AI usage, so they're clearly doing what folks in the AAA industry are looking for regardless of vocal public perception.

The most surprising and controversial detail of all is Epic announcing plans to eventually deprecate Blueprints! I'm not an Unreal dev but I know Blueprints are massive and its's how tons of games are made so this was very shocking to me. People have always complained about the complexity of C++ (despite being very powerful) and Blueprints was the main way lots of people were able to use Unreal.

Their hope is that developers embrace their simpler scripting language Verse instead of Blueprints which can have a lot of benefits, especially on larger games where Blueprints can become a tangled unperformant mess. But still a lot of people are not happy to see their favorite tool being deprecated. Although Epic also notes how "deprecated" does not mean removed, just not getting updates and eventually being phased out, but you can still use Blueprints for a few more years it seems.

So overall, UE6 sounds less like "UE5 but prettier" and more like a major philosophical shift. Unreal wants to become a platform, not just an engine. More Roblox, more Fortnite, more AI, more creator economy. Whether that is exciting or terrifying probably depends on what kind of developer you are.

The world of indie game development is fascinating, most games make nothing but some games come out of nowhere, suddenly go insanely viral and make millions upon millions of dollars!

MECCHA CHAMELEON is the latest indie hit, it's already sold over 5 million copies in just 10 days!

It is a multiplayer hide-and-seek game with a VERY CLEVER mechanic. Players hide and paint themselves to blend into the environment! Basically like Prop Hunt mixed with a drawing/camouflage mechanic, super cool idea!

This is definitely one of those games that sells itself just based on idea (plus great execution). It is simple enough to understand in one sentence and funny enough to create great clips for streamers. That is exactly the kind of design that works incredibly well in the current era, where players want cheap, chaotic, easy-to-share games they can play with friends.

This is another great example of the power of great ideas, and why I advise you to prototype a dozen different ideas before you really commit to something. The difference in success between a generic idea and a genuinely interesting idea is MASSIVE. Marketing becomes much easier and the potential sales ceiling goes through the roof.

This is also another great example of something else that I say, make small games. This one was made by just 2 developers in just 2 months! Imagine you start working on a game idea today, and in late August you have a mega hit, it's crazy how that's what happened here!

The Unity Asset Store Summer Sale is live! As always this is one of the biggest sales of the year with thousands of the BEST assets on sale. As usual it will be 50% off the top assets, and up to 90% OFF for some Daily Deals!

My own Code Monkey Toolkit is 50% OFF on this sale! It’s got over 50 Tools to help you make games BETTER and FASTER!

Check out everything on sale HERE!

Synty is back on HumbleBundle! Another great one with thousands of awesome Low Poly assets at 95% OFF!

Characters, Environments, Animations, UI, VFX, all in their signature style.

Get it HERE!

It's that time of the year again, Steam Next Fest is live! There's over 4400 game demos for you to play!

As usual the first 2 days are pretty chaotic, but by now the charts have stabilized and you can easily find tons of awesome upcoming games.

At the top of the chart we have IRON NEST: Heavy Turret Simulator which is a very hands-on game where you're inside a giant war machine, people are loving the scale and the simulation.

BOMBANANA! is a great friendslop game where you and 2 friends play as 3 monkey, one blind, one deaf, one mute. And you need to work together to defuse a bomb! Clever idea!

Dust Front RTS is an old-school strategy game that I'm surprised to see it's finding so much success. Usually classic RTS is a niche genre but this one has almost 2000 Overwhelmingly Positive reviews!

EMPULSE is a wall-running fast paced 6v6, ReStory: Chill Electronics Repair is a chill game with a very tactile feel, and Over the Hill finally has a demo! I've been seeing gifs of this one for ages, it's finally getting close.

Go browse all the demos in the festival and I'm sure you'll find your next favorite game!

I am amazed whenever I see how many tiny pieces are involved in making a mechanical watch work, so many springs put in such a complex specific configuration to make it all work.

Here is a website that explains it step by step. It has nice visualizations on each step, the shape of the main spring which stores mechanical energy, then combined with several gears it can demultiply the movement, with a fork it can start going tik-tok, and on and on.

It's a fascinating website with interactive visualizations, really cool if you ever wondered how a watch works!