Retronation Games is born (or...what took you so long??)
Hi.
If’n you didn’t know, I come from the videogame industry. I’ve been producing games since 1999, and I’ve been lucky enough, and blessed enough, to work on a ton of great products with some amazing humans over the years.
These days while in the middle of the job crunch we are all in, but I still love gaming. And, well... I love games.
That’s a big part of why I started RetroNation back in 2016 as a side hustle. It gave me an excuse to stay surrounded by this stuff, hunt down weird Japanese hardware and games, and share some of the things I love with other people who are just as obsessed with them as I am.
And now I’m spinning off a little satellite of RetroNation called RetroNation Games.
The idea is pretty simple:
Make small, fun games that are usually retro in style, execution, or spirit.
Not giant AAA projects. Not games that take eight years and 400 people to make.
Just games I want to play.
How I'm Making Them
Right now I’m building in Godot, with Claude and Astra helping me with the coding.
Anyone who knows me knows my strengths are much more in producing, audio, design, systems and figuring out how all the pieces of a game should fit together. Coding has never been something I was great at and at this level, i'd get nothing done, so I use those models to help me build what I design.
The same goes for art.
Some of the art is made by humans and some of it is made with AI. I’m one person. If I can get a favor from one of the talented people I know, awesome. If I can afford to pay somebody to make something, I will. If neither of those is possible and I need a piece of art to finish the game, I’m going to use the tools available to me.
Thankfully, places like itch.io also exist and have some incredibly talented artists making assets that indie developers can license and build with.
I still however am working in the editor for 10+ hours a day working on layouts, maps, mechanics, audio, balancing, pacing and all the other fun little headaches...erm I mean things that go into making a game actually work and be fun.
So... The Games
I have three games actively in development right now, with another four currently in various stages of design.
The plan is for the first one to hopefully hit Steam by the end of 2026, with the other two following sometime after that.
CUbear
The first game is CUbear.
It’s a little block game inspired by the kinds of games I grew up playing, including some I spent a good amount of time playing on my original Xbox dev kit back when I was at Majesco.
But CUbear has become very much its own thing.
It has its own world, its own characters, more than 140 levels, power-ups, collectible cards and a lot more going on than I originally planned when I started. Not feature creep, just things I felt would make it cooler.
Kyouran Storm
Next is Kyouran Storm, a top-down SHMUP.
It has 10 levels, three classes of ships, huge screen-filling bosses and its own exclusive soundtrack.
This one comes directly from my love of Japanese shooters and arcade games, this so far is coming out well but I have a LOT more work to do. I'll post videos of the progress on it.
F.O.B.
And then there’s F.O.B.
I’m not going to say much about this one yet.
It is easily the oddest game of the group.
More on that soon.
What's Next?
Right now I’m hoping to have CUbear on Steam by the end of 2026.
Steam is the focus. I’m not looking at other platforms at the moment.
I may also make it available directly here through a RetroNation Arcade section I’m planning for the website.
For now, I just wanted to finally announce that RetroNation Games is real, and I'm excited and scared at the same time.
So keep an eye on RetroNation, Steam and the retronationgames website as I start showing more of what I’ve been working on.
Thanks for being a RetroNation Gamer.
