We live inside a dream
Joel Auterson
Hello! My name's Joel and I'm a software developer. No, not that one.
I run a tiny indie game studio called Bearwaves. I'm also a published poet.
I'm part of the Rare Mammals collective, and am an alumnus of Southbank New Poets and Barbican Young Poets. I work in the games industry.
Hi, welcome to my website.
Latest blog posts
·
The games of 2025
I do this every year and I need to stop writing “hope next year is better for the industry!” because it just never is. I still hope, though.
·
Things I learned making a game engine
I’ve spent the last few years building my own game engine from scratch. Here are some of the things I learned.
·
My favourite command-line tools
A friend got a MacBook recently and was asking for recommendations. I found myself wishing I had a list of all my default-installed command-line tools, so that’s what this is.
All blog posts / subscribe via RSS
Some things I’ve made
- Feud – Bearwaves’ first game, a free-to-play strategy board game for mobile and PC
- Unremember – My first poetry book, published in 2017 by Bad Betty Press
- A LAKE IN AMERICA – A game-poem made in collaboration with Antosh Wojcik
- Growl – A lightweight game development framework, written in modern C++
- eos4j – An Epic Online Services SDK wrapper for Java
Recent
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A good big stomp along the Ridgeway today
Note
To quantify “nothing”: DWG has been downloaded around 3,500 times on iOS. On Android it’s more like 400. Most of our sales are in the UK, where Android is fairly common vs the US. The reverse of our last game in several ways!
Note
Been quite fun watching Dave’s Word Game fluctuate up and down the charts on the App Store. Think our peak is 83, but it goes right down to not even being in the top 200. App Store’s discovery algorithm is opaque but good to us. Play Store gives us nothing
Note
Social media adds constant wear and tear to my brain and soul but it’s also the only way I can find out about indie games given few of the websites have the staff to cover them these days. I love blogs, if you have a blog with an RSS feed send me it!
Note
Got promoted to Staff Software Engineer at the day job and found out someone else is making a game in my game engine so that’s a lovely start to my year professionally
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Not much of a view from the top of Binnian but still gorgeous to be out in the Mournes on the first day of the year
Post
·
The games of 2025
I do this every year and I need to stop writing “hope next year is better for the industry!” because it just never is. I still hope, though.
Photo
This evening I encountered a Christingle for the first time. How the English conquered the world I will never understand. Have a lovely Christmas friends, it’s hard out here but I love you and I’m glad to know you.
Photo
This dog keeps alternating between loudly snoring and yelling while walking around
