Indie Fest 🎮, UE5 Frozen Waterfall ❄️, Steam NSFW Friction 🚫, Unity URP 💡
đź“° Industry Watch: Indie Showcase & Platform Policy
Indie Fan Fest: New Online Showcase Debuts September 24, 2025
A new online showcase dedicated to indie games is arriving soon. Indie Fan Fest will debut on September 24, 2025, with further details available via the official source. If you follow indie reveals and spotlights, mark your calendar and hit the link for updates.
Steam Reportedly Blocks Adult Games from Early Access
Steam is reportedly rejecting Early Access submissions for adult-themed games, with Heavy Hearts’ dev sharing a denial citing “mature themes.” The move, arriving without a clear policy update, adds to mounting hurdles from itch.io de-indexing and payment processor pressure. Developers report shrinking revenue and discoverability, alongside deplatforming risks. While some say it might curb unfinished releases, most fear tighter censorship—and a push toward new, adult-friendly platforms.
🛠️ Unreal Engine Spotlight: Ice Tools & VFX Workflows
UE5 Frozen Waterfall 2.0: Faster, Smarter, Fully Native Ice Generation
Akram Kasravi Fard’s Frozen Waterfall 2.0 brings big upgrades to UE5 ice creation—no Houdini or plugins needed. Built entirely on Geometry Scripting, it adds realistic surface drips, procedural snow buildup, and smart pathfinding for uneven props, plus revamped shimmering ice materials. Performance and workflow are significantly improved. The final release is coming to Fab soon; the original tool already handles everything from giant ice sheets to delicate icicles on any mesh.
Lumen, Nanite, Niagara: Crafting Cronos’ Combat and Atmosphere
Go behind the scenes of Cronos: The New Dawn as Bloober Team details its UE5 toolkit. Lumen sets the dread-soaked tone, Nanite powers intricate environments, and Niagara fuels visceral encounters. The video shows how UE5 elevates survival horror pacing, readability, and mood—building on the studio’s prior Unreal experience. Check the linked interview for deeper production and pipeline insights.
🎨 DCC & Rendering: Blender Pivot + Unity URP Lighting
Maya-Style Pivot Power Comes to Blender with Pixie Pivot
Pixie Pivot brings Maya/3ds Max-style pivot control to Blender, letting you set custom pivot points, align gizmos to edges or face normals, and change object origins without swapping selections. It supports up to three alignment points, plus snapping to mesh centers and bounding boxes. With customizable hotkeys, colors, and defaults—and a clear in-view HUD—it streamlines precise transforms for faster, cleaner game asset workflows.
Make URP Yours: New Custom Lighting Sample in Unity 6.3
Unity 6.3 adds a Custom Lighting sample for Shader Graph, letting you reshape URP’s lighting for unique visuals or cheaper frames. Learn to build lit shaders without fog, alter SSAO and decal application, and craft stylized looks. You also get new template browser entries and a robust subgraph library to speed up lighting workflows. The video walks through why it matters, how it works, and how to import the samples.
🎮 Dev Diaries: Tactics in Unity & Lessons from EA
Behind the Scenes: How Tactical Breach Wizards Is Built in Unity
Tom Francis opens the Unity project for Tactical Breach Wizards to show the tools and structure behind the tactics hit. See how ScriptableObjects and a custom Stage List Inspector enable fast iteration, reordering, and balancing. He shares naming and organization strategies, contrasts raw Scene View with polished Game View, and demos flexible art workflows like tile set swapping. It wraps with an in-game level editor and practical recommendations for building your own tools.
Building EA: Crashes, Consoles, Madden—and Lessons for Modern Studios
EA co-founder Bing Gordon recounts how a “software artists” vision, emotional marketing, and bold console pivots fueled EA’s rise—from cash crunches to the Madden breakthrough and an IPO in 1989. He unpacks sports licensing, reverse-engineering for Genesis, and overcoming retailer resistance. Now a VC, Gordon shares his “Stanley Cup” team model, how he evaluates founders, and why mission and storytelling win. He closes on games as meaning engines beyond entertainment.