The H.A.M - Hangry Animals Magazine - Page 2
Indie Game Wins We Should Be Celebrating
Hey Hangry Fam, Ever sit back and think: “Wait — indie games are actually crushing it this year?” Because we’ve been watching, playing, wish listing… and yes: the numbers don’t lie. Small teams, big dreams, huge results. And it’s fuelling our excitement for Nom Nom Express even more. It’s the kind of motivation we need sometimes as a small indie team, building for impact, boot strapped, you know the deal. Here are five indie titles we love that are absolutely crushing it in 2025, and why they...
Are Streamers the New Brand Ambassadors?
About ten years ago, something quietly shifted in children’s entertainment. A new type of “celebrity” appeared - not on Saturday morning TV, but on Twitch. By the mid-2010s, platforms like Twitch and later YouTube Gaming turned gaming from a private pastime into a shared spectacle. Events like Twitch Plays Pokémon (2014) drew millions of curious viewers, many of them, kids discovering live streaming for the first time. It didn’t take long before watching someone else play became as common, and...
Where Adventure Meets Job Sim: Nom Nom Express
Hey Hangry Fam, Some weeks, we’re elbows deep in code and physics, testing how high we can stack jelly without it sliding off into chaos. Other weeks, we’re thinking about the bigger picture — what kind of game Nom Nom Express is shaping up to be, and why it matters. This week, it’s a mix of both.
Adventure + Job Sim = A New Recipe
Adventure games are having a moment. In fact, in 2024 they were the most popular genre by sales on PC, taking 17.1% of total revenue, beating out Shooters, RPGs...
Brand is everything - Hangry Animals
Greetings folks, after a good bit of R&R over the summer, we're back at it with concepts, further development and pitching our buts off to make Hangry a reality beyond ideas. First off, we appreciate everyone sharing the adventure with us and supporting what we're sharing on socials... we have pockets of busy weeks and dry spells as we focus on the actual doing! So it really does help when folks enjoy, comment, like and further share our content. Community is key, and that's something we're d...
Curiosity at Work
As a husband-and-wife team, people sometimes ask us how we switch off from work. The truth? We don’t. Because for us, creativity isn’t a hat you take off at the end of the day. It’s everywhere. It’s in the wallpaper of a restaurant, a funny one-liner by a supporting character, the background art of an animated TV series or, my weakness - the new seasonal stationery that somehow always ends up in our basket.
The Bagelry - Nelson St, Liverpool
And we wouldn’t change it. Because this is what fuels...
Respect the Craft
Hi Hangry’s, This week, we’re tackling a topic that hits close to home for many small studios like ours: intellectual property theft, the ethics of game development in open platforms, building in public, and the ripple effects these actions have on indie creators building with care, creativity and a growing community.
The Case of Peak vs. Cliff – and Why It Matters
One of 2025’s surprise indie hits, Peak, a chaotic, co-op climbing adventure by the brilliant folks at Aggro Crab, has found itself...
Gaming in Small Doses
By Ceri – R&D project lead at Hangry Animals If you're new here: I’m one-half of Hangry Animals, and we’re on a mission to make games that help real animals. But before we build them, we’re doing our homework. We’re deep in R&D, asking big questions like:
- How can games teach kindness?
- What makes kids want to help others while they play?
- Can 30 minutes of gaming a day actually be good for young people?
Turns out – yes. In fact, the benefits of short, age-appropriate play sessions are more interes...
Games that Give
Let’s be honest, if you’d told me ten years ago that in-game skins and Twitch streams would end up saving lives, I’d have raised an eyebrow. Possibly two. But here we are in 2025... and the gaming industry has become one of the biggest unsung heroes in the charity space. Not just raising funds, but actually reshaping how we give. And I don’t mean sticking a donation button on a loading screen and calling it a day. We’re talking about bundles that support mental health, races that raise millions...
Back to the (Drawing Board) Future...
This week’s update is all about fun and making sure we've captured it in our game. After a few months of testing, playing and layering in features, powerups, projectiles, enemy waves, first-person food fights and more… we took a deep breath, stepped back, and asked: “Is this still fun to play?” The answer was… not quite. So we’ve done what every good dev team should do now and again... ripped it apart, put the wagon wheels down, and gone back to the drawing board to focus on the fun factor fo...
Hangry Animals - Game Development Update #13
Hey Hangry Fam, hope all is well out there in human land? A warm and Hangry welcome to all our new subscribers! It's great to have you on board, following the adventure whilst we build out this project, mostly with you by our sides. Just how we like it! So settle in, we've got some hangryness to share. Our H.A.M (Hangry Animals Magazine) newsletter covers a series of topics weekly, from project development (The visual stuff), game development (The codey stuff), partnerships (Ways to accelerat...