David Stark

@Zarkonnen
632 Followers
496 Following
1.2K Posts
I make games about bad things happening to tiny simulated people. He/him.
Websitehttps://www.zarkonnen.com/
Airships: Conquer the Skieshttp://www.zarkonnen.com/airships
Swiss Game Hubhttps://www.swissgamehub.com/
More Gameshttps://zarkonnen.itch.io/
Slightly more serious prototype.
Very seriously working on the narrative design of Biomechanoid Repair Shop.

If only there had been a super-popular series of children's books where the central villain was motivated by an abject fear of death to usher in an era of fascism.

Wouldn't that have been really enlightening for our present situation? Oh well.

Rather than the same old boring internet pranks, I thought I'd build something more fun this April Fools.

CSS or BS. Can you tell your CSS properties names from BS?

https://www.keithcirkel.co.uk/css-or-bs

CSS or BS?

Think you know CSS? Real property or made-up nonsense? 20 rounds. No mercy.

Our upcoming #gamedev / biz conference in Zurich is looking for speakers:

We’re opening submissions for talks, panels and workshops on Oct 8 – 9, 2026!

Two tracks:
Dev Day (design, programming, art, production)
Business Day (publishing, funding, marketing)

=> https://forms.gle/MzDPmabXNF6Hduzt6

Gamespace Conference 2026 — Call for Content

8th & 9th October - Swiss Game Hub, Zurich Welcome! We're so glad you're here. The Gamespace Conference brings together game developers, publishers, producers, and industry professionals for two days of learning, connecting, and shaping the future of games and we'd love for you to help make it happen. We're looking for speakers and facilitators for our two dedicated tracks: Business Day: focused on the industry side of games: publishing, funding, marketing, partnerships, legal, and everything that keeps teams & studios running. Dev Day: dedicated to the craft: game design, programming, art, audio, production, and the tools and processes behind great games. What we're looking for Talks & Panels: Share your expertise, spark a conversation, or bring a group of voices together around a topic that matters to the games industry right now. If you have topics for a panel and missing a few suitable partners, submit anyways and let's see if we can help putting something together. Workshops: Lead a session where attendees walk away with new skills, fresh ideas, or practical tools they can use right away. Everything from optimization to esoteric engine work goes We welcome submissions from all experience levels, whether you're a seasoned speaker or stepping on stage for the first time, we'd love to hear from you. A few things to know Submission Deadline: 29th May 2026 23:49 CEST Sessions run 30 / 60 / 90 / 120 minutes (please indicate your preference) All submissions are reviewed by our program committee We'll be in touch with all applicants by the end of June Got questions before submitting? Reach out at [email protected].

Google Docs
I made a small game called "The Pelican" over the last few days. It's interactive fiction about hiding in a 19th century harbor town, waiting for a ship to arrive. It's more of an existential mood piece than a game you can progress in or win. => https://zarkonnen.itch.io/the-pelican

the idea that the web ecosystem isn't "open" anymore because of complexity is ridiculous. anyone can still write basic html and javascript and get a site working. you don't have to use flexbox. you could just use nested tables. nobody gives a shit

the web ecosystem isn't open anymore because 5 planet spanning companies richer than god monopolize it now and you can't fix that by buying into the AI slop those very companies are peddling

https://www.techdirt.com/2026/03/25/ai-might-be-our-best-shot-at-taking-back-the-open-web/

AI Might Be Our Best Shot At Taking Back The Open Web

I remember, pretty clearly, my excitement over the early World Wide Web. I had been on the internet for a year or two at that point, mostly using IRC, Usenet, and Gopher (along with email, naturall…

Techdirt
Opinion: If your fictional aliens aren't at least as weird as Earth insects, they're not weird enough => https://zarkonnen.com/xenobiology
If you think about the project as the people, then it becomes rather obvious that drive-by automatically generated patches don't actually contribute to the project. They are just so much noise. The people who generated and submitted them are not part of the project and usually don't intend to become part of the project. They didn't consult the other project members about their patches and they won't answer questions about them. They are like ephemeral ghosts, an illusion of contribution.
Just remembered my all-time favourite bug, where Android accidentally rendered the name of the "Grunt" tool on its webpage as "Dorkq" https://github.com/gruntjs/gruntjs.com/issues/81
Home page shows the project title as "dorkq" on some Android devices · Issue #81 · gruntjs/gruntjs.com

See here: http://www.browserstack.com/screenshots/2308d26f99f0b5915b53829c4ae5f9567b2d84be I haven't tried to figure out why. @practicum noticed that the letters are all 3 off and lowercase. G-3=d,...

GitHub