John Ayliff (Space Goblin)

373 Followers
372 Following
611 Posts

Text game developer, best known for the text-based game Seedship and its successor, Beyond the Chiron Gate. Now working on a pulp sci-fi adventure narrated by the villain!

More active on Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/spacegoblingames.com

Header+avatar by Tom Morley

#GameDev #IndieDev #Twine #InteractiveFiction #GameWriting #NarrativeDesign

Websitehttps://www.spacegoblingames.com/
My gameshttps://spacegoblingames.itch.io/
Bloghttps://write.as/johnayliff/
Pronounshe/him
I too am a ridiculous space nerd who also likes the opera, but I don't think I have ever been this well dressed.

Space Goblin goes to the opera!

Nell of Lamp Post Projects (lamppostprojects.com) painted this for me as thanks for playtesting their Fantasy Opera games. One doesn't wear a space helmet to the opera, so he's wearing an opera coat with a star pattern.

Hit a project milestone today! There's now a single path where I can play through the game without encountering any placeholder text. Now I just need to write the rest of it.

https://write.as/johnayliff/foolish-earth-creatures-march-2026

Foolish Earth Creatures: March 2026

Big milestone this month: the game now has one path where I can play all the way from start to finish without encountering any placehold...

Space Goblin Diaries
Solo: Illya, are you free?

Canadians, please consider signing this petition to have Endometriosis and Adenomyosis officially recognized as disabilities.

https://www.ourcommons.ca/petitions/en/Petition/Details?Petition=e-6929

Petition e-6929 - Petitions

One more day to get the "No ICE in Minnesota" bundle!

$10 for a ton of games including mine and also gems like "Baba Is You" and "Extreme Meatpunks Forever"

https://itch.io/b/3484/no-ice-in-minnesota

No ICE in Minnesota by jesthehuman and 651 others

No ICE in Minnesota: 1439 items for $10.00

itch.io
I've been thinking lately about game design lessons I've learned from putting achievements in Beyond the Chiron Gate, and I wrote up a little retrospective dev diary: https://write.as/johnayliff/achievements-in-beyond-the-chiron-gate-a-mini-design-retrospective
Achievements in Beyond the Chiron Gate: a mini design retrospective

I've been thinking about the design lessons I've learned from Beyond the Chiron Gate now that it's been out for a few years, and I though...

Space Goblin Diaries

The Dan Dare kickstarter is live!

As a fan of the original Dan Dare this looks like a really exciting modern take on the story.

And as a fan of, like, comic books about spaceships, this just looks gorgeous.

Very excited to back this!

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/798979572/dan-dare-graphic-novel/

After days of being blocked I'm making progress again, and have finally reached The End!

(Technically a spoiler I guess, but how else was this game going to end?)

New dev diary in which I talk about how endings are hard to write: https://write.as/johnayliff/foolish-earth-creatures-february-2026
Foolish Earth Creatures: February 2026

Progress has been slower this month, in part because I'm now working on the ending of the game, and endings are hard. Endings are espec...

Space Goblin Diaries