Top all-time · #5169
Tom Francis
Personal blog · pentadact.comgameswriting
Tom Francis's personal blog at pentadact.com covers games and writing. Since 2012, 15 different Hacker News readers have linked it 17 times, most often “15 years of indie dev in 4 bits of advice”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-01-08, and you can follow it by feed.
Too few sampled comments (3) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
HN readers link Tom Francis's pentadact.com for game design writing, such as a post on consistent, "honest" systems illustrated with Spelunky, and for a hosted search-history page.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 3 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Most-linked posts?
- 15 years of indie dev in 4 bits of advice3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2026-01-08
- Dad and the Egg Controller2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2018-12-18
- A Woman’s Life in Search Queries (2006)2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2014-03-31
What Hacker News says?
Let's see. Often when I find something interesting on HN or Reddit I might see if the author writes other interesting posts and subscribe to their blog on Feedly. I currently have a few hundred sources that I subscribe to so it might be a bit hard for me to choose which "blogs" I'd promote. But there are some: - https://blog.codinghorror.com/ - http://www.pentadact.com/ - http://procworld.blogspot.no/ - https://movi…
Comment linking /
on “Ask HN: What programming blogs do you follow?”Submitted Dad and the Egg Controller as a story · 253 points
HN discussionOn the game side of things, also check out Spelunky. A lot of effort has gone into making interactions consistent and universal, so really interesting stuff can happen and it's not difficult to figure out why it happened.[0] Spelunky was a big motivator for me to think more about building what I think of as these kind of "honest" systems, for lack of a better word. [0]: https://www.pentadact.com/2012-07-13-shopstorm…
Comment linking /2012-07-13-shopstorm-a-spelunky-story/
on “The Design is the Implementation”Submitted How to explain your game to an asshole as a story · 180 points
HN discussionHosted search history: http://www.pentadact.com/711391.htm
Comment linking /711391.htm
on “A Woman’s Life in Search Queries (2006)”Submitted Dad and the Egg Controller (2018) as a story · 110 points
HN discussionSubmitted A Woman’s Life in Search Queries (2006) as a story · 5 points
HN discussionSubmitted Gunpoint (indy game) successful - author quits day job as a story · 5 points
HN discussionSubmitted 15 years of indie dev in 4 bits of advice as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted Gridcannon: A Single Player Game with Regular Playing Cards (2019) as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted 15 Years of Indie Dev in 4 Bits of Advice as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted 15 Years of Indie Dev in 4 Bits of Advice as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted Unity's Trap as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted Five Problems with Chess as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted Video Tutorial: Make a Game with No Experience as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted A woman's life in search queries (2006) as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted Making Gunpoint’s Save System as a story · 1 points
HN discussion
