itch.io

Chain 3 started development in the summer of 2025, and has around 100 contributors so far. Plans were to release early this year, but the new structure requires more polish and coordination than last time. We expect it won't be ready until at least mid 2026. Thanks for your interest!

ill be seeing you

I've discovered a limitation when using the --if-changed flag with butler. When pushing a directory (not an archive file), the flag only detects modifications to existing files, but fails to detect newly added files.

For example, in our project workflow:

1. We push a directory to itch.io using butler push /path/to/dir username/game:channel --if-changed
2. Later, we add new files to the directory without changing any existing files
3. When we run the same command again, butler reports no changes and skips the upload

This creates problems for us because new content isn't being uploaded despite the directory having genuinely changed.

Is this the intended behavior? If so, are there any recommended approaches for detecting all changes, including new files, without having to force a full upload every time?

We've implemented a workaround by calculating a directory hash ourselves that includes file paths, sizes, and modification times, but it would be helpful to know if there's a built-in solution we're missing.

Because of the launcher's nested file structure, some filepaths can get too long for the OS to handle. It's only been a showstopper on windows so far.

If anyone else has this kind of issue, I would recommend trying to unzip and play closer to your root dir.

Looks like its back up. My butler updates from yesterday have all appeared.

Builds are uploading via butler, but not entering processing. Butler status reports their channel doesn't exist either.

Loved the behind the scenes. What a thoughtful inclusion.

fantástico

I still think about this one.

https://iwilliams.itch.io/ is a web wizard.!You can enable custom CSS for your games by reaching out to itch, there's documentation on the site for that.

Should be fixed I think. Updated a while back with a fresh build.

merry him mas

We have not discussed next year but finishing Madvent (in its current form) lets us get creative about new collab formats and possibly make our return to hosted game jams (which have fallen by the wayside). It's been getting harder to organize/ship Madvent year over year given the changing composition of the community and of course our personal lives resuming post-pandemic. 

I am happy to close curtains on this iteration of Madvent and hope everyone can share my excitement in discovering new directions for our holiday tradition next year. The community is still driven to make and release stuff and where there's a will there's a way.

Hey if you downloaded the game more than 10 minutes before this message, you got your hands on a special limited-edition release where everything is broken. >:} 

Maybe grab a new copy (v16+) if you want to play the games. Rest assured though, v16 has similar special features like game-crashing bugs, half finished builds, and outdated credits. You might want to check back in later for patches.

If you're not using the itch client, I highly recommend it. We will patch in the final cutscene/credits and a special game for the 24th later on in December and there's no need to download the whole kit again.  The client makes updates  super easy and it's not a creepazoid DRM system like steam or epic.

It's a mixed bag for performance, tbh. Some of these use unreal engine, some unity, some godot, some gamemaker. I have a midrange system from 2013 and got through it all fine. My system chugged on the two most intensive games. I'd consider trying it out at 720p to smooth out the highest end.

Unity for web can be spotty. The windows build should be easier to run.

I think these are a fair critiques and they pick up on tensions that have always been in play with these large collaborative projects. - I'd say generally what you point out as negatives are areas where developer comfort and interest have been prioritized over the player's experience. This is not an accident, but an intentional decision, although the consequence is this opens us up for obvious critique when the player experience is lacking.

In the end, these collabs are a bit more like game jams than full projects with strong directions, and that's intentional. I think it's a good sign these projects are at the point they are judged with high expectations, rather than treated as oddities. It shows that the collabs ARE getting more cohesive and compelling, although there's always room to improve. In the end, I think Chain2 was structurally and thematically more successful than Chain1 as a whole. I'm excited to see how we can improve the next collab using what we learned here.

We are listening and reading everything. All player feedback, good and bad, goes into consideration the next time around.

I wish we had controller support! I think the 2021 launcher had that. Since many of the demos inside rarely have controller support, we decided to not go with it.

Extracting to the C: or root directory of one of your drives is the best advice I have :(

For anyone else with GOB problems, you might have better luck with this separately distributed version https://gamma-girl.itch.io/gob

Nope! Forever stalking the cold dead mall is your final reward.

(We ran out of time to do anything fancy)

Sorry you had trouble! The .dll should be included. It might be easier to download, install, and run through itch's official download manager.  https://itch.io/app

Keep walking down or up the looping dark stairwell >:}

my chains are rattling in excitement!

I can finally stop using skypaint! 

Likely a parallels issue. The launcher asks the operating system to do the launch. To get directly to the games, go the game folder, _data folder, then the streaming assets folder. There you will see all the individual games. You can launch directly from their exe files.

Some games have controller support but the launcher is only M+KB this year. No plans to upgrade the 2022 launcher but next year may have that.

There's a button in the pause menu you can hold for a few seconds to reset the hub world.

Another fix is taking the .zip to your C:// directory and unzipping there. Windows has a character limit on path names which means the error likely comes from unzipping too deep in a directory.

For now I can recommend swapping to the itch download client. 

Do you know anything about the too-long file names? Like where they could be in the file structure?

I'll add in the next major patch. 

Smaller patches arent getting big announcements, at this point its minor bug fixes for games. 

Fun, difficult to pick up but fair. I liked how my capacity grew with time.

You launcher progress will be unaffected

No and if something breaks that's a bug! Let us know. 

https://pastebin.com/rBpBRCyp in lieu of spoiler tags heres the sequence from where you are, until the next big section.

Unfortunately, those kinds of details vary from demo to demo and are outside the control of the launcher. 

If you make a list of what's wrong with particular demos I can hand that off to the respective developers, but this kind of stuff is dependent on their setup. 

We are using jam submission required fields to handle some data entry requirements from contributors. (This is an amazing feature!)

It seems that line breaks in the field descriptions are not rendered in the submission portal. (Images below) For clarity's sake these linebreaks would be tremendously helpful.

Would this be a trivial thing to fix?

Creating descriptions for form fields (top)  How those descriptions are rendered on submission page (bottom)

Really interesting mechanic! I wish I could pan the camera as I quickly hit a case where the cube terminates off-screen and I can't see. Is that intentional?