- Get Your Geek On - 25% off - 29 June 2026
On Saturday I took Positron in to the heart of Huddersfield and again participated in Get Your Geek On, a comic-con style festival event that takes over the town centre for the day, with activities, cosplaying, market stalls, games, and more for geeks and families to enjoy.Together with a few other local indie devs, and some representation from the local university, we demoed our games at The Warehouse on Zetland Street throughout the day. There were table-top arcade machines available too for free-play, which proved quite popular. I had a triple set up again which has become common for my event presence. Laptop on the table, another laptop hooked up to one of the venue's large screens, and a Steam Deck. I had three people playing simultaneously for most of the day, which is always good, but is very tiring. Spending most of the day talking to people, making sure people don't hog the gam…
- 25% off for the Yorkshire Games Festival - 16 February 2026
I'm always proud to promote game development within my local community and local area, and was asked if I'd like to have Positron take part in a showcase at the Yorkshire Games Festival which is happening right now. The week long event combines educational aspects, games showcases, and exhibitions from people and companies working in the games industry, with a particular focus on the local region (Yorkshire, England).The festival has a showcase featuring dozens of locally made games running on Steam Deck, with a custom launcher. To celebrate being part of this showcase I've discounted the game 25%, so grab a deal while you can!
- Apologies for the delay - 10 February 2026
Last week I was ready to give up on Positron, and Retroburn.Late last year I separated from my Wife after 18 years together and 16 years of marriage. Shortly after, having spent a month sleeping on the sofa, I got an offer to take out a £5000 loan, which was exactly what I needed to be able to move out, get my own place, buy furniture, appliances, and get settled, all while supporting my Wife during the transition too. We applied for divorce, and things were feeling good, my kids helped me move and came over a few times to eat and play boardgames.I barely had any time to work Positron, but I had a rough roadmap of what I wanted to achieve in the coming year. Positron has sold 197 copies on Steam Early Access, and just broke £1000 at Christmas, which meant I could pay Chris and Eduardo £100 each (their first 10% cut) for their contributions (music, and 3d models)!My day job at Rebellion…
- 2026 Roadmap - 2 January 2026
Hello Positron fans! Looking back on 2025, we had some good times with Positron, but due to some personal issues I've not had much time to work on the game for the past month or two. I'm hoping to get back in to a routine of working on the game in the evenings and have big plans for 2026! I had wanted to try and push out the Arena (Deathmatch) mode, but it needs some tweaks and performance optimisation before I do that, so hopefully will be coming in the next few weeks. Here's a list of things I'm working on, with some big changes coming to the game in the coming months:Arena Mode: Deathmatch style gameplay vs AI to start with. Destroy the enemy bikes with your trail. Instant respawn on death, in a 3 minute match. Get the most kills to win the match. Arena also introduces the boost mechanic, which consumes your trail as you boost, so strategic use of boost is key to trapping your oppone…
- Completely remastered game soundtrack - 5 December 2025
I've just pushed a hefty update to the game which replaces the old original soundtrack with an entirely new re-arranged and remastered soundtrack from our original composer!Here's a glimpse of the updated title track and one of the in-game tracks. I've also changed how the game selects a track to play, opting to always play the title track (Positron) on the main menu, and transitioning to a 'random' track when entering gameplay. This keeps the menu and launch of the game consistent (something I had always intended to do):Back in the XNA days, it was common to see people offering their artistic services in exchange for a profit share of eventual sales. I signed up Chris Walker on such a deal, and he created the music for Positron, many years ago! Of course, the XNA version never got released, and the Steam version here was in limbo for a long time, but now the game is out, people are pla…
- MCM Comic Con Birmingham / EGX - 2 December 2025
Thank You to each and every person that played the game over our three days at MCM in Birmingham this weekend! Thank you to the people I chatted with, those that took a flyer, those that wishlisted the game, and especially those that actually bought a copy too! I'm just about recovered from the super busy weekend we had away in Birmingham for MCM / EGX demoing Positron there with a few dozen other Game Republic members. It was a great weekend amongst friends, all helping each other out and seeing really positive responses to our games from those that played them.I was lucky enough to be able to fit a Steam Deck on my stand, giving me two playable stations (I usually demo with three)! I had a steady stream of players sat playing the game, with both devices being used simultaneously throughout most of the three days we were demoing.We did have some crashes on the first day, which turned o…
- We're heading to MCM / EGX Birmingham - 24 November 2025
This weekend we will be attending MCM / EGX Birmingham with whole slew of other fellow game devs from Game Republic, bringing the best of Yorkshire made Indie Games to one of the biggest expos of the year. We will have professionally printed backing-boards up behind our stand, so look out for us:I've also had some flyers printed up which we'll be handing out to people around the show to try and pull some of that Comic Con crowd towards the EGX / Game Republic area!We're looking forward to showing the game, and will likely have a couple of Steam Decks on hand for additional players too as we know our game can get pretty busy with it grabbing people's attention from far away :-). We will be there at the NEC Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, so if you're about, pop along and say hello.
- One Year of Early Access - 21 November 2025
One year ago today I released my spare-time game Positron to Steam Early Access! To celebrate, it's currently discounted 33% until December.I've sold 176 copies of the game, about half of those sales in the first month after hitting Early Access. I've added the new Snake game mode (to compliment Maze) and whole bunch of levels. I added full reflections in the walls reflecting the world, bikes, trails, and particle effects (old school stencil reflections, my renderer is super basic tbh). I've optimised for lower end machines and it runs great on Steam Deck.Driving traffic to the Steam store page has been hard. Using what limited time I find on weekends occasionally to work on the game, to keep updates coming and keep engagement.I have two contributors who signed up to work on the XNA version of this game, 14 years ago. Both to receive 10% share of anything the game makes. The caveat is t…
- Reviews, and Awards - 22 October 2025
ReviewsThis is a personal appeal to all owners of the game to please leave a review! Reviews are important for small games such as Positron as a higher number of reviews results in more visibility throughout Steam. To date, Positron has sold 174 copies here on Steam. That's not bad, for the price I've placed the game at (as I believe the game is worth the price, and will be worth more when it is feature complete). It's not exactly enough to sustain development however. Most of those copies were sold during sale periods, and after taxes and Steam's cut, we've made almost £1000. I've spent far more than that just attending events around the UK demoing the game to the public in recent months. I'm lucky that this is a side project for me, and I guess most would call it a 'passion project', but it'd still be nice to make the game commercially viable, to allow me to make further games after t…
- Steam Deck Compatibility - 15 October 2025
If you're looking for a great game to play on your Steam Deck, then we have one right here with Positron!We're looking in to getting official verified status at the moment, but rest assured the game runs great on Steam Deck.The current live build is a Windows x64 D3D11 build, which runs great on our own LCD Steam Decks. Full 60fps on device or hooked up to TV. Weve also had someone test the OLED model too which hits 90 just fine. The game has primarily been tested using controller, so all inputs on the Steam Deck can be used for turning the bike. We will be looking in to using Steam Input for mapping the back paddle buttons and allowing remapping, but I believe this may already be possible anyway.
- 0.1.7 - New Trails - 15 October 2025
The update I have just pushed to Steam is primarily so that I can submit Positron for Steam Deck Verified. All that was required for this was for the starting screen to say 'Press A to start'. Hopefully, it gets a verified pass. I may need to do a full sweep over all screens with interaction to add A/B prompts though. As for performance on Steam Deck, I had a friend try it on his OLED a few days ago and it runs at a solid 90fps on the largest of levels. I've tested mine thoroughly (LCD) on device, and on TV, with no issues whatsoever. There are a couple of very minor changes to this build also. I'm part way through optimising and tweaking how the trails render. They now have a new texture which has a few contrast bars top and bottom to add abit more detail. I'm also working on making the trails lean on the corners to follow the lean of the bike. Visually this should look much nicer than…
- RED - 10 October 2025
Last night I pushed an update to Steam which brings with it a few changes I've been meaning to push live for a while. The most fundamental change is that the spacing between walls in QUICK and TOUGH levels is now slightly reduced. This means you can complete those levels quicker than was previously possible, so recommend players having a bash at the early levels again if you want to try and get some top ten scores on the leaderboards!Reflections have been greatly improved and optimised further, so you now see reflections much deeper than before, and particle effects including the explosions and spirals can now be seen in the reflections too.A number of render optimisations have been made which are included in the latest build, to ensure performance remains stable while rendering a lot of extra geometry for the many reflection passes.Snake levels now have a minimum target set of 15. If y…
- Play Expo Blackpool - 5 October 2025
Thank You to everyone that came and played the game at Play Expo Blackpool, and special thanks to all those that wishlisted, and the twelve people (so far) that bought a copy too!We have been demoing this little game here in Blackpool for over ten years, and this year is our first time demoing here since the game was released to Early Access!We've had a great weekend away. Laura, Myself, and our five kids were all in attendance wearing our new Positron shirts. We'll definitely be back next year, but also have a bunch of other demo events lined up for the coming months too!
- 33% off all week! - 29 September 2025
Get 33% off Positron all week, as part of the Steam Autumn Sale. We have a number of public demo events coming up over the coming weeks and months, and we are pushing ahead with getting our next content update pushed to Early Access too, so what better time to grab a copy of the game, and let us know what you think as we continue on towards our 'full release'.
- Huddersfield Get Your Geek On - 22 June 2025
We were proud to be representing Huddersfield's game developers this weekend, demoing our game as part of Huddersfield BID's Get Your Geek On. The event is a town-centre comic-con style takeover, with a range of activities for people to take part in. The gaming zone was hosted in The Warehouse, where myself and a few other indie devs set up our games for people to play. There were also some tabletop arcade games available too.We only live a couple of miles away, and much of the game has been written in the Wetherspoons just round the corner from The Warehouse, so we're always happy to be involved in events like this. This is our second time being involved with Get Your Geek On, and I'm sure we'll be back again next year (demoing the console versions!).We had plenty of people playing the game, lots of interest, and quite a few players were hooked too. As is common though, from our other…
- Big changes coming soon! - 5 April 2025
Hello Positron fans! It's been a while since I released the Snake mode update back in January, and I've been busy working on the next content update. Along the way, I've redesigned some systems and started making a lot of sweeping changes to how the game is structured. Due to these large changes, the next update has been delayed a little, but I'm getting closer to having a good solid build that we're happy with, and I hope this next update improves the game in a number of ways. If people don't know, I work in the games industry full time. I most recently worked on the iPhone, iPad, and Mac port of Sniper Elite 4. I also have five kids, and try to make the most of my morning and evening time with them. Outside of this, in my 'spare time' is when I sometimes get time to work on Positron. It's slow progress, usually only getting a few hours per week to work on the game, but the deeper I ge…
- 0.1.5: Crash Fix - 8 March 2025
We've been busy working on a substantial update which brings a lot to the game and we hope to get that live in the coming weeks. While testing last night we found the root cause of a crash that has been reported at the end of a level. It was caused by a change of font, which hasn't been exported with non-ASCII characters. If the leaderboard at the end of level showed a player's name that contained such a character, there's a chance the game would crash. As a temporary fix I've added detection for unsupported characters, and it will just skip rendering them. I'll look to re-export the fonts to fix it properly in a future update, but for now the crash should be averted. Today we're heading to Wakefield to demo the game for the weekend at WX Games Weekend, then we're back on to finishing Arena mode, with local splitscreen multiplayer, and the new progression system :)
- 0.2 - Arena Mode Incoming - 3 February 2025
February already?! We've been quiet through January, since we pushed our Snake mode live. We've been discussing changes to the game with people that are playing it, and looking at how we're going to shape the game going forwards. It has been difficult to keep motivation levels high when the game has effectively stopped selling. We've sold three copies so far in 2025, after selling about one hundred in 2024 (many of those came shortly after we released to Early Access). I have big plans for the game though, and I want to work on progression, engagement, and providing a variety of content and gameplay to engage new players but also keep existing players coming back. While I would like to keep pushing out smaller regular updates, it quickly became apparent that the introduction of Arena mode adds a lot to the game, and I wanted to get it right before pushing live. Along with the introducti…
- 0.1.4: Happy New Snake?! - 2 January 2025
Happy New Year everyone! 2025 promises to be a big year for Retroburn and Positron, and we're kicking it off with our first major update of the year. I had time over the Christmas break to work on tweaking Snake mode, fixing game flow issues and improving the feel of the game, and I'm happy to say that Snake mode is now available to play. As with the current Maze mode, all levels are unlocked by default and can be loaded via the main menu. Ultimately I am planning on putting in a progression system where you must complete the previous level to unlock the next. For Snake, this will likely mean hitting a pre-defined number of orbs (growing your trail to a particular length) which will then unlock the next level. Ultimately though, the leaderboards in Snake are based on the number of orbs collected, where you can compete with other players to see who can get the highest score. My next prio…
- 0.1.3: Menu and Flow improvements - 4 December 2024
Reworked menus: - Added menu intro scene, with menu overlayed on trail. - Fixed background blend, making menus easier to read. - Added navigation sounds. - Moved some sounds to menu entry and selection changes. Bug Fixes: - Fixed random seeding on startup, resulting in randomised levels/walls again. - Fixed pause menu unfreezing time. Leaderboards: - Started making some changes to allow the display of top 3 target scores while in-level. Known Issues: - Minimizing the game, or losing focus, can result in menu with time unfrozen.
