Riga, Latvia
Hobnail Games is one person — Mark Barkan — working in Riga. No engine licence, no publisher, no roadmap stretching past what I can actually build. A game ships when it is finished, and then you can click once and play it.
A hobnail is the short, thick-headed nail that holds a work boot's sole together. Nothing clever, nothing thematic — just the part that does the holding. It seemed like the right thing to name a workshop after.
1 out · playable now
Roguelite deckbuilder · plays in your browser
Sky pirates sign articles they can never pay off. You pick a captain, take a lane through three acts, and find out how far a deck built out of debt will carry you. Every run is new; the ledger never clears.
Nothing is listed here before you can play it. When something is in progress, it goes in the devlog instead — with what broke that week.
Design, code, art direction, sound, server. That sets the size of what I can promise, so I try not to promise past it.
No live service, no daily obligation, nothing that needs you back tomorrow to keep working. A run takes an evening; the game is finished when you stop.
Everything here runs in a browser — no store page, no download, no account before you have decided whether you like it.
Every other week, what actually happened: the measurement that proved me wrong, the bug that looked like a broken game, the thing I shipped and had to take back. Written by hand, signed, and ending in a question.
Read the devlog