A video about copying, sort of
How two devs make the same game without knowing
Tiny Brutalism, twice
Two games, one name
Placeholders. Released late Sept, Unity
What happened
Timeline
AUG 17
First commit, 1:32am
AUG 21
Last commit of the vertical slice
AUG 23–30
Brackeys Game Jam (a different game)
SEPT
Post-jam work, then a new project
LATE SEPT
Placeholders' Tiny Brutalism goes up on itch
Repo: ~/tiny-brutalism, 7 commits. Brackeys Game Jam 2026.2: itch.io/jam/brackeys-16
To be clear
No cross-
pollination
- I'd never heard of Placeholders
- They'd never heard of me
- I told maybe two people, at a show
The pitch
Tiny Glade, but brutalism.
How I pitched mine
“Goal: pretty looking post-modernism Tiny Glade — darker, colder geometric monumental version of Tiny Glade.”
How the idea showed up
Following a process
Research cozy + wholesomea couple of days
Cozy Cloudsgap found, couldn't crack it
Still want a wholesome gameso look at Tiny Glade
Tiny Brutalismand I already love brutalism
Cozy Clouds
Is there a market? Look at Tiny Glade
~$12M
Est. gross, lifetime *
GameDiscoverCo (Oct 2024). * Third-party estimate from SteamData.AI, gross revenue, not what the devs kept.
Is there an audience for brutalism?
Yeah, it looks like it
3
Oscars for “The Brutalist”, 2025
1.5M
Members in r/EvilBuildings, where brutalism often tops the list
Last and First Men (2020). My favourite brutalist-adjacent movie
It's visual, so it posts anywhere. The soundtrack writes itself. It's already a complete look.
Archinect (Mar 2025). The Conversation, “Brutalism: Oscar-nominated film has revived interest…”. Berlinale on Last and First Men.
Brutalism as an art style
Already defined. Nothing to invent.
Control
Control
Raw concrete, big shapes, fog, hard light.
People already know what it looks like.
Film and game stills shown as commentary. Control (Remedy).
And people were already trying it inside Tiny Glade
Players want this
r/TinyGlade: “Brutalist/Cyberpunk Mashup”
YouTube: “Tiny Glade — Soviet Panel Building”
Reddit and YouTube posts, shown as commentary.
Why the style works over Tiny Glade
Detail vs. light
- Gothic, fairy-tale
- Detail everywhere
- Fidelity is the product
- Big shapes, rough surfaces, mass
- Lighting, dark, contrast
- My assumption. Placeholders' game confirms it.
Steam: everyone checks the market now
20,282
Games released on Steam in 2025
Same data, same gaps, same conclusions.
Chris Zukowski's tally via GamesRadar (Jan 2026); howtomarketagame.com
And the shell is fast now
5 days, 7 commits
Aug 17Initial Tiny Brutalism vertical slice
Aug 17Stroke-drawn terrain, building gizmos, sandbox assets
Aug 18Parametric meshes replace CSG buildings
Aug 19Stairs and placed lights
Aug 20Windows tool
Aug 21Gizmo fixes, live remesh
My repo history. The Placeholders itch page also lists “AI Assisted, Code”.
Put it together
Same inputs, same output
Same market data
+
Same reference game
+
Same tools
=
Same game
It would be weirder if it didn't happen.
This isn't new
Calculus
Newton and Leibniz, independently
Natural selection
Darwin and Wallace, presented together in 1858
Oxygen
Scheele, Priestley and Lavoisier, 1770s
Discoveries become “virtually inevitable when prerequisite kinds of knowledge and tools accumulate”Robert K. Merton, on “multiples”
Merton, “Singletons and Multiples in Scientific Discovery” (1961). Wikipedia: List of multiple discoveries
Why it happens
Four ingredients, shared by everyone
| Ingredient | In science | For Tiny Brutalism |
|---|
| Shared knowledge | The next step becomes visible to everyone at once | Tiny Glade's results are public. So is the Steam data |
| Shared tools | New instruments, new methods | Godot, Unity, and AI for the first working version |
| Shared problem | A question everyone is circling | “Where's the next cozy builder?” |
| Lots of people looking | Many labs, same field | ~20,000 Steam releases a year, plus everyone who never ships |
148independent, near-simultaneous discoveries listed by Ogburn and Thomas in 1922, mostly within the same decade
Merton: multiples are the dominant pattern, not the exception. A “singleton” is the odd one.
Ogburn and Thomas, “Are Inventions Inevitable?” (1922). Merton (1961). Kauffman's “adjacent possible”, as applied by Steven Johnson.
Same thing, in games and movies
Independent twins
Games
- Probability 0 (2010) and Downwell (2015): procedural descend-the-well platformers. Neither dev knew the other's game
- Scoundrel (2011) and Donsol (2015): near-identical card-dungeon games. Both creators said they'd never seen Scoundrel
- Overland and The Last Seed: isometric, turn-based road-trip survival
Movies
- Dante's Peak and Volcano (1997)
- Deep Impact and Armageddon (1998)
- The Prestige and The Illusionist (2006)
Studios call them “twin films”. Some are coincidence, some are a race to release first.
Offworld via Game Developer (2015). Medium interview with droqen and moppin. Wikipedia: Twin films. BBC, “The strange phenomenon of ‘twin films’”.
Even Minecraft
Copy of a copy
Dwarf Fortressthe original base-builder idea
RubyDungNotch's first attempt
Infiniminer“the game I wanted to do”
Minecraftcredited Infiniminer publicly
Notch, “The origins of Minecraft” and “Credits due” (2009). PC Gamer, “The Making of Minecraft”.
Needle in a Haystack
A week before it blew up, I joked with a friend at a show that it was a game that should exist.
Kotaku, GamesRadar, Dexerto. LinkedIn post by Kirill Oreshkin (Polden Publishing), Sept 29. Original: Studio Bitdot (Nas Nakarus).
Two different things
| Coincidence | Clone |
|---|
| What happens | Two people reach the same idea without knowing | Someone sees it and copies it, fast |
| Example | Tiny Brutalism, twice | The Needle in a Haystack lookalikes |
| My take | That's just how ideas work | Fair to be annoyed |
Fair is fair
What Placeholders did better
Placeholders
- An 8×8 plot
- Photo mode
- Really good lighting
Me
- Stairs
- Trying to replicate Tiny Glade exactly
- Details that didn't matter yet
I started too big.
What shipping gets you
A feedback loop
Players, within days:
“Please make the plot bigger.”
Placeholders, about a day later:
Resizable plots, shipped.
Comments on placeholders.itch.io/tiny-brutalism. Paraphrased.
The part I haven't figured out
Share early, or not?
The worry
- Someone makes a slick tech demo of it
- You lose the momentum
- Unless you have a Steam page
The other side
- Tiny Glade shared WIP for ages: 257K wishlists in 3 months, no paid marketing
- Needle's dev shared, got 50M views and also got cloned
What I'm doing
- In-person shows
- Steam page, finally approved
Ana Opara's thread on Tiny Glade's wishlists (Mar 2023). Dexerto and Kotaku on Needle.
Ideas vs. execution
Ideas are worth nothing unless executed. They are just a multiplier.Derek Sivers, 2005
Brilliant idea, no execution: $20. Same idea, great execution: $20M.
sive.rs/multiply
What I'm taking from this
Four things
- The process works. It picked a project that did well.
- Execution is my weak spot. I iterate better with another person.
- Start smaller. A plot, a camera, good lighting.
- Show people sooner, even if it's only in person.
Sources
Games
placeholders.itch.io/tiny-brutalism
Needle: kotaku.com, gamesradar.com, dexerto.com
Brackeys Game Jam 2026.2: itch.io/jam/brackeys-16
Tiny Glade
newsletter.gamediscover.co (616K sold)
steamdata.ai/en-US/game/2198150
Ana Opara's wishlist thread (pingthread.com)
Market + brutalism
GamesRadar on Steam 2025 releases
howtomarketagame.com (Zukowski)
Archinect and The Conversation on The Brutalist
Berlinale: Last and First Men
Multiples + Minecraft
Merton (1961), stafforini.com
Ogburn and Thomas (1922), “Are Inventions Inevitable?”
Wikipedia: List of multiple discoveries
Notch: “The origins of Minecraft”, “Credits due”
zachtronics.com/infiniminer
Games and movies, in a vacuum
Game Developer: “The confusing difference between a clone and a coincidence”
Game Developer: “When 2 indie devs come up with very similar concepts”
Medium: Probability 0 / Downwell interview
Wikipedia: Twin films. BBC: “The strange phenomenon of ‘twin films’”
Ideas vs. execution
sive.rs/multiply
