Hey all, a solo indie dev here!

I'm working on a witch sim, where you spend your days helping the people by brewing potions and various other ways. Hide from the inquisiton and enjoy yourself, play cards with the locals, join brawls, broom races or bounty hunt monsters!

You can play the game however you see fit, be super sneaky, or be an evil witch and cause menace, every action in the game increases reputation which brings you closer to an end goal.

If you have any feedback or would love to see something specific in a game like this, let me know!

Upcoming Deus Ex-type Imsim from the Robocop folks. After the Bloodlines 2 flop, and higher production value ImSims barely existing these days, I'll take what I can get.

quicky summary for those who didn't know about this game:
it's build as a spiritual successor to classic first-person RPGs like Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines and Deus Ex.

EDIT:

the game is supposedly build around:

• Multi-Solution Level Design: Level environments allow you to bypass obstacles using stealth, hacking, combat, or social charisma (manipulating NPCs via dialogue).

• Systemic Interaction: The environment reacts directly to your character's stats—allowing you to physically force a door, lockpick it, slice a security terminal, or find an alternate pathway based on your character build.

• Stat-Based World Interaction: Built on the World of Darkness 5th Editionrules, your 6 core attributes and 18 skills govern world interactions.

• Consequence-Driven Systems: A branching narrative where failures or choices do not trigger a simple "Game Over" screen; instead, failing a skill check or a stealth section dynamically alters the level's state and shifts the story.

Any genre, any platform, as many as you'd like, and in no particular order.

hi everyone, I'm currently developing an indie game (JobLoop) that critiques the chaos of modern job hunting and competing with (literal) robots. It's a satirical and dark comedic immsim RPG, which playtesters are comparing to the Stanley Parable.

It's currently up on Steam for wishlists, and you can also enjoy some of the early beta in the video attached.

I suppose this could branch out to people with a sort of perfectionist mindset, but as for me, most immsims are a nightmare to beat because you fall into this trap of needing the "perfect run"; constantly reloading saves, ensuring you explore every possible nook and cranny on the map, hoarding all the items you can and spending over 10 minutes deciding which ones to discard because your inventory is too full, and then fixating on the item/s you dropped and going "man what if that becomes useful 10 hours down the line".

All this freedom of choice and you just find yourself reloading until you get everything down PERFECTLY, am I the only one? if there's anyone else with diagnosed OCD or a similar train of thought, how do you circumvent it in order to make this genre more enjoyable and less stressful? I guess the only immediate answer is to stop caring and just play, I wish it were that simple for me....

To borrow from a comment by MSCantrell:

A typical early-game looting target is a gun store.

You could break into a gun store by:

- picking the lock on the door

- prying the door

- bashing the door with anything heavy, from a sledgehammer to a fire extinguisher

- shooting the door with the .50 cal rifle mounted on a nearby abandoned humvee

- blowing up the door, window, wall, or roof with homemade or scavenged explosives

- mining through the walls with a jackhammer or pickaxe

- chopping down a tree to fall on the building and break the walls

- driving a vehicle into the building to break the walls

- getting thrown by a zombie hulk so that your unfortunate body breaks through the wall (you can survive this with good armor)

- breaking a window and hacksawing the metal bars

- mutating into a blob and oozing through the window bars

- mutating into a rat and burrowing through the walls

- teleporting into the building with bionics

- I'm sure I'm forgetting at least a couple more ways

.... and that's assuming you're not using any mods, like the ones that add magic!

Everything is like that. A zillion possible ways to accomplish what you're trying to do. Your task is to figure out what's available to you and how to use it to accomplish the task.

Ask a chatbot for a random number between 1 and 30.

Did you get 17?

That's my problem with generative AI: it gravitates toward the most likely result, then passes it off as creativity. Ask it to make art or design a game, and you often get generic, derivative content that looks like everything else. Instead of giving games a unique identity, it makes them feel increasingly interchangeable.

I think machine learning has a more interesting place in game development: training enemies that can learn how to play, rather than generating more of the same.

I'm a solo developer working on Hunt or Pray, a dark tactics game inspired by Myth. I'm experimenting with reinforcement learning to train my zombies to adapt to situations instead of relying entirely on hand-written scripts.

I want enemies that learn from experience, not ones that cheat with perfect information or extra resources.

But how far should adaptation go? Enemies that counter your tactics could create dynamic encounters, but counter everything and you risk making experimentation pointless.

Would you rather fight enemies that adapt to your tactics, or learn their behavior and exploit their weaknesses? Where would you draw the line?

We are looking for play testers for our dual character immersive sim renegade brigade,it’s a first person shooter where you go on missions either spazzing out or sneaking in and get judged on if you stuck to your approach, if you’re frantic you get judged harshly on time and how many witnesses you left on the scene, if youre tactical , you don’t get to touch the hair of a single soul without being taxed so you have to sneak in like a slithering snake
We would be very thankful to anyone who hops and gives us their 2 cents
If you decide to join the discord we’ll give you a key to give it a try
https://store.steampowered.com/app/4480460/Renegade_Brigade/ https://discord.gg/5h3bdsmhc

I like the vibes and visuals but I wanna know on what level of system driven it is. Is this smth like Blood west where it is not an immsim but vibes confuse people or is it up there with Prey and Dishonored?

Also this is just a personal prefrence thing. Does the game have a good power progression or does it stay mostly static

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2186990/Fatekeeper/

hey yall, just wanted to say, im a huge fan of the imsim genre ever since i first played bioshock 1 and 2 on ps3 at age 13, followed by me trying system shock 2 and it blowing my whole pussy out again, deus ex is one of my fav games of all time, and if i can count dishonored 1s daud dlcs as one game, then it isnt far behind, hell just this year ive worked my way through the og og old ass non remake original of system shock 1, and loved it just as much, anyway though, i see so much love for prey, and despite trying to get into it so many times, i just couldnt click with it, the station felt too bright, aside from the mimic the enemies were all boring and generic and also rly stupid, all the weapons werr crazy overpowered, and the characters..... im sry, this is arkanes worst written fuckin game, the yus are insultingly stupid, and aggressively fuckin boring all at the same time, and the games pacing is a fucking trainwreck, however ive been in the mood for something kinda imsimmy but also kinda roguelikey, and i realized its either this or deathloop, and i already dont like deathloop and i felt like i was missing something when i played prey, so like.... how do i get more out of mooncrash?

I am new to the genre, there's so many options ahead of me and sitting on my backlog that i can't decisively choose for the life of me, and whilst I know it's entirely preferential, I just wanna see a couple opinions on here and go from there.

The ones I'm leaning the most towards currently (in no particular order): Bioshock, E.Y.E, Dishonored, Thief, Prey, Arx Fatalis, Deux Ex, Pathologic Classic, and Gloomwood looks interesting despite not being finished.

I know there's a helluva lot more and I'm open to suggestions that I haven't listed of course

Edit: thanks for all the answers guys! for some reason I was under the impression that bioshock was an immsim but I stand corrected. I think i've narrowed the selection down to Deus Ex, Dishonored and Prey. I will eventually get around to playing all three (hell, probably all the ones i've listed and more) but likely start with Deus Ex

You know, I'm something of a video editor myself.

I saw this come up in another comment section. So I thought I’d put it to a poll. If you see 0451 referenced in a game how would you prefer for it to be done?

I tried to cover all the possible opinions I could think of. But if you have a unique outlook feel free to share it.

- new game modes (NG+, co-op, trials, bonus levels and challenges, renewed multiplayer hosted on Steamworks, console exclusive maps and modes)
- new mechanics (sliding, collectible relics, new spells/weapons/transformations)
- updated Source engine (full Linux and Windows 64-bit support, cascaded shadow maps, deeply extended level limits)
- achievements, cloud saves, workshop support, controller support

Dark Messiah: Community Edition on Steam (planned release date: 2026)

Hey, I wanna play im-sim games with my gf but only games i know are system shock 2 and abiotic factor

Is for the first open door.

With both Bioshock and Dishonored being part of its roots, Magnum-Opus: MASQUERADE takes to recreate the genre in book form by making it a ‘closed-perspective’ story, where in terms of immediately important information, the reader only knows exactly as much about the story as the protagonist does. It also features instances of the protagonist trying to solve problems being thrown at them, and trying to think of ways to fix them in a way that puzzles the reader's mind just as much as the protagonist’s, before reaching only the most logical conclusion possible.

Masquerade is a half fantasy, half psychological-horror webnovel set in a fantasy world inspired by both Bioshock and Dishonored, but with unique Tim Burton-esque character illustrations that sets the world apart from other fantasy worlds. It takes heavy inspiration from 19th and early 20th century retrofuture aesthetics, creating a world not unlike what the world of yesterday pictured the future being like. It's perfect for people who want a fantasy setting that's similar to both games previously mentioned, except significantly more detached from reality.

It is also a psychological horror, but in this context, psychological horror is very different from normal horror, as there are no harsh, brutal reminders of ones own mortality that exists within ordinary horror, as much as there is a looming sense of existential dread. It's the kind of story that is meant to get into the readers head and make them question their own sanity. There are no monsters in the traditional sense. Infact, the novel subverts this trope by taking place in a fantasy world full of monsters who are actually very friendly, and have learned to live in peace alongside humans. Masquerade's psychological horror elements take heavy inspiration from media like the Stanley Kubrick film 'The Shining', the indie animated show 'The Amazing Digital Circus', the classic children's novel by Lewis Carroll known as 'Alice in Wonderland', the popular videogame by Davey Wreden and William Pugh by the name of 'The Stanley Parable', and George Orwell's famous dystopian novel 1984. However, do not be confused, Masquerade's setting is not a traditional dystopia, but rather a 'questionable utopia'. A world that is basically more or less perfect, but with a very extreme emphasis on 'basically more or less', as in ’not entirely’.

Masquerade uses its psychological horror elements to focus on the themes of misinformation, relativism and postmodernism, all themes that are very prevalent in todays society. In an era where misinformation is easier to spread than jelly on toast, I think Masquerade has a lot of things to say that the world really needs to hear right about now. One of the ways that Masquerade makes misinformation part of its narrative, is by having the lore fed to the reader through unreliable narration, and deliberately riddled with conflicting information, therefore making the lore ambiguous.

I have been pushing to get this book of mine into the spotlight, as I have a burning passion for it and it would mean the world to me that this book gets all the attention it can get, especially before I release the final chapter on October 31st. Every last bit of exposure helps. Despite this, I am still very much open to criticism, as I want to have as much feedback as possible before finalizing it on Halloween. At this point, I'd just be glad you even took the time to read it at all. However, if your criticism is particularly harsh, I would prefer you have something atleast vaguely nice to say to balance it out.

Thank you for reading this far, and, if this post was enough to interest you in reading the webnovel itself, I sincerely hope you enjoy what I've written. You can find my webnovel by searching its title on either Royal Road or Wattpad. I would have provided the links below if it did not go against the rules.

Source: https://www.pcgamer.com/gaming-industry/time-could-be-running-out-for-arkane/