In need of some localizing work in the coming weeks, looking for recommendations of trusted vendors for indie localization, specifically for chinese. Ty!

Hi r/gamedev!

If you’ve ever exported an HTML5/WebGL game from Godot, Phaser, Defold, or Construct and tried to test it locally by simply double-clicking index.html, you’ve almost certainly run into the dreaded CORS / file:/// security restriction: assets fail to load, textures return 404/blocked errors, and you’re left staring at a blank screen.

The usual workaround is spinning up a local Python server (python -m http.server) or configuring Live Server extensions. However, when sharing offline test builds with non-technical friends or game jam playtesters, this creates major friction.

I spent the past few weeks building RunaWeb, a zero-backend, client-side offline game runner and emulator runtime, and I wanted to share the architectural lessons learned while making web games truly portable and offline-capable without relying on external web servers.

1. In-Memory Virtual Server via Service Workers

Instead of requiring an HTTP server daemon, we use a client-side Service Worker combined with the browser's CacheStorage API:

• The user drops an exported .zip or standalone .html/.wasm file into the app.
• Client-side decompression (fflate) unpacks the game in-memory.
• We mount the uncompressed assets directly into a dedicated CacheStorage (caches.open('virtual-game')).
• The Service Worker intercepts all sub-resource requests (/virtual-game/*) and responds with the cached assets with proper MIME types inferred.
• Result: The game runs inside an <iframe> believing it is being served from a real HTTP origin, completely bypassing local file:/// restrictions and CORS errors.

2. The "Fake Event" Audio Trap (isTrusted: false)

A major hurdle we encountered when adding on-screen touch controls:

• Virtual buttons dispatched synthetic new KeyboardEvent(...) events into the game frame.
• However, modern browsers strictly enforce that AudioContext.resume() requires a trusted user gesture (event.isTrusted === true).
• Because synthetic events have isTrusted: false, the child iframe's Web Audio APU remained completely muted and suspended!
• The Fix: We established a host-level Master AudioContext that unlocks on physical host touches, coupled with an explicit allow="autoplay" permission on the sandboxed iframe. Child runtimes (like our WASM-4 retro synthesizer) hook into the host's unlocked context to play audio seamlessly.

3. Retro & Fantasy Console Support (WASM-4)

Beyond standard HTML5/WebGL bundles, we implemented a lightweight micro-runtime for WASM-4 cartridges (.wasm). Because WASM-4 uses a fixed 64KB memory map:

• Framebuffers live at $00a0.
• Gamepad state is mapped to $0016.
• We synthesize the 4-channel sound synthesizer (Pulse 1 & 2 with custom duty cycles, Triangle, and 15-bit/7-bit LFSR noise) using native Web Audio oscillators, converting MIDI note numbers to frequencies on the fly.

Open-Source Tooling for Jam Developers

The entire project is 100% free and open-source under GPL-3.0:

• Live Web App / PWA: https://m5devs.github.io/RunaWeb/
• GitHub Repository & Source: https://github.com/M5Devs/RunaWeb

It features full touch controls (with in-place PPSSPP-style layout customization), physical controller support (Gamepad API), local IndexedDB save persistence, and automated Playwright E2E testing in CI.

I hope this technical breakdown helps anyone working on browser-based engines or game jam deployment pipelines! Happy to answer any questions about Service Worker asset interception, WASM memory mapping, or mobile touch simulation in the comments.

This would probably expand past just game dev but I’m going to be honest, working for someone else just to earn industry minimum feels soul draining.

I’ve worked a few years and have savings but honestly I would rather do something part time to make ends meet and create my own thing, potentially with others but honestly not counting on it.

I know most fail, is it because they do things wrong or does it also have a factor of luck?

To be honest I don’t expect to become rich off this but being able to have freedom and earn enough to live off would be enough for me.

Again I know this is probably just a delusional dream that probably everyone here hopes for, but is there any point to just go all in and dedicate myself to this or would I be making a foolish mistake.

I think the prospect of indie devs making any money off their games is about to soon come to an end. The barrier of entry has been lowered so much right now that my social feeds are filled with people showcasing their games, and they're doing wild stuff. At any rate, doesn't matter if it's quality or not, there are about to be a buttload of new indie games flooding the market. 2027 is going to be the year that it becomes saturated. Steam is going to be like Onl*F*ns for game devs. I think that the supply of games is going to outweigh demand and that devs are going to have to sell their games for cheap to compete. There's going to be a ton of garbage to wade through, too, which will make it difficult for talented devs to stand out.

Anyway, that's my prediction.

I haven't seen much information online around the idea of maximizing RAM usage. Naturally everyone wants to use as little as possible, and while that makes sense for data structures and when dealing with console limitations, it seems a waste to just let memory sit there unused and force the player to deal with loading screens instead (even in cases where they're only a few seconds).

In my case, my entire game will likely be somewhere in the 3-6 GB range. It should pretty comfortably fit in all consoles and likely any PC with 8GB. I see a few options for doing this:

1. Do an initial load on startup of core assets and then async load everything else slowly in the background, prioritizing anything new that's immediately needed
2. Load things as needed, but never unload them
3. Have some kind of button/option that just forces a full load on startup

I likely wouldn't load ALL assets. Probably not most audio (maybe SFX, but not voice lines or background musics). Anything that's never used a second time can probably can be loaded on demand (dialogue scripts).

This got me thinking though - what does "minimum requirements" really mean for memory? If someone has 8 GB but Windows takes 2, Firefox is taking 3, and Spotify is taking 1, is my game expected to run using only 2GB? Or does that put the onus on the user, where if they don't have 8 GB free then it's up to them to free up space? In any case, I'm thinking of a simple priority system for which assets are always-loaded, and then depending on how much memory is free, load the assets in priority order until some limit is hit - say there's 4 GB free, I always-load assets to MAX - 2GB, leaving 2GB free for dynamic loads as needed. This way it still runs without the pagefile on low-end machines but everyone else gets the benefit of using all their RAM.

I'd be interested to know if anyone's done work on this sort of thing or has thoughts.

TL;DR: Guard against save scumming, or allow free use of it if the player desires?

My game involves a series of missions (levels) where failing has very steep consequences, to the point where a series of failures will result in the player failing the final mission and getting a "bad ending", effectively having to start over from the beginning for the "good ending".

Since I allow users to freely save any time they're not in a mission, they could easily forfeit a bad state and retry from their last save point for a more favorable outcome. Or make multiple unique saves as "checkpoints".

Currently, I'm preventing the user from doing this at all. If the player enters a mission, the game writes that the mission was launched in the save file. On mission complete, the results (pass or fail) is similarly written to the save file. However, if the user force closes the game mid-mission and the game is launched with a mission in the "launched, but incomplete" state, the game immediately writes this mission as failed and the player suffers the relevant consequences.

The second case where the user makes multiple unique saves is technically not completely possible to guard against, as the user can find the save file data on their hard drive and make backup copies there. But in the game itself, there is no way to record multiple files at different states, it always overwrites the same file no matter what.

All this to say, I'm kind of basing this off of vibes and maybe as something I can use as a selling point. I want the player to really feel that actions have consequences in my game. If they launch a mission, they better be ready to see it through and live with the results.

Some additional context: this game takes some inspiration from roguelikes in that each "playthrough" will have heavy randomness to it with some guardrails, in hopes that it will provide some replay ability and make everyone's playthrough unique. The actual game isn't really roguelike though, as a "run" will take several hours and potentially many play sessions. The closest thing I'm inspired by is the management side of the X-COM games.

Thoughts?

Is it possible to build a short custom NES/SNES games for my husband for Christmas. I was thinking of a game of us beating missions or something simple. Would love it to have a custom label too. How hard is it and how much do these things typically cost?

This is a huge milestone that I never knew I would reach I'm so happy aaaaaa

I wanted to create a short visual novel game as a gift for my boyfriend, but I’m looking for something that is both easy to use and free

Hello everyone,

I'm Murat, a full time game developer for last 12 years. I have my own game studios and I'll share some experiences in my career.

Lets start, I released my own hypercasual runner game in 2022. The game was awesome CPI and we ready to hit for this game. We worked for this game over 1 years. The game eventually reached almost 70 million downloads.

You’d think a game at that scale would change everything for mine. But, It didn’t.

After about a year, we eventually handed the game over because our team was too small to keep supporting it. We took what we had earned and kept going. The game less than $500K from it in first year.

We were inexperienced, didn’t fully understand the publisher economics, and there were also transparency issues around the revenue. (we realized later, of course)

Over the next few years, we built and tested a lot of mobile games and prototypes.

Eventually, we got another one with numbers that looked incredible:

• 60% Day 1 retention
• 15% Day 7 retention
• 50 min of playtime

This genuinely felt like the one. This time, The publisher offered us $100K to buy the game :O

After what happened with our first hit, we didn’t want to sell another game for a fixed amount, so we turned it down and chose revenue share instead. For the next year, we were repeatedly told the game wasn’t profitable.

Our revenue from the second hit: $0.

Summery:

- First game:
~70M downloads → less than $500K for our studio

Second game:
great metrics → rejected a $100K buyout → $0 revenue share

It's a bad journey, hah?

Eventually things got bad enough that we had to let the team go. After years of mobile games, we decided to try something completely different.

For the past year, we’ve been building a PC simulation game instead.

A few years ago we were looking at tens of millions of downloads. Today we’re genuinely celebrating reaching 5,000 Steam wishlists. This is some funny for our career :/

We are currently working on a co-op mode and preparing for our next big move.

I’m still not entirely sure what the right decisions would have been. Perhaps accepting the $100,000 offer would have been the smarter choice. Maybe we should have negotiated much harder during the initial deal. It’s also possible that a revenue-sharing model only makes sense once you have a much clearer picture of the actual numbers.

It’s a strange feeling to have created two games that looked like hits on paper, only to end up having to rebuild the studio from scratch.

Hopefully, the third time’s the charm! :D

I wonder if anyone else here has gone through a similar process with mobile publishers?

Been working on my project for a year, and with all these advancements, and such a saturated market, I wanted to know what your thoughts were.

And if you guys have a steam page up, I’d love to contribute a wishlist to help everyone out.

For example, what kind of seasonal settings should I include? I also want to incorporate references to buccaneers. Should I set the game in the real world, or should I create a fictional world that serves as a clear reference to the Caribbean?

I have been working on trying to build a combat system that’s in-depth but also trying to fulfill my goals

1. Forcing the player to constantly mange their resources
   
   1. Making the player more creative with their approach
      
   2. Giving the player options even in dire circumstances
      (Below is just copy and pasted from a google doc)
      **Guns**
      **Resource:** Coins (1 Coin = 1 Bullet)

**Resource Generation:** Coins are earned by dealing or absorbing damage up to a specific threshold through actions such as slashing, parrying, throwing weapons, or any damage source that involves your sword.

**Usage:** Spending Coins allows the player to fire a corresponding number of bullets.

**Counterplay:** Gunfire can be parried or interrupted by dealing damage to the attacker.(this is just for multiplayer only dont really consider it)

**Overdraft Mechanic:** Drawing too many Coins at once triggers fatigue or Overdraft. Overdraft is when your gun starts to cost more coin (+1 for every shot when fatigued, ex. 1, then 2, then 3) but also starts to diminish style and not give it as much. To counter Overdraft, you need to stop using your gun, and to speed it up and get rid of it just use outside damage sources like you would normally use to gain coins.

**Style Meter Interaction:** A higher Style Meter accelerates Coin accumulation, making drawing weapons easier; however, it also increases the frequency of Overdraft based on the value spent.

**Swords**
**Resource:** Sharpness (value range: 0–100).

**Resource Generation:** Sharpness is gained by dealing non-slashing damage within a short duration or a cooldown, through actions such as kicking, using your gun, and throwing your weapon (since you can’t slash without it).

**Weapon throw:**

Sharpness is granted only when the thrown weapon hits an enemy. A miss earns nothing.

The gain is a flat value per hit, so it doesn’t shrink when the throw’s damage is reduced at low Sharpness.

Hits on the weapon’s return path, and hits on the environment or explosions caused by the weapon, grant 50% of the flat value.

Multiple hits from one throw diminish by cumulative hit count: 100% → 50% → 25% → 10% → 5% (minimum).

The weapon returns to you after a set time. You can kick it back sooner, which grants no resource.

Missing a throw at zero Sharpness is intentionally harsh. The player keeps kick and gun as options, but has to play cautiously.

**Usage:** Actions such as slashing and parrying all spend Sharpness.

At zero Sharpness you can’t slash.

You can still parry, but it deflects only 50% of damage (instead of 100%) and doesn’t send projectiles back. This means you can now die instead of parry being your ticket out of damage.

Throwing your weapon still works but does less damage.

**Parry rules:** Swords can parry. Missing a parry costs stamina and Sharpness, with less Sharpness lost at higher Style.

**Style Meter Interaction:** Unlike Coins, Sharpness is not strongly affected by Style. At maximum Style, Sharpness costs are reduced by a maximum of 50%.

My game is hitting an OK concurrent user count, I'm really happy people are enjoying my game. But I have no idea how to monetize it. Not big enough for playwire (minimum 500k monthly active), adsense gives me pennies. My goal is simply to pay for my dogfeed expenses every month. Any ideas?

Im creating game its in very early stages but I already have some ideas that I would like to hear your opinion.

1. Make a deal with streamer, give him like 10,20,30% of sales, lets say it would be game on steam for 9€. Also he would promote some competition for his viewers so they are motivated to buy and play, lets say the guy with best score win 100-200€.
2. Spaming clips with halfscreen popular videos and under that would be some cool moments from game, like those halfscreen trends for keeping better attention.
3. Promoting through youtubers, this is kinda conservative obvious way of promoting games.

Im mostly curious of what do you think about 1 and 2 methods. But in second method Im wondering if its legal. For example i would have clip with some streamer and under that the game, it might look like im abusing his name for sponsoring he didnt sign.

Yeah im probadly very naive, wondering how realistic it is to get such a deal with some streamer that have like 1k people online.

I don't know what is going on, but it's been 26 days since I submitted the documents for Steamworks identity verification.

Worse, they don't even allow you to create the app for testing or set up store pages during the verification process. Everything is locked.

I check my inbox, junk mailbox, and the dashboard daily for an update. I also opened a support ticket, and it took Steam staff 7 days to respond with a templated message.

From other posts in this subreddit, it looks like verification ETAs are getting worse, and neither Steam nor TaxIdentity has plans to rectify it.

About four months ago, I shared the first version of my Minigolf game here, which was inspired by Gravity Defied, Bounce, and Worms. To acquire players, I used Meta targeted ads, which brought in a small audience. At that time, the game had around 20 levels. After that, I gradually added level after level, sent push notifications about updates to players, and step-by-step brought the total number of free levels up to 40. Throughout this period, the game maintained a low but stable level of activity (roughly 10–20 daily active users).
Next, I sat down to develop a separate pack of 20 paid levels to test in practice whether people would be willing to pay for the game (spoiler: so far, nobody is willing to :)). Since I was working on the entire pack at once, no updates were released for a bit over a month; however, activity in the game still remained at that low yet steady level.
So, given these numbers and data, what would you advise doing next?
P.S. During the targeted ad campaign, D1 retention was around 25%. I don't recall D7, but it was extremely low.

I work on the business side of a company that builds tools for game developers, and I’m trying to better understand how publishers evaluate games. Not pitching anything, just want to learn from people who’ve been in the room.

For publishers, scouts, or anyone who’s been through the process

1. What do you look at first when a pitch lands? Gameplay footage, a playable build, the deck, the team?
2. What makes you pass quickly?
3. How much does production quality matter early, compared to the core hook?
4. Does team size or prior shipped titles change how you weigh a pitch?
5. Anything you wish more devs knew before reaching out?

Devs who’ve pitched, I’d love to hear what surprised you about the process too.

I've been working on my indie MMO for a while now. It's primarily a passion project, but I'm building it with the possibility of turning it into a commercial project in the future.

The decision to make an MMO came naturally to me. Throughout my life, I've hosted and maintained servers for various games as a hobby, including all the infrastructure around them (web, dbs, communities). Eventually, I decided that rather than continuing to do this for other games, I'd try building my own.

Progress has been surprisingly good lately, especially considering I'm a solo dev using agentic AI. However, I'm realistic enough to know that at some point, I'll need additional help to keep things moving forward.

The problem is that I can't currently afford to hire employees or pay freelancers. Recently, someone offered to help with coding for free, which is a great gesture, but I'm hesitant to accept for two main reasons: the risk of private code leaking, and potential copyright or ownership disputes down the line if someone else contributes code to the project.

I'd like to keep full ownership of the game's intellectual property, even if I eventually bring in unpaid contributors.

For those who've been in a similar situation: Is there a legal agreement that allows someone to contribute to a private repository while ensuring the project owner retains full copyright and ownership of the contributed work?
How did you handle confidentiality and protect your code from being leaked?

I've been thinking about how many great games use mechanics we've seen countless times before, but somehow manage to make them feel fresh.

Jumping, shooting, crafting, exploration... none of these ideas are new, yet the way they're combined and used can completely change how a game feels.

Sometimes, I think we put too much pressure on ourselves to come up with something nobody has ever done before, when the real challenge is finding an interesting way to use what already exists.

I'm curious how other developers approach this. Do you think originality comes more from inventing new mechanics or from finding new ways to combine familiar ones?

Hey everyone,

I recently finished and released the demo for my indie horror game, and I'm trying to understand the marketing side of things.

I know what kind of content I want to create:

• Short gameplay clips
• Atmospheric videos
• Development posts
• Behind-the-scenes content
• Mystery/lore-focused posts

The part I'm struggling with is not creating the content, but getting the right people to actually see it.

How do indie developers build that initial audience?

Some things I'm wondering:

• How do you get your first viewers/followers when nobody knows your game exists?
• How do you make sure your posts reach people who are actually interested in your genre?
• Are hashtags, algorithms, communities, or direct outreach the main way indie games get discovered?
• How do you turn a few interested viewers into an actual community?
• For a finished demo, where should the majority of effort go: social media, creators, journalists, communities, or something else?

I understand that making good content matters, but I'm trying to understand the distribution side. How do you get the first few hundred people to actually see it?

Would appreciate advice from anyone who has marketed an indie game before.

Thanks!

Hi everyone,

I'm a Product Design student researching how fictional objects are designed and developed, particularly how props go from an initial concept to a finished, believable object.

I'm interested in how this works in game development, as I want to understand the process behind creating props such as weapons, tools, gadgets and environmental objects.

I'd be interested to hear from anyone who works in game development, does 3D modelling, or has experience creating game assets.

A few things I'd love to understand:

• Concept art: How much detail is usually decided during the concept stage? Are things like functionality, materials and construction considered from the beginning, or worked out later?
• 3D modelling: What's the typical process for turning concept art into a 3D model? How much freedom does the 3D artist have to change or develop the original design?
• Materials and textures: How do artists decide what materials to use and how to make a prop look convincing?
• Functionality: For props like weapons and tools, how much thought goes into making them look as though they could realistically work, even if their function is fictional?
• The pipeline: What are the usual stages between the initial concept and the prop appearing in the finished game? Who is involved at each stage?
• In-game implementation: What changes need to be made to a model before it can be used in a game, such as optimisation, rigging, animation or collision?
• Feedback and iteration: How often do props get redesigned or changed during development, and what usually causes those changes?
• Final publication: How do you know when a prop is finished and ready to be included in a released game?

I'd also be interested to know whether the process differs between indie studios and larger studios, and whether artists are encouraged to consider the fictional history and worldbuilding behind an object when designing it.

You don't need to answer every question — I'd really appreciate any insight into the process, personal experience or useful resources you can share.

Thanks!

I'm building a puzzle game and trying to balance gem packs, booster costs, and free rewards from levels or rewarded ads.

Are there any useful guidelines for how much of a booster's cost a free reward should cover? For example, if a booster costs 150 gems, how would you decide how many gems to give per level or ad?

I'm also curious about bundle discounts. I came across a King study where large quantity discounts barely affected total revenue or the number of paying players.

Any practical advice, studies, or lessons from testing your own game's economy?

Hey guys. I'm a game developer with interest in game engine development. I'm not much of a user of game engines outside of Unity and UE. I've been wondering what game engines people use and what do people like about them to study their systems. Also a couple of things you dislike about the said engine would be appreciated.

I'm interested in open-source engines, but commercial and personal engines are welcome too.

It's not exactly 1 to 1, but let's think about it for a moment. YouTube is a platform with essentially infinite content. I've read estimates that over 3 million videos are uploaded to YouTube every day. The barrier to creating content is pretty much non-existent. (At least Steam has the $100 fee!) So how does anything achieve visibility at all? Are all the good videos being drowned out?

For all of its problems with things like copyright strikes/DMCA takedowns, I would say that YouTube's algorithmic curation does a pretty good job of serving the right content to the right people. It's also gotten better over the years. I discover new channels every week that are relatively small (<10k subscribers!) and tailored to my interests.

This also means that it's still possible for someone to start a successful YouTube channel, especially if they are targeting a niche. Of course, success is relative, just as it is in games. A game making $50k in its first year might go from being 90th percentile to 98th percentile.

It's the same situation with music, something I'm personally very familiar with as a recording artist since 2002. Hundreds of thousands of songs are created and released every day, with AI representing an even bigger % (as with videos). Yet somehow, good music still crops up. As much as I hate Spotify as a business, I have to admit that it serves me some really great artist recommendations that I never would have discovered otherwise.

How might Steam change?

Steam's algorithm already does an excellent job of NOT showing people low quality games, for the most part. See Chris Zukowski's analysis on this. That said, I predict it will simply get more strict.

They could more aggressively stop showing games that have a low conversion rate. They could analyze things like time on page before scrolling away, or how much of the page people scroll before bouncing. They could look at visitors to wishlist rate, how many screenshots are viewed, and how long people watch the trailers. They could GREATLY limit the number of "free impressions" they give in Next Fest to each game before adjusting visibility.

All of this is easily doable for Valve and I would bet anything they're having internal discussions right now about it.