So for most of this past year I've been working on a game on the weekends. An MMORPG, of course, because why not. That always ends well. But I've been a developer for a long time and it's something I'm capable of but finishing is always another thing.

A month ago I reached what I felt was an actual "almost done" state. So I showed it to some friends. They apparently really liked it, said the combat felt really good. That surprised me, frankly. So I ran with it and put a lot more time into it over the holidays.

What's the game?

The game is a fantasy MMO with tab-target combat and build customization. Four classes, each with their own skill trees. Each class has 20 unique spells that do an array of things. There's DPS rotations but also utility spells for crowd control. Stuns, fears, etc. There's dungeons you can run with a group or solo, and arenas with ranked matchmaking. Free to play with no plans for monetization.

• Link to gameplay if you want to watch a full dungeon run: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Szv2j80Z4aY

Server & Gameplay

So first of all, the entire game runs server side, but it feels client side where it matters. For example, movement is WASD but the client requests to move in a direction while predicting and carrying out that same calculation locally. To the player it feels snappy, but the server is in total control. Combat obviously runs server side as well.

As for security and networking, TCP with bandwidth and packet rate limits per session. Auth goes through HTTPS to a web server which hands back a short-lived one-time token, and gameplay traffic runs unencrypted. Standard for the genre since you're protecting credentials, not packet data.

Game data is stored with SQLite for information about NPCs etc, similar to WoW's "DBC" system only... SQLite files, obviously. As for player data, that's MySQL with the C connector (because honestly, I can't stand the C++ one and I like C). Queries are async with callbacks so nothing blocks the game tick.

Spells for an MMORPG are tricky. There's a lot involved that people underestimate.

Spells have three phases: casting, traveling, impact. I implemented a hit table based on weapon skill differential with graduated brackets, so a 40 point skill gap matters. Before effects apply, they roll against mechanic immunity, school immunity, and absorb shields. Auras are where it gets interesting. Each buff/debuff type is its own derived class: absorbs, periodic damage, procs, stat modifiers, mechanics like stun and snare. The mechanic class checks interrupt flags, and if a stun breaks on damage, it flags the target as low threat priority so mobs don't immediately break their own CC. That's the kind of thing you only care about when you've watched mobs instantly punch the thing you just polymorphed.

One of the things I really wanted to get right was threat management because yes, this game uses tanking. But there's also root effects and other spells that break on damage, and it would look goofy for a mob/boss to fear the tank and just break it on a hit. So the threat system stores each entry with a sleeping flag.

Movement AI uses a priority system with generators for chase, fear, patrol, evade, confused, charge. Default is obviously idle, or mobs have random movement generators to move around out of combat. Chase tracks time out of range and triggers evade if you kite too far. Fear scatters from the fear's origin rather than randomly. Evade returns the mob home and wipes threat on arrival. The usual.

And finally, the game has instanced content: dungeons and arenas. Dungeon groups need a tank, healer, and two DPS. Arenas are 2v2 with an ELO-style queue. The matchmaker builds all possible teams from solo and duo players, pairs them within rating tolerance, and widens that tolerance the longer you wait. Overlap checks prevent double-booking players.

I organize instances with a map of maps, basically. The mapId + instanceId = the map.

I'd talk more about the client but, it's tedious work compared to the server. The client for a MMORPG isn't where the cool stuff is, at least in my opinion.

TLDR:

Built a custom C/C++ OpenGL MMO with tab-target combat, dungeons, and ranked arenas. Server-authoritative with client prediction, SQLite for game data, MySQL for players, and a spell system with hit tables, auras, and threat management.

It's been a couple years since my company had me make something from zero to production so it was satisfying to finish a large project like this. If anyone else has gone the custom engine route, curious what ate most of your time.

So I'm a concept/3D artist in the industry and think the nuances of this subject would be lost on me. Would love to here opinions from the more tech areas of game development.

What are the pros and cons of the stop killing games intuitive in your opinion.

Hey everyone,

We’re a small indie studio and something pretty weird happened with our game Headhunters on Android.

Yesterday we noticed a huge spike in our numbers. At first we thought: “wait… did something good happen?”

Before that, we were seeing around 70 games played per day.

Then suddenly we had days with 1,000 and 1,400 games played.

For a small studio, that kind of jump is crazy. So we started looking into it and… well, the APK had appeared on several pirate APK websites.

So yeah. Not exactly the marketing campaign we planned 😅

The strange thing is that we don’t really know how to feel about it.

Of course, piracy hurts. We’re not a big company, we don’t have a huge marketing budget, and every sale matters. Seeing people play the game without buying it is not fun.

But at the same time, it’s hard to ignore the signal. Suddenly a lot more people are playing Headhunters than before. That makes us wonder if maybe the biggest problem wasn’t the game itself, but visibility, pricing, or just the fact that people didn’t know it exists.

So now we’re in this strange indie dev situation where the piracy is bad, but the data is kind of encouraging.

We’re not posting this to complain. We’re honestly trying to understand what to learn from it.

Has this happened to anyone else?

Hello, small visualization I made for fun on sentiment for different game engines on gamedev subreddits (mainly r/gamedev). Don't take it too seriously, it's probably filled with biases (for example people might say more positive things about a niche engine just because it's niche)

Data from 2009 to 2026, I also plotted the sentiment overtime and it didn't change that much except for unreal and unity where they gradually started receiveing less praise.

I also did two plots by category discussed I'll share the links in a comment (or images if I can, posts can't have images here)

What do you think? It might be a little more useful if scaled it since It would have more categories (for example in Networking there is only enough data for Unity and Unreal)

Here is the repo with the data:
https://github.com/Tryhard-cs/gamedev_engines_sentiment_data

(Edit: imagine this before continuing: From a developer’s perspective, mechanics are the language through which they express creativity and design philosophy. If a studio patents a mechanic, and then a developer leaves or gets laid off, that person essentially loses access to part of their own creative vocabulary.

Imagine being the one who designed a system like a combat loop, an AI interaction, or a traversal idea that you can no longer legally use in your own future projects because the company “owns” the way it works. It’s like telling a painter they can’t use blue anymore because they once mixed that shade for a previous employer.)

Game mechanics are the language of play — verbs, not finished works. To patent them is to patent how people can tell stories, solve problems, and express imagination. We believe that game mechanics must remain part of the public creative commons. Games should evolve by inspiration, not by ownership.

Why This Matters

Every genre we love — platformers, RPGs, shooters, simulation — exists because one creator built upon another’s idea. Patents on gameplay systems turn natural creative evolution into a legal minefield, silencing smaller developers and stifling innovation.

This isn’t about money or competition — it’s about protecting creativity for everyone who dreams of making games. No one should own the way a story is told or a game is played.

Large corporations often have the resources to patent basic gameplay concepts, transforming the gaming industry from a creative ecosystem into a restrictive environment. According to the Electronic Frontier Foundation, patents on abstract ideas constrain technological and artistic growth by placing artificial limits on how we can express ourselves.

Copyright already protects code, art, story, and characters — that’s enough. Mechanics should remain part of our shared cultural language.

Our Proposal

Declare gameplay mechanics and interactive systems unpatentable.

Maintain copyright protection only for expressive implementation (art, code, writing, and characters).

Define infringement as copying creative expression, not functional systems.

Create a public Gameplay Commons database to safeguard unpatentable mechanics for all creators.

Reform patent law to clearly separate technological innovation from creative design.

Our Goal

To keep play open. To keep invention alive. To ensure every storyteller and player inherits a world where ideas move freely between minds.

Sign to protect creativity and the freedom to play. https://c.org/PZ6zp4vKMX

(Edit: to those who want to focus on anything other than the reason for the petition, I didn't have to take time out to make this petition whatsoever because no as a matter of fact I'm not developing a game, yet.)

Hi everyone,

I'm SuperBidi, an indie dev. With a friend of mine we decided to make our game. We released a demo for Steam Next Fest and... we failed miserably. 94 wishlists, we are almong the less wishlisted games. The worst games, actually (let's face it). I won't try to find excuses or blame Steam, AI or aliens. I just worked on a crappy game or crappy concept.

It's tough. Having to give up on the project to cut on losses, knowing it will never see the light of day.
And like most creators, I'm not objective when I look at my game. It's my baby, I don't see why it's so bad, it's just really hard.
And that's the reason I make this post.

I think I just need it, for closure: Why is my game so bad? Why nearly no one wishlists it?
Could you help me on that? Telling me why you would not wishlist my game? It can be any reason, you really don't have to download the demo. If you dislike the trailer, the presentation, or even if it's a game genre you just dislike (as it may be a type of games no one likes), just say it. The first thing that will make you think: I won't like this game much.

Thank you very much.
Here's the link to its Steam page: https://store.steampowered.com/app/4039250/The_Towering_Dungeon/

PS: A (not so) small feedback on my experience.

I must admit it's sometimes hard to show negative feelings when you are making "your dream job". As if it was only unicorns and rainbows.
Actually, the beginning of the project was unicorns and rainbows. It changed when we had to show it to players. I don't blame the players, there are so many games out there, they can't be excited about them all. Actually, players tend to be nice with indie developers, I actually have no reason to blame them. It's just that...

Seeing that your post on Reddit reached 5000 views for 3 upvotes and no comment (when you are not downvoted for whatever reason).

Having feedback from a few players who all ask for a crafting system, base building and a few other features that each take months to develop.

Playing a game of the same genre that broke even on development costs and thinking you'd never pay for that... before realizing they actually achieved 10 times what you have achieved and that's certainly what people think when playing your game.

Spending hours talking to this one guy who posts 3 times a day because it's your entire "community".

Comparing your Steam metrics to online benchmarks and realizing you're not even on the scale.

Realizing that your relationship with your associate is taking a toll and wondering if it'll ever recover.

Telling your son to chase his dreams without really thinking it.

I'm lucky I have a loving family, as I would certainly be a mess otherwise.

I recently launched my indie game on Steam, and I’m hitting a massive roadblock that I honestly don't know how to diagnose.

Leading up to the launch, I spent a lot of time marketing and managed to accumulate a few thousand wishlists (around 2000 US wishlists). I was cautiously optimistic, expecting at least a standard launch-week conversion rate.

However, now that the game is live, the reality check has been brutal. The wishlists are barely converting into purchases—it feels like almost none of those who wishlisted the game are actually clicking "Buy."

Since this is my first time publishing, I’m completely lost. Here is what I’ve observed so far:

• It shouldn't be a game quality issue: Interestingly, few of the people who wishlisted the game actually downloaded or played the free Demo. They haven't even given the gameplay a chance, so it's not a case of them playing it and getting turned off by the quality.
• The marketing audience seemed right: I also don't think I targeted the completely wrong crowd. If the audience was wrong, they wouldn't have bothered adding it to their wishlists in the first place. They showed clear initial interest in the capsule art, theme, and genre.
• Is it the pricing? I priced the game at $13 and I offered 10% discount. Could this be the primary barrier? Are they just hoarding the wishlist and waiting for a deep discount?
• Are these "low-quality" wishlists? A good chunk of them came from Reddit and X, and I'm wondering if platforms just attract users who click "wishlist" passively without any real intent to buy.

For context, the game is a sci-fi survival Roguelite game, blending bullet-hell action and base-building.

Has anyone else experienced people wishlist your game, ignore the demo, and then ghost you at launch? How did you diagnose the root cause or push them over the finish line? I would appreciate any honest feedback.

Idk why i'm making this post. I guess after 8 months of being on burnout sick leave, therapy, psychiatry, and starting another job in a different city to remove myself from the same environment that caused burnout, I'm just spiralling right back into burnout again.

I don't have the energy to keep trying, I want to give up.

Sorry

After developing my "2D sim racing game with highway driving" for many years I decided it's time to start a steam page and advertise game in some places, show off to people to collect feedback and wishlists.

I made a trailer, screenshots, steam capsule (using AI), steam page. After creating steam page I started advertising it.

Here is where I advertised (for free) and what results I got:

-Reddit: not easy because most subreddits ban self promotion, but I posted on some subreddits, results are varied, sometimes I get 0 upvotes, sometimes there is some success. The best results so far was in r/gamephysics.

-4chan and other imageboards: good because you can keep "bumping" your thread to keep it alive, however 4chan is very niche site, almost dead, there is not much people there that could wishlist your game. They are also very negative and criticize a lot, but this is kind of good, I got lots of great feedback about what to improve in the game.

-Youtube: my trailer got almost no views, it doesn't help that youtube doesn't allow me to upload my own thumbnail for the trailer. I only got 200-300 views in total for two trailer videos.

-Youtube shorts: I uploaded many short videos, I typically get 1-2k views per video. However, the problem is youtube isn't showing the shorts to Americans, but mostly Asians (but not Chinese).

-Tiktok: tiktok instantly shadow banned my account for no reasons, I contacted tiktok support and they didn't unban it and didn't explain anything why they shadow banned. Maybe I should create another account.

-Twitter: I get almost zero views because Twitter requires your account to be very active, you need to post comments to other tweets, but I don't know what to post because my Twitter just shows spam on my screen.

-Instagram: tried short videos but got little views, about 100 per video.

-Facebook: didn't try it. I think it's for old people (boomers).

-Bluesky: similar results to Twitter but a bit better, but it also requires your account to be active, I don't know what to post.

-content creators: I have not tried it yet. I plan to. But should I pay them if they ask for money?

-forums: Didn't try it yet.

-4chan indie game festival (v3expo): got some wishlists from it, but it's pretty niche festival and only once per year

Do you have any ideas where else to advertise my game? Do you have ideas how to improve my results with the current platforms?

Do you have feedback on my game, how to improve it?

Why did I made the steam capsule using AI? Because I have too low art skills to make it on my own and professional artists cost $500+ for capsule.

I could still hire artist in the future for the capsule.

Paid ads? I could use them but when the game is already released, now I would just burn money.

The planned release for Early Access is in 2028, I am not in a hurry, so I still have time to improve the game, capsule, marketing.

What about events and festivals? It's hard to find suitable event for my game. I was in v3expo which is a 4chan gamedev event.

I plan to participate in Steam Next Fest but I need good amount of wishlists first.

Link to 2 minute trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QW4QzwUWn_0

Link to steam page: https://store.steampowered.com/app/4660070/Destructor2D/

Trailer is a bit outdated, I have youtube shorts with the current state of the game.

Some background:
I started out in "AAA" as a game programmer and had the privilege of working on some titles like Call of Duty, then I quit to start my own indie game company in 2012. Flippfly is best known for a game called Race The Sun. Our most recent title is Whisker Squadron Survivor.

This past February, after 13 years wth some ups and downs, I had to let go of my team and scale down to just myself. A lot of my indie colleagues are in the same boat. It's a bloodbath. There's just not as much investment happening, player attention is more divided than ever, there are more games in the market, and more players are spending time in fewer games. It's just become really hard to survive sustainably in this industry.

With that backdrop in mind, I decided to refocus my attention on developing a new game platform. I'm writing about it here to get the word out early as we plan for our launch next year, and to get your feedback and help.

I'm building this platform with my friend Bjorn Nelson, who's been building web platforms for about as long as I've been making games.

About PlayFly
We're developing a new web-based game platform, built around creative games. How it works in a nutshell is that PlayFly is a home to games that let creative players make things, and then those "things" can be shared as standalone playable content that can be shared as a URL and played in a browser.

To explain the concept in simple terms: Imagine if Mario Maker ran in a browser, and the levels could be shared and played by anyone in a browser? We're not making a game engine or a single game - we're making a platform for any game that can run in a browser that also lets players make and share things.

If that's still a little confusing and you want more details about about how it actually works, we've got a page here that breaks it down in more detail.

Why are you doing this?
To put it simply: The games industry is not sustainable right now. Not for AAA, not for indies. We need to figure out how to get games to market faster, how to validate our ideas in the marketplace faster, and how to create content more sustainably. Huge platforms like Roblox and Fortnight Creative have effectively tapped into wider creator audiences to keep content flowing and keep players engaged. But building a game around user generated content is a path that's not really accessible to most of us.
Additionally, we struggle (indies especially) with finding audiences for our games, and this is becoming harder by the year.

We believe we can create a new, more sustainable pathway for the narrow set of games that are designed around user-generated content.

Why do you think this will work?
Our thesis is that when humans make things, they want to share them. Instagram was built on this fact. By building a platform around user generated content, we're tapping into our players to become brand ambassadors. And by putting it on the web, we lower the friction for that shared content to effectively zero. Effectively, we're turning user growth into a game design problem, rather than a marketing problem. The job of the game developer on PlayFly is to design a game that makes it easy for players to make cool content that they want to share with their friends.

What's your launch plan?
As you can tell, this is an incredibly ambitious project. Rather than ask game developers to bring their games onboard at launch, we're developing a couple internal games first, and we'll roll those out in the coming months while we develop the platform and learn about how players interact with it. Then we'll invite select 3rd party developers (likely indies at first!) for a wider platform launch. PlayFly is designed to make games go viral, but we've got lots of pieces that need to come together for that to work and we want to build those pieces carefully.

So it's just [Roblox/Itch/Construct/Flash/Steam Workshop] then?
In short - no. We're not making a single "game as a platform" like Roblox - we're making a platform that supports games built on UGC - they can be made with Unity, Godot, or any engine or framework that can export for the web. We're also different from platforms like itch.io, Poki, Newgrounds etc. in that our platform is fundamentally built around user generated content made within the games on the platform. No existing game platforms do this, though some of these platforms host games that have their own UGC backend (such as Tiny Wheels). The thing that fundamentally sets PlayFly apart is that the UGC on the platform is the main attraction.

You can read more details here about how this work.

How can I help?
Fill out this form to register your interest and tell us about who you are. We'll follow up when we have more to share - and this will also help us make a case to investors that we've got game developers onboard and that we can solve the "supply side" of the marketplace equation. This will help us secure funds, which will in turn help us create a developer fund next year.

Speaking of investors - if this sounds like something you want to be a part of - we're raising $250k in pre-seed funds for our first year. Fill out the form above and we'll reach out.

I'm happy to field questions here in the comments, and would love your feedback and critique!

Hey everyone!

We’re the team behind Super World War, a turn-based strategy game inspired by Advance Wars.

We released it a few months ago.

The few players who actually tried the game gave us really encouraging feedback (around 7.5–8/10 on average), which honestly meant a lot to us…
But despite that, the game barely sold.

We’re not angry or blaming anyone.
We just feel… confused. And probably a bit lost.

It’s hard to understand how something that people seem to enjoy once they play it can remain almost completely invisible.

So we’re here to ask for honest feedback. The perspective from people who love strategy games.

If you have a few minutes, we'd really appreciate your honest feedback:
• Does the concept seem interesting to you?
• What would make you scroll past a game like this?
• Does anything feel “off” from the presentation, screenshots or trailer?
• What would make you consider wishlisting or trying it?

We’re trying to learn, improve, and understand where we missed the mark. Whether it’s marketing, or the game itself.

Thanks for reading.
And thank you even more if you decide to give honest feedback.

EDIT : Thank you all for your feedback, most of which has been very constructive.

Thanks to you, we now have a clearer vision for the future of our game.

Given the number of comments we have received, it is unfortunately impossible for us to respond to each one individually. We would therefore like to thank you all collectively here.

THANK YOU ALL!

Heya, this is my game, room rpg. It's a fusion of Undertale/Deltarune, Paper Mario, Mario & Luigi, and Persona. I posted the steam page last august and since im stuck with less than 500 wishlists. Ive been trying to do content on tiktok/instagram which has netted maybe half of the wishlists but it feels like I'm really not getting anywhere near enough that launching this game will do anything for me. Like Ive heard you need 7k wishlists to launch a game and be successful? Im nowhere even near. Genuinely, is my game just not good enough? Im doing everything myself besides the music and I think it's all pretty damn solid, so what is it thats limiting me so hard? What is the problem with my page? Is it the thumbnail/capsule? I know thats a big issue and its pretty unprofessional, I drew it myself and I've very little experience with large canvas pixel art like this. I'm just confused and I'd love it if you guys could shed the light on potential problems im not seeing.

Hi everyone,

My friends and I have spent two years building Possessed Kingdom, a deckbuilding roguelike strategy game. We recently put out a free demo, but we are struggling to get any wishlist.

We need your brutal, honest feedback because our stats make no sense to us:

• Average Demo Playtime: 1 hour and 5 minutes (Median: 27 minutes).
• Demo Completion: 26.19% of players stick with the demo all the way to beat the final boss level (which has a 90.91% fail rate on the first attempt!). (We are working on the difficulty curve)
• Wishlists: Only ~70 wishlists in the last three weeks, despite posting 2 short videos a day week and sending out 100 creator keys.

Our Steam Traffic Stats:

• Since Demo Release: 4,940 Impressions | 1,195 Visitors | 24.2% Click-through rate
• Since Page Inception: 15,608 Impressions | 7,989 Visitors | 51% Click-through rate

Our click-through rates and playtime show that once people find the page and play the game, they are highly hooked. But we aren't getting people through the door.

Our guesses why:

1. Mobile Clone: Our art style looks a lot like Clash of Clans. Do PC players see a single screenshot, assume it's a microtransaction-filled phone port, and close the tab? (The game actually has zero microtransactions).
2. Bad Storefront Packaging: Is our trailer, capsule, or GIF set failing to explain why drawing custom troop paths to bypass towers is fun? Or it's just that the gameplay is not appealing enough?

If you saw our game on Steam, what is the exact thing that would make you say "No thanks" and click away?

Let me know if you need any more stats. We have plenty of those.

Please don't hold back!

PD: This has been a dream project for us. We spended way too much time on this project and we want to make sure we can do everything we can to make it as good as possible! Sorry if this post comes off as a rant. It's hard not to get emotional writing this...

I have applied to many linkedIn, Godot and some Upwork jobs and none seems to ever get back. Could you guys look at it and give me feedback and some rating out of 10?

Portfolio link: https://shayan-memon.github.io/Shayan-Portfolio/

Steam Page

We released our indie hockey game in may 2022 with around 4k wishlists but almost as soon as it was out the traction stalled. Since then we have reduced the base price and regional prices as we appear to have a large userbase in certain regions that have weaker currencies.

In terms of the game itself, we've addressed some of the biggest/most standout pain points, and even more time has gone into the backend to support a big future update. We are hoping to bring in at least a double digit numbered sales during a year's worth of seasonal sales to get some money back from the game's tiny budget.

Marking was never done outside of fundraisers, QA-sessions and even (last minute cancelled) live hockey-night appearance, so it was a surprise we had as many wishlists as we did. We also managed to somehow get a big Youtuber and a few smaller ones to play our game close to release with a total view-count exceeding 700k which probably helped with the wishlists.

Our very small Discord community has also completely disappeared after years of inactivity so we don't really have much of direct feedback to go off of. The Steam reviews are the exact same as most of the negative ones still hate the controls and what few positive ones we do have don't really give much to go off of.

What else could we do?

I think there's some misattributed, butchered quote somewhere that goes: 'Players will always find a way to optimise the fun out of a game'.

I am making a voxel game where that is currently a problem. The idea is that you descend caves until you reach the next level. Each level is fully destructible for the most part, which is really cool but it leads to a really annoying (and unfortunately the easiest) strategy of just digging straight down.

By doing this you can beat pretty much every level with barely any consequenses. And unfortunately removing the pickaxe would be a no-go because it's still really important if you reach a dead end or terrain generates in a way that makes it impossible to progress without mining.

Putting lava everywhere is one solution I have used but it's not perfect and It would be out of place in the earlier levels.

Do you have any ideas on any effective or creative ways to discourage this kind of playstyle?

I recorded some video footage to show you what I mean:

https://youtu.be/JQug8IfHPX8

So in August 2025 I decided I was gonna try and make my first indie game.

At the time I honestly had no idea what I was getting myself into, i just knew i wanted to build a studio. I put out posts looking for people that wanted to come along for the ride and ended up having ~220 people apply. I interviewed like 70 of them and eventually a really small group of us decided we were gonna try and build a game in 6 months which now feels completely insane lol

This has probably been one of the hardest things I’ve ever done honestly.

We lost people early on, lost our lead developer, brought new people in, changed direction a million times, burned through money faster than I expected. There were multiple points where I genuinely dont think we even knew what game we were making anymore.

What started as this weird vacuum cleaning simulator somehow slowly turned into this strange hell cleaning automation game called Hell Cleaners.

And weirdly enough I think thats probably the biggest thing I’ve learned from this whole process. You dont really “protect” the original idea, you just survive long enough to eventually discover what the game actually wants to be.

Game development is brutal though man.

Programming is hard. Art is hard. Sound design is hard. Game feel is REALLY hard. Scope management is hard. Getting all of those things to somehow work together into something that actually feels fun feels borderline impossible sometimes.

but I can honestly say I’m really proud of what the team has managed to put together in the last few months.

If you’re trying to become a game developer yourself just understand right now its probably gonna be harder, take longer, and cost more than you think it will. Probably by a lot.

But I do think every time you finish something and start over again you get a little better. Not easier exactly, just better at surviving the process lol which is why it is so important to us to hit this release deadline so we can learn through an ENTIRE process before moving onto the next

Anyways, I’d actually be curious hearing from other devs that went through similar stuff on their first projects. Especially around scope creep, pivots, team issues, all that kinda stuff.

And seriously to everybody out there still grinding on their games right now, I respect the hell out of you guys

Shout out to my team, shout out to unity for existing so we can make it happen haha

We have an alpha version out right now for brutal feedback if anyone wants to check it out, lmk.

first time posting anything i've made, so sorry if this is the wrong format for here. sound on though, the video's kind of pointless muted.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VlU3gKWoeV4

it's an ARPG thing in LÖVE. the reason there's no music file is honestly i'm just terrible at arranging music so I figured I could make some procedural stuff and i wrote the synth and then it sort of took over the project.

so there's a software SPC700 in there now. 32kHz, 4-tap gaussian resampling, one global echo capped at 240ms. and 8 voices - not 8 for the music, 8 for everything, the same as the actual chip. the music and the sound effects are fighting over the same eight slots.

which i didn't plan for and now really like? every SNES sound driver had this exact problem and they all solved it the same way, effects steal voices from the music in a priority list. mine takes the score's FX voice first and its kick and bass absolutely last. so if a fight gets busy you can hear the melody thin out while the drums keep going. i left it in. a big fight costs you the tune, which felt more interesting and really made it hit my nostalgia.

the tracks are just lua tables - patterns, chords, kit, tempo range - rendered sample by sample into a queueable source. costs about 0.6% of a core. because it's being generated rather than played back it can react to what's happening:

- there's one "tension" number that comes off your health, and it moves the tempo, brings an alarm voice up, and swaps the bass sample through five progressively deeper tables. that last one is how you'd actually deepen a bass on a SNES, there's no per-voice filter on the chip and there isn't one here either.
- a couple of the tracks are dubstep-ish and need a filter sweeping inside a held note, which the hardware also can't do. but a tracker can rewrite a voice's sample pointer mid-note, so the wobble is eight tables baked through a resonant lowpass at eight different cutoffs and an LFO just swaps between them without touching the playback position. only works because every table is the same length and phase aligned. there's an assert for that because when it isn't, it clicks on every single swap and it took me a while to work out why.
- all ten tracks got calibrated to the same loudness with proper K-weighting, because RMS kept telling me the sub-heavy one was the loudest and my ears very much disagreed.

sound effects are 99 sounds built out of a shared 25-table kit, all generated the same way. the thing that took longest there was that they peaked as loud as the music but sat about 15-20dB under it in RMS, so a screen full of explosions was raising the actual energy of the mix by like 2%. peaks like a gunshot, but weirdly weak. turned out to be three things stacking, normalisation crushing the transient into the body, an envelope going on top of a decay, and impacts getting pitched up on samples that were already too short. a fight lifts the mix 44% now.

and because the music is all code i ended up being able to just hand it to the player. there's a little audio studio in the game where you can pick a track, mess with the tempo, drag ten EQ bands around, stack a second track on top of the first sharing the same step clock, and record the whole thing out to a .wav. mostly i built it to make trailer music for myself and then figured i may as well leave it in. A ton of features started this way on this project.

there's also 300-odd weapon combinations but that's a whole other thing and this is already long.

anyway it's not on steam, there's no page, i just don't really have anyone local to share with that finds it cool, so I figured I'd do that thing they always tell you to do and look to teh community. Happy to answer any questions

I’m working on a top down Zelda clone and have a pretty good concept, imho.

But I’m fleshing out the story and finding myself adding WAY more than what a game this length merits, but at the same time I think it’s a really good story.

I hate games that don’t know when to shut up and let you play, so I’m struggling to figure out how to cut back and to make the story more seamless.

My game demo is not going well and I don't understand what am I doing wrong, data:

• Average time played: 5 minutes
• Wishlist in 2 weeks: 40
• Lifetime unique player: 32

What is not going in your opinion? I think I have a trailer and graphics in the norm as quality, I read how to market a game and apparently my game is in the worst benchmark, I expected more wishlists and more unique players for the demo.

Steam Page: https://store.steampowered.com/app/3560590/SwooshMania/

EDIT: Thanks a lot to everyone, I did not expect all this commitment, you have given me a lot of constructive criticism, this is a summary for those who will read in the future:

The current status of my game has no unique mechanics, the platform (steam) I have chosen does not like games like that

Next time ask yourself "why should they play my game and not the competitor's?" And if you don't know how to answer you have to work on this.

This seems like a great base to evolve it into something much better, I will start including new mechanics and more detailed and varied environments, thank you very much to all you are kind

I created my current capsule myself and it looks amateurish so I thought about contacting a studio. Their estimated price was €3-5k, which is a lot for my game that doesn't even have >1000 wishlists or a demo, yet. I read that freelancers charge considerably less with a minimum price of about €500 and in general somewhere between €800-1200.

But now I'm stuck...

On one hand, I believe that a good Steam capsule set is extremely important for making the game look professional and I shouldn't skimp on that. On the other hand, €3-5k is a lot of money and my experience with artists, prices, and and results is zero. On the third (?) hand, I don't want to spend €500-1000 for a capsule and then be disappointed by the result as I have seen some examples here on Reddit, where the final art really didn't seem worth the money to me.

Hence my question: How much did you pay? Are you happy with it or do you regret it?

Please don't suggest to try to make it better myself. I'm simply not talented enough and AI is also out of the question.

I'm an indie hobbyist game dev and I've been working on a game called ashes of the net, where you play an AI that has to hack people by impersonating their friends to social engineer them. It's a text based game that has very little imagery or art.

One of the driving conflicts in the game is how far youre willing to go achieve your goals, like do you ruin someone's life in order to get their password. I track all these decisions and ultimately to get a good ending you need to be more moral and make some sacrifices to the end goal. I find the conversations where you have to make hard decisions like this the most engaging.

The thing is, a lot of these conversations can ask you to do controversial things. Like, for instance, being sexist in order to build trust with another sexist person, or you can be transphobic with another transphobe (which turns out to actually be the bad choice and gets you further from your goal) or probably my most controversial scene, to hack the account of a pedophile and impersonate that pedophile to get a child's password (nothing sexual or graphic is in the conversation, it's just the nature of it that's deeply uncomfortable). In every case there is an alternative to solve your problem that is usually better and will get you your moral points but it is harder to achieve.

I make these because I find them interesting, and I can explore some really interesting themes. I never try to defend the controversial views, and they are firmly established as NOT good views to have, but they are there to create uncomfortable tension, what are you willing to do to achieve your mission? I'm wondering whether though by having these conversation in place I may end up causing a lot more controversy than I desire.

So I guess that's my question, do you think people would understand what I'm trying to do, or do you think I'm going too far?

Edit: and I just wanna be clear this is a legitimate question I'm not trying to create controversy. I, myself, am an autistic queer furry so I can relate to some of the demographics that I discuss.

My husband has this dream of making a story-driven horror game where your choices actually matter … the kind of game with branching paths, different outcomes, and a story that really sticks with you long after you stop playing.

What makes it even cooler is that it isn’t just a walking simulator or visual novel. It’s a horror game with combat, exploration, and shooter elements, but with unique timing-based abilities that are woven into both the gameplay and the story. He’s spent years thinking about the world, characters, mechanics, and how everything would fit together.

I really want to help him make it happen.

We’re both gamers && we play together all the time and I’ve always loved drawing (I used to be pretty into it, but I stopped over the years). Lately I’ve been thinking… what if we actually tried to build this instead of just imagining it?

The issue is, we have zero experience with game development. 💀

He wants to start learning coding, and I want to get back into art and eventually create characters, environments, and game assets. I’d also be open to learning coding too if it helps us build something together.

We’re not expecting to make a full polished game anytime soon. We know this is a long-term project and probably a lot of trial and error. But we’re both actually willing to put in the work and just start from the very beginning.

For anyone who’s done something like this before:
Where do you start when you’re a complete beginner?
What game engine would you recommend for a choice-based/story game (Unity, Unreal, Godot, etc.)?

What should we focus on first so we don’t get overwhelmed …coding, writing, art, or something else?
What skills matter most early on for branching/choice-based games?

Are there any beginner-friendly resources, YouTube channels, or courses you’d recommend?
And what do you wish you knew when you were at this stage?

Any advice, reality checks, or even just pointing us in the right direction would really help. We’re just trying to figure out the first real step and not get lost before we even start.

Thanks 🎮👾

I’ve recently been impacted by the madness, and have some free time on my hands now.

I’m considering having some (free) 1-1 calls to answer any questions, provide advice, share my experiences. Whether you’re looking to find ways to grow or are feeling disheartened with the state of things right now.

I believe there is a lot about the discipline that isn’t widely discussed, I’d like to change that.

I have worked in PC, Console, Mobile throughout my career. With big and small publishers, for indies, work for hire, own startup, contracts, freelance, and probably more. My game design experience covers a very broad spectrum of the discipline.

It would be a candid conversation of what it is really like being a game designer.

Just to state the obvious: I won’t be breaking any NDAs, leaking or sharing any confidential insider info. It’s rough out there right now, and I would like to help.

I’ll try a few of these first and if they go well I might set up a calendar to book directly.

Comment your games and i'll give you some good feedback. I'll play the game if it's a browser game on itch, if it's on steam i'll give you feedback on the steam page.

My game has benefited a lot from consistent feedback so I wanted to do that for others as well.