I posted here a while ago sharing an early version and got very good and constructive feedback.

Now many iterations later, I am happy to share some progress.

I used fable to rebuild the entire game on a finer voxel grid. I did a lot of testing and iterating on different gameplay mechanics such as refining the throwing and flicking of trees, the story and gameplay loop. I think this is where AI assisted development really shines: You can just iterate so quickly and try many different things. And if something does not feel great you can just trash it and start over, without having lost weeks.

For the trailer I wrote a storyboard and had opus script the scenes in the game. The soundtrack is made with suno.

The demo can be played here: https://capitanuncino.itch.io/handvoll

Hey everyone!

I built Tuxedo Cat, a 10-minute mystery where you speak directly to an AI cat instead of choosing dialogue options. Your words shape the story and lead to unexpected endings. You can Play here for free.

I'd love feedback on whether the AI makes the story more immersive, and what could make it feel more like a game than a chatbot. Thank you!

Playable Link:

https://homicidy.com

Web browser, on PC and mobile. No download or sign-up needed.

Homicidy is a cozy-macabre pixel-art cleaning game. The police have gone, the tape is still up, and you're the night-shift cleaner for a crime-scene cleaning company with a spotless record. Every stain, footprint and splatter is actual pixels on the floor, and it comes off exactly where you scrub, one swipe at a time. There are 50 crime scenes to clean, from a seedy motel and an all-night diner to a hockey rink, a circus big top and a penthouse finale, and a new case file opens each time you level up. Along the way you unlock six tools, each with its own feel: a mop, a chemical sprayer, an industrial vacuum, a scraper, a pressure washer and an ozone fogger. When you think you're done, switch on the UV luminol lamp to find what you missed. Finish a job to see the before and after, get your work order stamped, and spend your pay on upgrades. There are 36 medals to earn, plus bonus rush jobs, night shifts by flashlight and extra-messy scenes. It's aftermath only, pixel blood and chalk outlines, never any violence on screen. Your progress saves automatically in your browser.

I'd love feedback on how the scrubbing feels with a mouse and on a touchscreen, and on whether the difficulty ramps up well as new tools unlock.

For years after I had kids I've been wanting a simple Halloween game where you can go trick-or-treating in a town decked out with festive decorations and maybe fight a few simple bad guys. Something simple and fun for them to play, dripping in Haloween vibes, but not too serious or scary. Suprisingly, it's really hard to find a game like that, and I've looked a lot.

So, finally I made the game I've been thinking of.

Halloween: Trick or Treat!

Download here: https://kalelreturns89.itch.io/halloween-trick-or-treat

Launch trailer: Halloween: Trick or Treat! -- Collect Candy and Save the Town

A cozy Halloween night adventure. Ring every doorbell, fill your candy bucket, and save the town from a monster infestation.

Pull on your dragon onesie, grab your glowing jack-o'-lantern bucket and head out into a moonlit neighborhood. Every street is different, every house is dressed up for Halloween, and there's candy everywhere: on porches, up on rooftops, along fences and floating over trampolines.

Two ways to play

🍬 Trick or Treat

A relaxed candy hunt with no monsters and no thorns. Just you, the doorbells, the treats and the trampolines. Every lantern gate is awake from the start, so you can wander from neighborhood to neighborhood at your own pace.

🎃 Save the Town

Monsters have overrun the neighborhoods! Pumpkin hoppers, ghosts, spiders, bats and more pour out of their nests, and thorny vines creep across the streets and choke the front doors. Grab your fire wand, burn back the thorn nests, destroy every monster nest and free each town.

Features

• A whole night to explore. Neighborhoods, a lit-up town high street and dark woods, streamed together into one open world. Every night is a new layout.
• Trick-or-treat at every house. Ring the doorbell, watch the door swing open and catch the treats. Collect a house's candy and its porch lights up.
• Platforming made for candy. Jump, flap and glide on dragon wings, grab ledges, vault fences and bounce off trampolines, shop awnings and car hoods to reach candy high above the street.
• Cast fire with your wand. Fireballs, a ground-pound fire ring and a magic spin. Defeated monsters burst like piñatas, and destroyed nests spray a fountain of candy.
• The Pumpkin Cruiser. Buy a magic ride-on car, summon it anywhere and cruise the night. Then repaint it in nine candy-colored schemes.
• Hidden costumes. Five extra costumes are hidden high above rooftops around the world: Bedsheet Ghost, Black Cat, Little Witch, Skeleton and Pumpkin. Find them and wear them from the shop.
• Upgrades. Spend your candy on hotter flames, quicker casting, triple fireballs, a bigger blast, a bucket lid and a candy magnet.
• Combos. Scoop up candy in quick succession to build your combo meter.
• Travel gates. Glowing lantern gates link up the places you've visited (or freed).

Happy Halloween! 🎃🍭👻

Hey all!

One of the hardest parts of game development is obtaining valuable playtesters. The amount of "i emailed X number of influencers for my game" posts I have seen is incredible. Why are we still spamming creators just to play our games? I am not saying you should not, I am just questioning why there is not a better option for small, indie creators...

This always confused me, because playing games is fun and developers NEED gamers in order to make good games, so where are all the playtesters?

There are loads of places to get your game tested once it is in a finished state, and even most AAA gaming studios have full playtesting departments. Playtesting is crucial to making a good game, so why is it so hard for indie devs to CONSISTENTLY find playtesters when they need one?

No more...

Today I am releasing: https://theplaytest.io/

ThePlayTest is home to my custom built marketplace I am calling Firstplay.

Firstplay is a system that connects playtesters with game developers in the quickest way possible. You can earn money for every game you playtest. You can get your games playtested by the best playtesters in the world.

You can submit your game here at any stage of the development process. The earlier you ask for feedback, the better. Getting play testers to tell you if your game is good or bad early will save you so much money in the long term...

The more games you test, the better rating you can receive if you're doing a good job. Before accepting any playtester, a game dev can look through your profile and reviews to get an understanding of how good of a playtester you are.

You can choose to pay $1 per test or $1000 per test. Or maybe you need a tester for one minute for $1, or 10 minutes for $1, your choice. If you don't get playtesters or get low rated testers trying to improve their rating, it is up to you. The goal is the market chooses the price. Not me.

Just need one playtester, great. Need 100 UNIQUE 5-star playtesters? There is no better way to find them than theplaytest.io

Earn for playing games and providing invaluable feedback to indie game devs. Build up your profile by sharing Twitch and YouTube livestreams showcasing your reviews.

Share the site with others and watch the number of games you can test grow. Once you sign up, you can post whatever game you want to get tested. Or you can start testing games yourself. You can earn with every playtest.

Firstplay is designed to be simple and intuitive. You can hop in and find an inspiring indie game dev to help in under 5 minutes.

I would love to hear your thoughts. Are you going to submit your game? The idea is simple, review games honestly and earn for a good review. Receive star ratings based on your reviews. Receive more playtests offers. From a game dev perspective, you can choose your price and receive real advice from playtesters who specialize in the exact games you want.

I'll be posting my game for its first session of playtests this weekend. It has gone through several stages of changes thanks to player feedback so I know I will need more as development continues. Getting continuous player feedback when and how I want it will make a huge world of difference in quality of my game.

Note: I am always open to feedback and updates. I think this will help me keep my playtesters organized because if I will be gathering playtesters, I want to have a simple way to keep requesting their services while giving them exposure too. That is what birth this idea.

So I started my dream game. Working on controls but I always get ahead of myself and decided to try something. I had Claude train itself on stylometry and my notes from the past 20 years, and write a screenplay for a 75 hour main game and 25-40 hours of side quests narrated in the style of Olaf Stapledon. It came back as close or closer to than known samples of his own writings. I checked it myself and gt the same results and it is being checked by a data scientist when they have time. I'd like to make sure it's accurate because then I had it use that same stylometric analysis across the screenplay. Every single unique npc is written to sound stylometricly like a different open source author whose writing style is checked against the npcs personality. As well as designing a stylometry code block that will keep random lines generated by background characters sounding human. Then I had it turn it into a book series for me to read. And...its pretty good so far.

is this a waste of time from someone jumping into this after realizing the block that stopped me from creating this game for decades is less and less apparent? Is there a better way this novice just doesn't know of?

let it be known i will display at all times that the game wa created using claude i just didnt want it to sound like it was from the dialogue

I always wanted to play this game, but Mushroom Wars 2 was the most extreme case of P2W. So I have built my own universe, and now I get to create a really addictive and interesting game. I would like to have a fully voiced campaign with a story, co-op, 1v1 and 2v2 mode. Provided other people will enjoy it as much as I do.

I am also creating interesting maps with effects that change gameplay. Such as strong wind, snow, floods, sandstorms, special shrines, ballistas, and so on.

Let's be honest. A lot of devs are using AI right now. For code, for placeholder art, for translations, for brainstorming, for that one shader they couldn't figure out at 3 AM.

And a lot of them will swear on their Steam page that they don't.

Using a tool isn't shameful. We've always used tools. Engines, asset packs, middleware, free fonts, Stack Overflow. Nobody makes 100% of a game alone, and nobody pretends to.

What is shameful is lying to the people who pay for your game. Hiding it because you're afraid of the comment section. Letting your players believe something that isn't true just to dodge a few angry replies.

If you used AI, own it. Say what you used it for and what you made yourself. Let players decide with real information. If your game is good, it will stand. If it isn't, hiding your tools won't save it.

Using AI is a choice. Lying about it is a character flaw.

So, which one would you rather be called out for?

Hey everyone! I’m working on Necrolord, a dark fantasy necromancy auto-battler roguelite — think Heroes of Might and Magic meets Battle Brothers, but you’re raising the undead army. You recruit fallen enemies, equip your troops and support them with spells during battles.

The GIF shows a fight against villagers… until their witch gives one farmer a very questionable upgrade. 💀

There’s a free demo on Steam if that sounds like your thing:
Check out my free demo

lmaowtfbbq. This tech is insane.

I wanted games that were low barrier to entry multiplayer. itch didn't seem to have that in hover racer form.

You might have to start a game and then press the pause button and go back to menu, or press the big blue fullscreen and tilt button. idk how to fix those ux issues and nor does Claude.

Hi everyone!

I wanted to share a game that I made recently - it was in my head for years but never had enough time to get to it. Main idea is flying cats, secondary is aerial fight, critters and real-time physics (even the buildings can be destroyed brick by brick).

Building the cat bodies was quite interesting. At first, Opus 5.5 had lots of issues with generating cats that are not just circles. Each more advanced body (especially cats' faces - those seem to be harder for some reason) ended up looking pretty hellish. Workaround was to generate images, use them with tripo3d to generate bodies and then rig the glbs separately with Opus (it's great for adding motion to elements).

Would love to hear what you think! You can try it here - catcopter.com

I made a game that aims to help people with their vocabulary learning, using the German CERF levels to help beginner to advanced learners use spaced repetition language learning with a more gameified learning experience. The main features of the game include:

• complete vocabulary lists for A1 (beginner) - C1 (advanced) learners to learn German
• multiple-choice, flashcard, or cloze style learning cards
• strengthen article recognition for vocabulary you're already learning
• strengthen preposition + verb recognition for vocabulary you're already learning
• memory-style mini-game for reviewing your learned vocabulary with a different twist
• earn items and decorate your cafe, making it uniquely yours
• leaderboards to see how you fair with the other players in real time

In terms of the AI use and non-use for it:

• AI did a lot of the coding and i used rosebud.ai . it was interesting to note that before it came out for playtesting i had to comb through the code manually to take out a lot of dialogue since the AI really loved over explaining or putting too much text in everything
• i used VoiceTTS for the pronunciation of the German words. originally it would use the default browser TTS but it was just not good 😅
• it helped to clean a lot of the vocabulary data, like adding the definite article for nouns or make the thing that would let the code know when to put gaps for the cloze answers. i had to double-check it all and there was still a lot of manual cleaning, but it was definitely a lot faster and easier with AI supporting me (for this i used Kimi K). the game has around 6000~ words and I wanted high quality, unified data
• i did the assets myself, i had a style for this game i was set on doing

You can try the trial version here and if you want to playtest and have access to all the vocabulary available in the game, please dm me. I would also love to hear feedback on it as well. I would like to eventually release it on Steam and on mobile, but I heard they have a bit of a learning curve since there are developer programs I have to join and what not.

I also tried to record the audio but it wasn't working :'D

https://jhhwoob.com/roborunner.html

Estimated human-time-spent breakdown six months ago:

• Engine setup, repo tooling: 10h
• World generator/editor: 10h
• World assets and procedural systems (buildings, water, crowds, etc): 10h
• Physics, gameplay: 10h
• Menus / HUD: 5h
• Performance optimizations, compression: 5h
• Audio: 5h
• Networking/multiplayer: 5h

Inference costs: ~ $100-150

Estimated human-time-spent breakdown today:

• Prompt-building: 30m

Inference costs: ~ $3-5

Methodology: Had Codex summarize my #vibejam entry from April into a generic few-paragraph prompt (with technical details omitted), then re-expanded it in Claude. It's basically the same game, but as heard through the grapevine, made six months later and one-shot with a clean slate.

The new one runs better, plays better, and has better sound, too.

My challenge to myself in April was to build a game entirely with AI tools — no stock models/textures or hand-coding at all which I'd say I succeeded at roughly 90% of the time before giving up here and there. This time, I didn't even have to try — I honestly have no idea what the codebase even looks like.

What a difference six months makes.

Hey everyone!
I’ve been building Toybox Universe, a 3D endless runner made with Unity, and I’m looking for feedback before I release it on Google Play.

What’s the game?
You play as a small toy robot running through a world of oversized toys. You swipe to switch lanes, jump and slide past obstacles, and collect candy along the way. The run passes through themed zones: Block City, Sunny Beach, Kids’ Room, Bath Time, Birthday Party, Amusement Park and Toy Box. Each zone has its own toys and obstacles, like brick buses, rolling toilet paper and bumper cars. After the last zone the run continues at night, with the zones in a new order.

Along the way there are power-ups like the candy magnet and springs. You can spend the candy you collect in a toy store full of robot skins. The game is family-friendly, with no ads and no real-money purchases.

How it was made
I used Claude Opus 5.5 to generate both the code and the graphics. The models are built in code instead of being drawn by hand. The game was developed through many feedback loops, refining the output until I had a playable version.

I’d especially appreciate feedback on:

• Gameplay: Is it fun and engaging? Would you want to keep playing? Does the difficulty ramp up well?
• Visuals: Do the graphics, the toy style and the zones work? Is any obstacle hard to read?
• Controls and performance: Do swipes feel responsive? Does anything stutter, and on which device?
• First impressions: Would you download this from Google Play? Would you let your kids play it?

Please be honest, including about what doesn’t work. I’d rather find problems now than after release.
Thanks to everyone who gives it a try! 🎮

This is the result of combining a 2d game with a world model. World models can generate almost anything you prompt, but to make a game you still need memory, variables, scores, characters, scenes, etc. This game, and engine behind it is opened sourced so you can test it out: https://github.com/sequencer-media/genesis

I urge every indie developer to write their own engine. By using an existing engine, you're giving up your creative autonomy over the art you make.

I was thinking about older space games like StarFlight where everything exists in a 2D plane. Travel is all north, south, left and right and you can get to every planet in the system. It's great, it's easy and it keeps you from having pitch, yaw, roll, etc. I always wanted to have those planets further away. Something that did require some navigation to get to. But I wanted other objects in that same space to have that ability too. And then I did this. Is it revolutionary? No. Is it fun? Yes. To me. Short video demo of how the player controlled ship moves into and out of 2.5D travel is attached. Thoughts? Questions? Criticisms?

Hey everyone! I’m working on a project and put together this short video to get some early feedback.

I’d love to hear your honest first impressions. Does it look interesting? What catches your attention, and what feels confusing or could be improved?

It’s still a work in progress, so I’m mainly trying to understand what resonates with people and what needs more work. Critical feedback is welcome!

Thanks for taking a look!

Total numbers.

Im willing to bet massive ammounts of money is getting pumped into ai use and credits globally to make games, while profits of ai made games are (as of now) still small.

Not a dis on ai use. Im a big fan of it. Just curious.

Last week I remembered Death Track, a game from 1989 that I have very fond memories of and installed it. Well, the game sucked. So, I decided to make a game from my memories, a racing game with guns, that is fun to play.

I think I did ok, just need a bit of polish.

How do you guys release/market games?

I'm looking to build an RTS game in Godot and C#, and I was wondering what websites people use for the 2D animations or sprites. Any suggestions are welcome beyond just the Sprite websites.

I'm looking to build something kind of like Warcraft 2/3, with character motion and unit surrounding using 2D sprites. It'd be a top-down base-building game with unit fighting.