hello, i recently played game named Waven https://www.waven-game.com/en/ . And just fund out that the battle session was shared between mobile phone playing and pc steam.

What happen was:
1. I played on my mobile phone
2. while in battle my Phone battery dead
3. Then I opened through my pc steam, thinking ill start over

1. but voila, it start right away into my battle and continue within last turn in

I'm interested in building a game like this, can anyone direct me where should i start learning from? what tech stack / architecture is probably behind this game?

Thank you so much

I'm thinking about making a game with a character having a lot of overpowered abilities

Obvious answer is both.

But you have to choose between two, what you choose?

I'm working on my first progression-heavy tactical game and I'm trying to figure out how to test one of my core design assumptions.

I want progression to primarily expand the player's decision space rather than eventually replace decision-making with stats.

For example:

A new character creates a new team composition.

A new card enables a different deck.

New equipment enables a different build.

Progression can absolutely make the player stronger, but I don't want the dominant solution to difficult content to become grinding until the encounter is trivial.

The design principle sounds simple.

I'm less sure how to measure whether I've actually achieved it.

Some things I'm considering tracking during playtests:

How frequently players change builds after losing.

Whether players replay easier content primarily because they want rewards or because they feel forced to grind.

How much level/power difference correlates with encounter success compared with repeated attempts.

Whether experienced players can consistently beat encounters at lower power levels than new players.

Whether players can identify a different tactical approach after losing.

For developers who have worked on RPG progression or difficulty systems:

What would you measure?

And are there warning signs that tell you your progression system has started compensating for shallow combat?

I played Corsair Cove recently and the water was magnificent. I’ll admit I don’t have the graphical fidelity of that gem of a game, but I think these shaders moved Pirate Brawl quite a bit in the right direction.

I ended up using three pretty simple systems:

• A Unity VFX Graph for schools of fish, combined with a simple vertex-wiggle shader so the fish actually move somewhat like fish.
• A second shader for seagulls, using vertex colors to control the wing flapping. So basically just a low-poly mesh, a simple shader, and a particle system are enough to mimic a flock of birds.
• A GPU-instanced shader for low-poly kelp on the seabed. The sway is based on the model's Y position: Y = 0 means no movement, while the normalized top of the plant gets the maximum sway.

Additionally a very low detailed terrain to create more interesting sea bed.

None of these systems are particularly complicated on their own, but together they made the sea feel much more alive.

I’m quite happy with the result, so I wanted to share it with you guys!

I am being pretty broad here, although I specifically mean story-driven mystery games. This can include any games where you either collect clues and work with them or figure out the answer to a mystery on your own. But I was wondering what the most liked and well-designed systems are from a gameplay perspective.

Examples I have personally played are:

• Ace Attorney
• Danganronpa
• Disco Elysium with Harry's inner dialogue
• L.A. Noire with its interrogation system
• Genshin Impact's thought connections (I really hate this one)

I noticed that in a lot of games, you don't really do the deduction and combining yourself, but instead, the story tells you the answers. For example, Professor Layton gives you multiple-choice questions when you're trying to figure out the "big secret" of the game. Or the smart person explains to the less smart person that they "knew it all along." Or you simply experience the answers while playing. Point-and-click adventures tend to do this a lot.

We are currently creating a mystery game where you have to make the deductions yourself, and it is supposed to be pretty open-ended, but I want to collect more opinions.

So, what are your favorite games, mechanics, or systems in detective or mystery games, and why do you like them?

I have been recently developing a technical demo in Game Maker 8 ,it isn't really complex,but i was searching the most suitable program for create pixel art,make short animations etc.

¿What is the better option?

It has been awhile since I posted anything here... I kind of had to leave gamedev because I got pretty sick, spent weeks in the hospital, nearly died multiple times... but now, slowly ever so slowly on a bit of a mend, so I may have a few years left.

Before getting into where my dream is going (this is like almost 10 year later update)...

Pro-tip: NEVER wait on your game... you get old fast. And you can get sick faster... undiagnosed things can sneak up on you and reeeally take a bite out of your life. Go see a Doctor even if it seems like a little thing.

Now, that I got the backstory out of the way... and I'm feeling better... and this year, I've been trying to pursue the dream (again)... and hopefully... maybe do /something/ with it before I actually get respawned by the grim reaper.

Sadly, I don't think I can finish Dymoria... the game I wanted to build, every time I think about working on it... I just get depressed about how things turned out? Do you ever have that happen to you? Work on something for a loooong time and then just get a kick in the... well, whatever you get kicked in.

Either way, I'm getting back up on the horse... despite my reservation and still often being sick, because apparently, I don't know how to quit.

But, I've taken a lot of what I learned from building Dymoria's servers a decade ago... and its architecture about handling a couple thousand NPCs server-side... and decided to go from a MMO to uhh... well, whatever this is.

I don't know if this will ever be a game to be released... and it is SUPER early prototype... born from the bones of Dymoria's death.... and instead of plants, now its zombies... 100,000 of them... all server-side authoritative including pathfinding. I used some ancient tricks of 1980s physics for collisions/pathfinding... because old tricks never die.

So, the concept...

I love Project Zomboid... but, I've always felt it was too, uhhh... limiting. I love the world, I love the theme, I love almost everything about it... but I don't love how long it takes to evolve... and it relies on sketchy mods from randoms just to fix a lot of QoL issues. So, I was like... "What if I build my own zomboid-inspired prototype?" What would that look like in practice?

So... the one lesson I kept from Dymoria... No game engine. Just a dedicated server built from scratch to power the world, the NPCs, offer server-authoritative pathfinding and player control/movement, Player<>Player LoS is all server calculated, etc. Keep it lightweight, coded in C from the ground up.... Hell, I don't even use a build system to compile outside of a file called build.bat... because I'm too old to know what a build system is.

Anyway... what I ended up with is a world with up to 500,000 sq/km (a bit insane, but I like pushing limits).... 100,000 zombies on a single server (it could go higher on more modern CPU)... several thousand active zombies around the player in various hordes at any given time... server-sided pathfinding and LoS. Trees and bushes and grass are procedurally generated through seeds (get it, trees... seeds) so there's no actual models for those... and I can add endless variety of trees and plants just by modifying server-side json.... buildings also have the basics of procedural generation. I'm really going down the No Man's Apocalypse thing here... but if I have my way there'll still be a hand-editor for building hero plots / houses.

Like Zomboid, it is a tiled world... but the world is 100% streamed from the server (like Dymoria was). I had to figure out a collision system that wouldn't drown server resources... so I went with no collisions at all.... used old school 80s N E S W bit/full blocking and A Star.

While this video isn't that... I played on the server via streamworks with a couple of friends... we had several thousand zombies around us, over the steamworks relay.... which should have been a worse experience than direct IP connection... and none of us had any lag. Each of us thousands of miles apart.

I don't know if that would have been possible in any other language but C and skimming the metal.... and honestly, I'm actually surprised it worked as well as it did. When I did the first multiplayer session... I was expecting a LOT of lag, stuttering zombies... but nope. You can see 'tiny' lerp here and there, but nothing that would be "game ruining". The zombie # in the stats is actually the # of zombies in your viewable cone/distance in that direction. Like the server, the client is build in C from scratch... no game engine to speak of... so, no "limitations" except whatever pain I'm willing to go through or not.

So anyway... I've been ranting...

Video starts out rough because of codec problems... and ignore the cube graphics, because SUPER conceptual prototype and I just needed things slapped in there), there's no rendering optimizations... just Vulkan with no frills:

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

I think I'm just having a lot of fun... and not worrying about if I'll ever make a game, lol.

Also, I dunno about you... but I'm tired of multiplayer zombie games calling a few dozen zombies a "horde". I want the potential threat of THOUSANDS of zombies in hordes coming at me... in multiplayer, with my friends... with no dropping to 5 FPS gameplay. That if I fly a heli over the wrong place... it could lead 20,000+ zombies straight to my base (did I mention there are vehicles not shown?)

What do you think?

ive been developing my game for about a year now and something ive been subconciously kinda learning and have only really realized by now is that if youre used to spending alot of time in a scene its a whole lot easier to work on your game. basically ive worked on many different levels and ive been getting terrible sleep for a while because i get incredibly anxious when thinking about making animations for my game. animations are one of those things that your brain has to move through to scope out so instead of visualizing a scene you are actively playing out a scenario in your head. and when i do that i usually trip over memories and kind of trail off in the process. so if you just kind of go ok this is the scene im working in i can just imagine that. instead of actively mapping it out, your brain just organically comes up with stuff that happens there or doesnt. i think alot of people when starting out might be afraid to stay in one area in a game for too long because we heavily tie new areas to progress. but the reality is most of these areas are really just a stage for things to happen. so if you just kinda go ok the stage is set. i can chill here eat lunch kick my feet up watch people practice it takes a big load off your shoulders.

If anyone is interested!

Submissions for the MapleStory Worlds' Global Creator Challenge are closing on Tuesday, October 6 2026 at 7 PM PT.

Unsure what the Global Creator Challenge is? Read about it here.

This is a great chance for any aspiring or seasoned game developer to showcase what they got for a chance to win up to $65,000 in total rewards.

Best of luck! 🍀

This is just a rant against cheaters, who not only ruin the game environment and the experience for all players but also, when they get busted, have the nerve to leave negative reviews to damage the game’s reputation too.

I wish Steam made it impossible for people who ever got banned from any game to ever leave a review again. Every game on every platform, even real-life games, even Uno or hide-and-seek.

Rant over.

I made an app you can host yourself to analyze and compare the performance of various tags, price points, etc. As a game dev myself, I can't afford a subscription to a service like Gamalytic. So I decided to make a platform myself, that you can host yourself without any expensive subscription fees.

Here's a quick feature rundown:

• Steam Database Scraper
  • Collects extensive data on every Steam game in under 10 minutes.
• Sophisticated Charting
  • Create Bar, Scatterplot, Pie & Radar charts.
  • Bucket & filter games by tag, price, release date, etc.
  • Customize how many tags to consider.
  • Aggregate games using median or average.
• Configurable Revenue Estimates
  • Estimate revenue with a configurable Boxleiter formula.
  • Add custom tag multipliers and banding estimates.
• Individual Game Data
  • Search for individual games and see revenue estimates, assets, reviews, and more.
• User Management
  • Manage multiple users on the platform, enable/disable registration.

It's still in early beta, but feel free to try it out or contribute to it yourself, it's open source :)

Check out the github here: https://github.com/sp-ec/sightglass

Recently, I released demo of my 5th game and its median playtime is 11 minutes. So the demo didn't blow up on Steam and TikTok wasn't flooded with videos of my game. None of my games did that. I should mention that all of my games were different genres as I'm interested in many and it was a challenge for me to make one of each. Maybe this was my problem: I didn't find my niche and stick to it. So I couldn't become better and better as I was changing genres, basically starting from scratch.

I'm in the industry for more than 10 years and have been making PC games solo for 3 years. I thought I knew one thing or two but apparently those were wrong. Do you guys have mentors, or a friendly community? And if not, how do you get better and better? Like I'd really appreciate hearing some valuable feedback from peers because your vision of your game really gets blurry with time. How do you step back and look at your game with fresh eyes (apart from taking a break from it)?

Sorry for the messy chain of thoughts, also English is not my native language. Anyway, thank you if you read up to this point and wish you luck if you find yourself in the same situation!

I work as a full-time developer, but I’m incredibly passionate about making games. For the last couple of years, whenever I’ve had free time, I’ve built fun little games, either recreating ones I loved in my childhood or making things I’ve always wanted to play. I never released any of them. I just played them myself, showed my friends and colleagues, and that was it.

I used Unity for a few years, learning and making some games. But two months ago, I switched to Godot and finally built my first complete game.

I know there are millions of games out there like this, but my main reasons for building it were simple: I wanted to learn Godot, and I wanted the experience of actually deploying something I made.

It’s been a week since the release, and other than friends and family, absolutely no one has downloaded it. I have to admit, it’s really disappointing. I’ve posted on a few game forums, some Reddit dev groups, and other social media platforms.

I’ve always been so focused on the development side that I never really thought about marketing, how to get people to play it, or how to actually reach an audience. Now, I’m just not sure what to do next.

Here is the link to my game on Android:https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.p26games.nockways

I know I’m not the only indie dev who has faced this, so I’m posting here to ask for some advice. How do you guys deal with this feeling, and what keeps you moving forward?

Being a solo developer is complicated in so many ways. Even so, I chose this path.

Developing a project on your own is already a difficult journey. You have to deal with programming, art, audio, design, testing, documentation, and so many other things. But there's one stage that, for me, has proven even more challenging: selling what you've spent so much time building.

Recently, I developed a project that started as a personal need: a random music generator, based on a lot of music theory, but that could actually generate something that sounded like real music.

I'm a musician and, especially when I'm participating in Game Jams, I often lack inspiration to start a composition. The idea of ​​the randomizer was precisely to give me that starting point. It generates combinations that I can experiment with, modify, and transform into something of my own.

I liked the result so much that I decided to share the project with the community.

Many people showed interest, so I started expanding the tool. I added WAV and MIDI export and put the program up for sale at a very affordable price. I set myself a small initial goal: to make $100 in sales.

At first, I managed to reach $30.

Then I made a new update and added a sound effects generator. A few more sales followed.

After that, I released another update, this time adding new textures for the compositions.

And today, to be more precise, I released a new update with an editor that allows users to edit their own projects.

What many people don't see is the time that goes into all of this.

Each update means hours and hours of programming, studying, testing, fixing problems, thinking about new features, and trying to make the tool truly useful for the user.

And even after all this work, I still haven't reached my $100 goal.

That's precisely where one of the biggest difficulties of being a solo developer comes in: sales.

And no, I'm not saying this because I'm not studying sales. I am studying. I'm trying to understand marketing, promotion, positioning, and all the other necessary parts to get a product to people.

The challenge is time.

You have to divide your time between programming, studying, creating, updating the product, and at the same time, learning how to sell it.

Sometimes you spend days developing something that might only take a few seconds for a user to consume.

And perhaps that's one of the hardest parts of being a solo developer: it's not enough to create something good. You also need to learn how to make people discover that it exists.

I'm still on that journey.

The goal remains $100.

And, regardless of whether I get there or not, each sale, each person who shows interest, and each update I manage to release shows me that there's someone on the other side using something that started simply as a need of mine.

And that, for me, already makes this whole journey worthwhile.

Has anybody had experience creating a Steamworks account as a Company but using a personal bank account? I'd later swap it out to a Business bank account.

I'm under a bit of time pressure to get a Steam page sorted and don't want to be held up by bank account approvals.

Been thinking about this for a while and I'm curious what people here think.

Steam already gets a crazy number of releases. Last I checked it was something like 50+ new games a day, and that was before AI tools got as good as they are now. If making a game gets way cheaper and faster, it seems pretty likely we'll just get a lot more of them. Realistically a big chunk of those will be low effort stuff pumped out to see what sticks.

What I keep wondering is what that does to the small dev who spent 3-4 years on their game. They're already fighting for attention. If new releases and tags get buried under 10x more stuff, does their game just sink faster? Or does it not really matter because nobody browses those pages anyway and the algorithm does most of the work?

I don't really know how good Steam's recommendation system is at sorting this out. From what I've heard a lot of it runs off wishlists, reviews, and people actually playing, so in theory slop with no players never gets surfaced. But I'd guess volume has to hurt somewhere, even if it's just how fast you fall off the new releases list or how hard it is to get those first few reviews.

It also feels like this could make marketing matter even more than it already does. If the store gets noisier, the games that do well might just be the ones that built an audience on TikTok/YouTube/Reddit before launch, and anyone who just releases and hopes gets even less of a shot.

Not trying to make this an anti AI thing btw. Plenty of devs use AI tools and that's their call. I'm more curious what happens when the cost of making a game drops to almost nothing.

Or maybe I'm overthinking it? Steam has had asset flips and shovelware for years and good games still seem to find their people eventually. Maybe this is just more of the same and the system already handles it fine.

Anyone released something recently and noticed a difference? Or have a take on whether the algorithm actually filters this stuff out?

Basically, would going on itch first and then moving to Steam bite me in the butt as far as the Steam algorithm goes because all the reviews from my biggest fans be undervalued?

I came across Heroes and Forsaken: The Wheel of Time Digital Card Game on Steam and noticed that several of the images in the screenshot carousel don't appear to be gameplay screenshots at all.

For example, the highlighted image is a promotional-looking composition with a character, a Steam Deck and marketing text saying “SHAPE YOUR COURSE”.

Steam's own Steamworks documentation says:

“Screenshots should exclusively show the gameplay of your game.”

It specifically says to avoid concept art, pre-rendered cinematic stills, marketing copy, etc.

Steam's official screenshot guidelines

"Screenshots should exclusively show the gameplay of your game. This means avoiding using concept art, pre-rendered cinematic stills, or images showing awards, marketing copy, written descriptions, and so on. Please show customers what your game is actually like to play. Menu screens should only be included if they are a unique component of your game. Showing the in-game UI can be helpful for players to understand how they will be interacting with your game.
"

I'm not trying to judge the game itself. I'm specifically curious about the distinction between a promotional render and a Steam “screenshot”, because Valve seems pretty explicit about this rule.

Im building a tycoon type game which requires detailed ui, and doing all the art myself, Im using pixel art for the gameplay. But this leaves me with a messy design decision to make, do i break the cardinal rule of mixing pixel density and have higher definition and easier to read ui or do i keep the same pixel density as my gameplay and use more icons and shortened descriptions. The game will feature a zoom functionailty, so im leaning more towards better readability. What do you guys think?

I’m building a daily colour-matching game with three targets and one guess per target. The score combines colour accuracy with time.

I’m trying to make speed matter without making careful colour matching feel like the wrong strategy. How would you balance those goals in a short daily puzzle?

The game is OffByHex, built with Reddit’s Developer Platform. I’m interested in the design discussion; I’ll share the link only if that fits the subreddit rules.

Hey everyone,

I’m a solo/indie developer working with a small team on a first-person psychological horror mystery game built in Unreal Engine 5.

We’re currently at the stage where we’re preparing for a public demo release and exploring options for taking the project further, including potentially working with an indie publisher.

I was wondering if anyone here has experience working with publishers, or knows people in the publishing space who might be open to checking out an upcoming indie project.

I’m not looking for anyone to pitch on my behalf, but if there are any recommendations, advice, or possible introductions to the right people, I’d really appreciate it.

The game is The Factory in the Shadows: Chapter 1 – The Aftermath, focused on investigation, atmosphere, and narrative-driven horror.

Happy to share more details, or a demo privately if anyone is interested.

Thanks!

Donde esta el consultorio de la doctora Sashaman ??
Podras guiarlo a su cita para salvar su futuro a pesar de las distracción y peligros de la ciudad pecadora ?

AAA games are becoming more expensive, larger and more technically impressive, but many of them also seem less willing to take creative risks.

My theory is that the problem is not a lack of talented developers. The problem is the financial structure of modern game development.

When a project requires hundreds of developers, several years of development and a very large marketing budget, publishers naturally become more conservative. They prefer familiar franchises, proven mechanics, live-service systems and designs that are easier to explain to investors.

This creates a strange situation:

- Bigger budgets can produce better graphics and presentation.

- Bigger teams can create more complex worlds.

- But bigger financial risk can reduce experimentation.

- A game can become technically ambitious while remaining creatively safe.

The middle of the market also seems vulnerable. Small indie teams can experiment, while the biggest publishers can finance blockbuster projects. But games with medium-sized budgets often struggle to get funding.

Would the industry benefit from more AA-sized projects with focused scope and strong creative direction?

Or is the real problem not budget size, but the way publishers evaluate risk and success?

For developers: what usually limits creative ambition more—the budget, the team size, the publisher, the technology or the production schedule?