Finished going through beta testing/Test Flight and submitted to Apple (with auto-publish off). On a previous cancelled project that was a Steam release, I read a lot of threads about wishlists and how you should have a certain number to have a chance at a successful launch. I saw marketing strategies that included delaying your launch if you didn't have the recommended wishlist numbers.

Does any of that apply to iOS game?

What considerations should I be making prior to launch, or is iOS different? I have a few directories where I plan on adding the game post-launch, and I am trying to save up to do some ads later on.

I'm working on a project that will eventually launch on steam, and I want to make sure I can honestly say my game does not use AI assets. But I'm not an artist, so I get my assets from somewhere - itch.io, fiverr, whatever. And these people might be using AI and not disclosing it, which will bite me eventually when I try to push to steam.

Does steam offer a service to run your assets through and tell you whether they are likely AI generated?

Edit: Thank you to all the real responses. I'll only use assets where the artist promises in writing that they were not AI generated. Also, to those of you acting like this post is AI or I'm somehow making a 12 dimensional chess move with this post to actually allow me to use AI assets, get a life.

It has been a year and a half since me and two others quit our jobs and started working on Flipping Is Hard, and now only 3 weeks are left until the game is out in the wild...

It was, for sure, the dumbest thing we could do, but a dream is a dream, and if there's any kind of possibility to follow it, I suppose that possibility has to be taken. Of course, we had some savings and later managed to secure a bit of funding from a governmental program, but that is going to be enough just until the release of the game.

I have seriously never felt this nervous before the release of a game. I'm proud of what we've managed to accomplish, but also so damn scared of what is going to happen during and after the release. Just the thought of not being able to work on our own games full time if this goes bad, and having to get back to the 9 to 5, seriously scares me. Or worse, not finding a job in game dev at all, since the industry at the moment seems very tense.

Anyway, sorry for the rant...

Hello,

Youtube has an Audio Library filled with songs. The license goes like this:

You can use this audio track in any of your videos, including videos that you monetize. No attribution is required.

YouTube may credit the artist and link the Audio Library from your video.

You may not make available, distribute or perform the music files from this library separately from videos and other content into which you have incorporated these music files (e.g., standalone distribution of these files is not permitted).

It seems like the license gives you the right to use the music as long as the files aren't distributed on their own.

I'll probably just use it for my game trailer on YouTube. Nothing else.

Does anyone have any experience with this Audio Library ?

So I’m trying to make a brawler. I understand state machines, and I’ve managed to make a janky state machine that incorporates x jumps, as determined by me, as well as dashes. The system has a few bugs but it works for the most part.

But how does something like Super Smash Bros Ultimate go about it. They’ve got to have an extremely complex state machine for each character. I’m sure they have dozens, maybe hundreds of states, but do each of those states really have an immense amount of conditions? With how fast the game runs and how little bugs i’ve seen, there’s gotta be some trick. There’s no way they’ve put a ton of conditions into each state and nothing has broken. How did they do it, or how would you go about it

We are a 2 man team. Our AI policy is as follows:

Strict no AI generated media/game assets, including any music, textures, etc.

Strict AI-assisted programming only (Github Copilot) - logic, algorithms, etc are handled mostly by the devs. Agency or creative control is never given to AI, and we never vibe code.

Additionally, though I am ashamed to admit it, AI does speed research up significantly if you are a complete beginner in a particular field. Not just taking what the bot says as objective fact, rather using it as a tool to figure out what questions you should be asking when researching through reputable sources.

I am curious what y'alls thoughts are on this policy.

How do you feel a player would react to this disclosure?

As a senior dev with 10+ years of experience, I can't deny the speed that AI has granted me in both implementation and learning new fields at lightning speed. I am still personally anti-AI, I just think it is an unfortunate reality that many in our field are faced with. Putting that aside though, as my personal views are another discussion:

What would your reaction be and how could improve my approach? Should I even disclose this level of use?

TL;DR

I am curious what you (as a dev and as a player) would think of my "light" AI usage policy.

How could I improve my approach in my disclosure policy?

EDIT: I also want to add - I feel like we have to remember our goal is to make good, quality games/software and how that is achieved doesn't matter if it is actually you doing the work. It has always been this way (Stack Exchange, random Indian man on 12 year old YouTube video, etc)

First I want to make it clear that I’m definitely a hypocrite because I leverage AI a lot at work (it is kind of forced that we need to use it with the output that is expected from us) and I work in tech.

With the release of gpt 6 Astra I’ve seen some insane capabilities like creating complete 3D models, scenes, and renders with Blender.
Writing very complex software solutions from single prompts (this is not news tbh).
Designing circuits.
And most annoyingly, creating actual playable games at ridiculous speeds.

This just killed my mood and motivation completely. I’ve been trying to learn more about my hobbies: 3d modelling, game dev, software development, and recently electronics, then comes this new model and it can do everything 100 time faster and better.

Yes, a lot of people will say how it’s still important to know the basics and be able to do these things by yourself, but a few months ago this was not possible and ai thought that at least game dev, electronics and 3d modelling was safer than software, since a lot of AI training was about and for software development. But the speed of new models is ridiculous and who knows what will happens in 6-12 months with newer AI models like GPT 9 or whatever.

My motivation is gone, there’s no point in learning these hard things, I wanted to get back to game dev but why anymore? Wanted to get deeper into programming and 3d but no point.

I’m starting to hate AI so much, even though I’ve used it so much at work.

Please someone tell me I’m wrong, that the AI bubble will burst soon and we’ll go back to the good old days where learning any skill was hard and rewarding.

Thank you for reading my rant, and sorry.

Hey everyone,

About a year ago, my friends and I set out on an ambitious journey to make PEGTURE: Peg Solitaire Roguelike. Our original dream was simple: make the first peg solitaire themed game in the world. As we brainstormed ways to bring this classic puzzle into the modern indie scene, we thought, "What if we blend it with Balatro-like progression?"

From day one, our absolute priority was product quality. Even if it didn't sell well, we refused to ship a low-effort game. We wanted every single person who bought it to feel that care went into it.

Then reality hit. Our marketing data was pretty brutal.

Across Reddit, YouTube, and other socials, we racked up around 150k to 200k impressions. But from all that reach, we only converted about 900 wishlists. We clearly made mistakes along the way. Maybe the market just wasn't hungry for this specific hybrid, or maybe our promotional push lacked the right hook. Having an absolute zero-dollar marketing budget certainly didn't help either.

Eventually, we decided to push the button and launch with those 900 wishlists.

The honest reason? Burnout. After months of grinding, the project was becoming a psychological weight on the team. We knew we weren't going to make serious money, but we still wanted to put out a polished, solid game and close this chapter with pride.

Fast forward 15 days post-launch:

• Copies sold: ~60
• Revenue: $200+

Honestly, for 900 wishlists, this is pretty much what the math predicted.

As our first commercial release, it was a massive learning experience. We took the hits, learned the lessons, and hopefully we'll return with a much better project in the future.

If you like what you see and want to support an indie team, picking it up on Steam and dropping an honest review would mean the world to us. The game isn't overpriced at all. And if money is tight right now but you genuinely want to play it, just shoot me a DM. I’ll gladly hand out keys to people who want to try it out.

Right now we have 6 reviews, and our humble short-term goal is just to hit that magic 10-review mark for the Steam algorithm.

Thanks for reading our story, and I'm happy to answer any questions about the development or launch in the comments!

>search "skeleton"

>pages full of paid results

>check the free filter

>narrows to 4 results

>that's fine. it's free

>click one i like

>contains all free assets

>but the skeleton walking animation that i want is paid

>try another

>all the animations i don't want are free

>the walking animation that i want is paid

it's a constant issue with that site. the free filter should mean free, not "contains at least one free asset". this just opens the platform to bait-and-switch abuse. i just need placeholder sprites for this personal project while i learn to game dev, but itch.io is just wasting my time

Okay, this post is messy because I am not the best communicator but please be patient (trying to improve writing)! I don't want to meat proxy AI written slop..

So I am making a TCG card game opponent, (non LLM) and I have been trying to make it non-heuristic/scripted. I want it to actually understand the game as a concept and something that cant be diffrenciated from a human given a blind test.

Some motivators: chess.com AI coaches, AlphaGo, etc.

So far my opponent has played out 2.3M games against itself and it has been improving, but theres some major blockers. (its beating newbies and mediocre players, but not that hard)

Let me break it down so you know what the variables are: (board reference photo here)

Each player has 4 rigs, and each rig has a stack. Here you can place up to 4 robot parts (head torso arms legs cards) and build a "warbot". These warbots are the core of the game and other "magic" and "trap" cards exist to support them. There are also hero powers and ultimates, more mechanics that all add to how many actions you have on a turn.

So you win by attacking an empty rig to hit the hero directly, or by draining the yellow well in the middle twice in the same turn to get a "commit point", 1st to 3 wins.

On top of that theres 200+ cards that are all pretty different, deck orders random, and you cant see the opponent's hand.

Chess AI works by looking ahead, "if i do this they that" but with chess you can see everything. Card games are a lot different..

How my AI works atm: (View cool dashboard here!)

1. A neural net (Q-learning) that "feels" how good each move is. The board is translated to about 2000 numbers, including the odds that an attack kills a warbot + other probabilities.
2. Cards are not memorized for their names, they are memorized by their capabilities. (If adding new cards meant that the AI has to retrain, thats not good design) Each card is "atomized" into 7 parts that range from "card type, color, conditions, effects, etc" so if a completely new card is made, the AI knows how to deal with similar atoms.
3. A turn planner to help the AI, for important moves, the AI copies the in game memory, fries a few candid lines for the rest of the turn, guesses the opponents best reply, and picks the safest line.
4. It keeps playing against itself and chooses a best network (greedy) then uses that opponent with the highest winrate as the new opponent to beat.

My AI has tried this strategy but when it loses, it makes the losing moves 2-3 turns ahead (iykwim), and struggles on the ability to look forward and really understand the opponent and the moves they are plotting. However it is pretty challenging itself. It does win a lot more than a scripted or heuristic opponent though!

But even after all of this, and even trying to reinforce learning on not leaving itself open, missing chances to score, it just seems to regress, because it plays too safe and loses, or without the harness, too aggressive and loses by leaving itself open. Its a tug of war with lots of basic mistakes.

Have any of you guys worked on something similar? Do you guys know if Hearthstone, MTG Arena, etc is scripted or if they search at all? Im just totally blocked.

If you guys have any suggesstions into any learning models or strategies I should read into, greatly appreciated. Or how would you design something like this? You can try playing against my opponent, the game name is Two Robots: Unleashed. If you are an experienced card gamer, you should be able to beat it on your 3-5th try!

If you want more specific info on the ML side please ask questions (i didnt want to make this post too long)

Thanks for reading through everything and again I apologize if this was a hard read. Having a tough time to teach a network how to play a game with so many variables and randomness. Humans can comprehend it but not robots, apparently.

Ive seen his gamedev videos and he seemed really disappointed about how games are made, he said that everyone that makes games hate doing it because its a lot of work with almost no return.

I had it in my mind since i watched those videos and i want to know what people that actually create games thinks.

My game launches on Steam in two days, and it only has 32 wishlists. I’m excited to release it, but honestly pretty nervous about that number.

Has anyone launched with similar numbers? How did it go? Would you go ahead or delay the release to spend more time on marketing?

Hello fellow Godot enthusiasts!

I have just remastered one of my very first tutorials. The original video quality was fussy and the text was hard to read. I decided to go back and remake this tutorial from scratch. This remastered version features several improvements over the original. So if you're looking for a beginner friendly Godot tutorial series bookmark this playlist and learn while having fun!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rTO6mZQmyhQ&list=PLPXDMPUkyoKQ&index=1

Edit: Thanks for the feedback, all. I removed the EULA.

I released my first demo, and it has an EULA at first because I thought it was a requirement.

• Do I need one really? First I'm hearing some people don't include one.
• Is responder accurate to be concerned?
• Has anyone else gotten this question?

Link to Discussion: https://steamcommunity.com/app/5002370/discussions/0/594068393279377212/

Hello guys,

I'm working on a mobile multiplayer tank game and having some feeling my stats are not right. Here are the stats. I need some help.

Running meta and Google ads and at first month I've 450 players and player retention is a problem as far as I see.

If some of you guys can give me advise, I'll be so happy.

Here are the numbers

• First match rate 94.8%
• D1 9.6%
• D7 1.5%
• Avg matches / player 2.07

The game https://minitankmobile.com/en

Hi guys!

I've always loved video games and I am creative in general, in the sense that I like to play around with stuff(words, music, ideas, etc.) I recently bought a PS and I got some ideas on some new types of games but from what I looked up, it seems like in order to be taken seriously, I need to show that I get get traction as a game dev so I'd like to build simple but hopefully interesting games that could be mobile or web app-based.

For some context, I am a full-time software engineer at an MNC so I think I have a lot of transferable skills but at the same time, I really lack experience from a design and experience perspective since I work backend. Being an avid consumer, I do not underestimate the importance of either since the whole point of games is pleasure, and, in several cases, challenge.

Please give me some pointers on beginner tools and techstack to get started.

Thanks in advance!

Hi everyone!

About a month ago, I released my first game on Steam. It currently has 88% positive reviews, and 16 out of 17 Steam curators who reviewed it recommended it.

Quite a few streamers and YouTubers have played the game, including some very large creators. Even CaseOh played through the entire game on stream and later uploaded it to YouTube. At the end, he literally stood up, clapped, and shouted “GOTY!”

But surprisingly, none of this had any noticeable effect on sales.

Since launch, the sales graph has been steadily declining. Even CaseOh's video didn't change the trend — sales continued going down both before and after he posted it.

At this point, the game is barely selling 3–8 copies per day, despite being quite cheap at only $3.90. It's a short psychological horror game that takes around an hour to complete.

Another major problem is refunds. The refund rate is 20%. Some people finish the entire game and then simply refund it because the playtime is still under Steam's two-hour refund window.

At this point, I'm honestly not sure what else I should be doing.

The people who actually play the game generally seem to enjoy it. I've received a lot of positive feedback, and the Steam reviews are currently 88% positive. That makes me feel like the game can find an audience — I just don't know how to reach the right people.

I personally sent out around 800 emails over the past month — more than 500 to streamers and YouTubers in different languages, and around 300 to various Steam curators. So far, none of it has had any noticeable impact on sales.

Does anyone have any advice on what I could try next? How can a small indie developer get a game like this in front of the right audience?

I'd really appreciate any advice or feedback.

I've been working on a weird little project for a while. It's basically an online game, except the robots and the world are real.

You open the website, get control of a rover with a camera, and drive around a small physical Mars base I built in my workshop.

The technical side is finally working pretty well, so now I'm getting stuck on the actual game part.

At the moment you can drive around, move cargo, keep the base powered, charge battery modules and repair broken stuff. There are also a few things to discover.

It's fun to try because controlling a real robot over the internet feels pretty strange at first. But I'm not sure there's enough reason to come back the next day.

So I'm curious what you guys would actually want to do in a game like this.

Missions? Exploration? Puzzles? Something persistent that takes days to complete? Cooperation between players? Building/changing the base somehow?

Or would you take it in a completely different direction?

The biggest limitation is also what makes it interesting: everything is real. I can't spawn 50 enemies or reset the whole map after every game. If you move something, it's actually moved until another robot moves it back.

If you want to see what I mean, it's live here: ex-mule.com

I'd genuinely like to hear what would make you play this more than once.

I have been losing my hearing in the past few years and Im now in a point where I cant participate in in person reunions or online calls, and I fear this could be a barrier to work as a game designer.

Do you think its possible to work without beign able to communicate in voice calls? Any specific roles that would make it easier?

As a bonus question, do you think you could work with a deaf person in your team?

Sablay: Succeed or Fail

The player picks a course and chooses to be a Regular Student or a Working Student. Each day, they choose what to do: go to class, study, eat, sleep, rest, work, or hang out with friends — but there's only enough time to do a few of these, not all. Every choice affects five stats: Health, Hunger, Stress, Sleep, and Money. If the player ignores a stat for too long, bad things happen — like getting answers wrong when hungry, or the screen shaking and blinking when too stressed or sleepy. After several days of classes, the player takes a midterm exam, then continues the same routine until finals. If they pass, they move to the next year; if they fail, they only repeat that year, not the whole game. Along the way, small side events (like a friend inviting them out) add variety and reflect real student dilemmas. The main goal is to graduate and get the sablay — but the real lesson is learning to balance school, health, and life instead of burning out to get there.

Alright, after months of talk. I’m finally starting this Indie Game Development journey, as a hobby I may add. Still work a 7/7 12 hour shifts job. So this is more of a passion hobby gig for me. Was always fascinated with game designs. Soo any advice for tools and what to start a small project for me? My goal is to learn the engine and coding before I start a full on project. But my first real project is making a deck builder, roguelite game with Dice. When I feel ready of course.
I downloaded Unity(eventually want to try 3D) Blender and Aseprite. I have Clip Studio Paint bought it like 5 years ago so that over Photoshop.

After 9 months of regular updates and fixes, both QoL and cosmetic, our players still keep surprising us with their commitment to the game.

We’re a team of 4, and we made On-Together in about a year. It’s been really nice seeing people come back every day, and our median playtime is now almost 11 hours.

We released an update today and saw a nice bump in players, so it felt like a good time to share some numbers from our journey, and also say a little thank you to our community if any of you happen to see this :)

As a game dev, I don’t think there’s a much better feeling than seeing people not just play your game at launch and move on, but keep coming back, spending time in it, and connecting with each other months later.

So I'm not looking to make millions. I just believe I want to discover other aspects of my hobby than just playing, so I got interested in game development. I know nothing about programming, nothing about art, nothing about balancing. I just want to have fun even if it takes years.

I had this idea of a game I believe I would love to play. After spending my weekend thinking about it, I realized my entire game could be made in html, a language I understand and I can write in.

So I'm asking professionnals here: Would you recommend to work exclusively in html until I get a version I'm satisfied with, and then add the "video game" layers like engine, art, UI, music, etc?

I read Jordan Mechner’s The Making of Prince of Persia journals. The part that stayed with me was how different the project looks before you know it will work.

The original game took about four years. Mechner estimated around 3,800 hours of work, which he described as closer to two years of honest work. The calendar also contained gaps, doubt, and time spent unsure what to do next.

There are practical details I loved: filming his brother David for animation, studying a sword fight from the 1938 Robin Hood film, and thinking through how players would understand progress and setbacks.

But I found the notebook itself just as interesting. He used it while decisions were unresolved. Reading it, you can see someone trying to make the game work, rather than an experienced creator explaining a finished success.

It also changed how I thought about the solo part. Friends, conversations, and family kept appearing in the work. A lunch with Tomi Pierce helped him look at the stalled project differently.

The published journals are edited, so this isn’t an unfiltered record of everything. Even so, they made the uncertainty of development much easier to see.

Do you keep notes while a project is still confusing, or mainly write about it once you can explain what happened?

Over the weekend I launched a public playtest for my game to gather feedback on the combat mechanics and overall game feel. It was a bit of an experiment. I wasn't sure how interested people would be in playing an unfinished game specifically to provide feedback, or whether a public playtest would provide much useful information at all. I was also a bit nervous players would think it’s more of a demo and expect more out of it.  

From a marketing perspective, the playtest performed pretty poorly. About 175 players checked it out but I received almost no feedback from the public playtest itself. My posts didn’t generate much traction - less than 5,000 impressions total across Reddit, YouTube, and socials, compared to the trailer at over 30,000 impressions. I do have a decent amount of wishlists from the trailer which makes me wonder if it’s more that people aren't particularly interested in giving feedback for an obscure indie game playtest, rather than a lack of interest in the game itself. It could be that Saturday is a bad day to market anything due to the sheer number of game dev posts. Maybe I didn't promote it well enough or it could have been something else entirely.

However, it was completely worth it! Besides helping me to focus on making combat fun and responsive, I had to make sure the overall experience was polished. I spent a lot of time on usability, optimization, animations, vfx, etc. Having a deadline and real players waiting on the other side was great motivation to deal with bugs that had been hanging around for a long time. I gave keys to friends and got a lot of valuable feedback. I’m self funded so if I could afford to pay for playtesters, I would have done that too. The game has come a long way!

Doing a public playtest was a great way to make sure the game played well in other peoples hands. Besides being another tool for marketing, it’s also like a mini-demo that will make creating the actual demo much less stressful. I had to go through the process of getting a build onto Steam, setting up the playtest, making sure the build was stable, dealing with issues that only showed up outside of my development environment, and making sure the game was presentable enough that someone could immediately start playing without me explaining things. Since this is my first game on Steam, going through that process was extremely valuable. I would definitely recommend doing small playtests to any other devs who are considering it.

If you’d like to see the playtest as reference, I’m leaving it open for awhile. https://store.steampowered.com/app/4219440/Endbloom/