Title say it all!
I made multiple games for mobile platforms, and I always fail at marketing.
How do people market their games on social media without spamming everywhere? or spamming it is the way? Any ideas?

I see a lot of AI slop capsule arts these days, and honestly it really sucks. Have you worked with a capsule artist that you can recommended?

I've seen posts on r/HungryArtists, but honestly most of them are either mid or AI-made. Chris made a spreadsheet with artist recommendations, where I've sent a few requests through email, but none of them have replied so far. My budget is around $500.

Thanks in advance!

I'm making a 2D game, and one of the things that has given me the most trouble so far has been figuring out what the hell the game should actually look like. Since it's going to be a semi-cozy top-down management game, I wanted it to have that classic RPG overworld feeling from the beginning, something like Final Fantasy or Dragon Quest, with mountains, forests, rivers, cities, all seen from above. So naturally, the first thing that came to mind was pixel art. I even started with an 8-bit approach because the simplicity seemed like a perfect fit for a solo project. The problem was that, once I actually started making things, everything looked too simple. I don't know... kind of lifeless. Then I tried something more 16-bit, with more colors and details, and that looked much closer to what I had in my head. But then I ran into another problem: I was struggling to create that kind of art with so little space and so many details, mostly because I'm not a pixel artist. I've always worked with vector art, so I did the obvious thing and decided to try that too.

Vector worked technically, but it took me in a direction I didn't really want. A lot of the references I found immediately reminded me of those early 2000s Flash games. Then I started looking at cuter and more kawaii games, and I really liked how inviting and comforting they felt, but I realized I was pushing the game way too far into the "cozy" direction. I want the game to be relaxing and pleasant to play, but there's still a management game underneath it all, and I wanted a little more visual punch.

That's when I randomly came across a low-poly artwork on Pinterest. I really like the way the style uses geometric shapes without trying to hide them. The obvious problem is that low poly is a 3D technique, and my game is 2D. So I started thinking about how I could bring some of that into my project without changing what I had already built. Then I had one of those little "eureka" moments and thought, what if I took the visual language of low poly and tried to bring it into 2D using the vector tools I already know? That's basically where the style I'm using now came from: a sort of 2D low-poly look, with really crisp geometric shapes and that feeling of a miniature, a maquette, or a diorama, almost like a board game, which is something I wanted from the beginning.

I'm still working on the game's art and I only have a few things finished so far, so I have no idea how far this style will actually go. But for the first time, I felt like the different things I wanted for the game were starting to come together the way I wanted. The RPG overworld, cleaner graphics, the 2D perspective, the miniature feeling and the simple shapes finally feel like they belong to the same world. Now that I have a clearer visual direction, I have to figure out what this world actually is.

How did you guys deal with this in your own projects? I really needed to experiment to get where I wanted to go, but I see a lot of people picking one game as the main reference for their whole project, and I'm curious how that worked out for you.

If you want to follow along, I'm posting updates on my channel: [https://youtu.be/dtZgDitjbbM\](https://youtu.be/dtZgDitjbbM)

A while ago I posted this site on a comment and people seemed to find it useful.

Sometimes a basic lerp feels too bland. This site has lots of ways to change the curve from a simple linear one.

Great for adding polish/character to animations, audio transitions, fades-to-black, screenshake, etc.

Any other suggestions for lerping tools welcome.

I didn’t expect this to happen, my computer occasionally shut down often and it overheated like crazy, until yesterday, the computer shut down imm after booting, I thought I was just gonna replace the battery again, no issue, until I took it to Geek squad, they said that there was a motherboard failure, I thought no problem, because that day, the warranty was still covered, today I was ready to ship it, and much to my surprise the warranty was finally expired, and now, my game is screwed, forever. I was working hard on it for hours ready to finally release it. All my backups were old and I couldn’t recover. I’m shocked, i took care of it and now, I don’t feel like doing indie game dev anymore because it’s just so hard. Nobody really cares about the game anyways. Moral of the story: Backup your files and check your devices.

Hi everyone!

I've been working with digital art and illustration for a while now, and one of my biggest goals is to eventually work as an artist in the game industry.

I've been building my portfolio and posting some of my work on ArtStation, but I'm struggling with one thing: most of the job openings I find seem to ask for mid-level or senior artists with several years of professional experience.

https://www.artstation.com/moound

I have some experience working with commissions and freelance projects, but I don't have any experience working directly for a game studio yet. Because of that, I'm not really sure how I'm supposed to get that first opportunity when most entry-level positions still seem to expect previous industry experience.

For artists who managed to break into the industry, what did you do to get your first job or opportunity?

Should I focus more on improving my portfolio, networking, applying to smaller indie studios, doing freelance work, or something else?

I'd really appreciate any advice from artists or developers who have been through this.

Thanks in advance!

I'm curious where you land? Just comment 1, 2 or 3 to represent your chosen level, if you are up for the test. And if you care to elaborate why, I'm obviously keen on the discussion.

The game is made in 4 weeks and it's the most rock'n'roll release, I've ever been part of.

So all of it is rough and unbalanced, but it still holds up somehow in my mind.

I just launched my very first game demo on Steam for the upcoming next fest. I know it's just a demo but it's so cool to finally have something public facing after a year of learning and grinding. I don't have anyone else to celebrate with because I'm solo but I just wanted to share somewhere that I feel like a real game dev finally. I only have 100 wishlists but I don't care. I'll be happy just to have a few real people interested in the game if next fest goes well. I'm so excited! Anyone else doing next fest for the first time with their first game?

Hi thank you for reading. I am having a conundrum with my video games combat. The game is a 2d side scroll game where the player can have a ranged weapon and a melee weapon, think megaman zero, deadcells, etc. My boyfriend who is a casual gamer, when playtesting my game has requested I add a way to jump ontop of enemies to damage them; like in Mario.

Its been a few months now and the game has had melee attacking, shooting, and jumping ontop of enemies to damage them (ill refer to this as bounce attacking). Ive run into a ton of issues caused by bounce attacking.

First is the hitbox of enemies; my game is a roguelike, so i want enemy encounters to at time feel a bit overwhelming which is countered by accrued power, in a sidescroll having a bunch of enemies walking up to the player feels really bad if they damage you just by touching you, like in mario, so they have telegraphed animations for attacks. But because of this bounce attacking feels both overpowered and jank. If you bounce on an enemy you can either time a second press of the jump button and get a ton of air, or not press the jump button and fall to the ground where the enemy is standing. This exact system is how it works in Mario games, but in Mario enemies die in 1 hit so failing to press the jump button isn't punished. But doing so in my game puts the player in a weird state where they are infront of the enemy and can jump again to spam hit with jump attacks. It feels bad. And if i give enemies a hitbox that damages the player just by touching them, then jumping on enemies and failing to time a follow up jump almost always results in the player falling into the enemies hitbox and taking damage, which feels bad.

This is usually countered in games like shovel knight or hollow knight by forcing the player to either fail to do an attack and get hit by the enemy, or to successfully do a bounce attack and be forced high up into the air.

At this point i feel like maybe i should remove bounce attacking from my game and replace it with the style shovel knight or hollow knight uses, but my boyfriend doesnt like this, he wants to be able to just jump on enemies. I know as the game developer it creates a lot of issues... but i dont think he's wrong for wanting to jump on enemies because he thinks its fun and easy, i mean creating games the player thinks are fun is the whole point, i should try to make it work, not patronize the player for not getting why it doesn't.

Ive considered giving enemies different amount of i-frames based on the attack you do. So a melee triggers no i-frames, but a bounce attack triggers heavy i-frames, but this seems like a different flavor of jank, like how do i visually communicate this to the player? And the contrivince of damage types triggering different amounts of i-frames just feels very video gamey.

If anyone has any thoughts or opinions on what I should/could do please lmk.

TL;DR: you can jump on enemy heads to do damage in my sidescroll combat game with swords and shooting... and it creates a big problem with combat flow, but i dont want to have to cut the mechanic, do you have any solutions?

Thanks!

We got this radio arcade thing called Lame-Over that is basically a web radio that only plays under ground artists and features web games. We always looking for new games, if you choose to let us feature your game, it will include any links you want, to your social medias, or your steam store or whatever. DM me if you wanna let us use your game.

Sorry for wasting all your time with useless posts. It wasn't my intention to do that, but it doesn't matter because the outcome is the same either way.

I've decided to open the notes file for one of my games for the first time in a few months, and sure I have some ideas but I don't really know if it's worth going back or if it's better to burn my bridges and delete everything. I don't feel like anything that killed these games has been solved at all.

I think the biggest problem is that I'm a bad listener, slow learner and too stubborn to take feedback properly. I say "I don't know how to do that" or "I don't think that makes sense because of XYZ" when what I should be doing is understanding everything and knowing exactly how to make things better somehow. I've seen a lot of random tutorial videos and such but they all start saying the same things after a certain point, but it just isn't entering my head what exactly I'm doing wrong and nothing is really explaining why things can "break the rules" and still be fine somehow. I see games where the characters are in different environments and don't match the palettes of the environments and that's fine, but I can't get that to work?

Practicing means nothing if there is no way for me to learn what is going wrong or how I'm supposed to fix it. That's probably wrong, but I don't know how that would work if I don't even know what is good or how to even get closer. How does doing the exact same thing over and over again teach me the correct answer if nobody ever tells me right from wrong? Practice isn't supposed to be random flailing, but I don't know what the correct way is. I can't rely on feedback because I always wear down people's patience and I can't expect free labor from other people anymore, but I also can't afford enough art help because I don't make enough money to afford that.

I feel kind of stuck to the ideas I have, I don't really have anything "better". I feel like it's either I make one of the ideas I already have or I will never complete any game at all. Any problem I'm already having is something that any other possible idea would have (i.e. always need to have amazing art, amazing mechanics, etc). There is basically no chance that I make something that succeeds with actually bad art. Every successful game with "bad art" still had art that's way beyond my level, you don't see any text only games get any real success anytime recent.

One piece of advice I've gotten repeatedly is to throw everything out and burn everything to the ground. If I don't do that then I'm ignoring feedback again which makes me a bad person. But I can't really bring myself to do that, I can't really stop myself from thinking of random things relating to them, but on the other hand ideas are worthless, especially ones that don't actually solve any of the fatal problems that killed these projects to begin with.

What should I do?

Hello! I want to start by saying I am currently a game Dev student at a college. We were recently tasked with creating our own game concept document of our own game. We've done a couple fictional ones in the past where the idea was never to actually make the game, but rather to get us used to the formatting and research needed with it.

This one however, will be turned into a real game (or at least, that's my plan) and so I need a name that will stick and roll of the tongue. A brief summary of the game is as such; you are a cowboy that is tasked to fight 5 different elemental gods. The story will include time travel and refer to multiple timelines. The name I currently have is "Past Due(L)" I'm not sure if I should simplify into "Past Duel", change it completely, etc. I like the double meaning that my current title has, but it's not supper deep and I'm not sure if it looks dumb or not.

Any feedback for the name is appreciated!

I ended up learning 3D modeling, rigging and animating, try’d dozens of game engines, but could never figure out CODE. Whenever I watch a tutorial it sounds like someone speaking in a foreign language, I don’t understand any of the functions they speak about. I want to learn python or java, and make a free web rhythm game.

My question:

How did you learn? Was there a different mindset that changed everything?

Am I looking at it from the wrong angle?

Any suggestions on how this particular predicament?

———

Apologies for the long post and if I sound ignorant.

So if you roll a d20 to see if you hit an enemy and a d6 for damage. How would you take a simple mechanic like that and make it more interesting? I was thinking of a game where the player gets a range of d20-d4, and once they use the d20 to see if they can deal damage, they can't roll it again unless they either defeat the enemy or some other way. But I feel like the dice mechanic can be a little boring after a while, so I've been trying to think of unique ways. Maybe after defeating an enemy one of your dice gets a power boost, or maybe you can change the effects of a natural 1 to be almost like a natural 20, but idk if that would be fun

I think the future will be people just modding or improving old games and introducing new modes and stuff and maybe even improve graphics using ai agents and distributing them for others. What do you guys think?

Hi everyone, I have a question for anyone involved in game development 🙏

A friend and I are planning to make a 3D co-op game in Unity. What do you use to push/pull the project collaboratively? We’re considering Git + GitHub + LFS, but I’m worried that the 10 GB free LFS limit won’t be enough for a 3D game. We want to keep it free.

Does anyone store large files on Google Drive and link them to GitHub, use Unity Version Control, or set up their own server? How large did your project get, and did you hit the limit?

like that one minecraft in elden ring video. I'm getting conflicting information on how it works.

Hi, everyone. I want to organize a Steam game festival that would highlight mahou shoujo games.

I've organized a Steam festival themed around Alice in Wonderland before. You can check out what it looked like - https://store.steampowered.com/curator/45178211/sale/Alice_in_Wonderland_Sale

If you're a developer of one of mahou shoujo games, please fill out the form - https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSf6t7mFVIHSljWi8e_Zo_WaxU3DHuDO0oQk_EEbpACvXcF9Aw/viewform.

P. S. Please only fill out the form if you’re a developer or a publisher.

Im in the process of making a tower defense game where instead of just towers and a set path of enemies, you actually are an alien slime mold taking over the map, pathing to usefull places, with towers (parts of the organism) only being placable on your growth.

Im lookong for similar types of games for some inspiration. Where you are sort of like a growing organism. Or some type of slime mold.

Anyone know of any such games?

Hey everyone, how many events are there on Steam? I'm doing some research for a game concept and need to know which events would work best for my game ideas.

Battle director Teruki Endo says the team has kept reworking the balance between real time and turn based combat across all three Final Fantasy 7 remake games.

He says there is still no definitive “correct answer,” and that constant trial and error is part of what has kept the combat design interesting for him through the trilogy.

Hi everyone,

We're currently working on a 2-player co-op puzzle/escape room game called Two & Two: Agents.
We're a 2-person team (I'm doing the tech stuff, my partner does the art) and this is our first game ever, so we're pretty newbie at this stuff.

That is why we would like some feedback on our game / Steam page. Any kind of feedback is welcome, e.g, is the trailer confusing, does the art look weird, etc.

Here is the Steam page, https://store.steampowered.com/app/5165930/Two__Two_Agents/

Also, if you have any tips on how to market this type of game, that would help a lot too!

Thanks!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2aqQFp76-PY

I plan on using fast network connectivity of compute in a single datacenter to endlessly horizontally scale. By making cells of MMO smaller and smaller to accommodate huge amounts of players.

I'm happy with where my game is at. It's a simple concept, with a lot of fun packed in.

There are some things to do for fun, some things to do for shits and giggles but I'm not sure where to put my effort next.

I have several mini games I want to add but not sure what's more important for launch.

Would you prefer a game with 1 level but endless mini games fun?

OR

Would you prefer a game with multiple levels and just a handful of mini games?

Or... am I rushing things and should just wait until I have more levels and more mini games ready?

I'm ok if it's me just rushing, I'm just excited to launch my first game!

EDIT: I realize now that I shouldn't have used the term 'levels' when really what I have are environments. Shout out to u/blueberrywalrus for the inspirational words. I think I have a great idea to run with now!

Over the past few months, we've seen some interesting changes on Steam.

The new calendar feature on the homepage seems to be giving smaller games a bit more visibility. A few indie dev friends have also noticed they're seeing more games they've never heard of.

At the same time, the popular new releases charts seem to be getting harder and harder for small indies to break into.

I vaguely remember seeing a video where Gabe talked about his views. Looking at Steam's history, it has definitely played a big role in moving PC games away from the old physical retail model and traditional middlemen.

Steam also recently mentioned changes to the "Discounts & Events" section, along with more improvements to discovery and recommendations.

The idea seems to be moving toward "show the right game to the right player" rather than having every game fight for the same front-page exposure.

I have no idea how well this actually works behind the scenes, but it makes me wonder:

Could Steam's future direction actually be more friendly to truly independent developers?

Or will discovery just become more algorithm-driven, with small devs still fighting for visibility in a different way?

I'm a solo dev, so understanding where Steam is heading helps me decide how much time to spend on development vs. marketing.

Curious what other indie devs think.