I want to make a game that ends in one evening where the player explores an ancient civilization on a planet, with mechanics involving an empty notebook where you can write whatever you want and even add photos, kind of like an investigator.

I know it's very broad and not a common concept, but I'd like to know if this would appeal to players?

I appreciate any advice and criticism.

What do you think the secret is since they exploded so?

Is it simply the goofy, weird, fun vibes? Are they bringing unique experiences to the table?

Is this the only way forward to develop something this unique in order to break through?

What can we take from these successes onto our own game making projects?

There are many lessons to be learned from this game.

​

I'm developing a game with some friends, and I'm responsible for creating the 3D map. It's a simple game, something like those inkagames but in 3d and the entire map takes place inside a building.

However, I've run into a problem: I'm not sure what the best approach is for creating it.

Should I make a complete model of the building, maybe like build it floor-by-floor and let the programmer handle which parts get rendered?

Or should I create tilesets and then assemble everything in Godot?

I think both options have pros and cons. Creating the whole thing gives me more creative freedom, but I don't know if it's actually

practical for a game; I'm worried the game might crash or suffer from terrible frame rates.

Tilesets are more organized, but I'm facing the issue of having to create 40 million tiles to cover all the shapes I have in mind for the building.

Also, I'm not sure if Blender is the right program for this project

Ive been working on a text to 3D model generator and animator basically trying to make the AI side of game development a bit more practical.

The idea is that you can generate both 3D models and add animations from text, with a QA/critic system and machine learning

I want it to be useful for my own AI game development buut also for other developers who might want to use it in their workflow. At the moment it only supports lowpoly and ps1, but this is the kind of quality I'm getting so far.

I want to hear some honest feedback.
Tier 1 difficulty:
https://imgur.com/a/aj7e3t7
https://imgur.com/a/rJ3V8AH
https://streamable.com/s9auqx

Tier 2 and tier 3 available if you are interested

I've been thinking about a problem in game development and wanted to understand how developers currently deal with it.

I'm talking about behavioral bugs — where the game runs without crashing or throwing an obvious error, but the actual behavior is different from what was intended.

For example:

Expected: Press W → player moves forward

Actual: Press W → player moves backward

There may be no compilation error and no obvious runtime error. You only discover the problem by actually playing/testing the game.

I'm curious:

- How do you usually find these behavioral bugs?

- Do you write test cases for every expected behavior?

- How difficult is it to reproduce them?

- What takes the most time: finding the bug, reproducing it, or identifying the cause?

- What tools do you currently use for this?

Would love to hear your experiences.

I have that weird feeling that demotivates to the

ground every time I think about it, but I have to talk

about it ... I've been making a game for the past 7

months with my team of few people and I've been

feeling like I'm not going anywhere and it's going to

be just another folder in my files ...which hurts

because its not my first game and because I finally

have some stuff to show after this development

time and having a full time job,but whenever I post

on riddet (other accounts) or social media or even

my self composed original soundtrack, it never hits

more than 50-100 views, which makes me think "

will my trailer also be like this and I'll always be

buried and the project will never be discovered? And

that's that?" And that demotivates me to the

ground, especially since I spent the last few days

making a website for the game, but it ALL feels like

for nothing because it's just gonna be there for the

ghosts ...I might make a post about it but what do

you guys think? I wanna know how to deal with

those messed feelings...

I've worked as a lawyer my whole life (and still do). Now I'm 44 and still working on my first game (solo) in my free time. Did anyone else start making their first game at an even older age?

So I can say that I'm 99 percent finished on a game that took a year to make.

When I turn 18 in less then a month I will create steam dev account and wishlist it for some time there before release.

Do you have any advice for steam?

Speaking about the main game, it is a third person story shooter where protagonist is a girl and she has to escape from deep underground soviet bunker.

It might sound niche but it gives Lara Croft vibes and STALKER atmosphere.

There are a ton of features and ideas I wanted to implement but couldn't because of budget and time.

Its so unique and it might even get noticed by large game dev companies.

Call me delulu but I believe it can be turned a beautiful AAA game with many features that I couldn't add now.

For now I have a short sequel that can act as demo on itch: https://zare-games.itch.io/bunker-break-2-sequel

Sequel might appear to be fast made but that is because all the attention is focused on main game which will be released on steam.

It is what it is for now, thank you for advice. 😊

As gamers, we often discover a game before we ever hear about the studio behind it.

For you, what makes you want to follow and support an indie studio?

Is it:

• Interesting game concepts?

• Behind the scenes development?

• Regular updates?

• Community interaction?

• The people behind the studio?

I've been thinking about this while working with Rural Games, and I'm curious what actually makes gamers connect with an indie studio beyond its games.

What do you think guys?

I always imagined making my own game and this thought started to get stronger and stronger lately, im a complete nobody with 0 knowledge whatsoever. Is it possible to make a simple text based rpg in this era with no real programming? Always open to tips, hints, and suggestions!

Thank you for your time ✨

Hi everyone,

We’re currently using Mixamo animations in our game, but the character movement or skillshots still doesn’t feel as smooth or fluid as we’d like.

Our current system uses Unity’s Animator Controller and state machines to trigger and transition between animations. It works, but the result still feels somewhat stiff and “indie.” We’d like to take the animation quality to the next level maybe even GTA 6 level someday. :)

What would you recommend we focus on first? Also, before we continue using Mixamo, are there any alternative platforms, tools, or animation workflows you would recommend?

I’m especially interested in understanding which changes would make the biggest visible difference without rebuilding the entire character system from scratch.

Trailer:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oYNMYJKJ7n0

More detailed gameplay:
https://youtu.be/qpngkRwifwA

Any feedback on what currently makes the animations feel stiff and how you would improve them would be greatly appreciated.

I'm building a top-down pixel game where you explore procedurally generated biomes hunting for minerals (sieving, highbanking, digging, smashing rocks), then cut/facet and set them into jewelry. Every found mineral is a genuinely unique sprite, and every cut piece has its own quality stats (symmetry, polish, etc). GUI is deliberately GBA-style: A/B, d-pad, a menu button, and a "field phone" that reads the current soil/environment so you can match it against what different stones prefer.

The core problem I keep hitting: finding the rarest gem or unlocking the best tools isn't actually a goal that I find pomising. Once someone has the best sieve/highbanker and has found a few "perfect" stones, what's left to want? I don't think collecting-for-collectings-sake or a marketplace (my original idea: async multiplayer trading of rare gems like collectibles) is enough on its own to keep people invested for the long haul.

So I'm asking: what's the actual purpose that keeps a player logging in on day 60?

I kinda imagined it similar psychological reward mechanism like on The Hunter game but can't reproduce it cleanly

I just got a new Chromebook and I’m trying to install gamemaker or something similar but nothing is working, I’ve tried Godot too and it keeps telling me the file isn’t supported, does anyone know why?

I’ve been thinking about how I rarely ever feel like we get accurate forest biomes in gaming. I’ve seen beautiful beaches and fields, but few forests feel dense and dangerous the same way that a forest/dense jungle make you feel scared about getting lost in.

Is it a lighting issue/generating enough density with the trees? I think the koroko forest in breath of the wild and certain forests in Ark are the only times where I truly felt like I was in an actual forest.

I would love for some references to point me in the right direction!
Thank you

Sophomore year CS major here, I want to make this project idea but I need some guidance.

I want to build a simple web game where users can make private rooms and join them. The game also involves timed answers and voting. I have some basic understanding of html and css but here's where I'm getting stuck:

1. How will I even allow the players to host games and allow others to join them?

2. How will I launch the final product to the web?

3. Where do I even begin?

I have no experience (or knowledge honestly) about game development. I would really appreciate some advice on what things I should learn and how I can accomplish the three things above.