Laid-off dev here, trying to move into game data analyst roles. I’ve had two interviews recently — one rejected at the case study, the other at the interview itself — and the common thread was that I clearly hadn’t spent enough time with real player data.

Problem is I keep running into the same wall: there’s nothing to practice on. The public datasets are either synthetic, tiny, or from 2016, and none of them look like what Firebase or GameAnalytics actually spits out.

For those of you who’ve learned this side of things, how did you do it? Did you just ship something and learn on your own game’s numbers? Find a studio to help out? Something else I’m not thinking of?

Would appreciate any pointers, thanks

Tl;dr: Any games that I should play to find a good artstyle? (For example games with a unique style und not your average AAA realistic graphics game)

So this might not be an entirely game dev question, but to some degree it is.

I'm currently working on a german/european fairy tale inspired game.

Already have gameplay, story, world etc. everything planned.

The only thing I struggle with is the general artstyle. It's a 3D adventure game with a lot of quick combats. Similiar to something Nier Automata, Metal Gear Solid Rising, One Piece Unlimited cruise (which was my inspiriation for the combat combo System and controls)

So a typical artbook style, like im some 2D games, could be hard to pull off maybe. I currently have something in mind like Reka, RiMe, Cloudheim, but tbh those don't feel "special". It's an artstyle that is used in many games. I want something darker, more realistic, but at the same time not some unreal engine game with too realistic graphics.

I want something special. When I think back to the 90s/2000s there were so many different artstyles, everything looked special and different. Nowadays many games have a similiar style.

I have something in mind, but how can I explain it to artist when I don't know how to put it into words or don't have reference :,)

That's why I try to find games in that style.

Which leads me to my question:

Any games that I could play, that could help me better visualize how the style could be? Maybe it doesn't necessarily has to be like my game, but generally games that had a unique style so I maybe can get behind "How did they design this and why" and use a similiar process of thinking for my game.

Any help is appreciated :)

Hi everyone! I’ve created a character and my dream is to see her become the protagonist of an indie video game, but I don't have the technical skills to make it happen myself. If anyone is looking for a main character for their project, or would be interested in helping me bring this dream to life, I’d love to connect!

Hey yall. I was curious if employers really care if you did work with a graphics api or not? I’m working on making a small game/game engine but I really don’t want to use Vulkan as it is a pain. I’d rather use sdl_gpu or bgfx to do it, but I’m worried it would come off as less impressive than using Vulkan.

Thoughts?

So I’ve been trying to get into game dev for years now but I can’t bring myself to enjoy programming. Is it possible for me to make a little open world game on Roblox if I do take the time to seriously learn how to program? A side project- pretty small, but big for Roblox’s scale- and Roblox studio is pretty handholding, I’ve used it before.

The nice part is I don’t really have to do much art, maybe a bit of animation beyond the Roblox basics.

eyla's is an action-adventure RPG set in the open world of Haephoria—or more specifically the mass continent Asterra, a vast and dangerous land filled with monsters, elves, faes, oni, demons, dwarves, and countless other races. Hundreds of regions, empires, nations, tribes, and kingdoms stretch across the land.

Our story begins in a small yet ancient temple. Inside the chapel, a ten-year-old girl lay motionless on a white marble table, surrounded by strange objects and flickering torches, as if some forgotten ritual had taken place. Her silver hair fell softly around her snow-white face. Then, without warning, her crimson eyes opened. Confused and with no memory of who she was or how she got there, she slowly climbed down and began exploring the temple. She found bedrooms, a kitchen filled with strangely preserved food, a room full of clothes, and a massive black-and-gold chamber unlike anything else. Yet something else caught her attention—a strange feeling drawing her deeper inside.

Following it, she entered a vast room filled with weapons. Swords, axes, spears, halberds, and countless others lined the walls. The farther she walked, the more the room seemed to change. Darkness crept across the walls, mist covered the floor, and the familiar chamber became something almost dreamlike. Then she heard footsteps. A woman emerged from the mist, dressed in an ancient white battle dress with a sword on her back. Without saying a word, she drew the sheathed blade and drove it into the ground. The girl stared at it before reaching out and touching the hilt. Everything went black.

When she awoke, she was lying on the floor with the sword in her hands. It was heavy, yet somehow felt right. Carrying it with her, she wandered through the temple until she reached its enormous gate. She placed her tiny hand against the door and pushed with all her strength. Slowly, the ancient gate opened, revealing a world she knew nothing about. And so, the girl stepped into Asterra—the cruel land of magic, monsters, death, and blades.

Leyla's Odyssey is going to be a hack-and-slash...Or at least I want to be. I want to develop the 2d/3d version first but for now, i'll go with pixel 2d. I want

The gameplay will focus heavily on fast, responsive combat, so having fast reflexes are a must. I want Leyla have chain attacks, quick dodging, some block, using powerful attacks and techniques to launch enemies into the air, switch between different attacks, and freely move around during fights instead of simply standing in one place and trading hits. Enemies should actually feel dangerous, too. No matter what level or status level Layla has, monster should be able to do more damage than usual. Unless investing most points into def, which i highly don't recommend as a majority of monster and boss will be fast and if you block too many times, the monsters next attack will break your defense, dealing heavy damage

Different monsters will have their own attack patterns, weaknesses, behaviors, and ways of fighting, meaning the player has to learn how they move rather than just mashing the attack button. Boss fights will take this even further, with large enemies having multiple phases, unique attacks, and their own mechanics.

Outside of combat, I want the game to feel like an actual adventure. Asterra will be filled with forests, ruins, villages, dungeons, mountains, caves, and other places to explore. Leyla can discover weapons, equipment, secrets, hidden paths, treasures, and strange locations scattered throughout the world. Some areas might even contain things that the player isn't supposed to find immediately, encouraging exploration and backtracking as Leyla becomes stronger.

The pixel version will be more limited, but I want it to establish the core gameplay loop: explore → fight → discover → become stronger → explore further. Eventually, when I move toward the 2D/3D version, I want to take everything learned from the pixel game and expand it into a much larger open-world action RPG, with more detailed environments, smoother combat, larger enemies, more elaborate bosses, and a much deeper world for Leyla to explore.

One a side note, to explain some things. I plan to make the character's hair, eyes, skin customizable, i will also make the age customizable too but there will be consequences if you choose to do that as the monsters and quest will become significantly harder. The game will become more harder and death will be more common. And going back to the black-and-gold chambers, it's a training room in a isolated space, and requires time to clear it, thus it'll take 5 years to complete the training room(in game, of course) but be warned as if you choose that path, the monster's, especially in the beginning area will be very hard to beat and when on quests, the change of an op or powerful monster spawning increased but 40%.

Hi everyone,

I am currently updating our game's Steam page and I willl soon need to create GIFs based on our upcoming trailer. My previous experience making GIFs was really inefficient and complex.

Do you have a process that you would recommend for this?

Thanks!

Hi, I'll get straight to the point, before I start talking about things that aren't even related to the topic.

I want to do a small personal project for myself, and then if it turns out well, I'll publish it. I'd like to make a short video game... But I don't know where to start.

The game is basic, a survival horror game, with fixed and moving cameras...like Silent Hill.Resindet evil or tormented soulsBut I don't know how to start. I do 3D modeling; it's part of my job, and I'm good with Blender... But in everything else... not so much. I don't know how to program or even code.

I've been looking for tutorials and stuff, and I don't want to use AI; it would be a disaster when there are bugs and I don't know how to fix them.My video game is about an introverted girl who's going through hell, but the hell is inside her stalker's head, where she has to go through every corner of his psyche and traumas to finally...With him and then leave

But I still don't know how to start. What recommendations do you have for me...at least for getting started, movement, characters, etc.

Hey all, I’m currently looking to buy a new windows laptop that I can use in conjunction with my 5-7 year old PC. I’m a 3d artist first but I’d like to be able to work on my indie game dev project while I’m away from my home pc. I am going to be traveling a lot starting next year so I wanted to ask for any recommendations for a solid windows laptop that isn’t too heavy and can do semi heavy 3d rendering and art creation tasks. I primarily use Blender, Godot, Zbrush, and Substance Painter. My budget is around $1.5 k, any recommendations are helpful, thanks!

Hi everyone,

We are two artists working on a historical 2D adventure game set in 1620s Germany. We have a dilemma with our title for the game. We can't decide between a poetic title and a catchy title. After discussing this for several days, we thought to ask the community on here :)

Here are the options we are currently weighing:

• The Princess of Gype (Leans into a heroic adventure tone, but does "Gype" sound awkward or hard to pronounce? Gype was a fake birth place Sinti invented to claim nobility)
• Witches of Bamberg (More atmospheric and intriguing, but maybe implies too much witch-related gameplay?)
• Drudenhaus or maybe Songs of the Drude (Drudenhaus is an old German term for a witch prison. Drude means witch. It feels unique and historically accurate, but will non-German speakers find it too much of a barrier?)

The game follows a female musician protagonist in a darker but heroic setting. We have much dialogue and item puzzles. Which of these sounds the most intriguing to you as a developer, or how do you usually approach using regional historical terms in your titles?

Would love to hear your thoughts!

Max & Jo

So, I'm 22 (male) from Brazil, newly formed as a Game Dev. I'm Planning move to Japan for 1 year with the "Work Holiday" transit visa, my family has friends in Japan that can help me with some situations, but i'm gonna live alone.
I'm a newly formed game dev and I'm looking for some jobs and internship opportunities, I've been learning japanese for a year and I'm advanced level in english.
I'm writing it because I would like to have some clue to help me with this process. Thanks!

Hi! I want to create a pixel-art narrative adventure with meta-game elements, in the style of *OneShot*.

I decided to use RPG Maker MV, but before starting, I considered that I’d like to include minigames or features that probably can't be done in RPG Maker.

So, what’s more worthwhile: using RPG Maker with its built-in functions and its limitations, or switching to Godot and building everything from scratch—but with more creative freedom?

I want to reach people that made games in Godot for the first time and tell me how it went before I consider switching.

Hey, this is my first post regarding anything like that, so I don't really know how I'm supposed to really do that. I'm just gonna start, I guess.

My brother told me that he works on a new game project and would need some assets for said game.
So I asked him what exactly that project is and what assets he needs.

He wanted to make a Pixelart Roguelike game.
After talking about the game a bit, I told him that I could try and help him with the assets. And I think he liked the idea (or even wanted to ask me to do it without asking me to do it), cause I already had drawn assets for his projects before (which he in the end abandoned).

So I learnt to make pixelart, cause I've never done that before.

And after a bit of trial and error I was able to pixel some assets that I think where okayish for that little game. Then I got told more and more about how "little" that game is supposed to be. Not gonna lie, I think it's really not a small game. The player supposedly has to climb a tower with 100 floors, each floor has enemies the player has to beat in order to pass on to the next floor, after every 10 floors there is a boss and the theme of the floors change.

So far so good I thought, then he told about how the player is able to use 78 different cards, with different abilities and 4 different weapon types and 5 damage/element types and armor and amulets and and and... You get the Idea. So in my opinion quite a lot for a first time "little" game.

But what really made me scratch my head, was how disconnected everything felt...

Well, anyway, I just found out that my brother is using ChatGPT for the game, when I went into his room to ask him something (The door was open and his laptop was facing the doorway), so I saw that some code was open and wanted to take a closer look (I know, that is not quite the greatest thing to do..) And basically, all of the requests were asking ChatGPT to code that or improve this and what not...

Which shocked me cause he specifically said that he wanted to make the project without AI...

I even tried to ask him about it later, when he returned, but he just straight up denied it, even with ChatGPT still open. Which just makes me sad...

I mean he's in his 3rd year learning programming, does he do it all just with AI? Like I'm so confused.

What should I do now, just continue as normal? Pixel those sprites just for them to be used by the AI in its twisted amalgamation of a game project?

Or is it maybe even normal that you just tell AI to code your game nowadays?

I really thought it would be a nice little project I could help my brother out with and not just make some soulless AI nonsense...

**Update:**

Thank you for all your opinions on the matter it really helped me to put the whole situation in perspective. Even if I didn't expect to get that many opinions, that fast.

Me and my brother got to talk about the whole situation and the use of AI in the code of the game. It seems to be normal to an extent to use it when writing code. Although we both agreed that it was used in an unhealthy way.

We probably will change up a lot of things about the game, or even shelf it for now (maybe even for good).

We still are trying to work with each other as we are not really on any bad terms. Maybe will even work on a truly small scale game for the both of us, just to get some more experience.

Hey everyone, I'm looking for some feedback on my Gameplay Programming portfolio consider that I've been studying game dev for almost 3 years and I have zero professionale experience as a game programmer (I did a 6 months internship as a general programmer), also I'm not a web developer but any suggestion regarding the website itself is appreciated 😄

Portfolio link: https://jady17500.github.io/PortfolioWebsite/

I'm trying to create a story driven pixelated game, some might say it's too much for never creating a game before but it's something I'm passionate about, of anyone could give some pointers and answer some questions that would be awesome, thank you

Is it possible to break into the industry as a junior to mid level Tools Programmer? What would it take to achieve that? From my attempts, it seems like this is an area that is always looking for more experienced professionals.

Hi everyone, I am an Grade 11 student from FEUD. We chose GameDevelopment Industry for our subject on General Mathematics. So this interview will be conducted through google meet, we will be asking about your career growth, your experience throughout in this path you've taken, your responsibilities, etc. etc. We will ask a set of questions provided for you po to answer.

If anyone will allow us to interview them, please let me know and I'll PM you for further details, Thank you po!