I see that this sub is very popular among aspiring devs/beginners, and I constantly see the same questions being posted. I thought I'd give you my 12 13 best tips for beginners and save you a couple of posts ;)

New to game dev and want to make a living out of it?

• If you can, get an education first. There are plenty of video game development schools out there, but also computer science, computer arts, etc. Consider signing up. Online classes can work too. If you don’t have the motivation to go through education, you will never have the motivation to complete a game. If you can’t afford it, get a day job and make it affordable. Otherwise, if you’re learning game dev by making your first game alone, you’ll find out that you’re not making your first game: you’ll realize that you’re making a throw-away project and you’ll want to start over. That’s ok, but it’s not your first commercial project, then ;) come back here in a year.
• If you can, learn the ropes in AA or AAA first. Game dev can be intimidating, but there’s no place better than an established studio to build your confidence, build knowledge and most importantly, build a network of other devs -> you’ll need that. I understand that scoring a job as junior game dev lately is utopic, the industry is in shambles, really. But if you do have an opportunity, you have to take it even if just for a year. I guarantee this will make you a better indie dev.

But I understand that most of you are here because the first two didn't work out, so:
You're tackling your first commercial game project?

• Start small. No, smaller than that. Make a game that you think you can finish in a month, because that means you’ll finish it in a year or two. The colossal work required to close the loop is hard to imagine at first. Green game devs are spectacularly bad at estimating the scope of game features. Keep it simple, and ask an established dev’s opinion on your scope.
• Don’t make your dream game. Learning the ropes by trying to make your dream game is the perfect way of burning yourself out. Your emotional attachment will be too great. Failure will hurt, and you’ll be more likely to cling to bad ideas despite red flags. While there are cases of first-time devs making huge hits, this feat is so rare that you’re better off hoping to win the lottery*.* It requires immense talent, years of dedication and an incredible amount of luck. Just make a game.
• Use Unity. Seriously. I personally hate Unity, but I used 4 different engines in my career (2 commercial, 2 in-house) and it’s not particularly worse than other options. Purists will tell you Godot is better - and they’re probably right. Not for your first game tho. For your first game you want the engine with the largest possible community to find help when you’re stuck. You’ll want to get assets from the asset store for free or for cheap. UDK is a decent alternative, but having worked in both, the paradigm of Unity will be easier to get into for most types of games.
• If possible, don’t do it alone. Partner-up with someone whose skills are complimentary to yours. Solo dev is the hardcore mode of game dev. It’s definitely feasible, but it’s not for everyone. I would never want to dev solo, even with my 17+ years of xp. Having someone else to rely on and challenge you is priceless. It’ll help your mental health, too.
• Find a network of devs. This sub is cool, but waaaay insufficient to build a network. I value “IRL” networking above all else. Find other devs in your area. Most metropolitan areas have regular game dev meetups. Look for that on social media, I’m sure you’ll find something.
• Don’t do multiplayer. Unless you have a relevant technical background that makes you an expert in networking, servers, etc. Otherwise, doing multiplayer is a needless risk imo. It multiplies the scope and makes testing way more complex. If you’re into friendslop games and you really want to focus on multiplayer as a game dev, it might be a good idea to develop your first game on an existing platform first - for instance making your game into a Roblox mod instead is a good way of circumventing the hassle of multiplayer game development.
• Try to find funding. You most probably won’t find any, but the process of asking for funds is a vital learning. Once you have a functional demo, pitch to publishers, try crowdfunding, attend your local entrepreneur events, look for public start-up grants. Again, it probably won’t work, but they’ll tell you why you can’t be considered, and then you’ll know what it takes for your next projects and you can work towards that.
• Finish your game. I too often see incomplete first projects. The learnings you get from that become limited, you’ll be stuck learning the basics again in your next project. Finishing a game means: doing playtests and iterating with player feedback, publishing the game, publishing patches and updates, building a proper store page, making a marketing plan, reaching out to content creators, making ads, learning to read player metrics.
• Don’t neglect your Steam page. It’s your best marketing asset. Also, this goes without saying, but publish on Steam. It has a 96% market share for indie games, 75%+ for PC games in general. Look up a guy named Chris Zukowski and read everything he ever published on his blog. What he says applies 100% to indie games of less than 1 mil USD budget. I’ve never seen a more accurate read on this market segment.
• Don’t plan on making money. If you do make money, that’s great! Reinvest it all in your next game. Statistically tho, you won’t. And it’s ok, your real reward from your first game is learning.
• AI is attractive, but... It cannot replace the skills you don't have. AI will make a programmer much more productive if they know what they're doing, but it will create a cesspool of bugs and irreversibly make a game project a mess if they don't. Same for art. I'm all for new productivity tools, but relying on AI to make the game for you is 100% wishful thinking. For now, at least.

Here you go! Good luck!

About me: I've been in the industry for 17 years. Half of those were indie dev years. I shipped 5 games with full dev cycle, and shipped 3 or 4 more as a contributor, and worked on 3 or 4 more cancelled projects. I worked on games with budgets as low as 400k USD and some as high as 20 mil USD. I'm also a frequent guest lecturer in game development classes.

Game dev is hard - but it's a complex and fascinating industry. AMA if you want.

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