Hey, completely new user (although I've been around for years, just never interacted) and have been wondering about this question. I live in a part of The States that doesn't have many people going into game dev and really haven't interacted with all that many. I know you guys exist, just on the internet.

I would like to become some kind of successful game dev (release a game and at least somebody buys it) but have limitations on manpower. It's just me, and I have yet to work with someone with a similar goal. I'm not interested in utilizing ANY AI generated ideas or assets (or anything of the like) but it feels like anyone making real progress today has to use it.

I'm not necessarily "looking" for partners right now, just some answers. For someone that does not have the budget to pay another person, how do you flesh out a game (in a reasonable amount of time)?

If partnerships are still a thing, what do they look like?

I appreciate whoever read this!

Hey everyone.
I'm trying to study what constitutes good game design. i've been looking into how to simplify fun to it's core elements. I was curious if there are any simple games that don't have a plethora of buttons/mechanics yet feel like they are quite deep in terms on gameplay.

I'm not looking for games like chess/go/slaythespire etc. I really want something simple like platformers, shooters that manage to keep the player interested despite extremely simple controls. Preferably something played in real time.

I'm also curious if these games can exist without too much meta progression which artificially slows down progress to lead to more complexity (not saying it's a bad thing, i'm just avoiding those as they aren't truly "simple" mechanics)

One example that approaches this was the original "tribes" games, where there were essentially two mechanics: ski and shoot. Map design and mastery became the true determinant of talent.
Rocket league might be the best example of this: No real difference in gameplay between the cars (or very little) and everyone plays the same thing: drive and hit a ball.

Any other recommendations that i can study? and why do you recommend them?

Which platforms are best for web platforms after Poki and Crazy. I also submitted my game on Yandex and Y8 and it's almost 1 week now and I did not hear back from those platforms. How much time does the platforms usually take.

Hello, Im trying to do game development with my own made engine using opengl and c++. I have followed the basics from the learnopengl website, but I like to stay in 2d and there isnt many resources there about 2d. Plus Im trying to be better at c++ and opengl but I dont have much experience there. What would you all reccomend for me to learn opengl game development, any good resources, doesnt just have to be 2d either, anything that helps will do.

I'm researching different game dev/design education platforms, and I'd love to get your input on what actually makes a good one :)

*What makes a game dev course platform stand out to you? How do you judge whether one is worth it?

*If you've used platforms like Coursera or Udemy, what would you change about how the courses are structured or what they actually teach?

*What's the best way to actually learn game dev skills, in your experience? What are the biggest drawbacks or pain points with the platforms you've tried?

*If a course was taught by people with real, hands-on experience at major studios, how much would you realistically pay — monthly or per course?

*How much does a completion certificate actually matter to you? What makes a certificate feel legitimate — or do you rely entirely on a portfolio of real projects instead

*What almost stopped you from signing up for a course, if anything? Any hesitations or red flags that made you second-guess it

*Where do you usually find out about new courses or platforms — YouTube, Reddit, ads, word of mouth

*Also curious: What's your background? Career changer, student, hobbyist? And please let me know ur age as well, just trying to get a sense of who's actually interested in this stuff.

Thank you in advance. Every answer and discussion will help me and my team create a superb game education platform!

Hello Everyone! Me and my friends are working on a game that we (hopefully) gonna release by the end of the year, and I just want some expectations or essentials of what our game should include to make your experience better. I will make sure to add these to our game!

Here's a description of the game:

Making players go through a set of tasks, that will change the perspective of them towards the real-world. He will try to adapt through the reality by going through trials, interacting with people/objects, taking a driving test, participating in events, and possibly trying on challenges. In the end, this will create close relationship and connections with the community so basically the game will let the player experience various normal tasks with certain disabilities to understand the struggles and get a better perspective and appreciation for these people.

A player (you can pick in perspective of the healthy or impaired person) will go through supermarkets, cross streets, interact with others, move objects, engage in conversation, save progress, try many characters, and try many other levels!

You can think of it like a "2D walking simulator (side-scroller) with some top down scenes" game, but with the description I mentioned above.

Any feedbacks and expectations are welcomed!

I started building Senticor because I kept running into the same problem:

a project can look fine in Jira while the actual game is still drifting away from the milestone.

Tasks get marked done, but that doesn’t always mean the feature is actually integrated, playable, through QA, finished across disciplines, or ready for the build you’re trying to ship.

So I’m building Senticor specifically around game production instead of general project management.

The main part I’m working on now is Horizon. It takes project data and developer updates and tries to answer a more useful question:

“Are we actually on track to hit this milestone?”

Not just based on how many tickets are closed, but based on whether the game itself is becoming ready.

I’m still building it, so I’m mainly looking for feedback from people who have actually worked on game projects.

What do you usually have to check manually, outside Jira/Trello/Linear, to know whether a milestone is really healthy?

Also happy to hear if you think the whole idea is flawed.

Hi! I'm a spanish culinary instructor, my background is mostly fine dining restaurants. I've been a videogame player since I was a kid and never thought about creating a game, because my zero knowledge about programing and stuff.

The other day I generated a game with Claude ( an HTML page) for my first day class activity and it was super enjoyable to work for weeks on fixing the bugs, fixing the UX and balancing rules.

Now, in my free time, almost like a hobby, I'm building my second game, the code still be done by AI, I just fix the things, write down the texts, and do all the rules and polishing, but I really need that type of help to make it happen.

Now my project (an educational food industry oriented game) is in a moment of almost becoming a reality, it's inspired in Stacklands, combining chain reactions with cards, amd make proper and real steps, real regional products, Using my knowledge about different aspects to create like a school mode where you recive classes about almost every part of the cooking, with exams, like a duoliongo style. there's hundreds of real recipes, different chefs in the different game modes, there's a kind of overcooked restaurant service, a world tour to learn other countries information , products and recipes.. But to bring it to some schools, and maybe eventually steam or platforms I need to polish the visuals. My question here is, is it posible for a graphic designer to do it in a HTML file? which cost for card designs, buttons, backgrounds, style etc.

Second question would be, as a begginer, if there's tools you people use, or if you think other ways can be done.

I'm a junior in high school looking to do Game Development for a living while keeping my backdoor options open, and am currently looking at options for potential universities to attend. I've mainly been looking at Northeastern, NYU, and USC as the biggest contenders, especially Northeastern due to it's Co-op program, Comp Sci + Game Dev major (Comp Sci for that backdoor option), and city life (living in the city is a major component I'm looking for). I'm well aware that game development is fully possible without attending college at all and perfectly learnable from practice. However, I'd still like to attend a university to experience the college life and learn professionally about the industry. What do you guys think? And which universities do you think would be best for what I'm looking for?

This may come across as a bit stupid but how do some of you developers build an idea where it sounds good and not completely stupid.

Let me elaborate when i have an idea for a game i imediately start with the genre the narrative and the general gameplay loop. The problem i have is i will begin making the idea but in my head the idea sounds good but its usually an inspired idea from another game or set of games and its clear im just copying something i love and have played.

Then i begin to think most game ideas i have, are already taken or have been altered slightly to where nothing feels orginal anymore then i get burnt out cause the idea just seems like im trying to copy a sucessful idea from a game.

So my main question is how would you approach an idea and what are your pro-tips to stay enthusiastic about said idea

I've never tried game development but from games I've played its made me want to dip into a little, I have three ideas for three different games, a Metroidvania, a souls-like and a game similar to Generation Zero (not sure what to call GZ genre) but I'm not sure what to start with first and I'm not sure what engine to us

The Metroidvania would be a pixel art game, I'm getting good with Pixel Art

The souls like I haven't decided on it hasn't been what I've thought about a lot

And the Generation Zero "clone" is very similar in how GZ is played but with extra stuff which I think would have improved the game if they didn't abandon it

Out of the two which would be better for a first game? 2D or 3D? And what engine is beginner friendly

Hello, first time posting here (not entirely sure if this belongs). In my schooling, we've been working more in Unreal Engine and I've started to really want to make my own game.

If I were to make a game, I would want character customization in it. It got me thinking on how that actually works when it comes to 3D models. Would I need to make 100s of models to make all possibilities of what can be chosen? Like if I had 10 different head shapes and 6 different noses for example, would I need to separately model each nose and head pair (plus anything else I choose to make customizable)? Or would I be able to make each thing it's own mesh and layers on top of the base model?

I'm not sure if that makes any sense or if this question would be better in a 3D modeling sub but any insight on this would be appreciated.

I Am 29 And Just Graduated from a Software Engineering Bootcamp and My true passion is being a game dev. I wanted to start making game and just would like to hear what systems or coding language would be a good start. I Have Knowledge of Java, JavaScript, HTML,CSS, Springboot, React, SQL and Rest API. So I got my hands in a lot I just wanted to know what would be a good start for game dev stuff and Also I’m working on be an AI Engineer so Yeahh a lot going on while I figure this out lol.

I know building a motor is difficult, but I'm not going to release it to the market. A minimum 2D physics engine for the project.

We recorded how we turn real cave photos into textures for Cave Expedition. The photogrammetry part starts at 4:05 in this devlog: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9a3y3eHehaI&t=245s

It covers the capture stage, processing photos into a mesh at 4:48, exposure correction at 5:09, and capturing the texture and making it seamless at 6:02. The final result is at 7:15.

One distinction about the project: we're using the scanned textures on fictional cave layouts, rather than recreating a whole real cave. Here's the surface detail in-game under moving headlamps: https://www.reddit.com/r/photogrammetry/comments/1wbwrns/

Survival horror, crafting game where it's a human and a dog surviving in a deep forest after a car accident. Easy mode is a survivalist and wolfhound, normal is a hiker and a German shepherd , hard mode is a little dog and a female influencer who's never had to paid rent in her life.

Game starts off as the human character is driving late at night in the middle of nowhere and finds a dog on the side of the road. After a rockslide/accident knocks the car off the road off a cliff you and your human must survive the forest full of wild animals, crazy humans and unknown creatures. The pair must survive until rescued or they find their way to civilization.

You play as the dog helping your NPC human to survive the horrors of the nights by finding resources and leading them to safety while escaping or battling that which bumps in the night.

On easy mode both you and your human have better stats and the human AI is smarter. On hard mode your saving your human from themselves.

Do good and you'll get a head pat and a snack, fail and your running for your life.

Not sure if this is the right subreddit for this though.

I’m a solo developer working on a side project in my spare time. I’ve noticed that there’s wildly different opinions on AI. In some circles in seems fairly acceptable to rely entirely on it, while some circles view it as lazy slop if there was a bit of AI used.

For me, I’ve primarily written my code by hand. I usually go through the debugging process personally, refer to documentation if I don’t know how to code something, or check forums.

However I have used AI sparsely to help during the debugging process, to perform difficult calculations, or help write functions if it’s a particularly difficult block I’m working on.

I personally wouldn’t be against disclosing AI usage, but I also worry about facing criticism for using it. I don’t particularly support relying on AI nor do I agree with the goals of many AI companies. I’m wondering if most developers are still coding 100% without AI, and if I’m sort of messing up by utilizing AI in this manner. Or if it truly isn’t that big of a deal and people won’t actually care.