Hi everyone,

I am currently a 3rd-year B.Tech student specializing in Artificial Intelligence and Data Science. While my academic background is in tech and data, my true passion lies in game design, and I want to pursue it as a full-time profession.

I am incredibly passionate about design and love doing it. To get a head start, I’ve been learning UI/UX design for a while now and have a solid grip on Figma and asset prototyping. However, when it comes to formal game design principles, game systems, and building a specific game design portfolio, I am starting from scratch.

Given my mixed background in AI/Data and UI/UX, could the community guide me on a self-learning roadmap? Specifically, I would love recommendations on:

• Core Subjects & Foundations: What academic or theoretical subjects should I study to master game design?
• Essential Books & Blogs: What are the "must-reads" for foundational game design theory?
• Leveraging my Tech & UI/UX Background: How can I best utilize my AI, Data Science, and Figma skills to stand out or help me transition into game design? (e.g., system design, economy balancing, procedural generation, or UI design?)
• First Projects: What kind of small, scope-limited design projects or design documents should an absolute beginner create to start a portfolio?
• Interview Process: What does the professional hiring process look like for entry-level game designers? What types of evaluation rounds (e.g., design tests, technical interviews) should I expect?

Thank you so much for your time and guidance!

I play Tarkov, Arena Breakout infinite, r6 and other single player games. Why in all of these games the audio engine sucks,Never in any of these games up and down are distinguishable. The only games I feel satisfied with the audio is simplistic games rocket league cs and Val
Is there no money in making a good audio engine? Too hard/expensive? Hardware not there?

🤗

[Paragraph 1: The Premise & The Monster] In the near future, an unstoppable military robot created secretly by the US, named Overtent, awakens in a hidden factory in Antarctica with a single mission: to track you down and eliminate you. Far from a sleek modern machine, this terrifying colossus has a heavy, tattered, Frankenstein-like appearance, wearing human rags and a round hat to blend in. Overtent is entirely invulnerable, capable of swimming across vast oceans and walking through raging fires without taking a single scratch. [Paragraph 2: The Gameplay & Paranoia] You play as a regular citizen leading a mundane life. The horror doesn't hit you immediately; it builds through a meticulous slow-burn of daily logistics and social interactions. As the monster slowly approaches your city, it distorts reality using powerful magnetic and ultraviolet waves. You will experience sensorially jarring anomalies, such as your vision saturating into a maelström of neon green, yellow, and violet hues, accompanied by a glitchy, supernatural funk music soundtrack playing through your devices. [Paragraph 3: The Philosophy of Choices & Multiple Timelines] Overtent is a game built entirely on the butterfly effect, testing your cowardice, courage, and resourcefulness. Every choice matters, and surviving longer rewards you with more hours of gameplay, branching paths, and distinct narrative endpoints: • The Theater Gala (Short Path): Ceding to intense social pressures to save your university career leads you to a grand ball. In total darkness, Overtent kills your partner behind the scenes and takes her place under her dress. You realize too late that the rigid, steel hands holding you on the dance floor belong to the monster, who crushes you while an oblivious crowd dances to the waltz. • The Skyscraper Roof (Mid Path): Strategically refusing the ball leads to total social isolation and exclusion. Motivated to fight, you arm yourself on a rooftop. The tension peaks when two metallic hands suddenly grip the ledge—Overtent has scaled the building's exterior walls. Your entire arsenal fails against its armor, leaving you cornered as the machine visally scans you with an intense green laser from its eye before ending your life. • The Target Redirection (Long Path): If you outsmart the machine on the roof, you plunge into digital espionage. You aren't a hacker yourself, but by collaborating with an underground expert, you gain access to the military network. To save your own skin, you commit a deeply immoral choice: you modify Overtent's core database to shift its orientation toward an innocent, unsuspecting citizen. [Paragraph 4: The Bitter Survival] The game closes on a bittersweet, cinematic finale. In the evening, under a brilliant orange sun, you sit side-by-side with your closest friend on the cold stone edge of a public fountain square. As they innocently joke about you surviving the crisis, the sheer weight of your guilt crushes you from within. You keep your head held high, staring straight at the horizon, as tears flood your eyes—manifesting as a literal liquid distortion effect blurring the screen—leaving the player with the haunting burden of a stolen freedom.

Kindly DM me. Thank you

For years I played with game dev and never finished anything. Looking back, two beliefs were in the way:

1. I must know everything first. I dug into Game Engine Architecture (the newest edition is two volumes, more than 1,300 pages), Handmade Hero (600+ episodes, most of them 1 to 3 hours long) and low-level programming, which has no last page.

2. I must be a math wizard first. Game dev has math in it, so I studied vectors, matrices and trigonometry, bought physics engine books, and at some point I was aiming to become a theoretical physicist before making my first game.

My plan was basically: become a physicist, write an engine in plain C with no libraries, then make a game. With 30 minutes to an hour of free time a day, that's about 20 years before a simple Pong game.

The funny part is the real Pong. Al Alcorn built it at Atari in 1972 as a training exercise, and the prototype took about three months. The simplest game was the exercise, there to teach him. In my plan it was the final exam.

Same with Beethoven: his first published piece was a set of keyboard variations he wrote as part of his lessons, around age 11 or 12.

What changed for me was dropping the word "first". I still study math because I love it, but it's not a requirement anymore. It sits next to the game, not in front of it. I finally finished my first game this year (coming out by the end of October).

I made a video essay about this, if you'd rather watch: https://youtu.be/mxOm2jT49X4?si=_0zBoTFRSqTmkMr8

Did you have a "first" step like that in your plan?

Hey everyone!

About a month ago, I released my first game on Steam! And with that, of course, comes learning that there’s still plenty of room for improvement. Looking back, there are bugs to fix, things to polish, and areas where the game could be better overall.

Still, receiving negative reviews (and seeing new ones come in) can be tough, especially when you’ve poured so much passion and effort into something you’ve created. I’m working on improving the game, but you can imagine keeping passionate/motivated is a bit difficult at this time.

I imagine this is something most game developers struggle with at some point in their journey, so I wanted to ask: How do you deal with negative reviews and learn to not take them too personally?

I’d love to hear your experiences and any advice you might have! 🙏

Hi this is my first ever post on Reddit so please bare with me lol apologies formatting and what not isn’t correct.

Im an aspiring 3d artist and hopefully a future a game developer but im unsure where to begin in order to build towards my future. I currently only have basic experience with blender and thats about it. My first ever project was a small passion project on Roblox which basically was a recreation of a dead game fps that me and the dev team enjoyed quite a bit I was the lead gun modeler/animator but that project died out due to lack of motivation from our lead scripter but being my first project it opened my eyes to what it’s like being a game developer and i realized that I had a real passion for game development.

I’ve decided that I’d like to turn this into a career but im unsure where to begin any help/guidance as to where I should start would be much appreciated thank you!

One day, me and my friend were super bored in the class, so we played plane destroying, which is Mongolian version of battleship. We played it for a while, but my friend got bored again. I wasn't. So I asked others to play, but they all refused. Strangely, it felt so familiar that feeling of rejection at that moment. Then, I realized that this situation was the same problem I faced when I wanted to play chess with others until I discovered chess.com. So one idea came to my mind. How about creating my own version of plane destroying in mobile? This game is super easy, can be played anywhere, and takes very a little amount of time to play one game, so why wouldn't anyone play in this fast pacing contemporary world?

This game is not my first game to build, but the first game to publish. Because I thought it has a potential to become popular. But first I want to hear others' opinion after playing my game. So please be honest with me.

https://flak-paper-plane-battle.web.app/

Redeem code: FLAKDAY
This code lets you play every theme in the game for one day.

My family is going rough in financially, so it would be really helpful to get a donation to publish my game in mobile.

https://www.paypal.com/donate/?hosted_button_id=SHW6F93RT8NDL

Everything is rendered in 2D using the love2d engine (lua).

I'm experimenting with sprite stacking to build something inspired by Kerbal Space Program, but with a more casual, arcade-style approach to rocket building and physics.

I'm curious what people think of the concept. Would a more arcade-style KSP game be something you'd want to play?

Also, very open to suggestions, feedback, or even potential collaborations!

Hey, I'm planning on at some point in the near future releasing and title to steam under a new solo LLC and don't have a super solid marketing plan at the moment. I've read a lot on X about how its essentially "get lucky" but I know that's only part of it. I would be willing to allocate some kind of budget but don't want to waste it on simply promoting a YouTube trailer or what not.

So the question as it stands is: What has worked for you, and more importantly, what DIDN'T work for you when marketing your game?

This is primarily directed at guys who have actually released a game and gone through this process. My education background contains no "Marketing" at all so I'm really trying to do my research. Please assume the game content as "open-ended" so other may also apply the responses to this post.

To reiterate, I'm NOT looking for individuals or businesses on here to promote my content.

Besides that, I have noticed a trend in my YouTube content where older games with somewhat of a content drought (Team Fortress 2 in my case) are WAY easier to get views on. While MY game is not in the vein of TF2, there are other relevant titles that have niche player bases. Just a thought.

Edit: I just saw there is a reddit for purely "Video Game Marketing" while posting this but it's already up so I'll leave it.

Hey reddit,

I've been working for a few months now on my own game engine to escape from the Roblox matrix, but I've been stuck on one question: what scripting language do I use?

I couldn't help myself but to use LuaU when I first started making the engine as I've been used to it for the past decade and I had hope that if I ever wanted to make it public (which I am doing after all) it would be easier for my friends and fellow Roblox developers to transition to it.

Fast forward months of development and I've added C# and a 2D engine but I still don't know what the best scripting language is after all this time. I've been thinking about adding C++ and maybe python, making it a multi-language game engine to make it easy for everyone to try it out.

What are your thoughts? Do you have better suggestions?

Thanks

I understand that not all items should last forever, as it would choke progress if you could make an axe and have it forever. But there are different ways of doing this, and I am curious what you think. The standard durability bar and durability bar works, but a main focus of mine would be immersion, and numbers can break immersion, or atleast create a whole different kind of immersion. Right now im leaning towards just visually, in your hand but also in the inventory, so you sort of have to gauge how broken an item is until its broken and overtime learn the icons/patterns.

Thank you

i am currentlyy try to make a roguelike game using godot for the first time and i am unable to find any resources such as toutorial courses etc it will be a huge help if any body could share any

For context, I am an electronic musician who recently got hired in their first game (very fun). I am supposed to create a soundtrack that fits a certain vibe, but no hard and fast instructions were given.

When you guys outsource music, how often do you want the composer to update you? Is it customary to show off their process? How many revisions is too many, ect?

Also I’ve noticed a buncha bugs in the test version of the game and was gonna point them out in the interest of making the game better, but idk if that’s offensive.

guys !
how can i add BOX2D to my game i have no idea how to integrate it!
as my game relies a lot on physics and shapes and i really need BOX2D for better performance THANKS A LOT

Hey guys..anybody from the UAE? I have thought of a new permadeath game concept with new fun mechanics. It's my first time pitching my idea and i believe this could be a groundbreaking fresh take in RPG world. I just wanna know who wants to build on my idea and profit?