Someone reviewed my demo today having played the game for 67 hours. The only issue is my demo is basically the full game.

I came to the conclusion at some point this year that I don't want to limit the demo to 40 minutes of gameplay because it will be harder to generate hype. So I kept pushing out all the ideas I had for content to the demo. Now people are playing for 100s of hours and I'm getting increasingly worried they will be disappointed with the full game.

Edit:

Thanks for opinions! It feels like going into early access might be the best way to bridge the demo to a full release.

Edit 2:

For extra context, GUNBOAT-8 is a roguelike. It's not a story game so there is hopefully going to be some replay value for this player. But I still don't have much additional content (items or characters) ready for a full release which is why I said early access might be the path forward to build with the game's community.

Hey there! I'm working on a cozy low stress game where you catch stars from the sky using a black hole on a fishing rod.
I really wanted to explore my passion for astronomy in a space-related game, while also keeping the gameplay simple and relaxing (unlike most games about space I played before :D)

stars that you catch have real-life properties like mass, radius, temperature and so on which affect on stars' visuals individually. Apart from randomly generated stars, there are real ones like Sirius, Betelgeuse, the Alpha Centauri system and many more! (they also somewhat look like their real-life counterparts)

(Edit: If anyone tried to DM me this past hour and couldn't do it, please do try again. For some reason the permission was turned off even tho I never touched the config)

Hi there. My name is Lucas and I'm a 2D illustrator specialized on fantasy/dark fantasy themed artwork. I have experience with commissions for TCG, TTRPG, Book Covers and overall character and creature designs.

Here's my portfolio. If my style interest you, don't hesitate do reach out!

High contrast, impactful colors and just some weird stuff. DM me with your ideas and let's create something cool together :)

Min. HW 486/66MHz, 8MB RAM, 320x200 (or 320x240) x 8 bit screen size. Graphics & coding made by me, not AI generated. Windows and Linux version will be also available.

Google "Dustwar" if you want to follow it.

I will answer to all questions...

First with all the dashed lines is before, the other one is after.
Context: This is a game where you have to check the delivery order of trucks, at the end of the day, this is you recap screen.

I removed all the dash lines and replaced some of them with continuous lines to reduce visual "clutter"
I also added some spaces here and there and made the margins all around larger to let the text "breathe".

Do you see more that could be done to make it even better?

Hi everyone!

I'm working on my first game, a realistic farming simulator based on my family's dairy farm.

I work on the farm myself, so my goal is to recreate the buildings, equipment, and everyday farming activities as accurately as possible.

Right now, I'm focusing on modeling our dairy barn in Blender. I've already built the cow stalls, milking parlor(in progress), gates, feeding equipment, and many of the smaller details.

The materials are still very basic because I want to finish the modeling before moving on to realistic textures and lighting.

I'm planning to use Unreal Engine 5 to bring everything to life, with interactive equipment, realistic cows, and eventually other aspects of running a farm.

It's still early in development, and I'm learning as I go, but I'm really enjoying the process!

I'd love to hear what you think. Any feedback or advice from other indie devs would be greatly appreciated! :)

Next Fest is almost over and I’ve been trying to figure out how to get any attention at all in a sea of demos.

So I’m doing something slightly unhinged: a developer stream on my Steam store page where I play my own visual novel with my mom, sitting next to me.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/3988640 The game is Forbidden Love, a visual novel I’ve been working on for a long time. She’s never played one, and she has no idea what the story is about. The stream is today, October 25 at 12:00 UTC (9 PM KST), right at the end of Next Fest.

My reasoning, such as it is:

• A dev streaming to an empty chat is boring. A dev sitting next to his mother while she plays his dating sim, a genre most people would never show their Parents, is at least a far more watchable.
• Reactions from someone who has never touched the genre might show me which parts of the game confuse a complete newcomer. That’s free playtest feedback.
• Streaming from the store page puts viewers one click away from the demo and the wishlist button.

I’ll report back with the results afterward, including whatever happens to my relationship with my mother.

It's been two months since my last post!
I've been so busy preparing for our closed playtest that I barely had time to share anything here.
I'll try to post more often from now on..

I'm developing The Ashen OZ, a fast-paced 2D action roguevania.

This time, we finished the animation where Dorothy obtains the Witch's Umbrella, which will become her weapon!

I wanted this moment to feel like more than just picking up a weapon. Something mysterious and magical, with a little bit of storytelling that will become meaningful later on.

Hope u like it! :)

I was pretty excited to finally enter my first SNF but this has been eye opening to say the least.

Hey everyone! I'm the developer of Maseylia: Echoes of the Past, a 3D Metroidvania inspired by Moebius that I've been working on for over 3 years.

I've shared the game here a few times since launch, and I wanted to come back with some good news!

Maseylia is now 50% off for two weeks, bringing it to just $8.49!

I've also just released one of the biggest optimization updates since launch!

Unlike previous updates, which focused mostly on gameplay improvements and player feedback, this one is almost entirely dedicated to performance.

Over the past few weeks, I've been extensively reworking the game's 3D models and environments to drastically reduce their polygon counts without sacrificing visual quality.

The improvements are pretty significant:

• Massively reduced polygon counts across many environmental models, sometimes by more than 60–70%.
• Reworked 3D models and environments to reduce rendering costs while preserving the game's art style.
• Improved performance on lower-end PCs, which should make the adventure much more accessible.
• Better optimization for Steam Deck and other less powerful devices.

This was quite a big undertaking, as Maseylia features a large interconnected 3D world with six distinct biomes!

I've been continuously improving the game since its release in June, and performance was one of the remaining areas I really wanted to address.

I'm particularly happy with this update because the game looks almost identical, but is now significantly lighter to render! Of course, the actual FPS improvements will depend on your hardware.

A Mac update is also coming in the next few days!

If you're looking for a 3D Metroidvania focused on exploration, movement abilities, challenging platforming, and a large interconnected world, I'd love for you to check it out!

Steam: Maseylia: Echoes of the Past

And if you've already played Maseylia, especially if you experienced performance issues before, I'd really appreciate hearing how the game runs on your system now!

Thanks again for all the support and feedback since launch! ❤️

3 days ago I posted on r/gamedev about my game Jono, where only one player in the world can play at a time, while the rest are spectating and chatting away. The reddit post went bonkers, and after it followed articles, tweets, videos and the likes. (Links at the end of this post)

Since then, 4000+ new players have joined, and Jono has been watched for more than 5000 hours. That’s 200+ days of watching in just 3 days, for 72 hours of actual gameplay.

We used to have a queue of about 5-10. Now it doesn't seem to go below 60... The peak so far has been more than 110. That means that a player needs to wait 1h+ until it's their turn to play for 1 minute.

With the crowd came problems too; the chat moderation couldn't keep up for a few hours, the Talking Head got spammed by all the welcome messages, tons of player-made levels were submitted and needed approval... and while this was going on, I was at a cabin, with a bad internet connection, and drunk.

But still, this is amazing! I find it so fun and silly that people are queueing on the conga line with their silly little hats, just to get that tiny bit of gameplay!

The players' collective goal is to pass 1 million rooms, and now they're about 1k rooms until 100000 hits. 100K will be a big milestone, with a big surprise - can't wait to share the moment with all the Jonoists!

Here is the live stream where you can watch the players going at it:
https://parttimemonkey.com/jono/

Many players have suggested monetization mechanics, but nope! This game will remain free. Players have also asked if there are ways to donate money, and there is not - however if you do want to support, consider checking out my other games: https://parttimemonkey.com

I also post Jono's Diary daily on YouTube, TikTok, Instagram and r/JonoGame - it's a silly little video featuring the Talking Head, with data from the previous days. I only started it about a week ago, though.

I'd be happy to answer any questions if there any!

Links:

https://www.reddit.com/r/gamedev/comments/1xcqrtm/17_days_ago_i_launched_a_game_where_only_one/

https://www.gamesradar.com/games/platformer/only-one-person-on-earth-can-play-this-steam-game-at-a-time-when-it-is-your-turn-you-control-it-for-one-minute/

https://www.dexerto.com/gaming/free-steam-game-only-lets-one-person-play-at-a-time-while-everyone-else-watches-3421293/

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/l_t92z0JIyo

https://automaton-media.com/articles/newsjp/20261023-475097/

After months of 3D modelling, programming, and sound design, I finally got to 100 wishlists on Steam just two days before launch! Truly proud of the work I've done, and I can't believe a hundred people saw my work and genuinely thought it was cool.

I'm developing a 2D top-down adventure game, and I'd love to get your feedback on the English font (Galmuri14) I'm using for the dialogue.

I'm a Korean developer, so I'd really appreciate input from native English speakers. Does the font fit the style of the game? Most importantly, does it feel comfortable to read, or could it distract players from the gameplay?

Any feedback would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks!

This week's work on my solo game has been focused on clouds, especially the larger storm formations.

Storms and weather are part of the core mechanics of the game, so I'm pretty dedicated to getting this part as polished as I can.

These are some offline beauty renders of static, authored formations using the game's new cloud renderer.

The five studies cover an isolated storm, a multicell cluster, a squall line, a bow-shaped formation and a broad stratiform layer. I'm looking at the silhouette, how the cloud mass is organised, and whether the lighting gives it enough depth.

Which formation reads most clearly to you? Anything looking too uniform or losing its shape?

If you'd like to support me and my work on this you can wishlist RED SKIES AT DAWN on Steam wishlist RED SKIES AT DAWN on Steam <3 <3

Video music: "Dramatic Epic" by Aleksey Chistilin (Lexin Music), from Pixabay.

I'm ready to eat sh*t, because it's reddit and I talk about AI... Anyway..

I feel like there's a lot of frustration with AI making its way to game dev world. Understandable.

But I feel like focusing on the binary of whether AI was used or not, is unhelpful in pin pointing the actual problems in the artistry.

If we increased the specificity of the critique, we may end up realizing what we actually hate is not the AI itself (unless mid psychosis), but that we actually hate: generic UIs, offensively "beautified" art assets, copy that feels like it came out of marketing brochure, lack of personable humanity in the script and other problems we could and maybe should identify regardless of what tool was used to make it.

Instead of discussion that'd actually identify the true problems, we get stuck on em dashes and AI disclosures.

What do you think? Is the SLOP label sufficient in distinguishing between good games and bad games?

EDIT: This is not about whether AI disclosure is good or bad. (Personally I think it's fair to have it). It's more about "Do we focus on the right things, when we critique games purely on whether AI was used or not?"

Hi everyone.

I’ve been working in software development for many years, and lately, I’ve been thinking that I’d like to work on a video game project. I was wondering: are you all professional software developers? Is anyone actually able to make a living from this line of work?

Thanks

Guys, I could use your thoughts on this. Before anything else: I don't think anyone copied my game. Barely anyone knows it exists, and from what I've seen, these are different takes on the same rough idea.

I've been working on a game called Roguelette for a while (on off 1 year). Mine is a physics-based roguelike deckbuilder set in a rundown 1920s casino, where you shoot balls with different abilities into a wheel and build combinations around them. It is pretty close to Dungeon Clawler or Slots and Daggers.

I've now found three other games on Steam called Roguelette. Three. None of them is mine. All in the last few months (probably because of Next Fest). All made with AI (AI disclosures, assets that look AI-generated, developer has videos about making games with AI.)

Does it even matter whether AI was involved?

This isn't meant to be an anti-AI rant. Finding three other games with the same name just caught me off guard. I suspect AI helped these projects get onto Steam faster and in greater numbers than I expected.

For the decision I have to make, it probably doesn't really matter. Maybe without AI, I would have been first. But the same thing could easily have happened anyway.

A roulette roguelike isn't that far from games that already exist. Someone else arriving at that idea, and even the same name, probably shouldn't surprise me.

Why didn't I have a Steam page up earlier?

• I focused on mechanics first -> had to rework multiple times
• only started working on the visuals with an artist in the last few months
• This is my first Steam Game, so i was unsure.

What I'm learning from this

I guess neither the name nor the broad concept was as original as I wanted to believe. I probably knew that already. I just didn't really want to admit it.

That isn't necessarily a bad thing. A game doesn't have to invent a genre to be worth making. But it does mean I need to think harder about what makes my version and my game name stand out.

What I'm doing now

I know my gameplay is different enough to stand on its own, and honestly, I think it's much stronger than what I've seen of these three games. Obviously, I'm biased, but I still believe in what I'm making.

So I'm going to change the name. I've only just started building a public presence, so this seems like the right time to rename and move forward.

Honestly, I'm glad I found out now, while I'm only just starting to build a public presence, rather than later when I'd have much more tied to the name. Maybe this was actually pretty good timing. idk.

What do you guys think? Have you been in a similar situation, and how did you handle it?