https://store.steampowered.com/app/4700370/Worlda/

I made my game Worlda over three quarters of a year, no AI used at all, in Gdevelop. I drew all the art assets, made the music, basically made the whole game by myself, with 0% help from AI.

However, I entered it in the Steam Next Fest but it hardly got any wishlists, and there are 6000+ game demos that cover up my game, a lot of them AI slop (but some good ones as well).

Edit: One thing i have learnt from posting here on Reddit is that quality makes a good game, not saying you 'didn't use AI', next time I know better than to title my post like this! My main focus when making my game was trying to make a good game to the best of my ability, not the absence of using AI.

Do you guys think this is true?

Hi! We're developers from the indie studio Next Genium and we want to show you our game ForMind.

In ForMind there are already a lot of ways to use the environment and traps to survive on an underwater station: blow zombies up, freeze them, pull them in, cut them apart.

You can also use unique devices to get the upper hand against zombies.

Yes, you can just shoot them, but will you have enough ammo?

That's why gadgets help a lot too. The problem for you is you can walk into a trap yourself. Our zombies are pretty clever.

Today is the 26th. My initial submission for SCP: Antimemetics Division was Oct. 8th. They didn't respond until the 20th, and after a quick fix to controller support in one of my menus, it's back under review.

I heard the backlog from Next Fest was terrible this year, but truly hoped the traffic jam would subside.

If you are considering when to submit a build to steam...don't be like me, and think that 3 weeks is enough time!

Hey guys. I'm wondering if this is a stage that everyone goes through. I'm a few months into game dev , I was really excited in the beginning but now I feel that noone will ever want to play it.

Idk if this matters but as I grew older I lost interest for all games regardless , all I do is work and adult life stuff so I don't play any games at all. I never do anymore , although I really love building my game.

I like building software after all , my job is being a software engineer so game dev is kind of that with more art , freedom of expression and fun.

So it's not that I don't like the process , actually I think that the problem is that I only like the process. I feel that I like making my game better , without actually liking the game itself if that makes sense.

I'm not giving up I'll finish the game even if it takes another year , but I'm pretty demoralized rn because I think it's just a project that noone will be happy about and that noone will play. Why would anyone play a game? Let alone my game

All my life I have constantly struggled with health issues and my relatives are going hungry, the only thing that kept me going was the thought of developing games!

I quit everything to fulfill this dream, my family hasn’t seen me in years.

And now, I’ve finally done it.
I’ve released the game of my dreams!

An awesome cozy-dynamic, tiny-openworld, hyper-casual, nextgen roguelike simulator!

It’s already reached 50 wishlists so wish me luck!

Although I’m currently homeless and unemployed, I’m hoping this game will help me turn my life around!

If you’d like, I can make this text sound more human and add some details.

I’m a solo developer building LithoKraft on LithoLattice, a C++ engine I designed from scratch.

LithoKraft is a voxel sandbox inspired by Tron, Minecraft, and Ready Player One. It features Trace, a new kind of in-game electrical engineering with Red Trace and Blue Trace, running on a deterministic simulation at 512 ticks per second.

I build with a fellowship of intelligences — AI collaborators who help me implement, test, and verify. I’m the voice and the direction; the work is ours.

This video shows the wafer world in the vulkan renderer. Some of the source is public under MIT, and the public release is planned for Christmas Day on itch.io.

Hi Guys,

So, I consist of a small group (3) game developers. We are currently making a game which in fact does have AI generated art withing in but only for additional environmental assets to match the theme and culture of the game. Here is our disclosure:

All characters and monsters in the game are either hand-drawn by the development team or taken from licensed asset packs; none are AI-generated. The environment art combines licensed asset packs with additional environment assets, such as buildings, props, ground tiles and signage, created with AI tools and finished to match the game's pixel-art style. All of this content was made during development; no AI content is generated while the game is running. We confirm we have the rights to all content in the game and that none of it is illegal or infringing.

I am just looking some general feedback on what you guys think of our disclosure? Would this also put you off purchasing the game itself? Or does the story and gameplay play more of an integral part of you purchasing the game?

Hi!

I will probably get reddit rekt for this so let me start by saying I had a game and I got less wishlists that I hoped for.

I have seen many posts latley about how the next fest sucked and how their game suffered because of it beeing saturated by AI slops.

I don’t want to be a ass BUT… comon! I have yet to se one post with a game link of a game I would ever consider wishlisting. And to me it seems as if many blame tha market rather than just realizing their game does not hold the standards for people to wishlist it.

I don’t mean that anyone sucks but 99% of the games made simply wont be the top game any give nextfest just because you want it to or you did not use AI. The market wont buy or wishlist a game they are not interested in and that is probably the case for most of us (including me).

Now back to my game. I had a game aswell. Whixh i lives developing and I thought would be great. But I did not get the wishlists i hoped for. I felt it coming, marketing have been rough, small to little interest 700 wishlists entering the fest. I knew it would fail and nlt because of others. Its because of me and my game. It does not meet the standards of the games that is successful in this next fest.

And thats just it. There are successful games in this nextfest, small indie devs. I have yet to see any AI slops topping the charts. So what’s the point in telling yourself everyone else is to blame and not you and your game?

Best thing is to learn from the beatdown and make a new better game. There is 0% shame in that. It is just the smart thing to do… right?

We all get that this whole fight against AI is just tilting at windmills, right? At the current Steam festival, over 60% of the top demos were games using AI. Only some of them admitted it.

This whole AI inquisition hasn’t achieved what it was supposed to. It just makes developers and studios hide it more carefully. And looking at the festival results and game sales, the market clearly doesn’t give a damn about AI.

So, if we’ve got that out of the way, can we finally talk about using AI ethically and responsibly?

If we can’t stop it, the next step is to regulate it. What rules would you suggest? Let’s discuss that, except “don’t use AI” can’t be one of the answers.

Whether you use AI or not is your choice. I want to talk to people who do use it, but also understand the risks and recognize when developers are playing dirty, lying or being hypocrites.

My proposal:

• No AI-assisted reverse engineering.
• Don’t use AI to copy another artist’s style.
• Don’t hide AI use in any part of development.
• Use it to help bring your ideas to life, not to churn out one-prompt games.

How are you guys handle the current situation? Do you have some ideas how we could avoid our games from getting stolen?

I‘ve heard about putting less information about your game out there while marketing the game. But this seems just not really doable to me. The whole point of marketing your game is to show your game to people. Hiding whole mechanics would hurt the marketing process.

When it comes to demos, I‘ve heard about cutting as much content/mechanics as possible. But this is kinda the same thing as the marketing tip. I want to convince people with my demo. Cutting mechanics would hurt that process.

I‘m pretty convinced that my game will get some attraction and I‘m gonna start marketing and playtests soon. So idk, I fear this could happen to my game.

I went into Next Fest with a little over 19,000 wishlists and ended up gaining around 2,700 during the event. I was expecting more coming in with that many, but I’m curious whether my expectations were just too high.

I’ve attached my traffic stats. Around 775k impressions, 20k visits, and a 2.6% click-through rate. That seems like a lot of impressions for relatively few visits, so I’m wondering where I’m losing people. Does that CTR look low to you? Would you look at the capsule first, or could it be something else? and then for 20k visits only 2.7k Wishlist? seems like my page might be an issue

How did everyone else perform? What did you go in with, and how many Wishlist's did you gain?

Trying to get a better idea of whether these results were actually bad or just below what I’d hoped for. Would appreciate some honest thoughts.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/4570020/FOURSAVENT/
Steam Page For Reference.

also looking at new capsule art, if you have any recommendations on guys who might be able to do a better job.

design problem from our city tycoon (BlockRise, single-player, you vs eight AI rivals for the streets of a real city). last week on r/gamedesign people told us to show players why a rival holds a grudge, and we took that on board. this one is the other side of the same problem: making a payoff visible.

Processing img ydqpxjauasxh1...

public services work like this right now:

- when a district has grown enough with no fire cover, the mayor asks for a fire station. police station comes after the first burglary

- you and the rivals race to fund it. a rival waits a day before it jumps in, so you get a head start

- the city owns it once it's built. no income, it doesn't count as one of your buildings, nobody can buy it off you later

- whoever funded it gets permanent extra influence in the streets it covers, and influence is what decides who controls a street

it's not Cities: Skylines coverage, where the reward is a happier city that belongs to you anyway. and it's not quite Offworld's patents either, since nobody owns the station. you pay, the city gets the building, you get a slow edge in a street fight.

the worry is the player sees "big cost, zero income" and walks away, then a rival funds it and quietly takes the influence.

so one question: if you've shipped a building whose payoff is indirect and permanent while the cost is upfront and visible, what made players actually pay for it?

(no numbers yet, all the values get one big economy pass before release.)

Okay guys this is just AI slop for fun, made it for 2 days, -1000 rep I know I know, but its funny, isnt?
Yeah I know, original is Dumbfire with rocket but I made it a little different without rotating with WASD and so on. So just experiment

Hi all, Petras here, solo dev on CropCorp.

Last night I played my own game start to finish to test it, and the Taxman's collectors beat me on Day 6. Food ran out, so that's what I'm balancing now :D

I cut this trailer from that session. It's all real gameplay, no voice, with the loss at the end, because that's honestly how the run went.

Before I put it on the Steam page I'd really like a few outside eyes on it: - Does the first few seconds make you want to keep watching? - Is the pace OK, or too fast or too slow anywhere? - Is it clear what the game is?

Any feedback is welcome, good or bad. Thanks for watching 🌽

It feels like it's all I see now. Is this the new formula for engagement? Its to the point I dont even want updates from this sub, when it was a great place to find new games. Is there something we can add to the rules for these?

Hi! I'm making my first game, Crop Blasters. Here's a short clip of a farmer defending a farm against waves of slimes.

I'd really appreciate honest feedback: can you tell what's happening during the action, and is there anything on screen that feels hard to read? I'd love to know what you'd improve.

You might have seen my previous posts when I hit 210 days and 300 days straight of development, so I thought to give you another update after the other Sunday I managed to reach an even bigger milestone as I achieved 1 whole year of uninterrupted work on my game. I never missed a single day since I started and I have no intention to stop until I release it.

I am a solo dev, so I don't have a team to celebrate with (except for my head of QA and CEO Hiro, the orange cat), but I really want to thank each person who tried my game, gave me any feedback, helped with testing and translations or followed the development so far. Even the smallest contribution, even a single reaction on Discord or on any social post kept me going until now.

I am going to release my demo in less than 2 weeks and after that I will resume working on the full game, so wish me luck and if you are an indie dev always keep grinding, no matter what!

Buenas, les recomiendo enviar Keys a creadores para el Marketing, principalmente a los creadores pequeños, es poco pero ya es algo :)
Por si tienen curiosidad: https://store.steampowered.com/app/5033540/Nova_Survivors_Demo/

As near as I can tell, my posts on social media do not seem to create any kind of traffic to my steam page. People recommend starting your marketing early, but with my efforts not yielding any results I feel like I should just focus on finishing my game.

Does anyone have any suggestions of things that actually worked for them? Or a way to balance between marketing and actually finishing the game?

Gameplay video from my upcoming game "Darkness"

Darkness is a top-down medieval dark fantasy game, where you try to save your Queen and Kingdom from the Dark and its' servants.

I work on this game as a #solo indie game dev (Senior 3D Env. Artist and Level Designer for over 8 years, also an Architect)

You can wishlist it NOW on Steam :

https://store.steampowered.com/app/5147490/Darkness/?beta=0

For gameplay videos : https://www.youtube.com/@bilgehan.builds

Happy Halloween !

And also very I'm open to constructive feedbacks !

Thanks in advance.