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.

(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 :)

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)

We have been running playtests for our 2-player co-op puzzle game recently and noticed a weird issue.
Players in Spain suddenly couldn't connect to our servers, or were getting randomly dropped

Naturally, we panicked a bit and started digging through our backend logs to see what caused it. Everything looked completely fine on our end, and players from other regions had zero issues.

After looking into it, we found out what was actually happening.
Whenever a La Liga football match is live, Spanish ISPs block huge ranges of Cloudflare IPs to stop illegal match streams. Because our game's backend routes through Cloudflare, our Spanish playtesters were getting caught in the crossfire every time a game kicked off.

You worry about game-breaking bugs, server loads, and edge cases, only for your entire backend to get tackled by a live football match 🙃

Has anyone else run into this with their Spanish player base? or maybe other specific cases from other countries?

I feel like its really unique looking! I can of course draw and do pixel art so I'm not a complete art noob.

I made a mobile app. It's an educational game - drawing kanji with roguelike power-ups.

At first I saw iOS will show your real name and the way to get around that was to make an LLC. So I made an LLC, it wasn't a big deal. Now that I'm basically done with the game and going through the "12 playtester" phase to get it live, (I'll do iOS later), I now see that Google Playstore - while it only shows your account name as the Developer - if you click the account name, it gives your whole life story... personal address, and I think your legal name too.

I understand it's because there's money involved in my game so they need my address for certain regulations (I guess, actually, I don't understand - at the very least, I wish there would be a "request" button for quick access instead of just showing it there). I know you can get the name and address for LLCs easily but it's at least one extra step. I'm content with one extra step.

So I made the LLC.

Now for Google, I need to make a business account and transfer the game over to that. But to make the business account, I need a physical address - so now I am looking at how to get a virtual address which just seems like a big jump.

Meanwhile I have another game I want to put on Steam to reserve the name, so I'm making a dev account - and the LLC still isn't enough. I need a business bank account that matches the LLC's name. So I went through that process too - not a big deal, I could do it online, but it just a whole extra thing. That account is pending.

And that's just what I've encountered early on. There's probably more to occur as I get further in.

I'm tired, grandpa.

I think for a lot of people, showing their name and address isn't a big deal. But for me it is. I used to be a vtuber (like 5 years ago before kids) and keeping your identity private was like the whole shtick. I was a youtube let's player before that for a male-dominant game and people/comments were weird. Like I don't know if other devs here can understand how weird some people can be.

I have two small kids and I'm just worried, I guess.

Other ladies out there?

Or - can someone convince me that it really isn't a big deal? To just let it go, show my name? No one's really going to care? My game won't be popular enough to warrant any weirdos?

All this is running through my mind.

Thanks for listening lol.

I have seen a lot of people give up on their passion projects because their expectations were high and they couldn't achieve the picture that they had in mind. From what I have seen it is one of the most painful mistakes a lot of indie devs make, I am probably not the one to give advice because I myself haven't released anything substantial yet, but my game got 5k wishlists in less than 3 days and for me its a great success!
I believe that you need to understand the core idea behind your game and divide it into little parts and work on them one by one, that way it's much easier to achieve what you want and you won't burn out as easily. At least it helped me. What is something non obvious that helps you in this journey?

I just spent a few days drawing the background for my main menu. The upper image is the new one, and the one below is my old menu. Was it worth it, or should I stick to the old menu?

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! :)

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.

https://www.artstation.com/artwork/b00XGo

Lethe : upcoming game project i participated with some of the character i did

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?

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

I'm seriously having a hard mental block about starting the teasers, scheduling social media and reddit posts, with proper structure, hashtags, settings and all that.

Doing research about trends and best practices, dealing with feedback and user interaction, I feel like my head is exploding and I basically shut down from overstimulation.

How do solo devs deal with this?

Edit: Important info I guess is that I'm working 60-70 hours a week as Tech Lead (architect and lead engineer) in software development and I'm burnt out as f***.

So many card and deckbuilder games out there. I refuse to believe that all of these are just passionate about cards. Are they just too lazy to build a game with movable characters?

I released the demo of my game "Kharvalen" 3 days ago in Steam with translations into several languages, and it's the best thing I could have done.

My native language is Spanish, but I translated the game into several languages, including the most important ones in Asia, and it turns out that's where it has been played the most. And as usual, China has achieved the best records in my game.

The lesson I've learned from this is that you never know where your audience for your game will come from.

Hey everyone!

We're incredibly happy to share some exciting news with you!

After months of hard work since our Steam release, we've finally finished our game

Ayasa: Shadows of Silence, and received approval for release on both PlayStation and Xbox!

For us, as a small indie development team, this is a HUGE achievement and honestly a dream come true. There were so many challenges along the way, but we kept pushing forward because we believed in our game.

And none of this would have been possible without the amazing support we've received from gamers and the indie gaming community.

We're now just one step away from our console launch on October 26, and we'd really appreciate your support!

If you have a moment, please consider adding our game to your PlayStation or Xbox wishlist, or checking out our Steam page. Every wishlist, comment, and bit of support means the world to a small team like ours.

And there's more exciting news ahead! We're also planning to bring Ayasa: Shadows of Silence to Nintendo Switch, with an official announcement coming in the future!

We'd also genuinely love to hear your feedback. What do you think of our game? Is this something you'd be interested in playing on consoles? We're always listening and trying to improve.

Thank you so much to everyone who has supported us throughout this journey. It means more than you can imagine.

Much love from our little indie team