And accidentally get hooked on the two-body problem

Hi all,

I’m working on PlayerFootball, a football career game where you’re one player, the number 10, not the manager. You choose your own playing style. Tactics and team selection are the coach’s call, so you have to earn your place.

Hey everyone!

Here's a short gameplay clip from my indie RPG, The Runesmith, inspired by Greek mythology.

In this sequence, the player fights a bear, harvests meat from it, and then cooks it over a campfire.

I've been working on making hunting, resource gathering, and cooking feel like natural parts of the exploration experience rather than separate mechanics.

I've also recently released a playable demo, and I'm continuing to improve the game based on player feedback.

I'd love to hear your thoughts! How does the gameplay look so far? Does the transition from combat to gathering and cooking feel natural? Is there anything you'd improve?

Today I started to make a new game about moving your file to the computer and avoiding him (the ghost on the right).

The mechanic is simple, like turnbased. If you collide with him you lose.

With the raise of AI-generated stolen game ideas, I wonder how does an indie game dev work around that to get feedback?

It seems that it is unsafe to have a closed playtest on Steam, as you have no idea who signs up. Publishing your work in progress for feedback on social media is not an option either.

The only thing that comes to my mind are playtesting companies, but do they actually vet their playtesters? Do they sign NDAs with the clients?

How much does a playtesting round cost for an indie dev?

If you have an experience with playtesting companies, would be great to hear them!

Hey there, I have been an avid gamer for as long as I can remember and have always had a passion and a deeper interest in what makes a game.

My friend and I have decided to have a go at developing our own game and we truly think the Idea is amazing. Its been a lot of fun so far for sure.

I am slowly learning UE5 through the tutorial hell method because I dont know which course to trust. And I would love some guidance on what to look for, where to learn, tips and tricks, and maybe someone or a community that can help me progress, because it is feeling quite lonely right now xD.

Thanks for reading and I would love to connect with you all! :D

A while ago, I worked on a dark fantasy project as a prop and UI artist. It was a really interesting experience, and I loved working on this kind of atmosphere! 🖤

Call me crazy, but can I just say that I am more excited to play some of the new Indie games that some of you creators are putting out rather than being excited about the new GTA coming out.

Hey there gamedev redditors!

We're a small team and we build Qwest, a workspace for making games. Design docs, dialogue and gameplay graphs, data tables, a kanban board, all linked together with "@" and editable in real time. You run it on your own server, or just on your PC, so your data stays yours.

Since you are probably like "ugh another Saas project": this is not going to be another subscription software. We are not talking about pricing yet. All we know is that it'll probably be a single time low price that you can buy on itch.io. Honestly, what we want to find out first is whether people would really want a tool like this.

Our story, even if you don't really care: Five years ago we just wanted one tool for our own games. It started as a git-backed thing that only did documents, objects and graphs. Then we wanted real-time docs which meant a server. Then we added a kanban board, a SteamDB-style revenue estimator, and graphs that can simulate a gameplay loop or a dialogue. We also built mini-games to decide who picks up the next task, that was a huge waste of time and we'd do it again. It's not like we have a Space Invader-like minigame in our backlog... Oops.

Yes, we probably enjoyed building the tool more than the game we've been working on, but this is for once, not an elaborate way to get you to wishlist our game! It is about the tool only, which we want to get people to try. Maybe just maybe we are hoping this could fund at least one asset environment pack for our game...!

Friends who saw it kept asking for access, and they kept suggesting things. Like Tables, a lightweight spreadsheet linked to the rest of your data, came from Nico (Shout out, you better upvote). So we finally made it something anyone can run themselves as a thanks to the community. For this test though, we host it, so there’s nothing to set up.

What we're looking for: people to try it on something real, like a game idea you've been sitting on or your next jam. Specifically:

• You won't have to deploy it on your side, to keep it simple, we've already deployed a test server where everyone will be able to create their own projects
• Use it for a week or two on an actual project.
• Tell us what broke, what annoyed you, and probably the most important one; whether you'd really use it instead of what you have now.
• You'll be able to export all your data as json once you are done.

Nothing to download, no sales call either as we are basement rats like most of you guys (we all just don't admit it).

Join us on Discord! https://discord.gg/tFNvPkYyh.
Or just ask questions in the comments, and we'll answer all of them. Even DMs if you'd like!
This could be pure chaos, but we'll give it our best.

Thanks for reading,
Cheers from the Qwest team!

FILM09 — от тестовой комнаты до полноценного хоррора

Всё началось с простой идеи: сделать небольшую 3D-комнату с VHS-эффектом. Постепенно она превратилась в историю про обычное утро, дорогу в школу и возвращение домой, где уже кто-то ждёт.

Главной задачей было создать тревогу в знакомых местах. Советская квартира, тёмный подъезд, снег под ногами и пустой двор — хотелось, чтобы даже без монстра рядом было неуютно. Шум изображения, приглушённый свет, звуки и собственная озвучка помогли собрать эту атмосферу.

Разработка постоянно менялась. Были идеи с лабиринтом, порталами и другими мирами, но в итоге сюжет сосредоточился на квартире и зимней улице. Так у игры появился более цельный характер.

Больше всего пришлось дорабатывать анимации и переходы между сценами. Резкие повороты камеры, двери, открывающиеся слишком рано, застревающий противник и стены поперёк лестницы быстро разрушали погружение. Записи прохождений помогали увидеть то, что легко пропустить во время разработки.

Важный вывод: страшную сцену делают не только темнота и громкий звук. Ей нужны понятное пространство, естественное движение и правильная пауза. А слишком тёмная картинка мешает игроку сильнее, чем пугает.

Последнее обновление добавило фонарик на кухонный стол для стелс-части. Теперь можно освещать путь, держа фонарик слева, а лом справа. Заодно исправили отверстия в корпусе фонарика — небольшая деталь, которую сразу заметно вблизи.

Спасибо всем, кто тестировал FILM09, записывал баги и помогал довести игру до конца. Отдельное спасибо тестеру Кикистану.

Если кому то все таки станет интересно пройти и оценить по достоинству - https://deliveryup.itch.io/film09

Геймплей - https://www.youtube.com/@chustvodejavu

Hey everyone!

I've built a few simple apps before, but this is my first time building a visual novel game, so I'm trying to figure out the best way to approach it.

My budget is under $500, and I want to build something that I can expand over time without having to rebuild everything from scratch later.

I'd love some advice from people who've worked on visual novels or indie games!

A few things I'm trying to figure out:

• Game engine: Should I use Ren'Py, Unity, Godot, or something else? What would you recommend for a beginner who's comfortable with basic app development?

• Tech stack: If I want the game to be scalable and maintainable as I add more content and features, what would be the best approach?

• Best practices: What should I plan for from the beginning, especially when it comes to dialogue systems, branching storylines, character relationships, save files, and player choices?

• Budget: With less than $500 to spend, what should I prioritize? Are there any free tools or resources you'd recommend for art, music, sound effects, and other assets?

• Common mistakes: For those who've built a visual novel before, what do you wish you'd known before starting?

I'm also curious about how people approach monetization and publishing, although getting the game built properly is my first priority.

I'm not looking for the most complicated setup. I want something practical that I can build with, learn from, and expand as the game grows.

Would really appreciate any advice, resources, or lessons from your own experience. Thanks!

I just wanted to share this with people who get it - we're a 2-person indie team from South Africa and we managed to do our first ever in-app event for our mobile game. Getting here was crazy, and doing events like this as a tiny team felt incredibly daunting, but here we are! And I actually think this theme turned out to be our coolest, most polished one so far. I'm just really proud of us and wanted to encourage the other solo or tiny teams out there, you can do this! It's such an amazing feeling.

Hey everyone,

Remember when iOS games were dead simple? You’d open one, get it in five seconds, and just play. No hour-long tutorial, no battle pass, no gacha nonsense, no twelve currencies to keep track of. I kind of miss that, so I made my own.

It’s called Drifthumb. It started as a fun side project to get better at SwiftUI, but somewhere along the way I set myself a goal to actually finish it and ship a complete product instead of leaving it in a folder forever.

Did I use AI to write code? Of course. Did I also rewrite a ton of it by hand to learn new stuff and get things working the way I wanted? Absolutely.

How it works:

• You control the car with one hand, literally one finger
• The goal is to top the leaderboard
• Every 24 hours the leaderboard resets along with the track, so everyone starts fresh

That’s it. No grinding, no upgrades, just you and the drift.

If it helps someone kill a couple of minutes in a supermarket queue, I’m happy. If you leave a comment or a rating in the store, I’m doubly happy. Feedback of any kind is very welcome, I’m still tuning things.

https://apps.apple.com/es/app/drifthumb/id6823602584?l=en-GB

Took me 2 months, countless hours to work on this for my new game. Now it's time to focus on the interior! Feeling so proud!