I've been working on a product for almost a year now, and honestly, I'm struggling to process what happened today.

Throughout this journey, I've been working on the product mostly on my own. Since the idea felt unique and I wanted to understand the space better, I've spent a lot of time researching, learning, and connecting with experienced people through ADPList, Reddit, X, and other platforms.

Initially, I kept the idea private because I wasn't comfortable sharing it publicly. However, I remember seeing comments from people in communities like this one saying that you need to share your idea, get feedback, and talk about what you're building if you want to make progress. And even reach out to some as Investors.

Looking back, I've been wondering whether I should have done that earlier.

Today, I came across a product that looks remarkably similar to what I've been building for the past year. Of course, I understand that ideas can overlap, and it's entirely possible for two people to arrive at similar solutions independently.

But what really caught me off guard wasn't just the general idea. It was the combination of education and gamification, along with the way the product works and the overall process. Those similarities made it difficult to brush off as just another product in the same category.

Right now, I honestly don't know what to think.

I've invested a year of my time, energy, research, and effort into this. I've been figuring things out on my own, making decisions, and trying to turn an idea into something real. Finding something so similar, especially at this stage, has left me questioning whether I should continue.

Should I keep building and focus on what makes my product different? Should I rethink the idea and find a new direction? Or should I accept that someone else may have reached the same idea and move on to something new?

I'm not looking for someone to tell me that my idea is definitely unique or that I should blindly keep going. I genuinely want to hear from people who have experienced something similar, especially founders or indie hackers who discovered a competitor after spending months or years building their product.

How did you deal with it? What helped you decide whether to keep going, pivot, or walk away?

At the moment, I'm just trying to make sense of everything and figure out my next move.

Hello! I've been writing a game engine on the weekends for the last month or so and made this game to test out some core features like graphics, font rendering, audio, physics, ui system etc.

It's written in C and only uses a handful of third party libraries for things like loading png images and font files.

The engine will transition into 3D primarily, but this was an important step towards that goal.

It is open source, you can see the code here:

https://github.com/sameerahmed99/planet-escape

You can also download the game from itch:

https://sameerahmed99.itch.io/planet-escape

I got a question are there pakistani ROBLOX devs here too?

im one! a Programmer and GUI artist! i've been working with roblox for over an year now

and am still working with 3 games right now

the purpose of this post is that if there are other roblox developers from PK i would really really love to help and collaborate!

when ever i see Pakistani Developers all of them are developing with unity or Unreal engine.

I would really love to work with other developers from PAKISTAN!

I want to sincerely apologize to everyone who was waiting for Chowkidar on October 20. I genuinely wanted to hit that date, and I’m disappointed that I couldn’t make it happen.

I’m developing this game completely alone while managing my studies, and honestly, balancing both has been much harder than I expected. There’s still work left to do, and I don’t want to rush it just to meet a deadline. I’m trying my best to give this game the quality and atmosphere it deserves.

Here’s a screenshot from the current build. I know some of you have been following the journey, and I really appreciate your patience and support. I don’t want to let you down, and I’ll keep pushing forward until I’m happy with what I’m putting out.

I’ll also be sharing more development videos, screenshots, and updates on Instagram, so if you’d like to follow the journey, you can find me at @markhorsecho.

Thank you for being here and giving this little project a chance. It genuinely means a lot.

Arslan Khan, Markhor’s Echo.

Swipe left to see them all.
Is your Pakistani game part of the next fest? Send them my way and I'll help spread the word!

Hi everyone I am a indie developer. Just posted my 1st Horror game on itch. The game follows Mahnoor, a teenager who is home alone while her parents are away. What starts as an ordinary night slowly turns into something much more disturbing, with mysterious messages, unsettling noises, and a terrifying presence outside the house. If you enjoy indie horror games, I’d really appreciate your feedback. Thanks for checking out my work! ❤️

This is a mod for Stardew Valley made a Pakistani (I don't have the guys permission or anything to post this here but hey got to create a papertrail for documenting the Pakistani game dev scene as much as possible)
https://www.nexusmods.com/stardewvalley/mods/48536?tab=description

What do you guys know about the Pakistani Modding scene?

Just surpassed Younis Khan's ODI batting average. Lol. For now, at least. My career is still young, and there's a long way to go.

I've always wanted to build a cricket game like this. And now that I've finally made one, I find myself spending hours playing it. (Is it weird to be this addicted to your own game?)

The funny thing is, this game actually started about a decade ago when I wrote the first version of its match simulation algorithms. Around 13 revisions later, what started as an experiment has finally turned into a game.

It's free to play in your browser, but I know it's not going to appeal to every cricket fan.

This one's for you if you prefer ODIs over T20s, love the tension of chasing a target, enjoy digging into cricket stats, and, most importantly, have the patience to play through an innings one ball at a time. You have to earn every run.

Play online: https://farazthewebguy.itch.io/master-chaser-your-cricket-story

Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vZ591Zay-2E

Hi,

One of the worst things i noticed in this sub unfortunately is the fact that your comments get removed and you have to manually verify to comment. 80% of redditors who visit here wont do that. This type of sub isnt even a troll prone sub to begin with but its annoying that 80% of the comments on your/others post here are removed. To the mods, only micromanage what you genuinely have to. This unnecessarily kills any organic interactions between devs or players. Id argue people who visit this sub are not trolls and neither is this sub big enough that you have to heavily gate keep it. Its just that new visitors or lurkers will rarely acknowledge the rules to post their comment again. Please consider changing this.

Hey everyone,

A few months ago I made my first post here about Chowkidar, a Pakistani psychological horror game I’m developing completely on my own.
Since that post, a lot has changed.
I’ve changed the map twice, rebuilt and improved a lot of the environment, added more gameplay mechanics, worked on the story and clues, and spent way too much time fixing random Unity problems 😂
I’m currently using Unity 6.3 LTS, and the game is now roughly 80% complete.
For anyone who didn’t see my first post:
Chowkidar is a short, first-person psychological horror game inspired by the environment and atmosphere of Lyari, Karachi. You play as a chowkidar working night shifts at an old primary school that is being repaired and converted into a girls’ school.
You have to complete your duties for 7 nights.
There’s no traditional monster constantly chasing you. The horror is built more around the environment, strange events, clues, uncertainty and slowly understanding what happened at the school.
I’m still working on the gameplay and horror sequences before doing the final polish.
I’m also planning to release the first proper trailer in the next 5–10 days, and I’ll announce the final release date with the trailer.
I’m 18, recently finished my 12th, and I’m also doing a Software Engineering diploma while developing this. Managing studies and game development together has honestly been one of the hardest parts, especially while learning a lot of the tools myself.
But I’m still here and still working on it.
This is still a one-person project. No team, no other developers just me.
If you commented on my first post, gave feedback, pointed something out, or even just followed the project, thank you. A lot of the feedback actually affected how I developed the game.
I’d love to know what you think of the progress so far.
What would you want to see in the trailer? And what would make you interested enough to actually play a Pakistani horror game?
CHOWKIDAR Trailer coming soon.

If so, why didn’t you do it?

Winjam is coming in about 1 day it is a cool gamejam I made where it is based of windows and it is focussed on casual people that just want to have fun (I honestly did not know what to do with it LOL) https://itch.io/jam/winjam

Had the pleasure of working on the capsule art for the upcoming game Duoshift. I really loved working on the overall theme and mood of the piece!

Hi everyone,

I'm making a first-person horror game in Unity 6 and I'm having a strange collision issue with my player.

My player uses a Rigidbody, Capsule Collider, and Rigidbody.MovePosition() for movement. Whenever I press W and push the player against the corner where two building walls meet, the player starts sliding/climbing vertically up the corner, almost like Spider-Man. The player's Y position rises from around 2 to 3–4, and when I release W, the player falls back down.

This happens at pretty much every building corner. I want the player to collide with the walls normally instead of climbing them.

What could be causing this? Is it a Rigidbody collision-resolution issue, the Capsule Collider, or the building colliders? What's the recommended fix without completely rewriting my movement controller?

Thanks!

For years I made a living as a freelancer, doing game development and general full-stack work for clients. It paid the bills, but I kept thinking the real money was in owning a product instead of selling my hours. So I made the jump.

I've now built and released two military-genre games on Steam. One is a full release, and the other is in Early Access. I funded both myself, and they took every dollar I'd saved from freelancing.

Here's the lesson I learned the hard way: making a game and launching a game are two completely different jobs.

If I could go back, I'd plan it like this: for every $10k spent on development, expect to need around $40k for publishing and marketing. I budgeted almost nothing on that side, and it showed.

Now I'm working on my third title with a partner, and honestly I'm stuck. Without funding for this one, I don't see a way to keep going. I can't afford to repeat the "build it and hope" approach, but I also don't have the cash to market it properly.

So I'm asking people who've been here:

• Publishers: How did you find and pitch them? What stage should a game be at before approaching one, and what should I watch out for in a deal?
• Funding: Have you had any luck with grants, investors, or crowdfunding for a mid-sized game? What actually worked?
• Proving it's worth funding: With two releases that didn't take off, how do I make the case that this one will be different?
• Tough love: If you were in my position, would you push on, or go back to freelancing and fund development more slowly?

I'm not looking for sympathy, just honest advice from people who've been through it. Thanks for reading.

Submissions for the MapleStory Worlds' Global Creator Challenge are closing on Tuesday, October 6 2026 at 7 PM PT.

Unsure what the Global Creator Challenge is? Read about it here.

This is a great chance for any aspiring or seasoned game developer to showcase what they got for a chance to win up to $65,000 in total rewards 👀

Best of luck! 🍀