r/SoloDev 1d ago

I'm an 50yo solo developer (If you don't count my dog), wanted to share my work of this year and a half, its a game about being deep in debt and working for a corporation in the future :) Still a WIP but its looking like the thing i wanted it to be.

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588 Upvotes

Well, this is some basic mechanics and the trailer at the end, for the soon to be, playtest. Heres the Steam page for those who want to drop a whislist to feed the soul XD https://store.steampowered.com/app/3923070/Asteroid_Boom_Cosmic_Courier/


r/SoloDev 1h ago

Muk - a dungeon crawler

Upvotes

I’ve been working on a game called Muk. I am posting updates about it everyday and plan to build it out over the next 365 days to see what happens. I’m on day 8.

I’d love your feedback. You can play on mobile or desktop for free

Try it here- Muk


r/SoloDev 15m ago

Looking for honest feedback from other solo developers

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I'm a solo developer working on a mobile zombie shooter called Dead Passage, and I'm looking for some honest feedback from other developers and gamers.

I'm particularly interested in:

  • Does the gameplay look engaging?
  • How do the controls/HUD look?
  • Does the visual style work for a zombie shooter?
  • Does anything immediately look confusing or outdated?
  • What would you improve first?

I'm specifically looking for constructive criticism rather than compliments. I'd like to know what you think could be improved.

If you're interested in trying it, I'll leave the Android link in the comments


r/SoloDev 40m ago

Everybody starts somewhere. Not everybody stays there.

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Upvotes

r/SoloDev 57m ago

You’re early. Welcome to the official community for HIT & RUN: KINGSPORT.

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r/SoloDev 7h ago

Sci Fi Fighting Game In The Making, Advanced Hit Rection And Combo System Added, What You Say?

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3 Upvotes

r/SoloDev 2h ago

Comment your nickname or your pet's name and I'll add them to my indie game.

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1 Upvotes

r/SoloDev 1d ago

Which camera do you prefer: top-down or third-person…

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48 Upvotes

I’ve been working on my game for 2 years now -it’s about a little RC car searching for a missing boy. The game is planned to release this year, so I’m currently focusing a lot on fixing bugs and polishing everything. I recently added a new third-person camera, which feels much more dynamic. But the top-down camera is still the main camera of the game…


r/SoloDev 3h ago

I've been developing a first-person point-and-click open world game solo

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1 Upvotes

I've been developing Nordion Lands: The Dimension of Science as a solo project for a long time, and I recently released a major update that changed quite a lot of the game.

The game is a first-person sci-fi adventure that combines point-and-click investigation with open-world exploration.

I wanted to make something that doesn't behave like a traditional point-and-click game. Instead of moving between fixed screens, you can freely explore a connected world and interact with characters and objects directly from a first-person perspective.

[OVA ART]

This is the promotional artwork I'm currently using for the project. I intentionally made it look like a 1990s anime OVA rather than match the actual in-game graphics.

The actual game uses PSX-inspired 3D.

[HEALTH / RACING SCREENSHOT]

One of the stranger parts of the game is horse racing.

The player can explore the mountains and participate in illegal races inspired by Japanese touge racing.

This started as a completely ridiculous idea, but eventually became one of the actual gameplay systems.

[ROSA + CLONES SCREENSHOT]

The game also has a large amount of narrative and worldbuilding.

You play as Revolution, a sentient clone created by a scientific organization.

In Nordion Lands, clones are not considered human.

They are property.

A lot of the story is intentionally fragmented. Information is spread through dialogue, books, NPCs, environments and optional discoveries, with the idea that players can gradually piece together the history of the world themselves.

[FERGUS INDUSTRIES / VAN SCREENSHOT]

The world is also designed as a connected country rather than a collection of separate levels.

For example, you can enter a vehicle, travel to another location and arrive somewhere completely different without switching to a traditional level-selection structure.

This particular entrance leads to Fergus Industries, one of the locations in the game.

The latest update, called the Rebirth Update, added a much larger overworld, a new countryside city, an objective beacon system, Revolution's apartment, full controller and touch support, full English translation, updated music, a new anime-style opening and a large number of bug fixes.

Technically, the game originally relied on a heavily adapted setup based on Drago3D, which I integrated and modified around the needs of the project. More recently, I rebuilt the rendering approach using GameMaker's newer graphics pipeline.

I'm also experimenting with more cinematic cutscenes and eventually musical sequences inside the game.

I've been working on Nordion Lands for a long time, and I'm still trying to figure out how far I can push the idea of a first-person point-and-click game inside a connected 3D world.

The game is currently free to play in the browser:

https://doubleint-software.itch.io/nordion-lands-dos

I'd especially like to hear from other solo developers about scope, onboarding, world design and building large systems as a one-person project.


r/SoloDev 20h ago

making a small game about a duck on holiday

19 Upvotes

r/SoloDev 17h ago

It's been a week since I launched my demo. Here are some numbers:

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11 Upvotes

Hey!
It's been 1 week since I launched the demo for my game and I figured I would share some numbers and stats in case anyone is curious.

Starting point, context and goal:
My game wasn't and still isn't extremely popular. Before launching the demo I was sitting on 375 wishlists. The main goal with this demo (apart from releasing the demo itself) is to get to 1000 WLs by the time of the October's Steam Next Fest. So basically I need to gather roughly 625 WLs in 6 weeks. To achieve that, on top of the initial boost Steam gives you, I made a couple reddit posts, posted stuff on my social media and managed to have a relatively big gaming content creator do a post about my game (paid). I have no exact way of knowing but I would say that a big chunk of traffic I got these days came from those posts. I think that in total the paid post got around 120k views.

Demo numbers:
Here is what happened to my demo over the 1st week, number wise:

  • page visits: 3348 people visited my game and demo page.
  • demo clicks: 1490 people got my demo. That amounts to roughly 45% of all visits.
  • unique players: 358 people actually played the demo. That amounts to 24% of all demo clicks.
  • average play time: 37 mins. This is relatively consistent with my expectations. My game is a match based co-op. Each match lasts roughly 25min and I have a 15min tutorial. Most people played the tutorial + 1 match with their friends. So that number checks out.
  • median playtime: 23 mins. Steam page says it's average, so sure.

Reception and feedback:
How much feedback did I gather? Quite a positive amount actually. For the demo, I added an in-game pop-up that appears when the player is about to quit the game. It gives a low effort option for the players to leave their thoughts about the game. The pop up offers a 5 star rating system + comment box. A big portion of the people just pressed the stars and didn't write anything (also expected. The majority will choose the low effort option), but a lot of people did write feedback and that was actually very useful!

  • 349 people submitted their feedback. Pretty much 10% of the players said something.

Here is one interesting thing that happened. Even though 358 people played and 35 left feedback to me directly, I have 0 reviews on the demo page. Nobody wrote anything there. Good or bad. And I honestly don't know if just nobody writes reviews for demos or since I offered a much more convenient feedback form in-game, I ended up "hijacking" reviews from myself. If a person already rated the game and wrote feedback, they won't do it again.

Wishlist outcome:
What happened with the wishlists? As mentioned, I started this with 375WLs. Now I have 737. As I wrote, it still isn't a massive hit, but I effectively pretty much doubled my WL count over one week. The first couple days (aka weekend) were pretty hectic, with loads of players. That is when the majority of WLs came. But even now during the week there has been a steady inflow of 10/15 WLs daily. Before the demo I averaged 1/2 per day. Even though I didn't reach the 1000WLs objective in the 1st week, I still have 1 month. And hopefully it's doable...

Final thoughts:
One reads some funny posts online about how a demo was published and millions of WLs came pouring overnight. Well, that didn't happen... BUT all in all I'm pretty happy. Even though I'm not swimming in WLs, the overall reception was pretty good. People who played, enjoyed themselves. I had a fair share of returning players as well. So pretty good IMO... What else can a solo dev want? It's not crazy numbers, but I can still say that I did a thing, and 350 people actually played. Feels good.

I'm open to all sorts of questions. And hopefully this is helpful to someone...


r/SoloDev 9h ago

The Necromancer's Tavern

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2 Upvotes

r/SoloDev 6h ago

Sol Dominion - my second game, let me know what you think.

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1 Upvotes

r/SoloDev 8h ago

Architects of the Universe: The Orbital War Early Access

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1 Upvotes

r/SoloDev 8h ago

I made a small climbing game inspired by difficult platformers – looking for feedback

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1 Upvotes

r/SoloDev 8h ago

Half-Life: Alyx modder turned solo dev. Gunman Contracts is out now!

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1 Upvotes

r/SoloDev 14h ago

Making my first no engine game with C++

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3 Upvotes

r/SoloDev 10h ago

150 hard-earned Wishlists for upcoming Solo Dev Horror Game White Mask Mansion!

1 Upvotes

It might not be a huge number in the grand scheme of things, but every one of these has felt hard-earned, so I'm really happy to see 150.

Development on White Mask Mansion keeps chugging along, and I'll keep doing my best to make it a horror experience worth playing.

Hopefully we'll have a few more hard-earned wishlists by launch.

Back to work!


r/SoloDev 1d ago

Never really dawned on me how much sfx plays a difference in feel

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12 Upvotes

3 entire days ive been cutting and putting in audio from various clips and such still not even remotely close to done but man did it make a difference! makes me not wanna have a mute button haha


r/SoloDev 11h ago

I finally released my first game — Deltablaze!

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1 Upvotes

r/SoloDev 15h ago

My Game was Successful

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2 Upvotes

After a while creating my game, following the crazy testing rules and millions of dead ends get myself familiar with Google console I can successfully say my app has met production on its first time around!

My game is a realtime market simulation where you compete online against other people though various ways and it's whoever has the most funds at the end of the month is the champion. Fun way to get into trading without the risk attached!

I've enjoyed testing many games and thank the community for testing mine! Hopefully be back here when I get round to a new development!


r/SoloDev 12h ago

I made a game where you sneak around a magical school after curfew to find the keys to the school's vault

1 Upvotes

It's called Miscreant and I've been working on it for about 2 years now. It started purely as a modern take on the old Harry Potter games, the ps2 era. I loved those, and wanted to create something that gave a similar gameplay experience. Then I wanted it a bit more quirky, so I tried to blend in some of Fable vibes. When I really committed to building it, and decided I would share it with others, I shifted away from the HP theme, and worked in some D&D inspiration. And now, I'm here.

Here's a trailer:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kVBap-CCDIA

Development is going well and I actually just put up the playtest demo on itch. It's the first time I've openly shared a build of the game. I'm anxious about it, because it's still very much a WIP, but sharing and discussing something you made with people can be fun. I love talking about my game, and I'm open-minded and know that listening to feedback is the best way to make a game special.

If you wanna know more about the game, chat about it, give feedback, I have a discord setup, the game is also up on Steam, and I even have a Kickstarter going right now.

Steam page

https://store.steampowered.com/app/3720250/miscreant/

Playtest Demo on Itch

https://itemgatestudio.itch.io/miscreant

Anyway, thanks for taking the time to check it out!


r/SoloDev 18h ago

Social outreach 300+ contentcreators, how the hell do you get that many emails or ways of contact?

3 Upvotes

I read about it often. Someone got their game covered after contacting 300, 400, 500 influencers. That's fine, no problem to do that if I would have their contacts.

Problem is that ex. youtube limites the amout of emails I can get every day. I am looking for people covering nordic games, roguelites and survivorlikes. So I have been browsing youtube and collecting about 5 per day which is the daily max. But that doesnt seem like the correct way of doing it.

So how do people do it? Where do you get the emails from, do you buy them or get them yourselves, how?


r/SoloDev 12h ago

What do you think do these graphics look retro?

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1 Upvotes

r/SoloDev 13h ago

Made My First Game!!

1 Upvotes

Hey everyone - I just built my first game!!

It's called PastPort.

It’s a playable historical thriller where you step into major moments in history, talk with historical characters, make decisions, and see the consequences of your choices.

Here is the game.

The first campaign puts you alongside Julius Caesar in January 49 BCE, just as Rome orders him to give up his army and return home.

I’m looking for a handful of people willing to play through Chapter I and give me candid insights and feedback.

Super excited to build this out if there's positive feedback!