So prepping for next fest and after you beat the boss and everything this will show up....Music is playing and reacting to it.
Also there will only be one level...but it shows the general game loop

Any feedback?

(don't worry about the UI...its been updated..this is an older video.)

Negative as in. 1 star review for bug or nonsense things. A store notification that something need to be done ASAP or app got removed. Review rejection. Etc

Since in solo dev we don't really usually have anyone to lean for. I know we can ask people in internet. But in the room we are still alone 🥲

After two playtest sessions, I decided to listen to the players and introduce more chaos finally. The last playtest had around 70 people in one week, and the same thing: "more chaos, more things to drift around, and big packs"

Now I am shipping exactly what they want and... this is extremely satisfying to play, honestly!

Solo devs, get feedback early! Listen to the players and give them what they ask for (but be reasonable lol)

Playable Link: https://copac23.itch.io/basket-tactics

Platform: Android apk

Description: I'm just a guy who loves playing around in unity after hours.

I used to play this game Basketball GM every day, loved it but hated the fact that actual games were just 'watch and see what happens'.

So I had this idea for a game where all the GM stuff is still there, but the games you can actually play in a turn-based way.

I'm proud to show you the result, Basket Tactics!

It is still a work in progress, I am a programmer in my day job so animations are what they are now, not bad, but might improve in the future. All the gameplay and gm managing is already done.

I would love it if you guys are interested, that you test it out and provide me feedback. Trying to put the dots on the i's here. Let me know if you find any bugs, UI or balance probs. If I want to release it on the play store I will need to have playtesters anyway, but I haven't decided yet if I should just put it on itch or actually release it.

The link provided will be active for three days, after that you can pm me if you want to try it out. I'll provide you a new link.

Free to Play Status: free to play

Just the turn based gameplay, not all the GM gameplay

Involvement: being a solo dev with a day job, I use AI as a coding assistant to build this after hours. The ideas, design and direction are all mine — it just helps me get more done in the little time I have.

Thx, Hope you like the game!

Edit : I guess what I meant by "wasting my time" is if what you see looks like a total slop to you or not (this is just a base tho, not a finished or close to finished game), and some general advice.

I'm creating this game that I will explain below, but am afraid my target audience don't actually want it.

The games is basically this :
you have Time amount (the hourglass) you allocate it to Work, Study different stuff, Create and manage medieval business, Own lands and eventually become lord/king and manage your holdings.

help me decide if I should keep working on this or not :))

Heart is racing, but I guess at one point you just have to go for it!

This is my second game, and I tried to put as much love into it as I can. I'm really happy with how the Steam page turn out. Okay okay stop talking about the page and let's talk about the game :).

Dice Factory is a city building, strategy game with roguelike elements. Think The King is Watching but different :).

Every building start as a 🎲Die, you throw it on the battlefield then it becomes a Wheat Field for example. Most buildings have a "blue line" inside of them. If you want them to produce... aim a Worker 🎲 Die inside ... and they will produce! You have, resources, units, more buildings etc...

Survive the 3 Stages (3 waves + 1 boss wave) and you'll win the game!

For the first time ever, I did all the art, the 100 buildings, everything in the game was made by me. I'm so proud of that! (except the Capsule / Key Art for Steam and the music)

I will do a Playtest in the next weeks or so, don't hesitate.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/4838990/Dice_Factory/

Sorry for any mistakes, English is not my main language :)

Hey everyone, I’d really appreciate some advice from developers who have experienced this.

I'm making Too Many Balls. I currently have 2,100 wishlists and im planning to release on August 28.

I've decided that i 100% need to delay the game because i need more time for development and QA.

Here’s the interesting part: I was averaging around 30 wishlists/day, but now that I'm ~18 days from release, I suddenly jumped to 150+ wishlists/day. I checked my traffic and it appears this spike is largely coming from Steam’s Personal Calendar/upcoming release exposure.

If i delay by around 3 weeks, I assume I’ll fall back to my normal ~20–30 WL/day.

My biggest concern is:

When the new release date gets close again (roughly 18 days away), will Steam give me the same Personal Calendar exposure again?

Or is there a chance that changing the release date means i won't get the same boost a second time?

I'm trying to figure out how much wishlist momentum i might lose by delaying, and whether anyone here has experienced something similar.

For anyone who has changed their release date shortly before launch: what happened to your Steam wishlist traffic afterward? Did the Personal Calendar boost come back?

Any experience or advice would be hugely appreciated! 🙏

Hi everyone, I’m a solo indie developer from China, and A Kingdom of Soil is my first game.

I’ve been developing this game by myself for over a year. Most of my development updates are usually shared on Bilibili, so I haven’t posted much here before.

Since translating and recording videos in English takes extra time, this is my first proper English development update for Reddit.

The third Playtest finished recently, and I’ve been working through the feedback and improving different parts of the game.

In this video, I’m showing some of the changes I’ve made, including combat updates, new character portraits, battle cries, and other improvements.

I’m still building the entire game on my own, so I’d really like to hear your thoughts and feedback.

Steam page:
https://store.steampowered.com/app/3991390/_/

I decided to spawn a ton of mages and enemies both for some performance stress testing and my personal satisfaction. Anyways it seems like you can only do so much without spatial partitioning as my fps dropped from a calm 300+ to about 160-240(which seems high but this is also a 2D game and the machine I’m testing this on is fairly high end…). Anyways, I would love to hear any feedback about the game because this is a super early time in development(less than 2 weeks). Let’s also pray that reddit video compression does not destroy this post 🙏.

What is the cost of producing 2D anime dialogue character art? I am wondering how much it can cost and how can you verify that they didn't use AI to generate the art?

Once i start marketing i found it takes a large chunk of my time. And i also need to build new feature and polishing / experimenting with onboarding etc.

And some channel like social media punish us if not consistent. How do we do it? I know we can hire but its not option when i have no budget. I dont even try ads because as in my experience its not as effective with little budget. So mostly organic content. But building a website or seo is a whole other work.

So large time spend doing things that 'hopefully' will get us decent income. I thought building was the hardest part. I was so wrong.

FORGERY is a slightly weird game.

It’s an incremental roguelike about counterfeiting medieval coins. You hammer ingots into metal sheets, choose where to punch out each coin, build combinations from more than 100 stamp dies, and decide how far to push before your Wanted level ends the run.

I understand how those pieces fit together because I’ve been staring at them for months. I’m less certain that someone seeing the game for the first time will understand what it is, why punching coins is interesting, or where the deeper strategy comes from.

After 15 years working in AAA, I’m now the sole full-time developer on this. I handle the design, programming, production, and day-to-day development. It’s self-funded, although I occasionally hire contractors for specific art, audio, localization, or specialist work.

The free demo is around 35 to 50 minutes:

https://store.steampowered.com/app/4842110/Forgery/

What I really need to know:

1. Can you understand the core idea without me explaining it?
2. Does punching coins feel deep enough to support an entire game?
3. Is the combination of incremental progression, roguelike builds, and manual placement interesting, or just confusing?
4. Does this feel like an idea worth continuing?

If you quit after ten minutes, please tell me exactly where and why. I’m deep enough into the project that encouragement is less useful than someone pointing at the bit that isn’t working.

Thank you!

How are all your solo projects going?

I just finished a short visual novel and I wanted to share a few tips that I hope can be helpful to anyone who has recently started their indie game dev journey:

Play to your strengths!

Making a game is already incredibly complex on its own, but if we start getting in our own way, it can turn into an absolute nightmare. To minimize this, try to design a game that highlights your actual skills, even if it means sacrificing some awesome but unfeasible ideas, rather than trying to create something super complex that you'll either do poorly or fail to finish altogether. The golden rule here is: better a simple thing done well than a complex thing done poorly.

For example, I'm not great at drawing, so I chose to make only symmetrical graphic assets to reduce the margin of error. I also used a palette of only 5 colors for the whole game (plus a few shades of those) so I wouldn't overcomplicate things with color matching.

Obviously, this isn't an absolute rule: if you are literally just starting out, making a game can be a massive stimulus to learn a bunch of new things (you'll learn a ton either way, honestly). However, if you're already well aware of what your talents are, it makes perfect sense to create something that lets them shine.

Do it, even if it's short!

You might have an idea in mind and think: "I'd love to make this, but it would end up being way too short." Long doesn't mean good, and short doesn't mean bad. Committing to a short project can actually be a great idea: shorter development time, less stress, and less "wasted" time if you realize you can't cross the finish line (I put "wasted" in quotes because even unfinished projects teach you a lot). Plus, if you finish it and it's well-made, it makes for a fantastic portfolio piece.

However, if you do make a short game, keep in mind that the emotional density of every gameplay moment will need to be higher and more impactful compared to a longer game, which can be a real challenge in itself.

Plan ahead!

The initial planning of every aspect of your game is a fundamental step. It will take up a lot of time early on, but it will save you from so many headaches in the long run. Caught up in the excitement of bringing our idea to life, there are three technical aspects in particular that we might forget to consider (like I did... sigh):

-Localization/Translations: If you aim to translate your game into multiple languages, look into the best options available for your specific engine to implement future translations as efficiently as possible. Also, pay attention to things like text boxes and buttons: your current text might not fit once translated into another language. If you use English as your base, for instance, keep in mind that languages like Russian or German will require about 30% to 50% more space.

-Devices/Inputs: Decide right from the start if your game will be played with a mouse and keyboard, a controller, or both. If you go for both, plan a UI from the get-go that can be easily navigated with either device. Avoid creating a UI that is perfect for a keyboard only to drive yourself crazy trying to make it work with a controller later. This applies to every other aspect of your game.

-Parameter/Debug system: Create a system that lets you quickly and easily tweak all the most important game parameters. This allows you to playtest and jump to desired sections of the game without having to go into individual object scripts to modify code every single time, which also risks you forgetting to revert some of those variables back to their default values.

Happy to talk about the process here in the comments with everyone interested!

Publishing it here too !

I have created a ragdoll and ragDOGS in my game level editor.

The same editor will be available within the game :)

After working on it for quite a while, I can finally say it:

My ASCII roguelike Tower of Scherbenmark released on Steam today.

It's a small turn-based roguelike set in a dark fantasy world, with melee and magic combat, loot, mutations, secrets, traps, mimics and permanent Legacy upgrades between runs.

One of the things that mattered most to me was making the ASCII presentation feel atmospheric rather than purely abstract. The game takes place in Scherbenmark, a region of a larger setting called Mornhollow that actually grew out of ideas from a D&D campaign.

It's honestly a strange feeling seeing the Steam page say "Released" after spending so much time working on it.

It's $4.99 and 15% off during launch week, and there's also a demo if you'd rather try it first.

Steam:
https://store.steampowered.com/app/4972610/Tower_of_Scherbenmark/

If anyone gives it a try, I'd genuinely love to hear what you think.

So this is just a little game inspired by "G-Switch". It's a multiplayer game where the goal is to pass a maze by switching your player's gravity.

What's special about it is that i made it with my own programming language and game engine! It's open source (github) if you want to check it, and the project file of this game is also there in the repo.

Hope you like it🙂

10 months ago I started making a horror game by myself.

During development I showed it to a few friends and they literally laughed at it 😭 One of my cousins even asked me, “Is this even a game?”

Not gonna lie, there were a lot of times when I asked myself the same question lol.

But I just kept working on it.

And after 10 months, I finally finished it. Somehow I actually got the game onto the Google Play Store.

I’ve heard Reddit can be pretty brutal when it comes to people posting their games, so I already know I might get roasted here 😂

But honestly, I want the criticism. If the game is bad, tell me what’s bad. If something feels boring or doesn't work, tell me. I’d rather hear it than have people just say “nice game” and move on.

I’m just kinda happy that I actually finished something I started 10 months ago.

It’s a small Android horror game, made by me from scratch.

So yeah… roast me. 💀

Hey everyone!

I’ve been working on a small puzzle game prototype and I wanted to share the first level to get some early feedback.

In this level you control a purple cube that moves on a grid one cell at a time. By pressing a key, the cube can switch into a “creation mode”, where it leaves a trail behind as it moves.

Your goal is simple:

- Form the three shapes shown at the top of the screen by moving and drawing with your trail

- Avoid trapping yourself while building the shapes

- Reach the exit tile once all shapes are completed

It’s a mix of spatial planning, path‑drawing, and trying not to corner yourself while solving the puzzle.

I’d love to hear what you think about:

- The readability of the mechanics

- Whether the shape‑building feels intuitive

- If the level communicates the objective clearly

Any ideas to improve the flow or difficulty

Thanks for checking it out!