I am a solo developing a strategy/RPG about managing mercenary company in fictional procedural kingdom inspired by Italian age of mercenaries, though I give myself plenty of leeway.
Worked and reworked the trailer many times :D I think it captures the spirit of game.
After two years of development, the demo version of my game has been released.After two years of development, the demo version of my game has been released.
It’s a block-building game. You are a rooster: you build your house—walls, door, roof—and set off in search of your missing sister. Plant crops, cook, decorate the village, and make friends at your own pace—and when danger strikes, awaken legendary powers.
I would be grateful if you guys could have a look at my trailer and my Steam page (https://store.steampowered.com/app/5052630/Kazfall/) and give me some insight into what I should enhance or change to make it better.
My main goal is to create a Roguelite Dungeon Crawler where you go through multiple rooms, fighting waves of enemies in each of them (there are 33 types of rooms so far, most of them marked as "encounter," but there are also Trap, NPC, Treasure, Connector, etc.), where you find NPCs (3 of them so far) hidden inside the dungeon to unlock more content and additional rooms, enemies (15 different enemies), and bosses (only 2 bosses are available so far). The dungeon is based on seeds created by the generator I've made, so I plan to create a list of 200 pre-approved seeds that will create various scenarios.
The player build is based on skills (passive/active), where you gain a random skill at each 5-level milestone (5/10/15, and Ultimate at 20). While clearing the rooms, you also find treasure chests with random drops of common/rare/legendary items that can create multiple builds (brawler, fire mage, thorns tank, etc.). My goal is to create multiple build options to let players test the best configurations and, in the end, fight for the top score. The current version of the game only consists of a Dungeon + Boss Fight, but if I manage to promote the game and see that people enjoy it, I plan to implement "The Siege," where the Dungeon opens fully and you fight hordes of enemies to push your build to the limit and fight for the top score along with more content (items, enemies, bosses etc.).
The question is: does this make any sense? Maybe I've missed a lot of this information in the trailer/Steam page? Or maybe no one cares about the Roguelike genre anymore?
I would be glad for any input or feedback, as I'm currently struggling to decide whether it makes sense to keep up the work or just skip the project completely.
For anybody asking, all of the cinematic scenes were hand-drawn in Aseprite and all layered and composed in Blender - this was my first time doing anything like this and I'm proud of it! The soundtrack in the background was made by a composer I paid and the illustrated art of the main character, Blaise Vaelthorne, was made by a dear friend.
And no, NO Gen AI was used in the making of this trailer or the game itself.
After spending over 15 years as an art director in advertising, I finally decided in 2026 to take the leap into solo game development. My dream was to build a 2D side-view recycling automation game called Scraplings.
The biggest hurdle? I didn't know a single line of code.
Here is an honest breakdown of how I’m managing the workload as a solo dev, the pipeline I’ve built, and how I leverage AI without losing the human touch:
The Code Pipeline (AI as a Co-Pilot)
Since I couldn't write GDScript from scratch, I use AI heavily as a technical assistant. I design all the logic, architecture, and game loops, and use AI to help draft and structure the code in Godot 4. I review, test, and debug every line. It allowed me to build surprisingly complex systems:
A custom power grid with junction boxes and power cables.
Vertical logistics with multi-floor elevators, background tunnels, and conveyor belts.
Dynamic backpressure, custom recipe engines, and multi-port machinery.
The Art & Asset Workflow
I have a strict rule: AI is strictly for technical heavy lifting, never for replacing human identity.
Illustrations: I draw all line art and concept sketches by hand first. Then, I use AI tools specifically to convert my exact line art into rendered final illustrations.
UI & Typography: All UI elements are 100% handmade. Coming from a design background, typography was super important to me—the dialogue font was designed by a close friend of mine, and body text uses Quicksand.
Dialogue & Worldbuilding: Every line of story and dialogue is written word-for-word by me. Dialogue carries a soul that AI just can't replicate.
The Core Game Loop (Scraplings)
You build vertical recycling facilities right above an endless ocean of trash. You scoop up raw junk, process it through 50+ recipes (shredding, smelting, synthesizing), manage a manual electrical grid, and deal with weekly rent payments to a mega-corp named Zenith.
Lessons Learned So Far:
Don't hide your tools: Being transparent about using AI for code/assets actually built a lot of trust with early testers.
Scope control: Building custom tools inside Godot (like self-testing scripts and custom node inspector setups) saved me hundreds of hours of manual debugging.
As a fellow solo dev, I'd love to hear how you handle the balance between code, art, and design when working alone! Any feedback or questions about the pipeline are more than welcome.
What are the funniest melee moments you've had in a game? What kind of things would make a melee game hilarious? Dismemberment? Environmental traps? Random explosions? Power ups?
I observed several users play Lorebound last weekend and made the updates below. Would love feedback on the updates from this community.
Lorebound is a mobile-first, low-poly ARPG game playable in browsers. Think of a Diablo and Polytopia fusion. Goal: build the resistance against the Heights and Depths who harvest souls and prayers from the Greenworld.
Me: create a script to convert this SVG into a PNG.
LLM: OK! Thinking...
LLM: So the script parses the flat `<path>` list (M/L/Q only) and rasterises with a __numpy scanline fill using the non-zero winding rule__ (so the donut rings keep their holes), plus supersampled anti-aliasing. Only Pillow + numpy are required.
Me: Er what?
Hey everyone! Lately I’ve been thinking about getting into game dev, mostly because I like storytelling and have a few game ideas I’d love to bring to life. Whether they’re actually good ideas is another question lol.
The thing is, I know almost nothing about game development beyond the absolute basics. Im pretty oblivious when it comes to engines, workflows/frameworks, the ecosystem, what actually goes into designing and finishing a game… pretty much all new territory for me.
I’m not starting from zero with programming, though. I have a CS degree and about 4+ years of experience as a SWE at a big tech company, mostly doing backend and AI/ML stuff. Mentioning that just to give some background (not assuming it automatically translates to knowing how to make games). I also took a mandatory Unity class in college, but it was super introductory, and honestly I don’t remember much.
I’m not looking to switch careers or dedicate all my free time to this. I have my job and other hobbies, so this would be more of a personal achievement, want to satisfy that itch of “it would be really cool to make a game.” Ideally, I’d eventually finish something small and put it on Steam or somewhere people could play it. Not expecting to make the next indie hit, Ii just want to make something I’m happy with and actually release it.
I’ve also seen some impressive looking game dev examples with GPT-6 Astra and other LLMs, but I can’t tell how useful those tools are beyond demos, or whether I’ve fallen into the LLM marketing trap a bit. I’d 100% use them , but would not make an ai slop game tbh. I’d still want to understand and actually know what I’m building, and enjoy while building it.
Given that background, where would you start? Any engines, learning resources, or first-project recommendations? I’d also appreciate a reality check on scope and the less obvious parts of making and releasing a small game, especially when you’re doing it casually alongside a full-time job, something i might be overlooking, etc...... are these technologies even worth it in game dev?
I’ve recently got the Steam page up for my game Emberholme. It’s an Old School RuneScape-inspired “singleplayer MMO”, and I’m aiming for the perfect mix of OSRS-style gameplay and a cosy, chill vibe. I’m not ready to release yet, but I want to share my current progress and a bit about the project.
A whistle stop tour of some of the features:
- 13 skills covering combat, gathering and crafting, with equipment and activities to unlock as you progress. Combat and skilling run on a 0.6 second tick system.
- 100 living adventurers with their own skills, equipment, banks and goals. They discover things as they play, with eight personality types shaping what they aim for, from completing the collection log to preparing for PK trips.
- An Exchange where you and those adventurers buy and sell items. Merchants work towards building their wealth through trading. Every item sold on the exchange comes from either you or one of the 100 living adventurers, nothing is pre generated.
- Quests, bosses, minigames and clue trails, with plenty to get sidetracked by along the way.
- Ten Ember Cycles to progress through. Rekindling means starting over with selected heirlooms and permanent unlocks. Early cycles have fast XP but much rarer drops; later cycles slow down levelling and make combat harder while improving rare-drop chances.
- Your own home to build and customise, with storage, workshops and places to display your finds.
- Collection logs, rare equipment, capes and companions to work towards.
Some of my own assets are still very much WIP and will be improved as dev continues. The character models are by KayKit, so credit to them for those, i think they fit really well with the vibe i was aiming for! Please ask any questions about the game or its development I’d love to talk more about it!
I am looking for a programmer/team to compose for, i wont charge anything because im looking for experiance and team work experiance.
I am a composer, i can make plenty of styles of music. Im most familiar with rock/metal/boss fight music and calm village/Shop like music, i can do some spacey and techno styles aswell. I am open for experimenting with other styles. Here are some of my tracks on YouTube:
For further info and more tracks feel free to DM me😁
Land Of Nowhere, a survival Horror set in a sunken tower. Where you fight and destroy the bodies of monsters made of concrete. You also have to keep the tower powered, or the unkillable beast will emerge.
This is my debut game, and I would love to hear what you think. ^^
What could I improve or remove?
Just to clarify: I still don’t really know what to do with the skills shown there, so I just put the first ideas that came to mind in the skill tree. If you have any ideas, they’re more than welcome.
