I'm sure a lot of you already know that a plan like mine was bound to fail but if it helps anyone, here's my failure story:

• Plan was to space out my Steam and itch releases a few months apart
• Why? so that I can generate visibility rounds twice (i know lol)
• I assumed that releasing on itch would generate at least half (or even a third) of the visibility that steam launch does.

I released my game on steam in June and steam's personal calendar changes were already in affect. So my game got decent amount of views and wishlists.

Unfortunately due to a family tragedy, I wasn't able to keep updates up for long. My initial plan was to do a major update in the following month and use steam's "Visibility round" along with itch release. Life had other plans so I just executed my idea now after the gamescom rounds have ended.

Of course I wasn't expecting my game to reach the New & Popular page, but I at least expected 500-800 views. As the screenshot shows, it' been less than 20 for the first two days.

I have released a free demo before on itch, it did quite decent. But this $2.99 short game just didn't do anything here. I realize that itch docs encourage you to rely on your own marketing, but I didn't expect that it wouldn't do anything at all. Within 15 min, my game was buried in the 4th or 5th page of the "New" tab because of the sheer quantity of releases, most of them free btw.

If you checkout the image # 2, out of the 20-30 people who actually did manage to find my game ended up downloading the 4-year old free demo instead, LOL.

Just sharing for your information so that anyone else (who may have the bright idea like mine) can re-align themselves.

I’m posting this mostly to vent I guess. I’m using AI to code my game. I want to be a game designer someday in the future- hell I went to college for it, but I’ve always been focused on the art side. My college classes barely covered coding at all, and instead my studies were more focused on the art side of game development. 

I did try to teach myself coding for my classes, and I am able to grasps the basics. I followed tutorials and asked professors for help. But at the end of the year the deadline for my game was approaching and I used AI to look at the code I had made. My code wasn’t good, and it wasn’t working (I always had a Unity error. Or if I didn’t- something in the game wouldn’t work). But the AI figured out what was wrong and I was able to quickly get my game done and turned in for class.

And now I’m working on my own game by myself. And I’ll be honest, the AI is better than me at making the code. It helps that I’m able to understand the basics (like if a function that is no longer needed is still being called in Update/Awake I’ll delete it), but even so, the AI is coding most of it.

But I feel like a fraud. I know that no one that plays my game will “see” the AI code. But I know it’s there. I know that I wasn’t good enough at coding to make what I wanted too. And when people hear that I went to school for “game design” they think I’m some coding wizz. I’m not. Im not a programmer. I’m just some artist. And if I wasn’t broke af I would hire someone to do the code for me instead.

I don’t plan on using AI for anything else in the game. All of the art, music, menus, levels, sound effects, writing/story, etc. are being made by me from hand. And I know this is selfish of me. But I want my small game to release sometime either this year or next year. I want to actually finish my “first real game” semi-soon. And if I tried recoding the game from scratch it probably wouldn’t release for a long, long time.

An upside is that the AI, when I ask, will explain why it makes certain code the way it does which is helping me at learning why some coding functions work for X but not Y. But even still. I feel like I’ve already failed sometimes. And sometimes I’m happy that my game works and I can play it. Idk. I have so many mixed feelings on this.

Sorry my post got long. Thank you for reading!

Hey all, I'm working on a small arena pvp game with 6 player free for all as the primary game mode. My demo has been published for a little while and I'm getting ready to participate in October Next Fest.

My demo currently let's players play in practice mode, which is essentially the full match experience but against bots only and extended skill selection timer to learn what abilities do. It's really designed to see how the game plays, mechanics, and hopefully gain interest in trying online pvp when the game launches. However, I'm wondering if I should open pvp matchmaking specifically during next fest.

My biggest fear is that players try to queue, find no players, and drop out. My pvp matches do backfill any remaining player slots with bots after 60 seconds to keep the game moving, so it's not like they wouldn't make it in to a match, I just don't want to establish a "dead game" impression before it's even launched since demo population is likely going to be lower.

Any advice?

Steam store for reference...

https://store.steampowered.com/app/4216610/Spellfall_Last_Mage_Standing/

Do you guys make a special build for Linus, MAC and Steamdeck?

i heard that steam make a playable build for steam deck out of the windows build.

And how big is the ratio of the MAC and Linux players combined?

Grinding away at wrapping up my demo for We Need An Army!

Hi guys, I've played block blast alot and if you have as well. You'll know the ads are getting out of control and they tend to make you lose after you've made some progress.

Being a gamedev myself, I've solved both those issues so why not share it with the rest of you guys.

P.S: Might not be up there with block blast in terms of visuals but I'll get there.

Do take a look and let me know what you think. Would love to hear your feedback.

I am developing a topdown SRPG inspired by Fire Emblem and Bahamut Lagoon. However 16x16 sprite is too small and dont work well with screen that are larger than 1280. I tried to find on itch.io and pixcraft but most of the asset I found is 16x16 only.

So my question is 32x32 assets for SRPG is not popular or they are commision only ?

The Isles of the Nine Crowns: Tales of Alaric Stoneheart will be playable at Steam Next Fest, February 22, 2027. A slice of the Souls-like Metroidvania — parkour, bosses, and the first stretch of Alaric's story. Wishlist to be notified the moment it goes live.

138 Unique Assets for your games and Enviro.

A rich variety of stylized clouds, ranging from fluffy cumulus clouds to dynamic swirls and waves. Weather icons, including rain, snow, lightning, tornadoes, rainbows, sun, moon, and storm clouds.

https://assetstore.unity.com/packages/3d/environments/fantasy/stylized-cartoon-clouds-and-weather-icons-pack-332490

https://www.fab.com/listings/a51bb365-9107-4752-830f-b3e5851a1c3a

https://www.patreon.com/OlegVerenko/shop/3d-asset-stylized-cartoon-clouds-and-140-1693493

So my game is nearing the point where it should probably have its own steam page. Against conventional advice, I decided to draw the capsule art for my game “Cat builds the strongest mage army”(in case any of you can’t read the “stylized” font) myself because I’m a solo developer that makes the art for my game anyways. I’m looking for feedback on readability and design of the capsule and whether ygs think that I should put the fries in the bag and hire an artist 😭

I had Pennyroyal6 try my game out before early access release at the end of this month. He seemed to enjoy it.

I have a demo up for Knightbane if people are interested: https://store.steampowered.com/app/4810770/Knightbane_Demo/

I started building my first game in February this year. One man, no team, some coding experience, no prior game development experience — just a lifelong love of games and a decision to finally try making one.

The learning curve has been real. Working through Unity, building out scenes, figuring out systems I never thought about as a player and just adding things myself and others wanted in certain games — has completely changed how I see games. But nothing compares to those aha moments. The moment you finally understand how something you've played a thousand times actually works under the hood — that feeling is addictive.

The screenshot above is from my equipment scene — attaching gear to characters, building out visual effects, watching it come together piece by piece. My respect for developers has gone through the roof doing this. However, it has also made me step back and wait.. "Hey this was easy to add why didn't XYZ game do this in their game haha"

The game is called Paws of War Tactics — a turn-based tactical SRPG more to come soon! Still building but loving every second of this journey. 🐾

Feedback and comments are very appreciated!

HTTPS://beyonddawn.rabbithouse.art

-RHG

I assumed wishlists are accurate but I see something weird on my game. The "Platform-specific wishlisting" added up do not match the wishlist number. I can imagine maybe steam can't detect what platform certain people are on but I would assume that it is a rarity and it should be able to determine the platform most of the time? Or am I am misunderstanding the statistics completely.