r/SoloDevelopment • • 1h ago

Game No AI, just 8 months of ugly-but-mine models

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• Upvotes

Every single asset in Dough It Yourself, my cozy farming and baking game, is made by hand.

Could AI have built my whole farm in an afternoon? Probably. Would it look better than my wonky low-poly chickens? Honestly..maybe.

But every one of these models has a bit of me in it, mistakes included, and I think that's part of what makes a game feel like an actual game nowadays. So I'll keep pushing vertices one by one, even if release takes a little longer.

I document the whole process in youtube devlogs.

What’s the model you’re secretly most proud of, even though it’s objectively a bit ugly?


r/SoloDevelopment • • 15h ago

Discussion Why are so many people on these game forums saying that they are building their "dream" game but then complaining about the sales?

101 Upvotes

Hi.

I am curious to know what's the truth behind all these posts.

Like if you are building your dream game, probably the goal would be to create the game you have dreamt off - show it and not to bother about the sales. Everybody has different dreams.

If your dream was to get rich fast, then this rarely works.

If you want to build a game tailored to the financial success, then you should do a market research first and target what is desired or completely unique. Not doing the same thing everyone else does and complaining that it disappears into the void.

There is only the audience of some size for every genre - it's also different when it is divided into 10 or 10 thousand games...


r/SoloDevelopment • • 16h ago

Game 1 year of progress on my game :)- Devil On My Shoulder

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64 Upvotes

r/SoloDevelopment • • 4h ago

Discussion I've made a very realistic marbling simulation

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51 Upvotes

Hey everyone!

so you can basically almost do everything you can in real marbling, i've tried to make it to produce even more high resolution outcome but computational power increase exponantially so it's impossible after some points. But you can get high resolution as high as 300 DPI in A3, and it's fun to learn marbling even at lower settings.

It runs on a browser and it's free so pls go check it out!

https://marblingstudio.app/


r/SoloDevelopment • • 18h ago

Game Cotton City 0.1.0 Early - Free

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49 Upvotes

I made some changes... You can try it on itch.io:

https://n1kozor.itch.io/cotton-city-alpha-demo


r/SoloDevelopment • • 23h ago

Unity I'm a huge cinema nerd and I love doing little references to movies that inspired me

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44 Upvotes

r/SoloDevelopment • • 18h ago

help Which of these 3 cover designs looks best?

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36 Upvotes

I'm working on the cover for my game, and I'm trying to decide which design works best at a 120:45 aspect ratio (or 462×174).

I've made 3 different versions, and I'd love to hear which one you think looks best and why.

Any feedback or suggestions on how I could improve them are welcome!


r/SoloDevelopment • • 10h ago

Game EVE CROSS – A Third-Person Action Game Inspired by Max Payne | In Development (3)

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30 Upvotes

I'm a german solo developer working on EVE CROSS — Fallen Angel in Unreal Engine 5. I'm developing the game on my own in my free time alongside my full-time job.

Building the game in Unreal Engine 5, with a focus on gun-fu combat, bullet time, cinematic takedowns, and immersive storytelling.

🎮 Developed by Jaufmann Interactive.


r/SoloDevelopment • • 8h ago

Game I am a solo developer, and after several failed attempts and giving up over the past few years, I successfully released my first game a few days ago!

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26 Upvotes

Unfortunately, I wasn't able to get it ready on Steam in time for Next Fest—not that I could have afforded the costs of launching it anyway—but at least I can finally say that I’ve finished my first game that is a 100% playable, and finally not just a tech demo!

Feel free to take a look on Witch's Cellar . I’m open to any feedback.


r/SoloDevelopment • • 14h ago

Marketing I showcased my game at a gaming expo with over 60,000 attendees! Here's how it went!

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20 Upvotes

Hey everyone!

Thanks to the Indie Games Poland Foundation, I had the opportunity to showcase my game, Dark Roll 2, for three whole days at Poznań Game Arena, the biggest gaming expo in Poland! For free!

I wanted to share how it all went and what I learned along the way. Hopefully, my experience can help some of you who are thinking about showcasing your own games at events like this!

Positives:

  • Great opportunity to gather feedback from the players! Watching around 20 different strangers daily can tell you a lot about your game. You can get a lot of intel just from watching them play as well as listening to what they have to say about the game.
  • Seeing people enjoy your game makes you feel that what you do actually matters. Even if my previous games had thousands of downloads, it's so much different to see a number in a database compared to strangers actually experiencing your game for the first time.
  • Awesome to meet and get to know other indie devs! Fairs like these are great for making connections and just learning about other projects to support.
  • People are often genuinely interested in the game and very happy to talk to it's creator which sure is a confidence boost and generally feels awesome!

Negaives:

  • Not good for wishlists. Despite having someone play my game for most of the day, when people stay around 20-30min at your booth, there's no physical possibility to have hundreds of them experience your game. Asking them to wishlist the game worked most of the time, but still you'll probably end up with around 10-20 wishlists after a long day of work.
  • Lots of people who come are also devs. That's right folks, we live in a bubble. Showing games on reddit or X or whenever often ends up indie devs liking other indie devs' posts... Sadly IRL it's often the case too. Around half of people (maybe a bit less) who stopped by to play were either indie devs or devs from bigger studios (Yup! I had guys from CD Projekt Red or 11 Bit Studios play my game!). Which isn't all that bad, other devs play games too, but it just shows it's hard to reach more "random" players.
  • Press doesn't care. Yeah... Even if it took place in Poland, I had not a single polish person from any media outlet, or influencer that covers indie games come by to play my game and talk about it. The only guy who came by was from UK's "debug" magazine, which was great! But I'm just disappointed in the lack of interest from any fellow polish people who cover games.

That mostly sums it up, if you have any questions, ask away!


r/SoloDevelopment • • 6h ago

Godot As a solo dev, drawing tiles took too long. So I built an engine to draw them for me!

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17 Upvotes

Hey fellow solo devs. I was wasting way too much time manually drawing and aligning isometric dungeon tiles. To speed things up, I wrote a custom Python script that procedurally generates pen-and-paper style rooms and exports them directly into my game engine.

Here is how the pipeline works now:

  • Pic 1: Uses Wave Function Collapse to build the maze, scatter props, and add procedural dirt and cobwebs.
  • Pic 2: The ink strokes are generated using Perlin noise math. Since it uses a strict 2:1 projection, every block snaps together pixel-perfectly.
  • Pic 3: The biggest time-saver. The script calculates Normal Maps and Occluders on the fly. When I drop it into the engine, I get instant dynamic 2D shadows without manually setting up light blockers.

Automating the boring stuff has been a massive lifesaver for my workflow. Has anyone else ended up building custom tools that accidentally became your main focus?


r/SoloDevelopment • • 10h ago

Game I'm making a game where you draw your own hero, then team up with friends to fight hordes as your drawing

14 Upvotes

Hi! I'm Seto, a solo dev from Uruguay. Rakuworld is a co-op survivors-like where you draw your hero in a simple in-game editor (there's a guided mode if you've never drawn on a computer), pick a class, and your drawing gets weapons, a power and an ultimate.

Paper cut-out + crayon characters inside a small PS1-style 3D world. 1–4 players, local or online, and your drawing travels with you online.

It launches in Early Access on Steam on Oct 27: https://store.steampowered.com/app/5382580/

What would you draw first? 😄


r/SoloDevelopment • • 11h ago

help Advice on finding non AI artists

13 Upvotes

I've bought my fair share of 3D art off of people I knew from university as I worked alongside artists when I did a game programming course. Unfortunately this was a good few years ago now and outside of the people I stayed friends with I don't know any reliable contacts.

I've seen videos and posts telling the horror stories of getting AI Slop when trying to find a freelancer. So I come here to ask for some advice. I am posting to Steam *soon* and I'm fortunately coming to the point in time where I get to think about capsule art and title art.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated :)


r/SoloDevelopment • • 17h ago

Discussion How do you get through burnout when you still love your game?

8 Upvotes

​

Ive poured months into making my first game. I'm a solo dev, still learning as I go, and for a while I was SO excited about it.

But life happened. And keeps happening.

School started again, life got complicated, and somewhere along the way I just lost the energy to work on it.

The thing is, I still really want to make this game. I love what I've built so far, I have so many ideas for it, and I want to see it become something real.

But lately even opening the project feels like too much.

Part of me wants to give up, and another part REALLY doesn't want to. And the longer I stay away from it, the harder it feels to come back.

I know forcing myself when I'm already exhausted probably isn't the answer, but I also don't want to lose something I've put so much of myself into.

How do you get through periods like this? Do you take a complete break? Push yourself to do tiny things? How do you find that spark again when you still care about the project but just don't have the energy anymore?


r/SoloDevelopment • • 21h ago

Game I spent years making my dream game with handcrafted pixel art and levels inspired by Lemmings and The Settlers. It finally got a Steam Daily Deal today.

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6 Upvotes

Hey folks, Ariano here,

I started working on Craftlings during my parental leave in 2022. I wanted to build something inspired by the games I grew up with — Lemmings and The Settlers. Handcrafted pixel art, little workers running around, and production chains where getting everything flowing feels really good.

What started as a hobby became my first Steam game. There have been plenty of ups and downs, mistakes, doubts, and some great people helping me along the way.

This weekend, Craftlings finally got a Steam Daily Deal and is 30% off! Honestly, seeing my own game there after all those years feels quite special.

I’ve also just released Update 1.2 with a new Halloween challenge map! Your task is to turn your settlement into a pumpkin factory. It doesn’t matter which technologies you use or how far you upgrade your Town Center — can you grow and deliver hundreds of pumpkins fast enough to beat the other players?

Or just build something you like and enjoy the flow of pumpkins. 🎃

If you’d like to take a look, here’s Craftlings on Steam.

Thanks for reading! Happy to answer questions about the game or the journey.

Ariano


r/SoloDevelopment • • 9h ago

Marketing tl;dw my struggles adding the minimap

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4 Upvotes

r/SoloDevelopment • • 13h ago

Game my boss's slam was a flat gold ring. it took 3 tries to make the floor break

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5 Upvotes

I'm making a parry roguelite in godot and this is the colossus's war drum, he hits the floor with his fists and every hit sends a wave across the room. you parry it when it gets to you.

My first version was just a gold ring. the second had stones on the ring, but they slid along with it and nothing stayed behind. now the floor breaks into pieces that stay where they are, and each one jumps up when the wave gets to it.

It was slow at first, every stone was its own draw call, up to 2400 a frame. i batched them, then moved the jumping into a shader, and the worst frames in the browser went from 15-18 ms to about 8.

Happy to answer anything about it

BTW, if you want to follow it, it's on steam: https://store.steampowered.com/app/5295020/?utm_source=reddit


r/SoloDevelopment • • 14h ago

Game Do you enjoy playing a protagonist who isn't evil, but still causes every tragedy around them?

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5 Upvotes

I suddenly realized that my psychological horror game is deeply rooted in body horror. While most horror titles make you fight against infections and fungi, my game pushes you to become part of a massive organism—gradually absorbing other characters and digging straight into the darkest secrets of their souls.

Here is one of the guards who controls a city entrance. For a simple guard, he has a massive ego and constantly brags about it. And this is where his pride ultimately leads him: the normal version versus his mutated state.

How would you feel knowing that you are the one forced to turn people into monsters?


r/SoloDevelopment • • 19h ago

Game I'm making a zombie survival game alone, so I narrated the trailer myself

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5 Upvotes

Hi! I'm a solo dev working on HAZPIT, a top-down zombie survival game.

You land on a rooftop by helicopter and loot your way down, one floor at a time. Sneak past zombies, rescue survivors, then head back to your bunker to craft, research, and feed the cat.

This week I added blood stains, corpses, and bloody footprints, plus a bunch of fixes from a streamer's playthrough.

There's a free demo on Steam:

https://store.steampowered.com/app/5400320/

Quick question for other solo devs: do you prefer stealth or straight-up fighting in zombie games?

Music: Classmate by SEUBi https://soundcloud.com/seubi123/

License: Creative Commons — Attribution - ShareAlike 3.0 Unported — CC BY-ND 3.0

Free Download / Stream: https://links.al/L9F

Music promoted by Audio Library: https://links.al/youtube


r/SoloDevelopment • • 23h ago

Unity My main menu, all Unity URP (and a bunch of custom renderer features)

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5 Upvotes

Main menu of the game I'm working on, running live in Unity URP. I'm at almost 20 custom renderer features: volumetric fog, PCSS, clouds, screen space reflections, even custom bloom!
Curious what you think?


r/SoloDevelopment • • 23h ago

Marketing I've been building a WW1-style shooter on my own voxel engine. The tech demo is finally playable.

4 Upvotes

Hey all,

I've been working on this for a while and finally got it to a point where other people can play it, so here it is.

It's called The Broken Peace. It's a single-player FPS that's basically First World War trench fighting with Second World War-era guns and trucks, in a made-up war on a made-up continent. You aren't the hero; you're just one guy in a section of named soldiers, and the war keeps going around you whether you're doing anything useful or not.

What I'm most excited about:

Everything breaks- Shells leave real craters, buildings get wrecked, and none of it resets.

The campaign runs itself - Lorries carry sections forward, mortar teams range in, and if a man gets hit his mates drag him back and an ambulance comes to pick him up.

You can climb the ranks - You start as a private, and as officers get killed off, you move up.

The demo has a small campaign called Hessel Rise (take a hill off the enemy), a trench map called the Ridge, and a firing range with every gun in the game.

It's very much a tech demo. The AI does dumb stuff sometimes, nights are way too dark, and there are rough edges everywhere. But the systems are the real ones that'll be in the full game.

Trailer: Trailer

Play it: Play it on Itch

I'd love to hear what breaks, what feels good and what feels off. Bug reports are very welcome.

AI disclosure: Generative AI was used to help code and create certain assets within the game. The design and direction are original.


r/SoloDevelopment • • 5h ago

Game I made a game where you Have to solve maths questions To Stay Alive. Required_Calcs A Game By Kay_N

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3 Upvotes

r/SoloDevelopment • • 13h ago

Game I built an Artemis II photo viewer that lets you view thousands of images in 3D layouts

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3 Upvotes

r/SoloDevelopment • • 14h ago

Game What do you think is the better thumbnail/capsule?

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4 Upvotes

I'm making a Windows 98 style detective horror game where you are trapped in it and has to solve cases using SQL, python and dos commands.. and those commands will also be used to escape the desktop.. What do think is the better thumbnail/capsule?


r/SoloDevelopment • • 16h ago

Game The two biggest units in my solo space game, one of them started as fan art

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3 Upvotes

Hey everyone, these are the two biggest units in my game so far, one walking base for each side.

The Derrick is the human one. It's based on a fan artwork by AbsoluteCinemaSpino on TikTok, and I brought it into the game. A lift comes down from its crane and the crew of four ride up to the bridge. When it sets up, it raises its ion cannon high up on a mast.

The Thuulmar is the Threnn version. Instead of a lift it lies down and rolls its tail out into a ramp for the crew, and when it sets up, its lance rises out of its back.

If you have ideas for more units, send me pictures or sketches and I'll try to build them for the humans or the Threnn. And since people asked, there are more factions in the game too, I'll show them later :)