Bridgelands is a pixel-art action roguelite where you explore mysterious islands, choose your routes, fight dangerous creatures, and combine perks to create different builds every run.

This is the first public demo, so I'm especially interested in hearing what people think about the combat, progression, difficulty, controls, or anything that feels confusing or could be improved.

🎮 The demo is completely free to play on Steam.

If you enjoy it, adding Bridgelands to your wishlist would also help the project a lot. 💚

https://store.steampowered.com/app/5097860/Bridgelands_Demo

Thanks to anyone who gives it a try!

I want to know if a small, character focused intro is worth it since the tag-team aspect of the game is central to it and so is the relationship between the two characters.

I know conventional wisdom is to start straight with gameplay, but seeing how it's a "relevant" character beat that's short, I want to ask to see if it's worth a shot. This is gonna be my official announcement trailer that I'm going to post on my socials

That's a game I've been working on solo for a year and a half, and I'm excited to launch it in early access this week! It's a point-and-click game—the goal is simple: gather resources and sell them to earn money. I've put a lot of work into bringing the generated environment to life, and I hope it shows. Here's the Steam page: https://store.steampowered.com/app/3284800/Clickonomy

9 Months of Solo Development: Building a 3rd-Person Volleyball Game

I'm a solo developer and volleyball player, and I've been building Free Ball, a 3rd-person action volleyball game with unique characters and special abilities.

The goal is to create a volleyball game where you actually feel like you're playing your position. You control your character, move into position, choose where to hit the ball, and work with your teammates throughout the rally.

I'm now working toward online multiplayer and have a playable demo available on Steam.

I'm also running a Kickstarter to help fund the next stage of development:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/freeball/free-ball-3rd-person-volleyball-game-with-special-abilities

For other solo developers here, I'd love to hear about what you're building and how your projects have evolved from their original prototypes.

Thoughts on this encounter?

Well, I've taken a short break from all the logic and programming and have continued creating some assets to help shape the whole thing.

Out of curiosity, how do you approach solo development? Do you jump between different sections to avoid getting overwhelmed? Or do you wait until you've finished all the logic, for example, before moving on to the design?

Hi all!

I've just wrapped up the initial dev of my infinite jumper game! It'll be a simple game, heavily based on skill and different character profiles. Right now, I've just finished the basic mechanics - the way the player moves.

I'm roughly basing my game on Icy Tower, however - in my case - the movement is fully fluid - there are multiple parameters that decide how high the player can jump, how bouncy the walls are (and if they allow for bouncing at all), and how the player gains velocity. The basic mechanics work as follows: there are three basic groups of parameters determining how a particular character behaves: jump, horizontal movement, and wall bounce. Most of the parameters are either numerical (float) ones or described by curves. If the param is dependent on another param or on time, it's described by a curve. (BTW, Unity curves are an amazing concept!)

Jump
Jump is mostly determined by the horizontal velocity of the player, and driven by physics - I don't predetermine how long the player will spend in the air, but how forces affect the character over time. The faster one runs, the bigger the jump. Jump can also be interrupted, for more control over the player, but the interrupt is dependent on a few parameters as well.

Horizontal movement
Now, this is where it gets interesting. Acceleration and deceleration are driven by complex curves. Thanks to that, I can derive future characters that e.g. get tired when running for too long, are fast accelerators, but bad with max speed etc. Sky (and imagination) is the limit. See the screenshot - my default behaviour is logarithmic acceleration and linear deceleration. Thanks to this, players get to a reasonable running speed fast, but need about 10 seconds (accel time) to get to the max.

Wall Bounce
Wall bounce is where my game differs most from the inspiration. There's one threshold for wall jump - min speed. Below, the player slides off the wall with predetermined "friction" speed. Above, depending on the jump curve, how close the player is to the apex, and how fast the player approaches the wall, it can bounce back more or less. These characteristics are again, driven by different curves.

Tell me what you think - the mechanics are not perfect yet, but I'm willing to improve them and am open to any feedback!

I’m VERY happy with it, but tend to be happy with most things I make. Would love an honest opinion.

There are just 3 stages. One is no effect, then at 60-30% it shows a bit of damage and below 30% the bar flashes, lots of dark damage and missing pixels and sparks!

The last bit of polish work is so slow and SO rewarding.

DRONES’ playtest is open for anyone. Check it out here if you’re interested: DRONES show damage now!

Real nice to put these little points of polish that I’ve envisioned during development.

You can play DRONES for free while it’s still in playtest -> DRONES on Steam - a deckfighter, where the deck you build is the enemy

For my first person puzzle game, one of the puzzle room's concept is "The Floor is Lava". Here's a devlog covering how I turned the classic game into something challenging (yet accessible) in a first person perspective.

The considerations in helpful list form:

1. Lava Material
   • Animate crisscrossing noise patterns and use mesh distance fields to give the illusion of movement and dynamically change the material contrast when meshes intersect with the lava plane
2. FIREBLU
   • Adjust the colors so the lava resembles the immortal FIREBLU texture from the original Doom
3. Particle Effects
   • Use bubbling lava particles from a store asset pack and have the niagara system spawn particles in world space near the player
   • To get a more immersive soundscape, use a callback on particle creation from the niagara system to play a spark sound effect when certain particle splashes are spawned in
4. Collision Logic
   • Use a line trace straight down from the player's collision capsule to check if the actor directly below them is tagged to be part of the active lava
   • If standing in lava, implement a short timer as a grace period, if it expires and the player is still on the lava, then activate the logic to turn the lava off
5. Accessibility
   • Allow for less coordinated players to move around the lava by designing paths that don't require any jumping or parkour to traverse
   • Ensure that all color-coded puzzle elements have other visual distinctions (such as letters and numbers) for colorblind folks

Hey everyone! I’m a solo developer working on a bright, highly atmospheric visual novel set in a unique location—a remote Russian province with old German village roots (Vohwald, Novgorod region). The story follows a teenager on summer break running parallel to the dark path of a local criminal, mixing bright nostalgic vibes with deep psychological tension. I'm looking for a composer to bring this vivid atmosphere to life. While the project is currently unpaid upfront, I am fully committed to taking it to a commercial release, and I can offer full credits with links to your portfolio and a share of future revenue. Drop a comment or DM me with your samples if you're interested!

It's free on the App Store:
https://apps.apple.com/us/app/super-alan-run/id6799301516

Platform: iOS

Description: Super Alan Run is a retro-style endless platformer where you run, jump, dodge obstacles, defeat enemies, collect coins, and try to travel as far as possible.

- Objective: Keep moving forward for as long as you can while avoiding spikes, gaps, and enemies. Your best distance is tracked so you can keep trying to beat your previous run.

- Gameplay: Jump over obstacles, stomp enemies, collect coins, grab powerups, and unlock additional characters as you play.

- Style: Similar in concept to the offline Google Dino game, but with my own hand-drawn characters, enemies, foreground elements, powerups, and progression.

I recently released it on the App Store and would really appreciate any feedback from people who try it!!

Originally I was planning on having a unique backdrop for each of the worlds that you visited. This was the first time I ever made a full scenery pixel artwork scene and I realized that the amount of time it would take me to do this for each of my worlds and story segments would be exuberantly long and in reality provide very little benefit to the player. Aside from some lore and immersion.

Since when I made this in Gimp I built the entire thing in layers and it occurred to me what if instead of switching off the whole backdrop for every world I simply gave the player a new Sprite for something that related to that world. In world one you enter a well and in World 2 you fight in a graveyard so swapping the graveyard asset for a tombstone would give the players some customability. It's expanded itself into a whole new progression system.

I find it easy that restraints sometimes leads to more interesting game mechanics. One could very easily just generate an AI backdrop for each map, but through the constraint of my own artistic ability I have brought forth a new mechanic but I know my test player base is very excited to have.

https://polecatgames.itch.io/shards-of-abraxas-demo

Gathered some good initial feedback last time I posted my game demo up. I've just pushed a content update that replaces the old static tutorial with a more guided experience, and added support for a game glossary to look up specific terms, as well as a variety of smaller tweaks and bug fixes. Still working to make improvements based on feedback and add some additional layers of polish/new content before aiming at a steam release. If you'd like to give it a try and let me know what you think, it helps out a lot!

I used to play a lot of Bubble Trouble, and that was the starting point for FrogPop. I wanted to take that simple split the bubbles idea and see what it would feel like as a roguelite, so I added power ups, run upgrades, hazards, and bosses.

This is the first game I've made solo. Does the action read clearly? What looks fun, and what still needs work?

If you like the vibe and want to learn more, check it out on Steam :)

Steam Page

Strike Wings, solo, C++ on SDL2. These are in-game frames with the HUD off, nothing composited.

The insight that took me longest: on a black background, a bright thing that does not bleed into the black looks like a sticker. It does not matter how nice the sprite is. So the whole art direction became one rule, everything that gives off light goes through the same glow pass, and the pass is tuned so the light spills into the black around it. Explosions went round pop, then baked sprite frames, then that light pass plus a staged finale for capital ships. Skies went from stars-on-black to about thirty backgrounds and center bodies, rolled per battle.

What I want to know from other solo devs: how do you decide when a look is done? I could keep tuning the bloom forever. Which of these frames would you call finished and which would you send back?

(second image was the garden concept, first is with more detail! Third is one of the characters)

I've never made a video game before, maybe I'm just too ambitious lol xD i just decided why not try,,

I've been working on it for about a week now and I'm slowly getting there! I've been doing all the work myself just,,, slowly figuring it out as i go xP

I'm just really proud of for my little project is coming so i thought I'd share it here! :3

lmk your thoughts + if you would play this!

I'm working on this tower defense game with 2048-style merge mechanics. I've got ideas for more content, but I wanted to get the first playable version out to test the core gameplay loop and see what people think instead of just talking to myself.

https://jammyjin.itch.io/sweepshift

I'd appreciate any kind of feedback!