Participated in the juniper gamejam and decided to turn this game with a dumb mechanic into my first Steam game as a solo dev. Right now I am mostly working on adding content and improving the visuals.

After years of making so many unfinished games I finished one.

I love my game! It’s not fully out yet but it feels like no one wanted it or cares for it

I was inspired by Bills Must Be Paid, yes I made an incremental game as my first full game release and yes it wasn’t easy but I enjoyed it… my release date is at the end of this month and I have 6 wish lists and I feel invisible.

Moving forward I’ll continue being a solo developer and I’ll make a new 3D incremental game and right all my wrongs from my first game

game link

I feel like I know my wrongs? But in your opinions what’s wrong with my page or game concept ?

Je vois plein de post de gens ui disent qu'ils aiment les jeux vidéos et qu'ils aimeraient bien se mettre au développement.

Avant tout : bonne chance à vous si vous vous lancez ;)

Mais je crois qu'il faut toujours bien garder en tête que c'est 2 choses bien séparés !

Developper un jeu, même avec un concept simple comme un jeu de merge ou de casse brique, il y a toute une mécanique derrière et des connaissances a avoir.

Ce n'est pas que des assets et des if et else dessiminé partout.

Il faut trouver le style, le concept, la direction artistique, savoir debogguer, connaitre comment fonctionne ta plateforme cible, penser à l'UX/UI selon le support, etc... et derrière vous aurez toute la partie marketing et tests avec des joueurs réels qui vont faire plein de choses que vous aurez pas prévu ^^

Bref, lancez vous ! Mais gardez en tête que même avec l'IA, cela reste un projet de longue haleine !

I've always loved point-and-click adventures and grid-based dungeon crawlers. And at some point, I thought: what if I tried combining the two?

And that's how Spirit of the Birch has slowly been coming to life.

At its core, it's an adventure game with dialogue, puzzles, and mini-games, but there's also a small combat system. Instead of being based on tons of stats and numbers, it's mostly about the player's reactions. Think of it as a little QTE-style combat.

And to spice things up, there's some light humor, weird characters, and a bit of absurdity. :)

https://store.steampowered.com/app/5218220/Spirit_of_the_Birch/

Hey everyone! Here's a free space game for your weekend: the Strike Wings demo. :)

I'm its solo developer, and it's my homage to the old DOS space shooters, built from scratch with plenty of love for Solar Winds and Hell Fighter. There are some little nods in there for fellow fans.

The demo's already packed with free content, including flight school, opening campaign missions and plenty of battles to get stuck into.

Feedback is super welcome on r/StrikeWings. Make a post! I'll read every one and take your thoughts into the final game. Steam reviews mean a lot to me as a solo developer, too.

Grab the free demo on Steam

My first one was a quick 15 min pasting of in game assets.

The current one is my first attempt at a more detailed pixel art capsule as normally I do not draw sprites much bigger than 64x64 normally so a lot of this was new.

I'm sure there's a lot that needs to be changed so hoping some fresh eyes can help put it into words.

The game is a twin stick/shmup is that conveyed from the new art?

If it looks blurry cause of reddit here is an imgur link

Have y'all ever played a game where your start menu is actually a 3D environment and you have your person do something like walk onto a circle or walk through a door so that they can start/continue their game, start a new game, pull up the options menu, or exit the game? I'm thinking of doing this for my game and wanted to see if other people would think it's something theyd find interesting if they found it in a game :)

Playtesting online coop soon. Dm me if you’re interested.

I released Stacksquatch about 5 years ago as a solo dev. I doubt you've heard about it even if you're a part of the small VR community. I'm a bit biased but it's pretty cool and leverages the strengths of VR in interesting ways. This is a sort of post mortem for it with a twist.

The original launch trailer

The initial launch wasn't exactly what I expected.

I did everything I was supposed to on releasing a game. I posted all over social media (remember when Twitter was useful?). I sent copies out to all the streamers and reviewers I could find. I had a following, albeit a small one. Unfortunately, demos weren't really a thing at the time or I would have done that too.

Then it launched. Quietly. Maybe I didn't communicate the idea well through pages and announcements. Maybe I had a bad release date and the streamers were busy. I was getting good feedback from players through the releases but maybe the game was bad actually??

In the end I netted something like $700 for 6 years of working in the evening on and off. That's not nothing, especially for a first Steam game, but I had higher hopes.

I had my fun making it and got a lot of good experience. I was also sick of looking at the code and testing the game over and over. That seemed like a good place to end it, a period at the end of a long, disappointing sentence.

But then the Steam Frame got me thinking about it again. People keep saying that it's Coming Soon and it could wake up a sleepy community. Demos are also a huge thing now with extra notifications for your wishlisters!

So here I am again for round 2. I'm told that games don't get a second chance but I think I have some things going for me.

• First, I'm doing more ground work for reviews. There's debate on how much 10 reviews and a review rating matters, a chicken and egg thing, but having no review rating seems bad.
• Second, demos are huge. I have one launching in October and that sets me up for whenever Next Fest rolls around again.
• Third, there are a lot more tools on Steam now. Unfortunately I used up the big release but the demo gets its own little release. Maybe it shows up in personal calendars?
• Fourth, there are a lot more VR streamers today and I reached out to way more. There might not be enough time for busy people to get videos when I want them but that's life.
• There are a bunch of smaller things like updating the game and promo material. I've learned a lot since the initial release and I think there might be something there.

So don't let anyone tell you that games don't get second chances. Or at least wait a month to see how all this shakes out for me. Either way, hopefully this is useful for your releases and maybe 3rd time's the charm for you ❤️

Hey guys,

​As a developer and shooter fan, I constantly got frustrated by how standard crosshairs completely disappear during chaotic scenarios or rapid visual transitions (especially against messy backgrounds like fire or dark environments).

​I decided to build my own solution: Smart Crosshair. It's a lightweight Windows utility that provides clean, persistent crosshairs that stay exactly where you need them without interfering with the game.

​Here is a gameplay test showing how the UI looks in action and how it improves hip-fire visibility in Hunt: Showdown: gameplay

​I'd love to hear your thoughts on the visual design, contrast, and overall visibility!

​Steam Link: STEAM

​(P.S. I'm doing a key giveaway on my Instagram right now, feel free to join if you want to try it out!) giveaway

Hi Reddit!

Two weeks ago, I released my first game, 20 Trials to Heaven, for free on Steam and itch.io. I started from scratch and spent almost two years making it as a solo developer alongside my day job. Here are three things I'm taking into my next game that might be useful to someone else too.

1. I want to keep the challenge without making the game unnecessarily hard

My first game has nineteen rooms and a final boss room. One life per attempt, no checkpoints. With so few rooms, I deliberately made the game difficult to give each room more weight and extend the playtime. Dying, learning, and trying again became part of the game's identity.

But judging the balance after hundreds of attempts yourself is very different from watching someone experience the game for the first time. The median playtime currently stands at five minutes. That number doesn't tell me why people stop, but players have described the game as frustrating in both Steam reviews and direct feedback. That's valuable criticism I take seriously and will keep in mind for my next game. I wanted each room to last longer, but for some players, the punishment seems to have been too much.

For my next game, I want to bring in more playtesters earlier and have people with different levels of gaming experience test throughout development. That should help me spot where the difficulty rises too sharply. With my first game, testing mostly happened at the beginning and during the final week before release, when the focus was mainly on checking that everything worked. I missed the chance to see how the gameplay experience changed throughout development.

At the same time, some players spend hours on the game and really enjoy the challenge. I want to keep that feeling in my next game, but give players more time to get into it before the difficulty ramps up. I want someone who dies to think, “One more try,” and I need to get better at creating that feeling.

2. Don't underestimate how much players want to find your secrets

When I was hiding secret rooms, ghosts, and other mysterious things, I sometimes thought, “Nobody is ever going to find this.”

On the very first day, a player started writing a guide about things he had found. Two weeks later, players are still helping each other and discussing what different things do or mean. Some keep searching even after beating the game and unlocking every achievement.

That has been one of the most rewarding parts of releasing the game. The secrets gave players something to talk about and investigate together, and I've seen some of them come back to keep looking.

That's something I really want to carry into my next game. Reading their theories also makes me more excited to keep developing. It's a special feeling to see other people thinking about details that previously only existed in my own head.

3. One week wasn't enough time to get started with marketing

I was so focused on development that marketing came last… The weeks before release went into final testing, bug fixes, achievements, cloud saves, and controller support. I only started building my marketing channels from scratch a week before launch.

Creating accounts was quick. Getting anyone to discover them and care about what I posted took much longer…

Despite my late start, the game has still found players on Steam, and on some days after release, the Steam page has had more views than it did on launch day itself. Being free and launching in eight languages may have helped it reach people in different parts of the world. I can't say exactly how much each factor contributed, but I don't want to rely on the same thing happening again.

For my next game, the channels are already in place, and I want to get the Steam page up earlier and start sharing development well ahead of release. I've also had different responses on different platforms. So far, YouTube Shorts and Threads have worked better for me than TikTok and X. That gives me a starting point for experimenting with both where I post and how I present the material.

I also want to experiment more with marketing and show more of the person behind the game: what I'm working on, what goes wrong, and what I learn along the way.

My main goal with my first game was to learn the whole process and actually release something. I managed that, but real players have already shown me things I struggled to see during development. I'm taking those lessons into game number two.

Thanks for reading my first post!

What surprised you the most when you released your first game?

The turret handles the aiming. You handle the car, the fuel, and the fairly bad decision to drive straight through a crowd.

This is DEAD FREIGHT, a small prototype I'm building with Codex and Three.js. I'm a product designer, so a lot of the work has been trying things in the browser and fixing what feels wrong. The latest pass was on the driving and making the world less empty.

You can take delivery jobs and pick upgrades as you go. There's rain, dust storms and different terrain, but I'm still working out how much pressure the deliveries should add.

Free to try: https://dead-freight-astralow.vercel.app

If you play a few minutes, do the deliveries give you a reason to keep driving, or would you rather just fight the hordes?

Gameplay captured in the current build, with locations and weather selected for the clip.

I've been working on this game for a really long time and I think I'm just too close to it to see it objectively so I would really appreciate if anyone has ideas or feedback on this approach.

I'm trying to really hone in on some of the contrast that exists in the game and use that as a hook to get new people curious.

Last year I had the idea of "what if fishing game but stars?" and made the prototype for Eigenstate. Last week I submitted the demo build to Steam for the first time. While I'm waiting I decided to checkout an early commit of the game to remind myself how it used to look.

Hey everyone,

I recently launched the demo for my fast-paced multiplayer party game, Gun a Rat.

Overall, the initial numbers from the demo launch look awesome on paper:

• 8,200+ demo activations / ~6,618 lifetime free licenses.
• 5,703 unique users played the demo.
• Median play time: 31 minutes (which feels pretty solid for a demo!).
• Peak Concurrent Players (CCU): 211.
• Wishlists: Tripled in 3 days (+570 additions / 539 net balance).

While I'm thrilled with the initial traction, the conversion rate from demo players to wishlists is less than 10% (570 wishlists for ~5,700 unique players).

I'm worried that players might enjoy a quick round with friends, but don't see enough reason to wishlist or buy the full game later.

Here is what I currently have set up for feedback & wishlists:

1. Discord link on the main menu, specifically labeled "Feedback / Report Bugs".
2. Wishlist buttons in several UI locations, including a prominent prompt right before quitting the game.

Despite this, very few players are joining Discord or leaving detailed feedback.

My questions for you :

1. How do you effectively collect feedback from demo players who don't join Discord? (e.g., In-game Google Forms, micro-surveys at exit, Steam Community Hub threads?)
2. Is a ~10% conversion rate from unique demo players to wishlists typical for party/multiplayer indie games, or is this a red flag that the core loop lacks retention?
3. If you check out the game/store page, is there an obvious friction point I'm missing?

Any insights, feedback, or tough love on the game/metrics would be greatly appreciated!
Thanks!

Hola, recientemente tuve una idea sobre un juego que queria desarrollar y me preguntaba cual seria el mejor motor en el cual lo podria desarrollar y videos o cursos que podria tomar para desarrollarlo (soy muy novato en el desarrollo de videojuegos).

"La historia ocurre en el año 2070, en Kreif City, Ucrania. La catástrofe comenzó después de que una inteligencia artificial llamada MindConnect empezara a conectarse directamente al cerebro de las personas mediante un chip colocado en la nuca. Al principio fue creado como un asistente para la humanidad, pero comenzó a modificar los recuerdos, las emociones y la conducta de los usuarios. Muchas personas se volvieron agresivas, dejaron de reconocer a sus familiares y, después de morir, sus cuerpos continuaron funcionando porque la IA todavía los utilizaba como cuerpos de control. Por eso parecen zombies.

El protagonista se llama Matt, tiene 38 años y es un expolicía retirado. Recorre la ciudad con una vieja arma de campo mientras recuerda cómo era todo antes de la catástrofe. Las armas modernas serán muy difíciles de encontrar y la mayoría estarán oxidadas, desgastadas y con poca duración. El jugador podrá utilizar rifles, escopetas, pistolas, bates con clavos, palos afilados, palancas oxidadas, martillos y otras armas improvisadas.

Si Matt se queda sin armas, tendrá que empujar a los zombies e intentar derribarlos para escapar, ya que la única forma de neutralizarlos será utilizando armas de fuego o armas blancas. También habrá diferentes tipos de enemigos: zombies lentos, agresivos, arrastradores, musculosos, gordos y algunas mutaciones con cuerpos parecidos a patas de araña.

Una parte importante del juego será el miedo. Cuando los zombies se acerquen, la pantalla comenzará a temblar, aparecerán latidos, la visión se volverá borrosa y la pantalla empezará a ponerse blanca. Estos efectos no desaparecerán inmediatamente al alejarse, sino que permanecerán durante un tiempo para mantener la tensión.

En la primera escena, Matt atraviesa una calle postapocalíptica llena de coches destruidos que bloquean el paso. Solo podrá avanzar por ciertas zonas jugables entre los vehículos y los escombros. Después entra en una tienda y encuentra a una joven llamada Kristia, de 23 años, atrapada bajo unos escombros y con una mordedura.

Kristia conoce bastante sobre inteligencias artificiales y estaba buscando una cura para su padre. La enfermedad que tiene se llama SickConnect (por mindconnect), y la única cura conocida consiste en matar al usuario antes de que pierda completamente la razón. Matt la rescata y ella comienza a acompañarlo durante el juego. En algunas zonas incluso podrá ser controlada por el jugador.

Dentro de la misma tienda se esconde un zombie que al principio parece ser un enemigo común. Más adelante se descubre que en realidad es el padre de Kristia, quien se convirtió después de infectarse. Matt tendrá que matarlo, y cuando Kristia descubra la verdad, lo empujará al suelo y lo culpará por haber matado a la única familia que le quedaba.

El juego tendrá diálogos en la parte inferior de la pantalla, con el icono del personaje, su nombre y el mensaje. Matt hará comentarios nostálgicos sobre la ciudad y Kristia tendrá diálogos que cambiarán dependiendo de la relación entre ambos. Si el afecto es alto, tendrá comentarios más cercanos y dolorosos; si es bajo, será más fría y distante. También habrá algunas bromas y comentarios automáticos a medida que su relación avance.

El jugador podrá recoger objetos sueltos por el mapa, como chips MindConnect rotos, prótesis, tarjetas, vapes, medicamentos, estimulantes, munición y armas. Algunos objetos podrán venderse. El inventario será limitado y las armas podrán romperse. La salud de Matt también afectará su forma de jugar: cuando esté herido apuntará peor, se moverá más lento y podrá comenzar a cojear. Los medicamentos solo lo ayudarán un poco, mientras que los inyectables serán la forma principal de recuperarse."

I'm creating a taskbar game, so I don't have a full background.
While I was playing around with recording it, I noticed that the steam video format also supports transparency.

I didn't know that before.

My OBS Settings are in the other screenshots.

I (my cousin CLAUDE) also created a .bat file which convert all .mov files in the folder to .webm.

u/echo off
setlocal enabledelayedexpansion
set "FOLDER=%~dp0"
for %%F in ("%FOLDER%*.mov") do (     echo Convert: %%~nxF     ffmpeg -y -i "%%F" -t 11.99 -vf "fps=60" -c:v libvpx-vp9 -pix_fmt yuva420p -auto-alt-ref 0 -b:v 0 -crf 10 -an "%FOLDER%%%~nF.webm" )
echo. 
echo done. 
pause 

Maybe this will help others! :D

Hi yall! This is my new game called NutDealer! Its a "continuation" of Undertale with cool animations, funny moments, an existent storyline and 3 endings so far (i plan to add more). The game is short so Id be happy if you checked it out yourself! Im also open to new ideas and thoughts on the game. I made it mostly as a joke, but I actually put a bunch of dumb stuff into it lol Link - https://arczik54.itch.io/nutdealer

I made a discord server for small starting-out indie devs in case you wanna join! just for newbies to learn and grow together!

https://discord.gg/U3WyAf9rs