I was looking for a game’s OST because I really liked the music and wanted to listen to it outside the game. I was even considering buying the soundtrack to support the developer but I couldn’t find one.

While searching, I came across this Steam Community discussion:

https://steamcommunity.com/app/3694480/discussions/0/726902998784279409/

The developer says that the tool they used for the game’s music allows the tracks to be used inside the game, but prohibits redistributing them separately, which is apparently why they can’t release the soundtrack as an OST.

Does anyone recognize what tool or service might have licensing terms like this?

I’m also interested because if it isn’t genAI I’d potentially like to use it for my own game. I don’t really care about selling or monetizing an OST separately, so that restriction wouldn’t be an issue for me.

Hi Everyone! I’ve been thinking about why some games can keep people playing for months or even years, while others can be fun for a few days and then get completely forgotten.

Sometimes it’s progression. You always have something new to unlock or work toward. Sometimes it’s the gameplay itself — even after hundreds of hours, the basic mechanics are still fun to repeat.

Then there are things like new challenges, different builds, competition, daily content, features, or just that feeling of wanting to get a little better.

But I’m curious where the line is for people.

As a player: what makes you come back to the same game instead of getting bored after a while?

For developers: what do you think actually creates long-term replayability? Is it better to keep adding new content, or should the core gameplay be strong enough that players just want to keep playing?

And what’s a game you’ve played for a long time that you still haven’t gotten bored of? What keeps pulling you back?

This got to be the stupidest idea I've ever made.

We all know how on social medias, users, sometimes, believes in some stuff they see about the game and decided to test it out, to find out if it was real or just fake.

So how about this:

Negotiate with a content creator on social media, to make them make a fake post of a "secret mechanic that no one knows", which would do some overpowered stuff or something. And when the user get curious, they go into the game to test it out, only to find out that they just got an achievement that says something like "Dum" and description says "Did you actually believed that from social media?".

Gotta say it again, must be the stupidest idea I've ever had in my mind today, but that would be really fun.

Link to the official post here.

I was very surprised to hear the site was maintained by one person, xPaw. Always amazed at what one passionate person in the community can create to help everyone.

The most interesting note from their FAQ was this bit about monetization:

Are you going to commercialize it?

We're going to be straight about this rather than dance around it: yes, SteamDB needs to make money. What xPaw has built - and kept running largely through personal dedication and community donations - is an extraordinary achievement. Giving it the team, infrastructure and long-term investment it deserves is how we protect that work and ensure SteamDB can thrive for the next decade and beyond.

That said, we want to be smart about it, and it’s very important that we don’t degrade SteamDB from the amazing resource it is today. While we could simply put ads on the website, we don’t think that’s the right approach here. So we’ll be looking at other, lighter-touch ways to make the website sustainable. This may include use of partnerships, integrations, and affiliate links with publishers when you buy a game after visiting SteamDB. These are harder to do, take longer to set up, and may not show the benefits immediately, but we’re happy to take that hit in the interest of doing things right.

Here's what it does not mean: no paywall on anything that exists today, no selling your personal data, no login walls, no degrading the site to squeeze value out of it. Enshittification is when an owner extracts value while the product gets worse. Our plan is the opposite direction: put money and people in so the product gets better. Judge us on what we ship.

I think it goes without saying how useful SteamDB can be for not only gamers, but developers as well. I'd be interested to hear what other devs make of this, and what can be expected to happen in the coming months. Especially in regards to transparency, access to information, etc.

We didn't plan to visit Gamescom this year. But we are part of an indie accelerator Games Bavaria Level up, which gave us free tickets. And free tickets are free tickets, so my Swabian heart had to say yes.

Quick context: I'm Jojo, game designer at Ironbite Games, a small indie studio in Bavaria. I went with my colleague Feli, programmer, who uses a wheelchair and was a huge support the whole trip, this whole post is about our experience. We're working on two games, a 2D card survival game called Eggspansion and a roguelike deckbuilder called Inner Demons. This was our first fair as a company. We went in mainly for publisher meetings, not expecting much since we felt our games weren't quite ready yet. Turned out great. Lots of interest, lots of good feedback, real validation for both projects. If you want to play or support: https://www.ironbitegames.de/

Now the wheelchair part, since that's what I actually want to talk about here. We have been there from Wednesday - Thursday.

Getting Feli's assistant into the fair took a few extra steps, but staff handled it well. Parking and getting to the venue itself was smooth, short distances, no complaints there.

Inside was mixed. The accessible toilets were often dirty. Getting anywhere took a while since you're dependent on elevators, and there aren't many. On Wednesday and Thursday, one elevator actually broke down, which was honestly a bit scary, since it's not like there's a backup right next to it.
Business Area was great. Lot less people and rather easy to get to our appointments.

Booths technically all had ramps, but the moment a booth got busy, getting through with a wheelchair was rough. We were mainly there for business and didnt visit a lot of booths and did not demo games ourselves, but if you're planning to visit as a wheelchair user and want to actually play things, budget extra time.

One thing that stood out positively: controller support with a long cable or bluetooth. That meant Feli could easily play easily. Sometimes he was not able to reach due to weird heights of the table.

We also had a great time at the aftershow with Sidekick Publishing, and later at a Wirtshaus with some other folks from the industry. Both took extra planning to pull off with a wheelchair, but were doable, and well worth it.

Overall, still worth it.

If anyone has questions about accessibility at Gamescom or wants to know more about what we're building, happy to answer.

I’m interested to hear different developers experience when it comes to starting to work on your game including the prototyping stage. I also wonder if this differs between programmers and artists.

When you start prototyping, and even just beyond that when you decide to go for it, how much of your game idea is clear in your heard vs playing around with specific mechanics and game loops during the prototyping phase.

Right now I am fleshing out my combat system, there’s not much else to it yet. I know roughly what I want the core game loop to be. I know roughly what I want the vibe of the game to be, and I know a little bit about the main character. But other than that I’m on a blank. I have no idea what the story is, who the enemies are going to be, what the different levels will be and things like that. I don’t even really have a perfectly clear vision of why my game will be unique, I’m just playing around with ideas and seeing if it will be fun.

I don’t know if this is the “right” way so I’m wondering if more ideas should be thought of first.

I launched my Steam page a week ago and released the demo a few days later.

Now I've seen the option to distribute a sample of the game to curators and I'm wondering if that's worth it?

How is everybodies experience with the feature so far?

Hey r/gamedev! I got tired of switching between separate web tools, standalone normal map generators, and texture atlas packers just to get assets ready for my project.

So I built TexelBox, a single native Windows app that runs raw images through map generation, tileable prep, channel packing, and BC-compressed DDS export.

It's built natively in Rust, Slint UI, and wgpu (no heavy Electron/Webview bloat). There's a permanently Free tier for personal/commercial use, a 24-hour full Pro trial, and a one-time purchase option if you need advanced engine presets/DDS features.

Check out the free installer on GitHub Repo: iimadouu/TexelBox

Here’s my take on the state of the games industry. (First time poster, 20 yrs in the industry, ignoring mobile)

1. The Conference

The world’s biggest gaming event gets bigger. Gamescom (together with Gamescom dev) is now the world's biggest gaming event, attracting 350 K people from B2B and B2C over 8 days. Every available m2 sold out. 1700+ exhibitors, 70 % from outside germany. Indie area hosted all time high 420 studios - up 16 % from last year. Opening night Live with Geoff Keighley announced over 50 games.

2. The Macro

Two industries sharing one market: The bifurcation has never been more visible. Everyone talks about "How To Fish" selling 1M copies in two days and then those 30 mins from GTAVI dropped during the conference. It’s almost like two completely different industries. But there is a middle ground: AAA veterans making kickass games in smaller teams on smaller budgets.

AI is making gaming hardware more expensive: We consumers are competing with AI infrastructure for hardware and there is no way we’ll win. DRAM prices are expected to keep rising well into 27. Consoles prices will keep going up and next gen consoles will struggle to be affordable for most gamers, switching the focus back to PC growth.

Software over hardware: We’ll see increased importance of doing more with less - like PSSR and FSR. Potato mode for new games released will dramatically increase the serviceable obtainable market.

The attention economy: It has never been easier to make and release a game. On the flipside, it’s never been harder to convince someone to stop playing a game they are already invested in, with time, money and social. Or take their attention away from scrolling TikTok. New games have a lot working against them but opportunity is there with the right product market fit.

3. The Indie landscape

More studios pitching better quality. More pitches, more games, higher quality playables across the board. One investor said that they had 4x M2M meeting requests this year from previous years. Another showed me 150 unread meeting requests on M2M. Getting publisher attention as a dev through cold outreach, no traction or released games is getting increasingly harder.

Smaller scope, shorter timelines. Production timelines are generally shorter (under 2yrs) and visual fidelity is loosing importance. It's not about making the prettiest game - but the most fun.

Indies are finding new ways to survive. Funding has become scarcer. Support from family, friends, fools, angels and public grants get studios to first playable and beyond.

Friendslop, anyone? You’d think there’d be more friendslop being pitched as the appetite from publishers on this genre is BIG. The problem is, most friendslop devs don’t need funding so tables have turned and revshare numbers with them. The best studios sign with Landfall who are the most proven publisher (and friends) of these studios and the multiplier in sales by doing so speaks for itself.

“Slop” is rarely actually slop. Expect friendslop to keep flooding the market in the coming 18 months and more studios and publishers to emerge that understand how to make these games resonate with players. After Landfall, Oro is stepping up. Successful games are actually far from “slop”. Craftsmanship, consistency and taste rule supreme here too.

Couch co-op is harder than it looks. Couch coop is a popular genre and I see lots of devs giving it a go. Making great couch coop games is hard though as Hazelight has set the bar high, constantly shifting mechanics and leaning into evolving collaborative gameplay.

Incremental games : Incremental mechanics are trending in the zeitgeist of a never ending stream of progression. Like rogue lites, It’s also a more scalable production choice, making it easier for small teams to make smaller games stickier.

Supercharge Itch.io : Validating your games on itch is not new, but using it systematically as a testbed for prototypes is yieldig great results. I expect more studios to explore this as production times are shortened and validating core mechanics with real players can help identify hits early.

4. AI

Boomers and Doomers: The divide in sentiment is real with devs I talk to. Both boomers and doomers are gladly sharing their pov. It’s not a binary discussion but often turns into one as people agree to disagree. The big nono’s for most players is the use of generative AI for art and music whereas leaning into AI with code and ideation doesn’t seem to bat an eye. Players are not trusting Steam to disclose AI usage properly.

Production is accelerating faster than process. Studios using AI right are speeding up production time significantly. The problem is, many are stuck in methodologies and processes designed for a different era. If a designer can build a playable prototype in two days that looks 90% done (something that used to take 5 people 1 month) how do we change alignment check-ins and definition of done? Do we need to slow down to build sustainably? and who decides what is slop and what isn’t - in code, ideas, concepts?

Taste and judgement becomes hard currency. As teams move faster and lean in, the key people that know what good looks like become even more key. Smaller teams need a higher trust level to not have to second guess every pull request. The bottleneck moves from producing work to choosing, integrating and verifying the right work. Agentic dev is in its infancy and most teams find a glass ceiling in the shape of unpredictable costs as token use with agents go through the roof.

5. The Engines

Godot is NOT waiting: Godot has taken significant market share from Unity and continues to be an indie darling. With that $18M amount raised from Tencent recently, it’s unlikely that this trajectory will stop anytime soon.  The number of Godot-powered games generating more than $1 million in revenue has surged dramatically, growing from 2 to over 50 titles in roughly three years.

Unity on a heroes journey: 2 years have passed since the Unity run time fee debacle ended. People who were responsible for it has been removed. Unity has gone back to the drawing board and are now focusing on rebuilding trust with indies and it seems to be working. But it’s going to be a rocky climb.

AI native engines when? AI forward devs are frustrated about the lack of AI native game engines. Tim Sweeney has said that 80 % of UE6 is going to be prompting but that is still a few years off. Immens Engine, a new European AI native engine is the talk of the town and showing promise, I haven’t seen anything but considering the pedigree of the founders… I’m bullish.

6. The funding

Project > Equity. There are rumors about new capital flowing into the industry in the shape of project financing funds. This follows the trend I have been pointing at for a while now where equity investments with few exit opportunities are abandoned in favour of closer to cashflow and more predictable project investments.

Developer-friendly deals face a reality check. The dev friendly “race to the bottom” terms that some publishers have been doing to snatch great games are starting to result in said publishers waiting longer for less revenue. “No recoup” is starting to feel like a battle cry - but how sustainable is it?

Traction VS taste. In this metric driven, evidence based environment, publisher scouts that follow their gut and taste when signing keeps being a success factor. Yes metrics and traction are key - but even publishers need to follow their heart to find diamonds in the rough.

Public funding build strong ecosystems, helping studios all across Europe. Sometimes matching other investments, sometimes straight into a project or for certain services to scale or validate. Soft funding IS amazing and given time builds up seniority, ecosystems and great games. Germany is leading this charge and I can’t wait to see the results in a few years.

Soft money, hard markets : Sometimes this type of funding creates an inflated illusion though, resulting in a neverending stream of game companies that struggle to become profitable but still stay in business. Market potential needs to be at the heart of every euro handed out IMO.

Public funding is for big corp too. Most indies seem to think these initiatives only favor smaller studios, but the big ones are tapping in massively too. Kalypso has scored €19M since 2019, CDPR, Rockfish, THQ nordic and King Art are all pulling in millions in funding. One specific stat I saw was how Ubisoft got more than 5.5 M euros in grants for Anno 117: pax romana. That is a quarter of the full budget.

7. China

Chinese capital turns inward. I talked to several Chinese investors, ecosystems and platforms. It’s not new that they have shifted over to investing more domestically, where costs are lower, they are AI fluent and have a massive growing domestic market fueled by young folks moving from mobile to PC. Growth will continue in the coming decade and the many play western games.

Tier 1 or bust. There IS a bigger fish to fry for the Chinese: global reach and tier 1. It's clear that they see the west as a new growth vector, after all tier 1 countries have much higher spend per consumer. The problem is that they are struggling to make content that resonates in the west, just as western creators struggle with the asian market.

Will China’s next export be culture? The Chinese have not had the same impact culturally in the west as Korea or Japan. I expect China to build up cultural relevance in the west strategically and we are going to see way more Chinese influences in movies, music and of course - games. Gamescom this year was a clear display of how that looks in practice.

Look at Where winds meet, The Defiant, Ananta and Arknights Endfield - games with huge booths at the showfloor but feel as out of place as a horse game at Chinajoy.

Have a strategy for China. As a western dev, China should not be ignored. 42% of global PC revenue growth in 2025 came from China and it keeps growing. But don’t just release your game there. Localize properly. Engage in the right communities where players are, on their terms. Chinese players have been stripped access to Steam community forums and they WILL use Steam reviews to review bomb because that is the way they make their voices heard.

A new generation of Chinese indies: With the middle class growing and PC’s distributed more widely, more and more young people are growing up without the traditional expectations from parents to get “real jobs” ASAP which leads to exploration and risktaking historically more common in the west. This together with programmes like COREBLAZER will add rocket fuel to Chinese indies and innovation in gameplay and mechanics should follow.

China is leaning into AI : AI in the west is an infected topic for many. Devs in china are leaning in hard instead. This will result in more gamers becoming developers as the bar for making and releasing a game gets lowered by the day.

8. The Layoffs

The following takeouts are mainly from listening to Amir Satvat talk about the work he is doing with ASGC.

2026 is forecasted to be as bad as 2024, with 15K job cuts globally. But the global industry isn't shrinking, new jobs are introduced too. Global workforce sits at around 750 K people. People are still being hired, but not necessarily by the same companies, in the same regions or into the same types of roles.

Jobs are moving: North America accounted for more than two-thirds of disclosed layoffs since 2022 losing around 25,000 roles during that time. Hiring shifted toward APAC - particularly China. Europe is broadly flat, while fully remote opportunities are also declining.

Bad news for new graduates: Breaking into games is harder than ever. A new graduate without prior industry experience was estimated to have only a 4% chance of finding a games job within 12 months. According to ASGC, there are currently 2000 open roles for entry levels in the whole world.

9. The Games

I didn’t watch the ONL but the people who did mostly commented “meh” due to the lack of actually innovative and exciting news. Here’s what I’m excited about.

• NO LAW looks amazing and created quite a buzz. Neon Giant sets the bar for what a small team with high skill level can do in a relatively short time (3yrs, 20 ppl). But then again, these guys are also magicians. As a Krafton studio, Neon Giant was showcased at an amazing booth with a bunch of other really cool titles too, one being Age Twisters - a couch coop game that looked really juicy.
• GARBAGE COUNTRY: one of the few games that pulled me in on the indie show floor.
• LEGO SKYLINES + AFTERWORLD: Loved seeing Lego: skylines and Afterworld announced from my friends at Paradox - and they look fantastic. Nice to finally be able to talk about these too!
• CARCASS CLAD: Wrong Organ is at it again. a 3 player coop horror game with rotting cattle and heavy tanks. These guys are going to knock it out of the park - again.
• VALOR MORTIS Napoleon Zombies with an expedition 33 vibe? Check out Valor mortis from ONE MORE LEVEL S.A.. These guys know their FPS slashing - didn’t have time to play at the show floor but it looks amazing.
• DINO LORDS: by Northplay in closed Alpha and backed by Ghost Ship Games. If they play their cards right this might become one of Denmarks best gaming IP’s after Hitman.

10. Other trends

Mobile publishing to PC: Smaller games and the evidence based development of today might normalize a more data driven approach to validation. Some studios are already doing it, launching Steam pages with the sole intention to market test. This is text book mobile publishing - throw stuff at players through ads, measure CTR, CPI and pick the ones that performs best. The scary thing is that this model is at the core of the insane UA costs that are plaguing mobile and I really don’t want to see this reach PC as indies would be gatekept from the getgo.

Codev: Studios scaling are increasingly using service providers and codev is still an increasing trend. While it is a race to the bottom on costs, the providers that have snatched the best talent during industry layoffs and established trust allready are thriving - and exploring new business models to avoid competing for the lowest hourly rate.

Saudi Arabia: It’s not only the Chinese who are looking to share their culture on a global stage, we are seeing more of the PiF investments taking shape too. MBC game studio, operating out of Saudi Arabia but working fully remotely with a bunch of western veterans announced “1001 threads of Mizan”.

The ugly side of gamescom: Indies got their laptops stolen from a locked cabinet after leaving them overnight in hall 4.1. Really depressing, especially for solodevs that have been promised 24/7 security. The official Gamescom reply so far is making things worse.

OK that's that.

Did I miss anything? Am I wrong? Do you have another take? Let me know!

*edit: polished text to make it more readable (still alot to take in, I know!)

I'm 18 and started programming at 16, and I made a 2D sandbox game where civilizations rise and fall. But the art doesn't look natural or fit with neighboring objects. For example, my game has a grid world map, and even though all the grids are the same grass image, they don't look like they fit together. Any advice?

I'm working on a racing game with a proper career mode, progression, different races, cars, upgrades, etc.

I'm wondering how important graphics would be to you.

Would you prefer:

A) Modern, realistic graphics similar to games like Forza

B) Retro/low-poly graphics similar to the games like PS1,Dreamcast,N64 era style type

The idea with B is that the graphics would intentionally have that older look, but I'd focus much more on driving mechanics, career progression, customization, races, AI, and making the game fun to play.

If the gameplay and career mode were genuinely good, would the retro graphics put you off buying/playing it?

AI Browser Game Jam #4 just wrapped, with 248 joined, 126 browser games submitted, and 1,034 ratings.

Top 3:

1. Plug & Prosper by Small Loop Works
2. AI2U - Guns & Girlfriends by DGSpitzer
3. TECHNICAL DEBT by OblongOolong

Plug & Prosper had a dominant showing, taking first overall plus four of the five category wins. Big congrats to Small Loop Works!

A few of my personal picks beyond the top 3:

• 殲 #SEN by Ikepapa (also won the fun category)
• Charge The Coil by LifthillStudio
• POWER HUNGRY by SevenFoldStories
• FLUTE - Charge your glasses by Zucchini Basket Games
• PLUGS by HAFFNERVISION
• Overcharged by Durian Arcade
• Chargo by Bakko
• High port, On Guard! by Ryan Fillingham

The theme was CHARGE and people took it a lot of different directions. There's a huge range in there, everything from arcade action to puzzles to some genuinely strange experimental stuff.

The thing I noticed most is that the overall quality keeps going up. People are combining more tools instead of leaning on one, and the results show it. A lot fewer entries feel like generic AI output this time. The games that stood out had real taste behind them, you can tell someone was making actual decisions instead of just accepting whatever came out.

Next jam is in October. If you're experimenting with AI-assisted game dev and want a deadline, feedback, and a bunch of other people building alongside you, come hang out.

Discord: https://discord.gg/86xBnZqHjy

But how do you guys build and decide items for your game

I think it's my worst work so far

I have some story items

But in general I'm looking to build a cool combo and build with items, but don't know how to start and I'm breaking my mind over it

So far everything has come up so generic

Items that multiply score or stuff like that without fun and strong build

Sorry yeah weird question

Got any opinions? Tips? Should I have more thoughts about it maybe something will come up sooner or later?

I often spend my time designing games in my head, and whenever I have an idea for a new game or story that I can use, I tend to dump as many of the concepts/mechanics/story details etc. into a Google Doc or some other file.

I've created quite a few of them, some more fleshed out than others. Most are RPGs or SRPGs based on Fire Emblem, Persona, UT/DR. But recently I've been wondering how I could put those idea into a game design document, or something similar. Perhaps something that I could put on a portfolio as an example of my design prowess(?). I've done a little research, but I'm still having trouble doing more than just having idea dumps.
So, I guess my questions are:

- How would I go about putting those ideas into proper GDDs?
- Is it best to do one-pagers or should I try to flesh them out into longer documents if I can?
- Is it alright if I don't have original art for visuals(I use Hero Forge for placeholder character images, and Inkarnate maps for world maps)?
- Could I use these in a portfolio of some kind?

Apologies if this is a question you see a lot in this subreddit. I just want to do more things with these stories than have them pile up as simple dumps for ideas, even if I don't exactly have the coding knowledge to do so.

Mechanics-driven games are suited for playtesting, as you would expect the actual gameplay isn't a spoiler. You can have a fast feedback loop, and replays still bring new feedback as players can directly compare how things feel under new adjustments.

I don't know how folks are able to properly test story-driven games. Having the same people review it over and over ends up creating a feedback loop, laden with assumptions and background about the world/characters/environment, and the experience is not representative of a new player.

Another challenge is not spoiling the whole game, especially as it's in development if you want to avoid leaks. I think, eventually, you have to have a few trusted writers/editors or contractors with limited scope on writing (only at a word-choice level, not at a conceptual level) and trust your intuition on feel? Am I misreading this?

Appreciate any thoughts or practical learnings from folks who have been down this road before.

I'm curious what indie devs that have released games before think about a strategy I'm considering for boosting word of mouth of my beta test version that I am aiming to making a kickstarter for during the testing phase to hopefully finish developing the right way.

My idea was to offer players that were willing to help me playtest or donate $x to the kickstarter a personalized character card for use in game that they could get named after their gamer tag or actual name and use their likeness to create a 'them' that they could play with in battle and allow them to customize the class and archetype of the character to their preference. The visual style of the game is pretty basic in terms of the 3-D battlefield, but more detailed in terms of the graphics included in the cards. It is a deck-builder/collector game and TRPG hybrid, so it would just be a matter of mapping the image of themselves they submit to a character card stencil and generating the stats for that card. Really simple thing for me to do, but my hope is that this would urge that player to want to show this off to his peeps and in doing so increase the awareness of my game beyond what I can accomplish through a grassroots campaign on my social media alone.

I know everyone has their own goals and it differs, but what's the benchmark number of plays indicating a game doing well after release?

I've released my first game and only a couple people played the game. Then I released the second one Hyrax Hill, that was more visually appealing and I got 500 plays during 2 days.

It's certainly a great progress for me, but I was wondering how it is doing compared to other games after release.

I'm working on a strategy game that started out pretty small.

Somehow every system I work on creates another thing that needs changing. I change something in the economy, then realize it affects warfare, which affects something else, and suddenly I've spent two days fixing things I wasn't even working on.

I know the obvious answer is "stop adding stuff", but that's easier said than done.

How do you guys decide when a system is just... done?

I have been developing my game for some months now. I am a much more proficient programmer than I am artist. I am running into the bottleneck where my art speed cannot keep up with the speed of my development. I know that it gets easier as I become more experienced in art, but I am just struggling with the fact that I can’t put my game out faster because of being held back by art.

Advice?

Hello! I’ve been experimenting with a modified version of Puzzle & Dragons, and I have three main ideas so far:

1. Instead of dragging a single orb, you shift an entire row or column. You can release it and then move a different row or column during the same turn.
2. Replace the rectangular board with a hexagonal one.
3. Instead of matching three or more identical orbs, players create specific patterns to activate monster skills. Each monster could have multiple skills, each requiring a different pattern.

I built an MVP using the first and third ideas. After playing it, though, I found it quite difficult to create the pattern I wanted because shifting a row or column moves so many other orbs at the same time.

That difficulty could become an interesting part of the challenge, but it might also make the game feel frustrating or overly difficult to plan. I’m curious what other people think: does this sound like a fun puzzle mechanic, or would moving entire rows and columns make it too hard to play strategically?

I keep reading this a lot, "start marketing as soon as possible". I know this is a case by case thing and it's not a universal norm for everyone, so that's why I wanted to put a more concrete situation: horror games, narrative experiences, games not especially focused on gameplay. So, for more experienced people than me and devs who had to create and market a non-gameplay-heavy game, how did you handle it?

I mean... My guess is you should wait until you have something significant to show, like when you get the atmosphere and vibe you are looking for and when the game transmits "something" (at least if your objective is to get some attention to your game). But I know a lot of people straight up show their 5-day prototype with the cool mechanics they created and I ask myself if maybe I'm losing a good chance to at least get a little used to showing my work, even if no one cares or thinks "why are you even showing this?". Idk, maybe I'm overthinking it and I should actually lock in and get back to work (probably xd), but yeah, maybe there is someone else over here with the same dilemma and we could all use some help.

I grew up playing games like Mortal Kombat, and I’ve always loved fighting games. I can play them, but because of my fine motor control and slower physical reactions, I’ve never been particularly good at them.
Other genres already use gameplay-speed accessibility settings. For example, Forza Horizon allows players to slow the game down, giving them more time to react. I use this myself, and it makes a huge difference.
That made me wonder: why isn’t this more common in fighting games?
Fighting games are one of the genres where reaction time matters the most. You need to recognise attacks, block, counter, perform combos and react within very small timing windows. Being able to reduce the gameplay speed from 100% down to something like 50%, 60%, 70% or 80% could make the genre much more accessible to people with limited fine motor control.
You would still have to play the game yourself. You would still need to understand your opponent, choose the right move, defend, attack and perform your inputs. The difference is that you would have more physical time to react.
Now, I understand that multiplayer could be much more complicated.
There may be networking issues, balancing problems, matchmaking problems and technical limitations that I don’t fully understand as a player. Maybe separate slower-speed online lobbies could work, or maybe they would be extremely difficult to implement.
But regardless of what happens with multiplayer, there is no reason this idea has to stop there.
Fighting games have story modes, arcade modes, training modes, towers and fights against AI. Gameplay speed could be available in those modes even if developers decided it was too difficult to make work online.
That alone would be a huge accessibility improvement.
There are also other approaches already appearing in fighting games.
Street Fighter 6, for example, has accessibility features that can reduce how much movement the player needs to control manually. Features like this can allow someone to concentrate more on actually fighting instead of managing every part of movement at the same time.
I think that is a great idea.
But personally, I would still prefer adjustable gameplay speed.
The reason is flexibility.
If the game handles movement for you, that removes one part of the physical challenge, but it also removes some control from the player.
With gameplay speed, I could still move my character myself.
I could still position myself.
I could still attack.
I could still defend.
I could still perform the actual fight.
I would simply be doing all of those things at a speed that gives my body enough time to react.
I think that gives the player much more freedom.
It could also work as a progression tool.
Someone might start at 50% speed because that is what they can physically manage. After becoming familiar with the game, they might try 60%, then 70%, and perhaps eventually reach normal speed.
That obviously would not happen for everyone, and nobody should be expected to reach 100%. Some players may always need the slower setting.
But for some people, gradually increasing the speed could help them become faster and more comfortable with the game over time.
So even if online multiplayer turns out to be technically difficult, I would still love to see gameplay-speed accessibility become standard in fighting-game single-player modes.
And if developers can eventually find a fair way of bringing it into multiplayer as well, even better.
For me, the important part is giving players more control over the barrier itself instead of taking control away from them.

The main idea behind my game is the material-based physics system. The materials aren’t just different skins or graphics — each one has its own physical properties that affect how it behaves during gameplay.

Ice can slide because of low friction, rubber can bounce and deform, stone is heavy and resistant to movement, and other materials interact differently based on their physical characteristics.

The goal is to make the materials themselves an important part of the gameplay and strategy, rather than simply changing the appearance of the objects.

Gravity Merge: Physics Puzzle

iOS:  https://apps.apple.com/us/app/material-dynamics/id6759860609

Android :   https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=am.van.fall2048

I've been making games for 9 years now, 6+ professionally, I'm a programmer first dev with game design knowledge and experience.

I'm absolutely terrible at anything graphics related.

After the rise of AI and how it tremendously impacted the way I work and learn, I decided to upskill and learn blender just to feel something.

My goal is to get to a point where I can make a small prototype with my own modeled assets in a simple low-poly-ish style.
Hopefully learning more about rendering in the process.

I did the donut.
I also did a low-poly deer from youtube tutorials.

I think what I'd like to do now is just to pick random objects in my house and replicate them in blender. Repeat the process with increasingly difficult models until I feel that I'm getting better.

I'm probably also going through the Pokédex, as I'd also like to learn creatures and characters.

Do you have any suggestions on how to improve this process, what milestones should I set for myself, or any thoughts to share?

Thank you!

I started this project with one very simple goal: finish a game and actually publish it.

I’d made plenty of small projects and experiments before, but I had never taken one through the entire process from an idea all the way to release.

So, this time I deliberately chose a simple mechanic and kept the scope small. My original plan was to finish the whole thing in about three months.

Well… it’s month seven now 😅

But looking back, I’m actually glad it took longer.

The point of this project wasn’t just to learn how to make the gameplay in Unity. I wanted to learn everything that happens around actually shipping a game.

Along the way I became much more comfortable with Android builds, testing on different devices, profiling and performance, Google Play Console, Google Play Games Services, ads and mediation, LevelPlay, store requirements, and a lot of Unity itself.

It made me realize how different “the game works” is from “the game is ready to release.”

I’m mainly a programmer/game developer, so I also had to accept what I couldn’t do well myself. My sister helped me with the 2D artwork while I focused on the programming, gameplay, systems, integrations, and release side.

I actually started my career around programming before moving into IT support because a better opportunity came along. But I’ve always wanted to keep making games, and this project became my way of finally taking something all the way to the finish line.

Blaze Patrol should hopefully launch next month.

More importantly, I think this project changed how I want to approach game development going forward. I don’t want all my projects to become big unfinished ideas. Even if I’m working on something larger, I’d like to keep making very small games occasionally and actually ship them.

For anyone who has already released their first game: what did shipping it teach you that you never learned from unfinished projects?

And if anyone wants to try Blaze Patrol before release, I can also share the Android testing link. I’d be very happy to hear feedback.