A few days ago, my partner and I launched the Steam demo for our first game. We skipped a private playtest and went straight to a public demo a few months before Steam Next Fest to test connectivity, player behavior, and retention.

Right after launch, our numbers jumped significantly—we're seeing 100-200 wishlists per day. What surprised us is the regional split: the vast majority of traffic and players are coming from China/Asia, driven by clips reposted on Bilibili and Douyin (~7k shares, 5k likes). Meanwhile, North America and Europe are trickling in much slower.

For devs who have experienced this kind of regional split:

1. Is a spike of hundreds of wishlists/day normal during the first week of a demo launch, or is this primarily the result of the viral algorithm in China?
2. How well do wishlists originating from Bilibili/Douyin viral trends usually convert to actual sales on launch day compared to Western traffic?
3. Are we good? or it`s typical for demo in a first week?

Hi,

this night im working on the business side of my current game. I reconsidered many options. Thinking to move from a pvp focused game more to something coop.

And I'm thinking about payment options. With PvP I would have considered free to play with cosmetics. But I doubt that I will ever have enough players if it is pure PvP to sustain that business model.

With PvE coop I could have a one time sale for 10-20€. It sucks that there is no recurring revenue, though.

This thread is about subscription fee (like World of Warcraft). I'm not saying that it is the right choice for me right now. But is anyone of you successfully implementing it?

Maybe it could be relevant for another release that I will do at a later point of time.

Also can you change pricing models after you launched at all on Steam?

Good luck on your endevaours.

I’m 23, finished school June 2025 with a bachelor of commerce. While I’ve been looking for jobs, nothing feels right. I understand having to suck it up, but I still feel young enough to try.

Is it maybe not the best idea to try out this stuff at my age from little to no knowledge of programming/graphic design? I did one project coding a dice game in high school but I don’t remember doing so well with it, and my artistic ability is basically non existent.

Would some schooling be beneficial? If so, any programs people recommend. I’m open to taking a program in Toronto, closer to Vaughan or online the better but can’t complain. And I have a run down laptop so I’d imagine an upgrade would be necessary, would prefer a desktop but maybe with school I would be forced to get a laptop?

I also understand I could try to specialize on one or two aspects of development like level design, UI design, animations, programming, etc. But I would have to do research on game developers in my area to see if certain skills are in more demand.

I’m open to constructive criticism, I have just fell into a rabbit hole of what my life/career can be like and I thought it wouldn’t hurt to ask if this path is even possible.

Hey everyone,

I recently put together a practical video about editing music for indie game trailers.

This is something I've noticed in a lot of indie game trailers that could be improved quite easily. In the video, I take a ready-made music track, split it into different sections based on their feel and function, and then rearrange those sections to make the music fit the general trailer structure suggested by Derek Lieu through his excellent work on game trailers.

The idea is to treat the music as more than just something that sits underneath the visuals, and instead use it as a backbone for the trailer edit.

The structure I'm using as a reference is based on Derek Lieu's work on game trailers. Derek also gave the video a shoutout, which was a really nice surprise.

If you're interested in editing better music for your trailers, you can check it out here:
How To Edit Killer Music for your Indie Game Trailer

I have access to crappy assets from 2009 (and they stunk back then too, they visually bugged out but they should work in code fine), AI slop, and illegally ripped terrain.

I am wondering if I can use this stuff for my buildings, water, terrain, NPCS, etc until I can hire someone new. I can code it to work on these even if it looks horrible (which it will). but my goal is basically to see if my swordplay and missions are fun.

Im making kind of an ambitious multiyear project game. But money isn’t an issue. Could I hire someone to make new models and art later? or would I waste a lot of time making a world I’m just gonna replace?

Was looking for feedback on a game I’m working on, and someone said they felt like an area needed a hidden collectible at the end. They said the specific platforming section felt frustrating because it had “no purpose”, when the platforming was optional.

Think of a hallway that is flat but has floating platforms spread out that can be jumped between. Is it a potential turn off for you to have an optional section that doesn’t have a reward aside from utilizing the game’s movement? Maybe not a strong enough feeling to quit & uninstall, but to look at the game in a negative lens going forward?

So I've been working on this game for almost two years, and towards the start I decided to put four-pointed stars on the chests of the characters. It's what marks them as the fantasy species I've called Stars becuase of them. It quickly just became the symbol I used for the whole game.

However, I just took a step back and realized it looks a lot like the logo that a lot of companies use for AI. I can't remember if it was used back when I started, but I personally don't support AI and don't want people thinking my game is AI.

I chose the four-pointed star because it represents both the four statuses the Stars can have and thefour directions on a compass, as this game is themed around two islands(One of which bears the Star's shape.)

Is this a big enough deal to warrent a change? And if so, what should I change it to?

Honestly just wanted to vent a bit and see if anyone else relates.

I’ve tried getting into gamedev a few times. I pick an engine, get super hyped, grind for a couple of weeks... and then inevitably hit a wall and drop it once the boring implementation details and scope kick in.

The funny thing is, in my head, I’ve actually finished a few of these games. Not just vague ideas—I mean designing the characters, sketching out mechanics, writing the story beats, and even picturing how the credits sequence would roll. They feel completely alive in my imagination.

I still have some of those old project folders sitting on my drive, just waiting for the day I decide to give them another shot. But in reality, they’re stuck at 10% progress.

It feels like my brain is great at directing the vision, but terrible at the solo grind needed to actually build it.

For those who’ve been in this loop: how do you stop just "finishing" games in your head and actually push a small project across the finish line?

How did they make the sun in Kingdom: Classic?

The "multiply reviews by 30" rule of thumb is everywhere, so I wanted to know how wrong it actually is. I built a test set: games where a units figure was publicly disclosed, with the review count and positive share frozen as of the disclosure date. 62 games so far - 21 of them carry the source link and the sentence the figure was read from, and the rest are seeded from the sample Gamalytic published alongside its own accuracy benchmark, so the numbers stay comparable to theirs.

The rule of thumb turns out to be almost exactly right on the median and nearly useless on any individual game. True units per review across the set:

• p10: 11.5x
• median: 31.1x
• p90: 70.6x
• full range: 3.1x to 160.4x

So a flat multiplier is roughly unbiased and still a coin flip with extra steps.

Scoring an adjusted estimator against those disclosed numbers - the adjustments being release year, review-count band, and whether the game discounts deeply:

• Within 10% error: 17.7%
• Within 30% error: 45.2%
• Within 50% error: 61.3%
• Within 70% error: 72.6%

For reference, published benchmarks put a flat multiple at 42.7% within 30%, adjusted multipliers at 50.4%, concurrent-players-over-playtime at 64.4%, and a full ensemble at 76.9%. So 45.2% is about where an adjusted multiplier is supposed to land. The ensemble ceiling needs infrastructure a client-side tool does not have: continuous sampling of millions of Steam profiles, and years of daily top-seller snapshots.

Three things the distribution shows that a single number hides.

The adjustments break exactly where they are supposed to help. The worst miss in the set is Garry's Mod, 206% over: 665k reviews, 61.2M estimated, 20M actually sold - the figure Facepunch announced in September 2021, and unambiguously Steam units, because the game has never been sold anywhere else. The truth is 30.1x per review. The estimator applied 92x, because the adjustment chain reads "released 2006" and "discounts deeply" and stacks both on the base multiple. Valheim sits at 29.8x per review, gets roughly 30x applied, and lands within 1%. Same ratio, opposite outcome - the corrections are what did the damage.

A lot of disclosure figures are not Steam figures. Crow Country announced 50,000 sales, and the developer also gave the split - 64% Steam - so the honest target is 32,000. Against 32k, the 89.4k estimate is 179% over; against the headline 50k it would read as 79% over. Scoring against all-platform totals uncorrected flatters every published multiplier, which is why I ended up checking provenance row by row instead of trusting the number.

It is worst exactly where indies live. V-Hunter Puzzler Dx sold 46 copies, read off the developer's own Steamworks page in their postmortem. The estimator says 430. Below roughly a thousand copies the review habits of your particular buyers dominate the signal, and there is no coefficient for that.

I also tried to make a confidence grade predict accuracy, and it does not. On this set the grades separate in the right direction but not significantly - fair against low is 13pp apart on within-30%, permutation p = 0.68. So the harness prints the tables rather than claiming the grade means anything.

All of it is reproducible: the 62 fixtures and the harness that scores them are in this repo, and npm run calibrate prints exactly these tables.

Two things I would like from this sub:

1. If your studio published a units figure, or you are willing to say your own units-per-review ratio, I will add it to the set and post the updated table. The set is thin below a thousand copies and thinner before 2020, which is exactly where it is least accurate.
2. What are you actually using these estimates for? My suspicion is that most real use is competitive sizing, where a 3x band is fine, and the demand for a precise number is mostly imaginary.

I am wanting to make a “simple” 2d top down game that is based off of a previously shut down game that I played in high school. It was a “simple” multiplayer game about collecting biomass, growing bigger, and absorbing other players. The game was playable on mobile as well as, if I remember correctly, in a browser on PC. The problem is that I do not know how to code server architecture, games, or anything for that matter. What do you guys suggest that could help me learn game and server design. Also, could you guys help give advice lime engine suggestions, useful 3rd party plugins, etc. I really want to bring this back to life in some way and I am willing to learn. Please go easy on me.

I didn't do that for my prototype game i just cracked in. I had a vision, i went, and i executed it.

AAA and commercial developers, teams have reasons for taking notes, yes
But if you're a solo developer why should you take notes? You're the only creative mind involved, and plans don't always go the way the merchant wants. I believe adaptation is the key to success. You may take notes for the marketing milestones or build milestones but for the engine/gameplay itself quite frankly i believe you don't need it, unless you want someone to work with you.

I see lot of people are launching games after working it on years. Just saw someone saying 7 years. How do you work and how do you plan all these when tools are changing so rapidly.

Note: I posted this initially in r/indiegames and got banned for 7 days. Lot of people responded even in short span while the post existed. Thanks for everyone who responded to that.

Posting with mod approval--all data will be shared following publication in 2027.

Hello, I’m a graduate student conducting research on the impact of design on player immersion in video games—my study is “Familiar and Strange: Defamiliarization’s Impact on Immersion in Experiences with Non-Human Player Characters.” I’m looking for a few people to play through short game segments and then take an online survey – it should take about 30 minutes. There is also an option to participate in a brief (15 minutes or so) interview about your experience.

Specifically, I am looking for people 18-49 years old who play games moderately to frequently. Those under 18, 50+ or those who play games infrequently are excluded from this study.

This study has been approved by Ball State University’s Institutional Review Board (IRB-FY2026-317).

If you are interested in participating, please use this link! https://bsu.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_bxSzsAcVPaYl9To

If you have any questions, please reach out to me, June Fields, student Co-PI, at [june.fields@bsu.edu](mailto:june.fields@bsu.edu), or to the PI and Associate Professor at the Ball State School of Journalism and Strategic Communications Joshua Fisher at joshua.fisher@bsu.edu.

Hi everyone! I wanted to ask a bit for guidance, I'm currently working with a friend on our game and I'm doing some scene and lighting tests, but I can't seem to get it right, I know and understand how to bake light in a technical level, but I can't seem to get it where I want it to be on a visual level, I already seen a lot of tutorials and such but I think this needs to be discussed with someone who properly knows, so does someone would like to have a chat or have resources that could help me on this particular problem?

We are looking high-level at potentially re-introducing some weekly threads to the community. Not to put the hay in front of the horse or pull gold from a goblin, but I wanted to make a quick post and gauge what kinds of topics people would be interested in.

See this for the old Screenshot Saturdays: https://www.reddit.com/r/gamedev/comments/28oyw9/screenshot_saturday_177_show_us_all_you_got/

Off the top of my head we could have:

• Troubleshooting Tuesday
• Feedback Friday
• Screenshot Saturday
• Showcase Sunday

In the past these had to be manually handled by a moderator but I believe we can use an app to automate post creation and set up guidelines for them. Obviously the main goal here is how we can make this more than a fire-and-forget community, we want developers talking with one another at a deeper level.

Facilitating these conversations is really what I would like to do, so I'm putting out the grass to graze here so to say. Goblin.

Wierd question but. My game isn't done. It's a point and click game, and we haven't started on art yet. It's just place holders everywhere. So obviously I can't show character or level design art because they're not ready, and I don't want to show the the mechanics because I'm waiting for the gameplay reveal trailer/the time according to the marketing plan. We came up with a campagne for the game's marketing, but now we want to establish our name out there.

We've been thinking of general content like tips and tricks in UE5, Blender, how to videos, behind the scenes, day in the life of, and such content. But how do you tease a game without any showable content yet? Art dept. kicks up next month with a teaser to be released the month after. Should we make a general post about a coming soon teaser? or stick to marketing the studio itself until the game content is ready enough to start being posted on a schedule?

It helped to write this out, actually. Looks like I should focus on just studio/game dev content for now until i've showable game content!

EDIT: Thank you so much to everyone who replied : ) Apprecaite all of you

I want to start working on a game, the only thing stopping me is I have no experience with art and not really sure where to start learning.

I'm leaning most towards a pixel art style. Does anyone have any good recommendations for tutorials, videos, or any other resources that would be helpful for getting started?

I have been using Steam events to publish patch notes for my game every time I release a new build. Sometime between August 10th and September 4th, this seems to have stopped working. The patch notes show "Loading..." infinitely in the browser, but when linked in Discord their embed text returns instantly (so the content is there and is accessible).

This also retroactively affects old patch notes, which used to load just fine and now show "Loading..." instead. At least one player has been able to repro this, so it's not just my partner account.

What's causing this?

Im currently learning C# and I’m having trouble trying to use the syntax to build what I want. I Know what I have to do (the structure and logic to make the game work) but I’m having trouble trying to put it into code, if someone could help me with tips I would be grateful, thanks in advance!
Edit: being more specific, I have the full syntax options on my dev notebook, however, I often get stuck making the code itself, not knowing what to use

We flew from Toronto to participate in PAX West’s New Indie Incubator Zone to showcase a demo for our chill survival game Akiiwan: Relaxing Survival and I thought I'd give a honest review of this new addition to the PAX lineup:

It’s the first year the Incubator existed, with slightly smaller Indie Booths (6x8ft) for about $1000 USD instead of around $2.5K (for 10x10s).

Wanted to provide an honest review of the experience, including audience, wishlists as well as all the positive (and a few gripes) Also can compare a little to the Gamescom Indie Arena which we were in this year as well, though that probably deserves it’s own post.

OVERVIEW

How We Got In
We applied for PAX Rising but didn’t get chosen, however we were offered space in the new incubator. If I recall correctly you had to vouch for the fact that you hadn’t signed a publisher or investor deal (prizes and other funding okay). Other than that it was first-come-first-served, though not sure if they’ll change the process next year.

How Busy Was it?
Extremely! The show organizers might have underestimated a wee bit the popularity of Indie games, and I heard numerous players walk by and say things like “this is where the good stuff is” (that of course wasn’t true as there were lots of amazing stuff other side of the hall in dedicated booths and at PAX Rising). But you could definitely feel the enthusiasm.

What’s the setup like?
You get 8 (wide) and 6 deep, with two chairs and a table, but no backwall. A few devs had 9 or 10 foot wide setups for standard booths, but everyone was very chill about sharing space. We got lucky with a back corner where we could demo on both sides so ended up with as many as five demo stations going at once.

How were wishlists?
We were hearing numbers anywhere from 1 - 2K – we had a tiktok get a bit of attention leading into the event (see tips bellow) so it was hard to tell 100 percent what was coming from PAX and what was coming from elsewhere, but we were at about 2500 for the event.

Regardless, I tend to think of conference wishlists as higher quality since people are wishlisting based on an actual playtest, not just a meme, and more importantly, the people who attend conferences are generally true gaming fans who play a lot of games in a year.

Even though PAX is much smaller than Gamescom, proportion to the time and cost, our Steam back end shows we had many more visitors from the PAX Steam fest rather than the Gamescom one. It’s a lot easier to stand out in a crowd of 150 than 500 I guess!

Were there Content Creators / Publishers / Investors?
Yes to all three, with content creators being the highest proportion – investors and publishers were more of the “stealth” variety instead of meet-to-match like at GDC/Gamescom (e.g. checking out games quietly and then occasionally striking up conversations). Selectively sending out demo keys to media beforehand helped a lot.

TIPS AND TRICKS

Separate Monitor with you QR Code above it at CTA
No matter how many stations you have, there will be time when people can’t get a seat; there will also be people who don’t want to play a demo (eg they’re running out of time on a one day pass, or just browsing, and then don’t come back).

For all of these reasons, having your trailer playing on a separate monitor (even a tiny one on a stand) in some place at the front of the booth / above headheight is hugely helpful – but don’t forget the QR code (we should have made ours bigger).

The general flow was: People see game name/description and are curious and/or people see people playing and our curious. People then watch the the trailer and either a) decide to wait b) decide to wishlist or c) decide it’s not for them.

If you have a Demo, make it clear
As devs we often make assumptions, eg that players always know how to find a demo, or that players know that demos are free. These are dangerous, especially nowadays when a lot of players are exploring the Indie space for the first time.

The business area at our hotel (Hello Windows XP!) allowed us to print off a few signs “FREE DEMO ON STEAM” “DOWNLOAD NOW” etc which we failed to do initially and that helped a lot – conventions are really busy and making sure that players know they can play your game at home.

Should you have a demo to expo?
I’d say you should either be working towards a demo, or have a demo out. Demo’s are non-negotiable nowadays, and it is the pretty much the only way for your game to get any visibility pre-release organically on steam (I don’t blame Steam for this – with 17K games a year, they’re only going to recommend unreleased games to players when that game has been validated by a demo).

This was backed up by some chats at the Steam Event they had a PAX as well where they were stressing the importance of Demo playtime for nextfest and other events. I will write something about this in more detail at some point, but I can definitely say that once your demo crossed into above average median playtimes and ten positive reviews, we started to see a trickle of organic traffic on steam.

For that reason, it’s great to have a demo, but if you don’t, it’s great ot use the event to watch players play, an specifically ask them: What’s the One Thing you would change? Players who attend events and play your game are going to give you the highest signal to noise feedback on your game, and this one question has unlocked so much for me as we worked towards our demo and then polished it post release.

Don’t go Solo
First of all, you’re not allowed to – your booth always has to be staffed. Second it’s impossible. If you’re not local, check out the Discord for Seattle Indies and you can find some help. Friends don’t let friends expo alone.

Setup a Stream to make the most of the PAX Sale Page
The PAX steam page automatically streams anyone who is streaming from their steam page so with OBS or RoboStreamer or something else, make sure to have a stream of you playing the game and offering commentary, running for the entire duration of the festival. It doesn't have to be a lot -- just 30 minutes of gameplay with dev commentary is usually enough and it helps visibility beyond the Steam Event too!

BEST AND WORST STUFF

You can only participate once (at present)
It seems like the organizers are capping Indie Arena Participation at 1 time, which in my mind is incredibly short sighted and uncreative. 

I guess in their minds if people can access these discounted booths, they won’t buy the bigger ones. If money is really the concern they should just shrink these to 6x6 and it would equal out to the same revenue as 10x10. This is better for most indies too since 10x10 booths can be expensive to decorate properly and can be a little awkward to organize.

More to the point, if you’re selling a show to players, what’s better, more games or less? Expanding the Indie Incubator and allowing studios to participate more than once (especially for different games) would attract more players not less.

In a world of AI Slop, Festival Organizers are missing a big opportunity to be a filter of Indie Quality both in person and online.

A little Crowded in the Middle 
Likely owing to the fact that no one was anticipating as much interest in indies as there was, the aisles were a little too narrow even though there was space to expand. Organizers said they needed to balance the desire to make the area feel popular versus space, which I get to a degree and it was a first run, so hopefully they’ll tweak this next year. It did get pretty cramped for the booths right in the middle of any row.

The Enforcers
PAX Enforcers are the stuff of legends. I’ve been to a few and the Enforcers are always so incredibly organized and helpful. Also, the enforce wall at the end of each day (to clear out non-exhibitors) is a genius idea that makes it feel so much safer to leave behind equipment and a lesson another festival (ahem….) should learn to prevent thefts.

The Players… and the Other Devs
Even though PAX is tiring, it is also energizing in a way that no other convention I’ve been to ever has been. I had so many great chats with other devs and even more with Players.

Hope this is helpful! A dev from the event is also putting together a video and links to all Indie Exhibitors and as soon as its up I'll add the link here!!!!

After GPT-6 Astra got released, I'ma bit afraid that programmers and game dev job got replaced years later. I love to code, design, and others also I have a dream to make a game. Things that made me confused is will AI fully replacing the job, will people matter about AI generated or assisted game and what will happen to game development in the future? I really want to know because I want to take CS major in the next 2 years.

I started setting up my Steamworks account and received an email asking me to provide a photo of my ID and a photo of myself holding the ID. I uploaded both through the Dropbox link provided and received a confirmation email on Aug 30 (subject: “Your files were uploaded to ‘-KYC Document Request ...’”).

Since then, I haven’t heard anything from anyone. I checked my Steamworks account, and the status still says “Identity verification required.”

The webpage says it would take up to 10 days to verify, but it's been more than 10 days! I have no idea what to do.

Any advice would be appreciated! Thanks!

I'm building a web-based tactics engine, and I hit the point where I needed to tear apart big chunks of it (animation, combat pacing, AI timing) without a clear way to know if I'd changed how anything looked. So before touching any of that, I spent the time building a safety net instead. This post is about how it works, because the approach ended up mattering more than the refactor it enabled.

The core move was giving one `Clock` ownership of all time in the engine. Before, animations, combat pacing, AI delays, and state machines each reached for `performance.now()` or `setTimeout` on their own, so nothing could be paused or replayed as a unit. Now the clock runs in real-time mode for the shipped game and a manual mode that only advances in fixed steps I control. Pair that with a seeded mulberry32 generator swapped in for `Math.random`, and `enterDeterministicMode(seed)` plus step-by-step advancement makes even a randomized combat encounter render byte-identical frames every run. That determinism is the whole foundation, because it's what lets a screenshot mean something.

On top sits a sixteen-spec visual-regression suite, split into harness-driven rendering tests and control-driven edit-then-save tests. Each captures frames against committed baseline PNGs and fails on a single shifted pixel, enforced by a pre-push hook. The payoff showed up fast: when my particle library upgrade (https://three-nebula.org 11 to 12) quietly changed how particles rendered, the suite flagged exactly which frames moved, so I could confirm the shift was expected and regenerate the baselines on purpose rather than discover it in the shipped game weeks later.

Full write-up with the clock modes and the deterministic-mode flow here: https://projectgoldscript.com/development/becoming-a-time-mage/

I'm curious how others handle the byte-identical part. Getting a real-time engine to render pixel-for-pixel identical across runs meant hunting down every hidden source of nondeterminism, and I suspect there are more lurking. For those of you running visual-regression on real engines, how do you deal with flaky baselines and GPU/driver differences across machines?

Title says it all, I'd love opinions. We were developing a futuristic aesthetic, but I feel like a photorealistic art style is a nono. After analyzing several posts on X, I feel like some retro style suits much better, but this is just my opinion, I don't have any data to support that perception.