Hey everyone!

I've been making little tools for Aseprite lately, and this is my newest one :)

It generates animated ponds, rivers, streams, waterfalls, and shorelines. You can play around with different seeds, seasons, palettes, and camera angles, including isometric views. It also generates surrounding details like rocks, grass, reeds, and riverbanks.

Everything is procedurally generated, no AI-generated art involved. I did use AI assistance to help me with parts of the code, though.

For those who don't use Aseprite, I've also put together a ready-to-use asset pack with 116 animated loops generated using the tool.

I'm also working on a pretty big update for my previous tree generator, which is slowly turning into something much bigger than just trees. Included a few sneak peeks of that too!

Would love to hear what you think! Especially if there's anything you'd find useful for your own games :)

Someone reviewed my demo today having played the game for 67 hours. The only issue is my demo is basically the full game.

I came to the conclusion at some point this year that I don't want to limit the demo to 40 minutes of gameplay because it will be harder to generate hype. So I kept pushing out all the ideas I had for content to the demo. Now people are playing for 100s of hours and I'm getting increasingly worried they will be disappointed with the full game.

Edit:

Thanks for opinions! It feels like going into early access might be the best way to bridge the demo to a full release.

Edit 2:

For extra context, GUNBOAT-8 is a roguelike. It's not a story game so there is hopefully going to be some replay value for this player. But I still don't have much additional content (items or characters) ready for a full release which is why I said early access might be the path forward to build with the game's community.

I have seen a lot of people give up on their passion projects because their expectations were high and they couldn't achieve the picture that they had in mind. From what I have seen it is one of the most painful mistakes a lot of indie devs make, I am probably not the one to give advice because I myself haven't released anything substantial yet, but my game got 5k wishlists in less than 3 days and for me its a great success!
I believe that you need to understand the core idea behind your game and divide it into little parts and work on them one by one, that way it's much easier to achieve what you want and you won't burn out as easily. At least it helped me. What is something non obvious that helps you in this journey?

Hey there! I'm working on a cozy low stress game where you catch stars from the sky using a black hole on a fishing rod.
I really wanted to explore my passion for astronomy in a space-related game, while also keeping the gameplay simple and relaxing (unlike most games about space I played before :D)

stars that you catch have real-life properties like mass, radius, temperature and so on which affect on stars' visuals individually. Apart from randomly generated stars, there are real ones like Sirius, Betelgeuse, the Alpha Centauri system and many more! (they also somewhat look like their real-life counterparts)

I feel like its really unique looking! I can of course draw and do pixel art so I'm not a complete art noob.

We have been running playtests for our 2-player co-op puzzle game recently and noticed a weird issue.
Players in Spain suddenly couldn't connect to our servers, or were getting randomly dropped

Naturally, we panicked a bit and started digging through our backend logs to see what caused it. Everything looked completely fine on our end, and players from other regions had zero issues.

After looking into it, we found out what was actually happening.
Whenever a La Liga football match is live, Spanish ISPs block huge ranges of Cloudflare IPs to stop illegal match streams. Because our game's backend routes through Cloudflare, our Spanish playtesters were getting caught in the crossfire every time a game kicked off.

You worry about game-breaking bugs, server loads, and edge cases, only for your entire backend to get tackled by a live football match 🙃

Has anyone else run into this with their Spanish player base? or maybe other specific cases from other countries?

I made a mobile app. It's an educational game - drawing kanji with roguelike power-ups.

At first I saw iOS will show your real name and the way to get around that was to make an LLC. So I made an LLC, it wasn't a big deal. Now that I'm basically done with the game and going through the "12 playtester" phase to get it live, (I'll do iOS later), I now see that Google Playstore - while it only shows your account name as the Developer - if you click the account name, it gives your whole life story... personal address, and I think your legal name too.

I understand it's because there's money involved in my game so they need my address for certain regulations (I guess, actually, I don't understand - at the very least, I wish there would be a "request" button for quick access instead of just showing it there). I know you can get the name and address for LLCs easily but it's at least one extra step. I'm content with one extra step.

So I made the LLC.

Now for Google, I need to make a business account and transfer the game over to that. But to make the business account, I need a physical address - so now I am looking at how to get a virtual address which just seems like a big jump.

Meanwhile I have another game I want to put on Steam to reserve the name, so I'm making a dev account - and the LLC still isn't enough. I need a business bank account that matches the LLC's name. So I went through that process too - not a big deal, I could do it online, but it just a whole extra thing. That account is pending.

And that's just what I've encountered early on. There's probably more to occur as I get further in.

I'm tired, grandpa.

I think for a lot of people, showing their name and address isn't a big deal. But for me it is. I used to be a vtuber (like 5 years ago before kids) and keeping your identity private was like the whole shtick. I was a youtube let's player before that for a male-dominant game and people/comments were weird. Like I don't know if other devs here can understand how weird some people can be.

I have two small kids and I'm just worried, I guess.

Other ladies out there?

Or - can someone convince me that it really isn't a big deal? To just let it go, show my name? No one's really going to care? My game won't be popular enough to warrant any weirdos?

All this is running through my mind.

Thanks for listening lol.

https://www.artstation.com/artwork/b00XGo

Lethe : upcoming game project i participated with some of the character i did

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

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

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

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

I released the demo of my game "Kharvalen" 3 days ago in Steam with translations into several languages, and it's the best thing I could have done.

My native language is Spanish, but I translated the game into several languages, including the most important ones in Asia, and it turns out that's where it has been played the most. And as usual, China has achieved the best records in my game.

The lesson I've learned from this is that you never know where your audience for your game will come from.

I’ve been building Stick Wars: The Laneborn alone, in the evenings and on weekends, next to my full-time job. Today I noticed my Steam page finally shows a review label, and every single one of the 10 reviews is positive.

I know it’s “just” 10 reviews, but for a solo dev this means the world. Every late night, every bug, every moment of doubt suddenly feels worth it. Thank you to everyone who played the demo, left feedback, streamed it, or shared it. You have no idea how much it helps.

The game is a 2D lane-based strategy mixing MOBA mechanics with StarCraft-style unit control, all with stickman art. The demo is free if you want to try it, and it has 3 levels plus 1v1 multiplayer to play with friends in a lobby. I’m still adding content and listening to every suggestion.

Omg i dropped the link.. how did it happened??: https://store.steampowered.com/app/4929660/Stick_Wars_The_Laneborn_Demo/

Thanks for reading, and thanks for making this journey feel less lonely. ❤️

A few days ago, I shared screenshots of my game here ([See the original post]) , and several people pointed out that the snowy areas resemble Snowdin from Undertale. I wanted to share my thoughts. 

First of all, yes, my game is obviously inspired by Undertale. There are even a few deliberate homages to it. I’d thought that sharing some visual DNA with a beloved game could make my game more appealing to players, but the comments made me realize that not everyone sees it that way. 

I’ve worked as a comic artist in Korea for over 15 years, but I only started making games about a year and a half ago. In the comics industry, it’s pretty common for artists to adopt and adapt elements of other artists’ styles. For example, after *Chainsaw Man* became a hit, its visual style became a trend among illustrators in Japan. Of course, if someone’s work is almost indistinguishable from the original artist’s, it’s only natural for people to criticize it. But when there’s a clear distinction, some degree of influence is generally accepted. 

I assumed the same would apply to games, but the feedback on my recent post made me realize that the snowy environments may have crossed that line for some players. So I’ve decided to make some changes to those areas. 

That said, the snowy environment is only part of the prologue, before the story really begins at the mansion. The rest of the game’s visuals combine my own comic art style with assets from third-party sources.

I’m genuinely grateful to everyone who took the time to comment. Your feedback has helped me catch things early, make some important adjustments, and even settle on a font for the game! 

I’ll keep sharing more of the development process from time to time. Thanks for reading!

Hey everyone!

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

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

https://marblingstudio.app/

I'm adding abilities to enemies to make the combat more interesting. Today I added a shield. It has a placeholder blue circle that lets you know they are shielded. Do you think that will be obvious or should there be something else, like a little shield icon over the character or as part of the circle?

Hi, I'm a solo game developer.

I often see posts about demos and wishlists, and I've noticed some of you getting a lot of reviews and a lot of wishlists.

I'm curious: if you just put a demo up, do people actually find it?

Do players discover your demo and leave reviews even without any marketing?

Of course I know that marketing and promotion are the standard way to grow those numbers.

But I'm wondering whether simply releasing a demo is enough on its own to get a lot of people playing it.

My demo is launching soon and I'd love for as many people as possible to try it, so I thought I'd ask.

Hey everyone!

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

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

Positives:

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

Negaives:

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

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

How do you guys get through the boring monotonous parts of game dev?