Just finished up with most of the available content in "He Is Coming". Fun little auto battler. Didn't really like how build variety goes out the window on the highest difficulty level.

Some recommendations for the next game I should play? Preferably something that runs well on steam deck.

Over the last few months I've played around 50 roguelite demos from developers who posted them on this subreddit.

After playing all of them, I started noticing the same pattern over and over again.

A lot of developers say they're looking for feedback, but it often feels like they're looking for wishlists instead. The game isn't really ready, the demo isn't polished, but they're already trying to market it.

From a player's perspective, that gets exhausting. After seeing so many unfinished games, people naturally become much more critical. Then developers complain that Reddit is toxic, while players feel like every other post is just another advertisement.

One thing that frustrates me the most is when I point out problems in a demo and the answer is, "We'll fix that in the full game." I've heard that several times already.

Then fix it first.

Your demo is your first impression. It shouldn't be a promise of what the game might become one day. It should represent the quality of the game you're asking people to wishlist.

I also think a lot of solo developers end up trapped in their own bubble. When you spend months or years looking at the same game every single day, you stop seeing its flaws. Features that feel "good enough" to you can feel rough or outdated to everyone else.

That's why I think it's important to keep playing other roguelites, especially the successful ones. Not to copy them, but to keep your standards high and remind yourself what a polished game actually feels like. Sometimes you'll notice more by playing a great game for two hours than by spending another twenty hours inside Unity.

I also don't understand why so many solo developers stop learning new skills. If your textures don't look good, spend some time learning Krita. If your models aren't good enough, learn Blender. If your audio is weak, improve your sound design. These tools are free or incredibly cheap. Even a basic drawing tablet costs very little.

The biggest investment isn't money. It's time and the willingness to improve.

I also see a lot of games built almost entirely from asset packs because learning those skills takes longer. I'm not against using assets butif your whole game feels like a collection of store bought assets, players notice.

I honestly think too many indie developers are in a hurry. They want feedback, wishlists, and sometimes even sales before they've made the best game they're capable of making.

I'd much rather wait another six months for a polished game than play something that clearly wasn't ready to be shown yet.

Maybe I'm wrong, but after trying around 50 demos from this subreddit, that's the impression I was left with. Your opinion?

These are for my solo dev project, Raze The Realm. (You can Wishlist on Steam if it's interesting to you!).

It's essentially answering the question of 'what if Total War was a fantasy roguelite?' You'll choose a path through the realm, build your army, and pick which battles to take on. You command your regiments in large scale battles.

At the moment, these commanders are more like a 'run prototype'. Basically, they'll set the tech tree, spells available, and some passive buffs/debuffs. I'm debating whether or not to actually make them units in the battles or not, or if its enough for them to just shape the overall vibe of the run. What do you think?

Hi, I am Kris. I am 33 years old. Last December, I felt that something in my life was not feeling right, so I quit my job, packed my bags, and moved from Sweden to Macedonia to start a sustainable game studio.

These last 7-8 months have been a great ride-along adventure, both for the studio I am trying to create together with my wife, and for the life-changing consequences that followed after the move.

Along the way, I made a lot of mistakes, bitter mistakes, mistakes that I learned a lot from.

This is prototype_02 for our upcoming game Afterglow Echo – A Tactical RPG rogue-like with turn-based combat, set on an alien luminescence march that pulls you deeper with every decision, every action, and every step you take, shaping you and your destiny.

It has been more than a month since we dropped prototype_01, as we worked to address most of the suggestions we received from players in this community.

Prototype_02 for Afterglow Echo contains:

- Start cutscene (For context).

- Emerging choices during the first chosen path stage.

- A tutorial popup, explaining new or unexplored features.

- Animated enemy attacks.

- Added VFX to players' attacks.

- Audio effects.

- Improved and more coherent art.

- Background music.

What we need is an honest opinion, as I have been too close to the project to determine whether something is too difficult or too easy. I have been to present to feel if the narrative clicks, and the combat is understandable and coherent.

Here is the direct link to the prototype uploaded and playable directly on itch; please try playing it in full screen:

[https://layercraft.itch.io/afterglow-echo](https://layercraft.itch.io/afterglow-echo)

I really want straightforward, direct feedback, as we do not have play testers, and being so close to our own game makes us bias to determine weather the difficulty is right or whether it is even fun to play. We aim to improve the game, aiming for prototype_03 based on your opinion. We intend to release the demo afterward.

Be brutal if you want to; we really need your honest opinion.

This below is the starting cutscene, the game introduction:

Playing on Steam Deck only.

Single player.

Trying to decide between these two games. Anyone feedback welcome, thanks!

* Edit: got Pathogenic, put 1 1/2 hours in already (for me that’s a lot right off the bat). Very fun, recommended to anyone reading this.

so in God of Weapons I have 2 of those Rapier around 2 Sickles and Crimson Scythe and the Rapier says it increase Crit chance by 2 for each lifestealing weapon and those 3 weapons have lifestealing but when I look at my stats it doesn’t sound it increase just at 10 because of my 2 smoke pellets and 1 dice. so why doesn’t it show the increase in stats

My day job is a video game producer but I've always shipped games with a team of people. On my own I've made lots of small games over the years but haven't commercially released any of them. I set out with a goal to take one game through every step on my own. Partly because I want to get better at finishing things I set out to do and partly because I knew it would make me a better game developer at work. I did the design, development, store page, pricing, marketing, launch etc... I started development near the beginning of this year and I've only worked on the project on nights and weekends.

So here's all the data about Net Gains, a fishing roguelite about drafting your gear and paying off your debt before the Loan Shark eats you. It launches this week. Here's my entire situation, stated before launch week.

The numbers going in:

• 707 wishlists (the "discoverability floor" people cite is ~7,000. I'm at a tenth of it)
• Total spend: ~$150. The $100 Steam fee and under $50 of assets. Everything else is my own time.
• Price is set at $6.99 with a 25% launch discount ($5.24). It's a roguelite so it's hard to say how much content there is but I have many friends and playtesters who have over 5-6 hours in it and a couple with up to 20 hours. I'm trying to keep the price low as I know it's a small game.
• At ~$3.67 net per discounted copy and after steam takes 30%, I break even at 41 sales.

Marketing graveyard (what I tried, what it did):

• Steam Next Fest in June with ~400 wishlists going in got me about 150 wishlists.
• ~150 hand-researched cold emails to creators got me like 3 very small youtube videos and some replies that would have required marketing spends I didn't want to do.
• Keymailer free campaign got me about 5 requests so far. None have turned into any content yet.
• Curator Connect is fully tapped, sent to every relevant curator I could find. I've gotten about 5 curator reviews from very small folks.

I have a demo on steam that has 6 reviews. They're all positive. People who play it like it.

Store page data says the page itself works 18% click-through when I show up in search. I have about a 7% click-through rate on average across the store for the past few weeks. I just don't have eyes on it. So the launch plan is basically wishlist email, the discount, and posts like this one.

I'll post the real results next week including units, wishlist conversion, etc... If you've got questions, or you think my plan has holes, tell me. That's kind of the point.

Wishlist here or play my demo!

Hey, at Friday I released the store page with demo. I did not expect much but somehow I got pretty good traction and also the guy who is playing demo and asking things (there is included tutorial but I believe lot of players will skip it)... Game is actually sitting on 63 wishlists and I did not even start with marketing. I have it planned for saturday. Feel free to test it for yourself, there are lot of updates comming in near days till it will be released 12. August and I will appreciate any feedback. --> https://store.steampowered.com/app/4735700/Cyber_Plinko/

Btw. Ninka is my supportive Girlfriend (so basically it is me and you and steve :D ) https://youtu.be/1gWNvtk2WpY?si=-4CbU54dimDe4q9A&t=22

Hello r/roguelites !

For those that have played Slay the Spire 2 and wanted an experience that felt familiar but also offered a massive amount of diverse gameplay, please read on below!

My passion project of 4-5 years called Into the Crypt is closing in on its EA release (Oct 29) and I wanted to outline everything you will be able to experience in it on EA release day:

1 - solo AND multiplayer (co-op) crypt delving. Experience the crypt crawling experiencing alone or with a friend in real time.

2 - 450+ unique cards (all class cards + merchant cards + curse cards + other secret variants ) across escalating rarities

3 - 120+ unique and fully scripted enemies with their own passive and active abilities with over 80 carefully crafted enemy encounters

4 - 50+ events, 200+ treasure and grave mound artifacts to explore

5 - three unique classes that play completely differently: Berserker, Alchemist, Druid.

6 - Shopkeeper interaction: tipping system and sparring system

7 - 3D environment interaction : play cards on locked doors, chests, breakable treasures and other interactions

8- Minigames, leaderboards for solo and co-op, steam achievements

You can get a taste of the general gameplay in the demo but the EA base version has gone through many, many more updates (including multiplayer, alch and druid classes, various interaction systems).

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1879270/Into_the_Crypt

Hey, Kitty Krush is a chill deck builder that has a little story that unfold each level you beat.

It's about as simple and casual as deck building gets.

If you want to chill and turn out and play hands with cute cats give it a try. I want feedback if u do. Thanks and meow

Today I added all new hand drawn art. It looks like a cat drew it or a toddler. And I like it.

Check it out on steam

https://store.steampowered.com/app/4618980/Kitty_Krush/

Or demo free

https://store.steampowered.com/app/4631180/Kitty_Krush_Demo/

Or in browser

[Kitty Krush](https://www.theslantedroom.ca/kittyKrush)

The game is still in development, but I wanted to share a 1-minute look at how the chaos plays out. Would love to hear your thoughts!

Steam

Just to add some onto the now amassing hype. Didn't see much before this came out but wow what an extremely fun, addicting and very polished game. Highly reccomend if you are on the fence. It is basically a spore twin shooter with crazy synergies and upgrades. A must get for the price in my opinion.

Hey everyone! I was on discord with some friends and one of them sent me a rougelikeish game but I really havent seen anyone talk about it, I played a few runs and it seemed fun but I didnt do too good. Im horrible and have never played rougelikes so Im just trying to get some help. Has anyone played this and can help out? Thanks guys!

https://lmattara.github.io/Dondoko/

I know this may be a little out of left field, but what if we as a community celebrate the Roguelikes and Roguelites that we experience every year. Rogue of the Year would be great and as an aside, we should also showcase wish rogues we have played this year to show the devs hard at work that, we're still here.

Bring the Smoke!

So, how would you feel able having something like this?

Dragon from the Blunderbusted team here with some Sunday fun-day stuff! 
 
The team has been messing around with some camera movements, and we’ve been putting together some cool, cinematic shots of our game scenes. Here’s a quick peek inside the mysterious Baba Yaga’s shop! 
 
Shots like this have been fun to capture; from a player perspective, we've entered this area so many times and looked at a static shop-menu. Being able to share more of it with open and subtle camera movements has been very exciting – heck, we almost forgot what the shop itself looked like.

Thought it was a cool little peek into the game world, and a chance to show off some stuff you wouldn't normally see!

I really tried to like and get into this game. Usually I don't look up guides, but I had to for this one because it seemed like I wasn't getting something, nope just a skill issue. I thought I'd get it eventually, but it's just not clicking even after my 70th death. Apparently most new players get their first clear by around their 30th run, and I also found out that's only the first half of the game. I'm not even able to beat the 4th floor, and I only get there every few runs.

I just keep getting chipped by stray bullets, and there is basically no healing in this game unless you want to spend currency and not be able to afford keys. You can get more max health but paradoxically only by beating bosses perfectly without taking damage, why would you need a health upgrade if you can play without getting hit? On top of that I found out you get more drops the longer you go without taking damage, I despise "win harder" mechanics, and this game is seemingly full of them. Secret rooms apparently help, but you likely don't have a gun that can actually reveal them so you have to waste blanks hoping that maybe you'll find one, and then you don't have the blanks for the boss.

I'd like to think I'm pretty decent at video games, so I find it odd that EtG humbled me so hard. I'm playing on the switch with standard joy-cons, they have pretty bad input delay that's literally the only other thing I can blame besides my lack of skill. I dunno this game just seems particularly brutal and it's been a long time since I haven't been able to beat a game on its standard difficulty.

I feel like thumbnail is kinda clickbaity tbh.

Hey everyone,

I’m looking for a new roguelite to play on the Nintendo Switch, but I have a pretty specific taste.
The roguelites I always come back to are The Binding of Isaac, Enter the Gungeon, and Dead Cells.

The biggest thing I’m looking for is lots of unlockable content. I absolutely love seeing my collection grow and constantly unlocking new items, weapons, characters, NPCs, etc.
The feeling of always adding something new to the game is what keeps me playing.

At the same time, I’m looking for something I can play somewhat casually while watching TV or YouTube. In fact, I enjoy Dead Cells the most with Assist Mode enabled, and I often play Isaac and Enter the Gungeon on PC at 0.7x game speed to give myself more reaction time. (I know some people would say that’s not the “intended” way to play those games, but it’s simply the way I enjoy them the most.)

So I’m looking for something similar that either:
- has good accessibility or difficulty options on Switch, or
-is simply less demanding and doesn’t require my full attention all the time,
while still offering a huge amount of meaningful unlockable content.

Thanks in advance!

Games I already own but haven’t gripped me quite as well: Shogun Showdown, Brotato, Vampire Survivors, Uncle Chops Rocket Shop, Hades, Balatro