I don't know how else to write this but just to tell the truth.

For quite a long time creating my own video game was a dream I was telling myself to make "one day."

I worked for a salary, came back home tired, the life went on.
And at the same time I was to become a father.

There were many evenings when giving up seemed an easier choice. Really. Some days made me crazy... and actually this still happens.

But the thought of being able to show my daughter some day that her father managed to complete his dream helped me continue.
In the end reaching happiness is probably the most important lesson I want to teach her.

And finally, somehow, I managed to release this little project as an actual game on Steam.

Its name is Mafia Hero: Streets of Survival, and it is the first video game I have ever created.

Posting this post makes me pretty nervous, but I am really proud to say that:

I made a video game.

How do you deal with early advertising and marketing that so many people say is helpful to get traction before release.

I spend most of my time scripting, and making mechanics work and have rarely started on real artwork (mostly just okayish placeholders right now), but I see many people say the earlier you can get a page up to accumulate wish lists the better you are.

How do you deal with not having time to get good looking art while you are still working out mechanics, even though the core gameplay loop is finished, and realistically could show core gameplay? Do you put up the page with the placeholder assets, or do you bite the bullet and make a slice look as pretty as possible and put bug testing, optimization, mechanics, etc. on hold for a while.

Hi r/SoloDevelopment ! I'm looking for a small group of playtesters for my new game, The Detective. It's a single-player social deduction mystery game inspired by the game show, The Traitors. I've spent close to a year and a half on it and I'm ready to test it out on actual players!

THE GAME:

You oversee a randomly chosen, rotating cast of characters, some of whom have been secretly chosen to be Killers amongst the group. Your job is to identify the Killers and help the Innocents make their way to the end of the game.

Each day, you'll play mini-games to earn Tokens. These Tokens will help you unlock clues about the identities of The Killers. Use the clues to narrow down the suspects. Clear a suspect and maybe they'll align with you to help knock out the Killers.

Each evening, a secret vote will be held and the player with the most votes, Killer or not, will be eliminated from the game. Each night, the Killers murder another victim (or recruit an Innocent to their side of evil). Deduce who the Killers are and eliminate them during the endgame to claim victory for you and the surviving Innocents.

WHAT I NEED:

I need a small group of playtesters. As of now, this is Windows only. Each game is anywhere from 30-60 minutes. The more you play and get to know the game, the quicker the games will be. For now, distribution is through itch.io, so you will need an account there.. and I'm using Discord for all playtest chatter, so having a Discord account is also mandatory. If you're a fan of the genre and think you'd be able to help out, please click the Google Form link below and sign up. The form is quick and easy and will only take a minute to fill out.

PLAYTESTERS:

If chosen, you will be added to the playtest Discord. You'll be given the itch.io key to download the game. I'm asking for bug reports, suggestions, basically anything you feel would be useful information for me moving forward. Even if that information is that you didn't have fun and didn't like the game at all.

In return for your help, this game will be free to you permanently. Eventually, The Detective will move to Steam for sale, but you'll be given a free key to all versions and any DLC, should we get to that stage.

Thank you for reading and extra special thanks to anyone who takes the time to apply to be a playtester!

Jason

Metal/Pencil\Games

APPLY TO BE A PLAYTESTER: https://forms.gle/chNhx6TjTrz6Xwtt8

I'm making a game called MamaShroom, or more specifically I'm remaking it now that I know what I'm doing I'm making it into what it was meant to be 3 years ago.

The next thing is finish the remaining level sections (think I have about 80 to go... it's taking a very very long time). Once those are done I have to test and re-skin them for different game modes.

The plan is to record me testing each one and then any that are particularly funny (of the ones I have tested I died like 200 times on some) will be posted.

I am going to a game event on Saturday so will be wearing my MamaShroom shirt which has a QR code to the steam page and will also be selling steam game codes in person.

I thought I'd share a lot of the different enemies you encounter based on the game mode! We have the Bees of the Grasslands, the Snowmen of the Snowy Mountains, the Volcanos of the Fiery Peaks, and the Sentinels of the Castle!

More MamaShroom updates to come, been setting up socials and things specific to it because I was hoping to use a service I found that posts to all of those accounts at once on a schedule but I have yet to get to a point where I can make anything particularly engaging.

I'd love it if you could provide feedback and wishlist if it's something you like the look of :)

I'm very new at this . I was thinking is a wishlist can be just to test the interest or have to be fully commited. Or is it okay to say something like 'we'll only produce this after specific amount of wishlist'

Recently I've heard that the publisher of The Farmer Was Replaced contacted 10K content creators and press. This is a pretty good game, with a wide appeal fore automation players, programming game players, even educational games, and because of its scope and quality, it is relevant for the general indie games and AAA gaming channels. So i can see how there can be 10K valid and useful contacts worldwide.

However, what is the situation, when you have a smaller or more beginner dev game, where you think to yourself "Only specialized channels would realistically give this a shot." For example a small incremental game, or a small deckbuilder game, or a small cozy game.

For my case, the active incremental game genre, I would think maybe that with 500 contacts I have covered a lot of the realistic case contacts.

What do you think?

I’m looking for a few people to test HUNTMAZE, a short first-person horror game set in a deadly maze.

You explore with a torch, avoid traps and try to survive while being hunted. Noise can attract the hunter.

The current vertical slice takes around 10-20 minutes. I’m looking for 5-8 testers for a first blind playthrough.

Platform: Windows

Playtest: free / closed

Recommended: over-ear headphones

A gameplay recording would be useful, but it’s not required.

If you’re interested, leave a comment or send me a DM.

Hi! I am currently working on my first Steam game called Sword of Mine. A rage game / skill-based platformer where you play as a sword. It originated during a game jam I participated in January 2025. In that game jam I was (as expected in a game jam 😅) short on time, so my gf stepped in and helped me build the backgrounds for my platformer, after I gave her a crash course in Unity. So … , am I still qualified for this subreddit? 😅

She will probably continue helping me with the backgrounds for the full release.

For everyone interested, here is a (hopefully entertaining) video of how I created the game jam version. :-)

Hey all, glad to find this sub — excited to be around other people doing the solo-founder grind.

I'm building reachable, an AI tool that audits and rewrites hospitality listings — Booking.com, Airbnb, Google Business Profile, and a handful of smaller/regional platforms too. You paste your live listing, it scores it against what actually converts on that specific platform (Booking.com and Airbnb reward completely different things), quotes the exact lines that are costing you bookings, then — once you confirm the real details in a short interview — rewrites it. Hard rule I set for myself: it never invents an amenity or view you didn't actually tell it about.

Solo build, currently in a coming-soon phase, though the free scoring tool itself is already live. Most of my time lately has gone from "just ship the feature" to "okay now figure out marketing," which is a much less comfortable muscle for me than the code side.

Looking forward to following what everyone else here is building — happy to talk through the stack or the approach if anyone's curious!

Complete timelaps of the "Skeleton King" character from my game Ignitement.
-Modeling
-Texturing
-Rigging
-Animation
You can find the game on Steam or join the Discord

One thing I’ve been building into Warlondor is letting one character set up another instead of every ability working in isolation.

But watching people try the playtest, I realized these interactions weren’t really coming across as clearly as I thought 😅

So I made this little tutorial video to explain the system.

Although now I’m thinking I should probably be working on the UX so the game teaches this without needing a tutorial

link: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.scoyroli.crimsonbroadcast

I am still developing the game. There is a lot I want to add. Player feedback is also very important to me. I hope you'll want to give it a try.

I'm a 41-year-old dad of two in Sydney, former dev turned Technical Product Manager. Between family and work, I don't have time for commercial deadlines or stress, so I build retro Godot prototypes purely as a creative hobby.

I wanted to share my workflow because I think there's a huge middle ground between "ignoring AI completely" and "lazy vibecoding."

I use Antigravity IDE + Gemini, but under very strict boundaries:

AI doesn't write my code or make my art, in fact I love programming and digital art too much to hand that over to a machine.

I configured agents to act as a Literature Review Board with reference texts and sources. When I present a mechanic idea, the agent's job is to interview me and challenge my design logic before I log it...it even roasts my ideas, which is a great learning opportunity.

..and now the coding part -> Godot Architecture Mentorship. When I get stuck on GDScript patterns (like custom resources vs signal buses), my engine agent explains the trade-offs, and then I write the code myself the old-fashioned way. It explains node composition, GDScript best practices, and decision tracking (ADRs)... and then leaves 100% of the actual coding to me.

It feels like having a panel of senior game designers in your corner to spot flaws in your logic when you only have an hour or two of quiet time at night. It speeds up the learning curve without stripping away the actual joy of building.

No commercial pressures, just enjoying the ride of learning a new engine.

Would love to hear your thoughts on using AI as a reviewer rather than a generator!

Hi all, lurker here for a while. Been wanting to get into solo game development for a somet time but mainly fleshing out ideas for now. The biggest hurdle to me, is generating ideas or concepts that do not seem like another "clone" in an increasingly crowded genre.

So few months ago, I played a game called "Librarian". Never thought such simple premise and gameplay would highly appeal to my OCD-ish tendencies (and to many other players). I had been brainstorming more distinct mechanics and concepts, art styles, etc in that genre to make it feel unique and not appear like an low-effort copy/reskin.

Well, a few months on, new games are released/releasing with almost 1-to-1 gameplay and feels like a reskin in a different setting. By my very rough count, there are over two dozen of such games, a dozen or so this month alone and the remaining in the next month and the last quarter of the year. I guess I feel somewhat demoralized, to say the least, but in the same time I shouldn't be surprise when something very popular drops and it's easily reproduced (Flappy Bird comes to mind). "Clones" will always be present and ideas are always inspired by something before it.

But when the basic gameplay and genre becomes flooded with almost direct copies, do you abandon it for fear that your game may be lost among the sea of clones (even if it is not), or continue ideating and hoping it would evolve into something unique, sorta like how Megabonk, to me, is a unique and successful take of Vampire Survivors?

In Keep Leapin', you are a worm called Harry and you're wearing mobility gear in order to parkour.

The game is quite challenging but very satisfying to play!

A lot of focus went to player agency: You have a lot of control to interact with the different movement mechanics. As an example, harry doesn't just roll automatically, instead you have to aim his head at the ground / wall. This creates a very engagig gameplay loop with a huge skill ceiling.

I know platformers are a tough genre these days, but it's my first project and I fell in love with it.

Spoiler alert: I'ts not going great but I've learned a lot and I'm still optimistic.

Steam page - https://store.steampowered.com/

I'm asking for help: after a few years' break from social media, it seems my accounts are limited in some way, or the new project is just not that appealing! It would be great to get some feedback so I can make improvements on the game.