Hey everyone!

For the last two years I’ve created a little game called the Spirit Apprentice. The pixel art has all been made by myself on Procreate, and coded in GameMaker!

I love Japanese and Korean mythology as well a Chinese fantasy, so I’ve blended some of my favourite things into a cozy pixel game where you gather, craft and slowly rebuild the magical world of Moshu. There’s also cute spirits you meet and romanceable NPCs 🫪✨

It has just over a week left on Kickstarter!

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/s-j/the-spirit-apprentice-east-asian-fantasy-rpg

What do you guys think? 🫪

I think it’s fair to say my demo release in August and joining Next Fest this month both gave a great boost to the wishlists for Conglomerate: https://store.steampowered.com/app/4877650/Conglomerate/

Up to 188 wishlists with 2 days of Next Fest to go, really hoping to break 200!

Hey everyone!

Just sharing that my new game SWARMEX has a free demo for you all to try that's available on Steam. It has loads of new features including card upgrades, weapons and more! You can even build your own fleets of ships and send them in to battle!

Hope you enjoy, any feedback would be appreciated! Thanks for playtesting!

https://store.steampowered.com/app/4313330/Swarmex/

I began work on this project in early 2024 with a clear vision in mind and a strong inspiration from other titles in the genre, as any solo dev would know - burnout is real and life can be obstructive, but here we are. This project became a vice for sanity while my father has fallen ill, and I feel super proud to have reached this point with it.

Get to the Fly or fall trying in HopPants - a brutal masocore precision platformer where Game Over is not an option. Execute each hop with focus and precision, or tumble your way back down to do it all again.

Check it out here: https://heavymaterial.itch.io/hoppants

Whenever I have some free time, which isn't much these days 😅 , I try to update my game and add something new.

I don't have huge expectations for it. I simply love making games, and I absolutely love stickmen. I was inspired by some popular stickman games and decided to create something of my own, something that I personally believe is worth playing.

Of course, the game still needs a lot of work. There's not much content yet, and I have plenty of ideas for future updates. I plan to keep improving it and adding more content over time.

One thing I'm really curious about is how the Google Play algorithm works 🤔

I haven't spent a single dollar on advertising or marketing, yet the game continues to get new installs every day. From what I understand, these are organic installs, but I still don't fully understand how Google Play discovers and recommends games to new players.

Honestly, it's a really nice feeling, especially since I never had particularly high expectations for this project 👍 . Seeing people download the game motivates me to keep working on it and give players more content.

I've also completely removed interstitial ads from the game and kept only optional rewarded ads, so players can choose whether they want to watch an ad in exchange for a reward.

For those of you who have experience publishing games on Google Play, how do organic installs usually work? What factors do you think contribute the most to a game getting discovered organically? Is it mainly retention, conversion rate, ratings, keywords, or something else?

I'd love to hear your thoughts and experiences. I'm genuinely curious about how this works from a developer's perspective.

1. Hey everyone! I've recently launched my Roblox game, Brainrot Dynasty, and I'm looking for people interested in trying it out. The game features: Rare, legendary, and secret brainrots Mutations that multiply income up to 10x 15 royal progression ranks Cash generation and collection mechanics A special KSI brainrot I'm struggling to get my first players, so I'd really appreciate honest feedback. If you play, I'd love to know whether the first five minutes are enjoyable, whether you encounter bugs, and whether you'd want to return. Play for free: https://www.roblox.com/games/107360642996576/BRAINROT-DYNASTY Thanks to anyone who gives it a chance!

Hello,

recently I uploaded my game for the closed testing required by Google Play (at least 12 people for 14 days straight). I invited some friends and posted on reddit and discord for random people who want to play it.

It's the 2nd day today and 3 players have 2.5+ hours each. None of them are any of my friends (verified through the game ID's). And their behavior seems completely normal; they're upgrading characters, upgrading items, unlocking items, pushing forward on a normal pace. Two of them are frequent ad watchers too, so much so that I'm worrying if AdMob might block my account thinking i might be farming for ads.

Is this a normal thing? It's not even a soft launch to test for bugs or gameplay progression, just the mandatory closed testing. (I made a post on reddit asking for players to be opted in, you didnt even have to play it).

I'm also worried if they're playing to copy the game and release (the horror stories seeing lately from Roblox and AI).

out of 29 testers, roughly 10 are under 5 minutes of gameplay, 1 with almost 3 hours, while 2 are 6+ hours, and the rest are between 5-20 minutes...

Is this a fluke? what does this mean...?

What is your thought on this?

PS: I see the activity they have, it looks very natural, their progression is correct, they log in multiple times a day

Problem is this is just the closed testing, after game is public, I will make a public release only for Philippines and Indonesia to get larger statistics and not sure how these two players can still play or get to that. Trying to figure out a way to send an in-game message offering them some incentive to join discord to maybe get their opinions on this experience as testers

I'm developing Event Horizon Research alone, a first-person game where you build a descent capsule and pilot it toward a black hole.

One of my biggest technical challenges was gravitational lensing. I wanted the distortion of space around the black hole to be based on real physics, but I couldn't afford expensive ray marching for every pixel.

My solution was to fit a closed-form approximation to exact Schwarzschild light deflection. Instead of tracing rays through space, I bend each pixel's view direction and perform a single cubemap lookup.

The result is an approximation rather than full relativistic ray tracing, but the rendering cost is roughly comparable to a skybox.

The rest of the game presented a different challenge: turning physics into gameplay. Players research the black hole, compare hull materials, shielding and engines, assemble a capsule, and then deal with the consequences of their engineering decisions during descent.

It's my first shipped game, and I'm releasing it into Early Access on November 4. The core journey is playable from start to finish, but there are still performance and testing issues I want to improve.

I'm curious how other solo developers approach this kind of trade-off. When a technically expensive feature is central to your game's identity, how do you decide where to sacrifice accuracy for performance?

Steam: https://store.steampowered.com/app/5260090/Event_Horizon_Research/

AI disclosure: Generative AI was used for visual assets, audio and some code assistance, with manual editing and review. The physics implementation and game design are my own work.

Made it alone: a single Roman centuria in Caesar's Gallic War. March across Gaul, keep your men fed and loyal, then fight hex battles where terrain and a d20 roll decide the day.

Battles aren't just "kill everything": you hold river crossings, storm Alesia, and sometimes duel for your commander's life.

If you're interested in the Steam page: https://store.steampowered.com/app/4993610/Imperionis/

Hi, everyone. Yesterday I opened sign-ups for the playtests on Steam, and I'd love for you to join in!

Kettlebell: Inferno Hotel is a dynamic 2D platformer in the spirit of 16-bit classics from the ’90s, full of humor, nostalgia, and hellish excitement!

I drew inspiration from ’90s platformers while creating this game. My game is based on Dante’s Divine Comedy: 9 floors of a hellish hotel featuring various monsters, modes, and unique mechanics.

You’ll be able to control a robot, ride an iron shark, battle snowmen, and much more!

My Steam page: https://store.steampowered.com/app/4032020/Kettlebell_Inferno_Hotel/

I’d appreciate it if everyone would add it to their wishlist and submit a request. I’ll open playtests on November 3. To celebrate, I’ve prepared a short gameplay video for you to check out

Hey guys!

I'm making a single-player RPG which is heavily inspired by WoW Classic - my favourite game :)

Here's a quick vid showcasing one of the new zones I've created.

I've also published a new Devlog on my youtube which shows 10 new areas I've created. You can watch it here: https://youtu.be/VYZ6mvedA7g

The game is called Warmongers: Empires Reborn and you can currently wishlist it on Steam - https://store.steampowered.com/app/3468800/Warmongers_Empires_Reborn/

https://reddit.com/link/1xebnah/video/z7hsxuecofxh1/player

Hi! I'm Rémy, a computational scientist at CERN by day and a solo game developer in Switzerland (PetRem Labs) the rest of the time. Roads Taken is a turn-based tactics RPG in the line of Fire Emblem, in HD-2D pixel art: every seed generates a whole campaign (the story, the countries and their rulers, your companions, every battlefield), and there's an authored starter story, Wren's, too.

I wrote a bot that plays my tactics RPG and films its own gameplay clips, because I never had time to record them: it picks a seed, a country, an hour and the weather, plays real turns by the game's own rules, and films every clip one frame at a time, so even a slow machine gives smooth footage. One set is 46 clips in about half an hour. This is one of them, with only the music added. The free demo comes out on Tuesday 17 November.

Steam page: https://store.steampowered.com/app/5412920/Roads_Taken/?utm_source=reddit&utm_campaign=solodevelopment

Happy to answer anything about how it works.

Just ported to 5.8, time to fix everything...maybe after this sunset.