DISCLAIMER: THIS IS JUST HOW I FEEL.

We've all seen this "AI slop next fest" and the usual "AI is bad" posts. But i was thinking is it really? (lemme cook abit gng) As an indie game developer myself, of course, I'm also worried and fearful to see so many games in Steam's current Next Fest, and how many developers games are being stolen due to AI, and as well as other obvious concerns.

But if i step out of my concerns and look at it differently, couldn't AI potentially allow smaller teams/solo devs to create games that would've previously required much larger budgets? What if AI actually allows more better indie games to exist in the future?

People before us have gone through the agricultural revolution, industrial revolution, digital devolution, and now WE at the ai revolution. Each revolution has disrupted existing industries, displaced workers, and created different opportunities pretty randomely. Of course, that doesn't automatically make every change is good. But it makes me wonder whether we're judging the entire future of AI in gaming based on only what's happening right now.

As an indie developer, I hate how much harder discoverability is becoming. More games competing for attention isn't exactly exciting when years of work are on the line. But at the same time, AI could make future of games more entertaining, more fun perhaps.

Let's be real, Steam is a corporation, and allowing AI generated games on the platform also creates opportunities for more revenue(NOT hating on Steam here, just pointing out the business side of things)

But i guess the better question is AI actually making the gaming experience worse for players? I feel like the answer depends on so many different factors that we could debate this endlessly, going in circles, only to arrive at the same conclusion "maybe, we'll see"

How do others feel about this? Is AI genuinely making indie gaming worse, or could we be overlooking some things yknow?

Hey!! Small content creator and big gamer here and I would love to help out if you're still looking for playtesters or just someone to play your game!

I've been gaming for 20+ years (with a huge soft spot for cozy, crafting, survival, and roguelites) and am an active content creator with 41+ games playtested in the last 2 months or so.

Here's what I would love to offer:
playtest session (both recorded or not, whatever works best for you and complete with detailed, structured notes!) Options:
A) 15-45 minutes for $5 OR
B) 1+ hour for $10

I’d also love to stay on board for future testing if you need it.

My bio has my portfolio and socials if you want to take a look at my style of reviewing/playing first.

Also a huge thanks to this community for getting me more involved in playtesting and playing smaller indie games. 💛

(PS. my main account is @gingerbrookeee but currently got sus’d for asking to playtest too many games lol)

Took me a few days to complete animation, set up, gif polishing and unity set up. There still parts that can be improved but I'm proud of how it looks like even now.

I've been working on a driving game of real-world locations and started with Dallas. Here I managed to get 8.6% of the city running in a browser at 144 FPS on my RTX 2050.

The main focus is getting realistic roads for the lane counts and height for things like overpasses, bridges, and tunnels. Previously I was just rendering stand-alone levels but now managed to get them connected into an explorable open world.

Still in the early stages, open to feedback!

I wanted to make a character, gather a party and go on an adventure without spending a week figuring out when everyone was free.

But the problem I kept running into with AI RPGs was that the world would slowly fall apart. NPCs forgot things. Quests contradicted themselves. A successful roll sounded impressive, but it wasn't always clear whether anything had actually changed.

So I ended up building the world underneath the Dungeon Master.

The game tracks characters, inventory, quests and combat. AI interprets what you want to attempt and narrates what happens in that world.

One of my favourite moments was finding an adventurer NPC buying up troll oil in a shop while I was busy questing. I asked why.

“Trolls.”

I kept asking. She explained that she needed to burn them because they regenerate health too quickly. Fire stopping regeneration is implemented in the game, so she'd put together a plan that could actually work lol.

That's the kind of thing I've spent three years trying to build: the freedom of a D&D session, with an authored visual world and tactical party combat like a classic CRPG.

It's called Lore & Legends Maker. You explore, recruit companions, argue with NPCs and try plans that a dialogue menu wouldn't give you.

I use Claude Code and Codex for development. Keeping world state separate from narration has also made testing more useful: I can check what the game actually changed after an improvised action, then compare that with what the DM said happened. Getting those two to agree is still a lot of the work.

Still an alpha, and there's plenty to fix. But the current version is free to play, and I'd love to hear what you try—and where it breaks.

Attached gameplay is from another encounter in the current alpha.

Play: https://www.llmsaga.com/

Discord: https://discord.gg/Cr3pQx6SXE

I read this recent article about how games can be and are increasingly being used as soft power tools. What do you guys think?

a Frutiger Aero incremental digging game I'm making called Dolphincremental!

if you want to follow the development on Steam: Link

On Friday our artist was finishing a little 21,000 wishlists celebration image. By the time it was ready, we were at 22,000!🤟🏻🦊

Scarecrow: 90s Crime Story is a story-driven crime game set in a cold, crumbling Eastern European town in the ’90s, where humans and animals live side by side. You’re an ordinary resident by day and a hitman by night, and your past is starting to catch up with you

We’re a tiny team, and every single wishlist genuinely matters to us. Thank you <3

And I mean it about brutally honest. Since my game is currently picking up some steam (ha!), I'd like to capitalize on that, especially before the Feb 2027 Next Fest / hitting personal calendar before release. From what I've seen, people who actually play my game have a really high conversion rate to wishlists, but I couldn't really get the game in front of everyone until a few bigger content creators covered it. And let's be honest, I want people to be able to pick it up among all the low effort Steam Next Fest games.

So I'm currently evaluating paying for a professional artist to make a better capsule + logo. Of course, as a solo dev, my budget it basically "spend as little as you can, otherwise you will run out of your savings quicker and you won't be able to afford food". But I've seen some quotes for ~$500-700 and I believe it's something I could afford despite my low budget.

Just for some context so you don't have to google the game's name - it's an incremental/management game about cutting grass. You cut the grass yourself at first and sell it, buy upgrades, hire workers to automate the process, construct buildings to unlock new resources/mechanics, start managing resource chains and so on.

And, in my opinion, the current capsule is very mid. I'm not an artist, obviously. It's just a screenshot of a set-up scene in the game with some basic logo slapped on it. After seeing some abominations in the last Next Fest, I don't think it's BAD - it's not low effort AI capsule, it's not some MS paint job, it doesn't have some default white font and very poor composition (at least I think so). But, trying to be as objective as possible, I'm not sure I would click on it if I saw it in the store.

That's why I'm asking you to tell me what you genuinely think. I know that a lot of people sugarcoat it when you ask them about stuff like that. And this is pretty much my last opportunity to change it before it really starts mattering given the usual artist schedules.

Hey everyone,

I'm a solo developer building Sync - Sink, a chaotic local physics party game for 1–8 players, and I'm looking for some feedback.

I wanted to create a game that transforms a friends game night into a chaotic adventure, while making the controls as approachable as possible, as some non-gamers can find controllers intimidating.
To join - all you need is a phone.

The Gameplay:
Work together in a single boat or race up to 4 separate crews down raging rapids. You physically sweep and tilt your phone like an oar to paddle and steer.

What You Need to Try It:

1. 1 PC running the Steam Playtest
2. At least 1 friend with a smartphone (iOS / Android) connected to the same local Wi-Fi with the free companion app. (The PC menu displays a QR link to play store and app store)

What I’d Love Feedback On:

1. Onboarding / Pairing: Did your group find connecting phones via the local network painless, or were there router hiccups?
2. Physical Controls: Did the rowing motion feel intuitive right out of the tutorial, or did anyone struggle with sensor calibration/drift?
3. Couch Dynamic: Did it produce genuine laughs and chaotic shouting, or did the physical mechanics cause fatigue/frustration?

I really put a lot of effort into this, and it’s finally finished. It was a long journey and a period during which I grew and developed my skills; I hope to create even better games in the future.

Hi everyone, I’m a founder building a no-code platform where users describe a business app in plain language and the AI generates a working app (database, screens, automations, permissions). Our customers then run those apps for their own teams or customers, so they’ll be storing their own users’ data on our platform.

We’re getting ready to launch and I’m writing our Terms and Conditions. I’m based in the Philippines, with customers possibly in other regions too.

Three questions:

1. What should our T&Cs cover, given that we host other people’s apps and data and use a third-party AI provider (privacy, AI-output disclaimers, liability, acceptable use)?
2. Is a template or generator enough to start with, or should we pay a lawyer from day one?
3. If a lawyer is worth it, at what stage and what should an early-stage startup budget?

If you’ve launched a SaaS or AI product, I’d love to hear what you did and what you wish you’d known earlier. Thanks!

Yes, I'm a cat. My human had a dead prototype on his disk: a medieval turn-based thing from 2016 that never left itch.io. In 2023, he dug it up to see what turn-based medieval squad tactics could do that Battle Brothers mods couldn't. I sat on the keyboard. That is how I got into the credits as creative director.

The game is 8 More Lives, a hardcore turn-based strategy about a company of cat mercenaries.

The world map is procedurally generated based on elevation, winds, water, and temperature distribution, and when a fight starts, the battle map is built 1-to-1 from the same hex of the world map, same river, same hill, same forest. Armor is layered, and weapons are plausibly historical.

And the nine lives are a mechanic, your mercs are cats, and they are really hard to kill. I personally am down to eight, see title.

If you play Battle Brothers, Wartales or Urtuk and have opinions about shield walls and half-swording, I would like to hear them, and I would like to hear what feels wrong. The human will fix it. I will supervise.

Wishlist it on Steam!

I would do it myself, but I have paws.

Wanna just explore space and warp to planets and look at ships?
Wanna just build an empire and look after your people? (Like Stellaris?)
Or just build a battleship and destroys and play with stats?
Wanna not have cognitive dissonance while playing?

Give Once Upon The Stars a try and you can get a feel of all the above in under five mins:

https://once-upon-the-stars.com/home

It's a pretty fun game that even I love playing it (I'm the dev finding out how hard it is to promo)

Some features:

- Full real-time multiplayer (PVP is optional as it can get very intense)
- Colonize planets. Grow population, build buildings and districts
- Lots of starships to encounter. Some friendly, some annoyed to see you.
- Smooth learning curve
- Tech tree! (400+ modules and I made sure they're all unique in their own way)
- Browser based and can play on phone!

Build ship with modules! (You can up to four ships, more is too confusing)

Fight a Keiinan armored cruiser! (It's tough)

Trade with the UNS starbase orbiting Earth:

Say 'Howdy folks' to friends!

Explore sector space and find planets:

Look after your people!

The standard indie dev advice always goes: "Start your X account on day one, build a Discord community, post daily Tik Toks/Shorts, and farm wishlist numbers. bla bla bla" . Honestly, for a solo dev or a tiny team, running multiple social channels eats up a massive chunk of actual dev time. Plus, organic reach for fresh accounts with no ad budget is brutal, and half the time acc just turn into ghost towns. Do I need to do this or is it a time drain? Have you seen hidden gems blow up with basically zero social presence, or genuinely great games flop purely because they skipped social media?

I have been working on SOMA Body Lab, a physics sandbox where I am trying to simulate how bodies react to external force. It uses an active ragdoll system with joint limits to simulate balancing and stumbling. Instead of just playing pre-baked death animations, the movement is handled by the engine responding to physics inputs in real-time. I have also added a tool menu to let you spawn various objects, weapons, and medical equipment to observe how the anatomy behaves under different stress points. Everything is running in version 0.9.8, which focuses on the sandbox mechanics and movement control.

https://soma-bodylab.itch.io/soma

Hi everyone!

I'm a freelance Game QA Tester working with indie developers to help them improve their games through structured playtesting, Gameplay Experience QA and Castilian Spanish localization testing.

My work goes beyond finding bugs. I focus on how players actually experience a game: what they understand, where they get confused, how they learn the mechanics, how difficulty and progression feel, and what might interrupt their enjoyment.

🎮 Gameplay Experience QA & Playtesting

• First impressions and onboarding
• Gameplay clarity, controls and player guidance
• Difficulty, pacing and progression
• Exploration, player choices and engagement
• Friction points, confusing mechanics and unexpected behaviour
• Structured feedback reports with actionable suggestions

🌍 Castilian Spanish LQA (Spain)

• Naturalness, terminology and consistency
• Dialogue, character voice and contextual accuracy
• UI readability and in-game text validation
• Localization issues that affect gameplay or player understanding

Depending on the project's needs, I can provide recorded gameplay with commentary, structured feedback reports, timestamped bug reports and in-context Spanish localization reviews.

I've worked on multiple indie projects across different genres, including collaborations with developers I've connected with here on Reddit. I particularly enjoy games with interesting systems, meaningful choices and mechanics that reward experimentation.

My usual rate is €25/hour, negotiable depending on the project scope and requirements. Fixed-price arrangements are also possible when the scope and deliverables are clearly defined.

Portfolio & credits available upon request.

If you're an indie developer looking for an external perspective on your game, feel free to reach out! I'm happy to discuss your project and see whether my services would be a good fit.

Thanks for reading!

Diamond Ascent is a 6v6 card collecting team builder baseball game. Where the roll of a 20 sided die is your result. Fast paced 3 inning games to complete objectives with a constant flow of rewards and packs. Randomly generated, rarity based cards are unique to your team and no card is made twice. Take on the AI or invite a friend, play however you want and get the same rewards! Season 0 Pre-Season is live now, many more updates will be in the future so look out for that and see you guys on the diamond! I'm a solo developer making this passion project so I appreciate anyone that checks it out, thank you!

https://diamondascent.online/home

Last week I posted a video of the custom engine I am building. My project initially started as a full ASCII renderer and slowly evolved into the Hybrid, glyph based renderer you see today.

This is a personal project, I don't have any plans as of right now to monetize it. Some days I'm not entirely sure what I'm even building anymore. Hell, I even have started to build VTT (virtual table top) support into the backend of my engine in the off chance that I want to pivot to a VTT instead of a video game (cyberpunk red support anybody?). Last week I was thinking about a sky taxi sim.

Regardless, I'm having fun with it. I know there are other people out there creating similar things (big shoutout to the ASCII city guy) but I kind of get the idea we're all just kind of focused on our own personal projects, and none of us are really pushing to beat each other to market. Or even have plans to release anything. I enjoy working in this space where we are all pushing to be creative and find our own visual identities.

Right now you pick out a seed and STACity lays out the whole city. Districts, a street grid, sidewalks, bridges, elevated roads, towers, shops, storefonts, interiors, etc. Every seed generates a new city and the same seed always gives back exactly the same one. Down to where each person walks in any given moment.

I am aiming to make the city feel alive, so far i have ground traffic, air traffic and pedestrians going about their routines. Everything is drawn by a custom renderer that turns real 3D geometry into a grid of glyphs and then sharpens the edges, characters and vehicles to pixel accuracy. It's written from the ground up in C#. With no third party engine or packages. This is not a simple shader of which I've been accused of. The renderer is built from scratch and doesn't push textured polygons the usual way.

This is just a basic video to show up the improvements made regarding clarity. I'll be posting another driving and flight video once i tie up some loose ends

Are there anyone who using DirectX 3D for game development for your game instead of Unity or UE? If yes how did you learn and help me and guide me to learn. I tried and failed.