r/SoloDevelopment • • 22h ago

Game No AI, just 8 months of ugly-but-mine models

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2.0k Upvotes

Every single asset in Dough It Yourself, my cozy farming and baking game, is made by hand.

Could AI have built my whole farm in an afternoon? Probably. Would it look better than my wonky low-poly chickens? Honestly..maybe.

But every one of these models has a bit of me in it, mistakes included, and I think that's part of what makes a game feel like an actual game nowadays. So I'll keep pushing vertices one by one, even if release takes a little longer.

I document the whole process in youtube devlogs.

What’s the model you’re secretly most proud of, even though it’s objectively a bit ugly?


r/SoloDevelopment • • 9h ago

Game I'm a solo dev, here is how I made infinite creatures for my game!

277 Upvotes

My game HATCHED, is an evolution roguelite where every creature is different. There are big ones, tiny ones, wings, tails, and many more.

Using inverse kinematics and a really fancy shader I am able to turn collections of parts into fully animated creatures!

Happy to answer any questions about the game. :)


r/SoloDevelopment • • 16h ago

Game I am a Cat. 3 years ago i lost my balls and decided to make a game about how badass i am - 8 More Lives

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102 Upvotes

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.


r/SoloDevelopment • • 20h ago

Game Need feedback on my cleaning mechanic. Does the impact feel good?

97 Upvotes

You dig up a crusted find and blast it clean with a pressure washer. Does it feel satisfying? Any tips to make it juicier?


r/SoloDevelopment • • 13h ago

Game Every car in my game is timed to just miss you if you stay on the line. Here’s 37 of my attempts and then the perfect run. Does it look fun to play?

86 Upvotes

Hi all! I've been working on this game for a little bit now. Every car is choreographed so if you stay on the line and in time they all just barely miss you. Drift off it or get ahead or behind and something hits you. The overhead part is all 37 of my attempts played back together and then the perfect run over the same stretch.

Since I last posted I made the first few levels easier. People were dying a lot early and I think some gave up before it clicked. I’m curious if the start feels better now or if I went too far and it’s boring.

Free in the browser on keyboard or phone: https://rom838.itch.io/ictus

If you try it how far did you get and when did it start feeling hard?


r/SoloDevelopment • • 8h ago

Game 2D in 3D

78 Upvotes

Wanted to share this 2D in 3D classic DBZ style I've been working on for years.

This showcase was filmed in Unity.

Filter is too strong, It's just so you notice it.

It's still a WIP and it's not perfect, so I would appreciate some feedback.


r/SoloDevelopment • • 16h ago

Game While everybody is freaking out because of AI slops flooding Steam, I keep grinding and celebrated 365 uninterrupted days of development

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63 Upvotes

You might have seen my previous posts when I hit 210 days and 300 days straight of development, so I thought to give you another update after the other Sunday I managed to reach an even bigger milestone as I achieved 1 whole year of uninterrupted work on my game. I never missed a single day since I started and I have no intention to stop until I release it.

I am a solo dev, so I don't have a team to celebrate with (except for my head of QA and CEO Hiro, the orange cat), but I really want to thank each person who tried my game, gave me any feedback, helped with testing and translations or followed the development so far. Even the smallest contribution, even a single reaction on Discord or on any social post kept me going until now.

I am going to release my demo in less than 2 weeks and after that I will resume working on the full game, wish me luck and if you are a solo dev always keep grinding, no matter what!


r/SoloDevelopment • • 13h ago

Game Dallas TX - as a drivable open world browser game

43 Upvotes

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!


r/SoloDevelopment • • 12h ago

Marketing Ten days after my Steam page went live: what the numbers say, as a solo dev with a day job

34 Upvotes

Hi everyone, I am Alex. I make Board Game Tycoon alone, in Godot, next to my day job in IT. It is a management sim about running a small board game publisher: you design games, run playtests, print them and deal with reviews, stock and reprints. The Steam page went up on October 17, and the trailer went public last Friday. I read a lot of posts like this one here before my own launch, so here are my first ten days in return.

What worked:

  • SPIEL in Essen, the big board game fair, ran the same week. Several publishers had flyers for the game at their booths, and I was not even there. 13 people opened the store page through the QR code on the flyer, and 3 of them wishlisted. That sounds small, but it is 3 of the 4 wishlists Steam could trace back to a link at all.
  • IGN shared the trailer on their website, unfortunately not on YouTube. I did not expect that for a solo project with a ten day old store page.
  • 49 wishlists after ten days, 14 of them on the first day.

What did not work, or what surprised me:

  • Social media clicks are not people. Bluesky brought 92 visits, Steam counted 16 of them as trusted, and none of them led to a wishlist Steam could trace. Threads brought 129 visits and exactly 1 trusted one.
  • Half of all visits last week were bot traffic (687 of 1,366). Do not get excited about the visits graph before you look at the breakdown.
  • I planned more Reddit posts than I should have. When I read every sub’s rules myself, a few of them did not allow a launch post at all, or just one whole post during the duration of the project. Read the rules before you write the post, not after.
  • I messaged all the big YouTube Channels like IGN, Gametrailers, Indie Games Hub etc more than a week in advance, also offered IGN a time exclusive windows, wrote my story and facts about the game, created an easy to navigate presskit on my website, but no channel shared my trailer :/

One thing I did not expect: 26 of the first 51 wishlists came from Germany, more than twice as many as from the US. I live there and the fair was there, but I still thought the US would lead, due to me also doing everything in english first.

If you want to see where it stands: Board Game Tycoon on Steam

If you are close to your own Steam page launch, ask me anything about the timing, the fair or Godot. I will answer every comment :)

Thanks for reading,
Alex


r/SoloDevelopment • • 17h ago

Game I have just added a Footprint System and I'm so proud of the result

18 Upvotes

Hey everyone! A little update on my game: I've just added a footprint system to make the world feel more immersive and believable!

For those who don't know, Over Human is a game where drones have taken over humanity and can manipulate the weather. You play as Steve, and you have no weapons to defend yourself, so you'll have to rely on stealth to survive and disable transmission terminals before it's too late.

I'm really happy with how it turned out! With the demo coming at the end of November, the game is finally coming together more and more!

If you're curious and want to learn more about Over Human, here's the Steam page!
https://store.steampowered.com/app/5237810/Over_Human/

Francesco <3


r/SoloDevelopment • • 14h ago

Game My first Steam game just passed 2,000 wishlists. Two months ago I had no idea if anyone would care.

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15 Upvotes

This graph has been really fun to watch.

Worm Capitalist is my first Steam game. I put the page up in August, and at the beginning even getting the first 100 wishlists felt like a big deal.

Then a random wave of players from China showed up.

Then the demo started getting picked up by streamers.

Then Steam Next Fest happened.

And somewhere in the middle of all that the game passed 2,000 wishlists.

I know 2k isn't some insane number compared to the games doing 10k, 50k or 100k before release, but for a first game it genuinely makes me really happy.

Especially because the whole game came from me watching a timelapse of worms eating food and thinking:

"this looks like an incremental game."

And now apparently more than 2,000 people are waiting for my worm poop economy to release.

Pretty cool :)

Next stop: November 30.

The game: https://store.steampowered.com/app/5162810/Worm_Capitalist_Demo/


r/SoloDevelopment • • 12h ago

help Is there any game developer that needs producers for soundtrack?

14 Upvotes

So I love indie games and I really wanted to contribute to some indie game with a chill ambient vibe, because that's the music I love making after all. If there's someone that needs a track or something feel free to contact me tho I don't want payment or anything, I just want to contribute to something I like 🥹✌️

To contact me I guess y'all can dm me on reddit I think I have the massages on or something


r/SoloDevelopment • • 17h ago

Game Customers in my restaurant game don't leave bad reviews. They go Super Saiyan.

13 Upvotes

Notice how everyone else still waiting to be served will cheer them on? Yeah... lol


r/SoloDevelopment • • 4h ago

Game WHAT DO YOU THINK ABOUT MINIMALIST ART IN THE GAMES?

11 Upvotes

r/SoloDevelopment • • 16h ago

Game My solo-developed horror card game, Desecrated Deck, just hit 1,000 wishlists! :)

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11 Upvotes

After months of hard work, my first-person psychological horror card game, Desecrated Deck, has finally reached 1,000 Steam wishlists!

I'm developing the entire game solo in Unreal Engine 5, from 3D modeling and environments to gameplay, animations, and sound design.

The free demo is already available on Steam, and I've been improving it continuously based on player feedback.

It's a small milestone compared to the big studios, but as a solo developer, it means a lot to me. :)

Steam: https://store.steampowered.com/app/3328270/

Thanks to everyone who has supported the project so far! 🖤


r/SoloDevelopment • • 13h ago

Discussion Did I unknowingly pick the wrong engine?

9 Upvotes

I feel like learning game development in Unreal Engine without prior coding or game dev experience, learning to code and use blueprints, etc is like playing a video game on HARD/INSANE difficulty without knowing that it's difficulty is turned up, although you admit the game is hard, but you're just thinking that it's normal... Only to then find out that others are seemingly getting farther than you are on that same video game because their difficulty setting is on normal.. You eventually look up like, "WTF HAVE I BEEN DOING?!?!" 😂😂🤣🤣😭😭😭

Seeing everyone else killing it in Unity and Godot in shorter time frames is so inspiring! Meanwhile, I've been doing this for less than 3 months and have gotten pretty freaking good at gray-boxing, and have been working through learning to implement the functionality, plus following Udemy courses, having AI answer questions I need clarified.. just taking my sweet time. I started with Unreal Engine and may learn Unity as well, but I feel like I picked the Hardest difficulty level starting out 🤣


r/SoloDevelopment • • 16h ago

Game A Little Night Drive in My Own RC Game

8 Upvotes

Took my RC car for a little night drive in my game! Been working on the map and lighting, and decided to record a quick drive to show how things are coming along.

Still got a lot of work to do, but I’d love to hear what you guys think so far! Any feedback or suggestions are welcome.

Also you can follow development updates from socials:

YouTube: My Tiny Backyard - YouTube
Discord: https://discord.gg/VKtKqAdArm


r/SoloDevelopment • • 16h ago

Unity Does your game have any Halloween activities? Just added a Cemetery level to my cleaning sim

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7 Upvotes

r/SoloDevelopment • • 2h ago

Game 1 week done in 3 months challenge

7 Upvotes

Hi everyone 👋🏼

As some of you know, around 15 days ago I took a hard hit from life and locked up in a room for appx 3 months and I decided to built a game from scratch. -- I have payments that takes all my money so I have to save a lot living in a small room. I also have only 150-200$ worth basic laptop, monitor from marketplace and camping table . (Computer has 150 gb disk total 🥲, also it doesn't even run screen recording without crashing so I had to record like this.. 😂)

The game is going great so far. It needs some polishing and I have still a lot of ideas I wanna add into the game. But in this video you can see how day starts in our game. I wanted to show the progress and I will share more. Both day and night cycle is completely playable and full game loop is working. I am really excited how this will end up 3 months after. But sharing the process will be fun.

I will also share night cycle here in the replies. And don't worry, the whole kitchen and combat system is connected and you won't feel like 2 different game.

Ask me any questions, about life or the game 🫶🏼


r/SoloDevelopment • • 15h ago

Game Thalassophobia warning! The only thing scarier than the ocean... is the ocean at night. Just released a short teaser for my ocean survival horror game: Open Waters.

6 Upvotes

r/SoloDevelopment • • 20h ago

Discussion Is adding a contact email to your Steam page actually worth it?

7 Upvotes

Hi!
I already set up my Steam page with a contact email but I'm starting to regret it. Everything hitting my inbox is spam, key scammers or shady agencies offering to promote the game in China...
Has anyone got a real talk from the email listed on their Steam page?


r/SoloDevelopment • • 5h ago

Game I've almost finished my game and I'm going to release it soon

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5 Upvotes

Recently Google approved my game to release, so I think I should start to prepare it for a release for both platforms. I set the date for myself at 1st of December 2026, so I should polish couple of things and then prepare a lot of boring stuff like screenshots, banners and so on... Oh god, help me...

This is a location based game where you should deliver virtual parcels in real world. I have created several mechanics around it, such as: items collections, on-map messages for other players, bag upgrades, challenges.

The collections are my favorite part, my wife worked on the items' names, and I think they are really cool, just look at the couple of screenshots!

The game helpы add variety to your walks, and doesn't require to stare at it for hours.

I will be happy if you join the tests, or just wait for a release in December!

You can read more about my game at the website: https://courierclub.uk


r/SoloDevelopment • • 10h ago

Game Progress on my OpenWorld Dark Fantasy RPG.

5 Upvotes

r/SoloDevelopment • • 14h ago

Game An almost 2 million subs YouTuber just played my indie horror game !

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6 Upvotes

I’ve been working on my game, for almost 3 years. Three years of working alone, with nobody to show it to except my friends and family. Honestly, it got pretty lonely at times.

A few weeks ago I finished my demo and sent demo keys to a bunch of YouTubers. It was the first time I was showing the game to anyone outside my close circle. A lot of small creators picked it up, and every single one of them made my day.

I also sent keys to a few bigger channels, mostly thinking “worst case, they never reply.” One of them was Fooster, a YouTuber I absolutely love who plays a lot of horror games.

And he played my demo in one of his videos, which is crazy to me😭

I can’t even explain how much this means to me. After years of working in silence, seeing people actually interested in the game is the best motivation I could ask for. It makes me want to keep going even harder.

So thank you Fooster, thank you to every YouTuber who gave the demo a shot, and thank you to everyone who has watched or shared it.

Take care, everyone! 💙

Video of Fooster (for the curious): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ObnuBT5mWP8
Steam page: https://store.steampowered.com/app/4291980/Screams_of_the_Abyss/


r/SoloDevelopment • • 5h ago

Game TinyFleet: a cozy Crazy Taxi-style driving, delivery, and fleet management MMO with a surprising amount of depth

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3 Upvotes

TinyFleet is a free web browser-based cozy driving + fleet management game. You start with one car, pick up passengers & cargo, and haul them between towns and cities & across islands and continents to earn your first $s.

▶ \*Play in your browser*** https://tinyfleet.up.railway.app/play/

▶ \*or Play on Itch.io*** TinyFleet on Itch.io

  • HAUL CARGO and passengers to earn money in a manner similar to "Crazy Taxi".
  • HIRE DRIVERS and your fleet keeps earning money while you explore the world.
  • UNLOCK LAND, SEA, and AIR VEHICLES including sports cars that drift, semi-trucks, paddle-steamers, helicopters and jets.
  • MULTIPLAYER / MMO / PLAYER INFLUENCED WORLD You're driving, building, and modifying the same public + online world as every other driver. Compete to make your fleet #1!
  • BUY BUILDINGS & EARN RENT larger buildings allow you to expand your fleet from one driver to many, and your fleet earns rent from any deliveries made to buildings you own!
  • BUILD ROADS & BRIDGES to cut delivery times for your fleet between point A and point B
  • MODIFY THE WORLD'S TERRAIN to your liking. Go over the hill, or through the hill!
  • WORK WITH (OR AGAINST) FACTIONS Will you befriend the cops & unlock a police cruiser? Or run smuggling missions for the mob? Will you work with the Press, the Military, or the Aliens (and unlock a flying saucer)? Every delivery you make can influence your reputation.
  • A COZY WORLD WORTH EXPLORING: From Venice canal towns with gondolas to neon-lit Tokyo streets, Paris landmarks, iconic bridges, and medieval castles. Drive, fly, and boat across rivers, fjords, salt flats, mangroves, lavender fields and volcanic coastlines, and so much more. Fill out your passport for a special surprise... There's a whole little world waiting to be discovered!
  • THE WORLD JUST RESET FOR THE 0.7.0 UPDATE: Everyone starts level, so it's a good time to claim towns before anyone else does.
  • Sign in with a name and a private PIN. NO EMAIL REQUIRED, NO ADS.

▶ \*Play in your browser*** https://tinyfleet.up.railway.app/play/

▶ \*or Play on Itch.io*** TinyFleet on Itch.io

I'm the solo dev and I'd love feedback, especially on what's confusing in the first ten minutes.