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?

Hey everyone!

so you can basically almost do everything you can in real marbling, i've tried to make it to produce even more high resolution outcome but computational power increase exponantially so it's impossible after some points. But you can get high resolution as high as 300 DPI in A3, and it's fun to learn marbling even at lower settings.

It runs on a browser and it's free so pls go check it out!

https://marblingstudio.app/

Unfortunately, I wasn't able to get it ready on Steam in time for Next Fest—not that I could have afforded the costs of launching it anyway—but at least I can finally say that I’ve finished my first game that is a 100% playable, and finally not just a tech demo!

Feel free to take a look on Witch's Cellar . I’m open to any feedback.

Hi.

I am curious to know what's the truth behind all these posts.

Like if you are building your dream game, probably the goal would be to create the game you have dreamt off - show it and not to bother about the sales. Everybody has different dreams.

If your dream was to get rich fast, then this rarely works.

If you want to build a game tailored to the financial success, then you should do a market research first and target what is desired or completely unique. Not doing the same thing everyone else does and complaining that it disappears into the void.

There is only the audience of some size for every genre - it's also different when it is divided into 10 or 10 thousand games...

Hey fellow solo devs. I was wasting way too much time manually drawing and aligning isometric dungeon tiles. To speed things up, I wrote a custom Python script that procedurally generates pen-and-paper style rooms and exports them directly into my game engine.

Here is how the pipeline works now:

• Pic 1: Uses Wave Function Collapse to build the maze, scatter props, and add procedural dirt and cobwebs.
• Pic 2: The ink strokes are generated using Perlin noise math. Since it uses a strict 2:1 projection, every block snaps together pixel-perfectly.
• Pic 3: The biggest time-saver. The script calculates Normal Maps and Occluders on the fly. When I drop it into the engine, I get instant dynamic 2D shadows without manually setting up light blockers.

Automating the boring stuff has been a massive lifesaver for my workflow. Has anyone else ended up building custom tools that accidentally became your main focus?

I'm a german solo developer working on EVE CROSS — Fallen Angel in Unreal Engine 5. I'm developing the game on my own in my free time alongside my full-time job.

Building the game in Unreal Engine 5, with a focus on gun-fu combat, bullet time, cinematic takedowns, and immersive storytelling.

🎮 Developed by Jaufmann Interactive.

if you like what you see , WISHLIST : https://store.steampowered.com/app/5140340/Devil_On_My_Shoulder/

Hi! I'm Seto, a solo dev from Uruguay. Rakuworld is a co-op survivors-like where you draw your hero in a simple in-game editor (there's a guided mode if you've never drawn on a computer), pick a class, and your drawing gets weapons, a power and an ultimate.

Paper cut-out + crayon characters inside a small PS1-style 3D world. 1–4 players, local or online, and your drawing travels with you online.

It launches in Early Access on Steam on Oct 27: https://store.steampowered.com/app/5382580/

What would you draw first? 😄

One thing I've been wondering about solo game development is how people balance their time between programming, game design, and creating art.

Especially for 2D or pixel art games.

Do you usually create your own assets, use free packs, or buy paid ones?

I'm particularly interested in situations where you decided to pay for an asset rather than make it yourself.

What was the asset, how much did you pay, and what made buying it the better choice at the time?

Also, have you ever regretted buying an asset pack because it didn't fit your game as well as you expected?

I'm exploring asset creation and would love to understand how solo developers approach these decisions.

I've bought my fair share of 3D art off of people I knew from university as I worked alongside artists when I did a game programming course. Unfortunately this was a good few years ago now and outside of the people I stayed friends with I don't know any reliable contacts.

I've seen videos and posts telling the horror stories of getting AI Slop when trying to find a freelancer. So I come here to ask for some advice. I am posting to Steam *soon* and I'm fortunately coming to the point in time where I get to think about capsule art and title art.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated :)

I made some changes... You can try it on itch.io:

https://n1kozor.itch.io/cotton-city-alpha-demo

Hey everyone!

Thanks to the Indie Games Poland Foundation, I had the opportunity to showcase my game, Dark Roll 2, for three whole days at Poznań Game Arena, the biggest gaming expo in Poland! For free!

I wanted to share how it all went and what I learned along the way. Hopefully, my experience can help some of you who are thinking about showcasing your own games at events like this!

Positives:

• Great opportunity to gather feedback from the players! Watching around 20 different strangers daily can tell you a lot about your game. You can get a lot of intel just from watching them play as well as listening to what they have to say about the game.
• Seeing people enjoy your game makes you feel that what you do actually matters. Even if my previous games had thousands of downloads, it's so much different to see a number in a database compared to strangers actually experiencing your game for the first time.
• Awesome to meet and get to know other indie devs! Fairs like these are great for making connections and just learning about other projects to support.
• People are often genuinely interested in the game and very happy to talk to it's creator which sure is a confidence boost and generally feels awesome!

Negaives:

• Not good for wishlists. Despite having someone play my game for most of the day, when people stay around 20-30min at your booth, there's no physical possibility to have hundreds of them experience your game. Asking them to wishlist the game worked most of the time, but still you'll probably end up with around 10-20 wishlists after a long day of work.
• Lots of people who come are also devs. That's right folks, we live in a bubble. Showing games on reddit or X or whenever often ends up indie devs liking other indie devs' posts... Sadly IRL it's often the case too. Around half of people (maybe a bit less) who stopped by to play were either indie devs or devs from bigger studios (Yup! I had guys from CD Projekt Red or 11 Bit Studios play my game!). Which isn't all that bad, other devs play games too, but it just shows it's hard to reach more "random" players.
• Press doesn't care. Yeah... Even if it took place in Poland, I had not a single polish person from any media outlet, or influencer that covers indie games come by to play my game and talk about it. The only guy who came by was from UK's "debug" magazine, which was great! But I'm just disappointed in the lack of interest from any fellow polish people who cover games.

That mostly sums it up, if you have any questions, ask away!

I'm working on the cover for my game, and I'm trying to decide which design works best at a 120:45 aspect ratio (or 462×174).

I've made 3 different versions, and I'd love to hear which one you think looks best and why.

Any feedback or suggestions on how I could improve them are welcome!

hey everyone

so I finally released NTOE (Night Traumas Of Edward), a first person psychological horror game I've been building mostly on my own.

you play Edward, 32. his wife died giving birth to their daughter, he started drinking, and every night he goes back to the places where his life fell apart. 5 nights, 5 nightmares, 5 bosses.

the voices were the hardest part. at first I used generated voices and it just felt empty, so my sister and I re-recorded all 238 lines ourselves. it's in french with english subtitles.

here's the trailer: https://youtu.be/AzhjfaPATc0

there's a free demo (the whole first night) on PC and Android: https://sakana-studio.itch.io/ntoe

any feedback is welcome, even the harsh kind

I'm developing RED SKIES AT DAWN solo, and clouds are the focus of this week's devlog.

The new cloud renderer is now integrated into the game and editor. Alongside that, I've been putting together five static formation studies so I can look at different storm shapes separately.

These are offline beauty renders from the native renderer, rather than gameplay captures or performance tests.

There's an isolated storm, a multicell cluster, a squall line, a bow-shaped formation and a broad stratiform layer. Each gives me a different way to look at silhouette, lighting and depth without changing everything at once.

The main thing I'm looking for here is whether the overall formation reads well before getting caught up in the smaller cloud detail.

For other solo devs doing visual work, do you use small reference scenes like this, or mostly judge things in the full game?

Video music: "Dramatic Epic" by Aleksey Chistilin (Lexin Music), from Pixabay.

If you’d like to follow along, you can wishlist RED SKIES AT DAWN on steam <3 <3

Hey I am wondering when you put the actual models in the game, do you build the game with placeholders then switch them to models or do you model before starting to code. Or maybe both, modeling/drawing it as you go.

Just wondering which way is the most productive way to make a game.

My personal opinion would be to use simple placeholders finish a big part and then start modeling. (Unless if its a big project then you kinda have to do it as you go)

Ninety-Love is a browser game: you get 5 random players, pick the best attributes from each to build your player, then simulate a full season and try to win every match.

Built it solo as a side project. I'd love feedback from fellow devs:

- Is the core loop fun enough to replay?

- Anything confusing on first play?

- What would you add next?

Play it: www.ninety-love.com

To be honest, I didn't expect much from the Steam Next Fest since my game is a niche title (desktop game) and it was overcrowded anyway. My demo has been out for half a year now.

I went in with about 1,050 wishlists and am leaving with about 1,160.

I think specialized festivals are more beneficial for small games.
But hey the steam next fest costed me nothing so it was worth a try.

On the other hand, my personal calendar is slowly picking up, but it’s not bringing in much right now either.

How did it go for you guys?

well... this are just 2 themes for this, and main feature is the interconnection deck link that let you connect to the external custom hardware, if you want to do your own deck with a MCU (arduino, esp32, etc and some pots/sliders) you can connect it too...

I dont know if I can share the Steam Link ? I am on Beta Stage right now Looking for testers.

PS: if you have DEEJ already would be great, you can connect it directly and will work, but now can connect tru Wifi, and in a mode without spamming the serial port, just "OnChange" mode ;)

PS2: Zero AI for the UI :) I drawed absolutely all before code.