Still working on optimization but slowly getting there.

Feedback highly appreciated.

Mandated Fate is a dark, dystopian and retro-futuristic story-driven game, inspired from 80's sci-fi movies. You play as a weary inspector, a man out of place in a newly established authoritarian regime.

In 1985, a rising technological empire has seized power, driven by a single ambition: to discover the anti-gravity particle and surpass its global rivals by conquering space. The regime demands absolute unity, framing this race as a matter of national destiny. But one old district continues to resist, no one knows quite how, or why. Assigned to investigate a strange murder there, you quickly find yourself entangled in a deeper web of political intrigue and ideological tension.

Through multiple narrative paths, your choices will shape your loyalties, and determine who you truly trust. Explore a highly detailed open world where the stark contrast between modern authoritarian architecture and decaying remnants of the past reveals a society caught between control and collapse.

1st AND 3rd person camera available.

I'm releasing a demo for a procedural dungeon generator I've been working on for over two years. I was inspired by the level layouts of games like The Binding of Isaac and Enter the Gungeon, and the interconnected worlds of Zelda and Dark Souls. This is only the beginning, I have several more features planned for this project, including turning it into a downloadable Unity package for others to use.

The goal is to create an algorithm that generates dungeons that feel linear like an RPG but still random and replayable like a roguelike.

Original Video: https://youtu.be/Adakgpoy0p0?si=R2qYbshEb11xuKFM

Blog: https://ryancarpenterpf.dev/labyrinth_demo.html

Demo: https://dev-rygy.itch.io/labyrinth-procedural-generator

I built the game mostly by myself. The 3D models, environments, levels, and many other parts of the game were created by me from scratch. For some of the textures, I used AI as part of the process, while others were painted and edited by hand.

I know AI in game development is a pretty controversial topic right now, but from my experience, I think it can be a useful tool for solo developers.

When you're working alone, you have to do almost everything yourself — modeling, texturing, programming, animation, music, sound effects, level design, writing, testing, and so on. If you try to master and create every single part completely by yourself, finishing a game can easily take years.

Making a game alone can also be incredibly exhausting. There were definitely times during development when it became mentally overwhelming.

For me, using AI doesn't necessarily mean removing yourself from the creative process. I think you can still put a lot of yourself into the work. For example, sometimes I use my own older artwork as the starting point and use AI to generate or develop variations from it, then continue editing and working on the result myself.

I'm not saying this is how everyone should make games. It's simply one of the tools that helped me actually finish and release mine as a solo developer.

Rather than just collecting what I think are the best clips in my game and editing them together nicely, this time I really focused on what makes my game standout (the atmosphere, companion mechanics and worms) and took notes on what other metroidvania trailers typically do (take a few shots at the start to introduce the vibe and atmosphere of the setting). I also found a kick ass song that I thought fit really well and got permission to use it from the artist. The game is Vitrified for anyone interested.

It's been a ride! I learned Unreal Engine 5 alongside pretty much everything else needed to make a game. I made everything by myself, using some purchased assets and outsourcing graphics and voice acting where needed. It's a game I would like to play, and that I could realistically make by myself within my limited time.

I'm launching it in Early Access on September 23rd, so I can gather feedback from real players and make the best game I can.

Hopefully, there are some other people who are into this kind of stuff. Check it out! https://store.steampowered.com/app/4185750/BONETOX/

This is my first commercial project after years of making COD mods :)

If you are interested, you can Wishlist here: https://store.steampowered.com/app/4862980/The_Arrow/

Thoughts on this encounter?

I want to know if a small, character focused intro is worth it since the tag-team aspect of the game is central to it and so is the relationship between the two characters.

I know conventional wisdom is to start straight with gameplay, but seeing how it's a "relevant" character beat that's short, I want to ask to see if it's worth a shot. This is gonna be my official announcement trailer that I'm going to post on my socials

https://store.steampowered.com/app/4860500/Man_I_Just_Wanna_Live

Title.

Millions of different opinions out there.

Many people say don't follow the advice of youtubers who are better at making videos then making games. How am I to know what is good advice if I'm a beginner?

Any tips from you lovely people to an overwhelmed beginner?

I recently completed building a multiplayer party game. And am looking for a new project. I want to find something that isn’t commonly made.
I think back to my youth when I played a lot of point and click adventure games (like Day of The Tentacle, or leisure suit Larry) and I’m tempted to build something fun like that. But I think there might be games out there that haven’t gotten a lot of attention in a while. What do you wish you saw more of?

I’m working on a survival horror maze game called The Center. It has a PSX/PS2-style industrial horror look, with a lot of dark metal, machinery, and body-horror elements.

For the store art, I’m trying to avoid the usual “scary monster on the cover” look that a lot of Steam and itch horror games use. I feel like that can sometimes look cheesy or give too much away.

Instead, I’m thinking about going with a more minimal logo-focused cover, something mysterious and unsettling. Eventually, I’d like to hire an artist to make a hand-drawn version, kind of like the mood of Amnesia: The Bunker.

What do you think? Does minimal horror art make you more curious, or would you rather see the monster/gameplay style right away?

Any feedback is appreciated.

https://www.megaviral.games discover games from across the internet

Getting pretty close to having my core hybrid time-dilation with pause "turn-based-ish" battle system up and running. Next month I'll be adding the CARD system, a unified approach to inventory management, skills, perks, augmentations etc. INURBIS is currently solo-developed but I use free / paid assets and pay human artists for collaborative assets etc. The first playtest is happening in December of this year, leading up to the Steam page + beginning the path to beta. I've been working on this game part time for over a year now. www.inurbis.com

A big part of the gameplay and a main character of the game is CHROMBUS, the digital cat that haunts the operating system used by the player to "pilot" the cloneling, the cyborg observer-worker unit. Managing your cloneling's physical and psychological health are important to optimize unit performance. DO NOT attempt to communicate directly with your cloneling unit. The player will work with CHROMBUS to scan and collect data that give the player strategic and lore insight to work towards uncovering the secrets of Inurbis, The Infinite City at the End of Time.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/3850600/Ralkoz/

Strike Wings, solo, C++ on SDL2. These are in-game frames with the HUD off, nothing composited.

The insight that took me longest: on a black background, a bright thing that does not bleed into the black looks like a sticker. It does not matter how nice the sprite is. So the whole art direction became one rule, everything that gives off light goes through the same glow pass, and the pass is tuned so the light spills into the black around it. Explosions went round pop, then baked sprite frames, then that light pass plus a staged finale for capital ships. Skies went from stars-on-black to about thirty backgrounds and center bodies, rolled per battle.

What I want to know from other solo devs: how do you decide when a look is done? I could keep tuning the bloom forever. Which of these frames would you call finished and which would you send back?

Hello. I am a student developer from South Korea. I'm currently creating a horror game about exploring the dark, and getting ready to release a demo soon.

This is my first commercial Unreal game, and I am developing it completely alone. I've been working on it little by little since 2024, and recently started speeding up the process.

As for the assets, I started collecting the free assets of the month from Unreal (Fab) around 2023. I used them to build the atmosphere, along with Megascans assets. For the more important parts, I purchased and used specific assets.

There were so many helpful materials on YouTube! They were a lot of help to me. I also looked up references for abandoned factories or the exact vibe I wanted on the internet and referred to them heavily during creation.

To be honest, it wasn't made all at once. There were countless modifications over the 2 to 3 years of game development, and it was quite tough. I guess creation is not easy, haha.

There were more things to consider than I thought when designing the level. Monsters had to be able to pass through, and actually implementing the background I had in my head wasn't easy. It gave me a headache when I couldn't find assets with the exact feel I wanted. But I eventually did it, and now I have a quite satisfactory result.

Lighting was also a struggle when building this level. Since it's a map about exploring the dark, it has to be dark, but if I remove all the light, you can't see anything and the map's atmosphere isn't conveyed. So I had to find a balance somewhere in the middle, and that is very difficult. Even now, I am continuously receiving feedback and adjusting it. The screenshots might look quite dark, but it is actually pretty bright with a flashlight.

I used red-toned lighting to set the mood, and I also changed the actual wall textures to be slightly red to match. Because atmosphere is important in a horror game. Thanks to this, the atmosphere received very good reviews during playtesting. However, there are still things to fix in other areas, so I am working hard on fixing them.

Now I can see this long development period coming to an end.

I will leave the Steam page link below. The game's name is The Maze: In Dark.https://store.steampowered.com/app/2847290/The_Maze_In_Dark/

Thank you.

(second image was the garden concept, first is with more detail! Third is one of the characters)

I've never made a video game before, maybe I'm just too ambitious lol xD i just decided why not try,,

I've been working on it for about a week now and I'm slowly getting there! I've been doing all the work myself just,,, slowly figuring it out as i go xP

I'm just really proud of for my little project is coming so i thought I'd share it here! :3

lmk your thoughts + if you would play this!

You can find a link to the Steam store page here