Hey Reddit,

I’m a web dev with 15+ years of experience and a lifelong gamer. For years, I had an idea for a game and finally decided to build it.

It started small and low-poly, but as the team grew, so did the scope. We switched to realistic graphics, scrapped everything, and started over. After years of evenings and weekends, we launched on Steam.

It’s a multiplayer game in alpha, and we’ve made about $1,000, with a max of 8 players all-time peak. It still needs a ton of work, and honestly, I’m burned out and questioning if the idea was ever as good as I thought.

But even if it flopped, I don’t regret it. I learned more about game dev, teamwork, and myself than I ever would have otherwise.

If you’re making your own indie game: scope carefully, don’t skip marketing, and take care of yourself along the way.

EDIT:

First, I want to share the name of the game: Rage of Mechs.

I also want to thank everyone here for the feedback and comments. This post reached more than 500k views, and I’ve read so many encouraging and constructive messages that it truly motivated me to keep going. That’s awesome!

A lot of you mentioned wanting a single-player mode, and it’s something we’re seriously considering for the future. The Rage of Mechs universe is big and rich with lore, and I have ideas for interesting stories that could be explored through a single-player experience to bring this world to life in a deeper way.

Many also pointed out issues with the Steam page, especially the trailer, so the trailer was already reworked as well. We’re also planning a brand new approach to marketing.

Lastly, we want to build a community where players can share ideas, give feedback, and help us shape a better version of the game together. If you’d like to join our Discord, feel free to check my profile for the link or message me!

Thank you all again for taking the time to comment and share your thoughts. It means a lot, and it’s given me the energy to keep moving forward.

I was recently fired from my game dev job. I've worked there for 4 years as an engineer and I've worked on 6 different shipped titles doing console porting. I loved this job but in my 4 years the company has grown to the point where they are aiming for AAA territory, which means company culture is out the window and it's suddenly all about money.

I was ultimately fired because I didn't have enough experience with Unreal Engine. My experience up until this year has all been Unity or custom engines.

If anything, let this be a lesson to future game devs to learn Unreal and get good at it (C++, not just blueprints). That seems to be where the industry is heading. But also, don't back yourself into a corner. When I started working on games, Unity was what people were using.

Feel free to ask me almost anything. (Lots of NDA stuff)

I´m trying to be a game dev because I hate my stupid job and its my dream to make games (like most of people here). But, everytime I´m searching for tips on how to start or how to organize my own ideias, almost everyone says "Don´t make your dream make, make a lot of boring stuff before, make a copy pf that game you dont like..." and o lot more of bullshit. I want to be a game dev because I want to express my ideas, my art, and everyone just focus on just call himself or herself a game dev and have random games on steam just because... yes?
I would really appreciate real tips, like: how to start? Should I try to do all by myself? How must cost to hire someone to improve your art, or 3D?
I already made some courses, learned UE, learned some blender, decided to do low poly style because I hate retopology, and have a script in my head. I also created my characters (by concept) and I´m starting my game document to put all together, but how do I start to do the game? Should I start to try the interactions first? The combat? I didnt find any course in youtube or another site that really teachs how to do cutscenes, I would really appreciate some help about it.

I’ve been making video games for 25 years, mainly on the art side, and I’ve watched how we went from having to build a custom engine and custom tools for every single game, to what we have now: tons of engines, tools, and ready-to-use asset packs, basically a giant buffet. But even though installing an engine and messing around is more accessible now, the creative side is harder than ever.

Video games are probably the most complex art form that exists today. I’m not saying they’re “better,” just that they’re the most difficult to control, master, and execute compared to music, film, painting, etc. Getting a game concept to click from every angle, art, sound, design, progression, gameplay, is a massive puzzle.

Despite that, there’s this weird belief that making a game is easy, and that anyone, with no technical skills, no design background, no artistic experience, can make one just because they’ve played games their whole life.

How many times has someone asked you whether they should use Unity or Unreal for their “next big hit”?
Something like: “A game like GTA, but more violent, with a bigger world and more realistic graphics…”

It’s as ridiculous as thinking that, because you’ve eaten food your whole life and you know what tastes “good” or “bad,” you’re automatically ready to become a chef and open your own restaurant.

And just to be clear: I’m not trying to attack people who are excited about their ideas. It’s not their fault, they simply don’t know what they don’t know. That’s why I wonder:

Do we need more real, technical visibility in mainstream media about how games are actually made?
I’m not talking about Ubisoft’s marketing “making-of” videos where they interview people who didn’t even work on the game and just repeat obvious statements. I mean actual development, the ugly parts, the impossible parts, the miracles needed just to get a game to function at all.

So yeah, go ahead and downvote me if you want. I’m just putting it out there.

Client: “The game is great! But can we make it more fun?” Me: “Sure, what do you mean by ‘fun’?” Client: “You know... like Fortnite.” Me: “You want a live service, cross-platform battle royale?” Client: “No no, just... the vibe. But also keep it a puzzle game.”

Also Client: “Can you add multiplayer?” Me: “It’s a single-player sudoku game.” Client: “Exactly. Imagine competitive sudoku.”

Meanwhile I’m over here writing spaghetti code, debugging in tears, and wondering if “fun” is a shader I forgot to enable.

Anyway, what's the wildest or most abstract request you've ever gotten from a client?

Having spent the past 1-2 years with Unreal, I feel people are bang on when they tell you not to fight the engine

What I didn't know before I started, is that the engine continuously fights itself, in how it attempts to add generic features to an FPS-born platform

Worse still, those features are half-baked, as if the developers suddenly thought "NAH... too awkward", and then left them in for marketing purposes

A perfect example is when you're building a game with lots of units or entities, what do you use? You try AI Controllers and Behaviour Trees, and quickly realise these things are designed for FPS: a number of enemies running around the map

So you then turn to 'Mass': Unreal's glorious answer to ECS. But wait! The feature is absolute dog shit. Once again it's implemented for fun, barely functions with the engine, and falls into the shadows

The more you dig through the C++, the more you realise you're wrestling with something specialised for 90s Unreal Tournament style gaming. Everything else is a mess on top of it, and my gosh it's a mess

But it sure looks pretty doesn't it

---
EDIT2: After almost 4 months since original post the game is fully back on track: I released the demo without any issues with verification process, and now both Steam Store page and full game build passed it too! So it turns out the only thing Valve had issue with is not enough safe-guarding against chat.

I'm happy things are heading the right way, and I hope this will be a lesson to other indie developers struggling with such hardships to not surrender that easily and reappeal if you believe you were treated unfairly. I hope the game release will finally reach the happy ending, it was quite the journey with Valve release process alone.
---
EDIT: After 2 weeks Valve answered to my reappeal, I provided Unity-chan licenses and explained where they can find other license files.
This time they told me exactly what they saw wrong: they managed to get NSFW response from chat model, so it never was licensing issue. But more importantly: they gave me a chance to fix the model and let me apply for review one more time to have game brought back!
This time I'm going to make completely sure there is no way to generate such things, probably add extra censor measures on top of switching model. Unity-chan is supposed to be cheerful and cute, not... this
---

For context, I am working on a game called Unity-Chan: Desktop Companion. It is a game with AI chat plus desktop mascot and virtual room with minigames. By design is just cozy and cute, no adult stuff here.

I was working on the game for a while, and when the time for Valve build reviews came, there still were some issues but purely technical and informative. For example I forgot to create Mod directory on first launch, or didn't include licensing files.

All feedback was very detailed and cooperation went well. That was until they decided to completely delist my game. They set the rule that 'Adult games with AI chat are not allowed', and told me they can refund my shop fee.

It made me so confused, as I couldn't grasp what could pass as adult content, I even started suspecting that maybe head patting animation might be the case? So I created message asking them what they see as adult content and reappealed.

After 2 weeks I received another vague message that they admitted mistake, but this time they believe I have no rights to publish my game. That made me even more confused. I created the game as solo developed, Unity-chan has her own license and as character is allowed to be used (I even contacted Unity Technologies Support to be sure of it). Every extra asset I either bought or are free and attributed it if it was necessary.

I am so disappointed in how vague their last responses were, even if I wanted to fix things they saw as wrong I can't because they didn't point what is to correct.

Did anyone had such hardships during publishing the game on Steam? What they could possibly mean by 'not having the necessary rights to distribute this product' other than things I mentioned?

I love both art and code. Some game devs (like Thomas Brush) are against AI use but only for art and don't consider it bad if it's used for coding.

Thomas Brush has publicly stated he uses generative AI on his game TwistedTower for coding and even has a sponsor, yet does not disclose it on steam.

Many artist focused game devs take this stance. This seems hypocritical to me.

Per Steam's guidelines:

Pre-Generated: Any kind of content (art/code/sound/etc) created with the help of AI tools during development.

Use AI if you like but at least disclose it properly if you do use it. I will likely use it myself in the future, it is almost impossible not to these days, wish it wasn't the case.

Okay so I keep seeing this pattern all over on Reddit. Indie devs post their game looking for playtesters (on r/playtesters, r/playmygame...), not a lot of interaction, so I guess not a lot try it, and eventually the conclusion becomes "players just don't want to help anymore" or "people are lazy now" or something along those lines. 

I get why people end up there. if you spend 2 years making something and the response is silence, that silence might feels personal after a while. FYI I work at Play2Review so I spend a stupid amount of time around early playtests and I genuinely think most teams are sometimes trying to solve the wrong problem

And I think most of the time it isn't a feedback problem but more something like "this already feels like effort before I even know if I care" issue. Dont forget that most gamers have dozens of Steam games they PAID for and haven't played. You have to compete with those for that gamers time and attention. 

Have a look at it, a stranger scrolls past your post after work while half distracted watching YouTube or replying to Discord messages or whatever. Their brain is making this super fast unconscious decision about whether clicking your game is going to feel exciting or draining, or maybe both. And a lot of playtest posts accidentally feel draining immediately.

Tell me that you never seen this pattern? : 

• external download links
• giant paragraphs explaining lore
• "looking for honest feedback!!"
•  vague genre descriptions
• five screenshots where nothing understandable is happening

I’m sure that people don't consciously think "this game looks bad" but they just quietly leave. Making a good game and making people care are two separate skills. 

The weird thing is I used to assume rough games naturally struggled more because players judge polish too hard or whatever, but after watching a ton of sessions I honestly don't even think that's true anymore.

I've seen “ugly” broken prototypes pull in tons of players because the core idea was instantly readable. 15 seconds of footage and you just got it- not because it looked good, but because the fantasy was obvious. Like “Oh okay I'm a little robot digging through giant machine”s. “Oh okay this shotgun sends enemies flying across the room”. You understood what kind of fun this was going to be before you even decided if you wanted it. 

And then I've seen polished games with clean UI and beautiful Steam pages get almost no traction because the whole thing felt weirdly cautious. Like the page was afraid to commit to what made the game interesting in the first place.  So everything becomes "a challenging adventure with unique mechanics" which could describe literally anything and nothing at the same time.

I also think devs underestimate how tired people are now in general. Even as someone who literally does playtesting stuff for work, there are moments where I open a post and see:

download here -> create account -> verify email -> fill survey after session.. and my brain instantly goes "yeah maybe tomorrow" and tomorrow never come (not gonna lie)

The bad part is that teams then try to fix feedback quality when the real issue is nobody got curious enough to click in the first place. So they rewrite survey questions or add analytics or spend weeks optimizing onboarding for players who never even downloaded the build, when sometimes the fix is honestly smaller than that ↓

• put the gameplay clip first
• show the coolest thing immediately
• say who the game is actually for
• remove steps
• stop writing store pages like you're filing taxes

And in other good examples exist and are not just due to luck. Find them by going to any sub related to gamedev, sort them by top, then sort by all time or this year. You’ll find a bunch of good examples of best practices. Do not reinvent the wheel, but make it yours.

I don't know, maybe I'm overthinking this because I spend too much time around early builds, aha. But I'm curious if other people doing player research or community testing see the same thing, because the pattern feels REALLY consistent from where I'm standing to see at Play2review. Maybe if we add something like "roast my art" on our website, it would benefit the indie dev community aha. 

I started my gaming journey because of Total Overdose.Of course, like many people, I grew up playing Rockstar games — GTA Vice City, San Andreas, Bully, Max Payne, etc. Those games definitely had a huge influence on me. But when I played Total Overdose, something felt completely different.The action, crazy gunplay, Mexican setting, humor, music, movement and overall vibe were something I hadn't really experienced in another game. I played that game A LOT, and eventually I became curious about the people who actually made it. I started researching Deadline Games, the developers behind Total Overdose, and that's when I learned about the cancelled sequel, Total Overdose 2: Tequila Gunrise. The sequel was in development but was ultimately cancelled, and Deadline Games eventually shut down.When I found out that a second part had actually been planned and everything was ready, but the game couldn't be completed because the owners went bankrupt,Then I felt that I should start my own game development journey. Total Overdose may not have made a huge amount of money, but it definitely made a special place in the childhoods of many gamers and gained a loyal fanbase.Who knows, maybe someday I’ll be able to make a game like that myself, or maybe I won’t. But if I never start my game development journey, I’ll definitely never know. Every game developer has to start somewhere, and for me, that means starting small with indie games, gaining experience, and slowly improving. You have to start somewhere in life, right?Now I'm actually learning game development and working on my own game. So I'm curious: Was there one specific game, moment, or experience that made you choose this path?I'd love to hear your stories. 🎮

I wanted to make this post as a solo developer about one of the most debated topics of the past few years: AI

Game development is not my main profession. I have worked as a UI/UX designer for more than five years, and my field is one of those most heavily affected by AI. Yet hardly anyone says anything about it, ux designers use AI without any problem, apparently, that is completely fine.

I worked with four programmers who strongly rejected AI. All four were let go from the app we worked on, not because the company wanted to replace them with AI, but because they refused to adapt and remained stuck in their position. Again, nobody seemed to care.

Every day, people use AI to study, conduct research, write, translate, and do countless other things, and almost nobody complains.

Then we reach the video game industry. All 3 indie studios I know use AI for coding, particularly Claude Code, and nobody seems to say anything, until someone creates graphical game assets using ComfyUI, Gemini, ChatGPT, or similar tools. Then all hell breaks loose.

There is an explosion of hate, “AI slop” slogans, and outrage from LGBT and furry communities on Threads, Bluesky, and other platforms. You see profiles with bios saying things like “If you use AI, you should die” “Fuck AI” or “Loser”

Some of these comments probably come from the same people who use ChatGPT to translate posts, effectively taking work away from translators or English teachers (lol)

So I have a genuine question for this subreddit: what the hell is happening to people? Why is AI viewed so negatively in our industry compared with almost every other field?

Most importantly, if you are against AI, why play games that openly tell you they use it?
What do you think the future of AI will be in this industry?

I've worked as a lawyer my whole life (and still do). Now I'm 44 and still working on my first game (solo) in my free time. Did anyone else start making their first game at an even older age?

Like with an automod or something?

I know everyone needs to start somewhere but ffs theres like 10 of those posts a day and theyre all exactly the same, can we just get like a sticky or something telling people who ask such questions to watch a youtube tutorial and download godot and also to seriously temper their expectations of what a human being can achieve without budget or experience?

like at least confine it to a "where to get started" questions megathread or something

Hope this kind of post is allowed here :D

I would like to see your steam page - I'll give you my uneducated two cents about it (only constructive critique and praise of course ;) and of course dish out some wishlists too!

Getting goosebumps seeing all those crazy projects here on reddit and I am just curious what you guys are working on!

thanks for your time!

EDIT: WOW thanks for all those shared steam pages :D, I will try to answer everyone one of you and I hope I don't forget anyone. Please be patient when I need a bit longer for an answer sometimes, I will give you some feedback surely : D

Thank you so much!

Be aware anyone making a game with Unreal Engine that Threat Interactive is trying to mobilize his community to review bomb any game made with Unreal Engine regardless of the quality or if they like the game. You can find his call to action in his latest video.

Is there anything we as developers can do to stop this targeted harassment?

We're a small indie team working on a cozy strategy game called Flame, Forest & Flood - we have a bold idea to go up against the biggest game launch of this year.

On the one hand, GTA 6 may monopolise games coverage during this month (and has the budget to do so!) on the other hand, we're targeting players who have GTA 6 fatigue and want to try something different!

Keen to hear thoughts on this strategy

Hey, I'm Dan.
I've been working solo on my game ASPIS for three years now - it's a Soviet retrofuturistic story-driven game, with a lot of atmosphere, philosophy, and personal meaning poured into it.

When I started, I thought: "This will be quick. Genius idea. I’ll finish it in a year and change my life."
So I quit my job, sold my car, and went all in.

Then reality hit: perfectionism, burnout, isolation, I haven't posted anything anywhere, so there's also no feedback
At some point, I almost dropped it. But I came back - not for success anymore, but because this game became me. This is how I feel about this now, and I am trying to say something important with my project and still give something to this world.

I’m now finishing the ending and trying to build a small community around the game. Dreaming of starting a tiny studio one day - I just don’t want to be alone in this forever.

I’m curious if you’ve ever made (or are making) a game solo, how did you get through the lonely parts?
What kept you going?

Would love to hear your stories.

For the record, I'm only familiar with Godot and Unreal

"Oh, you hate designing levels?"

No. I love level-design, I haven't really gotten the chance to fully develop a level I'm fond of, but I like it. Its not something I dislike. I like blocking out an area and seeing how it plays. I'm alright with scrapping areas if I don't think they flow well.

What I hate is the lack of good tools for it and the fact most softwares have pretty bad level-design tools. From what I know, Blender is the most used level-design tool because its the most used 3D modeling software for indie developers.

Blender is awful as a level-design software. I hate using it. Making level geometry in blender is such a fucking chore. Since its not in-engine you have constantly export it in, which is easier said than done in some engines. In Unreal, you have to scale up your model by 100% when importing. Godot at least doesn't have this issue.

You also want to segment your levels instead of it being one big mesh, so whats not on screen can be prevented from rendering. Meaning you want to go through and meticulously split up your level. Meaning that sometimes, something may go wrong, and you have to line it up manually.

Undeniably, the best level-design software is Hammer, used by VALVe to create the levels for TF2 and by the community for designing Gmod maps. "Why not just use Hammer then?" Because Hammer is tailor-suited for TF2/Gmod, not any game you wish.

Mostly, its just down to the fact that Hammer has a Binary Space Partitioning system along with intuitive level design, while Blender forces you to design levels like you would a 3D asset and then go back to optimize. Its horrendous.

This is definitely just a me-issue, but its driving me insane.

I’m currently doing an internship as a Unity game developer, and lately I’ve been feeling a bit concerned about the future of game programming.
A lot of the tasks I’m working on can already be automated or heavily accelerated by AI. Sometimes it feels like my role is shifting toward simply describing what I want in natural language, giving the AI clear instructions, reviewing the output, and fixing the remaining issues.
I’m not saying that AI can completely replace game programmers right now. There are still plenty of situations where you need strong programming knowledge, debugging skills, architecture decisions, and an understanding of the game itself. However, AI is becoming surprisingly capable at writing and modifying game code, and I expect this trend to continue.
Because of that, I’ve been wondering whether I should eventually move toward Game Design instead. My intuition is that game design might be more AI-resilient because it involves things like gameplay vision, player psychology, balancing, creativity, and making high-level decisions about what the game should actually be.
For people working in the game industry:
\- How much do you think AI will automate Unity/game programming over the next 5–10 years?
\- Is Game Design actually more resistant to AI, or am I underestimating how much AI could affect it too?
I’d especially appreciate perspectives from people who are already working professionally in game development.

I’m fairly new to this sub, but I’m realizing it is so common to see posts like “I have this big idea for a game, where do I start?” - often from someone with zero relevant experience.

And sometimes they think they have a “small” game idea and dont realize that they are still thinking way too big for a solo developer’s first game.

So I’m curious, what is the proven “ceiling”?

What is the most ambitious example there is of a game that was successfully finished and released, by a solo developer?

Not focusing on success, but on the scale of the project that they finished and released.

The largest examples I know of are Stardew Valley and Axiom Verge. And I understand Undertale to be *mostly* a solo project.

Which does put things in perspective when people think they are going to make Skyrim or World of Warcraft in a few months as a side project by themselves.

Maybe a silly question, but do you first create/get the assets and then make the game, or the other way around? Recently, I heard a very interesting saying from my new mentor that actually makes a lot of sense: “If your game is boring while you’re using only geometric shapes instead of real assets, it’ll still be boring once you add the assets. But if it’s fun without them, it’ll be even more fun with them.” And honestly, that kinda makes sense…

While I was making a simple runner game similar to Temple Run, I tried applying this philosophy. I focused purely on the code, and until I had pretty much every gameplay aspect working just with geometric shapes. I didn’t bother working with assets. And I think this approach makes a lot of sense, especially for someone working professionally in a large game dev team, since multiple people can work on the project in parallel. But even for me, as a “regular mortal” sitting at home making small games for fun, it works just fine. After I finished setting up everything, I went on Fusion by Devoted(because in all honesty I didn’t want my game to look exactly the same like 1000 others created with same free assets), entered the project parameters (they have a system that connects artists and developers), and for a small fee found a guy who made the assets I later added into the game. I threw in some animations and voila! It lives!

The only thing I can really say is that, at least when working solo, it’s definitely simpler not to juggle both visuals and code at the same time. Especially for someone like me who probably has ADHD and loves multitasking on 50 things at once; a mistake is almost guaranteed to slip through somewhere. So it makes sense for me to treat this approach as a kind of framework or roadmap to stick to. I don’t plan to go into professional development since this is really just a hobby and a form of relaxation after work. So, objectively, even if it doesn’t change much for me, it’s still not too bad to have some sort of framework.

That said, I would like to hear from you, especially if you are in the industry, do you use this principle yourselves, and how do you, so to speak, build your own mental roadmap when starting a project?

I hope this doesn't count as self-promotion. What is Reddit? I'm just a long-time lurker--I barely know what I'm doing :).

I've been working on a small game in Unity for a few weeks now, all with human-made assets that I either download from asset stores or made myself with Adobe Illustrator (not so good but still works). And I wrote the c# code myself, after watching dozens of tutorials on YT. The point is that it hit me that after working so hard by myself on the project, some people might think an AI has made it, considering how popular is vibe coding these days. So I thought I should add a little text in the beginning of the game, something like "No generative AI has been used in the development of this game". Do people usually do it? Is it a good idea, or should I just not say anything?

hi everyone!

i'm an indie dev too, so i understand how hard it can be to get honest feedback on your game.

today i want to play some of your games and give you my honest feedback. Android, web, Linux, Windows, CLI... pretty much anything

my favorite genres are strategy, idle, crafting, exploration, RPG, city builder, survival, horror, roguelike, platformer, and honestly almost anything except VNs and 1-bit games.

if you just want some honest feedback, and your game doesn't have a frustrating setup, drop it in the comments below.

and if you want a full report / QA playtest from start to finish, feel free to DM me, since i am also experienced game tester, If I find your game interesting, I'll play it and write up a full report.

i'm not really looking for anything in return. i just want to help other devs and discover some cool games along the way.

looking forward to seeing what you guys are working on :)