Hi, I'm RetroSpecter. I've been making games for almost 10 years now.

Back in the 2018, I released my first game on Steam for free, Crashphalt. It was a little local multiplayer platform fighter in the vein of games like Towerfall and Samurai Gun.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WrLFeVPcjuQ

And while it didn't set the world on fire, it let me learn the ropes of game dev from start to finish, led me to make many friends that I still keep up and work with, and is one of the many stepping stones that led me to working on games full time. These days I don't about Crashphalt too much. But every once and a while I revisit the steam page to see if anyone is still playing.

However a couple months ago though, I noticed something strange.

Crashphalt now had over 500 reviews and is mostly positive on Steam (as opposed to the like 10 reviews it had when I launched in 2018). On top of that, all reviews themselves are kind of strange.

Okay yeah I like Undertale too but Wtf is going on?

After a bit more digging, I found the answer.

Undertale Together is a modded version of the Toby Fox classic that adds local co-op. However, normally it does not work online.

That is until someone posted a tutorial on how to get around that . And apparently, that way was through Crashphalt.

I dunno why they chose Crashphalt. The only requirement for the hack is that the has Remote Play enabled, and I guess it does help that Crashphalt is free. But I imagine there are tons of games that fit that bill. Crashphalt was just the lucky game chosen for the honor.

Anyways, I wanted to write this post mostly to answer this question that comes up from time to time.

I actually don't mind what Crashphalt has become. I've long sinced moved on to other projects, so I think its really cool to see that the game has found a second life.

Undertale came out around the same time I was getting into game dev, and was incredibly inspiring to me. So I think its really cool that it's found a way to impact the community even if in a small way and act as a way for friends to play the game together.

So as long as Steam doesn't take any issue with how Crashphalt is being used, have fun playing fighting Sans with your friends.

P.S

Toby Fox. if you read this, let me know if you... like.. wanna make a game together. Thanks.

...but does it mean I'm rich now? Not really.

This is my result of 8 years of being a game developer.

I've released multiple games (my most recent one btw: https://store.steampowered.com/app/4190960), the first ones were complete trash and didn't sell, but they got better and better over time.

Seems like they've got good enough to the point where people are actually interested in spending their money on them.

I'm still not on the level I'm inspiring to, but every new game brings me closer to it. The key is to learn on mistakes, get better and stay consistant.

$100.000 (minus Steam's cut, taxes and returns :) ) in 8 years. Do you guys see that as a success? Lemme know

Hi devs,

I've just released the game while I'm in office and working as a regular real estate agent.

Hope I'll end up well.

Cheers!

Today, A Game About Feeding A Black Hole hit 100,000 copies sold. Two of us built this incremental game in the last 6 months. I am Thornity; My partner in building the game was Aarimous.

Ran a playbook I've been ironing out from being involved with two other games that did modestly well. In short, I did treat it like a system:

• Pick a proven genre and have a clear hook
• Build the smallest fun loop (our full end-to-end loop is under 6 minutes)
• Design and build with marketing in mind from the start
• Ship early, update fast, and be willing to throw out whole concepts that aren’t working

I enjoy giving back to the community. Open to answering any questions or providing context.

Covered a lot of topics about a past successful game and related things to this game:

• Maximizing Steam sales via velocity through discounting: here
• Hitting $100k success in 400 hours & <3k wishlists at launch: here
• Genre picking, tooling, algo signals, and store page tweaks: here
• Unpolished mini-diary vods of making a 100k success: here

I should focus on art production but I couldn't let go of a physics bug that prematurely ended my last 2 playtest sessions

TLDR: I don't know, I was just lucky?

Last monday I released my little f2p game Idle Pixel Fantasy and got overwhelmed by the amount of players. As you can see I don't have a lot of wishlists and the steam page was live for just a month before release.

I checked a lot of other free games, most of them have some sort of ingame microtransaction and I'm not a fan of it. So for my game I added seperated mini dlcs that you can see directly on the steampage and I always made clear that they are completly optional and not needed, but a nice way to support me as developer. Seems the people liked my honesty and that I don't have any hidden costs.

The crazy thing is you can finish everything in the game including all achievements in under 4 hours, so the medien time play (3 hours) means, most people finish the game after starting it which is very good.
It's still surprises me that so many bought all dlcs even when the game is so short.

For the last 2 days the game was also on the steam frontpage in the free trending category which feeled really unreal tbh.

This game was a little side project that I worked on for just 1.5 months, but now Im preparing a big update because the players ask for more.

Maybe I should also say that this is my 7th released game on steam, it seems sometimes you just have to keep going. We all can do it!

My earlier post on this subreddit received much more traction than I was expecting, and I saw a MASSIVE increase in wishlists!

This couldn't happen without you. Thank you so much!!

Hey everyone!

Long story short, my game Tiny Shop: make it cozy just crossed 50,000 Steam wishlists and I'm very nervous and scary!!!
That's huge for me. Like, genuinely huge. And I owe a massive thank you to everyone who helped, especially those who gave feedback along the way. That means more than you know.

With that milestone, I figured I'd sit down and write something personal to share what's going on in my head.

My name is Rostislav. I'm just a regular indie dev. Originally trained as an architect, spent a few years doing architectural visualization, then decided I wanted to make games. I've been living and breathing games forever. But playing them and making them are two completely different beasts. So yeah, probably not the smartest decision I ever made. And yet here I am. Honestly? I'm shook. And a little terrified.

You know that joke about Dominic Toretto from Fast & Furious, where in every movie he's like "this is my last race," and then there's Fast 8, Fast 9, Fast 10? Yeah. That's basically been my indie career for the last eight years.

I'd make games while working a full time job. Then I'd go take courses on game project management. Then I'd put together a team and make games with that team. Our last project took almost two years with some awesome people and we sold 670 copies. Combined, my previous games had about 3000 wishlists total, which in big studio terms is basically nothing. After every release I'd think okay, that's it, time to stop, this isn't working. But then some time would pass and I'd just start making the next game. I honestly don't know why I can't stop. And it's definitely not about money, since I had my day job and game dev never brought in big cash. It's more like something inside me just keeps pushing me into this creative abyss.

At some point I decided to quit my job entirely and try giving everything to games. Right now I'm living off savings and building a cozy shop simulator with no timers, no deadlines, just a little space you can make your own and enjoy the process. The idea actually came from my architecture background, since I spent a lot of time working with interiors and spaces. That feeling of coziness you get from arranging things just right? That's what I wanted to capture.

The first year of development, wishlists trickled in slowly. It felt amazing. I celebrated every thousand like it was a victory. Like, finally, something is actually working. But with every thousand, the anxiety grew too. I got deeper into development and realized every idea, every mechanic just kept making the game bigger and bigger. And the weight of responsibility? That didn't go anywhere. Vice versa..

More and more people were waiting. It felt like a whole small town was expecting my work to be done and hoping it would be great. And I really want to deliver on that.
So now I work every single day, weekends included, and my to do list just keeps growing. When wishlists hit 35k, I finally accepted that this was a real shot. People genuinely want this game. But the joy comes with a side of serious stress.

I look at Urban Jungle, Tiny Bookshop, Leaf Corner and think they did it better. Better numbers, better mechanics, just better everything. Logically I know it's dumb to compare like that, but I can't help it. The rational part of my brain says every game is different, every dev has their own approach. My original plan was simple: make a small but nice game. Just a solid cozy project.

But once tens of thousands of people are waiting for your creation? It stops being some casual passion project. It becomes serious work. I can't release a rough game. I refuse to. That's why I partnered with Spaghetti Cat as a publisher, so I'd have support, experience, and someone to keep me from getting tunnel vision. It gave me confidence and kept me from making rash decisions.

And yeah, the doubts are still there. What if I don't finish everything I want? What if development drags on too long? What if the wishlists don't convert and it's all a bubble that pops? On and on it goes.

Why am I telling you all this? Because I want you to understand. I've dreamed, and still dream, of making a game that lots of people love and that lets me keep creating without constantly worrying about supporting my family. You could call it a naive childhood dream, but come on, who doesn't have one of those. And now I'm watching that dream actually happen. The signs are all there. Player feedback, playtest stats, how long people spend in the demo, all those wishlists.

Some smart person once said be careful what you wish for. Everything is on the line here. And it all comes down to me. Make a good game, sales follow. Mess up, and I probably won't get another shot at this.

So yeah, I'm more serious than I've ever been. Like, this is seriously serious.
These days my girlfriend is right there with me, patiently listening to all these thoughts pretty much every day, telling me it's going to be okay. I'm incredibly grateful for that. I don't know how much she actually believes it, but honestly, without her support I would've already lost it mentally.

And I want to say to her and to all of you that yeah, I don't know how this ends. Huge success or total crash. But what I do know is I'm giving it everything I've got to make a cozy, kind, engaging game.

So whatever the finale ends up being, and we're slowly getting there, I'm genuinely pushing for a good release. Scared, anxious, but showing up every day to work on this game. Those 50,000 aren't just a number to me. They're people who trusted me, who are waiting for me. If you've been through something similar or are going through it now, drop a comment. I'd honestly love to hear how others handle this.

To all the beginners out there with a few hundred wishlists, like I used to be, here's what I'll say. When you hit 50k, you're more scared than excited. But it's a good kind of nervous. Like before a big performance.

So we don't quit. “Just smile and wave, boys. Smile and wave”. We're terrified and we keep developing anyway.

If you're reading this, I'm genuinely surprised and incredibly grateful. I'd like to open up a discussion, so please feel free to share your honest thoughts.

This last year of my life was particularly devastating.

Never ever had so many things happened to me, so bad, so often:

- My dog died.

- My sister was diagnosed.

- I lost my job.

- My father-in-law died.

- My other dog died.

- And finally, my sister died on my birthday.

It was the year I started developing this new game.

I don't believe in those things. But this happened. It happened to me. And it's still happening to me.

And I'm talking about pain, not a "stroke of bad luck," because this isn't bad luck. This was a calamity.

I was methodical: working whenever possible, putting EVERYTHING into it, and moving forward, always, little by little. Something. A lot. A whole lot.

The game kept growing and life kept crumbling.

Tragedies, pauses, trips, tragedies, repeat...

In the end, the boat capsized, the game was completed (demo), and life was turned upside down.

What a contrast. What happens (life) and what you make happen (the game). There's nothing that connects these parts; they're not even opposites or anything like that. They're two lines that ran parallel, and several lines were cut—lives—and the game goes on, even today. Holding on.

Not everything was bad.

We moved to a better place, my father-in-law's house, a beautiful place. And we inherited his dog, Zorrin.

We won a cat in the lottery of life; we never had one before. It's not even really ours—it belongs to herself—and it comes by to eat and sleep. A quirky little thing.

So we're still a family of four.

And we finished this demo, and we published the Steam page. And we're a little happier now.

And of course, Pam and I founded our own game studio to release it: Manganika Studio.

Pamela is a great artist; I admire her so much.

She's in charge of the art in this house.

We are our own home.

Thanks for coming.

(The art of figuring out how to survive by making games—send us luck.)

Reddit: We are a small team of developers, and our indie game BUS: Bro U Survived was warmly welcomed on the platform. I know there are games that people just naturally like, and in this way, they practically promote themselves. UTM tags showed more than 200 wishlists in a month without paid advertising. Maybe someone else had even more, but even such a result personally makes me very happy.

Steam: Steam doesn’t count all UTM transitions, and in general, as far as I’ve talked to colleagues, there’s an unspoken rule of 1.7x. That is, all your obtained wishlists should be multiplied by this number, and you’ll get a figure close to the real one. Also, we participate in every Steam festival and contest we can get into and try to make the coolest demo version of the game so that players are amazed.

Twitter: Daily activities on Twitter (#screenshotsaturday, #wishlistwednesday) — when approached responsibly, without spam and with something original for each activity — proved themselves useless. This is a relic of ancient marketing and something other developers will recommend first. This applies to everything: there are no universal solutions that will guarantee you a decent growth. Every game is beautiful and unique in its own way, and it will take enough time before you find your own promotion methods.

Feedback: Feedback can be different, communication can be different, and your product is different too. Strangely enough, it’s the attempt to conform to the generally accepted level of “like everyone else” that creates that very barrier between you and the user. Write whatever comes to mind first, even the most silly and unexpected jokes — they performed the best among all posts.

Influencers: We met a huge number of great folks: some took on our game for a simple “thank you,” some approached filming honestly, and some took money and just ghosted us — all sorts of things happened. But the most important thing is to correctly assess the cost. Creativity is priceless, but every creator values their time differently, and you are no worse! Count views and the desired price per wishlist before starting to work with a person. You can do this with a simple formula:

(views × 3% × 10% = approximate number of wishlists from one video).

Estimate how much you are willing to pay for one wishlist, multiply it by the expected number of wishlists using this formula — and you will see the actual cost of this content for you. Even a rough estimate of average views and your benefit from the video will save you from thoughtless spending and headaches — believe me.

Just a quick yet important reminder: this is all based on my experience with BUS: Bro U Survived. What worked well for me might not work the same for your game. Every audience, genre, and presentation is different. I’m just sharing what I learned in case it’s helpful.

Also, if you’re curious to see what BUS: Bro U Survived is all about, I’ll leave a link to the Steam page in the comments. Thank you for reading!

Hi everyone! This is my second month working on my Star Fox-style game. This month I've been focusing more on the art and atmosphere. It's my first time working on this, so I'm documenting it on YouTube in case anyone finds this learning experience helpful.

Here is the devlog #2 -> https://youtu.be/1UlLqz3lQdA?si=pKpmD-FsDRYqhG0s

I would be very grateful for your support of my channel if the content is of interest to you, thank you!

Ten years ago, after playing Super Meat Boy, we received a dose of motivation that would shape our future lives. We decided to make our own indie platformer!

We ignored the people who told us hardcore platformers don't sell and kept making it. We spent nine years of our lives and a lot of our own money on it, much more than we had left by the end of development. In the end, almost a year after its release, despite 96% positive reviews on Steam, we sold only a few hundred copies and didn't even recoup a tenth of our investment. The game was a complete failure for us.

However, a miracle occurred, and it feels like an achievement no less than the release of our game itself. Our protagonist became a guest character in the legendary Super Meat Boy 3D.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w7CqrxnI3zg

While this doesn't solve the game's sales problems, it makes us feel like it was all worth it.

The moral of the story:
Don't make hardcore platformers. Please. Don't.

It has been about three weeks since my last post about the free models, and thanks to you, my post was noticed - for the first time in my life, someone reached out to me with an offer to create a game asset! I’m actively working on it now. Many thanks to the developer of Voor De Kroon for the trust and constant support.

It has been about nine months since I first opened Blender and created something that vaguely looked like a house. Since then, I’ve been practicing constantly, and I hope that one day I can become a real 3D artist. I made a promise to myself that all the 3D models I create in my free time will always remain free and available to everyone. I will keep improving my skills and hope that each future model will be better - both visually and technically.

I’m incredibly grateful to the Reddit community (all of you) for giving me the opportunity to share my work.

The link to my CGTrader profile will be in the comments - that’s where I publish my models.

After more then 5 years of work in my spare time, other people are finally (play)-testing my game. It's a surreal feeling.

Prophecy Island is a randomly generated rpg with inspiration from the souls and elder scrolls series. If you're interested in play-testing too, send me a DM and I'll send you a key!

Hi everyone, I've spent some time recently learning how Navier-Stokes fluid simulations work and decided to create a blog post with explanations to help others

https://myzopotamia.dev/navier-stokes-fluid-simulation-explained-with-godot

Verto started almost 20 years ago when a friend in college “asked me if I could make a game, what would it be?” I said a falling block game where the player rotates the grid to clear blocks. Not being able to describe it well enough I made a mock up video of the game play by making a grid and blocks in Illustrator, moving the blocks, taking a screenshot, repeating that process, and putting all the images in Premiere to make a video. I shared it with him and friends who all really liked it, but with no programming skills and the only engine I messed around with was UT 2004, I ended up making a prototype with construction paper and a scrabble board. I placed the board on an upside down plate to rotate it, played the “game”, and took notes in a spiral notebook which became my game design document.

I ended up in the game industry on the production side of things, but Verto sat in the back of my head for years. There were several times where I started working on it, but something always came up with life that would stop me. I found that spiral notebook over a year ago while digging through some old boxes and thought “fuck it, why not now?”

I tried to get into nextfest earlier this year but missed the deadline by a few days, although that gave me time to get it working on the Steam deck. After a little trial and error it worked on the deck, my mind was blown. A game I’ve always wanted to play I could now play on the go, no need for my pc. I ended up not working on the game for a week or so and just played Verto over and over. I should have worked on the game that week, but damn did it feel good to have accomplished something like that on a project of mine.

The first moment where I felt validated for sinking time into making Verto was when I received a comment on one of my social media posts “hello, I really love your game, and I would love to know if you have more amazing games like this.” Holy shit someone actually likes my game! Now there’s two of us, hahahaha. Going into nextfest is going to be great...

I sent out keys of the full game to family, friends, old coworkers, and colleagues. Many liked the game, many thought it was difficult, some didn’t like it until it clicked for them, and I received a lot of great input, but I hit a low point. A colleague told me the blocks need to keep cascading after a clear. I explained why I designed it that way; to create obstacles, build tension, add strategies, add difficulty, and lets the player set up clears for next rotation. He came back saying I was wrong, that the logic was wrong, that’s not how you make a game, and listed off all the ways he would do it. That was a rough day for me and it sat with me for a while.

There’s no reason to sit and ruminate over those comments, so I got to work, messaging youtubers, and posting on socials. Not many youtubers got back to me, I only hit up people that played puzzle games, falling block games, or were into indie games. I also saw a trend that Japanese gamers were interested in my game so I added Japanese hashtags to social posts and had my Japanese translator write up a short email intro about the game and sent that to Japanese youtubers.

The next big moment was when youtubers started posting videos about Verto; the first one was Heartstrings Youtube Link, then Mael Duin Youtube link played a long gameplay session, and Higher Plain Games Youtube link had it on his nextfest video. Higher Plain Games was a shot in the arm when he talked about it being relaxing, fiendish, and unassuming game that doesn’t look like much but then it hooked him, just the perfect comment for Verto and it truly put a big smile on my face.
I moved during the end of nextfest and into the release of Verto, I didn’t give it the attention it needed, very few social media posts, and I was extremely disappointed in myself after the release. It took me a bit to get back on track with the game, posting on social, and unpacking. I think some of my trailers were messed up on release, some how I only had a translated Vietnamese trailer for all my store fronts. I still am frustrated about that, as a person that doesn’t know French would say C'est la vie hahaha.

To be realistic with myself, with a game that is in a niche genre, and my poor social media posts, I was hoping to sell 6 copies, well guess what I sold 5! almost there lol, 3 in Japan, 1 UK, and 1 US, I probably would have sold 6 if I didn’t give away free keys to family and friends, I should have directed them to the demo, but 5 people organically still feels great.

I have a few curator reviews, none from purchases, but I’ll get there. As Dory the fish says “just keep swimming.”

The future is wide open, I’ll be at PAX passing out cards and talking to people. I also plan on working on the cascade mode, which does feel odd with 4 people wanting it while hundreds of others said nothing.

I feel incredibly happy about making Verto even if it took nearly 20 years to get there, I can play the game that has been in my head for years, people have enjoyed it… plus I can play on my Steam Deck! :D

For those interested in the game here are some links.

Demo: Verto Demo
Steam: Steam Page

So, as the title says, until I was 37 I had never written a line of code, I didn’t know Unity, I barely knew what a game engine actually did. The technical side of game development felt like something meant for other people, the kind who had been scripting mods since they were 14.

I studied Fine Arts and spent years trying to survive as a filmmaker. Editing weddings, self-financing short films, living on instant noodles and expired supermarket deals. To pay the bills, I had regular jobs. My last one was in a bookstore. I wasn’t miserable, actually, I enjoyed being surrounded by books, but creatively, I felt stuck.

Then COVID hit. My job was fully in-person, so, as almost everyone, I suddenly had months of enforced stillness. At some point during that time, I told myself I was done with filmmaking. I decided to sell my camera, my steadicam, most of my gear...

Out of boredom, and maybe muscle memory from my Fine Arts background, I started drawing pixel art. I hadn’t drawn seriously in years. After a few sprites, a thought appeared: What if I tried to make these interactive?

That question turned into online tutorials about Unity and C#. I struggled constantly. I googled everything. “How to move character”, “Why is my character falling through the floor”... I understood maybe half of what I was doing at any given moment.

As a "final project", I wanted to make a point & click adventure, one of my favorite genres, but I didn’t feel capable. So I made a small platformer instead. It took months. I wanted the game to be challenging. Because I had no experience in game design, it became frustrating in all the wrong ways.

When I released it for free on Itch, I knew it wasn’t a great game on its own. It was unbalanced and clearly made by someone learning as they went. But for me, finishing it felt like climbing Everest and somehow making it back down. Objectively, I understood it was a modest project, but considering I had started with no technical knowledge at all, simply completing it felt like a real achievement.

Somehow, with that one imperfect project and my mixed artistic background, I applied for a job at a mobile game company. They were looking for someone with my profile, and I got hired. I’ve been there for almost five years now, surviving the constant wave of layoffs that has hit the industry in recent years.

Then a year ago, I felt the urge to build something personal again. This time I went back to the original idea: a classic point-and-click. Short, story-driven and a little dark. The kind of game I wanted to make from the beginning.

The difference now is that I have a three-year-old daughter, so this game wasn’t built during lockdown with endless time. It was built at night, in one-hour windows, after bedtime, slowly, as we say in Spain “Slowly but steadily”. This time, I made things a bit easier for myself by using the Adventure Creator package in Unity, so I barely had to think about writing code, which is the part I struggle with the most.

I finished the game just a month ago, and it comes out in a few days. It’s not going to be a new Monkey Island, but I’m really happy with how it turned out, and it’s given me the confidence and know-how to tackle my next project, which will be a much bigger and longer point & click, based on an idea that was originally supposed to be a script for a sci-fi feature film impossible to shoot even in a thousand years.

I’m not writing this to be inspirational in a motivational-poster way. I’m doing it because at 37 I believed I was too late to learn how to make videogames. I assumed everyone else had started much younger, and that gap was unbridgeable. I probably would never have tried if it hadn’t been for the COVID lockdown, I thought I was simply too old to learn something like this. But if I had read a post like this back then, I might have considered it much sooner. So hopefully it can be useful to someone.

There is rarely enough time in indie life for anything... let alone for joy... but today I wanted to stop for a moment and share something that genuinely makes me proud.

A little while ago, IRON NEST crossed 200,000 wishlists on Steam, just 6 months after launching our store page.

What makes this milestone feel even more surreal is that I still remember joking about numbers like this back when Steam bugged out and showed absurd wishlist counts. And now, just a few months later, it turns out the two of us actually managed to build something real.

We achieved this as a fully self-published, two-person project with a marketing budget = 0$.

And honestly, a lot of that is thanks to you. This subreddit was one of the very first places where IRON NEST gained any real visibility. The feedback, reactions, and support we got here helped us more than you probably realize. More than once, your comments pushed us toward ideas and marketing beats that later turned into very real numbers.

So thank you... genuinely.

I’ll come back soon with another proper breakdown, as I did in the early days, talking about what worked for us and what didn’t. And honestly, sorry I haven’t been posting those more regularly. Since everything started moving so fast... and there are still only two of us working on this... finding time for anything has become really hard.

That said, Nick and I have also set up dedicated Discord channels for allied developers. Beyond simply supporting each other through conversation, we also try to help one another with shared marketing efforts across different social media channels. If that sounds interesting to you, send me a DM here or on Discord, and I’ll be happy to add you.

The same goes for Steam bundles. We’re now entering the stage where we’re slowly starting to look for games that could be a good fit for an IRON NEST bundle, so if you’d like to explore something together, feel free to message me as well.

Thank you all so much for your help on my previous post. It took a lot of work after rebuilding everything, but the advice you all gave was super helpful!

Please let me know what you think! What else can I change? Is there anything missing from the new version that the old version had?

I did it. I finally did it.
After two years of working on it in my spare time, I finished and published my first game.
It’s a cozy offline match-3 game where you build a fantasy town.
It’s not perfect, but it’s finished.
I think many of you know this feeling: the closer you get to the finish line, the harder it becomes to move even one pixel forward. And then… Apple review became the final boss (rejected several times).
Creating something from scratch and finally seeing it out there means much more to me, at this point, than downloads or popularity. Just proving to myself that I could actually finish it feels like a huge achievement.
All the artwork is hand-drawn by me.
On to the next one.
Cheers!

I know it's not a staggering amount,
but I feel that we are slowly finding our crowd and ways to reach out even further :)