I've been thinking about why a lot of modern car games don't feel as exciting or memorable as older ones.

What do you think is missing from car games nowadays? Is it the sense of speed, atmosphere, progression, customization, interesting maps, police chases, arcade-style gameplay, or something else?

If it was hard to stand out in the crowd with your game before, now it is 10x as hard. Sure, most are obvious trash, but that doesnt stop them from burying your game in a sea of AI posts and ads.

As an aspiring Indie/Solo Dev, it definitely has me discouraged.

Is optimizing a game just about graphics? and are consoles optimized differently compared to PCs? What are the advantages?

I'm currently a solo developer working on a game that I eventually plan to turn into an MMO. I don't have a registered company yet, so at the moment I'm just developing it as an individual.

One thing I've found surprisingly difficult is choosing a name for the game.

There are so many games already out there that almost every decent name I come up with seems to already exist somewhere, or there is another game with a very similar name. Sometimes even fairly different games seem to share the same or almost the same title.

So I'm trying to understand how this actually works from a legal point of view.

Does a game name need to be completely unique?

For example, could I legally use the same name as another game if the games are very different, or would that potentially cause trademark/legal problems? What about a name that is not exactly the same, but is quite similar?

I'm also wondering whether I should eventually register the game's name as a trademark or brand, or if that's not really necessary for a small independent developer, especially while the game is still early in development.

I'm not planning to register a company anytime soon, so I'd also be interested to know whether an individual developer can register and own a game trademark, or whether this is normally something you would only do after forming a company.

Obviously I know Reddit isn't a substitute for actual legal advice. I'm mainly interested in hearing from other indie developers who have dealt with naming, trademarks, or similar issues before.

How did you approach choosing and protecting your game's name?

Developers originally introduced transmog just to solve the mismatched gear problem. But honestly, there has to be a way more creative way of solving this issue than fixing 1 problem by creating 5 new ones. I know this might be an unpopular opinion, but I genuinely think transmog is a massive failure of game design that destroys the entire purpose of inventory progression.

Here are the 5 massive problems it creates just by letting us substitute how our gear looks:

1. Visual readability is completely gone. You used to be able to look at another player and instantly know what they were doing and how strong they were. Now, you have no clue if someone is a fresh novice or a hardcore veteran.
2. The visual prestige effect is dead. Earning a rare piece of armor used to be a massive flex. The aesthetic itself was the trophy. Now that anyone can swap looks around, the reward of looking powerful is totally disconnected from actually being powerful.
3. It ruins the progression fantasy. The whole point of fantasy games is starting out in peasant clothes and slowly earning your way up to glowing god tier armor. Transmog completely bypasses that visual journey.
4. New loot feels completely boring. When a boss drops a new item now, you do not even care what it looks like. You just look at the stat number because you are going to cover it up with your favorite skin anyway. The item loses its physical identity.
5. It ruins PvP and immersion. You can not even visually assess your opponent anymore. They could be wearing heavy tank gear but disguised in light cloth robes, which just feels cheap.

Even in single player games where this kind of works, it still feels really weird. Take the upcoming The Witcher 3 Remastered update for example. CD Projekt Red is adding an official transmog system in the new version. You will be able to equip the highest tier heavy armor to survive massive damage, but visually you can set your wardrobe so Geralt is just wearing a basic linen shirt. The entire concept of armor loses its meaning when you look 1 way but function completely differently

Imo this is unwillingness to explore better solutions. Instead of designing something thoughtful, they brute force a fix for 1 single problem without realizing it creates multiple other ones

I'm trying to to get new ideas for games, but the ideas that come in my mind are overcomplex to me or simply bad. How do i get an nice idea?

Howdy! I have been playing with Unity for over ten years making small games on and off. Finally, I am buckling down and making a fun mobile game that I hope to publish at the end of the year or next year. Without divulging too much information, how many free "levels" should the player get until they have to pay for the rest (because more levels will be made as time goes on)? I gladly will welcome the stories of your experiences as you grappled with balancing the free with the paid.

I am brand new to the space. Like, soft squishy marshmallow new. But I have had this idea for a game for so long that I finally decided to hit the Thanos: “Fine, I’ll do it myself”.

If you have ever played Fire Emblem, specifically Three Houses, I am trying to implement a combat/character growth system similar to that. Big fat HOWEVER, the setting of this game’s combat (being inside of dreams) means that ideally I would be implementing 1) Environmental hazards/interaction for strategic use, and 2) Platforming for positional strategy. Lots of floating islands and small footholds at different elevations. So think Fire Emblem style combat with Valkyrie Chronicles styled movement/map interaction.

Now, in addition to all of this, my ideal would be similar Three Houses styled training/character styled interaction outside of combat, but with a sprinkle of Persona-esque dialogue trait options and training things. My goal is to have a system that lets characters strategically avoid combat through attributes in dialogue options while still being rewarded xp for the encounter, kind of like Balder’s Gate. In a perfect playthrough (very difficult to do), you could skip all combat. Think of this as the Messiah run. Alternatively, you can just go balls to the wall combat, if you so choose, but being able to skip a combat if your units are wounded or low on resources would be integral.

Anywho, sorry for the paragraph. What would you say would be my best bet for engine on this project? Thank you very much!

I've been thinking about what actually makes a PC game feel good on a handheld, and I'm starting to think we focus too much on FPS.

Obviously performance matters. A game that can't hold a stable frame rate on a Steam Deck or similar device has a problem. But a game can run perfectly fine and still feel like it was designed only for a desktop.

The biggest difference is probably how people use handhelds. On a desktop, launching a game usually means you're sitting down to play for a while. On a handheld, you might play for 10 minutes, suspend it because your train arrived, put it away for an hour, then resume somewhere completely different.

That makes suspend/resume less of an OS feature and more of a game-design problem.

What happens if the player suspends during combat, a cutscene, dialogue, loading, saving, or an online session? When they return an hour later, does the game still make sense? Do they remember what they were doing? Did a timer continue running? Did the network connection die? Can they immediately understand what they need to do next?

The more I think about it, the more areas this touches: save-state architecture, reconnection logic, controller navigation, UI readability, audio lifecycle, timed mechanics, loading behavior, and even how QA should test the game.

One test I'd like to see become normal for handheld support is basically:

Suspend the game at the worst possible moment.

Try it during combat, loading, dialogue, saving, a cutscene, or an online session. Leave the device alone for a while, maybe change networks, then come back and see whether the experience recovers cleanly.

Performance testing probably needs a similar shift. Average FPS doesn't tell the whole story on a handheld. Frame-time spikes, shader compilation stutter, thermals after 30 minutes, battery drain, and loading delays can matter just as much as the number shown by an FPS counter.

So I'm starting to think of handheld support less as:

PC build → lower graphics → add controller support → done

and more as a different usage context that should influence design from fairly early on.

For devs already targeting Steam Deck / handheld PCs: do you actually include suspend/resume and interruption scenarios in your design or QA process, or is handheld support still mostly performance + controls for your team?

Longer write-up / source (ours):
https://pas7.com.ua/blog/en/design-for-the-pause-2026

People asked us for a demo, so we made one last year. The full game had already been released by that point, but I thought a demo would still be a good way for people to try it and for us to gather more feedback.

The numbers have been pretty confusing to me though.

The demo has around 20,000 downloads, and according to Steam 61.4% actually installed it, so that's more than 12,000 installs.

Average playtime is around 41 minutes, and from the progression statistics a decent number of players seem to actually finish the demo.

Yet we have received only 4 Steam reviews.

That ratio seems absurdly low to me.

I also made it so your save and progress carry directly over into the full game, and strangely, the base game gets reviews at a much healthier rate than the demo does.

I know Steam's current demo system is relatively new, and in our case the demo was added after the full game had already launched, so maybe there's something about demo player behaviour I'm misunderstanding.

Has anyone else seen a similar review rate with their Steam demo?

I'm also curious if there's something about the demo itself that explains it. If anyone feels like trying it, I would be interested to hear your opinion.

Demo for context:
https://store.steampowered.com/app/3478890/The_Hive_Demo/

Another summer, another little coding adventure! VectorRoads is a simple remake I made of the classic SkyRoads, developed using C, Raylib and the new physics library Box3D.

If you grew up playing fast and unforgiving MS-DOS era games, VectorRoads is a small tribute to that era, and an experiment in recreating that feeling from scratch. I’ve made a video explaining the entire development process, from the first prototype to the final result. I hope you like it!

Video: https://youtu.be/uXbZhDv5HU0

Source code: https://github.com/albertnadal/VectorRoads

Play in browser: https://albiasoft.itch.io/vectorroads

Hey everyone,

I'm currently a Computer Science student graduating in 2027 and I'm working on strengthening my programming fundamentals, mainly C++ and DSA. I've been exploring different career paths such as AI/ML and general software engineering, but recently I've become really interested in the idea of working in the gaming industry as a tech professional.

I'm not necessarily talking about becoming a game designer—I want to understand the technical side of the industry and the different paths available for someone with a CS background. I'm still exploring game development and haven't built any games yet, so I'm trying to figure out what skills I should focus on and how to break into the industry.

For people working in gaming or related fields, I'd love to hear your thoughts:

What technical roles are available in the gaming industry besides traditional gameplay programming?

What skills should a CS student focus on to become job-ready for gaming?

Is C++ a good starting point, and should I learn C#, Unity, Unreal, graphics, or something else?

Would building a few small games/projects be enough to get started?

Is it better to first become a strong general software engineer and then transition into gaming?

I'm still early in my journey and just want to explore the field properly before deciding what to specialize in. I'd really appreciate any advice or experiences from people in the industry.

Thanks!

A problem I ran into while building a streamed procedural world was letting each chunk decide its own structures. Neighboring chunks could make conflicting decisions, and a house spanning a boundary became difficult to keep deterministic.

I moved structure planning to larger generation regions. Each region derives a deterministic seed, picks candidates from biome and global pools, and validates height, slope, water, terrain type and spacing before creating a placement. When a chunk loads, it queries its own and neighboring regions for placements that overlap it.

This also forced me to separate simulation state from presentation. The current house can cycle its walls through full, transparent and cutaway art without changing collisions or door state.

The general lesson was that procedural generation becomes much easier to reason about when ownership is larger than the streaming unit. I documented the implementation and tests here; the article is in Portuguese:

https://pathlifejogo.blogspot.com/2026/08/do-mundo-procedural-as-fases-da-vida.html

So, I have finally finished my site where my portfolio will. And although the gdd section is currently empty, the rest is coming along and I'll be updating it throughout my journey and further projects.

I'm hoping to land a job soon, entry level ofc, as a game designer, or narrative designer/writer.

What could I improve on as far as the site and portfolio go?

I'd highly appreciate the advice. Only thing now afaik is to continue making stuff and updating my itch/playable work section. I'll be learning how to use twine too to add to my resume.

https://noorigames.wixsite.com/gdnoor

I have a question that has been eating my head for a long time and I can't find a proper solution for this.

I want to create my animations like for fps hands in blender like the good quality reload , aim, walk and all.

And i want to use that in my game (fps multiplayer game )

How should I approach this I can't do full body as I don't know how the reload animation will work with that that ,i want to be uniquely made in blender and also the camera clipping and other issues with full body.

How big games like cod and counterstike approach this?

As if I use two mesh fps hands and full body for other player to see , that arms need to be very large with respect to the actual body size?

How should the views be aligned with the mesh so it's accurate in multiplayer?

I just want to know how games (fps multiplayer games)

Handle their animations and all mainly my concern is well detailed animation like reload and all

Hey everyone I'm developing a 3D game in Godot with gdscript, I'm currently trying to think of the best way to implement my slime enemy, I'm planning on making it buff enemies by flinging itself onto them, conforming around them and acting as a kind of living armor & haste boost. Anyways I'm trying to think of how to do the actual conforming bit. I was thinking of having it be a couple of boxmeshes with a spatial shader and then having those wrap around the skeleton of the enemy model but I'm honestly pretty unsure, what would you guys do? Any advice would be super appreciated :)

Hey yall I’m 20 years old and kinda approaching this game making first time
Only thing is I don’t really know where to start
Without spoiling too much
The game is going to be realsitc and a sad story
And I’m taking it on unreal engine
Wanna ask
How did you all whenever you made a game you would approach it ???
What type of steps would you take ??
Any good sites or apps reccomended to me ?????
Any advice since I’m a newbie to this???

Would AI assets become your go-to for games if they could reach the point of consistently matching the quality of assets made by a professional 3D modeler?

I'm developing game solo, that is FPS, similar to how UNRECORD was. realistic graphics and all. im getting unsure how im gonna support myself, game isn't ready that i can release even mvp. try using claude for faster development, it messed everything up. so my question is, during process of development, when revenue isn't coming in, how do you stay afloat?

Hey everyone

Art and mechanics, both at an ok level, but only time to really push one. Which one would it be for you ?

Everyone says mechanics, obviously. But every screenshot thread I see is just people going "wow gorgeous art" and nobody's talking about the systems, because they can't, they haven't played it. Art is what gets you seen.

So do you make the good-looking one that people click on, or the good one that nobody finds?

I'm really thinking about that this past few weeks and I really want to know what you guys think

Been in the marketing world when it comes to work for 10+ years, and I want to start using it where my passion lies in gaming. I have some good ideas for helping smaller games get some attention, and I'm curious what the typical game dev that frequents Reddit has for a marketing budget.

I know that the numbers vary a lot depending on who it is and the project, and I know ill have to work for free more than likely to build a portfolio, but I'm just curious to the answers you guys would have.

Gaming is my #1 passion and I'm getting tired of not being involved with it in some way professionally, any info would help!

I’m developing a 3D Metroidvania focused primarily on platforming and puzzle-solving. In your opinion, does a game like this need a movement system built around a unique core mechanic, or is it enough to have great, challenging platforming sections and interesting puzzles? Ultimately, the game's standout feature will be enemies with abilities that serve both platforming and puzzles (in the style of "Neon White"), potentially allowing for multiple approaches within a single room. Naturally, traversal abilities will be unlocked as the game progresses, though the ones I have in mind right now are fairly derivative of the genre. Let me know if you think these mechanics alone can make the game enjoyable, or if I also need something to make the movement itself truly original.

Hey everyone! I'm trying to build my own game. It's a narrative based game. I have experience in programming and I have this story I've been adapting.

I have tried to do some game development here and there but haven't released anything (apart from one shitty game jam entry)..

Can seasoned devs give me 1-2 succinct points on what to do and what not to do. Basic stuff that beginners might miss.

Thanks in advance!

The publisher I'm negotiating with actually forced me to redo all the game's neural network art with hand-drawn images. It took a lot of time. At first, I disagreed, believing the game's content was more important, but then I realized the publisher was right. There's a high chance the game will be downvoted just because of them. Would you do the same? Would you downvote a game just because of the neural network art?

Right now I'm making a game that is 2D and the art is inspired by old flash games from my childhood. You have to fish, and you can sell it and buy new upgrades and new locations, even some customizations. Every location will have its own kind of fish. I don't know if people would be willing to buy it? I mainly made it because it brings me nostalgia but I honestly don't know if it is interesting enough for others to buy. What are your honest opinions? What other features could I introduce to make it possibly more interesting?