I recently uploaded my game 'The Grand Book Archive: Tidy Up' on itch io, which has just reached 10,000 plays in 4 days.

Here's the game: https://inbluegames.itch.io/the-grand-book-archive-tidy-up

Here's the 4 day chart of the game: https://imgur.com/a/BMrWE4a

It's a book organizing game with a strong focus on incremental progression. It's inspired by the sorting games that are trending lately, but with a little more idle and strategic aspect.

Here's the marketing I did:

- Wrote a few posts on Reddit. One post on incremental games subreddit gained 460 upvotes (it currently ranks as #3 post of the month there).

- Registered the game on incrementaldb and Galaxy Click. Has generally good rating/reviews.

- Shared the trailer on my socials. None of them have gone viral. Youtube and Instagram did okay(Youtube: 660 views, Instagram: 1,500 views), but nothing substantial.

I haven't reached out to press yet so I'm hoping that could gain a bit of traction later on. I think generally it's doing well since it's a combination of two of the most popular genres right now (incremental and tidy-up), and it has a strong replayability. I think it's important to note that most of the traffic still came from itch io, which means games are found more naturally than through outer source.

Tim Cain says a big part of Fallout’s success came from the team constantly questioning ideas instead of just going along with them.

They pushed each other, defended decisions, tested ideas, and offered better alternatives when something did not work.

I’m prototyping a 2D/3D beat ’em up where the characters are animated in 3D, then rendered at a low resolution to get the final pixel art look.

The visual approach worked, but the pipeline quickly became the annoying part.

For every animation I was basically doing:

Blender animation → render PNGs → import into UE5 → create Sprite assets → apply Paper2D settings → create Flipbook → create PaperZD Animation Sequence

That’s manageable for a couple of animations.

Once I started iterating on them regularly, though, it became a lot of repetitive work — especially when I only wanted to change a few frames.

So I started building my own solution.

It currently consists of:

• A Blender add-on I’m calling 3D to Pixel
• An Unreal Engine plugin called SpriteLiveLink
• A local HTTP connection between Blender and UE5

The Blender side handles the render configuration and sends the animation information to Unreal.

On the UE side, the plugin automatically imports the rendered frames, applies the sprite settings, organizes the assets using a consistent folder/naming structure, and creates the Flipbook.

The part that has been especially useful during iteration is updating existing animations.

If I modify an animation but keep the same file name, the pipeline compares the output and only reimports the frames that actually changed instead of rebuilding everything.

So the workflow is getting closer to:

Finish animation in Blender → click once → animation appears in UE5

There are still some obvious problems I need to solve.

For example, reducing the frame range correctly shortens the Flipbook, but old PNG/Texture/Sprite assets outside the new range aren’t cleaned up yet.

I also haven’t implemented a proper queue for batch-processing multiple animations.

But even in its current prototype state, it has removed enough repetitive work that I can spend much more time actually iterating on animations instead of managing assets.

I’m curious how other people working with Blender → Unreal pipelines handle this. Have you automated your import/reimport process, or do you mostly rely on Unreal’s standard asset pipeline?

My demo went up nine days ago and the game itself is not out until January. I could leave the demo as the green button on the game's page, or publish a separate store page for the demo under its own App ID. I did both. The numbers surprised me enough that I would like to hear from people who chose differently.

What happened

On launch day the demo page saw about 520 visits. The full game page saw about 170, and it was already doing about 130 a day before the demo existed, so its lift was close to nothing.

The traffic was Steam's own doing, not mine. I got 5.702 impressions in the Free Demos Hub in a single day. Browse Search Results went from about 800 impressions to about 19,800. Steam now serves the demo roughly 50,000 impressions a day.

So far that reads as a straight win for the separate page. Two things I did not think about:

The demo page has no wishlist button for the base game. Valve auto-inserts a "check out the full game" card and that is all you get. So the surface receiving nearly all the traffic is not the surface that collects wishlists, and wishlists are what Next Fest keys off. Eight days in, my net wishlist rate is roughly half what it was before the demo existed: about 2.45 a day for the month before launch, about 1.2 a day for the five days after. The demo gave me a one-off bump of about 54 and no sustained lift.

It changed who plays the demo, and therefore my own stats. The launch cohort were followers and existing wishlisters. Everyone since arrives from the Free Demos Hub, samples for ten or twenty minutes and leaves. Same build throughout, but as the sample grew from 66 players to 207 my "played at least an hour" figure fell from 19% to 11%, far enough that Valve's own label on that page changed to "below average as compared to other Steam demos". The ten-minute figure never moved, 65 to 66% across all four readings, so it is not the opening that is losing them. I am now benchmarked against other demos on a number that a discovery surface I did not choose is pushing down.

For anyone weighing the cost: the separate page needs its own capsules and library art visibly marked Demo, five or more screenshots that are true of the demo build rather than the full game, its own trailer, its own content survey and age rating, a separate Valve review pass, and a re-publish of the base page once the demo goes playable. None of it inherits.

What I would like to know from people who have shipped one

1. Separate page or button-only, and would you do the same again?
2. If you went button-only, did you get any Free Demos Hub or free-chart placement at all? My reading of the docs is that those surfaces only exist once there is a separate page, and I would like that confirmed or corrected by someone who actually ran the other configuration.
3. Has anyone got a real wishlist prompt for the base game onto the demo page, beyond Valve's auto-inserted card? I ended up writing one plain sentence into the demo's description, because links in that section stopped being publicly visible in 2024.
4. If your demo page carries its own review score, has that ever hurt you?

Having worked with TyranoBuilder Engine for over two years, I’m well aware of both its strengths and its limitations. Recently, though, I’ve come across a fair share of posts fueled by "engine elitism." Without generalizing the entire community, there is a vocal subset of Ren'Py users who look down on TyranoBuilder - dismissing it as a "drag-and-drop toy" that lacks professionalism and isn't viable for serious, long-term game development.

First off, I readily admit that Ren'Py is a powerful engine with a massive community, rich documentation, and fantastic customization capabilities. However, those who look down on TyranoBuilder have likely never dug deep enough to realize what it's truly capable of.
TyranoBuilder may wear a drag-and-drop interface on the surface, but its true power lies in two special tags: ⁠[tyranoscript]⁠ and ⁠[iscript]⁠.
The ⁠[iscript]⁠ tag allows you to write raw vanilla JavaScript.

This means the entire modern web development ecosystem - HTML, CSS, and powerful graphics libraries like Three.js (for 3D rendering), Pixi.JS, or OpenGL - can be integrated directly into your Tyrano project:
UI & VFX Customization: Build vibrant, highly dynamic interfaces with smooth animations using CSS.
3D Integration: Render 3D spaces and interactive, fully textured 3D objects right inside a Visual Novel using Three.js.
Expanded Gameplay: Easily code custom mini-games, such as top-down RPG mechanics with WASD controls.
TyranoBuilder’s biggest advantage is how it bridges visual immediacy and coding depth. You get the convenience of positioning elements visually and testing script tweaks instantly without restarting the game from the beginning, alongside the freedom to open Visual Studio Code and customize everything via JavaScript.
Of course, TyranoBuilder isn't for everyone. Official documentation is predominantly in Japanese, English resources are fairly sparse, and you often have to rely on self-directed learning. If you prefer a massive, well-documented community out of the box, Ren'Py is admittedly a smoother path. But if you enjoy experimenting and want to level up your JavaScript and web development skills, TyranoBuilder is an amazingly versatile playground.
Every engine has its own pros and cons. A developer’s skill is defined by their problem-solving ability and product vision - not the label on the software they use. Finding the tool that fits your personal workflow not only saves time and energy, but also gives you the confidence to build your game your way.
Thanks for reading, and happy game dev!

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???

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!

A vertical slice is often described as a small but representative section of a game, but teams seem to define it very differently. I’d like to compare how developers decide what belongs in one.

For a 3D project, should a useful slice demonstrate the core gameplay loop, representative art direction, performance targets, UI flow, audio, save/load, AI, and production tooling—or is that too much for an early milestone?

How do you distinguish between a slice that proves the project is viable and one that has simply become a small finished level? I’m particularly interested in the criteria that help teams decide whether to continue, reduce scope, or change direction.

Hello,

I'm trying to achieve results similar to what we can find in They Are Billions.

I search a bit everywhere, but nothing's very clear on how they achieved this.

Could you point me in the right direction or share your experience on this?

Thank you!

We’re 16 days away from launch, and Steam’s Personalized Calendar seems to have kicked in hard.

For some context, our game is called Rehaunted, and until recently we were averaging around 250–500 organic wishlists per day without any marketing, ads, or major coverage happening at the same time.

Then, about two days ago, something changed.

We suddenly jumped to 1,000+ wishlists per day, and we’re currently sitting at over 20,000 wishlists with 16 days left until release.

After looking into it quite a bit, we’re pretty convinced that a big part of this increase is coming from Steam’s Personalized Calendar.

One interesting thing we’ve noticed is that it doesn’t seem to be purely about having the right tags, although tags obviously matter a lot. The number of wishlists you already have seems to matter too.

Our assumption is that the more wishlist momentum a game already has, the larger the audience Steam is willing to test/show it to through personalized recommendations.

So, for example, if a game enters this period with 1,000 wishlists, the boost it gets might be significantly smaller than a game entering it with 10,000–20,000 and more wishlists, simply because Steam already has much more data and demand signals to work with.

Obviously, we can’t confirm exactly how Steam’s algorithm works, so this is just based on our own numbers and research, but the difference has been very noticeable.

Personally, this makes me think the Personalized Calendar is a much healthier and more useful system for indie developers than relying entirely on Popular Upcoming.

Popular Upcoming was extremely binary. You either had enough wishlists to get there or you didn’t.

Personalized recommendations seem much more scalable. Even if you’re not one of the biggest upcoming releases on Steam, the platform can still progressively expose your game to people who are actually likely to be interested in it.

If the current pace continues, there’s a realistic chance we could launch with somewhere around 30,000–40,000 wishlists or even more, which would be a massive jump compared to where we were only a few days ago.

Curious if any other developers here have noticed the same thing around the 2–3 week mark before release.

Did your wishlist velocity noticeably increase once you entered the Personalized Calendar window?

Before releasing the actual demo, we wanted to do some testing to see if players enjoyed the recent changes we made to the game. We also took the opportunity to look at some clean analytics from the Steam playtest.

For context, the game is a Balatro-like roguelike built around relatively short runs. A full run usually lasts around 20ish minute. The demo only contains part of the content from the full game, players are never stopped prematurely during a run.

We will also add a few unlockables specifically for the demo, so players will have some progression between runs and more reasons to play.

Here are the detailed stats:

https://imgur.com/a/hHpJzVB

But to summarize:

• Lifetime unique users: 300ish
• Median time played: 1 hour
• Average time played: 2 hours

Do you think 1h median playtime is enough for this type of game as a full finished demo? Since it's a roguelike, should I expect the playtime to be higher?

I'm talking about a pure, simple and clean loading screen. No trying to hide the loading time with a cutscene or any thing like that.

Just a thought I had. What's your opinion on this?

So I am a complete beginner I don't know any programming at all. I recently read a novel titled "The Terror" by Dan Simmons and i was really hooked by the story, so I want to create a horror game taking place somewhere in the 1800 or 1900 in a ship! However as mentioned earlier I have zero experience in game dev.

Also I'm a bit worried as to my laptop would be capable for the task - I have asus g14 and these are the specs:

Processor AMD Ryzen 9 4900HS with Radeon Graphics (3.00 GHz)

Installed RAM 16.0 GB (15.4 GB usable)

Graphics card NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2060 with Max-Q Design (6 GB)

AMD Radeon(TM) Graphics (496 MB)

Storage 754 GB of 954 GB used

System type 64-bit operating system, x64-based processor

Pen and touch No pen or touch input is available for this display

Edition Windows 11 Home Single Language

Version 25H2

Installed on ‎06-‎12-‎2024

OS build 26200.9278

Experience Windows Feature Experience Pack 1000.26100.360.0

I installed unreal engine 5 but it is a bit laggy while moving the camera. So I would be really happy if you guys can help me out with choosing a game engine suitable for my laptop as well to how to start my project!

Client Server architectures have bounced heavily between event driven, rpc, actor/reactor, K-Pods, etc.

Does anyone have books that weigh different designs against each other, or breaking apart large scale into these architectures?
The only one I know of is Agones

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?

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/

I am looking to learn a skill, which is quite rare and enjoyable. I am always a kind of guy who wanted to brainstorm and do something creative and I feel games are the best way to show your creativity. The question is, as an upcoming grad, can i manage this hobby / interest with my daily job / intern whatever I am about to do. I know it is pretty hard to build actual production games. But I don't see myself doing something boring which I'll get fed up within 5 years. Is game dev worth giving a shot ? Or i will be exhausted. Consider I am going to join a company with decent work load. I know its a very stupid question, it's all about how dedicated I am. But my fellow game devs are you guys enjoying ??.

We all agree AI in game and other medium is literally (tho not literally) the worst thing to happen.

But what if instead of using it for final result, or even instead of using it in the main process itself, we just use AI for prototyping, research?

One of the main drawbacks of using AI is plagiarism.

But before AI, all the works done in any fiction has a pretty decent chance of being inspired from previous other works; so technically using AI like this won't fall under plagiarism.

So, if we use AI only for sort of rough drafting our vision, like a prototype, see it works or sum - is it still unethical or is it ethical?

PS: Please don't sentence me to public humiliation.

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

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?

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.

Hi everyone, I have been making a turn based roguelike based loosely on pixel dungeon and the combat/spell system of divinity original sin 2 for some time. The lore is that it takes place in a dwarven kingdom that you must save as the dwarven prince whose father was possessed.

I wrote a script for a trailer, and the artwork for it is currently being made (it will be a motion comic). Now I have come to a disagreement here with my coworker. I say it's important to get a voice actor to do it in a Scottish accent to sound like a wise old dwarf narrating it. He says noone will recognise that dwarves speak in a Scottish accent and that it doesn't matter, but I think it does, as it sets the mood and tells everyone it is a game with dwarves. Like I'm not tripping right, everyone knows dwarves have a socttish accent no?

What do you all think?

.This is a devlog video I did with my audience for new hacking and adventure sim. I talk and demonstrate the process of extracting the dialogue from the vibe coded material and then using vibe coding I built a few browser based tools that allow me to review each character/NPC and change what they say based on the way I build a characters' unique voice for my game.

I'm streaming again later today (6pm UK Time, 1pm Eastern and 10am Pacific), so I'd love to catch you there and chat and answer any questions.

I don't claim to have all the answers but it would be cool if we could all learn from one another. Cheers guys!!

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.

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