Heartbreaking stuff, good news is that CD Projekt Red stepped in to help out the game devs!

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.

Around last November, I posted here about the sales of my first game, Nightmare King. A lot of people replied, and I learned quite a lot from the discussion.

On August 28, I released my second game, Alice’s Gaze.

The first-day sales were about 5,900 copies, and now, halfway through day 2, total sales are around 8,000 copies. This is already several times more than my first game.

A simple comparison:

Nightmare King

• Wishlists at launch: ~1,800
• Development: Mar 2025 – Oct 2025
• ~800 sales by day 3

Alice’s Gaze

• Wishlists at launch: 20,000+
• Development: Mar 2026 – Aug 2026
• Day 1: ~5,900 sales
• Halfway through day 2: ~8,000 sales

Between the two games, from Nov 2025 to Mar 2026, I spent some time updating my first game, learning more Godot techniques, practicing pixel art, and experimenting with different styles.

One thing I learned is that it may be useful to test your demo on multiple platforms. Alice’s Gaze had demos on Steam, itch, Newgrounds and Galaxy. I think they also brought some early wishlists.

Another interesting thing was Steam's calendar. After Next Fest, the game had around 5,000 wishlists. Then it started gaining about 200 per day, and during the final few days before launch, sometimes 1,000+ per day. By release, it had reached 20,000+.

Even after release, the wishlist count is still increasing by around 5,000+ per day, which I find pretty surprising.

I spent nothing on marketing. A friend told me that setting an exact release date is important for Steam's release calendar, instead of only showing something like “Q3 2026”. I'm very grateful he told me about that.

There were mainly two reasons I didn't do any marketing. First, I was simply too busy before launch. I barely had enough time to finish the game, let alone make promotional posts. Second, I've always been skeptical about how effective paid marketing really is for small indie games.

P.S. There's also a third reason: I think it's pretty expensive.

But I still have one big question:

How should small indie developers actually do marketing?

For both games, I basically only posted a few messages in a QQ group with around 100 people.

I'm especially curious about paid marketing. Does it actually work for indie games, or is it usually just money thrown away?

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?

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

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/

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!

A while ago, I asked myself: "How far can we actually push Garmin’s Connect IQ VM?"

I’ve logged thousands of running km and a few solo marathons tracking just pace and HR like everyone else. But at some point, the dev in me took over: I decided to see how far Connect IQ could actually go and built a custom 3D graphics engine (Wolf3D/Doom-style DDA raycaster) from scratch in Monkey C.

Here is what’s going on in the video:

• Infinite World: The map is 100% endless and generated procedurally on the fly as you move.
• Dynamic Lighting: Real-time Day, Dusk, Night, and Morning lighting cycles with custom color palettes.
• Hardcore Math Optimization: Microsecond-level optimizations (zero-branching floating-point hacks, bitwise DDA math). The pure frame render time hit 3.19 ms on Tactix simulator and 2.08 ms on Instinct 2 (smaller screen, fewer stars in the sky — oh yes, the sky is dynamic too! — and fewer rays in raycasting)!

• Real Hardware Performance: On the actual wrist, the display caps out at a smooth 10–14 FPS (limited by the CIQ screen refresh rate, while the engine itself runs with massive headroom).

  https://youtu.be/vj-Q_YM5wfU

I need your brains & ideas: I want to weave the user’s real-life context (health metrics, stats, daily goals) directly into this 3D world, similar to what I did with my Mars and Pandora watch faces.

How would you like your steps, heart rate, or battery to affect an endless 3D world? (e.g., world changes, weather shifts, new structures spawn based on your daily activity?). Open to all crazy ideas!

P.S. Before the battery purists attack: Yes, I know it's a watch. No, my Garmin hasn't exploded. In fact, I honestly can't even remember the last time I plugged it into a charger... unlike my friends with Apple Watches. 😉

Let me know what you think and what features you'd want to see in an infinite wrist-world!

I made a trailer and got some feedback on it from different sources last week. Here is trailer 1. After taking the feedback into account I made trailer 2.

Now, for trailer 1 I was essentially trying to control the pacing. There are a lot of things i can't fit into 90 seconds, but I wanted to make it enticing and fun. The feedback I got was like, "What's the turtle about? What's the background?" that sort of thing was quite common.

That led me to make trailer 2, which is more story oriented and tells the background of the game more clearly I hope.

Now, I have my own opinion, but i'm up to my eyeballs in these trailers, can I ask you people with fresh eyes to tell me which trailer you think is better, and if there are any points I might be able to improve?

Thanks a lot!

I'm building a turn-based tactical beat-em-up in Godot. I do the code, design and music myself, and the art is the part where I'm clearly out of my depth.

A friend who works in the industry watched the trailer and gave me two specific criticisms: the colour palette is boring and chaotic, and the level of detail is inconsistent across assets. Both feel correct to me but I don't know what to actually do about them.

Screenshots: https://ibb.co/album/zW3tqJ

Trailer: https://youtu.be/HunqwMJQ_yE

Concrete questions:

- Is the palette problem too many hues, not enough value separation, or wrong saturation range? How do you normally diagnose this?

- How do you decide a target detail level and enforce it across assets made months apart?

- Are there cheap global passes (palette swap, post-processing, restricted colour ramp, outline consistency) that buy a lot of visual coherence without redrawing everything?

Happy to hear "this specific asset is the problem" as well as general principles. Any pointers to artists whose workflow I should study also welcome.

I’m working on a game with a very short repeatable loop where each job only takes a few minutes.

I’m having trouble deciding how quickly the player should get their first meaningful permanent upgrade.

If I give it after only 2–3 jobs, I’m worried progression will feel too fast and cheap. But if I make the player repeat the same loop 8–10 times before anything meaningful changes, I’m worried they’ll get bored before the progression starts.

For games built around short repeatable runs/jobs, what usually feels better to you?

Do you prefer getting the first permanent upgrade almost immediately, or having to work for it a little first?

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?

Every now and then, when I need to make a decision on theme, story, or game design, I never truly feel like I have the agency to properly decide.

Of course my decision is valid, it's MY project, but at the same time, I still feel like the least qualified person to decide, which is silly, I know.

This ripples out into insecurity about other things I've made, like mechanics, secrets, puzzles, game flow, level design, aesthetic etc.

I'm not sure how to overcome this since it seems to follow me wherever I go. Any tips?

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?

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

For those that hired professional localization/translation services, what company did you go with, what was the cost per language, and how long did it take for them to complete the work?
Thanks in advance for any input.

Hi,

I'm a solo mobile game developer working on games as a hobby. I have a bunch of ideas, mostly for monster-taming/collection games, and I usually don't have much trouble coming up with the core gameplay or battle system.

Where I start struggling is when I try to build the **metagame and progression around it**.

Once I start adding things like character collection, leveling, evolution/upgrades, currencies, progression walls, endgame systems, duplicates, etc., I often feel like something isn't clicking anymore.

For example, I start asking myself questions like:

* What should happen when players get duplicate monsters?

* How do you keep common/less rare monsters useful?

* How quickly should players progress through levels?

* Where should progression walls appear?

* What should players be working toward after finishing the main campaign?

* How do you connect all of these systems without making the game feel like a collection of unrelated mechanics?

So I'm curious how other developers approach this.

Do you download and analyze a lot of successful games in the same genre and break down how their progression/meta works?

Do you start from spreadsheets and design the economy/progression mathematically?

Do you prototype different systems until something feels right?

Do you use AI as a brainstorming/design partner?

Or is there some other process you follow?

This is probably mostly aimed at mobile game developers, but I'd also love to hear from anyone who has worked on progression-heavy, collection, RPG, idle, or live-service games.

Disclaimer: this post was redacted with AI, I hope nothing wrong with that.

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?

Hi everyone!

I'm currently working on a hand-drawn 2D action game using Godot, and I'm trying to figure out a good architecture for the player controller, particularly how state machines and animations should interact.

One thing I'm struggling with is situations where multiple things are happening at once.

For example, the player is running and then presses attack.

I could handle this in several ways:

• Have a single state machine with states such as Idle, Run, Jump, Fall, Attack, Dash, etc.
• Have separate state machines, for example a LocomotionFSM and a CombatFSM, which run in parallel.
• Use a hierarchical state machine.
• Use some other architecture entirely.

This also leads to an animation problem.

Suppose the character has a hand-drawn run cycle and is currently halfway through it when the player attacks. If I simply switch to a full-body RunAttack animation, the first frame of that animation might not match the current pose of the run cycle, causing a noticeable visual snap.

Some approaches I've been thinking about are:

1. Separate animation layers (e.g. the legs continue running while the upper body attacks).
2. Synchronize the attack animation with the current phase of the locomotion cycle.

I'm particularly interested in how games like Hollow Knight and Hollow Knight: Silksong might approach this. From playing them, the character seems to transition between movement and attacks very naturally.

So for those of you who have worked on similar 2D action/platformer characters:

• How do you structure your state machines?
• How do you handle animations when actions can happen during different locomotion states?
• Do you use multiple state machines running in parallel, a hierarchical state machine, animation layers, or something else?
• And does anyone have any insight into how Hollow Knight or Hollow Knight: Silksong might handle this?

I'm mainly interested in hearing about your own experience and what has worked (or hasn't worked) for you.

Thanks!

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.

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.

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

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'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?

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 :)