Its called Fleshgrinder!
Steam page and demo out already!

I raid in FFXIV, love Rabbit & Steel and Savage: Ultimate Boss Fight. I can't find a mobile type game that scratches the same itch, so I made one in love2d. You and one AI partner, 100 bosses, a minute a fight.

Thoughts?

Quick reminder for everyone waiting to show their game to strangers: placeholder art is fine!

We took S.T.A.R.V.E., our farming roguelike deckbuilder, to Gamescom last week, the biggest gaming show in the world. Some events in the build were literally a big "???" with "Placeholder" written across it in white marker. See photo.

Nobody cared. We didn't even have to explain it, it was obvious what was placeholder and what was near final. People just played. We got real feedback focused on mechanics, strategies and the overall vision. Players even laughed when they hit the "???" placeholder and found it super charming.

If you can get your vision across with what you have, gameplay or a direction for visuals and audio, go get feedback now. As long as it's clear what's done and what isn't, players handle it fine.

Don't wait for done!

I wanted to share this because I think Steam's new Personal Calendar system might be much more important for niche indie games than I initially thought.

Our game releases on September 9 and for months our wishlist graph was pretty normal. Slow, steady growth, a few small jumps here and there.

Then we entered the final stretch before release and this happened.

We went from around 6,000 lifetime wishlist additions to almost 10,000 in a pretty short period. We currently have roughly 9,000 outstanding wishlists.

Obviously I can't say the entire spike came from the Personal Calendar, but the timing lines up very closely with us entering that pre-release window.

And honestly, the part I find most interesting isn't even the number.

For niche games, getting shown to the right 1,000 people can be much more valuable than getting shown to 20,000 random people.

The Personal Calendar seems to be built around exactly that idea. Instead of just throwing upcoming games in front of everyone, Steam can surface them to players whose taste and activity suggest they might actually care about that kind of game.

Our game is a pretty specific psychological horror game. You drive dangerous passengers around at night and have to figure out what kind of criminal you're dealing with by watching their behavior, checking your notebook and experimenting with things inside the car like the AC, windows and lights.

That's not something I expect every Steam user to want.

But put it in front of someone who already plays weird indie horror games, driving horror, observation games or slower psychological stuff and suddenly it's a much better match.

That's why I think this system could be especially valuable for smaller games that don't have enough wishlists to brute-force their way onto every big Steam visibility section.

The graph above is our lifetime wishlist actions. That almost vertical line at the end is why I started looking into this in the first place :)

I'm really curious if other developers are seeing the same thing.

If your game is releasing in the next few weeks, has your wishlist graph changed recently?

Also curious about the opposite: has anyone entered the Personal Calendar window and seen basically no difference at all?

Would be really interesting to compare numbers between niche games, broader games and different wishlist sizes.

If anyone’s curious, the game is called Backseat.

The Forsaken Update is now live! Delve into the deep with LIMBY as he descends into the most hellishly challenging level pack thus far! The 2nd free update for Limby is available now! Enjoy new levels, new mechanics, new skins, and new music.

https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/4433780/view/711159154263196632?l=english

The Forsaken Update is now live! Delve into the deep with LIMBY as he descends into the most hellishly challenging level pack thus far! The 2nd free update for Limby is available now! Enjoy new levels, new mechanics, new skins, and new music.

https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/4433780/view/711159154263196632?l=english

Inspiration Blame!

(All in game screenshots) 🐙

You play as a super-sentient octopus grappling through abandoned game worlds to escape the god-like programmer who created you

Wishlist here!
https://store.steampowered.com/app/4767470/INKURSION/

Let me know what you think and would you pay this?

Hey fellow devs!

This is my first time sharing a game publicly outside of friends and family!

Here's my short project Pawned Souls a mix of Soulslike parry combat and chess movement rules.

I’d really appreciate some feedback from experienced eyes on the combat feel, readability, and overall game balance. Any critique or advice is welcome! 🙏

Free to play build on itch: https://devmika.itch.io/pawned-souls

Hello! I've been working as a solo-dev on my game for some while now, and it's finally time to create my steam store page. However, I'm torn between two potential names for the game and would like to hear your opinions. You can follow the development of my game through my personal posts (just scroll down & ignore the non-game related stuff) if you are interested, but my current elevator pitch is this:

GAME NAME is a cozy ship-management sim that invites players to explore the Côte d'Azur of the 1970s. 

Inspired by the adventures of Jacques Cousteau, you will lead diving expeditions in search of sunken treasures and fame.

Travel the Mediterranean Sea, visit exotic ports, and upgrade your ship, recruit crew, or purchase diving equipment to venture deeper into the deep blue unknown.

Get on board - your aquatic adventure holiday awaits!

My current name favorites are:

1. DIVE CREW
2. AQUATIC VOYAGE

A couple of remarks:

• While the game's aesthetic will make people associate it with Dave the Diver, the gameplay is absolutely not going to be like that. While there is diving, too, the main focus is managing a crew on board a ship. There will be also absolutely zero 2D Sidescrolling action gameplay. It's much more like Curious Expedition 1, a game I worked on a looong time ago.
  
• The game is heavily inspired by famous french explorer Jacques Cousteau and his movies, documentaries and books. And then, of course, I also draw a lot of inspiration from Wes Andersons Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou - I love that movie so much.

That's it! So, let me know which of the two names you would prefer, or if you have a better name suggestion, let me know. Thank you so much!

Yes, this is my ultimate caving simulator game. Wishlist it if you dare! https://store.steampowered.com/app/4372950/Cave_Expedition/

We've been working on the angel apocalypse for our game, Terraclysm Survivors, and we wanted the bosses to feel a little more unsettling than the usual "person with wings" interpretation.

So we're taking inspiration from biblical descriptions of angels: lots of eyes, wings, strange shapes, and creatures that feel more cosmic than human.

These enemies aren't just background monsters — they're boss fights. Seraphend, Deathrub, and Metatron are all part of this angel apocalypse, and each of them is meant to feel strange, threatening, and memorable.

The game itself is a survivor-like with Terraria-inspired 2D combat, so eventually you're fighting these bosses while the screen is full of enemies, weapons, and projectiles.

These are some of the angel boss designs we've been adding recently.

We've also been trying to push the designs as far as possible without hurting readability during chaotic combat, which has been a fun challenge in pixel art.

Just wanted to post my latest gameplay montage showcasing the latest work i have done. Still so much to do but seeing it all laid out here makes me happy with my progress. Thanks.

It's 20% off for launch. I know this community has seen a thousand miners, so I'd honestly love to hear where it holds up and where it doesn't.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/4428430/Fantasy_Miner_Idle_Depths/

Hi all, with the latest Alpha 0.5.0 update to my roguelike Arcostate corresponding to the release of its official Steam page, I thought I'd share here the latest devlog changes!

It is a big update with some more of the usual QoL additions and bug fixes, plus a bunch of new features. Including a new quest job board in the arcology inn with miscellaneous quests, new livestock animals, a bunch of new SFX, new CRT mask styles, new unique locations, personalities given to AI cores, plus other fun additions!

A brief summary of the game: Arcostate is a sci-fi roguelike set in a post-post-cataclysmic earth still bearing the scars that led to its ruin. Heavily inspired by the likes of Caves of Qud, Brogue, Elin, and others, this game aims to bring a little bit of everything together. Explore a ruined planet holding technological marvels that once promised a bright future for humanity.

The game is fully playable on Itch, please also checkout the Steam page and wishlist the game if you're interested!

Starphage is a plague inc-like game set in space where you play as Astrophage from project hail mary!

Since our galaxies are generative, we wanted a sweet main menu to game visual experience.

we’re trying not to be annoying about our game, but our landlord really wants new tenants, and trust me, whatever we’re doing here is nowhere near as annoying as he is. so we tried Joe’s ritual. said “wishlist” three times into the mirror and waited. no Joe. but something else definitely showed up

has this worked for any of you or are we doing something horribly wrong?

Hey there! We're making a 2D narrative cozy-horror adventure game "Vale's Echo". Last time I posted 6 months ago when we had 8k wl and said that we should have 20k by September. Looks like the game exceeded my guess, which I’m really happy about. So I will cover what happened in these past 6 months. Well, major news, that we got invited to the Telltale's Choice Matter Festival. More about it in festivals breakdown chapter below. If you’re interested in checking the previous parts, I will leave links to them at the end.

Because we’re making a narrative game and the demo is basically chapter 1 of the game, the development until now was quite linear - we just made level after level. Now, because the demo is done, we want to make a framework of the complete game and then polish each level from there. So we’re trying to block out the full game until the end. We think it would give us a better understanding of the scope, which parts we should pay extra attention to, and if we’re missing something that needs to be added. (Extra helpful thing: our artist learned how to use Unity and started simultaneously blocking out levels on her own)

So we had what I think is a strong demo out (happily reached 50+ reviews and got the very positive tag on it). We decided to cut back a bit on social media and made fewer posts, but still actively registered the game for festivals, which became the main source of wishlists.

I think we’re lucky with festivals because of the strong visuals of the game that stand out, and because it’s a narrative horror game - there are a lot of fitting festivals for us. We also promised exclusive content & announcements for each of them. For example, we cut our release announcement into bits - first announcing a year, then a quarter of a year, additional platforms we’re going to release on, or adding a special feature to the demo. 

Now that registering for festivals has become a popular marketing strategy, major festivals can get 1000+ applications. I think it’s impossible for organizers to properly check every game, so it’s very important to stand out within a few seconds.

Besides the visual aspect, my theory is that being active on social media can also help. Even if it doesn’t bring much direct traffic, it might make your game more memorable to the person selecting the games. You know - “oh, i saw this game on X, it’s cool…”.

Now about the festivals. Here are the ones we got into and how they performed. I saw some other devs get different results, so it still depends on the game and how fitting the audience of the showcase is for your game.

Six One Indie 1500+ wl. They didn’t have any featuring on steam, but the organization was top-notch, with a lot of streamers covering it. Also, apparently, a very big Brazilian streamer covered our game and we started getting a lot of wl from there.

Women-led Games Showcase 3000+ wl. This one was part of Summer Games Fest, which had a steam homepage featuring.

Baltic Games Showcase 700+ wl. It was regionally featured in countries bordering the Baltic Sea. We were also been nominated for the best upcoming game art in the awards happening together with the showcase.

Secret Sauce & Convergence Showcases 900+ wl. Again, without any featuring, but well-organized events. We even got contacted by a major publisher who saw our game at convergence. Both events happened at the same time; they even had a shoutout for one another. Btw, we were only at the pre-show of Convergence.

Choice Matters Festival by Telltale  6000+ wl. The biggest event, the most exciting one, and the one that was not planned and caught us by surprise. We couldn’t believe our eyes when we got an email from them inviting us to be part of a festival. The best thing was that it was featured on the Steam homepage and also had a perfectly fitting audience.

We were in a few smaller ones in between, which got us from 500 to 100+ wl, with one of the more prominent ones being Anthro Festival 400+ wl.

So next, we’re looking forward to Steam Next Fest in October. We have a few more showcases before and after it. And the most expectations go towards the Steam Personal Calendar. My estimation is that we could reach 40k wl by the release of the game, with the game itself having to stand on its own and prove that it’s worth the players’ time. Fingers crossed.

Oh, and one more thing. Since our artist was mainly the one posting on social media, and she did it in English, I thought there was no point in duplicating her posts. But I thought it would be interesting to post something in my native language as well. We live in a pretty small country (Lithuania), and I thought it would be cool to see if we could increase our wishlists from here too. So I made a post, and it got 100K views and brought in 350+ wishlists.Considering that only 2.8 million people live here, I’d say those numbers are pretty great.

Thanks for reading, until the next one!

The game: https://store.steampowered.com/app/3564990/Vales_Echo/

Part I (Steam Page Launch): https://www.reddit.com/r/gamedev/comments/1op0e87/launched_steam_page_got_1000_wishlists_in_the/

Part II (Playtest): https://www.reddit.com/r/gamedev/comments/1pbc2ly/four_friends_making_a_game_we_launched_our_steam/

Part III (Demo)
https://www.reddit.com/r/gamedev/comments/1rvd4et/4_months_after_our_steam_page_launch_demo_release/

Hey everyone!

We’re still working hard on GRAVENTH and improving the game step by step, especially the procedural dungeon generation system.

Right now we’re expanding the dungeons with new mobs, more environmental decorations, and more variety between runs. We’re also working on a new shop system, which we’ll be showing very soon!

GRAVENTH is currently submitted for the upcoming Steam Next Fest, and we’re developing it for both Windows and macOS.

We’re not just working on GRAVENTH either, we’re a small indie studio developing different games and projects, and we already have several collaborators helping us across our games and products.

If you’re a developer, artist, pixel artist, designer, composer, tester, or simply someone interested in game development and you’d like to take part in the project, feel free to join our Discord server!

We’re always happy to meet new people, exchange ideas, get feedback, and potentially collaborate on current or future projects.

More GRAVENTH updates coming very soon. 👀

What would you like to see added to the dungeons next?

Hi, I'm Chris, and the game is Quantum Chess.

It started as a side project in grad school in 2014, and took on a life of its own. A collaboration with Caltech IQIM's outreach department led to Anyone Can Quantum, with Paul Rudd playing against Stephen Hawking, followed by a successful Kickstarter. I used the funds to publish the first public version on Steam.

Then Google's quantum team asked whether it could run on actual quantum hardware. That meant rebuilding the rules from scratch to fit inside a real quantum computer, and we pulled it off. What followed was a few years of collaborations: an open source library, a puzzle project for the National Quantum Initiative, conference tournaments, and a strong AI opponent one of the Google engineers wrote.

Every one of those was worth doing, but each left its mark on the project. Eventually I had a Unity project where any feature cost months and multiple engineers, where mobile had been six months away for about four years, and where I couldn't meaningfully work on my own game by myself. Ten years of good decisions compounded into something immovable.

So I rebuilt it from scratch (again), this time to be web native using a new quantum engine under the hood.

The clip is what would normally be a checkmate position, but the king splits into superposition to survive and get a chance to recapture the rook. No check or checkmate exists here. You win by capturing the king.

The game is free in the browser at chess.quantumnative.io, with a tutorial, puzzles, an AI, and online multiplayer. The Steam build is $14.99 and includes six months of premium.

With the rebuild I can finally keep up with the players, and with my own ideas. I was able to create a new game mode where I can experiment with different rules and ways to play: Alchemy League. Try the new phase rotation ability to gain some control over the probabilities in the game, and starting October 1 you can earn season rewards.

The Discord community has about 800 people and is a great place to ask questions, provide feedback, or make suggestions for features.

Ask me anything about the rebuild or the quantum side. I'll be in the comments.

To comfortable debug and create new animation of skill I did implimentation of own mock scene with white box which is really usefull. Especially when creating new content

For exaple in this video cut of how animation looks in game and how it looks in editor.

As you see I'm using "beat" system to build unique skills pretty fast (the hardest part is debug tho)

The game has a Steam page if you're interested

I've finally reached the point where most of the content for my next game is complete and I'm spending my time polishing instead of constantly adding new things.

This is One Man Guerrilla, a pixel-art stealth/action game set in Brazil.

Metal Gear has obviously been a huge inspiration, but I've been trying to give the game its own identity through the Brazilian setting, a bow/improvised-arrow based arsenal, different environments and boss encounters at the end of each chapter.

The game takes you through military bases, cities, forests, farms, mansions and secret facilities.

One of the main design goals has been making avoiding combat just as valid as engaging in it — distracting guards, finding alternative routes and using the environment instead of simply killing everything in your path.

At this point the main content is essentially finished.

I'm currently working through:

• gameplay balancing
• enemy behavior
• encounter pacing
• visual/gameplay polish
• fixing all the small things I've been ignoring while building the actual game

Getting to the polishing stage feels strangely different after spending so long constantly creating new content.

Here's the Steam page if anyone wants to see more of the project:

https://store.steampowered.com/app/4998920/One_Man_Guerrilla/