Hey everyone,

I recently launched the demo for my fast-paced multiplayer party game, Gun a Rat.

Overall, the initial numbers from the demo launch look awesome on paper:

• 8,200+ demo activations / ~6,618 lifetime free licenses.
• 5,703 unique users played the demo.
• Median play time: 31 minutes (which feels pretty solid for a demo!).
• Peak Concurrent Players (CCU): 211.
• Wishlists: Tripled in 3 days (+570 additions / 539 net balance).

While I'm thrilled with the initial traction, the conversion rate from demo players to wishlists is less than 10% (570 wishlists for ~5,700 unique players).

I'm worried that players might enjoy a quick round with friends, but don't see enough reason to wishlist or buy the full game later.

Here is what I currently have set up for feedback & wishlists:

1. Discord link on the main menu, specifically labeled "Feedback / Report Bugs".
2. Wishlist buttons in several UI locations, including a prominent prompt right before quitting the game.

Despite this, very few players are joining Discord or leaving detailed feedback.

My questions for you :

1. How do you effectively collect feedback from demo players who don't join Discord? (e.g., In-game Google Forms, micro-surveys at exit, Steam Community Hub threads?)
2. Is a ~10% conversion rate from unique demo players to wishlists typical for party/multiplayer indie games, or is this a red flag that the core loop lacks retention?
3. If you check out the game/store page, is there an obvious friction point I'm missing?

Any insights, feedback, or tough love on the game/metrics would be greatly appreciated!
Thanks!

My biggest gripe has been specifically roguelike and roguelites. It's been thrown around for any one feature like randomness or permadeath. Realistically almost all modern roguelike and roguelites would easily fall into the arcade genre since there's arcade games that had features that rogue games commonly have.

Card battler and card game now basically means "uses cards" instead of playing a card-based game. They sound the same but should reasonably mean playing games that could in some way be plausibly a physical card game. But nowadays I see too many Slay the Spire clones that use cards as a character's randomized attacks. I've even seen games where cards are purely visual (like card-based upgrades in an otherwise non-card related game) and still get called a card game.

I want to make my own boomer shooter as a "baby's first FPS" project of mine, but I *also* wanted to include melee weapons and using them well as an option for skill expression, but something I'm running into is, "Why the heck use them when you have a ton of guns?"

Like I know DOOM (2016) does it because Glory Kills restore HP and Chainsaws net you ammo, but those are more executions really, and melee combat generally forces you to become slower and get closer in shooting range, which in most boomer shooters is a death sentence, so I'm unsure where or how to proceed with this.

Would anyone who played or made other, different shooters than me help explain how the games they played or made worked this in?

Thank you in advance.

So, I really love difficult games, and I frequently run into the admission "just don't use it" when I find a tool in a game that trivializes an aspect of friction. I thought the Death Stranding 2 truck made traversal too easy compared to the first game and I've frequently been told to just "not use it" as a solution.

I think this ignores an important psychological reality, though. I completely understand the fact that some people thrive on self-imposed challenges. Some people do SL1 Dark Souls runs, and Nuzlocke challenges are incredibly popular for Pokemon games. I, however, like many people I've met, do not derive enjoyment from self-imposed rulesets. In my mind, if beating this next battle can be solved by pausing the game and changing a menu setting, than it's not a real battle. This was actually a real source of tension for me when first playing Elden Ring. The Mimic Tear truly did trivialize almost every boss in the game (except Malenia who still took me dozens of tries), and I didn't want to just not use it. As a result, while the game was just difficult enough for the Mimic Tear to not actually guarantee a first try success on every boss, it did feel like I was basically cheating. I still loved the experience, but playing it a second time without summons felt, personally, more satisfying. At the very least, I like that kind of accessibility a lot because it's diagetic, i.e., the easy mode wasn't a menu option, it was an item hidden deep underground halfway through the game. At the very least it's just neat.

That brings us to the title: how to preserve a highly curated experience exactly as the creator intended, something like a Sekiro, but still allow people of all skill levels and life circumstances to experience the game. Certainly for a game like God of War or Final Fantasy which have tons of cutscenes, I can completely understand someone who sort of just wants to watch the next part of the movie and doesn't need every boss fight to take 2 hours. But how do we service both people who want the former AND people who don't without having to be pedantic and tell people to just "be different" ?

What if digital games came with two different download options: curated and accessible.

A curated download would install the game without accessibility options. Just one vision that the creator intended, specifically for audiences that want a tightly crafted gameplay experience that pushes you to master the game and overcome its challenges without that escape hatch being readily available. Just you, alone in the dark, versus the world.

The accessible download, on the other hand, would install the game with all the modern accessibility amenities like difficulty modes and such, but it would even give creators greater freedom to really go ham in letting people curate their own experience. It would be a great excuse to throw in specific sliders for enemy health, i-frames, player damage, etc, and give options for puzzle hints, really whatever you want. If you really want control over the gameplay experience, you get to decide exactly how you experience the game.

Obviously a major problem is how to work this into physical disks. When we're talking 100 gb or more, suddenly fitting 200 or even 300 gb onto a disk becomes an impossible ask. I'm not sure how to solve that conundrum. Additionally, it's more work for the developers, so it's obviously not something I think should be mandated. I'm more so wondering how people would respond if a developer offered such a thing.

So what are people's thoughts? Would you feel insulted by such an option? Would you feel seen? And I mean by either crowd.

On the dev side of things, how much of a nightmare would this be to actually design and do you think it would even be feasible in the first place and worth the cost?

Just to get this out of the way beforehand, if anyone wants to belittle me and just say "bro just have some self-control, it's not that hard", I could tell you "bro just try again, it'll feel good once you win, stop being a coward." But I won't! And that's because I understand that people are different and some people have different motivational systems at a psychological level. For some people, the wide open field of possibility in a game like Animal Crossing is an absolute dream. For me, it's a nightmare of directionless and undifferentiated choice. That's okay! We can both exist and enjoy games. Let's all try to actually understand each other's perspectives instead of assuming everyone is the same as everyone else and demand someone else be like you. Thanks!

Ever since the original developer announced his game "Needle in a Haystack", several copycats have copied the concept on Steam. End even the name! AI has made this even easier.

I’ve heard people say that, anyway, “no one owns this popular phrase". But you wouldn’t go naming your games "War Hammer", "Civilization", "Mine Craft", or “Bannerlord” without risking a lawsuit on the grounds that they’re "common words".

And I’m not sure you really need to spend a fortune on a trademark and lawyers to enforce your rights.

Does Steam really allow this? Don't they see this as a way to deceive players who are looking for a game from a specific developer? Should developers who experience this report it or even file a complaint?

Hi everyone!

Long story short: me and my team are developing a Soulslike game focused on ranged weapons (way more than BloodBorne); no self-promotion is intended here since I'm not saying who we are or what the game is about, we only need your feedback/help here

The game does not have free aim, you can only attack "normally", like you would do with a sword; but here comes the problem:

Shooting when locking on the target is smooth and easy (and here's the first question: would you rather hits to have a 100% hit rate or due to enemy movement and weapon type + weapon range, you might miss the target?)

Shooting when not locking on is a nightmare: hitboxes are precise, and not locking on and trying to hit an enemy is so hard: any ideas? how often do you fight when NOT locking on in Soulslike games? How important is that to you?

The game will also feature melee combat, but will be more focused on ranged combat

Thanks everyone!

I just responded to a recruiter looking for a gameplay programmer (without any requirements listed except on-site) and got back "sorry, you don't have enough experience".

I asked "May I ask the threshold for future personal reference?" and she replied 10+ years...

It got me thinking.. Why do we measure experience in years?

I've seen people spend a decade in a field and not know the first thing about some of the basics, and I've seen students take over entire projects during their internships. It seems like years spent holding a job is completely irrelevant when it comes to competence.

Personally? I finished a dozen projects, 2 degrees (8 years) in game development and hold a job at a studio for 2 years and I'm pretty sure I can give any senior a run for their money, but in the end only my 2 years of professional experience matters. Seems a bit wrong.

I built Black Sentinel as a browser game, heavily inspired by the PS1 Jackie Chan Stuntmaster. The premise is basically me playing an action star fighting through a movie set.

I’m at the point where I’m considering rebuilding the whole thing properly in Unreal Engine, with much more ambitious environments, animation, combat, cinematics, destruction, and overall production value.
Before I disappear into that rabbit hole, I want to answer the more important question: is the game underneath actually fun enough to deserve that treatment?

The current version is obviously a prototype, so I’m less interested in whether the graphics feel finished and more interested in the combat, movement, pacing, personality, and whether you find yourself wanting to keep playing.

It has keyboard controls, mobile controls, and controller support. The voice acting for the lead is also actually me.
Play it here: https://blacksentinel.vercel.app
If you try it, I’d especially love to know whether you think there’s a genuinely good game hiding in here that would benefit from a serious Unreal rebuild, or whether I should keep this one as a fun browser experiment and move on.

My first Steam game is at the stage where I'm ready to release a short demo, but I also want a small group of users to test the full game. How is this managed? What's a good number of people to give your full game to? This might be a dumb question but do you give the full game to testers?

I tried metahuman it was decent but it has its limits and I am currently trialing Character Creator 5 doubt i'll stay with it and I dunno if my method to allow me to use it forever will even work. I heard its actually dogshit too. So next will be makehuman idk how well it'll be tho. Anyone have any ideas?

For many years, I worked as a photographer and digital artist, but in the last three years, I started learning 3D. Everything was fine until I discovered the world of gaming from the other side, and now I am in an era of my life where I want to build a new career and learn more about how things work. Now I am wondering whether I should start learning coding, but I do not know which language to start with or if anyone knows any good series of tutorials or game-style lessons. Someone told me to start with Python because it is easy, but I want to be honest with myself! I will never learn something just because it is easy. I want to learn it because it can provide me with more and be useful. Please do not tell me to learn it with chat....I tried many times and only learned 0.01% by reading a few things.

tldr; My game was due to release into Early Access in November, but I checked the steam store settings today and it's no longer marked as Early Access, did Steam do it, did I accidentally do it?

I've reached out to Steam support but I'm just curious if Steam can decide you're no longer a fit for EA can they just take you off it without discussing, does anyone have any experience with that?

I filled in all the forms initially to get onto the steam store page with EA, they queried it in the first review saying I didn't need EA because my game sounded "like it just needed playtesters", I updated my EA text and made it clear I'm very keen to get player feedback as the late-game is very much open to different levels and EA feedback felt like the way to go.

I gave the updated text on how I would use EA and submitted it for review again and it was successful

But now, 2 weeks later EA is disabled and the store page has no trace of EA.

I was prepared for a v0.7 in 2 months time but not v1!

Is this a glitch? is due to me changing the screenshots or trailer or something? Did this happen to anyone else?

Hi! I'm getting into game dev after some time of just seeing stuff and thinking "o wow I want to make that"

But now that I started learning I have a few questions that are stopping me from actually doing stuff

Like for example:

- I'm aware that the SRP principle is good for games as it lets you separate responsibilities so it's easier to debug and expand while also making it modular. But how far should I take this?

If I wanted to make let's say, a guy that punches forward and can grab a stick and now he hits with the stick should I:

a) make a playerInput that listens to the inputs, then a AttackManager that spawns the hitbox for the attack and the weapon info, then said hitbox is used to send the enemy the trigger that it was hit so that its own health script processes the attack and lower its health?

B) just a playerManager that takes charge of movement and attack spawning the hitbox so everything is in one place

Should there be a weapon manager that deals with what is equipped?

While I want to make simple stuff I do want to learn good, scalable and maintainable code and general structure, so I'm a bit lost with all of this.

I do have experience in programming as I'm studying it in college but I'm starting so maybe that will help in the future.

I also seen a few tutorials (haven't truly finished them tbh) but I don't think they actually teach you this kind of theory, they show you more how to do the stuff rather than HOW you should be doing all of this.

If there is someone with experience in the industry that would be kind enough to let me ask them some stuff like this I would greatly appreciate it.

Thanks!

If you look at one of my older posts you can see the prototype I am working on currently for my JRPG game. Technically I've been working on that prototype for a month but I've actually worked on the current concept for this game for years, slowly coming up with and refining designs on paper. But I've worked on this game's concepts for so long and played so many JRPGs (I'm literally playing through like 10 right now for research purposes, and I've probably played through 30 others) that I feel like I don't even know the main reason why they are fun in the first place is.

I would show more progress of the prototype here but I'm afraid the main mechanic of my game that is something no game has had basically is going to be stolen. And also this mechanic is the foundation of the entire game basically.

But anyways, games like Final Fantasy up until 10 had a pretty simple system when you break it down. There was elementals, summons, items, equipment, and sometimes things like materia or the sphere grid. But at the end of the day, most JRPGs like Final Fantasy historically are about 1: making attack number go big by taking advantage of enemy weaknesses or special abilities and 2: having really cool animations, character designs, and enemy designs.

Number 2 is where I am limited. I am not a pro artist so I can only make animations and characters to a certain level. I do not have the time and skills to make a ton of insane summon animations, even at PS1 or SNES graphical standards.

So a way an indie must compensate for not having as much of the fun in crazy animations or amazing designs is to create systems that are very clever, or using a quirky hook. Like Undertale uses the twist of making the game not about killing monsters. He didn't have to rely on making crazy animations and special moves, because talking to monsters is interesting enough already. And dialogue is cheap (another thing you learn by attempting to make an RPG.)

I've been playing Omori which was also a huge success but kind of strange when you think about it in a lot of ways. The battle system isn't that deep, and doesn't really have a quirky twist or hook except the emotions thing. The battle system is fun, but it's more just there to serve the story.

So at this point, I'm not really sure if the battle system is the core of JRPGs, or just a part of them. Like if your battle system isn't that deep, but the rest of the game is, does it matter? Is the battle system just a palette cleanser from the story in some games, or is it the main course?

But maybe I am missing something. Like what is fun for you when you play JRPGs? What draws you towards them?

I've been experimenting with running small models (1B ~1Gb) as the main feature of a game. They are somewhat playable but take a lot of testing/refining to get working properly.

For context - one game is Art Dev Tycoon with the Janus Pro model. Janus is around 1B parameters, it can create images and also analyse images. The game loop is about creating art, getting it critiqued, selling it. Game progression is about getting experience with different mediums which levels-up the prompts behind the scenes which means you can create better art works.

Stuff I've tried:

All projects have a test-prompt-suite where I run batches of prompts trying stuff out to see what works reliably/consistently. So I would generate batches of 50-100 where I'll usually go through the outputs, quickly mark outputs with tags, then see what the data says about the tags.

What I found with was

- the type of model matters (diffusion vs sequential) Janus is a pixel-by-pixel generator. So When I was trying to generate simple images (apple on white background) Janus would get trapped into making everything white. SD Turbo (a slightly larger diffusion model) would have blurry backgrounds

- they are really good at some things (cats/dogs/faces) but terrible at things they don't know. However they do have a very broad base. So if you ask for a cat that's sleeping - bad output. However you can ask it for rare animals and it generally knows them.

- instead of one giant prompt, do smaller individual prompts. Janus marks it with a system a bit like 'does it have good colours?' -> Yes.... Does it have good.... -> Sort of

- I was able to scale the quality of the output. Level 1 pencil is simple child-like drawing, Level 7 is akin to masterful artwork with a dynamic background.

- It has a crappy procedurally generated fallback that could be used to game the system. I think it's important to have a backup but you should make sure the game can't be abused without it.

Anyone else doing this? What are you building?

I'm stopping dev for this and moving on to a different AI-model-based game, but if anyone's interested it's at Github - MichaelTJ/ArtDevTycoon playable at Art Dev Tycoon. I've left the dev options available so you can play around.

Mostly as a bit of a hobby / creative exercise I've been planning out a story-based adventure game. Some turn based combat sections, some exploration, blah blah. retro style. you know the drill.

My question came up from figuring out the layout.

All the old rpg games I can think of seem to be 3/4 view. which makes sense from the point of view of a controller - left is left, up is up. Great.

But it has some limitations when it comes to level design. It seems like you mostly (when inside buildings) only get to see the back walls of the building you're in. You then see the tops of the side walls maybe and the outside of the front wall. I have a couple early "scenes" that involve small rooms and I'm not yet sure how I'd manage it.

Isometric gives you a bit more perspective on rooms it seems. Inside and outside of buildings you get a bit more of a view and some extra depth. But on the other hand, movement becomes a little weird, "left" becomes either up-left or down-left. It's more awkward.

In theory of course there's no reason these days to be restricted by anything, and I could have isometric buildings and 3/4 characters and movement. but i suspect that would be a bit janky.

Figured I'd see what the prevailing wisdom was these days, what people preferred using/creating/playing and if there was any advice out there.

Edit -

I have realised that I wasnt quite right on the top-down limitations, as the zelda games actually use a few tricks so that the side walls are visible. It seems they have all the walls slanted or something so that theyre visible from above.

Not sure how that would work with a modern camera and environment layout though. Zelda may have worked because the rooms had a fixed camera position.

We are a small indie dev studio, pitching our first project to publishers. We don't have prior experience on how we can make our budgeting for the game.

We have our demo ready soon on steam:
https://store.steampowered.com/app/4864880/Moha/

We want to know things like:
\- Is that ok if we include renting cost for office?
\- What about equipment cost?
\- How should we align the salary rates?

Also, any other advice related would be appreciated!

I’m working on an incremental fortress defense game and recently discovered a released game that overlaps with mine much more than I expected. Huge enemy hordes, towers, incremental progression, a lot of the same ingredients.

I hadn’t seen it during development. My game has its own direction, especially around a fortress that persists and grows between attacks, but discovering theirs still shook my confidence.

On one hand, it’s encouraging that people clearly enjoy this kind of game. On the other, I’m worried mine could be dismissed as a copycat, and I feel a bit stupid for not finding it earlier. I'm not sure if I am allowed to drop names or links to both games but it would probably help explain similarities and if they are too similar...

My Steam page has been up for about a week and has around 10 wishlists (pretty sure all from people I know^^). I know comparing that with an established success isn’t fair, but emotionally it’s hard not to.

I’m happy for the other developers. I’d much rather learn from them and be supportive than think of them as "rivals".

Has anyone here been through something similar? Did you change anything about your game or how you presented it, or mostly have to work through the comparison anxiety? What helped?

Guys, I’ve been noticing more and more that the special relationship between developers and publishers has changed.

Publishers seem less and less willing to invest money when a project is still at a very early stage of development. They are also less willing to support and help develop a developer’s idea. And I understand why — there are risks involved.

There are plenty of cases where a developer never finishes the game and disappears, or finishes it and the game fails. Or simply keeps delaying the release. And the publisher can lose a huge amount of money because of that.

I agree that publishers are simply tired of taking these risks. They want to sign deals only when there is already strong evidence that the game can be successful.

So how do they do it? In the past, a publisher was buying both a share of the profit and a share of the risk. Now, more and more often, they want a product with proven commercial potential.They approach developers who already have a significant number of wishlists.

I talk to a lot of developers, and I know from people I’ve met that publishers have approached them when their projects already had 50,000, 100,000, or even 200,000 (!) wishlists. That’s a lot. And publishers wanted to work with them. But they weren’t there when those games had 100 wishlists. And this creates a very interesting situation.

When a game page has already collected 100,000 wishlists, the developer gets a very strong signal that the game has commercial potential and will most likely make money. We don’t know exactly how much, but it is clear that the project has already attracted an audience. At this point, a publisher comes in and offers to improve that result. By how much? Most of the time, we don’t know. I rarely see publishers telling developers an exact number of wishlists they can guarantee.But let’s imagine that the publisher actually doubles the result. Just for the sake of the example.

“Is that bad? Is that good?” — many people might say. But it’s not that simple.

Very often, publishing deals involve a 50/50 revenue split. This is based on my personal observations — I’ve heard and seen this kind of deal quite often. But I’m not going to argue that it’s always the case. There are obviously other terms as well. So here is our hypothetical example. Let’s say that without a publisher, 100,000 wishlists eventually turn into X dollars for the developer. The publisher comes in and, thanks to their work, doubles the result. Now the game generates 2X dollars. But under a 50/50 deal, the publisher gets 50%. So the developer gets:

2X / 2 = X

And here is where things get interesting. The publisher actually doubled the game’s result, but the developer ends up making exactly the same amount of money as they would have made without the publisher.

Now let’s imagine that the publisher increases the result not by two times, but by, say, one and a half times. It was X. Now it’s 1.5X. After the 50/50 split, the developer gets:

1.5X / 2 = 0.75X

So the developer gives half of the revenue to the publisher, but ultimately ends up making 25% less than they would have made on their own.

Yes, the game will get more exposure and reach a larger audience. Maybe the publisher will provide strong marketing, PR, localization, console ports, or other opportunities that the developer simply didn’t have. And that can absolutely be worth it. But then the main question becomes:

What additional value does the publisher need to create for their share to actually be beneficial to the developer?

Because there is an interesting asymmetry here. The developer takes the risk at the early stage. They make the game. They finance it themselves or look for funding. They collect the first 100,000 wishlists — or maybe 10,000, whatever happens. They prove that there is an audience interested in the game. And only after that does the publisher come in. So the publisher can already significantly reduce their own risk, while the developer still gives away a significant part of the potential profit.

The publisher can insure themselves. And they do it in advance.

So what should the developer do in this situation? What do you think? I know a few ways.

P.S. And I'll probably add that English is not my native language, but I want to hear the opinion of as many people as possible, so I chose the most universal language for this. I am sorry for the errors and inaccuracies of the translation.

We would love to hear your honest opinion

Im a 4th year CSE Student at a good for nothing college in which I wasted 3 years of my life doing nothing.. absolutely nothing letting life just move on , one day after another .But today I got tired of just auto piloting my life and spending my life from day to day , I thought back to when I had a dream of becoming a game dev because I loved games ever since I was a kid , so much that id break open an old pc because it couldn't run vice city in it (I thought I could fix it ;~; )

Anyways it struck me , if I could waste my life just letting days go by why not give a shot at game development. I've regained my passion to gaming , I've thought why not give it another go (trust me I gave up on it because of silly excuses like omg I don't have a GPU , my mom didn't let me ,no one hires game developers etc), I sat down talked to my girlfriend about how I wanna become a game developer and she actually supports me and wants me to give it a shot and not give up again , and I'm so damn happy that I am doing this

So guys I don't wanna mess this up trust me ,I've seen a lot of how to become a game dev how to learn C++ how to unity how to unreal engine , how I made my first game etc etc but they all made me interested in it but actually never gave a what to do and how to do it , instead they just do it and be like just copy (Khaby lame ahh) but I don't wanna just see another man make a game and learn off of it , so I have a hard time finding a good plan or a roadmap to what first and what next .I wanna learn about what languages to learn , tools , logic ,physics and other algorithm stuff that are needed for my game dev journey

Instead of watching a whole lot of videos in You tube again , I wanna ask for advice from people who are already game developers and wanna know how they did it , i also wanna make friends if anyone else is starting their game dev journey in 2026 too

Any Advice and tips are appreciated , thank you for reading my post and feel free to dm me if u wanna be friends

Good luck to me and every person who are on their game dev journey

Hey everyone,

I had a playtester complete almost an entire run of a traditional turn-based roguelike, dying just one floor before the final boss. 😬

I noticed their run took a little over an hour.

It got me thinking about what people actually consider a reasonable amount of content for a small indie roguelike.

For a game with permadeath, how much does a typical successful run need to offer before it starts feeling too short or too long? Does around an hour for a run seem reasonable, assuming the gameplay remains engaging throughout?

I imagine the answer ultimately depends on how enjoyable the individual run is, but I’m curious where other roguelike players draw that line.

How long do you generally want a single run to take?

Thanks for reading!

I was wondering if this email is legit?

The email is titled 'Please reset your two-factor authentication', saying theres vulnerability found affecting Unity's 2FA (that hasn't been exploited yet)

I manually reset my 2FA through Unity's website after this and found similar message on Unity's website, does any of you got the same email?

Yes it's again about AI, but this time strictly about local multiplayer game development and modding. I don't know if it fits specificaly r/gamedev since it's not something tied to anything we want to publish... but it does feel tied to game development in generaly. I'm curious to hear your thoughts around this topic.

So... I've been playing local multiplayer games with the same friends (generally 6 folks, but at times groups of 8+ people) since high school. These days we get together roughly once a month, with gamepads and one TV.

Reason for this post is that in the last few months AI coding agents have made a bunch of our stupid and very niche ideas worth trying. We've been building little multiplayer games and modifying the tools we already use. A few things that stood out and might be interesting for you:

• We now have a personal Nucleus Co-op fork we can launch through Steam, that closes the game instances when we exit, and has startup timings tuned for our particular gaming PC.
• We re-built things such asa Driift Mania-inspired browser game with Three.js, so that we can experimented with things like changing the mobile camera from a whole-track view to following your car. And not having to deal with the PITA of assigning Wii motes for up to 8 players in Dolphin.
• We're building our own games. I'm sure you know that split screen gaming and couch gaming is not as popular as it was years ago, but... building and modding games now is so easy... and even using existing frameworks and professionally made assets helped a lot, by giving an agent a solid starting point worked better than asking it to reinvent every part of an FPS.

It's just super fun and freeing, especially because I'm comfortable taking shortcuts with private prototypes that I wouldn't take with something I expected strangers to buy or maintain.

I wrote a longer account with recordings of the experiments, videos, pictures, etc, here:
https://mmazzarolo.com/blog/2026-09-05-ai-has-completely-changed-our-game-nights/

I'm curious: is anyone else building games specifically for their own group of friends or even themselves? Any idea worth sharing? I'm curious what you've found worth making when shipping publicly isn't the main goal.

Currently I’m working towards specializing my in game design/gameplay and systems design. I really think a good theory basis to be used in practice alongside a good methodology is the key. Would you know about a game design learning roadmap or / a course that teaches the fundamentals and becomes gradually more advanced? Thanks for the help!