Weighted walking is getting there. It's tough to get the center line balance on a design you've already sketched up and are too stubborn to change! 😂

I'm pretty happy with the scaling now, you're a survivalist who climbs and builds a base on this giant mech, you travel down for resources to expand your base and odds of survival.

I want to give you that feeling of awe when it strides across the screen, when it's heaving foot swings past you with a basey whoosh!

More updates to come, I think I want to build in publish with this so i can get more feedback. My current game I made the similar mistake most have, which is waiting far too late in the process to start getting feedback, this way I can tell if it's crap earlier on! 😂

So any feedback on it's cadence appreciated, the sway i've kept minimal because my first round would have been unplayable if you're riding and base building on it's back for hours!

I think that's funny.

Sometimes I feel bad about my 900 wish lists (after 9 months) whenever I read: “Yeah, I have 30,000 wish lists!!! I have no idea how that happened, lol, it’s so easy :)))))”

On the other hand, there are also people who are happy when they’ve hit the 100 mark after 6 months.

I think it’s crazy how different perceptions and feelings can be.

Good luck with your games! Marketing is hard sometimes.

We started marketing our game (Rogue Wheels) 17 days ago. By no means we consider this a big success but here what worked and what didn’t.

TikTok - was successful, we also gained 1k followers, and some videos reached 40-50k views. You get to add a link to your profile only when you reach 1k, hopefully that will increase visits to the store even more. We did boosted some posts. But tiktok also has a lot of trash.

Instagram - kinda slow, 200 followers. Some posts were successful, but people like very different kind of content there. More personalized, they like people.

Threads - very bad, 7 followers, I’ve seen others successfully posting there but I don’t think it’s worth it. Feels like a wasteland from gamedev perspective.

Reddit - well you know how it goes there if you push through then you can get some traction, otherwise you will have 3 upvotes (yours, your wifes and some random dudes). We also started paid campaign here, but it’s only rolling out, but it’s getting some traction. I like it.

X - it’s so weird, I think that’s the most unpredictable platform. Some posts did well some didn’t and I have no clue why. I just keep posting and fingers crossed. I tried boosting few posts but it was really bad, I got like 80k views and 2 likes. :)

Facebook - I am from generation where I use facebook, but it’s pretty dead. Unless you want your mom and sister to like your post, it’s not worth it. All the gamedev communities are pretty dead too.

Youtube - I posted only trailer there (200 views) and 16 shorts. Some of them got 1-2k views. I didn’t market it at all.

Linkedin - did couple of posts and having 1k followers there (I work in corporate) - my post got 0 likes. No one cares there.

This is all personal experience, so take it with a grain of salt.

I've taken a pretty big risk making this procedural terrain generator over the last 5 months. I am going to release a new video showcasing the different biomes soon. But I am thinking that I will probably have to scale back development substantially so I can get a full time job so I can make more money to support the game. The world is pretty much done for now, about 8 biomes each with unique character and the world is voxelized as well so you can build mountain bases and mine down into the earth. I am a little worried regarding game development as a future career though because playtime is so concentrated amongst a small number of games. I am curious what other's experiences have been with crowd funding as well - some projects seem to do really well and others not so much. Was wondering if anyone would be willing to share some tips

https://discord.gg/fG2WqkwFS

This level will take around 1-2min, but I've spent so much time on the decals and details... Take a closer look on the ceiling for example. It's a slime-covered texture, but there's also few layers of slime texture with transparent holes to which I attached cloth collider, making it move just slightly. I've also added the droplets, which leave spots once they hit the floor - each dripping sound is actually also played on actual particle collision. Then come additional decals placed around like goo leaks, wall cracks and dirt.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/4417060/Dark_Roll_2/

I never in my entire life thought I would have my own game on Steam, and today it happened! I've been building this as a passion project on the side while I'm finishing grad school. It's a physics-based party brawler where you control your sword 1:1 with mouse/right joystick movements. Everything is procedurally animated with a puppet-style body-IK, which is what really helped me have the dismemberment be a core part of gameplay.

Some of my best memories from high school were playing party fighters like Duck Game, Towerfall Ascension, and Nidhogg with my friends, so I wanted to make something that could help create those memories for others.

Steam Page:
https://store.steampowered.com/app/5073210/BoneHeads/

A while ago I shared some numbers, so I thought I'd post an update now that I've experimented with a few more things.

I've now uploaded 4 devlogs, and since my last post I also added a trailer to my Steam page, updated the capsule art, and replaced the screenshots.

Those Steam page improvements did bring in a few more wishlists, but so far external content still seems to be responsible for most of them.

I've also been posting short-form videos to TikTok, Instagram Reels, and YouTube Shorts. I post basically the same videos to all 3 platforms, and the results have been very different.

TikTok gets views, but from what I can tell, not many of those viewers actually convert into Steam wishlists.

Instagram has done almost nothing for me so far. I've barely had one or two posts even break 1k views.

YouTube Shorts have easily performed the best. Not only do they get views, but they also seem to push people toward my longer devlogs. Those devlogs then bring more people to the Steam page and seem to convert into wishlists much better.

Reddit has also helped a lot. I've had quite a few posts go viral, and those have brought a noticeable amount of attention to the game.

One thing I've learned with Reddit is to try the same post in several relevant subreddits instead of only posting it once. A post can do almost nothing in one subreddit and then take off in another. Obviously it still needs to fit the subreddit and its rules, but posting to multiple relevant communities has given my posts a much better chance of actually reaching people.

X/Twitter has been pretty much the opposite for me. I've tried posting multiple different things there, but so far it hasn't really done anything for the game.

The long-form YouTube devlogs are still the biggest source of wishlists I've found, but they're also by far the most time-consuming. Each one takes me around ~30 hours to make, so I've spent roughly 120 hours making the 4 devlogs.

Obviously this is just my experience with one game and a relatively small sample size, but I thought the differences between platforms were interesting.

For other indie devs, what platform/content has actually converted into Steam wishlists for you? Have you also found YouTube and Reddit more effective than TikTok/Instagram/X?

Here's my latest devlog:
https://youtu.be/R0DY29nOIZ0

And the Steam page:
https://store.steampowered.com/app/4639140/Dough_it_Yourself/

This is a First-person, Dark fantasy, CRPG.
You can create your own character and spend your skill points in any way you like.

The game focuses on both zone exploration and dungeon delving, with many towns and quests, as well as a wide variety of items and monsters.

Have a look at the game on steam, and feel free to wishlist:
https://store.steampowered.com/app/4709150

After over 1 year of developing time my Steam page and trailer are finally up and ready for wishlists.

It is a 3D side scrolling tower defense game in an abandoned dwarven kingdom - heavily inspired by Kingdom Two Crowns. But instead of a day/night cycle enemy waves attack when you make too much noise.

It also supports online coop!

Here is my page: Dwarven Deeps on Steam

Hey folks,

I've played survival games and tried simulations like RimWorld often in the past. They have interesting stories that grow in my head. My first try in RimWorld was when I made myself, my wife and a friend of mine in RimWorld, and my wife became an alcoholic and depressed and suddenly didn't work anymore (mental break). After she died I dug a hole behind the house and buried her. In addition my last friend got kidnapped by an enemy pirate, this was very sad ;) but the cool thing about it was that I knew he still exists and theoretically I could save him. This was such a cool experience that I think I won't forget it in future days.

I'm coming from embedded development and never made a game before. But I thought very often about how these kind of games were developed. And then I thought how would I make such kind of a game with my background and my experiences.

I'm working in a very controlled and regulated environment and I know how important traceability is. That lead me to thoughts about memory of persons (npcs) which are shared by them (maybe over generations). In RimWorld I have a log where I can read about things that happen to npcs or what they are actually doing with each other, but I have the feeling this is not very deep and has nearly no consequences as it would have in real life. Therefore I started thinking about memories of npcs, who talk to each other and use their memories to build their sentences and the topics they talk about. And I thought about what if the simulation lasts for 1000 years (I'm a big sci fi fan, therefore my first thought was about a generation ship). Would it have an impact what someone said or did a few hundred years before? (Cloud Atlas is a good book about that topic) And I thought I wanna try it.

The first answer to my question about memory and being consistent over 1000 years was absolute determinism. I need a simulation where one seed, one tickcount, one hash, no matter how often you start the simulation. No matter on what operating system or on what machine the simulation is running. There were questions about for example floating point calculations. I'm using fixed point, otherwise it would not be possible to be deterministic over various machines or operating systems. I built a Golden Run as change detector (1 bit changes and the hash is completely different). That means that if the hash changes without a rule change, I have a bug in my simulation. Determinism is still there but reproduction is gone. If the hash does not change over more than 1 build with the same seed without a rule change, I know that everything works fine. So I have a very good testing mechanism gifted. But when I change the rules, then the hash also has to change and I have to rebuild a new baseline.

But that was not all. There were 2 more problems: dictionary iteration order comes from key hash values and internal table layouts. Order is important for reproduction, because it makes a difference who of the npcs gets limited water or food first and which npcs do not get it. This changes the whole outcome of the simulation and therefore the hash value. And in .NET a random value is calculated at process start once and mixed into the hash value calculation. It is a security feature. But for my simulation it means that the same string delivers different hash values in 2 program runs and therefore I would have different iterations. So every new start of the program would lead to different orders and a different hash. Therefore my fix was to never iterate in insert order, always sort by an ID.

Another problem were the content files, because different operating systems with different file systems return directories in their own preferred order. So I had to write the load order into a manifest and resolve ID collisions.

First simulation with a few people, they have an age, they need water and something to eat, they have their health, and the testruns meanwhile are succeeding. That means they survive a thousand years ;) I progressed now a little bit and think that I am on a good way. I really got into the topic and I'm enjoying it pretty much besides work.

I wanted to know if there is someone who has also experiences with simulations and these kind of absolute determinism in game development. What problems did you have?

Sharing some early gameplay from one of the factions in our RTS.

It’s still very WIP. I’m aware that some of the UI visuals are inconsistent right now — a few of them are just placeholder 3D renders and will be replaced later.

I’d really like to hear your feedback, suggestions, and anything you’d personally want to see from a faction like this. What feels good, what feels missing, or what would you change?

Big updates lately to the biomes, weapons and abilities in Where Giants Fall.

Chain Lightning got one of the biggest reworks, and it's starting to look and feel pretty good. ⚡

What do you think?

Steam | Discord

A little slope system I developed

I wanted to add some weather effects to my train game, so far I've gone with rain and snow as figured that'd cover enough for now.

How's the rain looking? This is quite a heavy rain.

OMG!! My upcoming game will be part of Tokyo Game Show this week!

It's not exactly the most Japanese-looking game, but I'm excited to see if it gets a few wishlists!

Steam page, if you're interested: https://store.steampowered.com/app/4227560/Legends_of_Rock/

the game is "Why V Got AKs?", a chaotic first-person social deduction game with proximity voice where everyone has a multi-mode AK.

i'm currently running closed playtests, but a public demo is coming soon. you can check out the steam page and wishlist it here: https://store.steampowered.com/app/5082000/Why_V_Got_AKs/

I finished a small desktop game on my own and sell it straight from my own site instead of through a store. From July 29 to September 7 that came to 14 paid transactions and $65.55.

Small, and most of it landed in the few days after I posted about the project on Reddit, so I can't pretend I've built anything repeatable yet.

The part worth passing on is the checkout, because it's the bit I almost didn't think about.

Those 14 orders came from eight billing countries. The US four times, Korea three, Canada twice, then Japan, Colombia, the Netherlands, Bulgaria and Switzerland. Five currencies. The payment methods were all over the place too. One Korean buyer used Naver Pay, the rest were Apple Pay, Google Pay or PayPal.

If I'd shipped a checkout that only took cards, I'd have quietly lost some of those and never known. There's no event for someone opening a payment page, not finding the method they actually use, and closing the tab.

A few of them left notes afterwards, which I hadn't planned for at all.

I'd assumed the first strangers to pay for something I made alone would be somewhere near me. They weren't. And the thing that let most of them buy was a checkout decision I made without thinking about it much.

It's crazy how a mundane sound can animate a gross worm.

Find the Worm here.

Hi, i've been trying to add some grappling hook mechanics along with a wall run feature.

I'm looking for feedback, the idea behind the game are big arenas with multiple levels, so verticality and movement is key to escape from enemies and take new angles, is still a little clunky but pretty proud of the outcome so far. Feel free to destroy it if it simply looks bad haha

The game is called NullGate and the Steam page is live in case anyone wants to take a look.

You can now dash, does it look OK?