it’s the first boss in the game, so i want him to be pretty memorable

I'm a solo dev, and I've spent 4 days creating outlines for all 72 buildings of my incremental game, including specific outlines for each building upgrade. Some events also slightly change the outline of certain buildings.

They all come together on a village map that grows over time as you build and upgrade your village.

I was kind of happy and even a bit proud of how it turned out, to be honest.

Then my 5-year-old daughter passed by my work desk in the living room and asked, looking at the screen:

"Is that a pizza?"

So I guess I spent 4 days of work building a pizza.

But since she loves pizza, I'll take that as her seal of approval.

Link to pizza: https://a-dark-cave.com/

I was just bored and thought I'd make a simple game that I could have fun playing. After looking around for a bit, I found Fever Meme and decided to take inspiration from it. I made this game in just one day!There are 15 rooms in the game, and you enter each one through a different door. Every door is a surprise! Some let us in without any trouble, while others run away from us or even attack us lol.

My main goal is to make this game fun. If you don't find it fun enough, we can work together to make it more entertaining!Do you guys think this game looks fun? Every single one of your opinions means a lot to me!

Merlin and Mulligan! The standard playable wizards in my game, Conked Out. Their design philosophy has been to find a 'mario and luigi' pair who share similar simple colours and designs that remain appealing without being too complicated. I'd love some first-impressions feedback on whether they fit the bill?

If you're interested, there's a Demo on steam for the game where you can see more of their sprites and behaviour. It's a spoof fantasy roguelike where wands are gone so wizards are forced to duel with physics-based conkers controlled by spell cards. All feedback is greatly appreciated!

What can I do against this? We've discovered they have the EXACT same website copy pasted under a different name as well. My friend inspected the "game" download and it's some WPF app that's not a game. We're assuming it's some infostealer. It's blatantly obvious they're targeting my players because they put "a 2D sandbox MMO" in their description, which is exactly what my game is. I don't have the name trademarked but I've been publicly using it since 2024 and I've owned a domain for it.

What can I do against this? I wouldnt really care if it weren't the 3rd result on Google right below my website and my steam page. Has anyone here experienced anything similar?

We spent a year figuring out one ghost for Souls of Bombarika. Not rigging him, not animating him. Just getting him to look… right.

Turns out, having no pulse doesn't mean you can't have an identity crisis.

The final design took far longer than we'd like to admit, but we're pretty happy with where he landed.

What's the most ridiculous amount of time you've spent fixing something that players will probably never notice?

Linking the game in comments.

I keep seeing the same format: "After 4 years of work…", plus a cat or a desk photo if you're lucky. And honestly, it seems to work.

Is it the effort that gets people? The relatability? Or do we just all really like cats?

As for me: no cat (not even a stuffed one), and no desk photo, since I'd have to clean my desk first. But I did make a forensic mystery game, Bone to Pick, and it's joining Steam Next Fest.

Not judging. Just curious what makes it click for people.

Hey everyone! Hope all is well,

I'm John I'm a solo dev working on my project for a while now and I wanted to share the demo announcement for my game. The game is inspired by my favourite UFO Horror movies like Signs, Fire in the sky but the game itself is based on Project Blue Book.

I didn't want to show too much off of the demo level with the announcement so I think it shows the atmosphere of the game without spoiling much of it.

If anyone is interested in the game and wants to know more I'll link the steam page below 👽

Steam link: https://store.steampowered.com/app/4358700/Project_Blue_Files_Classified/

Thanks again to everyone for their support with the project!

So shortly, me and my friend were working on a incremental luggage opening game for the past few months. And recently we published the Steam page of it and started posting the game on social media.

We got lucky with the Twitter post and it got a lot of views. But after a few hours we noticed that our game got copied to Roblox. Some of the developers just replied to our post with their copy and there is probably more of them that we didn't see yet.

I guess this is the current state of game development.

It would be amazing if you wishlist our game and support us, thank you ❤️

We made the tree react to axe hit, particles, a bit of bending when the tree falls and some dust on ground impact.

What do you think? Anything you would add or change?

I have seen lot of indie devs being anxious about showing their work because of whats happening and I understand.

Also, I used to think of my game as a fun little hobby project because it was refreshing to build something without pressure after working professionally in game industry for three decades.. and that's why I used to share videos and screens from daily progress. The fun ended when I noticed someone taking those screens and feeding them to AI image generator on last winter, and amusingly, I also got piled on here in reddit when I mentioned that this is happening (someone accused me that I made it up).. well look where we are now.

For this reason, I have been keeping the new look of my game hidden from the public for 8 months now.
And turned out I did the right thing - there are now lot of bad actors ready and willing to clone anything in their sight using AI tools. For this reason, I won't be releasing demo either (but I am not saying you should do the same). I admit that even releasing a trailer makes me little nervous now.

Then again, I am very happy that I always pushed back whenever someone suggested to me that perhaps I should "just finish it" and ship my game quickly. The more I am taking my time and increasing the quality of this game, the harder it will be to rip off in a single weekend prompt by some inexperienced charlatan.
I firmly believe that you can prevail if you make quality, not quantity - or at least you can have more satisfying experience making it. Making money from games was already as likely as getting hit by a meteor in the early 90’s, and if you are in it for the money, I got some bad news for you.

(Decompilers are a different challenge to deal with, of course - they can absolutely copy anything you do, but then again that's outright piracy)

Those were sunday thoughts from someone who has been making games since 1990 and is now a solo dev. Feel free to agree or disagree.

Hey again! I shared my brother's Tiny Brutalism sandbox here a while ago, and the response was honestly incredible.

He's been working hard on it ever since, adding nature, new building possibilities, and even a way to walk around and parkour on your creations.

And now it finally has a Steam page!
I know a lot of you really connected with the atmosphere and visuals, so I thought you'd appreciate seeing how far it's come.

If you'd like to support him, wishlisting the game would mean a ton!
https://store.steampowered.com/app/5426130/

Since I was a pretty shitty artist 5 years ago, I made a pixelation tool called Ditherdragon to help me create weird mashup/photobashed pixelart sprites. And a lot of other people liked it enough to give me money haha
Over the years, a lot of stuff has changed, the best techniques have gotten more effective and most importantly I got a lot better at writing software :P

Now over the past few weeks I remade Ditherdragon entirely to be more performant and to have tons more SOTA features. The most important thing for me, is its muuuch improved detail retention when pixelating. Fine elements now carry over into the final image instead of disappearing.
Ditherdragon does NOT use GenAI, its all good ol' algorithms.

And its free for whoever owns the original Ditherdragon!

a Flower for you!

I'm 45, solo dev from Estonia, and this is my first serious game. Been into ants since I was a kid.

It's an ant farm that sits in the corner of your desktop. The ants dig tunnels, carry crumbs and look after the brood. You plan rooms and upgrade them, or just leave it running while you work and check on them later. There's also a cactus that sprouts under the lamp, and sometimes the ants dig up mutations for it. One of them is called Do Not Lick.

I really don't know if this is only for old guys like me or if younger players will like it too. If you have a minute to look, I'd be grateful for any feedback here. Thanks.

Early Access on Steam, Nov 30: Antmates on Steam

This is my third Steam game released but my first time participating in Next Fest, so I'm admittedly a little nervous! I'm eager to hear from folks who are also going into the Next Fest. This go around we've got the deck stacked against us, since there are yet again a record number of other games we're competing with for visibility (thanks, AI bros) and it doesn't seem like we'll be getting any kind of filtration for that this round either.

If you're entering a demo into tomorrow's Next Fest, drop a comment below with the link to your game, and if you're comfortable sharing, I'd be curious to know how many wishlists you're at now as we go into it. Fingers crossed we all do really well and get our games seen!

I'll go first! The game I'm entering into Next Fest is Edicts of the Truthsinger: the Orb of Artemagus, a mystery/detective game, and we're currently at 419 wishlists!

Originally, I made this game just for myself.

I live in Tajikistan. A few years ago, I went through a painful divorce. My daughter chose to stay with me, and we live together now. I’m grateful to have her beside me, but for a long time afterwards, I couldn’t find any peace. My mind kept going over everything.

One day, I decided to build a place where I could sit down, breathe out, and leave some of that noise outside. That became Memory House.

I wanted that feeling of being safe at home: dusk outside, rain tapping on the glass, wind rustling through the trees. Inside, there’s warm light and a crackling fireplace. You can read an illustrated story, leave a jigsaw half-finished, or open your own diary and write down whatever is on your mind.

I picked things that comforted me: those little hippo figures from 90s Kinder Surprise eggs, memories of Poirot, The Mentalist and Terminator, and the strange, melancholy fantasy atmosphere I loved in Morrowind. Very different things, but all part of my own memories. I wanted that familiar feeling of having a whole quiet evening ahead of me.

I’ve spent more than five months putting this house together. The free demo is now on Steam, and I’ve finally found the courage to share more of the story behind it.

Maybe someone else could use a quiet place to breathe tonight, too.

Free demo: https://store.steampowered.com/app/5345370/Memory_House/

I share development updates and welcome questions at r/GermesStudio.

These are in-game screenshots from development builds. The full-game showcase and trailer include content beyond the limited demo; the demo includes selected jigsaws, reading, the journal and the first era of Atlas.

Full-game trailer; demo activities are limited.

Couldn't help adding a musical element to my game. So far, it's used for fast travel, musical puzzles and rhythm challenges. Also, I just love handpans!

Yep, kei truck + harvester hybrid 🛻