a Flower for you!

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.

For transparency: I use generative AI to help with code, illustrations and writing. 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!

Sorry for the sass at the end, we couldn't resist 😭

Jokes aside, thanks to everyone who shared their keyboard setups and experiences in last week's post. It genuinely helped us decide to prioritize key rebinding for the demo!

https://orvask.com

Project team:

Director: Stan Dian

Programmer: ChatGPT

I don’t know the first thing about programming, so I want to be completely open about that. AI was also used to generate the artwork.

I came up with the game idea and directed its development through every prompt, update, change, addition and decision to remove something that wasn’t working. There have been plenty of sleepless nights getting it to this stage. ChatGPT wrote the code, while I kept playing, testing, making decisions and asking for changes until the game became what I wanted it to be.

I’m explaining this because some people have dismissed the game without even trying it, or told me I didn’t create anything because AI did the programming. Some of the responses have also crossed into trolling and personal abuse. Honest criticism is welcome, but I’d appreciate being able to discuss the actual game too.

Shigeru Miyamoto has described designing games while relying on programmers to implement them. His creative contribution still mattered. The comparison is about the role of a director: coming up with the experience and guiding its development is part of making a game.

ChatGPT existed long before Orvask did. This particular game came about because I had an idea and kept working with the tool to bring it to life. I wanted to create something, and this gave me a way to do it despite not knowing how to code.

I made Orvask, a puzzle game where you connect buildings with roads and try to match the minimum shown on screen. Getting everything connected is the easy part. Then you realise you’ve used one road too many, but every road looks necessary. Somewhere in that perfectly reasonable layout, there’s a better way.

It runs in your browser on phone or computer, with no download or account needed. There’s no timer, and your progress saves automatically.

Give it a go at "orvask.com" (https://orvask.com). I’d love some honest feedback, especially on whether finding that better route feels satisfying.

Hey everyone!

We've just released a major update for the Highschool J demo!

If you've already played the demo once, you might encounter a different experience on your next playthrough. We've also added new visuals and 3 new original music tracks that you can discover in-game.

If you're interested, give the updated demo a try! I'd love to hear your thoughts and feedback.

Steam demo: https://store.steampowered.com/app/5111980/Highschool_J/

We’ve been playing around with the idea that any sport, player or piece of equipment could become an enemy in Tiebreakers. Some bosses come from more realistic ideas, others get a bit more fantastical...

This one started as a “what if a golf ball was haunted” kind of idea and ended up becoming an Egyptian ghost golf ball boss.

Still tweaking some of the attacks, but we like how weird it feels

Hey all, I just finished a pixel art VFX pack. I'm happiest with the heat. Every blast starts near-white, drops through yellow and orange, and settles into charcoal before it fades. I draw it outside-in, not just faded down in opacity. I wrote a Python program that paints each frame from a fixed heat field and a fixed color ramp. Nothing gets upscaled or smoothed, and it never drifts between runs.

There's 16 effects: blasts, a chain explosion, debris, fire loops that run in all 8 directions, smoke, and dust kicks. I kept every size native instead of scaling it up. I also tried it in Compatibility mode early on, half expecting something to break, and it didn't.

I've got an older lightning pack too (my pixel beams & lightning pack), and I wanted both to sit in the same project without fighting each other. I gave every class its own prefix. Felt like overkill at the time, but I'd rather know that before someone emails me about it.

The gif is the showcase reel, all the effects back to back.

The pack: https://gennai.itch.io/arcbit-explosion-smoke-vfx Free version with the small explosion effect, fire theme, 2 sizes: https://gennai.itch.io/arcbit-explosion-lite

Today I’ve opened access to the demo of Patient Zero: Plague Idle. This is an idle/incremental game about developing a pathogen and spreading an outbreak across the world. The core gameplay revolves around collecting Biomass, upgrading infection rates, unlocking mutations, and progressing through multiple prestige layers.

You can experiment with different pathogen types, including viruses, bacteria, fungi, and nanobots, while adapting to medical research and global efforts to develop a cure. Progress continues while you’re away, with offline gains contributing to long-term progression.

The game was originally designed for mobile. I wanted to experiment with bringing a mobile idle game to Steam and see how its progression systems and overall gameplay translate to the PC audience.

The demo is now live, so if you enjoy idle and incremental games, give it a try and let me know what you think. I’m particularly interested in feedback on how an idle mobile game ported to desktop feels on PC.

Thanks for checking it out!

Check it out and sign up for the waitlist if you're interested at: merlinslibrary.net

It's half game, half program. You can start fresh and start writing from scratch, or just point the game at a folder with markdown, word or PDF files, and it'll fill the library with books written by you, or any other file you would like to read in here.

Find a nice place to relax and just read through the pages and become inspired by your surroundings. Fuck around a little with the magic and see what interesting things happen. The animals all have different personalities and wants and needs, so just watching them do stupid things like knocking books off of shelves or teasing each other really makes it feel like a home to come back to!

I would love to hear some opinions! Thanks for reading and watching!

People often left feedback on our posts regarding our trailer, so we decided to create a new one that incorporates all that audience input—and it’s truly a significant departure from the original version!

We’ve included far more gameplay footage, replacing the empty, sweeping camera shots of the environments. As for the remaining environmental shots, we’ve made sure they are as informative as possible, offering a better look at the game world.

We’ve also showcased a much wider array of abilities and bosses—elements that were almost entirely absent from the first trailer.

Furthermore, a voice actor collaborated with us on this new trailer, making it even more engaging and informative!

We hope you enjoy the new trailer, but even if you don’t, we remain open to constructive criticism so that we can take it into account moving forward!

So I have been developing an idle rpg style game for about a year and a half. I’m not even remotely close to being done but I have used AI to help with debugging and that’s about the extent of it in terms of AI to code. However, all my in game artwork is AI generated and it clearly looks AI generated (not horrible looking but just has the general markers for AI). The art it made does a solid job capturing exactly what I wanted. It makes the game UI look a lot more clean.

I was curious if you think AI artwork is enough to just off set a majority of people off a game entirely. While I understand some people are just completely anti AI. I was looking for your opinions. The game I hope to finish in the next year and push to steam for free. No ambitions other than looking to see if I can develop something that other people will like. A challenge to myself!

Anyone else have a game they made but used AI images? How did it go for you?

If you played a game with AI images did that really break any sort of immersion for you? Or is it simply the gameplay you care about?

Looking for all advice and insight!

I'm debating whether to update the trailer on my Steam page (the one with the logo).
I'm thinking of replacing the opening with this clip, but if there's any unnecessary footage at the start, people will probably just click away to another page, right?

https://store.steampowered.com/app/5197690/Endless_FPV/

Hey everyone! I’m still a bit in shock, but I recently sat down with Unity to break down my workflow and tech stack for porting Foxy Dumplings across platforms as a solo dev/tech pipeline lead.

Never in a million years did I expect this to happen, but Unity reached out to interview me about how I single-handedly manage porting Foxy Dumplings to multiple consoles and platforms.

You can read the full article here: unity.com/blog/foxy-dumplings

Happy to answer any questions about the porting process or our pipeline if anyone is currently tackling multi-platform builds for their own game!

I'm making a game set in the desolated world where Jesus was corrupted in the Mount of Olives and becomes the Antichrist bringing demons and undead to wreak havoc on the world. You are sent by God to defeat him and bring his flesh back to God so that he may wipe the earth clean and start again.

I'm going for a retro look and sound with pretty fast paced modern gameplay and mechanics like unlocking new abilities as you play, getting stronger as the game progresses and a wave survival system. 

The game currently has 2 weaker enemies, 4 minibosses that fuel the main gameplay loop and I'm working on a final boss battle.

I have a bunch of lore that I worked out in my head, but IDK how to integrate it into the game. Do I stop the game for periodic lore drops? Do I dump it all into an intro cutscene?? Do I give God a voice and have him speak during the gameplay? 

Does the game seem interesting? What could I add that could be fun? Currently the progression is linear, do I make it into a roguelike progression for replayability? 

Also I plan on making all the music in the game heavy/thrash metal that I'll write and record myself :)

I rebalanced all the movements and their costs

And now I added settings, keybinds for controllers (I'll add mobiles later) camera settings and colour adjustments, and hax for a different view on things

I'll add custom mobile controllers and start working on enemies to stop using dummies

Now, does anyone have a pc so I can test out these pc controllers, it's in a html file you just have to open it with the internet one because of the map, you can see what you can do in the video and in the settings, if you care to send the drive link

I've been working on Poolrooms Museum, a game inspired by the strange atmosphere of poolrooms and liminal spaces.

I want to create spaces that feel peaceful, mysterious, and slightly unsettling — places that make you curious about what's around the next corner.

Here's a glimpse of the game!

I'm continuing to work on it and wanted to share what I've been building.

I gave these spinning stars a little extra movement today. It's the little details that make game development fun!

Hi, artist here! My partner, myself, and a talented composer spent 2 weeks creating a short game for the Comfy Jam: Autumn, called Autumn Warmth! 🍂🎃

Autumn Warmth encapsulates everything I love about Autumn: warm hues, hot drinks, pumpkin pie, and plaid. Lots of plaid.

🍂 You can play it here: https://noctastrum.itch.io/autumnwarmth