Test it here: https://meticulai.com/games/last-drop/

Since quite a few of you were interested in my water shader post, I thought I'd share some more progress as we work through other parts of the game.

This time, it's snow.

I think snow is one of those things you really need to get right in a driving game. Not just because it needs to look good, but because of what it lets the player do. The same way convincing water can add so much to the atmosphere of a game, things like snow, mud and grass can make the world feel that much more alive when you can actually interact with them.

That's something my wife and I have been trying to nail with our game. We're putting a lot of attention into the smaller details across as many areas as we can, which has made for some pretty ridiculous demands on the hardware before we've had a chance to optimise anything. At this rate, our office might not survive development. Haha.

In this example, we've made another big leap forward, both visually and in how the terrain responds to the car. The tracks left in the snow are shaped by several parameters, including vehicle weight, tyre grip, tyre temperature and the season.

Honestly, I mostly wanted to share this because I find the tracks ridiculously satisfying. I've spent far more of my free time than I'd like to admit just driving around and drawing in the snow, and it's been really rewarding to see these little details come together.

There's still a lot to do, but I'm really looking forward to seeing how everything feels once all these systems start working together.

Have a great start to the week everyone!

~ Rein & Rev (New Zealand)

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

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!

I'm the solo dev. In HATCHED you hatch as a tiny creature, fight and eat to grow, and every boss you beat lets you evolve. You pick from three choices and watch your body change.

Everything is built in Unity, and the creatures and their animation are all procedural.

I've always loved Spore, and thought it would be so fun to have a roguelike version of it, so I made it!

Would love to hear what you think, happy to answer any questions about the game :)

Updated my shmup and prepared a new demo plus trailer on Steam in preparation for the upcoming Next Fest
https://store.steampowered.com/app/5054650/

Hope everyone likes the tweaked gameplay and polished looked

Full game launch scheduled on Steam for end of this month of October

Other platforms soon hopefully as well

Hey everyone, hope you've all had a great weekend so far!

I wanted to share a quick video I made about a question I get asked a lot, which is "when should you announce your game in the age of AI". Full disclosure, I don't really answer it, haha. Well, I sort of do, just not in the way you'd probably kinda expect. Because the more I tried to write that video, the more I kept coming back to something I think is far more important and gets overlooked quite a lot.

Yes, there are strategies to lessen the impact of copycats, and I will cover them in a future video or article. But none of it really matters if you're not passionate about making games. That's the part I really wanted to get across. Making games is art. It's a piece of you held up to the world, and that's terrifying, and it's meant to be. A vibe coder can copy an idea in a weekend, but what they can't copy is the love and the passion that's inside of you. And I truly believe that's about to become the rarest thing in games, and the thing players go looking for.

So if you've been scared to announce your game, or you've seen the copycats and the vibe coded clones and thought what's the point anymore, this one's for you.

Keep being amazing. Proud of every single one of you. <3

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!

I've always loved Arc System Works games. They nailed the Anime look in 3D. And it motivated me to make a 3D Anime action game in this style with some enhancements.

I Just wanted to share what I've reached so far from trying to perfect the 2D look in 3D. The goal is to make a game that looks like this.

The zooming is just to show that there is no pixelation no matter how much you zoom in for closeup animations.

Would love to get your opinions.

Hey everyone! I’m working with a small team on SHORAPAN, a hand-drawn narrative adventure set in a city beneath an eternally crimson sky. You play as a basket weaver whose mentor has disappeared, exploring the city and slowly discovering its stranger side.

This is a scene from the opening. We’re putting a lot of care into the painted environments, character animation, sound design, and original music. I want even a quiet conversation in a workshop to feel worth stopping and listening to.

Sound on for the rain and music. Does this feel cozy, unsettling, or somewhere in between?

STEAM https://store.steampowered.com/app/4926090/SHORAPAN/

Hey there!

I'll keep it short, names Pawkt, I am a freelance journalist, avid gamer that has a track record of putting together multi-hour long showcase events with commentary to help spotlight indie games and share them with my community. We are a passionate gamer and love helping bring new titles to life, be that through QA testing, insights and giving recommendations here and there daily.

If you’re taking part, I’d love to check out your game. Chances are, I’ve already come across it through the Steam Demo release window which I keep a close tab on weeks and months in advance to make sure I play every title that offers a demo of some sort, for a set amount of time, so I can really understand what each one offers and do my best to highlight them for everyone involved.

Feel free to reply here, leave a comment, or email me, or potentially stop by while I'm editing / compiling the 200+ game list on stream over this next full week, I could offer some live commentary on top of the video one if your game makes the list. I go above and beyond spending 20-22 hours a day putting it all together with barely any sleep, it would be great to connect and feature your work, so long as it is genuinely made with heart and hard effort, not AI generated in the sea of mediocrity which has currently swept over the industry threatening your livelihoods.

If you're wondering, my compilations and such look like:

Past SNFs

Summer SNF Reddit Post

Looking forward to hearing from you!

Hello everyone.
I recently released the playable demo of my psychological horror game, The Sin Of Fabien, which I’ve been working on for a while, before Next Fest.The first person to play the demo was my own 3 year old son. ( my son on the right ) The atmosphere I worked hard on, the story I carefully wrote, the mystery...

None of that mattered to him.The only thing he did was rub Fabien against the walls and cry when he couldn’t go through the doors he wasn’t supposed to enter.( 3 year old problems. ) In a way, he was right.If there’s a door, why can’t we go through it? ( you’re right son, the game is broken ).

Even though my game may not appeal to everyone, and even if it may never achieve huge success, being able to experience this moment was very special to me.Maybe when he grows up, my son will be proud of it, maybe he’ll be happy, maybe even his own children will play it one day.I’ll always carry the pride of having left something behind...

( At the end of the demo, he tried to convince his mom that he was the one who made the game. )

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?

For a bit over the past year, I have been working on One More Adventure, my own take on a classic RPG and traditional roguelike.

This game has been something of a kitchen sink project for me. It just started as a mapmaker, and then it grew and grew until I had a full game.

It sorta straddles the line between classic RPG & roguelike as the world is procedurally generated, but the quests and setting are not. While I personally prefer playing on Ironman and Hard Difficulty, my own father told me he was dying too much, so I made it possible to save scum.

Almost every quest somehow ties into the lies we tell ourselves, the ways we're held down by others, or the various evils of the world.

Anyway, it's in Next Fest starting tomorrow, and the Next Fest demo version opens up dwarves and elves for people to play. The full game launches on November 10th, so I hope if it catches your interest, you check it out!

Hello, does anyone know what's the current situations with the IGN Game Trailers channel. I've had 2 trailers posted by them in the past years, and I have a new trailer and e-mailed them about it. As far as I can see they haven't posted it or responded to my e-mail. I remember for my previous trailers they responded and wanted to specify a date. Have they tightened the rules or want bigger games? Does anyone have more insight about this?

For reference I used these two e-mails:

[trailers@ign.com](mailto:trailers@ign.com) and [videowire@ign.com](mailto:videowire@ign.com)

Rogue Machines on steam. hit me up with level ideas too, i only have like 25 right now

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/

In August, the two of us entered a ~20 days game jam with a simple idea: what if both the player and the boss could die in one hit?

We ended up winning and decided to keep developing the project, instead of releasing it as the jam version.

Since then, we've been rebuilding the bosses, polishing combat, animations and VFX, and working toward a proper Steam demo. We're also adding more content and more bosses, which will be revealed in the coming months!

The central mechanic is still the same as in the beginning: successful defensive actions build Resolve and gradually reconstruct your sword, until you earn one lethal strike.

We've just finished our first gameplay trailer!

The Steam page is also live if you'd like to follow the project:
https://store.steampowered.com/app/5228430/One_Hit_Hero/

Hi everyone! I’m the solo developer of Baitcore, a fishing survival horror game.
I've been working on it for 5 months and recently reworked the fishing, just in time for Steam Next Fest!

The free demo is now available on Steam.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/5150980/Baitcore/

If you try the demo, I’d love to hear what you think of the game, and what could be improved.
Wishlists are greatly appreciated 🙏

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!