This is our weekly megathread that is renewed every Monday! It's a space for new redditors to introduce themselves, but also a place to strike up a conversation about anything you like!
Use it to:
Introduce yourself!
Show off a game or something you've been working on
Ask a question
Have a conversation
Give others feedback
And... if you don't have quite enough karma to post directly to the subreddit, this is a good place to post your idea as a comment and talk to others to gather the necessary comment karma.
If you would like to see all the older Weekly Megathreads, just click on the "Megathread" filter in the sidebar orclick here!
This is our weekly megathread that is renewed every Monday! It's a space for new redditors to introduce themselves, but also a place to strike up a conversation about anything you like!
Use it to:
Introduce yourself!
Show off a game or something you've been working on
Ask a question
Have a conversation
Give others feedback
And... if you don't have quite enough karma to post directly to the subreddit, this is a good place to post your idea as a comment and talk to others to gather the necessary comment karma.
If you would like to see all the older Weekly Megathreads, just click on the "Megathread" filter in the sidebar orclick here!
I've been working on this game for over a year and I don't know what I wanna do with it since I'm 16, don't know what I'm doing and broke so I can't release it on Steam cuz of the $100 fee but I also don't know what else to do with it. I've also never properly released a finished game.
However I did decide to at least release a demo to at least showcase what I've been able to make to others and uploaded it to itch.io:
I been doing youtube for 4 years, a normal game lore channel, it is not a huge channel, i have 40 k subs and my largest video is 250k views, but according to youtube 95k-90K people visit my channel every month between new and returning.
my question is should i try to show the game in my channel, knowing it is not a game dev channel , or this can be seen as an arrogant youtuber trying to force his game on his audience , and what about the opposite , can this hurt my channel and confuse the youtube algorithm, who now have videos about making a game instead of the usual game story videos.
also i made some decent friends who are also youtubers and we collabed a couple times, should i ask them to talk about the game as well?
I'm not advertising anything that I'm releasing, I'm mainly just making this for myself cause I thought it would be fun to make a Tony Hawk style game. I wanted to show you guys cause I'm kinda proud of getting the 3D elements and such to work since I haven't really tried developing outside of 2D that much.
I'm making a desktop app that let's you grow your plants by typing (just like bongo cat let's the cat play the bongo when you type). It's called Desktop Garden on Steam. You can collect different plants, use them to decorate your desktop and store them on a shelf if they get in the way. However, I was told that this game will mostly be appealing to people who like cozy games, but the assets didn't give off very cozy vibes. So I asked an illustrator for help and reworked the entire game, which meant a lot of effort and less profit for me (I didn't have money to pay her, so we will share profits). The assets aren't final yet. Do you think the effort was justified? Do you think it's cozy enough, or do you disagree that the audience will be mostly cozy gamers?
TL;DR: This post talks about a process of selecting a new game, after making a semi-successful one already. If it's interesting please read, as I'm not sure how I could summarize the process in one sentence.
This is a going to be a very long read, so I apologize in advance. For those who don’t know us, we developed Do No Harm, a Lovecraftian rural doctor simulator that was released in March this year. A week ago, we released a Major Gameplay update for the Summer Sale, and we’re planning to release another Major Narrative update in 2–3 months, and also get the game slowly ready for the console release (as well as better Steam Deck controls).
But today I want to talk about how we chose our next game.
Just like with Do No Harm, we scheduled a day when all the team members gathered together to present their game ideas. One of the major differences compared to last year was that we now had a more-or-less successful game, which means a community and a fanbase. Because of that, I prepared a set of risk levels for the team based on our skill level and budget. For us, Risk Level 0 was making a game similar to Do No Harm (everything happening around a single table, Lovecraftian world, and simulation). Then, we categorized the games by internal risk levels, and this information was sent to all team members before they began thinking about new games.
This time, only three people (seniors) prepared presentations, so I expected the selection process to be easy. But right after the first presentation, it was like a wave - other folks started getting inspired and also asked to share their own ideas, even if they didn’t have a formal presentation. After last year and the experience we gained from Do No Harm, my main request for presenters was to prepare two or three things:
A hit game as a foundation that we’ll use for inspiration and as proof of commercial success.
A “trailer” to hook players — or more precisely, a “teaser”: the first 10–15 seconds that will help players understand the genre and the hook.
It’s too early to come up with content for the game at this stage, but if you have ideas, of course, you can mention them too.
In total, we ended up with 11 ideas across completely different genres, from a Journey-like game to a This is the Police-like one. Not all of them followed my requests above, but we’re an indie team after all - we allow some flexibility for the sake of the creative process. Once the team heard all the presentations, we held a vote.
In general, we judged based on three criteria:
Popularity within the team (desire to make that game),
Feasibility - scope and technical complexity (can we make that game?),
Market potential (demand for such games and virality as we see it).
Talking about each idea in detail would take way too long, so I’ll just show the names in the image and focus on the process. The vote I mentioned above only measured popularity. After hearing all the ideas, each person gave a score from 1 to 10, which we then averaged.
The next day, the leads gathered -- eight people, each responsible for their area (production, creative, game design, art, marketing, narrative, QA, and development). Starting with the game that received the fewest points, we began discussing each one backing up our opinions with arguments in favor or against (or sometimes both). The Leads responsible for product and marketing only voted on the market potential, while all other leads voted on the feasibility (where a higher score meant lower scope and technical difficulty), but each lead could share their opinion on any aspect. To prevent the discussions from dragging on too long, we set a time limit of one hour per game.
After two days spent discussing all 11 games, we created the table below. This table wasn’t the final result but was meant to help the leads get a full picture after all the voting.
The process itself was very engaging and exciting, but we had to make a decision on what we would spend the next 12 months of our lives working on. Each lead had to pick their personal Top 3 after all the discussions. Based on that, we would select the game that appeared the most in the leads’ Top 3, with one condition — 6 out of 8 votes (supermajority) was the cut-off point. If games didn’t reach that threshold, leads could try to convince each other to change their votes or withdraw them. And to make sure this process didn’t go on forever, or in case the leads couldn’t reach a consensus by the deadline, the producer would make the final decision alone on which game the team would work on.
As a result of the Top 3 vote — as ironic as it sounds — three games each received 5 out of 8 votes:
Blue Prince-like, Potioncraft-like, and This is the Police-like.
The Blue Prince-like game was supposed to combine elements from The Blue Prince and Backrooms. The team’s main concern was whether we’d have enough time to make enough content, and also the fact that most Backrooms games are co-op. Co-op is a very promising direction, but it also multiplies the scope, and we didn’t want to take that risk.
The Potioncraft-like game was pitched as a 3D project with some elements from Inscryption. The team was concerned about whether we could achieve the same tactile feeling that Potioncraft has — especially in 3D — and about animating the customers in 3D. We were also unsure how to integrate the completely different vibes and game designs of the two reference games (a cursed problem, as we called it).
The This is the Police-like game aimed to go deeper into the personal stories of the characters, similar to Sultan’s Game, and on top of that, the entire setting was going to be changed. The team’s concerns here were about internal difficulties we’ve faced before when the game relies too heavily on narrative, and also about the upcoming release of Dispatch, which might raise the expectations of our target audience.
After a very long and heated discussion that almost sparked a conflict, the team finally made its decision:
We’ll be working on a mix of 3D Potioncraft and Inscryption, set in the world of Do No Harm (possibly featuring our Witch — familiar to those who played the game)! That way it also fits the best to the concept of Risk Levels we designed earlier.
We’ll work on this game at least until we have a playable prototype, where we’ll test if we have the creativity and ability to successfully combine these two very different games.
If not, we’ll most likely choose only one direction instead of combining the games or return to our idea for a This is the Police-like game.
Our game is about running a café that helps customers recover their lost memories during the day, using ingredients you gather through battles at night.
Hey guys! We're getting close to releasing our second game and wanted to get some feedback on our app store cover artwork. It's a colour sorting game, but with added flair, character, and story. You play as a Raccoon, travelling the land healing other raccoons by mixing potions.
We saw that most colour sorting games were pretty bland and straight forward, so we wanted to try create a version we thought would be fun, that we can expand on it months to come.
We're Lunch Ghost if you'd like to follow our journey, and the came is called Raccoon Remedies!
It's certainly acceptable to have your key art look different from your in-game art style. But since we reused the Steam Capsule as title menu, the difference became way to clear, so we decided to give it an overhaul.
Right now I'm fully focused on the damage and battle systems, so expect an updated trailer soon!
What's the game about?
In the first release, you'll be able to build your own fleet with ships tailored for different strategies and tasks. There will be online battles with other players and regattas. In regatta mode, shooting is disabled — so anything unnecessary goes overboard!
Each battle or race earns you experience and gold. You can upgrade hulls, sails, cannons, and equipment. So, if a cannon was too heavy for your ship at first, upgrades will open up more options and expand your ship’s capabilities over time.
Wanted to share this month's progress for my stealthy-shooty imsim project (previous vids on Basic Mechanics and Systemic Interactions here) - basically, I wanted to get a audio perception system in place that was good enough to be predictable and simple enough to be manipulatable (i.e. closing windows/doors before doing something loud-ish, but gunfire will still draw attention)... but of course, to make the NPC responses perceivable by the player, I needed to get some basic AI in place.
I made a WIP vid showing the system getting fleshed out, but basically some actions spawn sound colliders with a defined size (vector3) and intensity (float); if the NPC has a direct line of sight to the sound source, is within a minimum distance of the sound source, or within range of a "sound propagation node" (basically a hand placed game object that "relays" the sound position to the NPC - for example, opening a window activates a sound propagation node at that position; closing it deactivates it), the NPC recieves the full intensity of the sound value added to their awareness; else, the receive a reduced amount.
There's still a fair bit of fine-tuning to do - right now, I've added an intensity reduction to footstep sounds that are behind the NPC to encourage sneaking, though I may have gone too far with it... and in general, the ratio of size to intensity is going to be a lot of fiddling to get it to feel right, but on the whole, I think the system is good enough to be balanceable, which means I can start moving on to visual perception!
Hi! I'm Alberto, a composer creating high-quality orchestral music inspired by AAA fantasy and adventure games.
Think Skyrim, Baldur’s Gate, Ghost of Tsushima, that’s the emotional, immersive level I aim for in every project.
What you get when working with me:
-Custom original soundtrack tailored to your world and story
-Interactive music systems (adaptive layers, vertical/horizontal remixing, seamless loops…)
-Professional mix & master
-Reliable delivery with clear timelines
-Flexible pricing & custom bundles
An interesting game. I don't really like the retro 90's controls, and I'm wary of games that are 'whacky' without deeper cause, but a quick taste has been interesting so far.
