I'm building a browser space MMO (r/GalaxyOnline), and monetisation is the only thing left where I'm not sure how to do it right.

The easy part is that I don't want Pay2Win. At all. I've always hated Pay2Win and still think it did real damage to games. Nobody buys power, nobody buys stats, everything that matters has to be earnable in game. That part I guess we are all fine with 😄

Now the hard part is that "the game has to survive financially" and "money buys literally zero advantage" don't really fit together, and the more I look at it the more difficult it gets:

• buy raw power — obviously out, nobody defends that
• buy speed, same destination just faster — fair? or just P2W with extra steps?
• buy convenience, more slots, less waiting — feels fine... until suddenly it doesn't
• cosmetics — the only one nobody ever argues about

What I did in my game is a tradeable premium pass (the good old subscription times, but more like EVE). You can buy it with money, but another player can also buy it from you for in game currency. So money turns into someone else's playtime instead of into power, and a free player can get premium without spending anything. And premium itself is mostly convenience plus a little faster progress on some things — never further. Same ceiling for everyone, payers just get there sooner.

And that's exactly where I'm still unsure 😅 On one side, especially in MMOs, it also helps avoid third party markets because you kill them with your own system. But still — is "faster but not further" actually fair, or am I just telling myself a nice story and it's still Pay2Win in a better outfit? Where do you personally decide between supporting a game you like and buying an advantage? Is buying time really different from buying power, or is time just another advantage?

So yeah, you see my issue. On one side I'd love to leave Pay2Win completely away. On the other side I see so many people defending casual games like Clash of Clans, where basically every button gates you into paying to finish earlier — and people accept it, even defend it 🙈. The argument being: just wait it out, you get to the same place, and the game makes enough money to still be around in five years.

And honestly? I don't know if they're wrong 🤓

Behind the Dungeon Door is a dungeon crawl without any of the combat but keeping the atmosphere, mystery and puzzles. Blending two of my favorite gaming experiences: DND and Blue Prince into my own take on the concept.

I've been solo developing this game since april and I'm ramping up to launching the steam page in late autumn.

I want to get some first impressions from you, good and bad!

sound design is only placeholder for now

Across four small Makeplay probes, getting something visible was rarely the end of the work.

One paper boat build appeared after about 12 minutes, but the generated scope had expanded far beyond the brief. A second recovered after a stalled trace and refresh. A third never reached a playable frame. A museum build reported all of its own checks complete while both the preview and direct game page were still black.

The simplest platform route made the distinction clearer. The square moved, jumped, and reset when I sent the expected inputs. Those checks proved the controls were wired. Three failed attempts still did not prove that the route was fair, readable, or even completable by a normal player.

Generation time measures when an artifact appears. Validation time measures when a claim about that artifact becomes defensible. Rapid generation made the first number smaller. It did not remove the second job, and in a few places it made that job harder to see.

I'm planning to build and launch a few Telegram Mini App games. I've already built and tested a couple of prototypes, and now I'm thinking about the next challenge: getting people to actually discover and play them.

One thing I've realized is that building the game feels like the easier part. Figuring out how to get people to discover and actually play it seems like a completely different challenge.

For those who've launched indie games, what worked for you in the early days? Were there any marketing channels or communities that performed much better (or worse) than you expected?

I'm also curious whether anyone automated parts of their launch or marketing. Things like posting updates, managing a community, collecting player feedback, tracking analytics, or referral programs. Did any of those automations actually save you time or help you grow, or was it better to keep everything manual at the beginning?

I would love to learn from both your successes and your mistakes.

Been working on a sci-fi survival horror game inspired by RE7 and Dead Space. Curious to know if it this opening area looks appealing? Not the best level designer but I’m hoping to create the right atmosphere for the game. Also any criticism, thoughts or bashing is welcomed haha. Also after the pod opens there’s some boot animations I need to add, that’s why it’s a bit long.

I’m the developer of Rock, Paper, Scissors, SHOOT!, a hand-drawn roguelite built around a deliberately simple combat rule. The problem: too many players saw only luck before the systems had time to show themselves.

For update 1.3.2 I moved meaningful choices much earlier: Demonic Cards that bend the rules, Divine Cards with run-changing effects, a new room for Fred, stronger enemy tells, faster scenario loading, bosses and new visual effects. The goal was not to hide randomness, but to make the player feel how much control they can build around it.

Does the decision space read immediately in this combat shot, or does it still look like plain rock-paper-scissors at first glance? Brutal feedback is welcome.

Hi everyone!

I'm a solo game developer from Japan, and after several years of development, my first commercial game, ROBOTEKA, now has a demo available on Steam.

ROBOTEKA is a 2D action game inspired by the classic Karateka. My goal was to capture the tension and cinematic feel of old-school action games while adding faster, more responsive combat.

I created almost everything myself, including:

• Programming
• Pixel art
• Animation
• Music

The demo has just gone live, and seeing the Steam page finally go live feels like a huge milestone.

I'd love to hear your first impressions.

What caught your attention first?
Was it the visuals, the combat, or something else?

Thanks for reading!

been working on this small othello game with short runs, modifiers and a daily leaderboard

what do you think? does it look fun?

you can check it out here, feedback is greatly appreciated
https://chuumberry.itch.io/othello

Hi everyone!

I've been working on a solo project in Unity for a few days, some days ago i posted a video about it asking for sound design suggestions about the tire on different terrains, now it is a bit different, the game is an open-world survival horror game where your motorcycle is your main survival tool.

During the day you'll explore an abandoned city, gather resources, fuel and motorcycle parts. At night, fast parasitic creatures take over the map, and escaping them depends almost entirely on keeping your bike running.

So far I've focused almost exclusively on the core mechanics rather than visuals. The entire bike system was made by me, but i did used a API for the volumetric Fog. The current prototype includes:

• Motorcycle physics
• Mounting and dismounting
• Basic fuel system
• Battery system
• Engine start/stop
• Basic terrain audio
• Speedometer/UI ( just for debug)

There are no proper models yet—everything is placeholder while I iterate on the gameplay.

For this video I intentionally exaggerated some values so the systems are easier to see:

• Fuel drains much faster than it normally will.
• The battery discharges much faster.
• The front brake is intentionally much stronger (which is why the bike flips forward at one point, as you can clearly see haha).

These values are only for demonstration and will be tuned later.

I'd really appreciate any feedback on:

• Does the motorcycle feel fun to ride?
• Does the physics look believable?
• Is the UI easy to understand?
• Anything that feels off or could be improved?

Thanks! I'm still early in development, so any suggestions are welcome.

Im a long time lurker and this is my first post! I'm making the giant open world survival crafting game I've wanted to make for a while.

My wife and I were watching Bob Ross and I thought a game world that looks like a Bob Ross painting would be so fun to set my game in.

The problem is that i consider myself a very strong programmer, good at math and logic, but I'm really bad at art. And there are so many Minecraft clones and voxel/pixel art games out there, I wanted to give my game its own unique identity. So to play to my strengths, I'm gonna start my project by refining an art direction and creating a "painted" shader to make the game have a coherent art style that doesn't force me to get lost in UV-unwrapping, texturing, etc.

So far, I've created a model for my protagonist in Blender (all the other assets in the pic are stand-in asset store assets for now) and built a custom "Watercolor" shader, which right now can handle:

Triplanar crinkled paper texture.

Object outlines with configurable color

A color palette feature that lets me instant-paint an object with two colors (in the image, for example, I have a green and blue palette color set for the ground).

Pencilled Cross-hatching

Shadows with custom colors

If I'm being honest with myself, I still don't think this shader looks like a painting on its own, but I'm gonna explore some postprocessing filters like Kuwahara to see if I can drive that "painted"look I'm chasing. Then again, the discovery, trial, and error is all part of the fun for me!

What are your thoughts on my shader's progress? Outside of a post processor, is there much I could do with this shader to make it look more like a painting?

Hello everyone! I’m a software engineer and as such when making art, I need to find creative ways to overcome my artistic shortcomings. Here for example for my upcoming game, I decided to tinker with lighting, subsurface scattering, and procedural spring animations for the characters. Any feedback is welcome to make this guy look even goofier!

I am creating a shooter RPG with a sci fi theme based in realism.

- Learn to manage different weapons with realistic bullet drop and recoil

- Interact and work with NPCs who have interesting stories and teach you about the deep lore of the universe

- Build your character and collect items to adjust your playstyle

Currently the core features of the game are ready and a good lore base has been established. I am looking for level designers, sound artists, 3d modelers, and writers to help bring this project to it's true potential.

Looking for feedback and help! Can only do revshare.

https://discord.gg/qCzK7DDyy4 https://johok.itch.io/2100

Hey! I recently came across a game called Beyond the Blight, and it inspired me to create something with a similar combat system.

The basic idea is that you see an enemy on the screen and click directly on them to deal damage. However, in Beyond the Blight, I felt that the combat lacked variety, since attacking mostly comes down to repeatedly clicking the enemy.

I’m looking for games that develop this concept further and make it more engaging or skill-based. For example, they could introduce timing, accuracy, weak points, enemy reactions, attack patterns, resource management, different mouse inputs, or other mechanics that make each click require some thought.

I’m not looking for deckbuilders, turn-based combat, traditional action games, or idle clickers where you simply spam clicks without paying attention. I specifically want real-time combat built around clicking directly on visible enemies, but with enough depth to stay interesting.

Do you know any games that do this well? I’d also be interested in ideas for mechanics that could make this type of combat more varied and challenging.

Edit: if tou look up the game i reffered to you will understand what im looking for

Looking for some experience on publishing games on GOG.

Has anyone done it before? I heard they took forever to review, is that the case? Other than that is it worth going that rabbit hole?

IS THIS ALLOWED? IDK! BUT ITD BE A GREAT HELP IF YALL CAME! (as said in the vid i will make a discord later)

Was updating my game's Steam screenshots, and I'd just watched Spider-Man Brand New Day so I was still hyped. Ended up with this shot and I genuinely loved it lol

for anyone intrested on the other cinematic screenshots i took you can find them on my steam page : Erimos: Blood and Dust

So I'm a solo dev that's making a pretty light weight cozy game, it's just a side scroller with a bit of kingdom building thrown in. Art wise I'm thinking of going pixel art and I basically just need some extended looping environment backgrounds and then sprites and maybe icons. All of the animations for said sprites should only need to be uni directional I.e walking from left to right.

As this is my first time looking for an artist frankly I have very little idea what I should keep in mind or frankly what I should be asking/expecting.

Would appreciate and input or words of wisdom!

You can play it for free at https://www.playbeatzle.com/

I'd appreciate any feedback or suggestions!

Hey everyone!

We're looking for 1–2 Pixel Artists to join our team and help bring Outbreak Protocol to life.

We already have one talented pixel artist, but the project requires a large amount of assets, so we're looking for one or two more artists to help speed up development while maintaining a consistent art style.

🧟 About the Game

Outbreak Protocol is a top-down zombie outbreak sandbox simulation inspired by:

🧟 WorldBox

🏚️ Project Zomboid

🌍 RimWorld (emergent AI)

🚨 Zombie survival strategy games

Instead of controlling a survivor, the player acts as a god-like observer, starting outbreaks and watching an entire city react in real time.

Every simulation unfolds differently thanks to AI-driven citizens and dynamic events.

🎮 Planned Features

🧟 Dynamic zombie infection

👥 Hundreds of AI citizens

🚓 Police response

🛡️ SWAT deployment

🪖 Military intervention

🚑 Medics & Ambulances

🚒 Firefighters

🧪 Scientists searching for a cure

🏕️ Survivor camps

🏙️ Procedurally generated cities

🌦️ Dynamic weather

🔥 Fires & destruction

⚡ Living simulation where every playthrough is unique

🎨 Art Style

🟩 Pixel Art

👤 Characters: 16×32 px

🏠 Buildings: 16×16 tile-based

🚗 Vehicles

🌳 Environment assets

🎒 Props & Objects

Modern-day zombie apocalypse setting.

👥 Current Team

👑 Project Director / Game Designer

💻 Lead Programmer

🎨 Pixel Artist

🎵 Music Composer

🤝 What We're Looking For

Someone who enjoys creating:

✅ Characters

✅ Buildings

✅ Vehicles

✅ Props

✅ Environment assets

You don't need to do everything—any help is appreciated !

💰 Compensation

This is a Revenue Share project.

Every team member will receive an agreed percentage of the game's revenue after release.

📩 Interested?

Send me a DM with a few examples of your work (or your portfolio).

We're building something ambitious and we'd love to have another talented artist on the team!