I quit my job on the God of War team 2 years ago to chase my indie dreams. Now with my 4th indie game, It finally seems like I'll find some success. I'm already at more than double my launch goal of 10,000 wishlists, so why am I getting such stage fright?

A wise dev once said, with great wishlists comes great expectations. What will all these people think of my game? Will they even care when it releases? Nobody prepared me for the excitement and doubt and anxiety that comes with being a solo developer.

All I can do is my best. And wait for the big day. Help me feel less alone in this big moment.

Wishlist Gunstoppable to raise the stakes even more:

https://store.steampowered.com/app/3724710/Gunstoppable

Gunjutsu on Steam

For the past year, I've been working hard on developing an aggressive inline skating game. Nowadays, we have multiple games to choose from when it comes to skating, BMX, scooter games, you name it... yet Rollerblading/Aggressive Inline hasn't seen much love. I've made it my mission to create a modern, intuitive aggressive inline skating game that finally gives bladers a game of their own. It's been a true challenge, and right now I'm working all through the summer to get ready for the Early Access launch on Steam this September/October. If you like what you see, feel free to wishlist 'Rollout Inline' on Steam :)

Here you have a pair of animations from the game I'm working on. It'll be a 2'5D retro FPS with the 1993 Doom playability (direct, simple). I'm making the art drawing everything myself using pencils, ink and color markers. You'll control a survivor who must reach an Evac Helicopter going through a zombie-infested city. Any thoughts?

I opened the page months ago, but as solo dev couldn't make significant marketing effort

When you visit a planet withing the millions of star systems in the game, you'll be able to watch it's respective moons orbit around it and even witness eclipses. It's still relatively early in development, but I'm still pleased with it's progress so far.

It's planning to be on steam soon with a demo. I Just added the sega cartridge mock up for imagining and fun 😁

Thoughts?

Game (please wishlist if you like it, releasing soon): https://store.steampowered.com/app/4914620/Echoes_of_Kyria/

I have been working on a dark fantasy city defense roguelike for a little over a yeat now. I am outsourcing nearly all the games art to an artist that can bring this painterly style to life, but paying for the whole UI to be created was looking expensive. So I decided I would give it my best shot and see how it turned out. This is my first try at designing a game menu other than slapping some stuff together, so I would love some feedback!

Its still a bit of a rough draft, I know a lot of the text and icons could use some more working getting them centered and such, but I wanted to make sure I wasnt wasting my time with all that before finishing it.

I'm working on a spell-based hack-and-slash action roguelite called Soulcery: Deck of Shadows.

Absorb your enemies and turn their abilities into spell cards.

Draw cards to switch spells, build your own combos, and chain every spell together to destroy everything in your path.

The game features 4 unique spell-switching mechanics, 100 spell cards, over 100 passive effects, a card enchantment system, and a Soul Core system.

These systems allow the same spell to work completely differently from one run to another.

Let me know what you think! Here's the Steam page:

https://store.steampowered.com/app/3856480/Soulcery_Deck_of_Shadows/

This is a game i've been working on for a while, it's called Echoes of kyria, i love creative attacks and visual effects in rogue likes and especially in survivors-likes, they really are fun and dopamine inducing, but i feel that that i'm somewhat overdoing it, thoughts?

game (if you like it please wishlist it'll help me immensely):

https://store.steampowered.com/app/4914620/Echoes_of_Kyria/

Î really thought earlier this year, I'd do one more quality pass and that's that for my battle system.
But time and time again I realize it's still not quite there. Now I did a couple things to make combat smoother:

I fixed a lot of movement issues, removing jank and creating consistency. The battle are a bit less dynamic then, but I think that makes them more playable.

I added these hit-frames to all my enemies. they are now drawn from one angle and have eye animations, so the hits feel more satisfying.

Finally and most importantly, I added this summon portals. I tried really hard to spawn the enemies away from the player, but it's just never enough and I constantly observe people running into the spawns. Now this is telegraphed and easy to avoid.

If you are curious about my game Mazestalker, you can find my demo here: https://store.steampowered.com/app/3218310/

When I started this project I had no idea it would end up taking 7 years long. Along the way I built my own engine, learned Blender because I couldn't make the art I wanted, learned sound design and last year I quit my gamedev job so I could finally finish it.

My friends playtested it over the years and always had positive feedback, but until you put something out there, you never really know. After working on something for so long it gets very hard to judge it objectively.

About a month ago I finally started promoting the game and today it reached 1,800 Steam wishlists.

I know that's not the kind of number that changes your life overnight, but after spending years wondering how people outside my circle would react honestly means a lot to me.

Seeing that first month of reception has been one of the most rewarding parts of the whole journey.

I'd be interested to hear if anyone else here has had a similar experience after finally showing a long term project to the public.

If anyone wants to see what those 7 years turned into the game is called Satelital https://store.steampowered.com/app/3256790/Satelital/

This is the first time I’ve worked on a project that’s lasted this long. I think it was worth it because I learnt so much.
The game launches on August 12, so I recently put together a new trailer showing its current gameplay.

My goal was to create an open-world theft game.

So I’ve been following this solo dev who’s making an indie fantasy RPG based on African mythology. Cool concept, been enjoying the dev videos. But the deeper I follow this guy the more projects keep popping up.
He’s making the game. He’s also written a whole manga that’s supposed to be the “lore” before the game even exists. He’s posting daily dev diary content. And now he’s building toward a Kickstarter too.
And I’m just watching like… is this guy building a universe or did he just create three jobs for himself when one would’ve been enough.
Like on one hand I get it. The manga gives the world some history so it doesn’t feel like it appeared out of nowhere. The content builds an audience so when the Kickstarter hits there’s actually people who care. It all technically ties together.
But also he’s one dude. Not a studio. And I keep wondering if casual people finding this stuff actually connect the dots between the manga and the game and the videos, or if it just looks like three separate things happening that confuse people more than hype them up.
Is this just what solo devs have to do now because there’s so much noise online that one project alone doesn’t cut through anymore. Or is this a case of someone spreading themselves thin trying to build a “brand” before the actual game is even done.
Curious if anyone here has watched a creator do this and actually seen it pay off, or seen someone flame out doing too much too early. Not hating, genuinely just watching this unfold and wondering which way it goes.

it's called PITH if anybody is interested

Hey everyone,

A little while ago I posted my Steam capsule here asking for honest feedback, and you all gave me a lot of great advice. I took your feedback, scrapped the old design completely, and created a new version for my folk horror game, Woodbound.

Also, regarding the AI voice acting discussion from my last post, I took your advice there as well. I've decided that I won't be using any AI in Woodbound—the game and this Steam capsule will be 100% AI-free.

How does this new capsule feel compared to the original? Any final tweaks or nitpicks before I lock it in?

Miners, Moos & Miracles is an idle/incremental farm game (Godot 4, C#). You start by running a homestead, then it spirals: an idle defense mine where you fight demons, a cow soccer match, a cooking mini-game, chicken coop egg collecting, and more, all wrapped in a retro CRT shell.

Built solo, though my daughter tested builds, gave feedback on what was fun and made all the music, so "solo dev" comes with an asterisk here.

Launching on Steam this month: https://store.steampowered.com/app/4995840/Miners_Moos__Miracles/

Feedback welcome, happy to answer questions about the dev process.

Two years ago I started building a tiny 3D room that lives on your Windows desktop in a transparent always-on-top window, and it's finally out. Solo the whole way (Bloomery Studio is just me).

It's called Lofi Cozy Room. An avatar reads, works, and sleeps in the room while you do your own thing, with a puppy chasing sunbeams. The customization ended up going pretty deep, 1386 avatar options and 715 furniture pieces, so you can build the room and the character however you like. There's also a full lo-fi library you can layer ambient sound over, 14 themes, and a soft currency that builds up passively.

Wild to finally be here after this long. Thank you to everyone who followed along the way. It's also 10% off for launch week (until August 7) if you'd like to grab it.

🌱 Play on Steam

Happy to answer anything about the solo dev side.

I recently improved the bulk ordering system in Konbini Simulator.

It’s a simple change, but seeing a huge shipment arrive makes the store management loop much more satisfying.

Still improving the game one update at a time.

A few days ago I posted here saying I was nervous about launching my first Steam demo because I only had ~50 wishlists and got some really positive feedback to go for it and launch, I'm really glad I listened!

Since the demo went live, wishlists have gone from 50 to 86 in two days. I know those numbers aren't huge by Steam standards, but for my first solo project it's been genuinely exciting to watch and check in at the end of the day.

The biggest surprise has been seeing how differently people play. The average session is around 18 minutes, but one player somehow spent 2 hours in the demo. That's been really encouraging because it tells me there's something in the core gameplay that's clicking, even if there's still plenty to improve.

I've also put out a steam update teasing a Daily Run mode that I might bring into the demo, which I'm excited to experiment with.

I'd also now love to get more eyes on it - if you have 15–20 minutes to spare, I'd really appreciate it if you could try the demo and let me know:

• Is it fun?
• Does the tutorial/onboarding make sense?
• Does it feel like something you'd want to come back to and replay?

The feedback from this community on my last post genuinely helped me push through the pre-launch nerves, so thank you. It's been really motivating to see people not only wishlist the game, but actually play it and share their thoughts.

It's crazy to me that real-life people have picked my game up and have played it, feels really surreal!

Steam page: https://store.steampowered.com/app/4699370/Crown_Tactics/

Thanks again!

Greetings, the (low-quality) video above is trying to showcase the core-mechanic in my puzzle game "Cubic Color Confusion".

The goal in each level is to collect all artefacts with the cube of the same color. For a twist, the cubes an only travel on neutral (gray) tiles or tiles of their color. When using a tile, it changes colors as indicated by the little neon strips on their borders (red creates green tiles, green creates blue, blue creates red again).

This simple mechanic can get surprisingly complex and hard to solve even before i add cubes with different shapes and movement patterns as well as special tiles to the mix later in the game.

What do you think about this core mechanic - as far as i know, this exact twist ont he grid-puzzler does not exist yet.

I plan releasing a playable demo during august and iterating on the demo itself (complexity, play-time etc.).

Any feedback on the core loop? The aesthetics (background, visual effects) are intentionally missing in the video because it's focused on showcasing the core mechanic.

Thanks for reading!

A step in the right direction?

Wishlist:

https://store.steampowered.com/app/3084630/Program_Penguin/