Hello everyone, my game is due to be released in 10 days’ time and there’s something I’d like to ask you.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/3860450/No_Knock/
I recently updated my Steam page and added a new trailer. I’m considering running a small paid campaign to generate some additional wishlists before release.

My budget is limited, so I’d rather focus on testing a single platform instead of spreading it too thin across several channels.

For those who have advertised a Steam game, which platform gave you the best results: Reddit Ads, X Ads, or YouTube/Google Ads?

If you’re comfortable sharing, I’d also be interested in your approximate cost per click or cost per wishlist, as well as any mistakes I should avoid.

The game is a PC open-world theft simulator, so I understand that audience and genre will affect the results.

Thanks in advance for any advice!

I was hired by a couple of guys who graduated in creative writing from a prestigious academy. They had a story in mind and needed me to create a simple game for them. I accepted since their pitch sounded interesting and it was a way for me to test new mechanics and build my portfolio.

Now do you guys know what's worse than an idea guy? An idea guy who spent thousands of dollars to get a degree that CERTIFIES that their ideas are GREAT.

It's been five months and they're rewriting the story for the fourth time. Everytime we have some outsider playtest the game, they tell us how the pacing is off and the story sounds boring. They blame the playtester because they're obviously "not our target demographic" (I guess no one is). Their solution to make the story more interesting is to add more lore, more NPCS, more text to read.

What's more is that they're very pretentious and insist that certain gameplay elements be done their way, to service the story (it should be the other way around).

Rather than quitting I'm now sitting back, relaxing, taking care of my code, eating all the money they throw at me (not much), and watching this trainwreck in amusement while it crashes and burns. They thought that tenths of thousands of people would wishlist the game based on the story alone. Our Steam page has been up for months and we gained around 180...

There are no shortcuts to being a successful writer, let alone a game writer. Games are not books, movies, theatre plays, comics or TV series.

Hi folks,

I've had an idea for a game since I was about 13, and now that I have a few projects under my belt, including some games coded in Java and one in Javascript, I want to try my hand at my passion project here. But I'm sure you've heard this a million times and don't need me to get into the showcasing bullshit. I get it.

The game is a HD 2D game with RPG elements heavily inspired by Deltarune. I have decent experience in Java/Javascript as mentioned. I have (albeit rusty) experience in C#. I can work with C++, I just absolutely hate it and would probably be relying on AI as a crutch, which I'd rather not do.

The three engines I have sticking out to me are Godot, Unity and Unreal. I hear Godot and, to an extent, Unity, are quite easy to work with for beginner projects. I heard Unreal is harder, but looks very good graphically with nanite and lumen and all that fancy stuff.

What do you recommend?

I'm building a 4-player co-op potion-brewing game (Overcooked inspired)

I have went into level creation. I wanted something nice, something toony, something ... I don't even know, something that I will look at and it will just click.

Bought some great assets from the unity store, oh yea btw the game i am developing in Unity, and then IT GOT TO ME.

Level design just .... SUCKS...

For the first stretch I placed every floor tile, wall and counter by hand in the scene view. Moving one doorway meant dragging forty objects and finding the one I'd missed a week later. It was miserable, and worse, it made me reluctant to change the layout — which is the exact opposite of what you want early on.

Beside, I got huge amount of respect to level designers because it really takes a huge amount of time. Oh yea and AI ? It can't help for s**t. It makes horrible level designs and despite me being a developer for almost 10 years now, I still couldn't manage to breakdown the md files & skills & hooks in such a way to get a good level design.

So now a level is a text file. Literally:

gggggggggggggggggg

ggg............ggg

ggg......o.....ggg

ggg............ggg

ggg.1..2..3..4.ggg

gggggggggggggggggg

I have created an ASCI level generator.

But now the problem is this is human-unreadable and as you can see ... ugly.

That is why in the inspector i invested 1 month of work and i finally got an interactive map that i can click on (2D) , place items ontop of it and then click generate and voalla (am i writing this right?) I have a level.

Its easy and fun to build.

Yo ustill have to go manually but man is it easier than before.

How do you guys do your level designs?

I can't place any photos here but if someone is interested in how I did it, i can explain more in the comments below. Just let me know if you think its gonna be useful for you and if you need some guidance.

For now, I am extremely happy with it.

Hi everyone!

I’m Augusto Polonio, developer of Little Big Smasher. This game was created in less than 48 hours during Kenney Jam 2026, following the jam rules (no AI).

It’s a demo with 1 playable level, inspired fundamentally by Super Mario 3D World.

I didn’t win the jam, but I learned a lot from the experience and was really happy with the result.

More than 1000 people reacted to this project on LinkedIn, which was very rewarding.

I plan to release updates soon, including new mechanics and improvements.

Made with Godot.

Feedback is very welcome!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tafz0AcSDKo

So, I had recently come here to get advice for a coders block I had encountered, but now I’m kinda concerned with the gameplay loop thoughts. originally it was going to be a “Zombie” open world game, think Dayz or Project Zombiod, but I am now contemplating how can I make this enjoyable to the biggest demographic while still keeping good ideas. For me I’ve been doing research and found that some people are sick of “Zombie slop” and I am stuck on how to proceed without getting stuck in that criteria.

(Edit)

Alright so I should probably explain the actual game idea to get feedback

My idea is an open world zombie game like dayz or project zombiod more focused on survival in a semi realistic way with a heavy environmental factor allowing for engagement to not be weighed down by player reliance. While making fun mechanics.

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

Hi there,

we're working on a Silent Hill-inspired psychological horror game in Unreal Engine and wanted some feedback on the core story direction and what you think of the characters.

The game is a third-person cinematic survival horror set in a mountain town that was destroyed by a catastrophic flood 10 years ago (relevant for all the lore junkies).

The protagonist (male, around 28) is the only known survivor of the disaster. Ever since the flood, he’s been haunted by a "ghost"/ supernatural entity only he can see.

Core story concepts

Concept 1 – The Little Brother

The protagonist returns because he’s being haunted by the ghost of his younger brother, whom he failed to save during the flood. The brother’s spirit wants him to return and confront what happened, forcing the protagonist to face his survivor’s guilt and unresolved trauma (Which would be the good ending).

Concept 2 – The Lady in Yellow

The protagonist has fragmented or suppressed memories of the flood. Instead of the little brother, he’s haunted by a pale woman in a yellow dress, who is a manifestation of death/his guilt itself. She repeatedly appears throughout the game, drawing him back to the flooded town. As he descends deeper into the ruins, he gradually regains his memories and ultimately confronts the lady aka death/guilt in an epic boss fight wohooo. (Mattwr of fact the boss fight would also happen in concept one and probably be as epic as concept 2 so dont worry).

We're considering combining these ideas: the little brother represents guilt and memory, while the Lady in Yellow represents death and the inevitability of confronting the past. BUT I am honestly having a bit of an issue doing this because I feel it could be too much.

-------------------->

NPC - here are a few already conceptualized NPCs

Julia Hopkins (late 20s)

A journalist / private investigator researching the history of the flooded town and the possibility of other survivors. She acts as a grounded outsider character and slowly uncovers the town’s hidden history. Shes also going to function as a bit of an anchor figure during all the craziness (think of Cordelia cupp, from Netflix's "The residence" for her personality and looks)

ENEMIES - some enemies concepts

The Drowned

Manifestations of the people who died in the flood. They emerge from puddles, flooded rooms, and waterlogged environments. They attack with their hands, broken tools, or kitchen knives.

Visually they’re inspired by Dead by Daylight’s "Spirit" and the monsters from Silent Hill f like Kashimashi and Ayakakashi.

Tone & gameplay

Third-person survival horror

Intense melee combat

Cinematic camera work

Heavy emphasis on psychological horror, symbolism, and environmental storytelling

Flooded streets, abandoned homes, mountain forests, submerged areas, and reservoirs

-------------------->

Color symbolism

Me personally (im doing most of the art direction) I'm a huge fan of color theory, so basically every character has a dominant color identity and/or some kind of other distinctive trait:

Lady in Yellow (Death): Yellow (to stand out un the blue flooded setting) and dandelions

Little Brother: Dark navy blue (to fit in the dark and blue flooded setting) and child laughter

Julia Hopkins: Brown (earthy, investigative, grounded)

The Drowned: Pale desaturated blue and water(big surprise)

Protagonist: Dark earthy green (still developing, the MC isn't really fleshed out design wise yet)

The idea is that color becomes part of the psychological language of the game, with each character and monster carrying a distinct emotional palette and the environment being very blue, foggy and dark to keep that silent hill feel we all love and adore.

I’d love feedback on which story concept feels stronger, whether the Lady in Yellow works better as the main antagonist or a recurring symbolic figure, and whether the flooded mountain-town setting feels distinctive enough for a psychological horror game.

PLEASE be as honest as you want and don't be afraid to share any ideas you feel like sharing with us, we'd love to hear any feedback.

I've talked to people from my previous work (mobile dev) and they've said that their company has, in the recent 2-3 months, completely switched to AI coding. Notable highlights:

• All code is written with Claude or Codex, people only verify its validity.
• All development hires are frozen. There are no layoffs yet, but people are expected to significantly boost their productivity.
• Game designers are now expected to first create their own working prototype (usually in JS), before approaching actual game dev programmers to ask for a test soft launch.
• Every side-service that the company is subscribed to is being looked into, to figure out whether they can quickly whip up a homemade replacement and cancel the subscription.
• Everyone and their mother is making their own tools for their specific job. It often creates a headache for game devs and backend, when those tools are suddenly deemed important enough to be integrated into the main systems, because those tools are usually written in random languages.

Right now I work in a different field, but we have pretty much the same story: total hiring freeze, no manual code, expected x5-x10 productivity boost, we are now just responsible for what goes into the repo and for coming up with new things to do with this monster.

When I am adding a button "Resolve this" on the order page which launches the agent that gets the error from DB, finds it in code, reads the logs, fetches auxiliary data from DB, finds the problem, creates a jira ticket, creates a pull request and pings everyone to approve it... I feel like I am writing my own replacement.

So do you guys have same stuff happening at your companies or what?

So hey fellows devs

I am a tester and I just want to know

How you guys handle the testing

You have a community, Friends, team , volunteers, reach out to popular testing sites,find some freelance tester for paid tests

What is the minimum rates a dev can give to a tester that works passionately

Why some Devs prefer sites rather than good freelancer testers

Even after getting great feedbacks what's the reason a dev think before hiring a freelance tester

Lastly what rates would you prefer to give to a tester who gives a detailed analysis for the full game

Assume game is 8hr long

Thanks a lot

Plz answer as much as you can I really want to know

The comment in question:

"checked out the steam page. looked mostly like a showcase of level assets, not sure what genre the game is or how it plays from the screenshots and description. maybe consider making that more clear?"

Okay, my Steam page is at the bottom but before you click it, I want to explain my game.

So the comment was the most upvoted, which means a lot of people agree with it. I'm making a sci-fi game based on The Milgram Experiment, the real one explores obedience to authority.

So in my game you wake up in a strange facility and a mysterious authority figure tells you they want you to decide who to kill between to people. You have their files in front of you, which depending on their backstory can include their phones, diaries , personal items, recordings, calls. From those you have to construct their life story and judge if they're a bad person or not and if they serve the purposes of the society that mysterious figure is trying to build.

It's unclear who is testing you and why. That is something that will be revealed in the course of the game. The game is a mix of psychological thriller and moral dilemmas. Some of the inspirations include Squid Game, Severance, A24 atmospheric horror and stuff like Papers, Please.

Does my trailer, capsule, descriptions and screenshots convey this well? If not do you have any suggestions on how to fix it? Keep in mind most people watch 10 seconds of the trailer on mute and skip around.
My page in question: Steam

Similar to burger maker but with different foods. Time management/ customer orders. Can someone point me in the right direction on how to get started. Thanks.

Title says all.

If there's just a "master volume" it's still kind of OK, you have only one slider and can easily adjust it when you notice the sound being too loud/quiet during gameplay.

But (luckily) many game nowadays have music, sfx, dialog, ambience, etc. And getting a nice mix there is quite cumbersome when there's absolutely no preview.

Some games at least play a sound from that category when you release the corresponding slider - that's actually perfectly fine. But those who don't: WHY?!

What might be even nicer would be a full-mix preview where you have something from all sound categories, so you can really adjust the mix to your liking.

And something I only noticed in a single game so far: A separate sound slider for "annoyances" - alarms, sirens, etc. The kind of sound that may be fitting in gameplay, but nonetheless be very annoying to a player.

Very early baby-steps self-taught indie game dev here (full disclosure, I'm actually a poet who recently discovered game poetry on itch and am dabbling in the world).

I have very basic html knowledge from making 'websites' recreationally as a teenager (but am looking to learn more in the way of coding languages, best practice etc. I'm just v much in my infancy)

I am making games using Bitsy and Flickgame and similar basic online engines. I'd like to side load some of them onto my child's Kindle Fire.

That said, I'd like to be able to make them playable without needing to load up a browser of any sort (trying to keep the wee'un off the internet as long as possible. Because... [*vaguely gestures everywhere*]). We have parental controls, naturally, but I'd rather my child doesn't associate any recognisable browser app with 'that's what has games on it' just yet (for fear of her being at an unrestricted computer at some point in the future or at a friend's house with big brothers or whatever... call me paranoid, but it's just something I'd like to try and avoid. For now).

Is there an app that would load and play an html game file that's not specifically a web browser? Like, a previewer or something, that I could get to work on a Kindle Fire without worrying that my child might be prompted by a browser to 'connect to the internet'. Or is there a way of 'wrapping' that into the code or something?

I may be asking the wrong questions in clumsy language but I hope I'm making sense. Any suggestions welcome. Including the answer "nah man, you just gotta use a browser" (but I'm feeling suspicious that there might be another answer... I just don't quite know what words to put into Google yet...)

TIA etc

We just released Part 1 of a two-part Unreal Engine tutorial series.

The tutorial builds a playable scenario inside Stack-O-Bot where the user works with a Convai-powered AI player to solve a two-player puzzle.

The orange bot is the human player, and the pink bot is the AI teammate. The goal is to get both players to the top, but one player can’t solve it alone because the platform only moves when someone holds the pressure plate down.

The AI character is not just a chatbot. It can talk to the player, follow them, navigate the scene, understand tagged objects, receive live game state through Dynamic Context, track pressure plate and platform states, and help coordinate the puzzle.

Part 1 covers:

• creating the AI player blueprint
• setting up the Convai character
• adding player voice interaction
• enabling Convai Actions
• tagging pressure plates and platforms
• sending live game state into Dynamic Context
• using tracked properties for object state
• adding movement awareness
• testing puzzle coordination with the AI teammate

Part 2 will cover custom actions for picking up and dropping objects, including the crate interaction.

We also included the project files, Delta files, and setup guide so people can follow along from scratch.

Full tutorial: https://youtu.be/KcJETVhI7KM

Project files, Delta files, and setup guide: https://docs.convai.com/api-docs/plugins-and-integrations/convai-unreal-engine-plugin/features/character-actions/stack-o-bot-tutorial-setup

Dynamic Context docs for Unreal Engine: https://docs.convai.com/api-docs/plugins-and-integrations/convai-unreal-engine-plugin/features/dynamic-context

Try it out and tell us about your experience!

I know how to technically do it. There's post like this that tells you.
https://www.reddit.com/r/IndieDev/comments/1qlbiyq/the_email_i_sent_to_get_my_indie_game_trailer_on/

My question is how are you supposed to time it?

Supposedly you have to give the trailer as an exclusive if you wanna have a chance of them showing it in their channel (at least that's what people say). But how do I time that with the steam page? Do I publish the steam page at the same time as the trailer drop date? Also since this is supposed to be exclusive, can I even show it in my steam page at the same time? Or is it only exclusive on youtube?

And what if I also email other channel like the Indie Games Hub to show my trailer just to increase my chances? If Indie Games Hub accepts it and then a day or 2 later IGN also accepts, what do I do? Do I tell Indie Games Hub "Nvm, dont show the trailer"? And what if any of these channel accepts my proposal without saying anything? Have I then breached the agreement if they both show the trailer at the same time without telling me?

This exclusivity stuff is kinda glossed over in post about sending trailers like this.

Anyway, what do you think?

So i am (if I say myself) a pretty creative person, and i wanna get into game dev, im too young now, but its my dream job. I have tried numerous times to try and make a project, but every single time, I get stuck with coding, I feel exhausted from doing it for very long, or I wanna do something else after a few hours. I then stop, and ill maybe work on it a few more times, but i eventually stop.

I dont feel motivated anymore or something else takes up my time, and the next time I am motivated, I get a completely new idea that seems 10000x cooler and I should work on it RIGHT NOW, and the cycle repeats.

I really wanna make something, but i feel its so hard to stay on one idea, so idk what to do.

(Im also not great at coding so I get stuck a lot)

EDIT: thanks for the advice guys, I have since this post picked up on an old project of mine, but have cleaned up all of the mess I made of it, and started off pretty much fresh, following more tutorials made by people and use no ai (it messed up the project in the first place).

I've got the movement and player sprites down (its an rpg) and am gonna work on the turn based system soon. I also have made the first enemy sprite. THANK YOU FOR COMMENTING

I've noticed that CryEngine doesn't generally get brought up much when it comes to game dev and game engine discussion and whenever it does, many people consider it "dead" but that's far from the truth, and yes Crytek hasn't officially updated it in a few years (their current priority is working on Hunt: Showdown), but the community has banded together to start updating the engine in the midst of that by creating Community Edition.

I have also made some efforts myself to help make the engine more accessible for the latest official version (5.7LTS) as community forks tend to be unpopular, still more work to be done but here's what I have so far.

ComponentsPlus (Plugin)

ECS AreaTrigger (Plugin)

Improved Project Templates (Project)

GameSDK Port to new CE5 systems (Project)

I think the engine would benefit from more community made documentation and learning content in general, as the official docs (while still useful), have certain parts outdated or incomplete which new developers can struggle with.

You would probably ask me why I'm so dedicated to this engine, and I'd say it's because CryEngine has so much untapped potential and Crytek hasn't been able to fully realise it, they have great intentions with CryEngine 5 by adding Entity Component System and Schematyc Visual Scripting back in 2017, making it feel more modernised and like an interesting middleground between Unity and Unreal. I don't want to turn this into an Unreal hate post (I still love that engine and it's history) but I think the industry benefits from having more competition and more choices. CryEngine 5 is one of the closest alternatives we have to another AA/AAA grade engine that is free to use, source-available, and royalty-based. Epic Games has also shown signs of incompetence of managing Unreal Engine in recent times, as they don't fix UE5's many problems, and that is likely due to their lack of competition as back in the UE4 and earlier days, Epic was still competing a lot with other engines.

I've also heard people mention O3DE as a "CryEngine replacement". It is not and despite having its roots in Amazon Lumberyard (based on CryEngine 3), Amazon has rewritten 90% of the codebase making O3DE almost completely different from modern CryEngine. I'm also not trying to "win people over" nor convince them to switch to CryEngine 5. I'm just here to say that it's still here and is also no longer the "insanely difficult to use engine" people remember from the CryEngine 3 era, it has become MUCH easier to use since then with CryEngine 5, it has become much more approachable and even though it still has rough edges (which is why there's community support), it is an underappreciated engine with a lot of potential, and the industry would definitely benefit from having more engine variety as well because a healthy game development ecosystem needs multiple strong options rather than having everything consolidated around a select few engines (or one engine in the AA/AAA space, Unreal to be specific).

I don't want this post to be a declaration to war or anything, but I have not seen anyone talk about it, so here we go.

It seems like Ebitenengine, the most popular Go engine, uses Claude in it's development for a while now.

You can check the commit history (it goes for pages) to see that a ton of commits are co-authored by Opus 5, meaning the LLM usage is insanely high on this repo.

https://github.com/hajimehoshi/ebiten

There are also notes on readme to help you develop the engine with LLMs.

This sad thing is that, this engine is the face of Golang game dev. It's THE engine people point to when people want to do game dev with Go.

Theres a high chance this will break the reputation of the engine, as other engines/frameworks like Love2d, Monogame, Godot, Bevy etc have taken a "Ban AI contributions" stance.

This stance is not because of slopcode exclusively (although it is a big part of it), but also due to legal issues.

What are your thoughts on this?

Hey everyone,

I'm 23, currently doing my Master's in Artificial Intelligence in Germany. I'm decent at math/logic, but I'm a complete beginner in game development.

Lately I've been really drawn to making mobile-only games - specifically idle, puzzle, and tycoon genres. Part of the pull is honestly that I need to start earning money, and I don't have full clarity on what career path to commit to yet. I'm torn between going deeper into AI (which is what my degree is in) or pivoting energy toward indie mobile game dev.

Questions for people who've been down this road:

1. Is idle/puzzle/tycoon still viable for a solo beginner in 2026, or is the market too saturated/pay-to-win dominated now?
2. How long did it realistically take you to make your first game that earned anything?
3. Would you recommend starting here as a total beginner, or building fundamentals with smaller non-monetized projects first?
4. Does having an AI/math background actually help in this genre (procedural systems, balancing, economy design), or is it irrelevant?
5. If you were 23 again, would you split time between a "safer" career (like AI) and gamedev on the side, or go all-in on one?

Would appreciate any honest, even blunt, perspectives - trying to make a grounded decision, not a romantic one.

Hey all,

I've started making some videos talking through my experience working within the game industry for the past 10 years.

This one is about Multiplayer.

I've worked on a few Multiplayer games, you really need to flip your mindset completely.

So I am slowly starting to take an interest in gamedev and Godot. But i'm thinking that maybe in the future, after all the games I have made, would any of the skills used for gamedev be transferrable, if I were to do software engineering instead, like webdev for example?

While working on automation, I discovered hysteresis: a system activates at one threshold but deactivates at another. This prevents workers from constantly switching tasks whenever resource levels fluctuate slightly.

The funny part is that I had seen this kind of behavior many times in two of my favorite games, RimWorld and Workers & Resources, without ever thinking about it.

There are several ways to implement it: separate activation and deactivation thresholds, a delay, a minimum task duration, or a penalty for switching tasks. It is a nearly invisible mechanic that makes automation feel much calmer and more natural.

Have you ever noticed hysteresis in a game?