I had a dream a few nights ago where I was playing a really cool game and I wanna make it in real life now but I know next to nothing about programming/game making so I came here to ask questions and learn some stuff. I've posted in other subreddits but I wanna cover all my bases lol

The game's basic premise is you're stuck in purgatory and you've gotta make your way through an infinite mansion (infinitely generating rooms that spawn in and as you enter the new room the old one despawns) fighting all sorts of demons/evil spirits trapped/possessing each large room. (rooms in purgatory are different then rooms we're used to, there's rooms that have 2nd and 3rd floors and multiple sub-rooms in one large room). Along the way you're given various objects that can help and/or hinder your Sisyphus-like task of exercising an infinite mansion. It'd be 3D world but all the assets would be 2D and hand drawn, like tables, bookshelves, etc.

I think I'd also like to make it multiplayer maybe? (but there'd be a single player option in the menu too if you wanna just play alone)

Any tips/advice/help would be awesome :D thanks for reading if you made it this far too :)

https://docs.google.com/document/d/11d-rfH3CSfj_6re2oc0d_MV9MeNQO9vQXEI5FQ_exuw/edit?tab=t.0

This is my idea for my game, its kind of based around my favorite games and I have no idea how to code, would anyone be interested in this type of complex tycoon style game? Write your review in the doc as i gave everyone edit permissions. Thanks.

Hey fellow devs! I’m working on a game and need inspiration for a map set in modern Japan. I’ve played games like Yakuza: Like a Dragon and Persona 5, but i need a few more if anyone can recommend me:)

I'm looking for books, courses, and, in general, any resources that will help me understand QA, game testing, also production management and producer tasks in depth.

I found a few books, but most of them are outdated. Something relatively new and still relevant.

1. Wrath of The Fallen

2. Ashes of Divinity

I only college and other institutions teach Unity or Unreal, but never the Source engine.

I am talking about badges/trading cards etc.

These are locked until you reach a certain level but it doesn't say how much you need to get. Does anyone know what you need to unlock them?

Hi!

I am looking for LLM (large language models) for running the dialogue of characters in a game. That means it has to be

1. Super small and decently fast (the real reason is being run parallell to the game)
2. Reasoning can be low
3. Don't need alot of lanugages
4. Be able to roleplay as characters and remember maybe 100-200 lines of facts and questinformation.
5. "Styles" as in "Joe talks like a parrot and usually adds a zen question when he finishes speaking".

This is ofc for using AI characters in a game locally to avoid the dangers relying (and paying) for online versions. Should ofc run either on CPU or shared GPU with the game while still being relativly fast.
So if you have any ideas of LLMs that would fit this description, I could really use a hand. Thank you.

it is obvious that if a person is close to me the person will be more likely to say the game is good even if the general public would dislike it. Where can i get playtesters,or anyone that will judge the game before launch?

I have a job interview upcoming for the above mentioned job profile. But I’m really confused about what to expect. It’s fresher graduate level job. I have made games with blueprints and c++ both. Can people in similar positions offer any guidance on how to prepare for it

For the context, I released 3 games on Steam, each of them has >90% positive reviews, between 50 and 300. I am getting very positive reviews and I am very grateful players are enjoying my games. I am also getting some negative reviews. And some of them are fully fair, people don't find the games interesting or don't like music, art style, say games are boring and similar. All good.

But some are just full of pure hate. E.g.

1. I've got accusation that I am copying work of other devs, which is basically not true.
2. I've got accusation that positive reviews are bought because some people are reviewing all my games.
3. I've got accusation that positive reviews are bought because some people have only 1 review of this genre on their account (which is actually not true).
4. Asset flip of course. Flipping is a form of cheating. Game that is fun to play for players and is made using assets is not cheating. Especially if it costs like 4$.

Then these accusation reviews are getting people that found the review helpfull. I believe that some players while seeing a "warning review" simply put a "like" on it being grateful to the reviewer for the warning. I've seen it dozens of times in other games. Honestly I did the same more than once as a player. Then such review is on top of reviews. And then my sales are affected, because many playes are just reading first review on top and run away.

I know, I know. I shouldn't react and just chill. Every game has some hateful reviews. Especially that it's like 4 out of few hundreds.

But at the same time, being accusated of buying reviews or copying others people work is just discouraging. I feel very uncomfortable knowing that such accusations are just there for people to see.

How do you mentally cope with such reviews ?

+ Is it worth to flag the review for Valve to moderate ? There's an option and it says that it can be used if a review is not compliant to community guidelines. And community guidlines have a point "public accusations" explitely. Looks like a valid use. But then it may only give fuel to the hater to hate even more.

Hi all, I've been actively promoting my game and have had my Steam page visible for about a year and a half now, and I was quite shocked to notice a similar game with the same name as mine pop up on Steam around a month ago. The only difference is this game name is two words, while mine is one (funny enough, I partially chose this for stylistic reasons, but the main reason I chose this was to have a distinct phrase so search engines wouldn't get confused with the two common words, critter and garden).

Fundamentally the games are quite different but on the surface it appears similar enough that it has me a bit worried with regards to discoverability and confusing potential customers. I'm about to ramp up my marketing efforts in prep for the Feb Next Fest and this concern has been looming over me.

As my title implies, I'm interested to hear if something similar has happened to anyone before and what the outcome was, and if my concerns above are valid (or, if there are any other reasons I should be worried about this).

Thanks for reading!

My game has 0 hud and it doesn’t need it.

I’m thinking about adding a very small effect on corners or sides of screen to show the player they’re in a space suit, even if it does nothing for the game.

Obviously, I’d allow players to turn it off. But would it even be worth adding? Or would everyone just turn it off

Hi! im working on a cyberpunk game about disability and right to repair, we've gotten to a stage in making the game were we think a demo might be viable to come out this year, so we've started posting devlog stuff in socials. Any tips on spreading the word/marketing in the early stages?

We plan to use the demo to launch a kick-starter with

Ever had a user hop in to say, "hey I have this problem. It's doing X."

So you say, "okay, cool, how do I reproduce that?"

And then they say, "Oh nevermind some guy on Z solved it."

Then you're like, "WTF?" And the user of course immediately ghosts leaving you with no trace. Frustrating.

If it's not reported where we can see it -- we don't know about it to fix it.

It's especially true that if it's not reported with frequency we probably don't know how common and serious it is.

You have go to that social media site and find a whole bunch of users all there cataloguing issues... By complaining about them.

A few smart users say, "why don't you report these to the devs so they can fix them?" And the users there are just like, lol, Isildur refusing to throw the ring into mount doom.gif (With you reading this like months later like... come on guys.)

Some of this is solved by having a friendly and supportive forum or discord where these kinds of things can be reported and documented. An environment that encourages breaking the game and reporting on issues, with the effort being rewarded with accolades and thanks. Unfortunately, there's a ton of community trauma around devs who are irritable and can't take feedback, or simply ignore it.

We can't solve that industry wide problem on our little indie game discord, so users continue to either use public reviews/criticism as feedback instead of, you know, communicating issues to the devs to fix! It doesn't matter how responsive our devs are when users have been trained to just complain/vent helplessly by other companies not accepting and encouraging feedback 1on1.

Thus, we have to go dumpster diving for diamonds on sites like reddit, where we can spot issues to take home to the issue tracker and prioritize them.

Have you had to do this?

What's the experience like googling yourself and reading all this hidden user commentary, sorting fact from fiction and actionable feedback from meaningless noise? Especially when you read "the devs don't care" as you are literally caring currently because you were just made aware of this issue by reading the comments in a place you'd never know to look, lol.

I've found it useful, it's a necessary chore, but it's also a source of profound frustration.

Hello, im studying an optional, Mobile Application Development module for my undergrads. The final project is, unsurprisingly a mobile app. I chose a video game since i think i will enjoy the process.

We use Flutter as a framework. As such, i initially thought ill use Flame as the engine. But after reading stuff about game development and other peoples opinions, im also considering Unity as well. I am a bit lost on what to pick.

I want to create a relatively simple, 2D pixel art, Rougelike.

Our only requirement is using the Flutter framework, and has freedom to do and use anything we like. Since this module is completely optional for me, and i dont get credit, i dont have that limitation either. Though im still leaning towards using Flutter and Flame since Flutter is used for general mobile application development, so it could be better for my future.

I have no experience with either of the engines. So please inform me what is the better option in your opinion

as in like warning signs,grafitii etc, i was able to find textures models and sounds, but not decals

So I want to get ahead of anyone suggesting to learn Blender, I swear I fucking tried. I used YouTube tutorials, the available literature and I even had 5 hours of one on one tutoring at $50 and hour.

There's just something about 3D modelling characters that I just can't get my head around.

I even got my hands on a license for Character Creator and iClone through liberal use of "work expenses" for a company that counts boozy lunches every day as meetings.

Texturing, animating etc I can handle but I would love something like a character creator I could use, as opposed to what "Character Creator" is supposed to be other than convoluted hot bullshit with fuck all assets and an extortionate store.

Please and thank you.

I cannot, for the life of me, find any good documentation on basic cube/player collisions. I'm using raylib and was wondering if there's any good tutorials on collisions.

Hi every one, I have kind of a crazy idea and would like to find people that would be interested. I want to make a Game Jam where the winner gain a certain amount of money. And the twist is that the money comes from the participant 😈. To participate to the jam, everyone puts 10$ to a pot, and the winner takes it all !!! I would love to see experimented developer fight against eachother with some really cool game in order to win. Let me know what you think of it, contact me dm or on my discord : gymnopediese, if you're interested and if enough people join, I'll set up the discord and the itch.io page for the first edition of the Risky Jam 😈 and I'll find a secured way to take the money so people can trust the project. It could be a really interesting, and paying 10$ for a fun Game Jam experience is not too much I think.

I'm currently working on a game that's all about generating electricity and upgrading your power station to make more money and progress through the game. The goal is to build your energy empire, and at the end of each season, you get offers to sell your company, giving you benefits for your next restart. There's also a competitive element where you can buy upgrades to sabotage other players or cause blackouts (with cooldowns to keep it balanced).

I think the concept is pretty fun, and I've planned several tiers with different structures you can build, ranging from wood biomass burners to nuclear plants. What do you guys think? Does this sound like a fun and doable game idea? Are there any features you'd suggest adding to make it more engaging or enjoyable for players? I’d love to hear your feedback—thanks in advance!

So ive been creating games for a while now. Creating mobile games has been more of a hobbyist journey and in terms of making money its not been good. Ive decided to create a multiplayer racing f1 game on steam. Im self taught and i want players to be able to competitively be able to race against eachother, on gp tracks ect. This will require dedicated servers for sure to reduce/eliminate cheating however as a solo developer this is a very expensive decision. Utilising P2P is cheaper but making the host the server is also bad as it causes cheating. What do you guys think I should do? I've always wanted to build my own f1 metaverse type racing game but seeing how hard it is to actually make money from games is making me unsure what to do.

Right now I’m trying to make an LLM based choose your own adventure game. Kind of hitting a wall right now - when the story is written ahead of time the story is good, but the game isn’t fun since it feels predetermined. When I focus on the game with no prescribed story, it’s somewhat fun but nothing feels refined and is just AI slop.

Curious if anyone is hitting a similar wall in any of the games they worked on before and if they have any good advice on how to cross that chasm

Howdy,

I have a few questions about Spine2D regarding skins and how it works - my team isn't giving the clarity that I want so I'm looking for new ways to understand the situation.

My team currently develops Visual Novels.

Currently, in our game, players can choose between 4 different characters for the FMC. Each character has 4 facial emotions.

We're looking to expand a player's customization of their character. Primarily... adding hair1, hair2, hair3, hair4 options and eyecolor1, eyecolor2, eyecolor3, eyecolor4 options.

I am told that this will make the task exponentially more complicated. Because we will need to do...

skin1_hair1__eyecolor1_emotion1

skin1_hair1__eyecolor1_emotion2

skin1_hair1__eyecolor1_emotion3

skin1_hair1__eyecolor1_emotion4

skin1_hair1__eyecolor2_emotion1

skin1_hair1__eyecolor2_emotion2

skin1_hair1__eyecolor2_emotion3

skin1_hair1__eyecolor2_emotion4

skin1_hair1__eyecolor3_emotion1

skin1_hair1__eyecolor3_emotion2

skin1_hair1__eyecolor3_emotion3

skin1_hair1__eyecolor3_emotion4

skin1_hair1__eyecolor4_emotion1

skin1_hair1__eyecolor4_emotion2

skin1_hair1__eyecolor4_emotion3

skin1_hair1__eyecolor4_emotion4

skin1_hair2__eyecolor1_emotion1

skin1_hair2__eyecolor1_emotion2

skin1_hair2__eyecolor1_emotion3

skin1_hair2__eyecolor1_emotion4

...

And so forth.

Conceptually, I understand why this will make it exponentially more time-consuming. What I'd like to ask is... is there no easier alternative to achieve the result that we want? How would you approach this problem (of increasing customization for players) without walking down this path?

Thanks.

Hello everyone!

So we just released our first game, Unreachable, last week. We were able to make it to popular upcoming at around 7k wishlists and by launch we had over 9.5k wishlists. We are really happy that we managed to launch our first game, but the conversion this first week has been pretty low at around 2% conversion, 200 copies, with less than 10 reviews from customers. We have heard a few complaints that the pricing might have been a bit too high, which in hindsight we agree with.

Steam traffic is now dying out (as expected after the first week) and so we have lost our chance of getting into new and trending. We are now left with two options.

Option 1: Lower the game's base price. We asked Steam about this and they said we can't do this immediately but need to wait 1 month. One of our fears if we go with this option is that customers who bought at the higher price might leave negative reviews since we are not able to refund them. So if we go with this option, we plan to make an announcement, probably later this week, where we basically say the game price is gonna go down to 10 USD (so 50% of current 20 USD), along with some of the things we plan to improve in our game. By doing this we hope people who wishlisted the game originally would be more interested in buying it, even if at discounts.

Option 2: Keep the same base price and hope we convert well during discounts. It is common advice that games only really sell during discounts, and there has also been some advice against reducing the base price so drastically as it shows a lack of confidence in your product. The downside is that since our base price is 50% too high right now, the discounts must be steep in order to be effective at converting (because people already expect the base price to be 50% cheaper). This means that we will need to constantly run 50%+ discounts, which we think could devalue the discount. Also, we have a game that is very dependent on influencer traffic and we don't know when a streamer will cover us. So we might not have a discount in place when a streamer covers us, which could damage our conversion at the time.

Here is the steam page for reference (https://store.steampowered.com/app/2487620/Unreachable/).

So which option should we take and why? Or do you think that price is not the issue and something else with the steam page is the issue?

Any advice is greatly appreciated. If you can think of any other options we have please let us know, and don't be afraid to be brutally honest. Thanks for reading and for your help!

Hi all,

I am looking for U.S. game developers for a NYU capstone project I am working on.

You will be able to be a part of this exciting project talking about AI, ethics and gaming!

I will also need U.S. based gamers for a survey i will provide.

Just a friendly reminder, I will need to provide you (if you are able to participate) a consent form that our university provides to make sure everything is confidential between me and the participant.

Thanks all!

I will probably share with family and friends but it is from a private IP, so I won’t be able to really launch it.

I've got hundreds of textures that need converting and optimizing for different platforms (mobile, PC, etc). Currently doing it manually which is a huge time sink. Tried ImageMagick but it's pretty clunky. What tools do you all use for this? Looking for something that cando batch processing, Convert between formats, Resize/optimize for different platforms, Deal with normal maps properly,etc

Any recommendations? Or are you all just suffering through manual processing too?

I have been trying to find one but I cant

Hello all!

*I'm not sure how best to phrase this question, but 'design fatigue' sounds about right. I'm referring to a kind of combined writer's block/lack of motivation thing.

I've been doing game dev stuff on-and-off since 2016, purely as a hobby, and something that always stops me getting further with it is building up the actual levels.

I don't mean because I have no ideas or don't know how to do something, exactly; instead, I prototype an idea and get something I'm really happy with, and an overall story, loads of project ideas planned out, etc, but just can't seem to get my brain to want to keep focused on a project until it better resembles a finished game.

Typically, I decide to start on something else. Which is nuts because I also do music and write novels, and those are things I can always see through to completion.

I don't know why it's different for game development because I'll be super excited and into a project, but just...grind to a halt.

So my question/discussion point is: does this happen to you too, and if so, how do you manage to keep focus?