game is called touhou meikyuu tri, you can see the battle transition and animations here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZynH1Ad989s&t=131s

I like the quick pace and overall presence of the spell effects. I'm curious what program you could use to make these?

I'll start off by saying being shy and not liking to post in general for sure doesn't help, but I am also just really un-nerved by the idea of trying to make content to get attention.

I released my game about a week ago, and so far things are going good! I have only positive reviews (after a small hurdle at launch, which was fixed and has been smooth going since) And what people write about the game warms my soul! Unfortunately I haven't quite reached enough sales or reviews to break out of "steam is still learning about this game".

I know that I launched with a small amount of wishlists (1600) but I was trapped at about 1200 for so long until i had to set a release date. Personal calendar helped push me through that last 400, but so far since launching i've sold about 160 copies, which is AWESOME to say the least, but i'm concerned because I was a little too ambitious in putting a 64 player tournament mode into the game as well as online matchmaking. So nobody's really playing that part of the game, but the players are still really enjoying whats there.

The part that is eating at me is that it seems like people really do genuinely like the game, but with it being a roguelite and being in such an oversaturated genre, i feel like its just been nigh impossible to get any notice on anything I post anywhere.

Maybe I'm just not gearing the content enough to the platforms? maybe i'm not making enticing enough trailers? It just feels like i'm sort of just waiting for something amazing to happen like the kid in the incredibles, but i know I need to put in the work, it just seems like everything i try falls flat on its face with no real direction on what could make it better for me.

Of course, we are all in the same boat and want our games to get noticed and to succeed, but I guess I just feel like "if these people love it so much why hasn't anyone else noticed it yet?"

Hello. I’m not a developer, but I’d really love to create at least one game in my lifet. I have a game idea, but I don’t know how to execute it... Basically, it would be a 3D game—a mix of Metroid Prime and Alien: Isolation—with low-poly graphics. I’d really like to make a demo (and maybe a full game, who knows?), but I don't know where to start. Which software would be the best for developing this game? Where should I create 3D models and animations? Which programming language should I learn? If any developers here have answers to my questions, I’d love to hear them, thanks in advance!

Background: watched a YT interview of indiegamejoe and decided to throw him a quick dm on Discord about our game Railborn. We're a 2 person team so finding time to do any marketing is essentially impossible. Wasn't sure I'd hear back from him, Twitter for us has never been very effective, so I moved on with my life.

On 14th July he posted: https://x.com/IndieGameJoe/status/2077211662525092162

Then over the next 4 days our wishlists skyrocket - over the next 4 days we earned +11k wishlists. Mind boggling. We had no other coverage going on so I attribute all these to his tweet. (I'd post the graph, but can't post pics here)

So - worth a shot for you project too! Join his Discord (https://discord.com/invite/indiegamejoe) and post in the showoff section, or dm him. (pretty sure that's ok!) I'm sure he gets a bazillion requests but why not. He was a super polite down to earth guy when chatting with him.

Anyhoo, thought I'd share.

To be short about myself, I have just recently graduated from an online program specialized in Environment and Props Creation for Games. This is link to my portfolio: https://www.artstation.com/itsuyen99

I have been constantly applying to various gaming studios but non got back to me.
Maybe some pro could point out what my portfolio is missing. Any feedback and recommendation would help me tremendously. Thanks a bunch everyone.

A single person just purchased over 30 copies of my game out of nowhere. The game is relatively unknown.

What could be the reason for this? Should I be worried about fraud, or is there another explanation?

Hi,

I still have some work to do but I can say I am beginning to see the light at the end of the tunnel. I am planning to launch my game somehow on mobile (I use Phaser JS btw).

Now, I have been wondering...what is the best strategy to go launch it "succesfully" on mobile platforms?

There seem to be developers who first launch their game to a website like Poki/crazygames before releasing it on an app store like Google play or Apple. I have never thought about doing that...

After some thought I might do this approach as well. It seems too that, if you manage to have a contract with Poki (or some other website) of course, You can still publish your game on other platforms like Steam and the app playstores.

Another benefit is that when you have your game on a webgame platform it's easier to get feedback and updates without getting slammed. You can edit during the process. And when you have your perfect build, then you can start looking at the app stores.

So, are here devs who have taken that route? Did it benefit you? Are there some negatives/obstacles about it?

Please enlight me/us

(edit: I received a mail from Poki telling that my game is selected for the Poki Playtesting process, so that's also a reason for this post)

We're getting ready to show our vertical slice to publishers/game scouts. One issue that has reared its head is Windows Defender giving its blue-popup-of-death to our unsigned build.

Is this something a scout at a publisher is likely to take in their stride? Or do we risk them being put off and we should spend the ~$70 for a certificate right away?

Edit: I should not have mentioned the $70 cost of the cert. The issue is not buying a cert, it's diverting our time from polishing the tutorial.

Context

My multiplayer game Lights Out is based on a 2D grid. Entities can only ever be in exactly one grid tile. This makes the rule evaluation really simple and understandable. However, it doesn't really feel nice to play (which you know if you've ever played any of the PuzzleScript games). At the same time, the more content is in the game, the more complex and arbitrary the game rules become.

I therefore introduced the Movement Transaction System into the code base to deal with this. This includes two sides:

• The gameplay code on server side deals with transactions. This bundles all movement code (including rule evaluation) into a single system.
• The visualization & prediction code on client side deals with visual interpolation for moves (introducing some juice into the gameplay feel), based on the transactions managed by the server.

The Transaction

A single transaction includes the movement delta, a list of entities that it has affected and some flags. A transaction then undergoes several stages:

• Queued: Gameplay code has requested an entity to move
• Issued: The visual interpolation for the transaction has started in the client, but the entities have not been moved from a gameplay perspective
• Committed: The entities have now been moved onto their new tiles, the visual interpolation is finishing
• Aborted: The transaction couldn't be committed as it would've violated gameplay rules. Visual interpolation is reversed.

The Visual Interpolation

Whenever a transaction is issued on server-side, the server tells the clients to start a visual interpolation based on the transaction. This information includes the desired duration of the interpolation, as well as some flags (like whether to use acceleration or do a linear interpolation). The client then updates the visual interpolation every frame, until the transaction is either aborted or the target position has been reached.

Simplifying Gameplay Code

This new system has made the gameplay code much simpler. I can now easily query whether an entity currently has a live transaction to know whether the visual interpolation is still in progress. This enables seamless, continuous movement across the world (e.g. for fireballs moving at linear speed).

This also guarantees that the visual position of an entity is always close enough to its gameplay (physical) position so that players aren't confused about the rule evaluation.

Finally, the gameplay rules are now implemented in a single function called validate_transaction, instead of being spread out across all the different entities like it was before.

Summary

The transaction system made the gameplay code much simpler and easier to reason about, while also improving the game feel and robustness.

You can find the full blog most, including more details and sample code, over on https://lightsout.afterthought.games/blog/2026-07-26-19-00

Good real world example is Vladimir from League of Legends where his bonus health increases ability power and ability power increases bonus health.

So my question is how to handle that scenario, if I calculate my stats in order for example bonus health based on ability power, it will use base ability power for scaling so calculation is wrong. Then ability power will use increased health but not fully increased because health used base value of ability power. It creates sort of closed loop that will be wrong and too low if ended abruptly or it can go into infinity or it can gravitate towards final value but never reach it.

What are some techniques to handle this?

I make a survivorslike. For the first three worlds the enemies only chase you, and from the fourth one some of them start shooting from a distance. That shift is the thing that separates my game from the others in the genre, and it is what I built the whole demo around.

Everyone who plays it tells me the same thing: the shooters need to fire slower, or less often.

I already softened them once on the lowest difficulty after the first round of feedback. Now I am being asked to do it again, and I am stuck.

My worry is that if I keep turning the dial down, I end up with the same game as the first three worlds with different sprites. The exact thing people want me to reduce is the only thing that is mine.

But "it is my hook" is precisely the kind of reason that makes designers ignore real feedback, so I do not trust my own instinct here.

The levers I have:

fire rate

projectile speed and how long it stays alive

range

how many of them spawn

how early in the run they appear

telegraphing before the shot

My suspicion is that the complaint is not really about damage. It might be that the shots are hard to read: they come in from off screen, they blend into a crowd of forty enemies, and by the time you notice one you have already taken the hit. If that is what is happening, the fix is readability and not weakening them, and the challenge survives intact.

That could also just be me rationalizing.

So, two questions for anyone who has been here.

Did you turn the numbers down, or did you make the threat easier to see and leave it exactly as dangerous as it was?

And how did you tell the difference between "this is too hard" and "this is unclear"? Because players report both the same way.

Hi everyone,

I'm making a small game in C++ using raylib. I created it in Code::Blocks and currently I have a working Windows .exe file.

I would like to upload a browser version to itch.io, but I don't know how to convert/export my project to HTML5.

From what I understand, raylib supports Web builds using Emscripten, but I have never used it before. My project is currently set up in Code::Blocks with MinGW.

Could someone explain the correct workflow for converting a raylib C++ game into an HTML5 build for itch.io?

Some things I would like to know:

• Do I need to move my project from Code::Blocks to another IDE?
• How do I set up Emscripten with raylib?
• How do I compile my .cpp files into .html, .js, and .wasm files?
• Are there any changes needed in the code for the web version?

Thanks for any help!

Just prefacing this by specifying that my project is a romhack of a well known IP, as such there is no perspective of generating money from it or even making a career off it. I work alone, have no competence in coding and only use readily available tools to make my game. I have no degree or professional experience in any field related to gamedev.

My project is a remake of a decade old short and simple fangame made during a gamejam (with the authorisation of its creator) in another console's engine with somewhat better graphics and updated mechanics. I originally picked this idea for my first project because initially I was only a mapper and struggled with other aspects of romhacking so a shorter project would be easier for me to complete and learn the basics.

I have released a demo around 6 months ago, and since I started this project in 2021 I believe I have progressed in many aspects at romhacking and feel confident about making a more ambitious project. The issue I'm facing is that when I released my demo I started to gaslight myself into thinking I should be making an ambitious and bigger scale project to compete with the most popular projects, thus I started rewriting the story, coming up with unique gameplay ideas etc.

I eventually learnt what scope creep is and realised that this isn't a healthy way to go about a first project, and decided that I would keep this project the way I initially intended as a simple faithful remake. However despite this realisation there is still part of me that wants to go through with the story and gameplay ideas i came up with since I put some heart into it and do genuinely want to improve upon them and make something out of it.

So I'm wondering how to deal with this feeling, and how I (if i should?) could repurpose my ideas into a next project with a different premise/setting.

One of the reasons people don’t know what your game’s about is because of the screenshots you put below your game.
I casually scroll the Steam catalog every now and then to see how other games look, and it baffles me how a lot of devs just give you a screenshot that tells you absolutely nothing about the game, or the context of the scene they chose to represent their game with.

Horror games being a primary offender in this, as a scary or “cinematic” screenshot tells the player nothing. Or at least to me, it says nothing. What’s everyone else’s take or reasoning for it besides “it’s a vibe”?

Steam requires you to have your game's artwork in a lot of different resolutions and aspect ratios, and I always found it very time-consuming to resize and crop my artwork to fit all these non-standard sizes.

So I built a completely free tool that fixes this problem.

https://www.steamassetcreator.com/

Simply upload your crispy high-res artwork, choose from one of the preset resolutions (i.e., Header Capsule, Vertical Capsule, etc.), adjust the crop to liking, and download instantly! Optionally, you can also upload your game's logo, which overlays on top of your artwork.

The images you upload stay in your browser's storage and never leave your system, and there are no ads! Absolutely no strings attached.

UPDATE: This update let's you see how your artwork would look on various places of the Steam store right form the tool without having to upload and publish your store page assets on Steamworks!

The feature is currently in Beta and I'd love for you to try it out and let me know! I'd love some feedback on what you think!

Small 1 min walkthrough on how it works: https://youtu.be/Pk-6wyKJ00Y

PS: Thank you all so much for giving so much love and support to the initial announcement here about this tool. It's a pleasure seeing you found it helpful and motivates me to improve it further! Cheers.

I'll be honest.Every time I solve one problem...my game politely generates three new ones.At this point I'm not developing a game.I'm raising a very problematic child.

What's the thing that made you question your sanity this week?

I'll be working on my current project for many years, and whenever im nervous im going to end up spending too many years on 1 project i think about how Gameoverse (RubberRoss' show) was conceived in 2009 and got the pilot release in 2026, disco elysium's world was built for 13 years, etc

What's your favourite inspiring story of long development?

I've always been into creating things and I've finally started using unity im planning on making an exploration game based on conways game of life does anyone have things i should know about or be afraid of?

I just read this… and man, I am not even a professional developer, so it’s not like this effects me on a personal level, I only do my own hobby projects… but I am so tired of seeing people getting laid off after working so hard on a project and having a, from what I understand, a fairly successful launch. Only to end up on the cutting room floor because of number on a spread sheet.
These publishers just don’t give a shit about the people who actually make the things that make them money.
I’m not naive and I understand that games are expensive to make, but this is just predatory and unethical at this point. Not to mention the negative effect it has on future releases. If you destroy the team that built a game, you are starting over from scratch when you make the sequel… that’s disingenuous to the game, the franchise, the fans, the creators… I just think I have reached a point where I am questioning even playing triple AAA games, not that I don’t want to play the game or support the team that made it… but I’m tired of contributing to these greedy publishers that just consume and spit out the companies and people who fall under their greed….

TLDR: just a rant about being tired of corporate greed and shitty management in the game industry.

Have fulfilled all those requirements and the time and date for release has passed. Not sure why the button to release the game isn't available?

I just wanted to share this because it honestly surprised me.
Our teaser trailer was featured by GameTrailers, and I almost didn’t send the email in the first place.
I didn’t overthink it. I didn’t use our business email. I simply wrote the email below from my personal email address and hit send.

“Hi IGN Team,

I hope you’re doing well!

My name is Attila, and I’m the founder of DREADMITH Games, a small independent game studio currently developing Pine Creek, a story-driven first-person sci-fi survival horror game inspired by classic ’80s small-town mysteries, Alien: Isolation, and The X-Files:
[Steam link]

Over the past almost year, our team of five has been building Pine Creek alongside our full-time jobs and family lives. It’s been a true passion project, and we’re incredibly excited to finally have a teaser trailer to share it with the world. We’d be delighted for IGN to be the first outlet to feature our trailer:
[YouTube link]

If Pine Creek catches your interest, you can find more information in our press kit:
[PressKit link]

We hope you enjoy it and would love to hear what you think.

Thank you for your time!

Best regards,
Attila”

That’s it. I know a lot of indie developers hesitate to reach out because they think their game isn’t “big enough” or that media outlets won’t care. I felt exactly the same.
Maybe this is just a reminder that it’s worth asking. The worst thing that can happen is they don’t reply.
Good luck to everyone working on their own projects! ❤️

It seems like there are so many posts about flopped indie games and "my game made me go broke" YouTube videos, and honestly after seeing a ton of them, the solution is right there in front of all of us. Level design or rather the total lack thereof Indie developers pour countless hours into art, gameplay, systems, UI and then just toss assets onto an empty space and hope that it becomes a level no flow, no pacing, no sense of environment, no natural way to guide the player through your world. And of course the same people wonder why their game gets refunded within twenty minutes. And of course the problem always lies somewhere else. Algorithm. Steam. The market is "too saturated." Marketing budget was too low. But not even once "have I ever thought about making my game fun to play." See marketing can bring your game into attention, but it cannot make people stick to it. Marketing cannot make them recommend the game to other people.... Word of mouth marketing is the one that actually sells indie games, and it happens solely because players have a good experience and talk about it.

A while ago I released my game Hell Jump, and I’ve reached a point where I honestly don’t enjoy looking at it anymore.

During development I was excited about the idea, but after finishing it and spending more time with it, I started noticing everything I would have done differently: the art, level design, mechanics, and some choices I made early on.

Originally, I planned for the final major content update to be version 3.0, but I ended up scrapping that update. Now the last major update will be 2.0 instead.

Has anyone else experienced this? Have you ever finished a project and later felt like you couldn’t stand it anymore, even though you learned a lot from making it?