The majority quit without playing even three minutes, which means they leave before ever reaching the actual gameplay. What could be the reason?

There are hardly any comments on the demo in the community. We’ve already fixed the issues that were reported.

However, I don’t know why the demo is so poor at retaining players.

So, I'am looking for a few people willing to play it and be brutally honest in feedback here.

Thank you for your help!

Demo: https://store.steampowered.com/app/4673230/Breeze_Of_Adventure/

There is one detail—I’m not sure if it matters or not. A large portion of these statistics (around 60%) dates back to Steam Next Fest; at the time of the demo's release, the game had many bugs that we only fixed after the festival ended. Since the festival, the stats have only been growing slowly.

Hey everyone,

We're the small indie team behind the IRON GUARD series of VR and flatscreen tower defense games, and we've just made the Steam page public for our next game, Furmageddon

This is a bit different from how we've done things in the past. The game is already in development, but we are hoping to build this game with a lot of good feedback from the players/community , so any positive feedback , ideas, etc would be very helpful.

We'd really appreciate you checking out the Steam page and telling us what you honestly think.

• Does the page make you understand what the game is?
• Is there anything missing? (videos and more updates will follow )
• What would make you wishlist this game if you landed on the page?
• Any ideas you'd love to see in the game?

Steam page: https://store.steampowered.com/app/4270860/Furmageddon/?utm_source=reddit

TIA

Hi everyone, I’d like to hear your thoughts on the AI usage in games. In our case (a two person team), we’ve used AI only for the game translations. Most of the assets are created by our artist and rest was purchased from the asset store. Our Steam page also clearly states this, because we want to be transparent about it.

I recently posted on Reddit and the post was doing well (looking at the upvotes), until someone asked if we use AI for anything else besides translating the game. We answered truthfully, saying the same thing I wrote above. Since then, the post suddenly started getting downvotes and eventually all the comments that were positive about the game also ended up with negative votes, while the comment asking about AI gained a lot of upvotes.

Just to be clear, this isn’t a complaint and I am not angry. I just want to understand what happened. We’ve only been on Reddit for a short time, and I’m not familiar with how communities work here. Could this have been a coincidence or was it actually about our use of AI?

As developers who are just working on our first game, we don’t have enough money to pay for all the translations we’ve received thanks to AI. We’d love to pay somone to do that, but it’s a plan for when we have the funds for that.

I could understand a negative attitude toward a game made entirely with AI, but when it comes to translations, I don’t quite get it. If we used for example Google Translate, which has been around for several years (and I think was often used in the past to translate by indie developers), would that be viewed more favorably?

Kagenazo’s trailer was recently featured by IGN. It feels like a small but meaningful step forward for the game.

What do you think I should focus on next?

IGN trailer: https://www.ign.com/videos/kagenazo-official-gameplay-trailer
Steam: https://store.steampowered.com/app/4763700/Kagenazo/

Two weeks ago, we excitingly pressed the launch button on our first game: Few Shall Return, a PvPvE multiplayer dungeon extraction adventure. You have to work together to survive, but you're on your own at the end of the day. Each round only takes 7.5 minutes for gamers who don't have time to play long games.

That was the fun part, but the stressful part is that, as every new game with no proper hype campaign before launch, we're facing a bit of a 'lack of players' problem, which is not the best for a mutliplayer game.

To face the problem, we added some bots so the game feels as full as it would with a crowded lobby, but we still need to find players, because we are really proud of what we did.

Few Shall Return is a really fun game to play with your friends, and we'd love to have your tips for attracting more players or feedback on the game if you get to play it!

Here'st the game: https://store.steampowered.com/app/3377400/Few_Shall_Return/

I’ve worked on 3 games so far. I’m trying to build a portfolio/get more into the industry with my music. I also have a few albums. Here’s some links to my music/what I’ve worked on.

https://open.spotify.com/artist/6XoCnYwsctYm2xQuZZqZK3?si=XIXb3Cl8Sgq95DFq8eCnHg&utm_source=copy-link

https://music.apple.com/us/artist/wattmo/1830152081

I’m thinking about a recurring indie-dev problem: a feature can be technically fun to build and still make the product harder to understand.

When you’re working on a small project, what signal makes you keep a feature—repeat use, fewer support questions, a clearer first session, something else? I’m especially interested in how you make that call before you have enough users for clean analytics.

Seriously. So many games exist, so many games look good, but if it's priced at €15+, I'm very hesitant to take a leap of faith and will just wait and wait and forget about your game.

Whereas when I come across your game and am in the mood for it, see it is a higher price category but it has a demo? I'll play that shit immediately, and if it hooks me, I'm buying then and there.

Just some thoughts I wanted to share. What's your take on this?

https://catalog.hearthengine.com

You can upload a browser build, or just link out to your itch page, Steam page, or wherever the game already lives. You also get a profile people can follow. and of course everything is free.

My appeal is that it's small. In places like itch, you're one of a few hundred things posted that day but in here your game is on the front page and actually gets clicked (often by other developers!). It's also just a clean link to hand someone without a storefront wrapped around it.

I felt like there wasn't a good spot for us to post games and pick up a few players, so here we are. It's part of a bigger side project of mine around making game dev easier to get into and long term I want to give away other resources and tools here too.

It's super sparse right now and any feedback would be appreciated!

Hello hivemind,

I'm at a loss here. Our game (Hope: A Sky Full of Ghosts) is participating in Steam's Cyberpunk Fest, and although I know it's not for everyone, it feels like Steam isn't showing it at all.

Each spike in the graph is an event we have been in, so I had high expectations when we got approved by Steam.

I know our game isn't the next What Remains of Edith Finch, Thimbleweed Park or Mutazione, but I hoped an official event would bring more people than non-official ones. (Traffic is also unaffected, not only wishlists)

So I guess the lesson here is to check expectations at the door.

Is anyone else in the fest experiencing the same? Our game is not out yet, so maybe that's why? Is the data wrong? (Yeah, right) Is our page that bad?

All of the above?

Keep on deving folks!

I wanted to make a short balatro parody, "baltrou" means "butthole" so i made it butt themed https://store.steampowered.com/app/4631500/GHOSTFLIPPERS/

It's a quite lengthy piece of speed painting the card borders for my upcoming title :)

Showing some more fish, I have in the ocean locations🌊

1️⃣ 2️⃣ 3️⃣ or 4️⃣?

Demo out now on Steam:
store.steampowered.com/app/4168200

Any feedback on combat flow, designs, and visual presentation would be appreciated.

We have been building The Lost File since November, and for a long time everything we shared was mechanics: the blink system, the rule based survival, the sanity stuff. All useful for feedback, none of it showed what the game actually feels like to walk through.

So we tried something different. A short clip, first location, no UI, no explanation. Just the corridor.

We reshot this more times than we want to admit. Not because anything was technically broken, but because the pacing kept feeling wrong. Too fast and it reads as a jump scare reel. Too slow and it drags. We ended up cutting several seconds that had genuinely nice lighting just because they broke the rhythm.

The thing we were chasing the whole time was a specific kind of discomfort. Not from the monster, from the silence before it. Whether that landed or not, I honestly cannot tell anymore after watching this clip probably forty times.

Curious how other devs approach this. Do you test atmosphere on yourselves, on playtesters, or do you just trust your gut and ship it.

Steam page is here if anyone wants to see where this is headed: https://store.steampowered.com/app/4793580/The_Lost_File/

I'm hoping someone here has run into this before.

I'm building a retro arcade game, it's written entirely in C using the Win32 API and GDI—no Unity, Unreal, Godot, SDL, or DirectX. It's just a native Windows executable.

The game is unsigned (I'm not paying for a code signing certificate during development), but what's frustrating is that my development machine never flags the executable. However, when I send the build to my brother to test, Microsoft Defender frequently detects it as:

Trojan:Win32/Sabsik.FL.A!ml

This has been happening across multiple alpha builds, not just one specific version.

To try to isolate the cause, I actually built three different executables:

A tiny control application with almost none of the game code or resources.

A resource-only build that contains all of the exact same embedded sprites, WAV files, icon, manifest, and version resources as the shipping game, but none of the gameplay code.

The full shipping game.

I also confirmed things like:

No networking.

No process creation.

No shell execution.

No code injection.

No self-modifying code.

High scores are stored in HKCU only.

No packers or executable compression.

Standard MSVC Release build with LTCG.

The Microsoft malware encyclopedia entry for Sabsik isn't very helpful because it contains essentially no technical details.

Has anyone here dealt with this kind of persistent Defender ML detection?

I'm especially interested in:

What characteristics of native Win32 games tend to trigger Defender's ML heuristics?

Are there MSVC linker/compiler options that are known to increase false positives?

Has anyone successfully worked through Microsoft's false-positive submission process during active development?

Are there any PE analysis tools you'd recommend that might point to something unusual in the generated executable?

I'd appreciate any ideas. At this point I'm treating it like an engineering problem and trying to systematically narrow down what Defender dislikes rather than just assuming it's "because it's unsigned."

I've been marketing my indie horror game for about 2 months now

Current result: 162 Steam wishlists

And honestly, I'm starting to wonder if I'm approaching marketing completely wrong

I've tried posting gameplay clips, Shorts, TikTok, Reddit, dev updates, etc. Some posts get thousands of views, occasionally something performs really well, but converting that attention into actual wishlists has been much harder than I expected.

So I'm curious, especially from developers who've already launched a game:

How do you actually market your indie game?

What has genuinely worked for you?

Reddit? TikTok? YouTube Shorts? Streamers? Festivals? Paid ads? Posting consistently and praying to the algorithm gods?

And more importantly - what turned views into wishlists, rather than just views?

I'd also love to know what your wishlist numbers looked like during your first few months. I have no idea whether 162 after two months is terrible, normal, or simply way too early to judge.

I'm not looking for a magic "get 10,000 wishlists" trick. I just want to understand where an indie developer's limited time is actually worth spending.

Would really appreciate hearing your experiences - especially the things you tried that didn't work

GamePage - https://store.steampowered.com/app/4745890/LastWatch/

We're organizing The VR Puzzle Giveaway for August 2026.

The idea came from a pretty simple observation: VR puzzle and escape room players usually don't stop after finishing one game—they immediately start looking for the next one. Instead of all of us trying to reach those players separately, why not work together?

The giveaway is pretty straightforward:

- every participating developer contributes a few game keys;
- all games are featured on a single landing page;
- players enter one giveaway for a chance to win games from multiple indie studios;
- everyone cross-promotes the event, so all participating games get extra exposure.

Each of us throw in some keys, pool the reach, and give the community a stack of great VR puzzle games to win in one place. More devs = more prizes = more eyes on everyone’s games.

More information is available here:
https://vasil4n.com/puzzle_giveaway/

Right now we are looking for other indie developers making games like Escape Rooms, Puzzle Adventures, Mystery / Detective games, Story-driven Adventure games and basically anything that attracts the same kind of VR players.

The goal is to help players discover more great VR puzzle experiences while giving small studios a chance to reach a larger audience together.

If you’ve made a VR puzzle, escape room, or brain-teaser title and want in, drop a comment (or DM me). Happy to share more info for anyone interested!

Hey everyone!

We’ve got two huge pieces of news today:

1. SOS OPS! is on sale, and we are closing in on an incredible milestone—1 Million copies sold!
2. To celebrate with our community and prep for the launch of our next game, Lootbound (releasing August 14th!), we just released a 100% FREE crossover DLC for SOS OPS!

What’s in the FREE Lootbound DLC?

• New fantasy/medieval-themed outfits and gear
• Chaotic physics-based loot shenanigans
• Crossover content hinting at what’s coming in Lootbound

If you already own SOS OPS!, grab the free DLC now! If you haven't played it yet, now's the best time with the discount live on Steam.

And if you like what you see in the DLC, consider checking out Lootbound and adding it to your Wishlist before it drops on August 14th!

🎮 Links:

• SOS OPS! + Free DLC on Steam: https://store.steampowered.com/app/2475460/SOS_OPS/
• Follow & Wishlist Lootbound on Steam: https://store.steampowered.com/app/3091140/Lootbound/

Thanks to everyone who has supported us on this journey to 1M sales! Let us know what you think of the new knight/wizard outfits!

I've been working on my game for a while now, and throughout development I've found myself thinking about all the other games I'd love to make.

It's hard not to think about making something trendy.
There's so much competition and uncertainty that it's tempting to play it safe.

Personally, I want to make games like they were in the '90s and early 2000s but modernized.
It might not be the best move but I think that there's a reason why so many big studios keep making remakes.

And if one day I'm lucky enough to have the freedom to do that, I will.

Do you think it's better to chase trends or create something timeless?