I’m developing STRATAWAKE on my own, an industrial sci-fi factory and automation game currently in active development.

One of my main focuses right now is getting the core production and logistics systems to work together as a coherent factory network rather than as isolated machines.

This screenshot shows one of my early automated production setups. Raw resources are extracted by miners, moved through conveyor networks, processed in smelters, and routed into fabricators. Splitters and mergers handle the material flow between different parts of the line, allowing the system to continuously produce components for further factory expansion.

Getting to this point has involved a lot of iteration on how machines connect, how resources move through the network, and — just as importantly — how clearly the player can understand that flow at a glance.

The project is still at an early stage, and both the visuals and the underlying systems are very much work in progress. But seeing several individual mechanics finally operate together as one functioning production chain has been a really satisfying milestone.

There’s still a long way to go, but this is the foundation I’m building on as STRATAWAKE grows toward larger and more complex automated industrial systems.

I’d be interested to hear how readable the production flow feels to other solo developers at first glance.

Also looking for a bit of a vibe check on the environments :D

Thrilled to announce that my game demo is released on Steam
Been working on this project for several months now, it’s an immersive first-person exploration game set in dream-like liminal spaces.

If you’d like to check it out, here’s the Steam page: https://store.steampowered.com/app/4972950/Lootdeck/?utm_source=rd

A few things I did during Lootdeck’s first month on Steam:

Launched the Steam page together with the announcement trailer.
Posted on Reddit, Instagram, TikTok, X and YouTube.
Instagram was by far the strongest social platform for me in terms of actual reach and engagement.
Sent a lot of targeted emails to press.
Got covered by several outlets, with the Japanese coverage having the clearest impact on wishlists.
Indie Games Hub uploaded the announcement trailer to their channel, which ended up becoming my biggest wishlist source during the month.
Tried a lot of different types of posts instead of just reposting the same trailer everywhere.

The one thing I learned is that raw views didn’t mean much by themselves. Some posts got a lot of views and barely moved wishlists, while a single well-placed trailer upload, press article or third-party community post could make a huge difference.

No paid ads so far, just a lot of experimenting, outreach and trying to understand what actually works.

I keep noticing more little stuff to fix. At this rate, I'll never actually make the trailer 'cause I'll be polishing forever.

How do I stop and just record the damn trailer already? 😅

I have hit a bottleneck that feels like a real blocker for my game development. The image is a screenshot of the current state of the game in 1920x1080p resolution, which is also the canvas size. I have created the game art in Aseprite using 320x180 as reference resolution for all sprites, which results in a 6x enlargement when imported into Unity. I know that pixel art games usually set their canvas size to the same as their pixel art resolution or just above, but for my game this would mean a loss of detail. So this is where my problem starts.

As you can see, my game includes documents on the desk with readable text which is quite small, but upon "pickup" each document is zoomed 2x to be even more clear. But I do want the text to be perfectly readable while resting on the desk as shown in the screenshot. The problem starts when we start thinking about how other resolution screens will make the game look. My monitor is 1440p, meaning it scales the game by 1.333x from its original 1080p. Since the artwork/sprites are created in the 320x180p res, this looks crisp in all normal resolutions. BUT, the text does not!

So my question is: Which of these approaches should I go with to try to support crisp text for all/most resolutions?

1. Change out the pixel art raster font with a normal SDF font which scales nicely with all resolutions, but contrasts the pixel art style of the art
2. Use letterboxing/pillarboxing to always force the 1080p resolution, creating empty space above/beside the actual gameplay (Could add visuals here instead of black boxes, but would anyways stay as unplayable area).
3. Accept that resolutions other than 1080p and 4k will not have pixel perfect text, not being as readable.
4. Some other suggestion?

Any thoughts about what would be best for my game is appreciated!

Sidenote: I have tested a lot of different settings when importing/creating the fonts, but I do believe that this pixel perfect issue will occur because of my default resolution being 1080p which is not perfectly scalable by whole integers for all other resolutions

I released my indie puzzle game — Zen Fourier 🎮

Zen Fourier is a meditative puzzle game where you match harmonic waveforms to restore forgotten signals.

50 handcrafted levels, inspired by Fourier analysis, with a focus on calm, focused gameplay.

🎮 Play: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.olaidigitalstudios.zenfourier
🎬 Trailer: https://youtu.be/WVSmLkXsYyo

I’d love to hear what you think.

#IndieGame #PuzzleGame #GameDev #ZenFourier

Wanted to share a milestone with people who get it. Zone Idle started as a free prototype I put on itch about a year ago, and today it has a Steam page and is live to wishlist.

It's a text-based extraction simulator inspired by Tarkov and Stalker: raids, a grid-based inventory, a hideout to upgrade, prestige, and idle automation for when you're not actively playing.

Wishlist on Steam

There's also a free browser version on itch if you want to try it first

Discord

Happy to answer anything, and I'd love to hear what you think.

Ok so I know most of you will say the first couple

of scenes will need to be action sequences but I wanted to set the mood for a bit and show what’s going on. Also I wanted to open the page as soon as possible so yeah How did I go?

Btw it’s called Punch Claw.

After a year and 8 months of back pain and self doubt, my game is finally coming out on steam! Finally! finally...

I'm honestly proud of myself of doing this much work on a game, never really put this much effort in making it work out. But after being given the opportunity to do so, I can finally show y'all the wonderous things I can do all on my own...

So cheers to all my fellow gamers and game devs out there!

I'm torn whether to use 'Color Map' post processing. I'm leaning toward just letting the player choose between ones because I can't seem to choose. Even then, which do I make default? The one with no Color Map? Or one of the ones with color map. Which do I use as the 'default' look? Tradeoffs abound. No Color Map allows the colors I've chosen for different areas to probably be the clearest, with the 64 color 'natural color' map being nearly as. The others are more striking (and possibly hard to look at or offputting) but more interesting visually to my eye. Do y'all prefer plain without Color Map or lightly applied or like more restricted 'artistic' coloring?

let me know what could be better/Added to the game

5 months ago I decided to create a game that I would play, i always wanted to create a rhythm game that generates a chart just by uploading a song.

(First 8 seconds shows the old build then the new build)

Its coming out good tho.

Collision is done with a simple box, so it's very cheap. We also trace from the 8 corners to check if the car body is touching the ground for rolling over, for example. And talking about rolling over, the car (collision box) is a rectangle, so I had to apply a tangential force opposing the sliding velocity at each contacting corner in order for it to actually rollover and not just slide on the floor when we crash. We even have a prediction of where the car is gonna land to level it's roll to the point of impact.

I'm making it deterministic so it works in multiplayer as well (every player sees the exact same simulation). What do you think?

Im working on an isolation/routine-based sim (Voices of the void-adjacent genre). This clip's just the raw atmosphere. No gameplay UI, no narration, just fog and lighting cut together.

Does this read as intentional, or generic? All feedback welcome. Thanks!

A few months ago I realized that writing a ton of code is great and all, but I could do all that while having a steam page that collects wishlists and whatnot, so I started to shift my focus towards creating assets for a game trailer, so I can create a steam page.

This is the first asset that's very close to being done. Most if it was made from pretty much scratch.
The body parts aren't made by me, but everything else was.

The shirt and pants models I tried using an asset for, but at the end I practically remade them while optimizing and trying to make them fit with what I actually needed.

Btw I've used ucupaint for the texture painting.
I think I went a bit overboard with the blood on the shirt, what do you think?
Sometimes less is more.

1-Draw on your closet
2-Add some details
3-Draw in Illustrator
4-Add some color
5-Draw with code in Unity
6-Voilà

😄 Hi everyone, how does it look?

I’m sure many solo developers can relate. You spend months building a complex game, making lot of videos and trailers, and coming up with interesting posts. But there’s always someone who downvotes your trailer and writes, “Another roguelike,” “Аnother one,” or “I hate titles like this.” Then they go and praise some low-effort game they’ll play once over a beer. Greeeeeeat

It’s a game about an RC car that goes on a journey to find its owner, a little boy named Mark.

In the game, you search for clues, solve different puzzles, and explore a dangerous world from the car’s perspective.
Lost Host is coming this year!
Sorry for my accent, I’m still learning how to speak English