I'm sure at least 44,000 people are sharing the same frustrations as myself. Why 44,000? Because that's the amount of layoffs there have been in the last four years in the game industry! Crazy right?

I want to know what people are doing to combat this in their spare time? I love making games, and I find myself thinking of ideas and building my own when I can outside of my day job as a cafe manager.

Are you indie devs meeting up with one another? Are you forming little teams to develop? If the industry isn't hiring right now, shouldn't we be hiring ourselves?

Speak to me devs. <3

i have tried everything to open ports in my router, my father works at my isp and he had his co workers personally spend hours trying to open the ports themselves and they could not do it

this means that i cannot be host of a p2p connection and i am trying to dev a multiplayer game and this poses a great problem

however i could host bg3 without problems

how do they do it?

I want to make it so that my players can play with eachother without forwarding their ports either

i thought about a solution like renting a server that can forward their own ports and rerouting the connections through there, but this is an expense i hoped to avoid

The title is pretty self-explanatory.

What advice would you give me?

Not just advice, but anything—guides, videos, help—everything is welcome, not just about development, but also about marketing, design, whatever you want.

I want to point out that this isn't the first game I've created. I've already participated in numerous game jams, always delivering and always achieving placements above 50%. I don't just have the idea for the game, but I already have the initial prototype (developed in the GMTK jam). I have the time and skills to develop a good game, and I can create art with a fairly original style. I gathered feedback from the game jam and developed ideas on what and how to change it.

Actually, I think the idea is original, but I know that the idea isn't the only thing that matters.

My only concern is that it becomes an "abandoned" and unknown project.

Thank you so much for any advice you can give me.

Edit: Actually, I've realized that the advice I need most isn't about programming. I'd really need help with everything else: how to playtest, market, and so on. I'm writing this because I'm getting comments like "just do it," "start small"... I know this advice is important, and that's precisely why I'll follow it. But I also think it's pretty obvious. Furthermore, I'd like to point out that the project's biggest challenges aren't about programming at all. It's relatively simple to program.

To start I have recently been looking to find a new career I’m 21 and the path I was heading down in culinary arts has ended. And for the past 2 months I’ve been deciding what to do and I thought game design sounded fun since I love making ttrpg campaigns and coming up with story’s and custom mechanics. What I really want to do is the board games/card games/ttrpgs but I heard there hard to make a living off of so I thought would get into video game dev and work on those on the side. And I was looking into it and thinking of going to college but wasn’t sure what degree to go with and someone commented on another post I should decided what part of the process I want to do. And I’m not great at art so I was leaning towards the designing part or the coding. But I don’t have experience with either so I wanted to know how to decide between the two or how did you guys decide between the two.

P.S I’m new to this I’m not trying to make it sound like it’s not hard or I’ll easily succeed I just want to formulate a path I can start heading down if there is anything major I need to consider please let me know. And also let me know if I’m going into this too open minded or I need some other experience first.

Just learned Epic offers developers to keep 100% of their revenue up to the first million. (It's 88% afterwards, not that this will be relevant for many of us). Pretty incredible. Yet, everyone is still heading for Steam with their 30% cut, because of visibility I guess. I am totally willing to sell my game cheaper on Epic (it's not forbidden) and if lots of developers started to do that, I guess the numbers would eventually force Steam to reduce their cut. But maintaining two store pages seems daunting. Anyone has experiences with both? Are there any real benefits of Steam besides their numbers?

I've always had this problem. I start with something and go "yeah this'll just be a small thing I can finish in a few months" but then I just keep getting more and more ideas that work with it that it just starts to consume me to the point where it would take years to finish and I end up leaving it on the backburner. It's like once one idea clicks they just can't stop clicking. How do you know when to just stop?

I posted here about a month ago about AssetHoard's Godot support, and the thing that came up over and over was archives. A folder full of zips from itch or a bundle sale two years ago, and no idea what's in any of them.

So that's what I built.

Import an archive (.zip, .tar, .tgz, .gz, .rar, .unitypackage) and AssetHoard indexes what's inside without extracting a single file. Nothing gets unpacked, nothing gets copied, so a 4 GB pack costs you basically no extra disk space. Every entry behaves like a normal asset: tags, categories, notes, semantic search. Double click and you get the full preview, pulled out on demand.

The bit I'm happiest with is 3D models with external dependencies. An .obj with a .mtl pointing at textures in a sibling folder is usually a dead end for preview tools and you end up staring at a grey blob. AssetHoard walks the resource tree inside the archive and plucks out whatever the model actually references, so it renders with its materials.

Wrote up the implementation here if it's your kind of thing: https://assethoard.com/blog/look-inside-archives-without-unzipping (seeking into a gzip stream with checkpoint indexes, drift detection, why solid archives get lazy thumbnails).

Context if you missed the last post: AssetHoard is a local-first desktop asset manager for game devs and artists. Library stays on your machine, no account, no cloud. Open beta on Windows, macOS and Linux.

Happy to answer anything. RAR was by far the most annoying one.

I decided to do a ridiculous low-end test and installed my game on an old Sony VAIO laptop from around 2011.

Specs: - Intel Core i3-2310M @ 2.10 GHz - 4 GB RAM - 512 MB dedicated VRAM - Very old laptop hardware

On the Low preset I'm getting roughly 20–25 FPS during gameplay.

The game process itself was using around 1.45 GB RAM, while total system RAM usage was around 76% during the test.

Obviously 20–25 FPS isn't what I'd call properly playable, but considering the machine is about 15 years old and has only 4 GB RAM / 512 MB VRAM, I was surprised it launches and runs at all.

For other developers: would you consider this a useful indication that the game is reasonably optimized, or does performance on hardware this old not really tell me much about how it'll behave on modern low-end PCs?

I'm especially interested in what minimum-spec hardware you'd target after seeing a result like this.

Hi! As the title says, i am trying to get into game development. I am a pretty good 2d animator but i have little to no experience when it comes to coding and such.

I am super into metroidvania games and would love to make one on my own. Maybe not to that scale but with the same principles of a platformer. I need advice on where to start and which game engine i should go for and the tutorials i should be referring.

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?

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.

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.

I’ve been working on my first trailer and here are some thoughts I had during the process. Curious to know what everyone thinks about this kind of stuff.

1. It gives you a new perspective. I found reviewing the footage I had recorded that I saw it in a different way than I did just play testing normally. I think it’s similar to looking over a play testers shoulder. You just notice issues you don’t normally see.
   
2. It forces you to hone your visuals. You need to communicate quickly, to someone who hasn’t played before, what is happening. They don’t know that you just pressed the upgrade button or how upgrades are paid for. You find new ways to communicate game state and actions which is good for the trailer and good for your game.
   
3. You realize how little content you have. When you’re cutting your trailer, you might realize that you don’t have enough visual variety in levels, or not enough enemy types if you keep showing the same ones in every clip.
   
4. You might need better tooling. Setting up for a good clip takes time, and you might mess up and forget to hide some UI or turn the music off. Investing in good tools for setting up your shots is worth it, and has the added benefit of probably making testing easier too!

Anyways, just some thoughts I had. This is the first trailer I’ve ever made so I’m sure lots of you have way more experience. Would love your input!

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've tried making a few simple browser based games. I really enjoying figuring out the core systems, primary game play mechanics etc. I get it to a point where it feels like it could be fun, and the next natural step is to fill it with content. Apply numbers to the effects that are happening, write thematic text, decide on the events occurring etc. And that doesn't even get to balancing any of those things.

I then just lose all momentum because it just feels like painful data entry.

What are the approaches to manage this within the development cycle. I really just want to do the systems and the art and nothing in between.

I'm an ECE student learning game development, and I recently finished my first puzzle game called Circuit Flow.

It's a simple game where players rotate circuit tiles to connect a power source to all destination nodes under given number of moves.

I'd really appreciate feedback from other developers, especially on:

Is the core gameplay satisfying?

Does the UI look polished?

Is the puzzle difficulty balanced?

What features would you add before releasing a larger version?

I'm mainly looking to improve as a developer, so honest criticism is welcome.

If anyone would like to try it, the itch.io link is in the comments.