Steam Next Fest is coming soon, and you can do us players a huge favor by helping us get to the fun part of your game faster. I am listing only the things that should be easy to fix or remove right now:

1. Choosing a save slot: This is totally unnecessary on the first play. Just assign one automatically and let me jump into gameplay immediately.
2. Explaining the developer's purpose for the demo: Players don't care about this; we have our own reasons for playing.
3. Asking to choose a game mode or difficulty level: Just default to your best mode and a balanced difficulty, or unlock those options after the first session.
4. Multiple unskippable splash screens: Time is ticking, and we have 20 more games to try. Make them skippable or show a single one.
5. Deep character creators?: Just give us presets or a "Randomize" button for the demo, and save the full customization suite for the final game.
6. Walls of lore: Anyone can generate pages of lore nowadays. Nobody cares about your deep world before playing a single second of the game. Cut the text, leave some mystery, and get to the gameplay.

The whole onboarding and tutorial process is another story. Here, I'm just mentioning the easy, no-brainer things to strip out of your demo, based on analyzing a lot of them during playtesting sessions since the last Steam Next Fest.

Hey all,

I’m looking for a discussion here. I’m a full-time worker, husband, father, and even work a second job part-time. However, I’ve always wanted to make a certain game, and I believe that time has come where I’m able to. I especially wanted to make a zombie game that I could play with my kids. One that isn’t gory or frightening, but does have cool guns and explosions. Something you can show your 7-year-old that is still somewhat appropriate.

However, due to time and my life, and my existing Claude Code subscription, I had it do basically 99% of the coding of the game. The design, systems, artwork, direction, and mapping is done by me, but I feel like people have very strong opinions on the use of Claude for coding games.

Is it so severe that I should reconsider publishing it on Steam? Is there ramifications or issues it could cause me personally (people trying to dox me or something crazy) over the use of Gen AI? I’m just worried about the implications, as I have a family to take care of, and they’re my first priority.

Been using Unity for a while now, realistically I would say I just know the basics though, and I've been curious about whether I move over to Godot.

I don't think I have any big issues with Unity (except the compiling time whenever hitting Play) and I like C# but the Godot community feels like a movement I want to be a part of.

I've watched a video or two about some of the differences, and I've decided I'll download it at some point and try it for a month or something, but I still wanted to ask for people that know both engines pretty well - what are some of the major differences that don't get talked about or was there anything you could do in Unity that you couldn't do in Godot? Anything simple like gravity acting differently or UI having limitations

I also know there's something about the Unity license fee if my game is successful but I don't think that's going to happen 😂 just a hobbyist dad

Thanks in advance ✌️

Hey guys, I wanted to share my process in developing my game and see what you guys think.
My goal is to have a GTA style game mixed with Postal 2 style missions set in a satirical Barcelona.

Im now expanding the map, but I have now some basic systems.

What do you guys think? Will it work?

We (dofhouse) just released Refund This Game, where we challenge players to get to the top of a single level in under 2 hours and get their money back from Steam.

It's a Foddian rage-platformer where you poke your stick into walls and flick your way across a 90's inspired vertical level! It's hard, but not impossible, to beat this game and get a refund.

Some developers think that the 2-hour refund limit is too lenient, but we think it's awesome. That's why we made this game that celebrates Steams refund policy <3

What do you guys think?

P.S - No AI in our game!! Handcrafted with human hands <3

Classic snakes & ladders is pure luck based, you just roll the dice and hope for the best. but i thought what if we add a bit strategy in it

So i made Climb & Bite. a game where board starts empty and players build it. Half the tiles has ladder or snake to pick up. once you get it then on your turn you can use it before you roll.

so now it's not just luck but a proper strategy game. the snakes you place can hurt others but yourself as well. same for ladder. so now each snake and ladder is carefully placed to target other players. that makes it much harder to avoid

after some initial test i also added a feature of Power cards that gives players some perks like Protection againts snakes for next turn, making opponent walks backward for 2 turns or just skip the whole turn etc.

play it with friends online or just with Computer offline, its fun both ways. also it has other features like shop items for different theme and daily rewards.

Note: it's in pre-registration right now. Full release is in early November, and the first 100 people who sign up get an exclusive Diwali set: a board, chips, dice and music.

Pre-register on Google Play: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.maziminds.climbandbite

Happy to answer anything about the design or how it's built.

Kkaeal is a free Windows desktop pet game I'm making solo. Pokémon and Digimon live in the corner of your screen and grow while you work.

The big update I'm working on is moves. I put every Pokémon move and Digimon special attack the game can use into one table, a bit over 500 of them, and assigned each one to one of 26 effect parts: beam, orb, pillar of light, slash, bite, and so on. So Pikachu gets Thunderbolt and Omnimon gets Garuru Cannon, and each one is drawn by one of those shared parts instead of its own one-off effect.

The part I care about most is that fights on the desktop and in the arena will use the same effects. Nothing opens a new window, which matters for a pet that's supposed to stay quiet on a work PC.

It's still a draft, so the numbers may change, and I'm not showing animation yet. These cards are a teaser.

Some honest notes. It's a non-commercial fan game and the creature sprites come from the original games; the hard hats and props are new. I build it with Claude Code.

Free download for Windows: https://kkaeal-game.vercel.app/en

Which move would you want to see first?

I'm developing Cargo Calling, a first-person "social deduction-like" game for up to 8 players.

At the beginning of each match, you're assigned a Calling with unique objectives, mechanics and craftable items. Completing your objectives earns you points, and the player with the highest score wins.

A free demo is coming during Steam Next Fest on October 19, where you'll be able to play 8 Callings!

I spent about 2 months building PuckIt with AI -- a web multi-player hockey type game inspired by a lot of games I enjoyed growing up (Tagpro, NHL94, Tribes, NHL 3v3 Arcade, NES Ice Hockey).

Tested it with a bunch of tagpro players, made the bots better, different difficulty levels, and when we got a lot of humans on, it was a ton of fun to play. It took a lot of prompts - this was far from a one shot deal. It took about 1500, and we're still going.

Anyway - one of the testers recommends I launch on itch.io -- we do, and get about zero traffic from it. Ok.

Then we explore CrazyGames and start making the changes needed -- hiding other sign-in methods from their visitors, SDK integration, and so on. We submit for review.

.. and it gets approved for basic launch, at like 4am when I'm dead asleep. I wake up to see the webhook on our discord going nuts, which pings whenever we have a brand new player sign in for the first time. During our basic launch period on CrazyGames, we typically get about 350 people a day from it.

For those who don't know, to get from CrazyGames basic launch to full launch, you have to hit particular metrics in terms of game play, 1D retention, and so on. So even before we launched, we built a tutorial mode that we figured people would go through -- and actually, we made the decision to force a short 2 lesson tutorial on them.

Lesson 1 - skate and shoot. There's not even a bot in the way. It just exists to teach you to move and to hit shoot.

Lesson 2 - winding up shots. Teaches them to hold SPACE to shoot harder.

That is it. Each tutorial should take 10 seconds at the absolute max, and then they get dropped into a bot ladder, where they play bots of escalating difficulty so they can get their feet under them.

Here's how it went:

Top countries: India, Vietnam, Brazil, Turkey, Indonesia, Japan

This probably hurt us and I didn't expect it. Ice hockey isn't big in all these countries, and with our server being in Ohio, they would have experienced some bad ping.

Only 2% of the visitors ever came back.

First launch:

Bounced immediately: 470 of 2,062 starters (23%) recorded no other event at all.

Lesson 1 completion: of those who did anything, 74% cleared lesson 1.

Never pressed a movement key: 29% of tutorial starters (41 of 140). Of the 99 who moved, 76% cleared lesson 1. Half of all 140 starters went on to play a real match.

I can't stress how simple the tutorial was. I mean, if you don't believe me, go to puckit.gg, hit tutorial, and look at lesson 1.

How long the starters who never cleared lesson 1 stayed (882 sessions):

So, we re-tuned. Dom from CrazyGames was actually super helpful and kind, told me to message him when I resubmit, and they would give my game another chance. None of this is bashing CrazyGames (though I will have some comments at the end here), when you reach a human -- they are very helpful and kind.

Launch 2: Ok, no more forced tutorial. We throw them right into a new match, 10 second countdown, the movement keys appear under their ball, we tooltip them when things happen they need to know (if they don't wind up their shot, we tell them how. If they run into the goalie, we tell them that's not going to work, etc..)

Time in matches per visit (visitor_sessions, 1,649 visits that reached a match):

What players did in their first match (887 replays, Sep 21–24, before a Reddit post brought other traffic):

We have a spectate mode, I'd watch new players come in, go and join their team to try to help them, chat, etc -- none ever responded. They also just .. didn't get hockey.

Play style: in their first match, CrazyGames players passed 0.03 times a minute, and 97% never passed at all. Players who came from r/hockey passed 9× as often, and shot and scored about twice as often.

(That's referencing our reddit push we got from r/hockey, which you can read about here: https://www.reddit.com/r/hockey/comments/1wp6wm6/puckitgg_free_2d_hockey_you_can_play_in_your/)

We failed, and got delisted. I gave it one more shot, reskinning and tuning a version we have live still at futsal.gg, stood up an EU server, etc.

We add franchise modes to get people to come back. You end up on a team, get relegated, need to work your way to get promoted again, there's trades, coaching strategies, etc etc -- very Retro Bowl-esque.

Submitted, rejected. Submitted again, rejected. Each time, we got a tester from Indonesia.

The first one played the game for about 5 seconds, made one movement, quit, rejected. I had logs, I sent them into CrazyGames, explained they may have had bad ping, and this is when we first set up the EU server to maybe help.

We resubmit - rejected. Another Indonesia tester, gets into the game, and aborts before the 10 second match countdown expires.

So .. yeah, lots of lessons learned.

1) This wasn't really the target audience for me, for hockey. The CrazyGames users don't pass, they expect to score immediately, got frustrated, and left -- if they even got that far.

2) Tutorials are worthless. Weaving the instructions into actual gameplay seemed better, but it's not enough.

3) The iframe size is pretty limiting. We were constantly tweaking the layout to fit what is really a tight iframe you are limited to on CrazyGames.

Happy to answer questions or share more of the funnel data. The game is at puckit.gg if you want to see what we were testing, and we try to schedule human pickup games on our Discord on Mondays and Thursday nights @ 9pm eastern. It's a small community but we're having a blast.

Hey everyone,

I have zero background in game development. A few months ago I just wanted a side project I could actually finish, so I made Gamele, a daily browser puzzle where you guess a video game using progressive clues.

Kept it browser-only on purpose: no App Store hassle, no game engines to learn, just a clean daily game I personally wanted to play.
Building it was a blast, and seeing people come back every morning has been awesome. But distribution is definitely where I'm hitting a wall right now.
I've submitted to some web portals and puzzle directories (got some approved, some rejected, still waiting on others), but growing organic traffic without ad spend is tough.

For anyone who has shipped a web game or daily puzzle: how did you get your first real wave of players? What actually moved the needle for you early on?

Link to check it out: https://videogamele.com/

I’ve been solo developing a game for about a year.

For several months, I was going to bed at 3 or 4 a.m. and waking up at 8 almost every day. I figured a few extra hours of work each night would help me finish the game sooner.

Then I got shingles and couldn’t work for two weeks.

I was cutting back on sleep to make more time for development, only to end up unable to develop anything at all. Apparently, my time-saving math wasn’t very good.

These days, I go to bed at midnight and wake up at 8. I still want to finish my game, but I’m trying to stop borrowing those extra hours from sleep.

So if you’re reading this while thinking, “I’ll just finish this one thing before bed”… I did that for months and ended up taking a mandatory two-week break.

Take care of yourselves, fellow devs.

Posting this feels unreal. So much time went into our game. My friends and I managed to pull this off, and whatever the result, I’m just proud of what we accomplished.

It's a co-op strategy game, launching in Early Access on November 6. We'll also have a demo during Steam Next Fest (Oct 19–26) if you want to try it.

Really proud and happy with the result :)

Happy to answer questions about the dev process, Steam release, or anything else!

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2950410/Gear_Up_Einstein/

I’m working on my first attempt at a publicly released game, and as such I was looking around some discords for game devs to help. I found one who seemed to good to be true, and after a call with them I’m almost sure I’m getting scammed which is very disappointing, and I’d like some feedback just to be sure I’m not being paranoid.

Things that made me suspicious:

• Claimed to be in my time zone but got the time wrong. Not huge on its own but with the other things it feels like a butter up.

• Constantly refers to herself in plural “we” “us” ect when it comes to doing things for me. She has a heavy accent and it seems English ain’t her first language so maybe it’s just a result of her native language.

• When I tried to call with her she invited her “team leader” who has a similar accent and made conversation a little awkward as they seemed to kinda go back and fourth on if it’s multiple people I got or just her.

• She had a working version of the limited info I gave her on day one, which makes me worry she is using AI, but at the time made me think she was just very good at it.

• During the call she seemed to be calling from someplace other than home, which isn’t a huge red flag but feels a little suspicious given everything else.

Overall she seems nice and helpful but I can’t get this nagging feeling my leg is being pulled. Advice from anyone more experienced than me is greatly appreciated.

I pulled every game released on Steam between March 12 and August 3 this year and compared 128 that crossed 200 reviews with 193 that are still under 10. I left out big budget games and old Early Access titles, so these are mostly smaller teams.

Five things separated them:

• 77% of the hits posted on Steam before launch, vs 22% of the others. The median hit’s first post went up about 3 months before release. Most of the others stayed silent until launch day.
• 84% had a GIF or video in their About section, vs 25%.
• 84% supported more than English, vs 42%.
• 76% used all 20 tags, vs 39%.
• 95% went past the 5 minimum screenshots, vs 63%.

It’s correlation, not proof. Bigger teams tend to do more of everything. Still, every one of these is free and in your control before a single player sees your game.

I built a free checker that tests your page for all five, plus a lot more. It also works on the App Store, Google Play, PlayStation, Xbox, Switch, Epic, GOG and itch.io. No signup. Paste your link at theentityeffect.com.

I’ll also do a full page rewrite for free for the 3 pages that need it most. Run yours through the checker and comment your score with the link. If you’re cool with it, I’d love to share the before and after.

If a result looks wrong for your game, tell me in the comments. It's meant to be a forever free tool that helps you see your Page at a glance, and where you might need improvement. So feedback is how it gets better.

LMK what you think.

I’m building a local AI tool for 2D game animation.

The goal is to reduce the repetitive and time-consuming parts of the 2D character workflow, especially around reference-driven setup and animation output, while keeping control of the art pipeline and avoiding cloud dependency.

This is aimed at indie and small-team game development, where time is limited and asset privacy matters.

In practice, the workflow is trying to help with:

• faster iteration on animation ideas
• more manageable production overhead
• better local control for character art assets
• fewer bottlenecks in the handoff from concept/reference to game-ready output

Project page: https://donatelloai.co/

Steam: https://store.steampowered.com/app/5030490/Donatello/

I’d love to hear how other devs think about AI in real game pipelines — especially what tools feel genuinely useful and what feels like hype.

Hi all,

I'm an indie dev working on a cozy 2D pixel-art magnet fishing adventure about the beauty of surprise. It is called Magnetic Catch and I just released the demo on Steam.

This is my second game, and I'm working on it with a small team. We started with the idea about a year ago.

Since I take research for my games very seriously, I bought a magnet and went magnet fishing several times. It was the best way to get inspiration for the game. Of course, you will find a laptop in the full game as well ;)

If you like what you see, play the demo or leave a wishlist. It would mean a lot!

Hey everyone, Cygon 0.6 just landed. Quick rundown of what’s new:

Roofs — select your rooms, the roof is generated automatically. Edit the shape, apply a texture, and it keeps reacting to the building structure.

Custom shapes can now be textured.

Multi selection — filter your selection in one click and apply textures to the whole batch.

Light modes — Normal for everyday use, Build (no lights) to work in dark interiors without distractions, Cinema to enjoy the result.

Vertical columns — create rows of pillars in seconds.

Props rotation snapping — 5° steps while placing props.

As always, feedback and feature requests welcome, we read everything.

My game, Hatchling Scramble, is a one-woman passion project that I’ve been slowly bringing to life. It’s a game where you can’t control the turtles themselves. Instead you have to remove hazards that surround them to get them safely to the water. 

I’ve done everything myself except the music (I found an awesome composer to help me out), and I’ve been treating it primarily as a learning project and a way to understand everything it takes to make a game (which is a LOT!)

One of my dreams going into this project was partnering with the Sea Turtle Conservancy, the world’s oldest and most accomplished sea turtle research and conservation organization, to help raise money for actual turtles. And I’m so proud that I’ve accomplished that goal and 20% of net proceeds from my game will go directly to STC!

I’m not expecting a huge commercial success from this game by any means, but I’m hoping it finds its audience and raises a bit of money for the turtles!

The Steam demo is out now (with an update coming before Next Fest starts next week), and I’m also developing for iOS since I think it makes a great mobile game!

Steam page: https://store.steampowered.com/app/4260940/Hatchling_Scramble/

Hey!

I've been working on a round-based survival FPS inspired by classic COD Zombies.

I recently released a free demo and would appreciate some feedback for the game ❤️

What do you think could be improved?

https://store.steampowered.com/app/5371780/Monster_Showdown_Demo/