We’re making GlagStone, a story-driven 1-bit city builder set on a northern island.

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!

Wild how much a bit of water changes the whole mood, and the tilt-shift blur turns the sparkles into little bokeh dots. Even the road and grass look better now.

How do you approach water in your games? Do you use custom shaders or your own unique approach to simulate bodies of water.

Hi everyone!

3 years ago, I gave up going on walks with my human to make the game I'd been dreaming of for the past 20 years. And now, it's finally about to be released!

It's a horror game, and I personally created a monster that looks just like my stupid human.

I'll keep this short because my human will be coming back to play Minecraft on the computer any minute now.

Basically, the game is about avoiding a monster that looks like my human, retrieving confidential documents, and escaping. It's also going to be part of the upcoming Steam Next Fest!

There's a Steam page linked below, so please check it out!
https://store.steampowered.com/app/2847290/The_Maze_In_Dark/

Oh, I can hear my human coming. All I have to do is act cute next to him, and he absolutely loses his mind.

Anyway, thanks for reading!

In Made by Hand, I'm trying to make a woodworking simulator where you don't just click a button to craft - you have to actually measure, cut, and sand the wood yourself.

I decided to cut all the typical shop management mechanics to focus 100% on tactility and game feel. I want the magic to come entirely from the satisfaction of the tools interacting with the wood (like the exact way a lathe removes layers). To give the gameplay a satisfying ending, you just post a photo of your item online for likes, and a drone takes it away.

Do you think a game can survive purely on the "juice" and meditative focus of a single mechanic, or do players inevitably need a deeper progression system?

We're making INARI, a one-hit-death kunai action platformer set in a steampunk Eastern fantasy world.

Our fox dashes across this rooftop in about five seconds. Our artist spent five days on it.

Could this count as craftsmanship?

Wishlist On Steam

Hi!

I'm a software and game developer from Belgium and I've announced Malsort 2 days ago.

Since 2021 I've spent my weekends building an MMO backend. I started Malsort because Diablo II is my favourite game (along with Dofus) and I've always wanted a world that stays when you log out: a town full of other players, player-based economy (Dofus really shines there), and world bosses the whole server fights together.

Right now there are 7 classes with skill trees, ARPG loot, player stalls in town, parties and a world boss (more to come, of course!).

Early Access is planned for 2027. The Steam link is in the comments (a wishlist or follow really helps!).

Do you have any advice for a fellow dev? How is your wishlist/release going?

7 years ago, I decided to make my dream game.

The idea was pretty simple: A cozy little hometown filled with interesting characters and merchants, surrounded by a dangerous world full of monsters, haunted dungeons, and exciting loot. You'd venture out, fight your way through dangerous areas, and (hopefully) make it back alive with a backpack full of treasures.

I've always loved Halloween, ghosts, and pretty much everything spooky, so naturally I wanted the entire world to revolve around that theme.

There was just one tiny problem: I had absolutely no idea how to make a game. 😅

But I started learning, and after a few months, i had actually made something playable. It was super simple, barely had any content, and definitely had its fair share of issues. But it was my game, and I genuinely enjoyed playing it.

I called it Ghostworld and decided to publish it on the Google Play Store to see if anyone else would enjoy it.

It got 3 downloads. Me and my two brothers. 😂

Still, I was incredibly proud. i'd gone from knowing absolutely nothing about game development to actually finishing and publishing a game.

Eventually, I moved on, but the idea of Ghostworld never really left my head.

Fast forward 7 years.

I stumbled across my old project and thought: What if i gave this another shot?

Opening the old code was... an experience. Let's just say there was absolutely no saving that spaghetti. So i decided to rebuild Ghostworld completely from scratch.

I'm still far from being an amazing programmer or artist, but i've learned a lot since then, and tools like Claude have been a huge help along the way.

And after quite a bit of work, I finally have something that feels like the game I originally imagined.

The gameplay is basically a mix of extraction games, roguelites, and Diablo-style character building, all wrapped up in a cozy, spooky fantasy world.

The core loop is:

• Raid haunted dungeons filled with monsters, secrets, and treasures.
• Escape with your loot before things go horribly wrong.
• Upgrade your gear and become stronger with every successful run.
• Create unique builds with crazy synergies, abilities, and effects.
• Fight powerful bosses that put your builds to the test.
• Team up with friends and take on the dangers together.

I absolutely love games where you find an item, realize it interacts with another item in some completely broken way, and suddenly your entire build comes together.

I want that feeling of "Wait... does this actually work?!" followed by absolute chaos.

And I think I'm finally getting there.

The other day, i was supposed to be testing some mechanics, but i found a hammer and ended up spending hours just running around smashing everything in sight because it felt satisfying.

At some point I realized i'd completely forgotten I was supposed to be developing the game. 😂

That was probably the moment I felt like I was onto something.

There's still plenty of work ahead, but for the first time, Ghostworld really feels like the game I dreamed about 7 years ago. Oh and i named it Escape From Darkon i thought i would be a fitting name😅

And honestly, even if it ends up getting just 3 downloads again, I'm already pretty happy I decided to bring it back. The game is currently in the review process for the App Store and the Play Store so it will be published very soon, you can already get notified once it's live here: https://escapefromdarkon.com/

Although this time, I'm hoping to convince at least one person outside my family to play it. 😅

I'd love to hear what you think!

Hi all! After many months working on it, the demo of Bocage, a cozy puzzle game is now available on Steam!

https://store.steampowered.com/app/4938320

If you like cozy or puzzle games, please take a look at it and tell me what you think!

It's probably a little too late to be asking this now since next fest is next week, but I'm so curious how other devs go about reaching out to creators. I find the process so laborious and have been looking for ways to improve it. We had an outfit called Cloutboost reach out to us and demo their tools which seem pretty good for finding creators who have played comparable games.
Are other people rocking the hand created google sheet full of names and emails like us, or is there some better, easy way that everyone knows about that I somehow missed? Just curious what others are doing for outreach, if anyone cares to comment.

I've been working on this game for about 3 months.

It's a short PS1-style horror game set inside an old hydroelectric dam. You play as a night maintenance operator, checking turbines, water levels, gates, and fixing problems around the facility.

As the night goes on, the dam starts flooding, and you eventually have to enter the water yourself after realizing something may be living in the reservoir.
"Night Shift" is not the actual name of the game; it’s just a working title. It won’t be like typical job-themed games, so don’t worry.

I'm aiming for a 2–3 hour slow-burn horror experience focused on deep water, huge machinery, isolation, and very little combat.

Would you play something like this?

I shipped my first commercial game called Immunica a few months ago after 3 months of solo dev. It's a small Nodebuster style incremental game.

I did almost zero marketing during development (literally 3 shorts and a few tweets) and was sitting at 82 wishlists a month before Next Fest.

Here is how the numbers ended up looking:

• Tiny Roguelikes event: +474 wishlists in 2 weeks
• Steam Next Fest: +160 wishlists
• Wishlists at launch: ~700
• Sales: 147 in the first 3 days, 234 first week, 895 total so far
• Revenue: $2,123 gross (~$1,100 net after Steam cut, taxes, refunds)
• Outstanding Wishlist: 1,081

Biggest surprise for me was Next Fest vs smaller festivals. If you go into Next Fest with ~500 wishlists, you just get buried. Niche genre events convert way better when you're small.

Also a random tip: manually check your Polish pricing on Steam. Steam's default PLN conversion is super high right now. There's a PolishOurPrices movement in Poland and they pointed it out to me on Twitter during launch week, I lowered it, and some posts about it just went viral there. Poland ended up being my #1 market (201 copies sold).

Anyway, I teamed up with an artist friend for my next incremental game Feed The Pond so it doesn't have my programmer art this time, and we put the Steam page up early instead of waiting until the last minute.

Made a quick 5 min video breaking down the launch graphs and showing the new game if anyone wants to check it out: Video

Feed The Pond on Steam: Steam

Hi all! We're a two-person team developing MYRIORAMA, a top-down adventure with rearrangeable dungeons. This is an excerpt from a deep-dive video we produced recently for our participation in ICO Partners' Unmistakable Festival on Steam!

Full video is here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zhM1F993Ga8

This is technically a 2D project, but we're doing a lot of 3D fakery to try and pull off the stop-motion look with dynamic lighting and shadows. It's been a fun challenge.

Happy to provide more specifics or answer any questions!

This guy is one of 3 playable characters in my game. It took me about 6 hours to draw and I'm pretty happy with how he looks. I still need to draw Mage and Archer next.

After that I still need to draw about 200 enemies. I imagine they will all take about 4-8h. That's 900h total on average. That's almost 40 days.

My goal is to release a demo with around 50 enemies.

I don't want to endup using AI for sure, I want the game to be unique and mine. I hope people will endup appreciating the work behind it... But how? How does solo indie game dev do all of that?

Do you guys hire somebody? I imagine i'd pay insane ammount of money If i wanted to do that. Do you guys just endup reusing the same enemies? Do you generate them for demo and then slowly replace them by your unique art as time goes on?

I would really appreciate some insight from somebody who's more experienced.

Btw. you can roast my green guy, I love him, but would love to hear some feedback. After all, if you pick warrior class, that's what you will be staring at if you played my game. And my game ain't 5-hour incremental lol. You will be staring for weeks. xD

I didn't even change the color of the default unity gray material lol (except for the button itself). I had great fun, will keep intuitively adding stuff. I also scratched a musical itch with adding the sounds, picking the notes and programming the pitch shift.