Hey fellow devs!

I'm an indie game developer from Poland, and I'm helping organize NRG Game Awards 2026, taking place next week (October 23–25) at Poznań Game Arena, one of Poland's biggest gaming events.

We're inviting indie developers from around the world to submit their games. Early Access titles, playable prototypes, and unfinished projects are welcome!

Your game will be showcased on a huge screen at the event, and the competitions will be livestreamed online. Winners will be decided by votes from registered event participants, so it's the community that gets to choose!

And you don't even have to travel to Poland to participate. Remote submissions are welcome!

Submission deadline: October 21.

Check out the rules and submit your game here:
https://nrgevent.eu/compo/

I'd love to see what you've been working on! :)

I wanted to know what separates the games that get traction from the ones that don’t, using real numbers instead of advice threads. So I pulled every game released on Steam between March 12 and August 3 this year. That’s 2,100 games.

The baseline is rough. 61% of them still have fewer than 10 reviews. Only 8% have reached 200 or more.

I took 128 of the games that crossed 200 reviews and compared them with 193 random games from the under 10 group. To keep it fair, I dropped big budget titles over $40 and older games that had spent years in Early Access, so these are mostly newer pages from smaller teams.

Here’s what separated them.

1. They talked before they launched.
77% of the hits posted at least one Steam announcement before release. Only 22% of the others did. For the median hit, the first post went up 101 days before launch. For the median game stuck under 10 reviews, the first post came on launch day or after. Every announcement goes to your followers, and people who wishlist you, follow you, so a page that stays silent until launch day gives Steam nothing to work with.

2. They didn’t stop at the minimum screenshots.
Steam requires 5. 37% of the struggling games stopped right there. Only 5% of the hits did. The median hit had 9.

3. Their About section moved.
84% of the hits had at least one GIF or video inside the About section. Only 25% of the others did. 58% of the struggling games had no images in the About section at all, just text.

4. They weren’t English only.
58% of the struggling games supported only English, compared to 16% of the hits. The median hit supported 9 languages. Some of that is teams localizing after a game takes off, so I’d treat this one more carefully than the rest.

5. They used all 20 tags.
76% of the hits filled every tag slot. Only 39% of the others did. Every empty slot is a shelf on Steam where the game never shows up.

What didn’t separate them:

• Demos: 34% of hits had one vs 25% of the others. Smaller gap than I expected.
• Trailers: the median was 1 for both groups.
• Description length: close, around 225 words vs 180.

The big caveat: this is correlation. The hits probably had bigger teams, more time and better games on average. Nobody gets 200 reviews from GIFs alone. Still, several of these are things you control before a single player sees your game, and they cost almost nothing: posting updates early, adding screenshots, putting GIFs in the About section, filling your tags. The gaps on those are huge.

If people are interested, I can break it down by genre or price next. What else would you want compared?

I have sent my ID information for Tax Identity Verification on Oct 1st and now it's Oct 16st it still pending to review. Why it takes too much? They said it may takes 10 business day.

Hey everyone!

I'm working on a really small game and I need some pixel art assets (a cat, some ui, etc)

I was thinking about paying someone on Fiverr since I'm not really sure where to find a pixel artist that can help me with this (I don't want it to be free by any means)

If there's another site that's better I'd really appreciate if you could share it with me!

Thanks and sorry if this has been asked 1000 times before!

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

This is fantastic news. The old system was such a headache.

Hey everyone!

I'm currently working on my university capstone project: a 2D vertical precision platformer heavily inspired by Jump King.

I have the basic charge jump mechanics working, but I'm struggling with the map architecture and level design workflow. In Jump King, the level design is brilliant—every jump is calibrated, and the "chutes" or fall paths are deliberately aligned so failing a jump can send you tumbling down several screens.

For those who have worked on precision platformers or vertical climbing games, I’d love your advice on:

Any tips, post-mortems, or level design principles for vertical games would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks a lot!

Week ago i shadow drop my demo and from this time its been played 58 times (10 from this are probably me and my friends who added the game to wishlist before). And in this time i got 49 wishlists additions.

Is it good result for shadow drop without promotion?

Hey all,

I ran a quick poc test for my first HTML5 game using CrazyGames Basic Launch. It was just a short 6-level demo to test mechanics, hitting ~1,600 plays in 5 days with a 4.5-minute average playtime. This means nearly 100% of players finished the entire demo. (I'm tracking retention here)

I want to take the demo down, expand it into a full game over 2 months, and pitch it to Poki. But CrazyGames support hasn't responded to my removal emails in 3 days, and there’s no unpublish button.

1. How do I force a removal if support ignores me?
2. Poki vs. CrazyGames: Which pays better long-term for a full game?
3. Scrapers: If bot sites already copied the public demo, does Poki care?
4. Reskinning: If CrazyGames won't take it down, can I change the name/art style for Poki, or will their QA flag it as the same game?

Hi everyone! I'm start a career migration from software development into game development, and I was wondering, how is it like to work on game dev? How's your daily-basis, how the tasks looks like, due dates, deliveries. Can you talk a little bit of your work? And also, how's the AI usage on your work?

I’m about to enter the gaming industry for my career (previously was in fintech) and I’m not entering as a developer - but I am super excited for this opportunity. Recently I’ve heard about downturns, tons of layoffs, and uncertainty about where the industry is headed.
Is this a terrible choice I’m making? I could stay in the fintech industry but it really doesn’t interest me at all, and the idea of pivoting to something that produces creative and imaginative content for people lights me up. I also want to be smart though and don’t want to pivot careers if I can’t stay here long term :/

EDIT: I wouldn’t be working as a game developer - just in the game industry. For context I was laid off back in May, found another job and started that in September and it is filled with the same stuff that burnt me out for years, but I needed a job so I accepted. Then I got an offer from a game company! Woohoo! But I am nervous to start with all the instability right now.

I'm making an rpg game on my spare time and was ready to star to work on a basic battle system, i'm basing my game on Final Fantasy Origins, so at first i planned to make an battle system based on FF1 but while i was replaying it on steam i noticed that at certain point of the game i stopped to care about the battles, most of the time i just pressed Enter to attack and end the battle as fast as i can and that's something i want to avoid in my game.

To avoid this this I initially planned to make the battles more interesting by making some enemies do certain actions like in FF2 and Earthbound that have some enemies that explode and gives alot of damage if you kill them first. But i want to know your opinions on this, what makes an rpg battle fun for you? What would you do to make an rpg battle fun?

I know there's no music or a call-to-action, etc. I just want to see what people think about this trailer before I continue polishing it. Any and all feedback is greatly appreciated!

Hey everyone!

I'm from Vedant Game Studios, a small indie studio, and we're hosting our first game jam from November 1–11, 2026.

There's no theme or engine restriction. You can build anything you like, whether it's 2D or 3D, solo or with friends.

We'll be judging 2D and 3D games separately, with certificates, community recognition, and some free promotional support for the winners.

No entry fees, no cash prizes. We're just hoping to bring developers together, discover some interesting games, and give smaller creators a little more visibility.

If you'd like to participate:

https://itch.io/jam/vedantopengamejam2026

Would be cool to see what everyone comes up with! :)

I'm a solo indie developer, and today was supposed to be the launch day for my MMO game on Steam. Unfortunately, I'm still stuck waiting for my build to be approved.

I originally submitted my build on September 27, well ahead of Steam's estimated 3–5 business day review window. Mind you this is after the storefront page approval, which also took over the max estimated time. On the build approval, I didn't receive feedback until October 7, eight business days later.

Steam flagged a single minor issue, which is completely understandable. I immediately investigated, fixed the problem, and provided the requested transaction logs and confirmation that everything was working. I responded to their feedback in less than an hour. Fast forward to October 15, my scheduled launch date, and I'm still waiting. People are asking in my Discord if the game was cancelled or something ...

I've spent considerable time preparing for this launch, coordinating marketing, announcements, and everything else that goes into releasing a game. Now all of that is up in the air, with no indication of when the review will be completed, what happens to wishlist notifications, a new launch date, etc.

I completely understand why Steam needs to review games before release, and I don't expect special treatment. But it's difficult to plan a launch around an estimated 3–5 business day review process when it can take significantly longer, especially when a second review is required.

TBH, I was extremely hesitant to put the game on Steam in the first place, because I really dislike being at the mercy of a corporation for everything. That's why I've mostly made web games in the past, avoided the app store, or Steam etc, because the web as a distribution platform is permissionless. This is kinda confirming my worst fears about the whole thing.

Has anyone else experienced this? How long did your second build review take, and is there anything I can do besides wait?

Yes, this is me speaking Japanese and eating bugs (!) This looks to be early, real-time performance capture tech. The Polar Express had just come out at the end of 2004, so this was a big deal for video games.

The video was shot using a Sony Cyber-shot P41 digicam at 640x480/12 frames per second.

I've been thinking about how some games are naturally complex just because of what they're trying to simulate.

When making these games, it's tempting to simplify mechanics to make them easier to get into. And while that can be a good thing, I wonder if there's a point where simplifying too much starts taking away what made the experience interesting in the first place.

I'm currently working on a doctor sim, so this has been on my mind a lot. Some of the complexity comes with the subject itself. Simplifying too much might make the game easier to play, but it could also take away from what makes it feel like a simulation..I'm starting to think that the goal shouldn't always be to make a game simpler, but to help players understand its complexity.

There's a big difference between struggling because a system takes time to learn and struggling because the game doesn't explain what's going on. I think some games are just meant to have a steeper learning curve, and that's not necessarily a bad thing

Have you ever decided to keep a complex mechanic instead of simplifying it? How do you tell when complexity adds depth and when it's just getting in the player's way?

Btw, I'm Phil! I'm new around here, so thanks for taking the time to read this. I'd love to hear what you guys think!

I'll be honest I don't use social media much and didn't know where to post this.

Just was informed that the AI 3D Modeling company Tripo AI used my 3D environment art in a recent post on X and claimed that Astra and Tripo were able to "build this Zelda-styled environment for me" even though that's my exact environment demo map available on Fab, under the name "Stylized Nature Vol. 2 | Stylized Environment Bundle" created without ai.

I feel like most people know these companies are kind of shady and scammy but seeing them outright lie like that just seemed silly and I wanted to get a bit of exposure out there about it. I tried to post on the Tripo page but my posts were all being removed due to negativity about Tripo.

Is this just common? Have you seen similar experiences with Tripo AI and other 3D modelers?

Hey everyone!

I'm planning to build a free browser-based multiplayer game, but instead of jumping straight into development with a random idea, I figured I'd ask the people who would actually play it.

I'm curious about what kind of multiplayer games people genuinely enjoy or wish existed.

It could be anything:

• A casual board game to play with friends
• A competitive strategy game
• A chaotic party game
• A social deduction or bluffing game
• Something completely new that hasn't been done before

I'm especially interested in games that are easy to get into but hard to stop playing. Something you could open in your browser, invite a few friends, and have fun without downloading anything.

A few questions:

1. What's one multiplayer game you never get bored of?
2. Is there a game concept you wish someone would make?
3. What makes you keep coming back to an online game?
4. Would you prefer quick 5–10 minute matches or longer sessions?

I'm open to pretty much any genre. I'm not trying to promote a project or sell anything, just genuinely looking for ideas and understanding what people would enjoy.

If you've ever thought, "I wish there was an online multiplayer game where you could ___," I'd love to hear it!

Thanks in advance!

​I have zero experience on the game side, but it's been the industry I've wanted to get into the most for a long time. Honestly, between a bit of laziness and not knowing where to start, I just couldn't kick off somehow. After researching a bit, I found Godot to be great (it has Linux support, the language is similar to Python, and it's for 2D indie development). I looked at GDScript a little bit with its general outlines and it didn't look too challenging to me, I guess Godot is right for me. Do you think the documentation alone will be enough for me to learn Godot, or do I need to watch tutorial videos on YT and stuff?

​Also, since I have no experience in making games at all, I'll be proceeding by learning everything from scratch. If anyone has any suggestions or advice for this process, I would be very happy if you could help.

​(Note: If there are people who are going to make depressing/gloomy comments, I kindly ask you not to comment in advance; I already know very well that it's not easy, that it takes effort, and how hard it is)

Sometimes you have an idea that sounds amazing in your head. You imagine the mechanics, the world, the atmosphere, and all the possibilities. You're convinced it could become something special.

Then you try to explain it to someone else, build a prototype, or imagine how it would actually play, and suddenly it doesn't seem so great anymore.

How do you know when an idea genuinely has potential and when you're just in love with the version of it that exists in your imagination?

Have you ever had to accept that an idea you really loved just wasn't working? Did you manage to save it, or did you eventually move on?

Hey yall, as the title would suggest, I need some help with adding my pixel art sprite sheets to my game. I'm using an engine called Fighter Factory, and I'm making my sprites via libresprite.

I don't know why, but everytime I add a sprite sheet into the engine, it ends up looking extremely blurry. I've tried essentially everything, but it always looks blurry. Does anybody know a potential reason or fix for this? Thanks in advance!

Another day, another reminder of how companies treat the people who actually do the work.

I'm a senior 3D animator with around 15 years of experience. And somehow, here I am, almost 7 months without payment for work I've already completed and delivered.

The company acknowledged my formal complaint, promised to resolve the issue, and then.... nothing🫠

Apparently, deadlines are sacred when you're delivering work. But when it's time to pay? Suddenly, deadlines don't matter. Funny how that works.

And the best part? They claim the problem is with their client. So now I'm stuck trying to figure out who's actually responsible.

Meanwhile, there's an NDA, intellectual property rights, and a contract that's apparently much easier to enforce against an artist than against a company.

Honestly, I'm not even sure what to do next.

Has anyone dealt with something similar? Or maybe someone with legal experience could point me in the right direction? I'd really appreciate any help🫣

Because seriously, when did paying people for their work become optional?

Let's assume I have an isolated component: UnitMover. It's job is only to move a unit around each frame. So we could say UnitMover has two states: moving and stopped.

When looking at open source state machines, tutorials, etc, a common pattern emerges: polling. There will be say, a MovingState and StoppedState. These classes may implement an Enter, Tick, and/or Exit methods. Tick is executed every frame, and it polls UnitMover and makes a decision to change states based on what information it gets from UnitMover. This seems to be the most common approach.

But, in my project (which has no state machine, which is why I'm looking into it now), my UnitMover emits events. A moving event, a stopped event, and even a stuck event.

So my question is, why does it seem more common to poll, then push, with these state classes? The MovingState/StoppedState classes could bind/unbind to events from UnitMover in their Enter/Exit methods, instead of polling UnitMover every frame. I have not really come across anything that would highlight the pros/cons of both approaches and I'm interested in some opinions. Thanks in advance.