I'm a solo developer who usually makes plain simple visual novels on ren'py which are very easy to play test on my own, or my friends help me scour for spelling mistakes when it's in its most basic form

But I'm taking things a little further by using quick time events and different game modes, I want my friends to test my game in order to help me balance things out and make things fair or just challenging enough

I'm just not sure at what point do I give my friends the game to test? While the art is still just place holders? When I've cleaned it up and finalised it? Should it be public ready before I give it to my friends to test? Or should I do several tests? One at its prototype form, one at its final form?

All advice is appreciated :)

First and foremost I want to thank anyone that will answer my question(s).

I am planning to make my dream game after years but I couldn't start mainly because of hardware issues(my pc was terrible at running a lot of programs) and I have almost to none knowledge on programming.

Recently the desire to make that game ignited again and I want to actually start on something before I lose it again and I want to ask people about what kind of schedule you used while developing games.

If you used/made/checked tutorials do you have any no brainer recommendations(language tutorials, modeling, tutorials, game engine tutorials, and etc. Anything counts)

I assume people will also ask what kind of game I'm planning to make so I will include here beforehand:

In short I want to make a soulslike game(that's pretty much it)

If anyone can help me with these questions I really would be grateful and I wish everyone a great day/night.

I’ve just started my game development adventure. I started with Godot to get a feel for the process. I really like the scripting as it’s pretty straightforward. However, my long term goal is a 3D farming game. I’ve heard that Unity is much better for 3D. I just got through with my first Zenva class in Unity and C# is a lot more complicated to learn.

Can Godot actually handle a 3D farming game or should I put my big girl pants on and learn C#?

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?

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 am playing this game from Jonathan Blow, and I have two questions.

1) How are the crystals made translucent like that? They almost feel alive. Is this shaders or just assets?

2) The game looks top down, but is 2.5 dimensional. How is this made? Is it just the assets or something more complicated is done in terms of programming.

Thank you very much.

May your game be a success.

Just for sake of an example, lets say you make a really fun Kangaroo simulator game hosted as a browser app. Is it ok to join random animal/zoology related fb groups and casually try to bring it up?

Not randomly of course, but usually under some given context. Example: Someone posts a silly picture of a real Kangaroo, then someone else comments on it and says "Man it must be so fun to be a kangaroo!", then you chime in and say "Haha yeah. If you're up to it, I built a game that makes you feel like one" and then drop the game in that message.

Is this sort of thing frowned upon? I feel like I'm selling away my dignity when I do this lol

Assuming of course that these groups do not have a explicit "NO ADVERTISEMENTS" sign written in their description.

Reason I ask is because I tried this thing in a chatroom once and got kicked out.

Are there any game developers here? I would like to know what kinds of engine plugins can help optimize workflow and improve efficiency. Appreciate any help.

My first ever game Breakkaboom's DEMO is live on Steam. I'm participating in the Steam Next Fest for the first time hoping for some visibility and wishlist.

I have been working on this game for 7, 8 months and it's at a state where I can show people my work. Being an indie, social media is my only hope for some visibility but now a days releasing a Demo is the biggest form of advertisement you can do for your game. So for the last few weeks I have been working on this Demo. Polishing levels I wanted to include, adding new features, adding the freakin Settings menu etc...

This is my first time, so made stupid mistakes while demo release. Like uploading the wrong build. Totally messing up the steam capsule art, they specifically asked me to change it (In my defense, I'm a very bad artist, and I don't have money for hiring a professional artist). My friends played the demo and helped me find out many issues, I immediately fixed those, but couldn't submit the fix because of some security protocols of Valve, after almost 3 days I finally completed the authentication process and submitted an updated build as soon as possible.

Right now the Demo looks fine, to me at least... I know I need to improve a lot of things, I made a separate demo page so that people can review, good or bad I will know a lot of things from those I guess and hopefully make the experience better for the players! I have already got one review, it's positive, but I need a lot more to understand what player are actually thinking about the game... Let's hope for something better, if not the best(surely not with that capsule art)!

Cheers!

This is by pixel in Procreate

I’ve never made a game before but I’ve thought that with my extra time I have, I could try my best to make a game. The game in mind would be 2d pixel art as that is the easiest thing for me so I don’t have to spend money on 3d assets and stuff like that. I thought of a few different ideas but none of them really intrigued me enough. That’s when I made the mistake of playing Elden Ring and now I really want to make an rpg game. This is a trap I’ve heard a lot of newbies fall into but I can’t stop thinking about all the different things I want to add and places to explore. My main problem at the moment is making the art. I’ve never done pixel art before or animation. And now I don’t know what engine to use. Do I use godot or unity etc. anyways, back to the art problem, I want my art to be simplistic for exploration and a Birds Eye view but when you go into a boss fight, I want a side on view with a little more detail. I’m willing to spend a lot of time on this project so the scale and the coding is not too worrying for me. Trial and error. It’s just that art. With the simplistic exploration view I don’t know how I’m going to differentiate armour and weapons because of the shear lack of detail I can put on a 16x16 sprite tile. That is basically all and I don’t even know if I’m going to go through with it. Any help is appreciated.

hello we are new stodio or team its me and ma friend now we gonna start devloping games they will been fun horror 2d 3d on future because we hope a big support from gays and ixactly arabic love you

Just walked out of a meeting.

Apart from having my competence questioned, what really got to me was hearing the devs being told they need to start shifting into other roles (like game design) because AI is gradually replacing them. My feelings about it are complicated.

Sad, because back when I was a fresher, I learned so much from devs. I tried to learn programming myself many times, and failed every time. To me, a dev was a kind of craftsman. But now development is just a skill, a "tool," the way we talk about Figma or Photoshop.

Complicated, because I was also bullied by devs. Because of them, I wanted to quit the industry. Then AI came along and helped me with that part, and I kept making games.

There are days like this, when the boundary between work and passion gets shaky, watching the thing you love get industrialized, turned soulless and assembly-line. I wonder: if everyone can easily make a game, who's still going to play them?

Anyway, right now an interactive game I made for an event is running there. Watching strangers, people who rarely touch games, poke around and figure out something I built... honestly, that makes me happier than being immersed in the current game industry. An industry that, not too far in the future, might become a factory full of workers with their brains squeezed dry, until something cheaper and faster comes along to replace them too.

Hey everyone! I'm in the early concept phase of designing a 2-4 player, war-free physics-based co-op game called Space Subcontractors.

The premise: You and your friends are underpaid, uninsured workers for a cheap space corporation. Instead of fighting enemies, your main goal is exploring randomized planets, scanning alien artifacts, and managing a dying robot battery, your oxygen, and chaotic physics-based movement while dealing with sudden corporate "emergencies" (like the company cutting your oxygen budget or forgetting to pay the station's electricity bill).

Before I spend months writing code for this, I wanted to ask: Does this core loop sound fun? Would you play something like this with friends, and what would turn you off from it?

I saw this video and absolutely loved the recoil system. Do you know of any training resources or tutorials for this type of recoil system? Alternatively, I’d be curious to hear your thoughts on how it could be implemented.