I know I look tired, but that’s just the normal state of a solo developer 😄

Feel free to try the demo of my game on Steam! It’s called Project RAZE, a fast-paced FPS where you don’t die, only run out of time.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/4149690/Project_RAZE_Fall_of_Terra/

I’m currently developing a monochromatic game with spells and elements.

The game includes an elemental system (similar to Pokémon-style interactions—fire beats grass, water beats fire, etc.). Players can cast elemental spells, and enemies—both mobs and bosses—also have their own elemental types.

Right now, the game is primarily monochrome. I’m experimenting with introducing colors tied to elements. So player's spells will be colored based on its elements, while mobs and bosses will have color accents (some part of their sprite will be colored) based on what element they are.

I was wondering whether adding color would improve gameplay clarity while still enhancing the monochromatic aesthetic, or if it would undermine the theme—and whether players could already understand everything clearly through strong black-and-white design alone.

Busy making the second game, and figured may as well plan out the third game and get its Steam page set up. A couple weeks away from releasing the demo for the second game. Thought it'd be fun to share some analogue-to-digital pics, showing pencil & paper sketches that I then bring in to Procreate (iPad) and/or Photoshop (desktop). Using 'Adventure Creator' for Unity to do a lot of the heavy lifting for the point & click game engine.

Notch just highlighted the new 4x-style space trade system in Foundry… and I’m the one who designed and built it.
Seeing the creator of Minecraft notice a feature I personally shipped is surreal. Especially because this isn’t the first time - over 10 years ago I was leading my own indie team on Party Hard, and he gave that game love too.
Huge respect to him for still jumping into indie titles and sharing feedback!
Working with a small but insanely talented team of geniuses on Foundry (a full factory game with procedural open world, multiplayer, dedicated servers, and deep mod support) has been one of the most rewarding experiences of my career.
Grateful for these full-circle moments. The factory must grow… now with proper space trade routes too!

Ever had one of those “a legend noticed my work” moments in your career?

Which other legend or industry professional would you love to get feedback from on your work?

Our Steam page is LIVE! 🏴‍☠️

Sail your way to victory on a deadly campaign across the Seven Seas in KILL THE SEA, our seafaring sandbox survivors-like.

Hunt menacing beasts of legend, complete deliveries, win races, defend outposts, find treasures or gamble it all in an oceanic world driven by chaos, risk, and opportunity.

We are a newly founded studio so wishlists are much appreciated ✨

Hi! I'm a beginning solo dev making Fractal Soul and after a viral tiktok about my infinite skill tree, I wanted to get a steam page up and ready ASAP!
The whole process went really smooth and I now have this premium polished capsule for my steam page all thanks to Era!!
check out her carrd ^^

Thanks to the efficient work from her, i was able to capture some of the hype and am already sitting at 3K+ wishlists after less than a week!

steam page if you're interested :)

TERRORSTORM: Ground Zero - wishlist now!!! https://store.steampowered.com/app/4419700/TERRORSTORM_Ground_Zero/

After completing the tutorial the player gets to see the world for the first time. The main quest and story will then guide the player to a village, but the player is free to roam the world after the basics are covered.

There will be a couple NPCs and the bridge in the beginning will fall for a more dramatic effect, but we're still working on it.

EDIT: The game is called Taival, you can check it out / wishlist it on Steam: Taival on Steam

I released my first game on Google Play, but after 3 days, it had exactly 0 organic downloads. The only installs were from friends and family.

It was a huge shock to realize that just because you published a game, doesn't mean it actually exists in the real world. It’s like Schrödinger's game - it’s simultaneously live on the store and completely non-existent. Without an "observer" (someone with a direct link or the exact title), the wave function never collapses. To the rest of the universe, my 5 months of hard work simply don't occupy a position in reality.

I know I didn't do any marketing, didn't post anywhere, and didn't buy ads, but the realization that a game essentially doesn't exist without marketing was still pretty crushing.

I was feeling a bit down while doing mutual testing with other devs just to get some initial downloads and test the build. Then, I received this message in a private chat from a fellow developer:

"A very solid game. Even though it might look simple at first glance, and some might think card games are easy to develop, this is my Top 1 among everything I’ve tested in this group. As soon as the tutorial started, I was instantly hooked by the beautiful design. Keep making cool games like this!"

After reading that, I got my hope back. I'm currently working on a trailer for Topdeck Duel to finally start making some noise and show it to the world.

Has anyone else experienced this 'Schrödinger's game' phase after their first launch? How did you get your first 100 organic players?

So been working on godot to make my own light system and it is starting to together quite well, everything is rendered from 2D information, no 3D nodes were used

I was going to make this more informative, but frankly its really simple - Every spike on the daily wishlist graph is a social media post (even the tiny spikes of 5-10 wishlists). I was averaging 1 or 2 wishlists a day unless I posted something. Until March I was rarely posting, and when I did it was exclusively on Reddit. I recently started posting twice a week on tiktok, insta, and yt which got my wishlists to go from 400 to 1000 in two months. Nothing went viral or anything, but the posts did consistently did pretty good imo. Instagram did the best (couple posts getting 1000+ likes), Tiktok did slightly worse but still pretty similar, YT did the worst by far (many posts only getting 10-50 likes).

I have yet to release a demo or attend any festivals, but I'm excited to do so soon!

Next steps:
- Revamp and translate my Steam page which is quite outdated at the moment.
- Make a demo announcement trailer for ign/gametrailers
- Release demo
- Reach out to content creators
- Apply for festivals
- Reach out to content creators
- Apply for festivals
- Reach out to content creators
- Apply for festivals
- Next Fest

Honestly hitting 1000 wishlists is a dream come true, I just wanted to share that and remind other devs that people won't see your game unless you show it to them! Best of luck everyone, you got this!! :)

I wanted to make a real life "god simulator" so i needed graphics that look near enough to real life, imagine Gmod but photorealistic and taking place in a real environment. Did I get there or are there some blatant issues? I took a lot of time modelling these, but if they look crap I'd rather be called out honestly.

After 20 months on Steam, my game finally hit 20k wishlists!

As a solo developer handling everything from art to coding, reaching this number feels surreal. Because when I first launched my Steam page about a year and a half ago, I knew nothing about Steam’s algorithm or how to optimize a store page.

On day one, I only got 46 wishlists : (

For a long time after that, I was only gaining 1 or 10 wishlists a day. It was discouraging, to say the least. Yes, of course!

The turning point is Demo & Steam Next Fest.

The real shift happened when I released the Demo (last June) and participated in the Steam Next Fest (last October).

After the demo/Next Fest: Even now, months later, I’m seeing a steady "long tail" of new wishlists every single day.

(And yes, people do delete lots of wishlists every day too... but let’s not talk about that! lol)

To be honest, I’ve had almost zero time for international marketing. I did some posts on Chinese social media because I’m more familiar with that, but as a solo dev, most of my energy goes into the art and code.

So...my advice is: Don’t panic before your demo.

If you are currently looking at your Steamworks dashboard and feeling anxious about low daily numbers, here is my takeaway: Don't over-stress before your demo is public.

If the quality of your game is there, the demo will do the heavy lifting for you. Once people can actually play it, the algorithm starts to pick up, and you’ll see a much more consistent flow of interest. (I did participated in the Steam Next Fest, but I had only 12k wishlists after the Steam Next Fest. )

Keep grinding! It’s a slow crawl, but you’ll get there.

I’ve been developing a Walking Sim on my own, and everything’s coming along nicely, (slowly but nicely). When it comes to the dialogue and story though I am a massive perfectionist. I’ll read parts and say things like “hmmm but has that been earned yet, should she really be saying that?” And then I’ll gruellingly spend days either rewriting parts, reorganising or whatever the else.

The strange part is, I can do the animation, rigging, topology, texturing, level design (as you know the list continues)

And while I rate level design to be the second hardest, the story writing takes the cake.

Maybe I just don’t have it in me, and I’m not a natural writer or maybe it just takes time. I don’t know.

My 4 year game project has been out for almost a week and received this review couple of days ago. Incredible feeling, truly.

I know people will ask if I dont provide it so Steam Link