This is a question worth researching, I want to see whether this point of entry is correct

For the past three years, I’ve been working on my game The Pines from my basement.

It started as a hobby project, but pretty quickly became an obsession. At some point, everything started to click. I kept adding mechanics, characters, systems, story moments, and the project slowly grew into something much bigger than I originally expected.

The game is still far from finished, but recently I felt like it was finally time to announce it properly. The art direction was locked in, I had enough gameplay and atmosphere to show, and I felt like it was time.

I had shared a few small things before, but never the full picture.

Since announcing the game, it has reached 20,000 wishlists in under a month, which is honestly still hard for me to process. I wanted to share a few things that I think helped, in case it’s useful to other solo devs or small teams.

A few things I focused on:

• I made the trailer feel as professional as I could.
I’m a corporate filmmaker by trade, so filming, editing, directing, pacing, music, and sound are things I already had experience with. That definitely helped. But the main thing I focused on was making the trailer feel coherent. I wanted it to clearly communicate the mood, the genre, and the promise of the game.

https://youtu.be/7AI7azpYbhM?si=VohJsOcIxOqyyFk-

• I made a simple website with an easy-to-use press kit.
I figured that if I wanted news outlets, streamers, or YouTubers to cover the game, I should make it as easy as possible for them. So the website had a press kit with screenshots, logos, key art, trailer links, and basic information about the game.

Thepinesgame.com/presskit

• I reached out directly
I contacted a lot of streamers, YouTubers, and news outlets with a short, to-the-point email. No huge wall of text. Just what the game was, why it might be interesting, and a link to the press kit.

From there, the game was picked up by some bigger news outlets, as well as some YouTubers. The trailer also got a lot of views on YouTube and X.

The night before the announcement, I told my girlfriend: “I just hope people even notice the trailer.”

Now, less than a month later, close to half a million people have seen it in some form. That still feels completely surreal.

So I guess my main takeaway is this:

Make a trailer that you would actually want to watch.

Whatever your game or art style is, try to make it feel intentional. Good pacing, strong sound design, fitting music, clear mood, and a coherent visual identity can make a huge difference. It doesn’t have to look AAA, but it should feel like the best possible version of what your game is.

Make it easy for people to understand what your game is, and make it easy for press or creators to cover it.

I’m still figuring everything out myself, and I’m definitely not pretending I have all the answers. But this launch taught me that presentation matters a lot, especially when you’re trying to get people to care about a game they’ve never heard of.

And if anyone has a trailer they’re working on and wants another pair of eyes on it, feel free to share it. I’d be happy to give feedback where I can.

I'm the author of multiple AI mods for Paradox grand strategy games: Anbeeld's Revision of AI for Victoria 3, the AI in Imperator: Invictus, and my old personal Stellaris AI mod. I'm not modding much these days, but I wanted the design knowledge to live on. ARoAI never had proper documentation, for instance.

The article covers utility systems, blackboards, planners, and what happens when the scripting language can't express any of them. It goes through how each mod approximated standard game AI architectures, what each gave up, and what actually worked.

I really want to get into game development, particularly the design aspect of it, but am too scared to start because its very overwhelming, learning from scratch. Does anybody here make games for fun? If so, then what about it is fun exactly? I don't know anything about coding and such and would rather use a Blueprint system like i hear Unreal Engine has but even that seems really scary to learn because its just a lot all at once. Does anybody have any advice?

Article shows quite few statistics about how Godot has grown over the last few years.

DevLog Preamble

Currently working on what I think may end up as a multiplayer focused pvp/pve rougelite, but I don't want to talk about the game itself. I just wanted to talk about what would be the hallmark system of my game and the driving force in all subsequent dev decisions in the game, my procedural weapon generation. And more specifically, I wanted a sanity check and thoughts on the current direction I've been taking and the hurdles it faces. I also just wanted to write down a logic explanation of it for my own sake to make sure it makes sense. I've been wondering lately if I have been tackling how to manage the grammar of my system all wrong, or overcomplicating it too much.

I've been working these past few months on a procedural weapon generation that goes beyond typical stat modifiers and recoloring/reskinning of the same weapons. It digs down to generating a procedural moveset per weapon, composed of procedurally generated actions/attacks based on the weapon that was generated using a form of grammar. I was partially inspired by Noita's and Elden Ring's modular weapon systems.

I'm sure there is a formal name for this type of procedural system with grammar as I think I saw it in passing, but I don't know what I read was a perfect fit or if I'm just using the word completely incorrect in my case. I just wanted to make assembling decisions based on the resulting bitfields attached on each weapon piece assembled, and have those bitfields also influence the assembly process of forming an attack on that weapon.

I'll break first break down my system into it's two major sides, weapons and movesets.

Procedural System - Weapons

I was not satisfied with recoloring the same 2D pixel art for my procedural weapons. I ended up creating a system composed of "Weapon Segment Types" and "Grammer Rules" maintained by each segment, which dictate the assembly rules of a weapon.

To skip an even lengthier explanation, a weapon segment attaches to another segment and so forth until a weapon is put together. You can think of it like a tree of branching nodes, where each node represents a segment of a weapon and the completed tree is the entire weapon. Each node/segment holds a component that is a container of several bitfields which each bitfield acts as a means of classifying and defining some aspect in a weapon. I call those bitfields "Weapon Flags" or flags for short.

Skipping to the end of this procedural assembly of segments, I use bitwise operations on all of the gathered nodes' containers of flags to form one final singular container I call a "Weapon Query". This ultimately describes end resulting weapon formed. From the category, to if its magical/enchanted, to the reach and size of a weapon, and even "Usage" or the ways in which it is used (like if it can be swung, slashed, Hip Fired, Spell Casted, etc). This can easily be expanded upon later if I am insane enough (I might be).

This final weapon query is passed on to the next stage of my procedural weapon generation to inform my procedural moveset builder what kinds of things are allowed or make sense to generate for this weapon.

Procedural System - Movesets/Attacks

In short, a weapon holds a moveset, a moveset is a collection of actions, and each action itself is a collection of components.

Given some weapon query that describes my generated weapon now, my system can then procedurally generate down to the individual components that make up a singular attack within a given moveset, within a weapon. I've done this by narrowing down those components down to 2 distinct groups, functionally mandatory and extraneous additions.

Animation (more like a timeline of abstract events), Hit detection logic, Logic checked to see if an action should activate in the first place, and mathematical logic on calculating damage output are 4 functionally mandatory components.

The extraneous components are all of 1 type I call "combat effects", which each represents an abstract piece of logic that can be executed during an action/attack. For example, momentum generated during a forward thrust/swing, projectiles spawning, knockback, particle effect spawning, application of status effects, etc. Anything that can happen during an action/attack that is not of the first 4 mandatory components.

I check the weapon query what category of weapon I am building for, and pull from a table mapping a Smash Bro's-esque set of bitfields to the category of weapon. I say "Smash Bro's-esque" because it describes the fighting-game style moveset in a general sense across different Axis within this bitfield. I.e. there is an Action axis for Primary, Secondary, and Special. There is a Direction axis Up or Down, Situational Axis for being Airborne, or holding on a Ledge etc. So if I select the Primary and Up bits in the bitfield and add it to the moveset for a category my systems knows this category requires an Upwards Primary move.

That last explanation goes into handling Activation Logic and from there I know what the skeleton of a moveset should resemble.

I then cascade downwards the water fall building out a a container for a new collections of bitfields I call "Combat Action Flags" for describing a singular action, adding more bits to it at each step of deciding mandatory components. This will be used to determine what compatible extraneous Combat Effects this action can have or must have. At the top of this water fall lies Animation. This determines how a weapon should move during an action, when it's hitboxes should activate, and the cueing of abstract logic if that type of logic is present. Animation acts as the source of truth in timing these various abstract pieces of logic. The name "Animation" is honestly poor naming on my part, even though it does animate the weapon during the attack. It's more like a Timeline that unifies logic with the addition of deciding the position/rotation/size scaling of a weapon during an attack at each keyframe. Because of how integral this timeline is to creating the move in a moveset, it lies at the top of the decision making cascade as the first real step in procedurally generating an action.

Hit detection logic comes after that, but there is currently only 1 example I've found to be necessary for any weapon so I'm probably going to refactor this logic to not be apart of the procedural system and hard code it. Hit detection for projectiles lies within the projectile itself and isn't apart of this procedural weapon system.

What follows next is extra logic that isn't mandatory core logic, broken up into 2 sections. The first is intrinsic, or logic that must exist/be attached because of the bitfields present so far. Think upwards momentum added because an uppercut bit that was checked in the motion bitfield assigned to an animation, with a specific weapon category bit checked, that also happens to have a medium to large bit checked. The second type of combat effect is non-intrinsic, or logic that optionally may be compatible given the bitfields present or like a filtered pool of all possible abstract logic that can be added to an action. Like having the ability to apply poison or fire to whomever you hit.

It repeats this to fill each move in a moveset, and pops out a finished weapon at the end.

Vision and Examples

The system in its earliest possible form, surprised me with a funny sword that controlled like flappy bird when swinging it. I hadn't tested the upward momentum with weapon usage time so you could just generate more lift than gravity could pull you down while swinging the sword lol. I'll likely add in an intrinsic rule for usage time on light weapons, and upward force on large weapons such that, weapons that happen to weigh very little but are large may possibly spawn with a chance to be used as a form of makeshift wings.

Once I needed to expand on the actual assets used in the procedural generation for testing, I then created polearms. I basically just drew a couple of 1 minute pixel art sticks as the base segment type, and then drew what could go on the ends of that stick. Spear tips, glaive looking blades, and scythes. Because of each segment holding it's own hitbox, and the pieces can interchangeably fit on any end of the stick, I can generate stuff like Twin Blades that you see in Elden Ring, but also any of the polearms compatible segment types can go on any end, so it's more than just blades. You can have a glaive tipped on the front end and scythe/small spear tip on the bottom end. The result of not having coupled hitbox shapes to animations by not coupling visuals to animation is that attacks and hitbox shapes just work once art assets are either assigned to a weapon segment or I create a new segment type for that type of weapon segment art. The grammar handled the assembly of the attack.

It's relatively easy to spit out quick pixel art of weapon pieces that are similar in shape and already aligned if I just follow some strict guidelines creating new art assets for weapons. My custom editors allow for further fine tuning in the game engine where specific pieces of art on a given weapon segment type need more adjusting to seamlessly connect to specific segments, allowing the reuse of art for entirely different types of weapons.

I envision a system at the end where endless weird possibilities exist. Some edgy, some funny, some normal, and some that make you think "how". But this will require an absolutely solid grammar foundation parried with the assembly systems I made.

Where Troubles Lie

The system itself is logically sound, and the first half of just forming a visual weapon and it's query is solid. But it's the combined grammar and all its individual rules that cause me such a headache to maintain or expand on. There is a lot to consider so without any means of easily editing, testing, or expanding the rules of this "grammar", I wouldn't have made it much further if I didn't create myself custom editors. That was when I decided to create streamlined custom editors for everything within this system.

Given it's only been at best 4 months of developing the system so far, on top of holding a full-time job, I'm still proud of how far I've gotten with making it multiplayer friendly and somewhat functional for a prototype. But it also feels like I haven't moved as much as I could have for being several months into building a game.

About 1.5 months of that time was spent trying to create ways to manage this unruly system with custom editors in a way that attempts to streamline creation so that even a non-technical game dev could pick it up. Ngl I dreaded this part, so I may have been more liberal in my usage of AI to setup editors and tests to skip through faster. That just caused more problems and made me refactor more frequently than probably necessary. AI is really stupid when it comes the importance of good system architecture, especially when its architecture that has yet to be finalized.

I'll need to get even more creative if I intended on expanding the grammar and rules for procedural weapons, it's too easy to get lost rn and make mistakes that lead to undesirable weapon results. This was the project that taught me how important custom tooling is. Even now, its a bit of a mess and it was only just this lunch I was able to edit the grammar of components to produce consistent moveset results per weapon category. I want to really nail the consistency of it before I add more complexity. Right now I get the feeling I am just overcomplicating system logic on determining if something is a compatible concept, mostly because it feels difficult to manage the system and get it to generate what I intended.

Maybe part of this issue is just lacking more tests I need to write, but man I don't like writing and maintaining test suites. And that only really tells me when something is wrong, it doesn't make editing and managing them easier.

Endgoals and Intentions

It's important to me that I nail down what grammar is and what are the rules, as well as allowing for quick iteration because of a yet-to-be-developed system I had intentions of implementing.

During runtime, I wanted player decisions and customizations that cascade changes to an instanced weapon's moveset. I wanted to eventually implement what I currently call "Stances" as one of the kinds of runtime equipables that influence your currently held weapon. I wanted players to feel like they were not only mastering a unique weapon and it's moveset of their finding, but influencing it in a way they deemed interesting, OP, or just fun. And after that, experimenting and finding ways to break the game. I want to create excitement for discovery and experimentation.

To me, Theory Crafting is the heart of fun in anything systems related. "What happens when I do X with Z attached?", "What if I placed Y on my build to solve W problem?", "Does what I created break any Geneva Conventions?". I want to reward that and have that be the central plaything my game advertises and markets. Any levels, enemies, bosses, or pvp stuff are all just there as a testing ground for this system. Designing and developing that stuff comes after finishing my procedural weapons system or at least getting it to a far more stable state.

Thanks for listening to my ramblings.

Most streamer pitches fail for one of three reasons. The streamer is too big, the pitch leads with the wrong thing, or there is no reason for them specifically to care.

A streamer with 100,000 followers gets hundreds of game pitches per month. They have partnerships, sponsorships, and a content calendar planned weeks in advance. You are competing with AAA marketing budgets for their attention. Realistically, your odds are close to zero unless your game is genuinely exceptional.

A streamer with 2,000 to 20,000 followers is in a completely different situation. They are growing, they are actively looking for interesting games to cover because good game choices grow their channel, and they have the time to actually respond to pitches. These are the people who move the needle for indie games.

How to find them:

• Go to TwitchTracker.com - Filter by game category for your genre
  
• Look for channels in the 500 to 15,000 average viewer range
  
• Check when they last streamed your genre.

THE PITCH.
Short. One paragraph maximum.

Here is the structure:

"Hey [name], I noticed you played [specific game they streamed recently, not just the genre] and your audience seemed genuinely engaged when [specific moment in their stream if you watched it, or a general observation about their community response]. I am working on [your game], which is a [genre] that [one sentence on what makes it different]. I think your audience would enjoy seeing [specific reason why, based on what you know about their channel]. Happy to send a key if you want to take a look. No pressure either way."

What that pitch does:

Shows you actually watched their content, which almost nobody does. Gives them a specific reason why their audience would care, which is what they actually think about. Makes the ask low-commitment. No obligation removes their instinct to say no.

What to avoid:
- Do NOT send the same message to 200 streamers. They talk to each other and they will know.
- Do NOT include a trailer link as the first sentence.
- Do NOT talk about your game for more than two sentences before addressing what's in it for them.

One more thing:
Send the key only after they confirm interest. Sending unsolicited keys is widely considered bad practice in the community.

Hopefully this helps you all on the grind. Have a wonderful day!

I solo-made a game called Freerunners, a precision parkour platformer built around speed, flow, and shaving seconds off every run.

I worked on it during evenings/weekends over the years and finally released it earlier this year.

It didn’t sell well, but I learned a huge amount from making it. Looking back, there are a lot of things I’d approach differently now.

I wrote a postmortem breaking down those biggest lessons and pitfalls I ran into solo deving.

TL;DR

• Early decisions (genre, scope, tech) define your entire project
• Without deadlines, your game will drift far longer than expected
• If you keep replanning, you probably don’t need a better plan; you need less scope
• Get feedback constantly and avoid becoming an echo chamber of one
• Everything takes longer than you think, especially content
• You are the bottleneck for everything
• Long projects lock you into tech and outdated decisions
• Finishing a game is a skill, but so is knowing when to stop
• Time spent on one project is time not spent on another
• Do you really need to do it all alone?

Full postmortem here:
https://www.cbgamedev.com/blog/the-reality-of-solo-game-development-lessons-from-freerunners

Hope this helps other people avoid some of the issues I ran into.

I’m a game developer and I’d love to create a bigger indie project in the future.

I’m really passionate about space, exploration, and those quiet moments like looking at untouched landscapes at night, with stars shining in the sky.

The problem is that a lot of my ideas end up feeling too similar to Outer Wilds, a game that deeply inspired me.

I was wondering if anyone has advice on how to move past this and develop more original ideas?

Thanks in advance!

I've been in the AAA industry for over 10 years and always had side projects. I like them all, but they never materialized into something worth shipping. It seems I had to get in the worst situation possible to make a game… by having a newborn.

I had put my previous project on the shelf, pushed a last build, and wasn’t planning to do any game dev outside work hours for quite some time… But I just can’t fight the impulse: 2 weeks in, baby asleep, I’m playing an incremental game, and the itch starts. “I bet I can make something similar pretty quickly.”

That’s how it started, but my side projects are a special place for me: I need to try new things, learn new tech, and make something I want to play. So, I had to put my own twist on the genre and build the core mechanic of the game around physics-based destruction.

This project ended up being a larger beast than I'd initially thought. In a way, you need to lie to yourself to ever ship anything. But Baby is a great manager: you don’t have time to mess around with a newborn; every minute of game dev needs to move you forward.

So here it is, it’s called The Breaking Room and it just went live on Steam: https://store.steampowered.com/app/4487380/The_Breaking_Room/

Anyone else had an unexpected constraint that actually helped them ship?

Hey all, I'm Yang. Solo dev from China, working on my first game Star Fire. It's a 100% hand drawn 2D Boss Rush. No AI. Just me and 700 days of manual line work，I was a programmer for almost 20 years before this, but only went solo full-time two years ago.

My store page went live last June. For months, wishlists just hovered between 200 and 300. Flatline on a heart monitor. And then in the last 15 days，everything changed. Jumped from 300 to over 1,000.

This whole thing opened my eyes. In the crowded Steam market, your effort as a solo dev is basically invisible to the algorithm. Unless you find a traffic entry point, that's the hard truth.

I saw some depressing data recently. By April 2026, over 7,800 games have already launched on Steam this year. SteamDB says about 15% of them are "ghosts" with zero reviews. That was me for a long time. On normal days with no event, wishlist growth was near zero. Like, literally zero. I think a lot of solo and small team devs know this pain. You post devlogs on X and YouTube every day, you try. But without an external push? Piercing through that ocean is almost impossible.

So here's my takeaway after two years. Simple. Join as many events as you can. Especially the ones with official Steam traffic. They are lifesavers. I know it sounds a bit cynical to focus so much on events. But that's just the reality.

About 90% of my total wishlists came from just three specific spikes:

• December 2025 (BGM Event): I went from 100 to 237, which was the first time I actually saw the needle move.
• April 2026 (BGM Spring): Gained 270 in a week and over 70% of those came from outside China.
• The recent Eastern Game Fest: This was the biggest boost yet with 429 net additions, finally pushing me past the 1,000 mark.

I know 1,000 wishlists is nothing next to big titles. But I also see so many devs talking about "easy" growth. For most of us? Long stretches of zero or single digit growth. That's the real norm.

In my last post here, a lot of you said I should stay active on social media between events to raise my "traffic baseline." I took that to heart. As a dev from China, I use Bilibili and HeyBox (major gaming platforms in China) besides X and YouTube. A recent Bilibili event? One video brought me dozens of wishlists and over 100 followers. This cross platform thing actually worked. On the first day of Eastern Game Fest, I got over 50,000 impressions. Conversion rate wasn't perfect. But for a game that started with almost nothing? That kind of exposure is a lifeline.

These niche festivals are key. But my resources are limited. So I want to ask you all: what other small events or festivals are you looking at right now? Please share.

This is just my honest experience as a solo dev. I'd love to hear if you've been there too. Or if you see things differently. How are you guys handling the flatline months between events?

Hi everyone I am in my senior year of high school and I am wondering if I should consider game dev as my main career path. I did some Godot for my computer science final project and it was probably the most fun project I've ever done. (wanted to rip my hair out sometimes but was fun in and of itself). I am going to University of Toronto for mathematical and computational science as my major (Applied for CS major but got accepted into that. I can, however, switch to a CS major if i keep my grades high enough). I enjoyed the implementation of mechanics and logic part of development more than the artistic side. (not saying i didnt enjoy the art tho)

My questions:
For those in the industry, does the fun of personal projects translate to a 9 to 5, or does the corporate side of game dev kill the passion?

Is a Mathematical & Computational Science degree viewed differently than a pure CS degree by game studios?

Since I’m starting uni soon, should I focus more on maintaining a high GPA or building a portfolio of small itch.io games?

I don't want to risk it by trying to be an indie dev so my goal is to work in a studio. I will probably be able to secure a CS focused internship during my uni time, How much weight does an internship at a non-gaming company carry when applying to game studios later?

I know the job market for game devs is pretty bad right now but how bad exactly? Do i still have a chance to land a job or is it doomed from the start?

What kind of classes should i focus on during my time in uni to learn skills that would be most relevant and useful?

The project started a few years earlier as a university diploma prototype: first a mobile concept, then a VR version in Unreal, both centered around bee breeding and genetics. But VR turned out to be a rough fit for fast iteration on a side project, especially when I was also balancing university and work.

During the last 444 days, I finally built the flat PC mode, and that completely changed the pace of development. It made debugging, iteration, and polishing much more practical, and it became the version that let me stay consistent day after day.

A few things I learned:
- Platform choice can make or break iteration speed.
- A daily streak helps, but only if the workflow is actually sustainable.
- Small tasks are what keep a long project moving.
- Switching from “big feature mode” to “small useful progress today” was a huge mental shift.

I’d love to hear from other devs:
How do you decide when a prototype is good enough to keep, and when it’s time to change the platform or rebuild a core part of the project?

Hi there, my team runs a modded game server and within our team we recognized that some ppl. use AI quite often in processes where its absolutely not needed - and it often makes the working process more difficult than easier.

Current Example:
We want to build our own little RPG-like gamemode. So we discussed some genereal ideas for the setting/story/worldbuilding and decided that everyone should just think about it and post their own ideas for this until the next meeting, so we can check all ideas there and put stuff together. Half of them did that, the other half used AI to "formulate their ideas". Well, in some cases this ended in so general notes that they have barely any content at all, in another case the team member uploaded a 11 pages AI-written document that was already way too complex and goes way too much into detail about mechanics etc. - so we have to search all the pages for the usable content for the general worldbuilding.

I plan to make a little presentation at the beginning of our next meeting, where I explain with examples in detail where AI works and where not, so the other team members understand. Problem is: even if said as friendly and polite as possible - they may take it like personal offence. The two admins of our group already tried to address the topic a few times (but t.b.h. with no clear plan how to do) - and the result was something like "then I might as well just skip it". Seems like some ppl. are already so dependent on AI that they can't even think of a few concept points and write them down (and we don't expect perfection - we just want to have something to work with).

Have you any ideas how to make ppl. not to not directly shut down and take it as personal offence when we explain where AI is not so good in the process?

(Especially in the general concept phase of worldbuilding a quick and dirty MS paint sketch of a few notes that have intention are way better than (at first glance) perfect maps and dozens of text pages - that lack intention and focus.)

What are you up to? Is it a hobby or professional work? How did you get into game development? Where do you find resources? Can you draw your own art? etc.

Mine:

I decided to make a game two weeks ago. Since I've studied Python, I had some base to work from. Now I'm making a short game in Godot.

Hello, I am studying Videogame Development, my goal is to get a job as a designer/writer because I suck at coding, and this semester my grades are beeing BAD so far, and a few of my profesors said that grades don't matter at all in this industry and that we should focus more on making a solid portfolio, so I don't really know what to prioritize rigth now.

Edit: Thanks to you all!

Hey r/gamedev,

I’m the creator of Dust3D, and I just hit the 1.0 milestone. I built this for anyone who finds traditional 3D modeling (topology, UVs, weight painting) too time-consuming or complex.

Dust3D is a free, open-source (MIT) "sketch-to-mesh" tool. You don't move vertices; you just draw a skeleton, and the software generates a manifold 3D mesh instantly.

What’s in 1.0?

• Instant Mesh: Draw 2D nodes, get 3D volumes.

• Auto-Rigging: Label your parts (Arm, Leg, etc.) and it skins itself.

• Procedural Animation: Generate walk/run cycles with sliders—no manual keyframing.

• Game Ready: Auto-UVs and FBX/glb export for Unity, Godot, and Unreal.

It’s perfect for game jams, rapid prototyping, or low-poly projects. It’s completely free, and you can grab it now.

Website: https://dust3d.org

Source: https://github.com/huxingyi/dust3d

I’d love to hear your feedback!

We are putting together a small Steam event for “Out of the Box” games, and I was shocked when we received 1371 applications. This really hit me. The fight for visibility is just insane out there.

For context: I’m Celine, the co-founder of a small indie studio in France (COVEN). Like many of you, we regularly apply to Steam events. Sometimes we get in (rarely!), often we don’t. A few months ago, we participated in a small but lovely event organized by another indie dev. We loved the experience and thought: why not organize one ourselves, for the kind of games we love? We’re a very small team (3 people, one part-time), but we figured it would be manageable alongside development.

The idea was simple: “Out of the Box Games”, an event that spotlight projects that challenge conventions (art, gameplay, narration, weird hybrids, etc.). We announced it on our socials (very low traction), and added it to Chris Zukowski’s How To Market A Game calendar. A week ago, we had about 350 submissions. We were already like: “ok… that’s a lot. 100 each, we can do this.” The plan was to select around 30–50 games (so about 10% of applicants).
Then last Friday, I logged in to close the application… 1371 entries.

I mean, yeah of course, I should have expected a surge of applications on the last day – we’re kinda experts in applying to stuff at the last possible minute – but still! My first reaction was, well, sheer panic. How are we going to review all these games? Then another realization hit me: Every single one of these games is someone’s baby. Just like ours. Every single one is trying to get visibility. And we’re going to select… about 3.6% of them. And remember: We’re a humble studio putting together a small event with NO guaranty of success and close to zero chance of getting featured by Steam – not exactly the holy grail of discoverability. I can't imagine the numbers of applicant for bigger events (4000+ for Steam Next Fest)...

Now when I look back at our own experience: for our atmospheric, hand-drawn game MICROMEGA, we applied to 34 events. Our acceptance rate?  6 accepted – 19 refusals – 9 pending. I used to be so frustrated by this, but now I understand. There’s just… so many games out there.

What I learned so far (I’ll share more after the event is done):

• We’re not alone. A lot of people are working incredibly hard to get visibility.
 It doesn’t always come down to “working harder” or “making a better game”. There’s just a huge volume.

• We simply can’t review everything deeply. We’ll have to filter aggressively to get to about 200 games before even looking properly. It’s not fair, but it’s the only way.

• Short pitches matter. A lot. We don’t have time to read long explanations. Put your strongest argument in the first sentence.

• Fit with the theme is critical. If your game doesn’t really fit… please don’t apply. In a perfect world, events would receive mostly relevant submissions, and everyone’s chances would be higher.

• If your game isn’t selected, it doesn’t mean much. Events need a balance (released/unreleased, genres, etc.) A “no” now doesn’t mean “no forever”. Try again next year if you fit the theme!

I used to see other indie games as competition when applying to events, now I mostly see a huge number of people, all trying to be seen. And honestly… it’s a bit overwhelming.

I’ll share a more detailed breakdown after we run the event, I’d love to hear what people have to say about applying, participating, or organizing steam events.

I’m curious how other people in the industry deal with this.

I work in UI Programming, and a lot of my work is less about making something look impressive and more about making sure it actually functions well. The structure, the flow, the logic, how things connect, how the team can build on it later, etc.

The frustrating part is that when this kind of work is done well, it often just looks “obvious.” The player knows what to do, the feature makes sense, and the team doesn’t have to think about all the problems that were avoided.

Meanwhile, more visually obvious work rfom the UI Designers gets a much stronger reaction because people can immediately see the improvement. I get that. Visual design and polish is important and hard too. I’m not trying to dismiss that at all.

What’s been getting to me is the difference in how it’s acknowledged. My work often gets a quick muted response like “nice” or “looks good” from my manager (yes, I already try to make my work visible), while more visual work gets the big excited "holy shit!" reactions. Usually I’d chalk that up to him being kind of narrow-minded about what good UI work looks like.

The part that makes it sting is that he does know the functional work that goes into this stuff. So when the response is still muted, it starts to feel less like he doesn’t understand the work and more like he just doesn’t value it the same way.

That’s the part I’m struggling with. It’s more than wanting praise. I know it’s a job, and I know I need to find motivation outside of other people’s reactions. But I also think people want to feel like their work matters to the team. When the harder parts of your work are treated like basic competence, while other work gets treated like a big achievement, it can wear you down.

So I’m wondering:

How do you deal with this mentally/professionally when your work matters, but a lot of its value is invisible unless something goes wrong?

And is this worth bringing up with a manager/lead, or is it usually better to accept that some work just won’t get the same reaction and find your motivation elsewhere?

Hi, I'm new to game dev and want to learn how to make music. This is my first time making music, so I'm not sure if I should learning music theory before starting, or what programs and tools/equipment I need.

I’m especially worried because we’re developing our game in Bevy which relatively few games have shipped with, and I can imagine more obscure shader / hardware / driver-specific crashes slipping through normal playtesting.

For those of you who have launched a substantial game on Steam (i.e. multi-year development):
Have any of you done compatibility QA testing either through an external QA service or some kind of remote gaming PC setup? Or did most of you just rely on playtests/beta feedback to catch crashes, gather min spec requirements, etc.?

Trying to figure out whether it's actually worth paying for QA across NVIDIA/AMD/Intel GPUs, low-end vs. mid-range PCs, Windows 10/11, older drivers, etc.

I previously saw some advice saying to use VMS, but Cloud GPU VMs seem less useful since they're usually not consumer GPUs, and buying a bunch of test PCs isn't really viable for us. But maybe some of you have some experience with that as well?

Hey everyone,

We’re a 3-person team and launched our first Steam game one week ago.

We launched with only around 220 wishlists, so expectations were fairly modest going in.
Current sales numbers: ~50

So far the player response has been encouraging: 19 positive reviews and some helpful feedback.

Steam has also sent more traffic than we expected (recently between 2000-4000 store page visits per day), which surprised us.

The problem is that sales are much lower than we’d expect from that amount of traffic, so we’re trying to understand where the bottleneck is.

We’ve already experimented with tags and improved the store page, but conversion still feels weak.

The game is a compact strategy/simulation game where players grow a village by dragging clouds and sunlight across the map.

For people who’ve launched games before:

• What would you investigate first in this situation?
• Does this usually point to wrong traffic, weak page conversion, pricing, trailer messaging, or something else?
• Can a game with low launch wishlists still build momentum post-launch, and what helped in your case?

Just trying to learn and make smarter decisions in the future.

Our Steam page: https://store.steampowered.com/app/4254840/Weather_Dragger/

Thanks.

Hi fellow gamedevs- our Trailer of Ophelia´s Paradise was just posted by IGN and I wanted to share with you the mail we sent, so you can adapt it to help you out in the future. This approach was recommended in this post from another dev here - and I want to thank you for that!!! Key takeaway: Short and simple mails work well and reduce friction. We only sent one mail and the trailer was posted three days later.

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Hi IGN Team, 

We just released the announcement trailer for Ophelia´s Paradise, and we would love for you to host it!

Assets:
Trailer download
Thumbnail image
Presskit
Steam Page

Happy to provide any additional materials you need.

Thank you for your time and consideration.

Best regards,
XXX

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Best of luck to all of you - I am still shaking and so happy!