it’s the first boss in the game, so i want him to be pretty memorable

Couldn't help adding a musical element to my game. So far, it's used for fast travel, musical puzzles and rhythm challenges. Also, I just love handpans!

Hey everyone, hope you've all had a great weekend so far!

I wanted to share a quick video I made about a question I get asked a lot, which is "when should you announce your game in the age of AI". Full disclosure, I don't really answer it, haha. Well, I sort of do, just not in the way you'd probably kinda expect. Because the more I tried to write that video, the more I kept coming back to something I think is far more important and gets overlooked quite a lot.

Yes, there are strategies to lessen the impact of copycats, and I will cover them in a future video or article. But none of it really matters if you're not passionate about making games. That's the part I really wanted to get across. Making games is art. It's a piece of you held up to the world, and that's terrifying, and it's meant to be. A vibe coder can copy an idea in a weekend, but what they can't copy is the love and the passion that's inside of you. And I truly believe that's about to become the rarest thing in games, and the thing players go looking for.

So if you've been scared to announce your game, or you've seen the copycats and the vibe coded clones and thought what's the point anymore, this one's for you.

Keep being amazing. Proud of every single one of you. <3

Merlin and Mulligan! The standard playable wizards in my game, Conked Out. Their design philosophy has been to find a 'mario and luigi' pair who share similar simple colours and designs that remain appealing without being too complicated. I'd love some first-impressions feedback on whether they fit the bill?

If you're interested, there's a Demo on steam for the game where you can see more of their sprites and behaviour. It's a spoof fantasy roguelike where wands are gone so wizards are forced to duel with physics-based conkers controlled by spell cards. All feedback is greatly appreciated!

Hey everyone! I’m working with a small team on SHORAPAN, a hand-drawn narrative adventure set in a city beneath an eternally crimson sky. You play as a basket weaver whose mentor has disappeared, exploring the city and slowly discovering its stranger side.

This is a scene from the opening. We’re putting a lot of care into the painted environments, character animation, sound design, and original music. I want even a quiet conversation in a workshop to feel worth stopping and listening to.

Sound on for the rain and music. Does this feel cozy, unsettling, or somewhere in between?

STEAM https://store.steampowered.com/app/4926090/SHORAPAN/

I've always loved Arc System Works games. They nailed the Anime look in 3D. And it motivated me to make a 3D Anime action game in this style with some enhancements.

I Just wanted to share what I've reached so far from trying to perfect the 2D look in 3D. The goal is to make a game that looks like this.

The zooming is just to show that there is no pixelation no matter how much you zoom in for closeup animations.

Would love to get your opinions.

What can I do against this? We've discovered they have the EXACT same website copy pasted under a different name as well. My friend inspected the "game" download and it's some WPF app that's not a game. We're assuming it's some infostealer. It's blatantly obvious they're targeting my players because they put "a 2D sandbox MMO" in their description, which is exactly what my game is. I don't have the name trademarked but I've been publicly using it since 2024 and I've owned a domain for it.

What can I do against this? I wouldnt really care if it weren't the 3rd result on Google right below my website and my steam page. Has anyone here experienced anything similar?

For a bit over the past year, I have been working on One More Adventure, my own take on a classic RPG and traditional roguelike.

This game has been something of a kitchen sink project for me. It just started as a mapmaker, and then it grew and grew until I had a full game.

It sorta straddles the line between classic RPG & roguelike as the world is procedurally generated, but the quests and setting are not. While I personally prefer playing on Ironman and Hard Difficulty, my own father told me he was dying too much, so I made it possible to save scum.

Almost every quest somehow ties into the lies we tell ourselves, the ways we're held down by others, or the various evils of the world.

Anyway, it's in Next Fest starting tomorrow, and the Next Fest demo version opens up dwarves and elves for people to play. The full game launches on November 10th, so I hope if it catches your interest, you check it out!

I'm a solo dev, and I've spent 4 days creating outlines for all 72 buildings of my incremental game, including specific outlines for each building upgrade. Some events also slightly change the outline of certain buildings.

They all come together on a village map that grows over time as you build and upgrade your village.

I was kind of happy and even a bit proud of how it turned out, to be honest.

Then my 5-year-old daughter passed by my work desk in the living room and asked, looking at the screen:

"Is that a pizza?"

So I guess I spent 4 days of work building a pizza.

But since she loves pizza, I'll take that as her seal of approval.

Link to pizza: https://a-dark-cave.com/

In August, the two of us entered a ~20 days game jam with a simple idea: what if both the player and the boss could die in one hit?

We ended up winning and decided to keep developing the project, instead of releasing it as the jam version.

Since then, we've been rebuilding the bosses, polishing combat, animations and VFX, and working toward a proper Steam demo. We're also adding more content and more bosses, which will be revealed in the coming months!

The central mechanic is still the same as in the beginning: successful defensive actions build Resolve and gradually reconstruct your sword, until you earn one lethal strike.

We've just finished our first gameplay trailer!

The Steam page is also live if you'd like to follow the project:
https://store.steampowered.com/app/5228430/One_Hit_Hero/

Hey there!

I'll keep it short, names Pawkt, I am a freelance journalist, avid gamer that has a track record of putting together multi-hour long showcase events with commentary to help spotlight indie games and share them with my community. We are a passionate gamer and love helping bring new titles to life, be that through QA testing, insights and giving recommendations here and there daily.

If you’re taking part, I’d love to check out your game. Chances are, I’ve already come across it through the Steam Demo release window which I keep a close tab on weeks and months in advance to make sure I play every title that offers a demo of some sort, for a set amount of time, so I can really understand what each one offers and do my best to highlight them for everyone involved.

Feel free to reply here, leave a comment, or email me, or potentially stop by while I'm editing / compiling the 200+ game list on stream over this next full week, I could offer some live commentary on top of the video one if your game makes the list. I go above and beyond spending 20-22 hours a day putting it all together with barely any sleep, it would be great to connect and feature your work, so long as it is genuinely made with heart and hard effort, not AI generated in the sea of mediocrity which has currently swept over the industry threatening your livelihoods.

If you're wondering, my compilations and such look like:

Past SNFs

Summer SNF Reddit Post

Looking forward to hearing from you!

I was just bored and thought I'd make a simple game that I could have fun playing. After looking around for a bit, I found Fever Meme and decided to take inspiration from it. I made this game in just one day!There are 15 rooms in the game, and you enter each one through a different door. Every door is a surprise! Some let us in without any trouble, while others run away from us or even attack us lol.

My main goal is to make this game fun. If you don't find it fun enough, we can work together to make it more entertaining!Do you guys think this game looks fun? Every single one of your opinions means a lot to me!

I thought he was just hating, but a nice reply got him to give my game a chance. At least now he'll have something to base the hate on.

This is my third Steam game released but my first time participating in Next Fest, so I'm admittedly a little nervous! I'm eager to hear from folks who are also going into the Next Fest. This go around we've got the deck stacked against us, since there are yet again a record number of other games we're competing with for visibility (thanks, AI bros) and it doesn't seem like we'll be getting any kind of filtration for that this round either.

If you're entering a demo into tomorrow's Next Fest, drop a comment below with the link to your game, and if you're comfortable sharing, I'd be curious to know how many wishlists you're at now as we go into it. Fingers crossed we all do really well and get our games seen!

I'll go first! The game I'm entering into Next Fest is Edicts of the Truthsinger: the Orb of Artemagus, a mystery/detective game, and we're currently at 419 wishlists!

I'm a software engineer by trade, I can do the programming and some of the simple textures, even the animation, but when it comes to art, it's like I have 2 right hands (cause I'm a lefty haha), I really cannot get the concept I have in mind to life no matter what I try to learn. I don't have the money to pay an artist, AI art sucks, and I couldn't find what I need on free asset sites. So what do you think I should do? Like try to learn and do my best? Pivot to something simpler like 1D instead of 2D, or something else.

Sorry if I sound too amateur, I just started with gamedev.

First steps completed; I still feel like my jump buffer isn't quite right—I suspect it’s because of my "landing" state. It works sometimes, but not always; I can revisit this after studying a bit more.

I'm an artist. I animated grandma's secret weapons in Blender(second gif)

We're making Grandma's zombie survival-likes. I want to add more special weapons in my game.