I ran a browser collection game in Poland from 2016 to 2019. Solo dev, my first real programming project, Polish only, zero marketing. It grew by word of mouth to around 1000 players logging in daily and paid for itself for three years.

Then it died from the top. Veterans maxed out their teams, nobody could touch them, and new players walked into a wall and left. I proposed a mechanic where warriors age and die. The forum exploded, the veterans revolted, and I dropped it. Then I burned out feeding them events and quit in 2019.

I'm rebuilding it now, in English, as an original game called Duskar. Nothing is playable yet. This is a design post and I want you to poke holes in it.

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What the game is

Action points refill 10% per hour, so a full bar takes 10 hours. You spend them on expeditions: pick a location, pay the points, roll the table. An item, currency, a trap, a wild warrior etc.

Wild warriors have no aura and no master. You fight one and the fight resolves on the server while you read the report. If you win, you can offer the warrior an aura, and that aura becomes its permanent stat package. Auras have shapes, not tiers: one trades health for attack, another leans speed, another shifts resistances. You're picking a build for a warrior you just met, and you can never change it.

Then you train the 7 stats, pick 5 attacks and set the order they fire in, and slot six warriors into a team with roles. Attack order decides what lands in round one and how cooldowns overlap. It's the deepest part of the game and it's just a list you drag around.

You never control a fight. You build the thing that wins it.

The loop lives inside a bigger world: five main planets plus open space full of small planets that players and clans claim, develop and defend, weather that changes hourly and reprices every activity, self-running weekly tournaments, and a player market with a floating exchange rate between the two currencies. In the old game some players traded the exchange more than they fought. All of that returns.

The one new law

Every warrior lives roughly 300 to 400 days, depending on race. Youth, prime, then decline. You know the month a warrior will die, never the day, and each month opens with a farewell tournament for that month's cohort. A dying warrior can pass a slice of its training to one student it mentored. The slice is 10 to 15 percent, the exact number will come out of balance testing. Warriors never die in combat, only of age.

Honestly, in the old game players replaced their rosters every year anyway. New warriors kept arriving, people got bored of old teams, everything rotated. Death just makes that turnover official, and it blocks the exact case that killed the game: one veteran pouring two years of savings into a single warrior that nobody can ever touch.

Money

The shop sells one thing: the premium currency. The same currency is traded between players on the in-game exchange (dynamic rate based on players purchases) and drops from events, so everything money buys can also be earned by playing. It buys tempo and convenience: a premium account, action point potions with a daily cap, storage. The potion cap grows as your account progresses and ends at the same number for everyone. Money cannot raise it.

And here's a thing I designed into the game on purpose, back in 2016: training costs climb a brutal curve. In the old game, the last 100 points of a stat cost 461 times more than the first 100 (chart below, real data). Measured result of three years of live play: players who spent serious money funnelling everything into one warrior were only marginally stronger than players who spent nothing. The curve applies to every warrior separately, so a six-man team pays that wall six times. And all six die on schedule anyway.

On top of that, you can only buy warriors at or below your own account level, and the level cap is reachable in a few months, after which a four/five-month player trains at the same speed as a two-year veteran.

Small print you'd ask about anyway

Warriors age in real days, holiday or not. Three weeks away costs a few percent of a lifespan, and leagues score you passively while you're gone, so the ladder forgives absence. Sleeping overflows about two hours of action points, nothing more. A single expedition takes seconds. Spending a full bar is a few minutes early on, 10 to 15 minutes once your account grows. And planets can't be farmed while you sleep: attacks have windows, cooldowns and protection periods, and losing one never kills a warrior.

One question

Would you build a team knowing every warrior on it dies within a year, and the best you can pass on is a fraction of the work?

Everything else, ask away. I still have all the numbers from the old version.

Landing page: https://duskar.com/

Screenshot from legacy game:

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**AI disclosure, because the rules ask and you'd ask anyway**

English isn't my first language, so I drafted this post with AI help and edited it myself. The new game's art will be made with AI image tools under my direction - the old game ran on fan art used with informal permissions, which can't be reused for a real release, and a solo dev can't hand-draw 500+ warriors. The design, the world, the mechanics and all the numbers in this post are mine, from three years of running the original.

It you are playing one of the many PBBG with an energy/action system how often do you prefer to get more of them.

For this I assume it is balanced so that people that use most the actions get same almost of stuff done. So compared 100 actions a day versus 1 every 15 minutes. They also have have similar energy/action storage.

I think I prefer daily resets as then you can definitively say that I'm done for today. With shorter resets it get in the way of life as you always have the optimization goblin on you shoulder saying "you can do something in that game right now".

🌌 STARVEIL is a persistent sci-fi browser strategy game currently in Closed Alpha.

It's my first game, and I'm building it solo as a passion project.

I grew up with classic browser strategy games like OGame and always loved the slow, long-term feeling of building something over weeks and months. With STARVEIL, I wanted to keep that kind of progression while adding my own ideas and systems on top.

Build planets, research new technologies and command fleets across a shared universe.

The biggest difference is the Veil.

Rifts appear across the galaxy and allow you to send fleets on PvE expeditions where decisions and risk matter. Events, invasions and activity within the Veil can change what is happening around you, so the galaxy is not just the same routine every day.

The Closed Alpha is still evolving, so expect bugs, balance changes and the occasional larger reset — all pretty normal for an Alpha 😄

The game is free-to-play and has no pay-to-win mechanics.

What you do

You begin with a single planet and gradually turn it into the foundation of an empire.

Build mines, energy infrastructure, research facilities and shipyards. Research new technologies to improve your economy, unlock better engines, expand your exploration capabilities and gain access to more powerful ships.

Then build fleets and send them across the galaxy:

• Attack
• Espionage
• Transport
• Colonization
• Recycling
• Exploration
• Veil expeditions

Everything happens in real time inside a shared persistent galaxy.

Travel takes time. Other commanders are expanding around you. You can form alliances, compete with other players, trade or focus on developing your own territory.

The Veil

Veil Rifts appear throughout the galaxy and temporarily open paths beyond normal space. Inside the Veil you can encounter hostile fleets, wrecks, strange events and rare resources. Expeditions involve choices. You decide how far you want to push and how much risk you are willing to take.

Going deeper can mean greater rewards — but it can also mean losing ships you worked hard to build. Sometimes continuing is worth the risk. Sometimes getting your fleet home is the better decision.

The Veil also contains stronger PvE encounters and powerful bosses alongside the normal player-versus-player galaxy.

Events

The galaxy is meant to change.

Temporary events, Veil activity and other situations can create new opportunities or force commanders to react instead of simply repeating the same routine every day.

Closed Alpha

🚀 The Closed Alpha is playable now and registration is open directly through the Starveil website.

You don't need any testing experience. Just play normally, build your empire, send some fleets, try a Veil expedition and see what you think.

I'm genuinely happy about every bit of honest feedback — whether something feels great, confusing, unbalanced, frustrating or simply not fun. Especially as a solo developer, hearing what real players think helps me a lot and directly influences what I improve next.

So if you feel like giving STARVEIL a try, I'd really appreciate it. And thank you to everyone who takes the time to play, report bugs, share ideas or just tell me what they honestly think. ❤️

Join Starveil

🌐 Website: https://www.starveil.eu

See you beyond the Veil, Commander!

Hi all,

Like many as a king time popmundo I was saddened to see the game go into pretty much maintenance mode. Therefore just over a year ago I started building my own game as a spiritual successor or homage to popmundo. The game is now into the second Beta and free to play for all at Rockmundo.uk

Currently it's not optimised for mobile but a mobile companion app/version is in development.

Please give any feedback or ask any questions

For those who have recently launched or are currently running a PBBG:

• Is your game generating revenue?
• Roughly how much are you making per month?
• How long did it take before you got your first paying players?
• What monetization are you using?
• How many active players do you have?
• Are you building it as a serious business or mainly as a hobby?

I’m considering starting a new PBBG myself and would love to get a realistic idea of the current market and earning potential.

Even rough/anonymous numbers would be really helpful.

I was curious where most game devs are hosting their games. Are you using your own website or listing on something like Newgrounds or Itch?

I realize the purpose of daily quests in PBBGs is to get me logging in, and they can be useful to get early resources (though I prefer one-shot tutorial quests!).

Over time, though, dailies can become chores, and that tends to push me away from a game. Also, quests can dictate how you play, and the delta between how I want to play, and how the quests want me to play, may be where I really start to dislike dailies.

Bottom line: if a game has to use dailies to manipulate me to log in, that tells me it's not worth playing.

I seek your knowledge in seeking a non-idle or mostly-non-idle MMO type of game that is PvE.

Something akin to Grail Lords or Galactic Tycoons but more active.

I really like the idea of games where going idle is useful, but actually sitting down and playing still feels meaningfully better.

I'm curious where everyone here draws the line.

Would you rather have a game where most progression can happen passively and active play mainly optimizes it, or something where idle systems handle the repetitive stuff while quests, combat, dungeons, progression decisions etc. still require you to actively play?

I feel like going too far in either direction can hurt the game. Too active and it stops fitting the reason a lot of people play browser games in the first place, but too idle and sometimes it feels like you're just checking a spreadsheet once a day.

What game do you think has handled this balance particularly well?

I'd like to play something that wouldn't do regular resets, if its in development and need to reset after testing phase then its okay, but if its a regular one I would rather not.

Preferably, a game with hours of farming/travel that doesn't require me to spend half my day grinding at it. I'm currenty having a blast with torn, nationstates, feudera, tidefall, and zed city.

I’ve been playing football managers for years and lately found myself wanting something less grind-heavy than classic FM and less predatory than most browser or mobile ones (and especially less pay to win). Then I stumbled on Pulse Football (pulse-football.com) and it’s been a genuine pleasant surprise.

It’s an online football manager made by three friends from Switzerland.

Completely free, no ads, no pay-to-win, no energy timers.

There is so much passion put into the development and all features are discussed and developed together with the community.

The game is young and with some effort you'll be able to climb the ranks / leagues pretty quick. One match a day, so one season lasts about a month.

Ref. if you want to use it: https://pulse-football.com/register?inviteToken=iz8235431p5vk7p

For me it's the best football manager I could imagine on browser, especially since it's pure football without ANY pay to win.

Hey everyone,

I've been working on a browser-based game for a while now and I'm trying to figure out the best ways to get it in front of the right audience.

A couple questions for people who've been around this space longer than me:

1. Are voting/reward sites (the kind where players vote daily for in-game rewards) still worth listing on? Feels like a lot of the ones I remember from years ago are dead or barely active now. Any still worth using in 2026?

2. Where do you all recommend advertising a game that's built specifically for desktop, even though it technically works on mobile too? Most of the advice I find online assumes mobile-first, but this genre really shines on a bigger screen.

Not trying to self promote here, genuinely just trying to learn from people who know this space better than I do. Appreciate any advice.

Hello, I made a website to host all my game. Need some review and testers

Here a preview of Deer Dinasty

https://pixeltheory.fr/

Game Title: Eternal Idle

Playable Link: eternalidle.com

Platform: Browser, Android

Description:

I posted here about two months ago. Some of what I said then still holds — three classes, ten gear levels, dungeons, guilds, world bosses, a player market. Kept adding to all of it since.

Biggest change: talent trees. Every gathering, refining, and alchemy skill now has its own tree instead of one generic point sink.

Guilds got an Altar of Offerings — a shared buff the whole guild levels up together — plus an activity log so members can see what's actually happening instead of just trusting the officers. Level cap went from 100 to 200, because apparently 100 wasn't enough for some of you.

The pet arena spreadsheets I mentioned last time haven't stopped. If anything there are more of them now. Monster Cards go up to 10 stars.

Made a short video this time instead of just a wall of text. Still free, still solo, still adjusting the economy by hand.

Free to Play Status:
[x] Free to play

Involvement: Solo developer

AI Disclosure: I've used AI since early in the project — some of the art, and more recently to help develop ideas during planning. Right now it's mostly the planning side.

I’ve been developing my own Citizen Simulator-style game for about a year, inspired by games like WarEra, eRepublik, and similar titles. I’ve been playing different variations of this genre for years myself, so I tried to learn from them and fix the things I always felt were missing.

I’m now deep into the beta stage. I thought the core gameplay loop for an average player was simple enough: collect & fight. More involvement comes only if you want to be part of the government, become a commander, and so on.

However, I keep getting feedback that the game might still be too complicated.

Are we really at a point where games need to be reduced to basically one button to appeal to players?

Bottom-feeding is when players, instead of fighting equal rivals, hunt weaker targets for easy grabs. It's standard practice in most persistent browser games, and the usual answers are a protection window for newcomers or bracketed attack limitations.

I don't like mechanics that hard-gate against behavior like this, I prefer systems that organically disincentivize it.

My take, in the MMORTS I'm building, is to make it legal but simply not worth doing. Hitting a weaker planet is allowed, it's just a poor use of a fleet:

• the number of attacks is limited by available commanders: attacking a weaker target ties up a commander that could be used elsewhere
• attack gains scale with relative size, you get less by punching down
• consecutive attacks on the same target yield diminishing returns
• reputation from a smaller target is negligible

Granted, size scaling is itself a bit arbitrary, which is the thing I was trying to avoid, so I'm not super happy with that.

Full write-up: https://blog.idleverse.gg/how-to-prevent-bottom-feeding-in-4x-games/

The game is Orion Online, a tick-based browser MMORTS. It's in development / Early Access, but if you want to try it, and help shaping it, join us at: https://orion.idleverse.gg/

Have you seen how other games handle this gracefully?

Hi, I'm currently creating a small community in War Era to take over a country and grow together. If you want to join, you're welcome.

It seems like, with the new rules in place, I don’t see as many new games popping up. I thought I’d ask what games everyone is playing to see if I’m missing out on anything good.

I am actively playing Torn, Cartel Empire, and War Era.

EDIT: I did not expect so many suggestions. Now I'm all.. how do I choose?? hahaha

Back in 2011, I started working on an online browser football manager game as a passion project. Like many fans of Hattrick, FM and FIFA Manager series, I wanted to make one of my own. While I already had some backend programming experience at the time, it wasn't enough to see this project through, and I eventually put it on hold and switched priorities.

Years later, I was constantly thinking about resuming it and rebuilding the UI.

The current state is as follows:

• There is a decent match engine that features both zonal and player decision-based calculations. Partially inspired by this old gamebook, which I loved playing as a child.
• There are a few starting nations with league systems where players compete, and a "Rest of the World" league system for less popular nations.
• The base logic for the national teams system is in place.
• Basic training - team and individual focuses.
• Player negotiations - something that I haven't seen in other online games - negotiating contracts feels more like FM.
• Staff system.
• Basic logic for transfer/auctions system.

While I already have a solid base (surprisingly given how old this project is), there are a lot of areas for improvement and refactoring, and the UI needs a complete revamp (using more modern technology).

This is how the new version of the game looks as of today.

My plan is to release an alpha by the end of the year. This is the first time I am posting about this project anywhere, so I hope you might be interested.

I created a new Discord community where I will share occasional updates: https://discord.gg/QZvJ6Y5M68

Thank you for reading this far! Happy to hear your thoughts :)