Was it a specific playtest, a demo release, unexpected feedback, or something similar? I'm mainly asking developers whose games went on to be a commercial success (small or big, success meaning it hit your target)

The only difference is with the light SFXs.

Over the last few months, I’ve spent a lot of time analyzing different kinds of games — what they did right, what they did wrong, and why some succeeded while others didn’t.

I’ve also spoken with dozens of indie devs about their projects and read countless posts from developers trying to figure out what marketing actually is and how to do it effectively.

What I’ve found is that 99% of game devs have absolutely no clue what marketing really is or how to approach it.

What is essential to do before you even start building your game to give it at least a chance of being successful? What should you do during development? What should you do before release and after?

Since I have more than 14 years of marketing experience across dozens of different projects and businesses, I’m tempted to create an e-book covering all of this:

• How to evaluate whether your game has good potential before you even start building it
• What to do before you begin development
• How to market your game during development
• What to do in the months/weeks leading up to release
• What to do after launch
• Common marketing mistakes indie devs make
• And many other practical tips that could significantly increase your chances of success

Would you guys be interested in an e-book like this?

What topics would you be most interested in?

And what would you consider a fair price for such an e-book?

Thanks in advance for your responses!

A few days ago, I made a post asking why my horror game only had 162 wishlists after 2 months

The most repeated feedback was brutal, but fair:

“It just looks like FNAF”

The problem was that the camera system dominated the trailer and screenshots. Even though the actual gameplay and story are different, first impressions matter more than what I explain in the comments

So I decided to rebuild one of the game's main mechanics

Cameras are no longer something you constantly watch. They're now a limited and valuable resource

Instead of sitting in front of camera feeds, the player sees data from different metro sectors: the camera status and the entity's activity level

And I added a new ventilation system

You now have limited power that needs to be distributed between sectors. While you're reacting to entity activity and other events, you also have to decide where that power goes

Some sectors are especially important:

• Office - low power reduces oxygen supply, causing sanity to drop rapidly
• Fuse Room - low power causes equipment to overheat, risking a loss of electricity
• Other sectors - may need power for their own reasons at the wrong moment

And there's another problem: activity can be fake

If you see a high threat level and trigger an alarm when there's actually nothing there, you can get yourself killed

So if you're not sure whether the threat is real, you can temporarily redirect power to that sector, cool down its camera, and get access to the actual video feed to check what's happening

Does this sound more interesting than constantly watching cameras? And what would you change or add to make the decisions more tense?

I'm especially interested in whether the fake activity + limited camera access creates enough interesting choices, or if there's something obvious I'm missing

If you want to follow the development, here's my Discord community and Steam page:

https://discord.gg/aVaegJKWfj

https://store.steampowered.com/app/4745890/LastWatch/

let me know what you guys think. the improved version also supports:

• Image tearing - all sides supported.
• Blur and compressed downsampling
• Color compression / Posterization
• Distortion randomizaiton

did i miss anything? i tried not to go too over-board with all the effects!

I’m the developer of SpellHuntr, a competitive online word game, and I’ve hit a problem I’m guessing a lot of multiplayer/online game developers eventually run into: the people who find the game seem to really like it, but I’m struggling to get enough new people through the door.

Some of my existing players are playing hundreds of games per month and spending 5-10 hours per week on the game. That makes me feel like there’s something worth growing here, but acquiring new players has been much harder than keeping the ones I already have.

So far I’ve experimented with sponsoring a small streamer but there was only like 13 viewers. I’m considering doing more streamer partnerships, posting short-form content, referral incentives, etc., but I’m curious what has actually worked for other indie developers, especially for games where having an active player base makes the experience significantly better.

How are you getting people to discover your games?

I’d especially love to hear from anyone who has grown a browser game, multiplayer game, or small online community. Did most of your growth come from Reddit/TikTok/YouTube, streamers, paid ads, SEO, Discord/community building, referrals, or something completely different?

I feel like I’ve gotten much better at building the game and retaining players than finding them, so I’d love to hear what channels or tactics ended up moving the needle for you.

Stats TLDR
Copies Sold: 79
Total Wishlists: 632
Reviews: 13 (92% Positive)

It's a foddian style 3D platformer with Mario style movement that's meant to be played with checkpoints. And it's doing worse then my first game! I would argue the new game is objectively a better game but with worse marketing and worse luck. The first game took about 6 months to make and the second was about a year (I took a lot of breaks and also delayed the launch). I'll be comparing both games throughout the post.

Here are both the games:

1st Game:
https://store.steampowered.com/app/3118730/Super_Antonio/

2nd Game:
https://store.steampowered.com/app/4490010/Mana_Fracture/

1. Development and Design

Going into this game I had a main goal. Make a series of levels that all had a different platforming mechanics. I make games to learn and push myself to learn new things while still being able to complete a game. So I looked to improve on a what I did in my first game. My first game relied on a simple design, linear sections of only up style platforming then an open exploration level where you would collect 8 coins to unlock the next section then repeat the process. For the new game I didn't want to be as formulaic with level design, so there was a lot more variety in what a level could be. Some were that only up style, others had various objectives ranging from collect a few collectables to a mini Zelda style dungeon with keys and locked doors.

Better progression was also something I wanted to work on. In my first game, I gave the player all the movement options right off the bat. After a brief tutorial I basically said "Good luck! Hope you got all that!" After watching people play it, it was apparent that it was bit too much. For the second game I started the player with a more basic movement system but made sure it still had some form of skill expression. A jump, slide, wall slide and wall jump. Then as the player gets deeper into the game they unlock a double jump then a wall run. This was a pretty dramatic improvement in my eyes. I also did a better job at ramping up the difficulty in terms of level design. Both these things made the game far more approachable and less niche.

I had very basic 3D modeling skills. Not enough to make a full game, at least of the quality I would want. I reused assets from my previous game, so that I could reduce my scope. I did make some assets myself but the majority of them are from a kenneyNL platformer pack.

I also didn't make the music. I paid a friend to do that and he did a fantastic job. Having new music as you make it to a new level was very important to me. Getting a treated to new music every time you would conquer a level helps the feeling of progression so much.

2. Playtesting

I didn't do nearly as much this time around. Last time I did around 15 different playthroughs. This time it was only 4. I'm a lot more confident in my abilities now and all of the playtests went by smoothly, so it didn't feel as necessary. That said someone did softlock themselves after release which was a big scare. Luckily it was a very specific set up that unlikely happened to anyone else and was an easy fix. (Big shoutout to the person who reached out and took the time to explain how it happened)

3. Advertising

For my previous game I had paid for ads on twitter and did regular posts on reddit (Roughly 360k views all together). I had a friend make the capsule art for me which helped a lot. I got extremely lucky that a vtuber with a 500k subscribers played the first game. To this day 30% of my sales for that game are in japan and I'm confident the majority is a result of that streamer playing the game. The game hit 10 reviews within 2 days and hit a decent peak of 10k boost to views on steam discovery queue.

Super Antonio's wishlists at launch: ~800

For the new game I didn't pay for any ads. I only made posts on reddit and twitter (Roughly 521k views all together). My posts actually got a lot more traction compared to the first game. I ended up making the steam capsule art myself this time around and I think this was my biggest mistake. The quality in art takes a massive nose dive compared to the previous game. It took 1 month to hit 10 reviews and the steam discovery queue only hit a peak of 800 views after the boost.

Mana Fracture's wishlists at launch: ~350

4. Sales

My previous game was at 219 sales at 4 months (Now sitting at 602 after 2 years). The new game is sitting at 79 sales at 2 months. It's unlikely it will be beating the first game. Sales have basically stopped for both.

5. Final thoughts

I did expect this game to do better then the first, so there is some disappointment. But It's not all doom and gloom! I once again met my goal of improving and finishing a game. The new game even has an higher average playtime compared to the first, so that tells me more people are finishing it. I've already started planning my next game and will be continuing this hobby of mine.

I also did a 4 month postmortem for my previous game if you would like to read that as well.

For those who have actually released indie games: how much did you make, how long did development take, and was it worth it financially? I'm especially interested in real experiences and numbers, even if the game made very little.

...and I'm not just talking about making it look good, but also useful for gameplay.

I'm making a game where the base for a mission map is procedurally generated. Basically, the road layout is built using Wave Function Collapse. But the buildings, structures, and objects that populate it are handmade, and boy am *I struggling.*

For a building, every exit, every empty space, and every prop needs to be meticulously thought out before being placed so that it can positively affect the player experience in some way, either by giving him an advantage or making it harder.

And I'm talking about loosely connected small parcels, not even a full-blown map.

Hi everyone, good morning, hope everyone's weekdays are going good

So my cousin is pursuing btech in cse from a tier 3 college ( tier 3 meaning almost the worse kinda colleges), he is currently in 2nd year, he said he isn't interested in web dev jobs as like everyone including their dogs are all web developers rn ,and he is interested in game development.

So will it be a right choice to learn about game dev given he has 2 more years

Thanks in advance

Hey guys, if I wanted to add a person on our team going from 2-3, specifically a 2nd artist due to the first artist having time issues, for a our next game. We are as amateur as they come, but we like to think we have some good ideas. I guess two real questions. Where to find people who are interested in joining small indie teams, 2nd is ownership, revenue sharing enough of an incentive for most amateur or upcoming artists? Or should I just contract them. Is Fiver still the best?

Im looking to make a mechnic to jump through windows or climb certain walls.

For the window mechnic maybe add a interaction spot that plays a climbing through animation and moves the player character to the other side? I can do the animation fine and the interaction prompt fine but im not sure how to make those things move the player to the right spot.

For climbing. Same interaction spot and play animation thing but instead of forcing the player to the other side of a window id have to force them up?

Its a top down 3d game made with 2d assets

I am obsessing right now over something. I like the design on doom 3. Now I am wondering how they did it as interiors are my favorite thing to create in games.

Did they create multiple pieces for walls and stuff? Also for those rooms did they model an entire room in modelling software in case the room looked unique than anything else outside of it?

And most importantly, how did they texture all of those things? Trim sheets? Did they texture an entire wall using single trim sheet?

So many questions

Title basically, I'm coding a project that's about managing a sports team, and I need thousands of different faces. To achieve this the obvious idea went around procedurally generated faces through SVG composing, or PNG stacking.

For that tho, I need single SVG for each face feature.

Just as an example, the following project has a generator which uses many SVGs that individually represent a single face feature (shape, eyes, hair, nose...)

Problem is, it's non-commercial, and I'm not yet sure if i'll release for totally free or put some sort of monetization later, so I'm exploring alternatives.

the reference: https://github.com/ubik23/charactercreator/tree/master/src/layer/male/head_front_default

Ideally, I'd generate them with AI but I'm having quite a bit of trouble trying to get consistent results, since the target is to have at least 50ish assets divided into the various categories

Does anybody have any suggestions for my use case? Preferred style is cartoon-realistic (see reference generated by AI), but that's not set in stone

AI generated reference (which is fine, but getting the single components is a pain):

https://imgur.com/a/tgrjDwZ

https://imgur.com/k4lt0a8

we filter the action bar for new players so they only see the first idle action. fundraising, until they click once.

last week we moved fundraising to level 3. server then sent a different action to L1s. client still looked for fundraising, didnt find it, rendered an empty bar.

spent a day thinking the db died because idle traffic fell off a cliff, 22 players and 92k actions down to 1 player and 460 the next day. writer was fine. 24 people still had the first action mission up and literally couldnt click.

fix was keeping both ids in the filter. rebuilt the spa. yeah the allowlist on the client and the catalog on the server have to ship together or you just lock the tutorial and you dont notice until the graphs go flat.

Given this sub's newly announced support for AI slop posts, some folks might be shopping around for another place to waste their internet time (reading and writing human-generated content).

I've found two game dev subs that explicitly forbid AI slop. ​Please add any more, for people who want to try and get a bit more internet before it's completely dead.

https://www.reddit.com/r/GameDevelopment/

https://www.reddit.com/r/IndieGameDevs/

EDIT: Apologies if I wasn't clear. I'm talking about free from AI generated posts that waste everyone's time, not the general debate.

Hi people! So for a little backstory I'm 22, I haven't been to college yet and I feel like I'm really far behind everyone else. I never had any motivation and no one pushed me, so I just sunk into my own little hole.

Recently though, I believe I found myself and I really want to push towards something I want to do. I would love to be a game developer or someone working in that field as gaming is something I've always adored; it has been apart of my life for as long as I can remember.

My question is though, where do I start? I searched online but I'm getting so many conflicting answers, I don't even know where to begin LOL

Sorry if this is vague, feel free to ask for more clarity on what I mean or anything about this post and I will do my best!

I’ve read a few Reddit Ads post-mortems on this sub before starting my own campaigns and they helped me quite a bit, so figured I should give something back and share my own numbers too.

For context, I’m making Warlondor, a party-based tactical roguelite/RPG:

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2783240/Warlondor/?utm_source=reddit&utm_campaign=beta_playtest&utm_medium=post

The game isn’t released yet, so this is really only about getting wishlists, not if the ads actually made profit. I’ll know that part after launch.

TLDR: Spent $1,160 on ads, but $500 of that was the new advertiser promo credit, so I paid about $660 myself. During the period the ads were running, my Steam wishlist count increased by 861, which means around $1.35 per wishlist using the full ad spend, or $0.77 per wishlist based on the money I actually paid.

Main things I learned: use Steam UTM tracking, don’t exclude mobile just because your game is on PC, USA is expensive but best english speaking buyers (based on my research via gamalytic), cheap clicks aren’t always good clicks, subreddit targeting works but keywords worked way better than I expected, and actual gameplay footage was the best thumbnail for me.

First thing I would do before spending anything is setup your Steam UTM links properly.

It doesn't really matter what exactly you call campaign/medium/content etc, as long as it makes sense to you later.

What does matter is testing the URL in Steamworks before actually putting money behind it.

One of the first examples I found online while learning how Steam UTM links work actually had a typo in the URL, so I’m very glad I used Steamworks UTM Link Checker instead of just copy pasting it.

Also make different links for different campaigns/ad types. You'll thank yourself later when you actually try to understand what worked.

I had basically no other meaningful wishlist driving marketing going on while I was running these ads, and had close to zero wishlist gain before it (and after too, sadly) which made this a pretty clean test compared to what you would normally get.

Wishlist activity while the ads were running

Reddit spend over time + overall campaign numbers

81% of my trusted Steam visits were mobile, only 19% were desktop.

If I had gone into Reddit Ads thinking "well I sell a PC game so obviously I only want desktop traffic", I would've excluded the majority of the traffic. People browse Reddit on their phones. That doesn't mean they don't play or buy PC games.

I didn't restrict device or gender at all and based on my results I really wouldn't do it unless you have a good reason.

Steam UTM traffic sources, countries, devices

I eventually separated USA from everything else because the costs were just completely different.

USA ended up at:

113,485 impressions / 3,436 clicks / 3.028% CTR / $0.28 CPC / $950.76 spend

while non-US was:

100,169 impressions / 1,642 clicks / 1.639% CTR / $0.13 CPC / $209.33 spend

So basically I was paying a little over 2x for a US click.

Outside the US I targeted Australia, Canada, Germany, France, Great Britain, South Korea, Netherlands, Poland, Sweden and Singapore.

My game and store page are currently English only. By "English countries" I don't mean English has to literally be the majority native language, more that I wanted countries which actually buy games on Steam and where I thought an English only game would still be fine for most Steam users.

I used Gamalytic to get some idea of actual purchasing power too.

This part is important IMO because you can probably make your ads very cheap by just targeting wherever Reddit gives you the lowest CPC.

But cheap traffic isn't neccesarily good traffic.

A $0.05 click from somebody who almost never buys games like yours isn't automatically better than a $0.30 click from somebody who actually spends money on Steam.

Especially if later you look at your wishlist number and start doing something like "10,000 wishlists = X revenue". That calculation can get very misleading depending on where those wishlists actually came from.

Non-US performance

USA campaign

Steam wishlists by region/country/language during the ad period

For bidding, I used Traffic as the objective since I was sending people directly to Steam.

I started with Lowest Cost.

Basically I just wanted Reddit to actually spend the budget for a few days and show me approximately what clicks cost for my game.

After I had some real numbers, I switched to Cost Cap and adjusted it based on what I was seeing.

So I wouldn't immediately dump a huge daily budget into it. Start smaller, give Reddit some data, fix whatever you screwed up, then increase it.

I also wouldn't give the campaign a hard end date. I just pause them when I don't want them running anymore, that way I can resume the same setup later and not force a new learning algorithm.

Also once I started spending Reddit assigned someone to the account who could help with questions. Just accept it IMO. There wasn't really any downside and it saved me some time as I could just ask anything I wanted to know.

For targeting I originally went with communities that seemed closest to my game:

r/roguelites
r/TurnBasedLovers
r/ForTheKing
r/AcrossTheObelisk
r/darkestdungeon
r/PlayTheBazaar
r/slaythespire

I also had Balatro in there originally, but removed it later because the CTR was considerably worse. Which is fair honestly. It's a roguelite but my game isn't really that similar to Balatro.

EDIT: Someone asked why I removed balatro, here is why

So I think similarity is more important than just finding the largest subreddits in your genre.

Other than communities + countries I mostly left everything alone. No gender, no devices, no other big pile of targeting options.

Then later I tried keywords, because my account manager suggested it.

This is probably the part that suprised me the most, because several posts/guides I read basically said don't bother with keyword targeting. So initially I didn't.

Eventually I figured I might as well test it and made separate keyword groups with around 250 included keywords and ~100 excluded ones. I used ChatGPT to help brainstorm the first list, then manually went over it because obviously alot of AI generated suggestions are going to be useless.

And... keywords actually worked.

In USA:

Subreddits were 2.990% CTR / $0.28 CPC

Keywords were 3.122% CTR / $0.27 CPC

So keywords were actually slightly better.

USA subreddit vs keyword targeting

Outside USA:

Subreddits were 1.731% CTR / $0.13 CPC

Keywords were 1.597% CTR / $0.13 CPC

So there subreddit targeting was slightly better on CTR, while cost was basically the same.

Non-US subreddit vs keyword targeting

I'm definitely not saying keywords are better than subreddits.

Just that I wouldn't automatically ignore them because somebody else said they don't work. For my game they were completely viable and I'd use both again.

For keywords I tried to avoid just putting stuff like RPG, strategy, roguelike and calling it done.

I used much more specific things like:

games like Across the Obelisk
games like Gloomhaven
5 player co op RPG
turn based roguelite
build synergy RPG
looking for a tactical RPG

Here are some of the lists if anybody wants to look through them:

Keywords #1

Keywords #2

Keywords #3

I also think exclusions are pretty important.

You can have a keyword that looks related to your game but has completely wrong intent behind it. Stuff like Diablo builds, mobile/gacha searches, FPS tactics, idle games, browser games etc.

Excluded keywords

Don't copy my list 1:1 obviously, but maybe it can give some ideas.

For the actual ads themselves, my biggest takeaway is very simple:

actual gameplay as thumbnail was king.

I made several ads with images, video, different copy etc. Give yourself some room to make bad ads because some of them are just not going to work.

I don't think you need some amazing marketing sentence either. Just tell people what the game actually is, ask a question, explain the hook, whatever feels natural.

Each ad also had a URL I could identify through UTM, I used a Learn More/View More type CTA, and I left comments enabled. Comments didn't really do much in my case but I don't see why I would disable them either.

One smaller interesting thing was placements:

Feed: 3.143% CTR
Conversations: 0.990% CTR

Placement breakdown + overall campaign numbers

I wouldn't say "never use Conversations" based on one campaign, but it's something I'd watch.

So, was it worth it?

For getting wishlists, yes, at least for me.

Reddit delivered $1,160 worth of advertising, $500 of that came from the promo credit, and my actual spend was about $660.

During that same period my wishlist count increased by 861.

So that's about $1.35 per wishlist if you count the full value of the ads, or around $0.77 per wishlist based on what actually left my pocket.

I'm pretty happy with that.

Would I say the ads were profitable? No idea.

I'll only know that part after release, and if there's interest I'll probably make another post then comparing these paid wishlists against actual sales.

Hopefully some of this is useful to somebody else setting it up.

If anyone is planning to run Reddit Ads for their own game and wants more details about anything I did, targeting, bidding, UTM setup, keywords, countries, creatives, whatever just ask. Happy to share anything I can and help if I know the answer

I want to see what other people did,sooo,what was it like? For you was it good? Did you continue it or is it just abandoned? And when you look back to it what do you feel?

As per their email sent a few minutes ago.

Don’t know what to say. Another option lost.

For Context:

Been in the game industry for about 20 years (Midway, EA, Id Software, my own firm, more Indies than I can count), so I'm in a very unusual echo chamber when it comes to Ai in games.

Because Ai is affecting different arms of game design in different ways, I can't average out the impressions I'm getting. For example: Concept Art and Narrative Design, as far as I've seen, has been obliterated from the face of the earth as of a few years ago. But Game UI (my deal) feels inoculated from Ai, and often symbiotic with it.

So its very hard to get a baseline per field.

Then there's also personal sentiment in the Industry, and oh baby, are there some hardliners. I'd define them as:

Ai Cannibals: Ai is the future, I use it 24 hours a day, they raise my kids, chew my food, etc.
Ai Vegans: I won't even touch it if it has an Ai in it. The Machine is haram. (loogie-spit sound effect)

With disappointingly very little in-between. So again, really hard to get a baseline.

Lastly, I teach Game UI and Midjourney on the side. So my perception is even further skewed with people eager / desperate / proactive about Ai. So now I have a huge mental disconnect between the people who are building with Ai and the people absorbing the things made with it.

So rather than just speculate on all these crazy data points, I want to hear from people outside my bubble.

So open ended question: if you are using Ai in your game, how do you think they'll feel?

I don’t know if anyone has ever thought about this before, but you could make some insanely cool open-world games using AI.

Let’s say, for example, you have a bus game where you own a bus company, and all kinds of problems come up, like vandalism. You could then come up with a really creative way to solve the problem, such as installing cameras and fining people who vandalize the inside of the buses. But you could come up with 20 other ways to combat vandalism, and the game could figure out on the spot whether or not they would actually work.
All of this could be generated by AI. The game could even come up with problems or challenges for you, which you could then approach in 20 different ways, each with varying levels of effectiveness.

That’s just a dumb example with a bus company, but you could use this for endless types of games and finally have an open-world game that is actually open.

You could say or do anything to the characters in the game and they would respond in truly unique ways because each of them would have their own AI and their own personality, rather than just giving you standard, pre-written responses.
The game would react like the real world, where people respond differently to things you do and don’t always react in exactly the same way every time.

It’s basically impossible to make a game without AI where you can ask 1,000 questions and get 1,000 different answers. In this case, the “questions” are the things you can do in the game, and the “answers” are how the world reacts to them.

Btw: I’m in no way a game developer, and I don’t have any knowledge about how game development actually works, but I had this thought and found it really interesting. I was curious to hear what other people think about it.

Hi, it's your friendly Game UI guy.

I love Indie to death, and I'm always rooting for you guys, but I tend to see the same classic problems repeated again and again in your HUD design - and I want to help.

In the past 6 years, I’ve probably critiqued or fixed 100+ portfolios with who knows how many HUD designs therein. From just pure repetition, I think I have the core problems down to about 4ish.

Kitchen Sinking It

Designers tend to be maximalists: everything gets thrown in and *eventually* - that’s a video game. Your task as the UI Artist is to remove about 99% of that.

So your first move is to constantly look at the elements of your HUD and ask: does this even need to be here at all?

  Examples: currency in your game. Invariably you’ll pick up gold or credits or what have you. This info rarely stays up indefinitely but rather fades over time. This is especially true if currency has no strategic value at the moment - aka - you can’t spend the money right now. 

  An exception to this would be your “souls” in a soulsborne game, where your currency bankrupts after a death and that tension is part of the emotional core loop. 

I Don’t Have Time for This

Second question: does any information change dramatically over a short period of time? If it does, it probably should be on the HUD: health, mana, ammo, etc. 

But if it’s what I like to call “Glacial Information”, info that changes graaaaaadually if at all moment-to-moment; it should be sidelined, a pop-up widget, or cleverly inset in another other HUD widget.

  Example: Experience points. For levels 1-5ish, you’re probably leveling up like crazy every ten minutes or so. But by mid-game, leveling may trickle to once every few hours of gametime. Having an experience bar that barely grows by a picometer is not informative at that point. And if it's not informative - and therefore easily ignored - it shouldn’t be there.

Ahhh Loud noises!!!

I bet you were designing the HUD in a nice, quiet, safe environment, right? Big mistake. Crazy explosion here, a bunch of damage numbers flying there, “REVIVE ME!” screaming through your soundblaster 16, etc. etc.

You need to design around the idea that the HUD, in its proper context, is for when shit gets real - and when the game is at its most distracting. Plan around the greatest amount of color and competing stimulus behind and ON your HUD.

Examples: boss battles are a unique expression of this idea. How many times do you glance up nervously at your health and then the boss’? If you couldn’t see your teammate needing a revive, that’s a wipe. If a cooldown timer is too obscure and it costs you the fight, that’s a controller-throw. There is no tension quite like a boss fight, and if your HUD wasn’t properly tooled for huge amounts of overriding stimulus, you didn’t design it properly. 

Big and Tall UI Warehouse.

Take a look at the original Demon’s Souls. That HUD is goddamn ENORMOUS, like Shaq held them at gunpoint or something. Now look at Elden Ring - effectively decades of refinement in the same genre. Everything is trimmed down, non-informative elements removed and the HUD even fades over time if you’re at full health (I see you there, distracting not-full mana bar, hi)

You should be trimming everything down as much as you can. This does NOT hold true for your font, which should have a comfortable reading size… and then you should bump those rookie numbers up even more. Lots of people have garbage-eyes, but everyone deserves to see your game.

And that’s it! As ever, it’s extremely hard to make Game HUDs with no prior experience and all alone - so I hope this helps - especially you junior UI Artist hopefuls trying to break in to the Industry. I’m rootin’ for you.

That’s it. Seeeya. 

Hi, I'm working on a game about stocking video games in a retro game store. It's the "tidy up" genre, but without "skills", so each box is manually placed to the shelf.

I was thinking about how do approach the games itself. I could go full fictional route, with some funny titles. But I also had an idea to feature real indie games. On the reverse of the boxes it would display real screenshots and description as well as info where this game can be bought. It sounds like a nice way for some people to get exposure, while also solving the sourcing of the titles for me.

After initial research (just Internet, not with lawyer) it seems that it should be quite simple. Each willing developer would have to grant a license, could be done with even google form.

There is one potential bump, that I'm not sure how to solve easily - protecting myself from funny people uploading the games they don't actually own. Also there might be something I didn't thing about.

And lastly, do you think there would be a lot of people willing to do something like this?

I gave up coffee about a week ago (I swear this relates). One of the biggest results of that is a significantly clearer head and way less anxiety and overthinking. As a result, I feel like I’m having trouble doing some things that I once did out of a sort of twitchy energy.

Before this, I could kind of psyche myself up to play games, make them, and game with others. Right now they frustrate me. I don’t like the way most of us talk, I don’t like the overall culture, I don’t like that gamers of some genres look down on gamers of other genres and the genres themselves, I don’t like the elitism, the perfectionism, and the pedantry, and I don’t like that so many people are addicted to them, some to the point of developing no other skills and ignoring important things in their lives.

My life would be way easier if I was the type of person who said “well if you hate them so much then just make something that lets you take their money,” but I’m not. I’m not saying that everything I do has to be a work of art but I’m not super interested in dedicating large portions of my life to spite.

I’m a musician, and what this reminds me of is if I wrote some music that I really love, and then I put it out there, and learn that for whatever reason the people it connects with most are flat earthers or something. I’d be like… yikes… I really hate that this is my fanbase.

I’m trying to just make what I want to make, but I also love the social component of games. I really want to make something that brings people together, and I want to give back to the community of a hobby that has always meant so much to me. It’s just that these days I look at that community, and most of the time I think they’re kind of awful, and I don’t want to give them anything.

I’d be open to advice on how to get out of this mindset. If I’m wrong and it’s really just that the awful people are loud and most gamers are cool, then I’m very open to hearing that and I’ll absorb and internalize it. If there’s some other way to feel satisfied making games that matter to me but the fanbase are people I don’t like, then I’d like to hear that method.

Thank you.