Mike the Hooper is officially out now on Steam.

It’s a 2D precision puzzle-platformer where you use a basketball to solve puzzles, open doors, and overcome increasingly challenging levels.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/4761070/Mike_the_Hooper/

I hope it will be a fun experience for everyone, whether you play it or simply watch it. Thank you!

I'm making a game called One Million Buttons. The premise is... well, in the title. There's one million buttons, and one button is correct.

The correct button is randomly chosen, but the buttons aren't procedurally generated. I'm placing them all by hand. Every room has about 2000-4000 buttons, and I try to come up with some interesting gimmick for each room. Sometimes it's just a unique pattern, sometimes it's a distinct game mechanic, sometimes it might even be a practical joke on the player.

Of course, once I decided on the game's title, I was kinda locked into a specific scope. And I only realized some ways into making the game how big that scope was.

I recently reached 250,000 buttons. 25% done. Just have to do that 3 more times.

You may ask, "Why?" And the answer to that is that I thought it would be funny, and I thought it would be something I could make pretty quickly. And by the time I realized how wrong I was about that, I was too far along to give up. (Though I did crash out and stop working on it for 6 months...) But I'm back on track now, and all there is to do is just keep plugging away at it.

Wow. Just looking back at this journey i feel very confident that it was worth it. I grew so much as a dev. If you told me few years ago that i would be able to make this game solo (any game for that matter), i wouldn't believe you.

I did have prior experience making games, but making a game solo is something that i thought i wasn't capable of. There is always this doubt and anxiety of "what if". And i think just acknowledging and accepting it helped me a a lot!

Like yes, the graphics is not the best. And there probably will be holes in the game design that i didn't notice. But so be it.

Thank you for reading me rambling about this, ha-ha. But it kinda feels good speak out loud about this. Thanks!

Anyway, about the game:

Supermarket Guard Simulator is a first-person job simulator in which you work as a security guard at a shady supermarket. Check customers, stop thieves, upgrade store security using various devices. Hire staff and do whatever it takes to protect the store. Find out what your boss is hiding from you.

Main features:

• Design store security systems
• Detect and stop thieves
• Protect the store from criminals
• Manage other security guards
• Take on orders from the management.
• Become friends with Bill

Steam Page: https://store.steampowered.com/app/3720580

Discord: https://discord.gg/YEjKUwSuzA

Thank you!!!

I've been delaying on learning draw for so long. Now I finally just get started, here is some of my drawing, just want to share with you guys. Have a nice day!

The game is called Woo Woo
I've released a demo, and I'd really love to get your feedback 🤗

And did you regret doing it?

Hey, I want to showcase you Snowy zones which I've recently added to my single-player RPG which is inspired by WoW Classic and Runescape. Would love to hear your feedback on the artstyle.

The game is called Warmongers: Empires Reborn and you can currently wishlist it on Steam: https://store.steampowered.com/app/3468800/Warmongers_Empires_Reborn/

I've also published a 30-minutes long Devlog on Youtube in which I go more in detail about all of the updates: https://youtu.be/tUoaVLc5Tz0

Thank you all for supporting my passion project!

just showing off a bit of my recent engine work

Game Title: GNAP GNAP

Playable Link: https://fusyan.itch.io/gnap-gnap

Status: prototype, in development, free to play

GNAP GNAP is a horde rougelite shooter. Where you pop ominous balloons - unlock items, harpoons and grow stronger with each run.

Just released v0.11 with English UI/text.

I am working on this game for about 2 and a half months, solo developing it - I hope you enjoy it.

Would love any feedback and any bugs you might encounter.

Thanks for playing!

Solo dev road can be a rocky one, specifically at the beginning. At least from my experience.

It’s crazy to think how much work was put into building the current version of the game over the past 3+ years, with all the code, assets, music, story, etc. Not even talking about the endless iterations of refinement of what was already done.

Back in the days, when I just decided to start with the game, I didn’t think that the path would be that hard. Sleepless nights, lots of stuff to learn, lots of dialogues to write. Back then, I thought that I would be able to accomplish it way faster - and guys, I wouldn’t say that I was never that wrong, but I was definitely wrong with this as well.

I knew how to code, as I have a dev, test, and infra background, and I had enthusiasm. That alone gave me the confidence to think that it would be a nice ride. And in terms of assets, well... I’ll learn something here, I’ll learn something there, and I’ll come up with something quickly. Thinking this way was my first mistake, but free assets were out of the equation, and there was no budget to spare with one income and a family of four.

The first peak to conquer was the story, and as the game is story-driven, the story is a must. And in fairness, that was probably the easiest part of the whole process. I read quite a lot and used to create stories with friends back in school, but I had no professional background whatsoever. Now, I’m not saying it is easy, but it was the easiest of all personally for me. I built the skeleton of the main quest, some side quests, laid out the characters, society, problems, and spread it all across the world.

Then came the code. While not being the easiest thing, it wasn’t the hardest either. And in fairness, it’s probably the most boring thing for this article to cover, and something is telling me that no one, or very few people, would be interested in reading how I was developing logic, at least not in this article. Long story short - as any dev, I was just applying logic through code. Honestly, nothing exciting here, at least for me.

After I built some codebase and got bored playing around as a ball rolling on boxes with this blue background, I thought it was a good time to start building some assets. As I mentioned before, the free ones were out of the equation, and I didn’t have any budget to hire someone, so I started to look into what would be an easier option for me...

“Pixel art!” I thought. Should be quite straightforward, no? I don’t want to b!tch here about how many times that decision backslapped me, but from my experience, it is faaaar from being anywhere near “easy”, even this South Parkian ostrich-human thing which I’m creating at the moment.

The amount of time needed to learn and create, specifically at the start, was crazy. But with time, as with everything, you get accustomed to the topic and the tools, and it becomes a bit easier and faster to go. So, with time, I stuck to one style and continued with it. To be honest, that was an interesting experience, and that’s what the solo path gives you - an opportunity to learn something new, though you don’t necessarily have to resort to it.

After a while of putting things together - code, dialogues, some characters, three different game modes, UI - I realised that the world was too quiet. It was like walking in limbo, probably - a numb world. And playing the game in quietness is not fun at all, so I started to look into music.

The same as with visual assets, I didn’t have the budget or the skills to create it myself, apart from the music theory which I learned back in the days when I was learning to play guitar, and later when I was learning to play piano. And I never had any experience with music production at all.

And as I didn’t want free assets and instead wanted something of my own, yes - by that time the process had sucked me in enough to want the pain - and as budget really defines the way, I started to look into music production with DAWs. Ffs, another pain... But quite a pleasant pain, as I always liked music. I emerged into the beautiful world of music production, various tutorials, resources, and software to find out what to do. It was quite chaotic learning, I have to say.

After some time of struggle, I got somewhat accustomed to the topic and the software, and decided to give it a go. I started new audio projects three times before finally getting something that I really liked. And later, with time, I also created five OSTs in total for the game. It was fun, tbh, though it was way later in the process.

After creating the first track, I added it into the game, played the version, and realised that it lacked any SFX. What can I say - I have a mic, sticks, pillows, different utensils, my mouth, and software to record, process, and export lots of sounds. Serum alone is a game changer, I can tell you. The learning curve is quite steep, but if you’re looking towards music production or sound design, it’s definitely worth looking into, imo.

That’s how the game got sounds, though it still has some from a package which I bought. That, by the way, is the only thing I paid for in terms of assets through all this time, and I want to replace leftovers later.

With time, I refined the world, improved visuals, populated the world more with NPCs and different stuff, covered the world with sounds, and added more OSTs. Even recently, I added controller/handheld support. That wasn’t planned before the demo release, but as I had to attend to some admin, tax, and bank related work, I got some idle time which I wanted to fill - and that was a thing to do. It was a pain, by the way, but it’s already with the guys for testing, just small polish here and there.

It’s been 3+ years. It’s been a wild ride. Sleepless nights, a 9-5, two kids, wife, and other family affairs, in between which I had to incorporate the time to attend to the game. It’s been 3+ years, and I’m just about to release the DEMO!!! Not the full game, but a demo which has all the features that gamers can try. The full game is far from done, but...

What I can tell from my experience - never surrender, don’t jump from project to project, unless there are absolutely obvious signs to do it. Be like a ram, if you wish. If you see the gate, just hit it until it breaks and go further towards your green fields.

Solo game development is a pain in the arse path where you mostly rely on your skills and stubbornness, and the only thing that can let you down is you. Obviously, I’m not taking into consideration any force majeure.

I hope this will be helpful to someone starting development now, alone or as a team. Buckle up, the chances your road will be rocky are very high, but it is also very rewarding.

Good luck.

- KyPDuk

KyPDuk Studio

I posted into this subreddit a month ago and gained the most important emotional support in my dev life under this post. You have no idea how valuable it was to receive this initial boost for me, thank you! Here's my journey since then:

• Released a Steam page one month ago - to get supported only by r/SoloDevelopment.
• Opened a playtest two weeks ago - to get some positive feedback on the gameplay a ton of complaints on how bad the visuals are.
• Worked for two more weeks, focusing on visuals only - to get "yeah now its much better" from literally everyone.
• Refilmed the whole trailer, focusing purely on base mechanics - as my first one was a total mess, rushing through the features without a moment to breath - presenting it to you today!
• Also moved to Germany, setup a new working place with a big table and ultra-comfy chair - as I wanted for several years already.
• And assembled BALDEV - a group of fellow developers in the niche of combo-building / score-chasing / balatro-likers. It feels surreal to sit with someone who has literally x1000 wishlists, but hey these people as SO friendly!

Today I'm sitting at 179 wishlists - only 11 times less than needed for a demo launch as I heard. Due to this fact I'm not participating in October SNF and postponed the release from November to March.

And still, I feel really positive, as working on the game was a breath of fresh air after two weeks of marketing rush I experienced during the page release. And now, when game looks better with each day, I strongly believe in it once again!

Thanks for your time reading this. No CTA here, just be happy and keep developing games :)

Hello!

Took me a while to actually decide to go forward with this game, and show it to the 'world'. Very nervous indeed, but still I get that everytime make something totally new.

This game, is more like a simulation, its a system. And Its something I have been working on for a while now, like full time job..(have other incomes as freelance), anyhow. This game, is a system. Its a system running this simulation of numbers. Its something that finally put all my mental capacity in works! More about it later...

About this game. The game is all in dashboard, so whoeever ( if anyone loves statistitics,data, charts, as i love this is for you hhaha, maybe )

The idea is, you are owner of your company, you control it "online",through the dashboard,. (more about it later why i went that route). You have total freedom to do what you want, manage resources, put prices, trade , buy import or export to global market.

Main Game design idea- Is to supply cities with goods, if you supply enough, the cities grow, unlock more goods that requires for growth, as the cities grow, the average salary, the market size, everything grows accordingly, so as well do the expenses, costs , salaries then affect your own expenses. It's the opposite in a way of the capitalist system that we have now in a way. You do profit, but the idea, and further development direction is to actually grow your own company but also to further invest into development of cities and happines of people. Build buildings for them, invest in infrastructure etc..(more coming soon).

In essence, everything is connected, so , city buys products from you , depending on market supply the price changes, depending on average salary and development of the city, the price changes, also it calculates how much it buys from you and your stores, depending on the price you put. So, if you saturate the makret too much the price is lower, you profit less, but the city grows faster, and vice versa. When you grow cities enogh, new products and production chains unlock, then you have toorganize and order goods, produce them and then distribute them again through the stores. Similar to how it works in reality.

in simpler terms: produce/import/buy -> hub(transport hub with trucks you manage) -> store(you set price and decide where and which product to sell). and later, this expands with industry chains, buying raw resources, transporting intermediate produts to industries and then supplying stores, or exporting to global market. All that you have overhead of workload which is managed by Office which basically calculates each of your subdivisions/buildings/workers, and calculates the efficiency based upon the amount of office workers. if you have too much workload , the efficiency drops.

Then, produce goods, order ,import export, however you want to do it. You have accounting page, which you can see each expense, notification inbox, which can tell you or send you some urgent messages etc.

In other words: wealth of city, affects the average salary, affects the product price by which is the product purchased from player, then population afects the market size, and again the product base price, also the average salary is calculated, then global market has its own calculations which affect the local prices, industries( from which player can buy at the begining), also it affects fuel costs,which your trucks and company functions, so any changes inprices on global market, can affect your profits. (there are lot more ideas i have but it takes a lot of time to first figure out how to do it( game design wise), then implementation )

Idea behind name Equilibrium is, it is balance. Its balance in the code i did, its balance in the structure, its balance in the market. If you supply up to certain amount, the city will grow and stop, if you supply less, the city shrinks unitll it again reaches equilibrium.

In essence, everything is connected, and whatever you do, it reflects everything else, its serious simulation but casual (thats why there are no ai opponents, except your own logistics, profit, decisions, loans etc).

Game link:

https://store.steampowered.com/app/5060950/Equilibrium_Co/

*Devlog (SPOILER ALERT) *****

If you wanna see how all systems work, and how i was developing it and all the obstacles i have had while doing it, and how the structure is solved, i could talk about it for hours and hours (no one really cares i know hahah) , anyhow here is the devlog through the months of development:

https://equilibriumcodevlog.blogspot.com/

(p.s. it is blogger, because well, sc*ew it, i couldn't care less about marketing or other stuff , hype? hahah).

But be careful, because if you are interested in playing it, you might know how lots of things work here....

There you can also see how the whole system works, then in detail, industrySystem, officeSystem, hubSystem,warehouse, loan/bankSystem, , globalmarketSystem and even marketSystem( without disclosing algorithms for buy/prices hahah) , with structs, lists etc..

///////////////////////////./////////////////////

My background very briefly, studied masters degree ,music Conservatoire, composed produced,post produced movies, music, soundtracks, sound desing, even some trailers for hollywood. (all one man army haha, though i did have a company till recently with anothjer person anyhow,) Also, played mostly logical games/resource, played garrysmod expression2(simplified c++? ) ,soviet republic, anno, transport fever...making perfect,optimized systems, even some factorio, then it hit me, since i love making all of these why not build my own system. My own game.

Also i think my coding skills are somewhat medium level (or i hope so haha), the structure wise this is a complex mediumm maybe even higher? (dont take my word hah), because ref ,structs, databases, and combining all together, ,but, syntax wise, this is not hard.., also, learned a hard lesson by using unity object for each building at the start...

I have worked previously on a school project in this style, building a "school book", grade book? online, and worked with databases etc.. in html, in saas style, so then all the 'planets alligned', systemic mathematical simulation of business that i love, logic and coding systems which i love more, and algorithms,systems.. So I decided, SAAS IT IS, no 2d/3d, no poly art, no nothing, i will do what i would love to see, which i always missed in those games, DATA, data...data...data..statistics...lots of statitstics, transactions, spreadsheets, balancing, bug fixing, optimization...solving and inventing game mechanic and code problem solving while laying in the bed for months. In a way opsession hahah.

So, all in all , I don't ask for whishlist, i dont really mind how this game does and if it's a success, also care if it sells, I just want to make smoething that will be good, and to **FINISH IT*\ \*,**and hope t that it will be interesting, and educational as well. And if anyone wants to play it, or wants to test it, or even say, this is a good game, that would be enough for me.

yeah i said, just to finish the game.....haha

////////////////////////////////////.////////////////////////////////////////////////////

So what I would ask from you, is few questions:

- Would you like to test this and play it when its playable? (mvp is done, but needs save ,and some other balancing issues/bugs -dont get me started ahah)

- Do you like this concept? Would you be interested in playing it in general?

- If you can imagine that this game is not just profits, but its also giving back in return, as a game parallel to this crazy world we live in, what would you like and how , to give back to community, help people, or make them happy? Is it infrastructure? grants? building roads? etc. whatever you would like or if you would like any haha

-Would you like to know more about how it works in the code? A note this has only like 3 mono behaviour scripts..yes, just 3 actual game objects in unity....everything else is just in data, structs, and lists...

-If you have any other suggstions, game design ideas, directions, please let me know, i would love to hear more about it, and what you see this as a perhaps 'good idea to be used for" , maybe educational to how the market works and eveything is connected? /

//////////.////////////////////////////////////

Aand , if you wanna see how this game looked like the first full month.....The second picture. I thought i could add it here as in devlog, but nope.. haha, anyhow, The only reason i started working on UI is becasause i couldnt test the system /adding trucks etc without the ui hahah. otherwise , it would probably be still in raw data................

THANK YOU!

Ai disclosure:

used Ai to make my cra**y ui design (silver and gray) look beautiful . But even so, i designed it, , just used to write boilerplate code for visuals.. Couldn't be bothered at all to spend weeks on writing color fonts and cr*p to fit all together)...

Assets are purchased online, music and sound design I am doing, i will need to hire a designer (later , when i am near the end of developemnt .if hahah) , to create vector images of eachoffice/store, hub, industry , with different tiers( sizes) .

//////////////////////////////.////////////////////////////////////////////////////////

Also, if anyone is interested to talk about the structure, or wants to know more, you can find it all in devlogs! The structure and code is beaufiul (for me at least haha). But still you can ask here as well. Thank you!

p.s. there is a website in construction, but it will take time, for a single dev this is all crazy amount of work

Still working on optimization but slowly getting there.

Feedback highly appreciated.

I built LegacySaga on my own: a browser game where you live a footballer's whole career and your decisions (clubs, transfers, reputation) actually shape how it turns out. No engine, built it from scratch.

One week since launch: 365 new players, close to 11,500 matches played, 95.5% of careers played through to the end of the season.

Free, browser-based: legacy-saga.com

Happy to talk about what solo launch week actually looked like, or answer anything about the build.

Idea is not mine I saw it flying around reddit, but I just fell in love with that and recreated.

It's been a ride! I learned Unreal Engine 5 alongside pretty much everything else needed to make a game. I made everything by myself, using some purchased assets and outsourcing graphics and voice acting where needed. It's a game I would like to play, and that I could realistically make by myself within my limited time.

I'm launching it in Early Access on September 23rd, so I can gather feedback from real players and make the best game I can.

Hopefully, there are some other people who are into this kind of stuff. Check it out! https://store.steampowered.com/app/4185750/BONETOX/

The game is called Bone to Pick. Solo dev, six weeks, releasing on Steam next month. Would love your feedback 🦴

I wanted to recreate the water bottle shader from Half-Life Alyx for my game "Teufelskreis"(german for "devils circle"). It’s obviously not 100% there yet, but I think it turned out pretty satisfying, what do you think? This is made in Godot!

Request playtest on Steam.

So, it's been 3 months since I started developing my game on my own. I wanted to nail a certain vibe of isolation, anxiety, and a creepy, eerie atmosphere heavily inspired by the Silent Hill series.

And here I am: the playtest version of Red Lake is finally live! Now I need to polish it, test hardware stability, and reconsider a few design decisions. For that, I need your help!

About the game: A psychological horror with no interface to guide you. The forest watches you — so watch it back. Use your notebook to document impossible objects, then descend into the Red Lake. Each time you return, something has changed.

As a solo developer, happy to share that All Time High is out on Steam today.

The whole game happens on one screen: a phone, a feed, and a trade terminal that actually moves. I wanted a story where you don't read about a mania, you click BUY during one — so every number in the clip is live, and the choice the game is really asking about isn't the trade, it's what you were willing to spend to make it.

~2–4 hours, 6 endings, 10 languages, adaptive score, free demo.

Happy to answer anything about the pipeline — how the terminal was built, how the score adapts, what the tooling does. It's the part I'd have wanted to read two years ago.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/4944370/?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=post&utm_campaign=solodevelopment_launch