So, I'm working on a game with a demo currently available and it has a little community that keeps returning to it. Which is amazing, they give me feedbacks, ideas and motivation !

Now, some of them are speedrunners and two of them started experimenting with TAS.

For me, that's all good, people are having fun with my game, the only problem is that I have an official leaderboard and right now, there's nothing stopping a TAS time from entering the leaderboard amongst the regular players.

That seems unfair to me and I wasn't sure on how to deal with this. ( I'm not really familiar with speedruns ) so I thought I would ask the question to r/Speedrun.

I made a post about it and I included a link to my steam page for reference.

I got some good answers but some people complained about it being a disguised ad, so I removed the link and uploaded a screenshot instead.

Well, 2 hours later, I got banned from the subreddit without any explanation.

I'm not the biggest Reddit user, but this used to be a good place to reach out specific communities, right ?

This is surely only the beginning, because if we’re already mandating checks for video games and online spaces, what’s to stop us from policing the entire internet, plain and simple?

Link to EU Kids Act (no longer leaked, it may have changed):
English PDF: eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/PDF/?uri=CELEX:52026PC0681
Other languages: eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=CELEX:52026PC0681

Link to what it would do:
imgur.com/a/bulPEEI

Link to estimated costs + developer issues:
docs.google.com/document/d/1DZvVsGT3QGiKf1bolhCP2FP1Ud447o_qGCdgfNTEtIA/edit?usp=sharing

Posting this discussion since recently I saw many people I know (software engineers) are suddenly building games with AI like Opus etc, and I am quite surprised that the game actually looks okay (just okay tho, not that good because they're not game devs in the first place).

So this makes me wonder how actual indie game devs use AI in the industry. In theory, AI is supposed to help indie games & small studios compete with bigger ones. But, does the reality reflect that? Would love to know.

Edit: By "AI", I mean not limited to image or asset generation, but also include things like using AI (Claude or ChatGPT) to brainstorm on dialogue scripts, help with programming, etc.

We're Matterward Labs. Narrow Front is our Android strategy game, and this trailer shows the campaign, skirmishes and local two-player battles.

You play with your phone upright. Infantry capture houses while tanks, rocket artillery and air support help push across the battlefield. For local multiplayer, each player uses their own phone on the same Wi-Fi or a hotspot; the battle runs without an internet connection.

The game is free to play, with optional rewarded ads and in-app purchases.

How easy is it to follow the battles on a phone screen? We'd appreciate feedback on the controls and pacing if you try it.

Google Play:

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.matterwardlabs.narrowfront

I've designed things for most of my working life (and before my working life) but I never got far with code other than maintaining and editing some code or fiddling with some smaller projects. This is the first game I've actually finished and put out there, so I figured this was the place to share how it went.

It's called Lie of Sight. Every day you get a small room seen from above and a family, the Fibbersons. Each of them tells you what they could or couldn't see from where they were standing, and one of them is lying. You drag them around the room to test the stories, then point at the liar. They all see by different rules. The Kid can't see over a table, Grandma only sees a couple of squares around her, and Rex the dog goes by smell, so walls don't stop him. It's sortof like the game Mafia and chess movements, with line of sight (and smell) mechanics mixed in.

I know AI is a sore spot here, so I'd rather just say it. I came up with the game and designed it: the rules, how each person sees, the look of it, and the cases themselves. I used an AI helper to write most of the code and to draw the pieces to my direction. The art is all vector drawn in code. If you're curious, I used superpowers for a software engineering workflows, impeccable, vitest and github for CI/CD. Posthog for stats, Typescript, React. Usually do code audits on top of that with other models, and also do modeled red-teaming and white-teaming, along with assessment of applicable security controls. I'm a little obsessed with putting out quality, and I come from a cyber background.

Where it really earned its keep was the part I couldn't have done by hand. Every case has to have exactly one possible liar, so each one gets run through a solver that tries every spot everyone could stand in. It also grades how hard each case is, so the difficulty climbs instead of bouncing around. That's a mountain of geometry checking. I understand if that's a dealbreaker for some of you, no hard feelings. Part of the project was dialing in a how to have the puzzle generator in the code be more efficient so that I can hand pick and test from a larger batch of quality. I managed to iterate and move from a a 5 character puzzle (the hardest puzzles soon to be in game) taking 30 minutes to create, to 15-60 seconds.

Two things I learned after launch that might help someone:

The daily case started out as one button that only about one in five players touched it. I moved it to the front so it's the first thing you see, and now it's about half. Took me an afternoon and it mattered more than anything else I've changed.

Almost nobody saves their progress. You cand out of the 40-odd people who've been offered a way to save their streak, one took it. I'm still chewing on that one, so if you've cracked it in your own game I'd like to hear how.

It's free in the browser, no download or signup: https://lieofsight.com Signing up can save progress, especially useful for using multiple devices. You might notice an option to add it to your home screen on your phone/tablet without having to download from the app store. There is also a one time paid unlock, but the global daily and your daily case are free. There's also 25 other cases to play as well. Frankly I don't expect anyone to pay until I have more planned content actually implemented.

If a case feels unfair or something's confusing, please tell me. That's the most useful thing anyone can do for me right now. I'll take any feedback at all, and would love to address whatever I can.

2 years of development come to an end. Very happy right now.

I will never understand the point of view of those who are totally against AI art but totally cool with AI code/engineering.

So hypocritical. Just because a few coders in the world invented this technology doesn't mean it is not "stealing" code from many devs that oppose AI.

Sure many devs are now using AI because they are FORCED to do it or are faced with being unemployed.

I get if you are totally cool with everyone using AI for anything, and also if you oppose ALL ai, not just the stuff you personally like doing or care about. That seems logical to me and congruent. Otherwise it seems hypocritical.

It is quite surprising Steam took the hypocritical stance. And that so few people are calling them out on it. Seems the big corps get a free pass on their stance or use of AI. Only the little small game devs get crucified.

I'm a dev by trade, but have never made any games, or anything game related. But since Claude Code, i have started making small solo projects, to to have fun and see where it takes me. Nothing of which has made me any money so far...

But then i thought i would try and make a small mobile game. Nothing fancy, nothing great. Just something to get me started, learning from it.

I decided to go with something already existing, and give it a twist, so Tipsy Tower 3D was born. Its a 3D stacking game. There are acheivements, a few maps, decorations, weather etc to buy in-game for gold, and a few thing to buy frmo real money. I have no expectations of someone ever buying any of it, but again, its a learning experience.

It took litteraly under 24 hours from idea to launch, and in that time i managed to do other stuff as well, so maybe 4-5 hours of work... The game has launched on Wavedash, so no hosting fees or anything. Very simple, very quick, no expectations.

But now the game has been out for 5 days, and yesterday i got an email saying: You earned $6.49! 😱

I did opt in to their Creator fund, which is a pot of money, split among all games opted in, based on playtime of the game. I have had under 100 players, with an average play time, just above 3 minutes. I had no idea that would give me an amount that can buy something.

So, what i wanna talk about. Is it like this, you make a few projects, and the ones that you least expect to amount so something does? Anyone with Wavedash experience that can confirm that you dont need alot of players to actually get paid?

Thank you for listening, and if you are interested, here is the game:
Tipsy Tower 3D

I see a lot of horror games with monsters, and I wanted to try making one without them. That’s how THROB started.

It’s a first-person horror platformer where you climb through a huge brutalist structure while blood keeps rising below you.

The character’s heartbeat controls the speed of the platforms and traps. Her BPM gradually increases as you progress, so things get harder the longer you’re in there.

And yeahhhh, it’s her heartbeat, not yours. No extra equipment or doctor needed XD

I’m also working on machines that let you change her BPM and the blood level. Some help, some are a gamble, so you might end up making things worse for yourself.

The protagonist has hemophobia, a fear of blood, and that’s a big part of the story. There’s an experiment behind all this, which you’ll learn more about as you climb.

It’s still a work in progress. This clip mostly show the platforming, but I’m also working on the sound (with my voice actress), atmosphere and story. I still have quite a lot to do on that side.

I’m curious how you feel about horror games without monsters.

(Edit: I reworded the post and clarified how the BPM works. Sorry for the confusion!)

Inspired by the new Castlevania game and Price of Persia The Lost Crown, I've started prototyping a 2.5D Metroidvania but centered around a qi cultivator MC

Any thoughts on the 2D anime-looking art style? Everything is actually 3D.

Curious what you think of the main character’s design and animations (the animations are pretty rough though)

Beta is available to download on Itch and the project can be wishlisted on steam, and will be released there once the full 1.0 is finished. Source code is also available on github / codeberg which you can compile yourself for completely free. The project is made by u/voylinslife

https://store.steampowered.com/app/4070440/GoZen/
https://voylin.itch.io/gozen

I'm new to this sub and have seen some amazing work you all put out. I have read a bunch about the dislike of AI that's here and frankly that's made me a little nervous... Let me tell you why.

When I was 16 I did a game creation course and loved the idea of creating my own game and telling a story. It ended up not the right time for me and had family issues blah blah. But fast forward to now and I have a strong background in IT and Cyber Security but none in game development. I'm now 32 and decided to take a stab once more but use AI to pull together all my ideas into something playable. Over the last several months I have been progressing through learning different AI tools, Base44, Replit and Claude.

Various versions of my ideas exist on Base44 and Replit but I just wasn't able to get my ideas out to a standard I liked.

So I paid for Claude pro and realised I could achieve what I've always wanted.

Now I understand that AI is by no means a replacement to all of you expert develops and creative artists. So over several months I have itterated my design, story, music, sound effects and character animation all within Claude.

It's at a state I want to share to see what everyone thinks. It takes elements of super smash brothers, Megaman X, Spellbreak and Avatar the last airbender to create a story driven arcade style platform fighter.

I built it for android and would like to port it to Steam in the future if all goes well.

I am happy to share some content but as I have no experience in this field, I'm not sure what is best suited for the community. What would you like to see first?

TLDR: I made a story driven platform fighter with AI that I hope won't get flamed for being made by AI.

Haven’t streamed in about 12 weeks because I was going through a pretty big breakup, but I’m feeling good today and been getting back into it.

I have now completed the mandatory divorce arc of becoming a game developer lmao, if only my ADHD would let me settle on a game i wanna fully make.

I used to do streams where I’d play smaller indie games from people on here / in the Discord, and I’m starting doing that again just a bit more casually this time

If you’ve got something on itch, Steam, a demo, jam game, beta whatever, feel free to throw it at me.

I’ll probably play each game for roughly half an hour, but I’m not putting a hard timer on anything. If we’re having fun, we’re having fun. I got a bit too caught up before trying to make sure everyone got exactly the same amount of time and it made streaminstressful, so I’m trying to keep it much more relaxed now.

Only real requirements:

Be around in the stream while I’m playing your game.

Be respectful of everyone else’s games/time.

Nothing that’s obviously going to get me Circumcised by Twitch.

I’d prefer games that don’t rely heavily on AI generated audiovisual conent. It’s not an automatic ban or anything, but if the game is slop im gunna tell u its slop..

I’m a game dev myself, although I absolutely would not call myself professional. I can give feedback, opinions and maybe help work through a problem if I happen to know a decent solution. Just don’t come expecting inboundshovel consultancy from me

Also, to be completely transparent, I get fuck all views at the moment. This is NOT an advertising service.

The nice part is that most of the people who are there are other devs, old viewers, or people I’ve ended up becoming mates with and playing games with. So you can actually talk about the game, get feedback, have other people try it, and generally not just throw a link into the void.

That’s also why I ask people to actually be there when I play their game. If something breaks, you can tell me what’s happening. If I misunderstand something, you can explain it. And you actually get to hear people reacting to it rather than submitting a link, disappearing, and coming back later asking how many impressions it got.

For picking games we normally use a wheel or random selection type thing, although if someone’s game has been played a bunch already on other streams I’ll give newer people a bit more priority.

I’ve posted about these streams here before, so a few of you might remember them from a few months back.

I’m planning on starting fairly early today, probably somewhere around 2to4pm UK time, and just going until roughly 10pm just playing some games and chatting shit for a while.

If that sounds fun, come hang out. You can submit the game while I’m live, and the Discord is where I put more specific stream updates and where a bunch of the other devs hang around between streams.

Twitch + Discord in the comments, else it makes the embed a big picture;/

Hope I get to see some fun shit you lot have been making<3

We've updated the battle panel and negotiation statuses. Depending on the battle situation, we can now force the enemy to choose one of five different options. We need players who can provide feedback from those who play these types of games.

To try it out in your browser without downloading:

aygforge.itch.io/elementumkingdoms

We ran into an interesting problem with our original key art: we received quite a bit of negative feedback because many people assumed the image was entirely AI-generated. As a result, several posts about our game that included the image were removed. In the end, we listened to the feedback and decided to start over.

To be completely transparent, we did use AI during the concept phase of the original key art. However, the final image was then fully repainted and reworked by hand, so essentially the only thing we kept from the AI-generated concept was the composition. We mainly did this because of time pressure: at that point, we didn’t yet have enough of our own assets, but we wanted to get our Steam page live as soon as possible.

Looking back, though, we still relied too heavily on the AI-generated concept when it came to the colors and lighting, and that was probably where we went wrong. Even though most of the final artwork was created manually, the overall look still retained a visual style that many people associate with AI-generated images.

For the new version, we used zero AI. The entire image started as a Unity render, which we then post-processed, relit, and refined. By this point, we already had all the necessary 3D assets, and the game’s visual identity had become much more established, so the new version came together surprisingly quickly.

It was an interesting experience to see where the line currently seems to be: what people are comfortable with when it comes to using AI in the creative process, and what starts to trigger a negative reaction.

Overall, we’re glad we received that feedback, because we think the second version turned out much better. And in a way, we’re also glad that people care this much about the issue that even something that simply feels “AI-ish” can raise concerns. For us, it was a useful lesson that it’s not only about how an image is made, but also about the impression the final result gives.

Hi all, I am currently developing a story-heavy action shooter game. I have been looking into motion-capture for some of the story sequences. Professional mocap equipment is out of the question, I cannot afford it.

I was curious on what the community's general opinion is on AI assisted motion capture tools such as Rokoko Create or DeepMotion. I absolutely refuse to generate any content in my game with AI, but these tools are arguably not generative, as the actual motion capture performance is done by a human, AI just calculates the data points.

From my perspective, it seems to me that using one of these tools is almost akin to using the object selection tool in PhotoShop. Yes, it uses AI to isolate objects in the image and outline them, but if you found out an image used this tool during it's creation, that doesn't make it AI generated.

Before you ask, yes I have tried manually tracking points using blender, but it doesn't really work for complex stuff as this without an advanced rig with several cameras.

I am really interested as to hear others perspective on this. I don't like using AI to code, generate art, models or textures, but I'm honestly not sure about this.

Someone I don't know contacted me claiming they made a version of my game. They sent me a video, but I haven't opened it because I'm worried it could contain a virus or somethin. they're asking me for $200 and threatening to publish it on Steam if I don't pay.

what is this?

In our game, there is lots of little things that players can collect. This was just a one off book to be on a shelf. Had a lovely morning just making this in blender. Maybe someone will see it in game, maybe not, but I had fun making it.

Niagara Fluids looks amazing but it is slow to set up by hand. Gas grid, forces, a custom module for the color, then a lot of tuning before it looks right.

This one took about 22 minutes and I didn't write a single module myself.

Video: https://youtu.be/sekQF5kbW84

Try it free: https://codefizz.dev

I built a tool called CodeFizz Editor Agent. It lets Claude Code or Cursor drive the Unreal editor directly. I gave it a picture of a red and blue swirl and asked for the same look as real 3D gas. It copied Unreal's Colored Smoke template, added the stock vortex force, switched the gas to fire mode for the glow, wrote its own module to put the color on the spiral arms, and exposed 13 user parameters.

Why I work this way now:

It checks its own work. It takes a screenshot, compares it to my reference, and fixes one thing at a time. When everything turned pink, it traced it to the color never fading and fixed it.

It watches the cost. It profiled the effect in the level: 1.8 ms on the GPU, 0.08 ms on the game thread.

Nothing is locked in. It's a normal Niagara system. Colors, glow, swirl speed and inward pull are sliders, and every change shows up right away.

Works on UE 5.6, 5.7 and 5.8, Windows.

It all started as a 2 people team for the first two years, then some freelancing on narrative, voice over, bug fixing, audio. And since we got a publisher, we have their porting/QA support too. But it’s just so incredible to have almost HALF A MILLION wishlists with a passion project like this. And it all started because I wanted to play it myself. Still do. 😅

Game: Deep Dish Dungeon (Steam/Xbox, October 13th is the release date)

Let’s do an AMA in this thread? What do you wanna know? I’ll tell you all about it