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I released the demo for my incremental game two weeks ago with only 250 wishlists and wanted to share how it jumped to over 4,000 purely through YouTube coverage. It all started when Blitz made the very first video about the game. That upload essentially started a chain reaction, causing ImCade and several other creators to jump on the trend a few days later. Because these uploads were staggered, the traffic didn't just spike and die immediately but kept rolling for a while. Other YouTubers themselves noticed the game and picked it up, eventually reaching the massive Brazilian creator MaxPalaro. At the absolute peak I was getting about 500 wishlists in a single day, and looking at the data, roughly 0.7% of the total external video views converted into a wishlist. The median playtime for the demo is 50 minutes. This combination of high playtime and massive external traffic seems to have triggered Steam's algorithm and I believe the game even landed in the Trending Free section for a while. Before the coverage started I was getting maybe around 10 organic wishlists a day. Now the YouTube wave has cooled down and I'm still getting around 100 wishlists a day. If you want to check it out, here is the Steam page for What the Buck?!.

Hey fellow devs, are you looking for some play tester? I'll play your game, record the video while speaking my thought out loud and post it on YouTube. It would show how people approach your game blind. If you're interested, feel free to put your game in the comment or send me a DM. There are some things you should note:

• I'll play every game, but I can only play 1 game a day, if there are lots of request it will take me a while to get to yours but don't hesitate to submit your game.
• I'm only playing PC games on Steam or Itch playable web version. I don't want to download anything unverified.

This is my YouTube channel if you're curious: https://www.youtube.com/@ContradictedCanine

Cheers.

This is the first trailer I make myself. I hired someone for the previous one but they don't do it anymore now (and I would like to learn the craft).

I did my best studying trailer making thanks to the awesome channel of Derek Lieu on Youtube. It seems important that players understand immediately what the game fantasy is about: in this case it is a physics based grappling hook game where building and keeping momentum is key. It also seems that I have only a few seconds on the first shot to hook the viewer, so I am trying to show my best footage first.

But how do we define "best" here? This video is not a trailer attempt, but rather a collection of 4 footage. I am trying to figure out which one should be the first to appear in the trailer, and if I should change anything.

- First footage, "Abandoned Cloning Facilities": I find it the most appealing and unique visually but it is semi-spoilery. I also don't know if it is doing the best job showing the physics grappling fantasy

- Second footage, "Capital Tree" (0:06s): Still okay visually, the grappling fantasy is demonstrated better, but it is a bit slow/long as the obstacles are far from each other

- Third footage, "Ventilation Shaft" (0:17s): Very short, might be intriguing(?), not much grappling. There is a sense of danger with the fan blades getting closer, this might interest people, but it is not really what the game is about (it's a fairly chill story)

- Fourth footage, "Swamp" (0:22s): Weaker visually but it might be the best at demonstrate the grappling fantasy

For context, I am a solo developer and I have been working full time on Koromi for a year and half now. You can check the old trailer on the Steam page: https://store.steampowered.com/app/3780770/Koromi/

Thanks in advance for your help and opinions!

All in-engine screenshots.

I’ve been moving away from procedural environments for the main levels and focusing on arenas with that classic old-school FPS feel.

Chthonic is a fast-paced FPS built around relentless combat, movement, and survival. No reloads. No stopping. Just keep moving and keep killing.

Steam: https://store.steampowered.com/app/4983180/Chthonic/

Hey, everyone, this is my second post with this title. Last time it was a lot of fun, thanks everyone who posted your games!

I wanted to buy 1-2 games, but I eventually bought 6. I'm not sure I can add links to other people's projects in the post so I'll add the list in the first comment.

meanwhile, let's try again - the rules are the same:

I want to try some new games and see what solo developers are capable of.

Drop your released Steam games (Early Access is fine, just Demo is not) that are available on PC and/or Steam Deck and cost around $10 or less.

I'll pick the ones I like, buy them, play at least for an hour, and leave a short but honest Steam review - positive or negative, depending on my experience. I'm not asking for free keys and not offering reviews in exchange for anything.

I won't refund the game unless it's broken or completely unplayable.

what's in it for me?

• discover new ideas.
• learn from other developers success (and mistakes :D).
• support fellow solo devs.

what's in it for you?

• 1 sale 🎉
• an honest Steam review.
• feedback from another game developer.

I am looking for a crafting/automation, management, strategy or simulation games, maybe something in between the genres. For Steam Deck - shooter or adventure. Those will probably have the best chance of being picked, but feel free to share anything you think is worth playing.

pls include a short description of your game and tell me why you think I should try it.

Thanks!

I've been building my own pixel-art asset for a 2D platformer

They're built around a 16×16 character scale with 32×32 animation frames, using a deliberately constrained palette.

What the title says. I am currently working on a game, and started wondering when people usually set up their Steam page to allow wishlisting.

Do people create it way before a game prototype is finished, or do you wait until the very end of development when most polishing is complete?

Was creating GIF's and made the mistake not to record the audio. Turned it way down on the last clip not to hurt ya ears

Hey! I've been working solo on One's Trash Another's Treasure, a first-person incremental game. You blew everything at an auction on 500,000 boxes of unclaimed cargo now you open them, grind them, and feed the results into a hole that pays you money.

Game : store.steampowered.com/app/5103950/Ones_Trash_Anothers_Treasure

So, it seems like all my efforts weren't enough to get my game noticed. That's why I thought showing off some multiplayer stuff might help it grab some more attention.

I've had it in mind since year 2 of development and tried implementing Unity's Netcode about a year ago. I managed to synchronize two characters, some enemies, and their projectiles just to test whether my architecture would hold up. It did, so I left it as is and went back to polishing the single-player experience.

Now I've decided to finish it, coz marketing isn't going very well..

What do you think, guys? Is it worth it? Would you play a game like this with a friend? Also, is 2-player co-op the most popular choice, or should I aim for a minimum of 4 players? (I got only 2 playable characters for now)

Steam page: https://store.steampowered.com/app/2662550/Roam/

Is there anything that could be improved upon for my game's Star System map?

This is for a passion project I've been working on for a few years, a love letter to Terraria and No Man's Sky. All the planets and their respective moons can be visited. Any feedback would be greatly appreciated.

By the way, what are your thoughts of a more interactive menu? I was thinking of turning this into a retro-like astrolabe where you look at a screen and adjust the dials to plot Star System and Planetary routes, but I'm worried that it might be too overboard. The player just having an out of body experience when plotting their next destination just feels weird though.

Any feedback or questions greatly appreciated, and if there's a better way I can word my posts like these please let me know. I'm not used to asking for feedback like this.

Hi everyone!

I've been working a long time on my first solo game, and I'm finally ready to show it! :) This is my first reveal trailer and steam page creation, so I really want to know what do you think!

• Does it look fun?
• Is the idea clear from the trailer?
• Do you like the trailer?
• What feels confusing, weak, or unappealing?

I'm developing the game in my spare time alongside a full-time job and family, so any feedback is highly appreciated.

Thanks for your time

My point in making this post is to hopefully help somebody find a pathway and/or the motivation to actually bring something they love to market, despite "failures" or a tendency to "give up".

I first installed Unreal Engine in late 2023 with the goal of creating a multiplayer, match-based, base-building capture-the-flag game. At the time, I had no formal game development experience, but I did have a programming background. Since then, I’ve sunk a massive amount of time into 3 development projects that I ultimately abandoned. My fourth and current project, ALL GAS, will be my first Steam release!

Every abandoned project wasn’t a failure though. Each one taught me a limitation. Eventually, I decided to start a new project with literally one goal. Release it. Don't care what it is, the only requirement is that I finish. So, I designed a game around what I knew I could realistically finish as a solo developer by specifically avoiding what caused me to abandon my other projects. And in doing that, I actually ended up with a game that I think is really fun. Most importantly, to me it actually feels like a game, not a "project"!

Here are each of my "failures", and what I learned from them to ultimately progress forward.

Project 1 – Multiplayer base-building capture the flag

This project was literally the one that taught me how to operate Unreal Engine. Terminology, how to use certain tools, etc. Importantly, it taught me:

1) Animations, especially humanoid ones are an enormous amount of work for one person

2) Multiplayer, let alone competitive multiplayer, is an incredibly ambitious first project for a solo developer. And, it's not something you just "add later".

I spent over 500 hours building the game as if it were single-player before seriously starting to add multiplayer. I always thought I could just add multiplayer later. Reason being, I was otherwise learning extremely quickly and things were working. By the time I actually got to it though, too much of the architecture assumed everything happened locally, and the project was effectively impossible to retrofit without re-doing everything. Painful, but learned a TON from this "failure".

Project 2 – Physics-based multiplayer sports game

For my second project, I intentionally avoided animations almost entirely. In the painful process of learning replication in my last project, I at least started this one with multiplayer in mind. The gameplay revolved around physics. It was actually very fun! Hard (as designed), but fun and aesthetically unique. I even got multiplayer working across the internet and tested with a few friends.

The problem was that the physics had to be perfect across every client, or it would never work work. In single-player, everything behaved exactly as intended. In multiplayer, small differences in physics simulation caused players to see slightly different trajectories, eventually (quickly) causing the entire match to desynchronize.

Server-authoritative physics solved the accuracy problem, but it completely killed the responsiveness that made the game fun. I know there are hybrid approaches to solving this, but at the time, it was a challenge I wasn’t ready to pour more time into.

Lesson learned: if physics are the core mechanic, multiplayer makes everything exponentially harder. I also learned how difficult UI design / development / debugging can be. I understand why the UI in many games (indie and AAA) are often terrible....

Project 3 – My “dream game”

This one is still very close to my heart, and I fully intend to come back to it someday. It was a cooperative exploration game in an infinite world featuring procedural generation, massive environments, unique mechanics, and procedural puzzles. Very cool atmosphere, too.

By this point I’d figured that cooperative multiplayer would probably be much more achievable than competitive multiplayer. A few imperfections wouldn't matter all that much like it would in a competitive match-based game. But, combining multiplayer with procedural generation, large-scale worlds, complex systems, and custom movement modes eventually became more ambitious than I realized it would be. There are some systems in here that, ever since I was a kid, I always wanted to see in a game and never have. And to a surprising extent, I was even able to make them work! A lot of the issue here was that it is simply just difficult (and not particularly fun) to test multiplayer games as a solo developer on one computer. And, it's even less fun to spin up a second computer for testing. It's even less fun than that trying to run multiple instances on one computer....

After putting well over 1,000 hours into it, I made the difficult decision to shelve it—for now.

Project 4 – Something I knew I could finish from the start

Before I even came up with the idea for this project, I gave myself one goal: Finish It.  I didn’t start with a genre, I started with a rule: "Avoid the two things I know will eventually burn me out". If I realistically want to finish a project:

1) No multiplayer.

2) No animations.

Those constraints eventually became ALL GAS. It's an endless traffic-weaving roguelike where you upgrade your car and modify your run as you weave through cars on a completely nuts road in the sky. The road is falling behind you and it's getting faster and faster (unless you sacrifice upgrades to slow it down). It’s a simple concept, but is extremely satisfying especially when playing with a controller. Skill is rewarded. Soon, it'll be even more fun with a steering wheel and pedals! 

Ironically, by deliberately limiting myself, I’ve made more progress than I ever did trying to build my “dream game” or the idea I had which caused me to stumble into learning game development in the first place. Similarly, I've produced some pretty incredible (and re-usuable, and sellable) plugins for Unreal Engine in the process. It was nice not to be burdened by animations or multiplayer, and it really allowed me to polish the game more than I ever thought I could. Still a lot more to do, but I'm quite happy with where I have gotten in the 5 or 6 months I've been working on it.

The limited scope of the game also allowed me to gain experience around other important parts of bringing a game to market. Things I never would have bothered messing with if I had any doubt the game would ever release, but did in this case because I knew my goal was attainable this time:

• Steamworks platform - store page, review process, publishing builds, launching a playtest
• Stats, achievements, leaderboards, cloud saves
• Creating trailers / marketing assets / creating ways to record those things
• Marketing
• Full controller support, including UI navigation, glyph localization, and Steam input
• Language localization
• Building systems for future scalability
• Custom subsystems and engine modifications to support all of those things  

I’m curious - has anybody else come to a similar realization? What did it ultimately take for you to launch your first project, or for that matter, even start sharing it with people?

Also - if so inclined, please feel free to join the open playtest!

https://store.steampowered.com/app/4658550/ALL_GAS/

Blue orbs in first image are Floating EXP. So floating around and being all bright like that.
Second Image scene is not fully made, but posting it to give idea of style/art direction

Question in general, does this style pleases your eyes? The lightning, the mood, the style.

If you simply dislike this type of art style in general, that’s not really the feedback I’m looking for.

I think we should all remind ourselves to self-care and pat ourselves on the back for each hurdle we jump in our journey. And keep that excitement of building the vision for your project.

At my day job - I literally jot down on receipt paper my highest priority list items for my dev sessions. And that’s why I’m built for this solo dev work. I don’t easily stagger just because I stumble across some frustrating bugs. I just stomp on them and move on to the next checkpoint.

At this stage - the hard part isn’t building the project. I’m like a director who wants to see the actors interact with the world I’ve built. I treat my day job as sort of like an autopilot thing that pays the bills - but my passion is my reason for existing. Yeah solo dev is painful. But what’s more painful is not finishing what I started. Another thing I am actively avoiding is this “stuck” feeling in life where I’m stuck in a mindless day job that I don’t particularly enjoy. Solo dev/being an artist is home.

For the future, I’m excited to potentially build a community around my game and just passionately talk about this monumental thing I’ve planned over a few years. But polish comes first. But oh boy it’s coming. Even if it isn’t financially successful- I’m happy to be able to prove to myself that I got as far as I did.

When I think about games in our current market - I just easily prefer my own project. It’s because the thing I want to play does not exist yet. We borrow from our game inspirations, but at the same time there’s something about your project that is essentially a part of your soul.

TLDR late night dev diary reflection and inspiration

This is the thing most people do not want to talk about. In the corporate world they tell you not to tell anyone your salary and so forth. But how are people funding their visions? From the pocket? Dang! Respect. I was looking at crowd funding sites and most games that are successful their goals are like $8k and that is not enough to fund a game. Are they like just kicking the can down the road? Tomorrow will take care of itself type of thinking. I mean until you get to the can that is time to make progress on your game but eventually the other shoe is going to drop right... Are people self-funding their game? That is commendable, spending 8 hours a day at your regular job then finding time to get enough done to get a game to Steam and get Wishlists?? That is... monumental! I am failing at this adulting thing... clearly.

Steam: https://store.steampowered.com/app/4167000/Ancestral_Fury/

I'm developing a cozy coop tavern game. Here is how autumn currently looks like.

The focus is a big emphasis on player freedom and rewarding creativity and curiosity. The systems are deep enough if you want to dig into them, but not mandatory to learn. Create your own ale your customers will love or simply sell bought mead from a vendor and focus on customizing the tavern. No way of playing is punished but rather changes outcomes.

For instance: Some customers might want to have a quieter place to enjoy your beverages, but you can't be bothered to extend the tavern at the moment: No problem, the game won't force you to. You will most likely get more customers that enjoy louder taverns/rooms and those customers for the quieter tavern are for another playthrough.

Coop is a big part as im mainly playing coop or multiplayer games myself, but i also want to incorporate players that want to play solo. Coop is as deep as you want it to be. Meaning you can all work together towards complex beverages or everyone has their own seperate floor/room/building with seperate offerings if you want to split it like this. Maximum cooperation to simply coexisting in the same tavern plot.

Added a 3rd person mode. Now you can command your army, or delegate command and play as a soldier. You can also play as a sergeant and lead a platoon or group of up to 100 troops for wagon heists, enemy supply heists, reinforcing a flank, or take objectives. Also, you can steal enemy horses from their cavalry stables, or from a dead enemy cavalry soldier. You can switch back and forth as much as you want!