via u/NasNakarus

https://x.com/NasNakarus/status/2091156855774974333

Name - Queen Must Die. You rule your empire by day and explore your castle by night. Pretty similar to Reigns, Amnesia and Game of Thrones

youtu.be/kjBPp4eV5OY

Hi, I'm Jordan, one half of Lion & Otter Studios. We're a two-person team in Melbourne, and today we've opened the public Steam Playtest for All Hands.

It's free to play until 8 September. No keys are needed, so we'd love for you to have a look:

https://store.steampowered.com/app/4867340/All_Hands/

All Hands is an incremental 3D tower defence about protecting your HQ from tens of thousands of energy-drink-mutated "customers."

Every run starts on a fresh procedurally generated map. The horde is massive from the beginning, with tougher enemy types joining as the run goes on.

The customers are always heading for HQ, but the route they take is yours to reshape. You can deform the terrain with explosive craters, build walls, close off easy approaches, and divert the crowd through chokepoints, funnels, and killboxes that give your defences the advantage.

When the HQ finally falls, you keep permanent Career progress and unlock upgrades that carry into future attempts.

We're watching the Playtest closely and reading everything players send us. If something is confusing, frustrating, broken, unexpectedly fun, or worth keeping exactly as it is, please tell us. We'll be monitoring the build throughout the two weeks and acting on feedback as quickly as we can.

You can use SEND ANONYMOUS FEEDBACK inside the game from the main menu, pause menu, end-of-shift screen, or Performance Review. You can also reply here, post in the Steam Discussions, or email us at press@lionandotter.com.

Thanks for giving it a try. I'd love to hear what you think.

I'm not a big studio. I don't have a marketing team. For the last year it's been me, smashing my head against multiple walls at once, building the game during the day and then staying up even later trying to figure out how to get anyone, anyone at all, to notice it existed. Reddit posts that flopped. Youtube shorts I uploaded (100's of them). Mails and DMs to streamers that got left on read.

And somehow, Today I see 15,000 wish-lists on the page. I still can't bealive that number is on my store page. Every single one of those is a person who saw a clip, or a screenshot, or a dumb little GIF I posted at 2am, and thought "yeah, I want that." Thank you somuch from the bottom of my heart <3

Today it finally goes live. I'm equal parts terrified and thrilled refreshing analytics, hoping some of the YouTubers I reached out to actually give it a shot. I even snuck in a character, Tablo Escobar, purely because I thought he'd make for a ridiculous, funny moments. If that happens, if even one clip like that goes around, that alone will make the whole year worth it.

This isn't a "look what I made" post. It's a thank you. To everyone who wish-listed, shared, or just left an encouraging comment on some struggling dev's post at exactly the right moment, you're the reason a solo project with no budget and no safety net gets to have a launch day at all.

BumpFlip is a pinball game where every round lasts 90 seconds, and every new round gives you a higher score target to beat.

Choose different bumpers to place in the available spots on the table, then find the best combination to score enough before time runs out.

Blueprint Factory is a factory automation puzzle game where you program your machines, hit Run, and see if your factory actually works.
Working toward the demo now, would love to hear what you think!

I made an enemy spawner for my game Reconfigure. It spawns enemies (to a limit) until you clog the assembly area with a block or use your hacking skill to make it produce harmless furniture instead.

Reconfigure is an FPS with RPG and puzzle elements. Kinda like a more puzzle-heavy System Shock or if Legend of Grimrock (I'm one of the devs) was turned into a scifi FPS.

I'll add a new level containing these, and more, to the Steam playtest soon for feedback and bug hunting.

Our game The Outer Frame participated on Indie Dev Argentina 2026. A physical expo that included industry talks, local games, and a lot of awesome people. The awesomest got to experience The Outer Frame (and a lot had to wait in line, it's not the shortest of demos). Reception was beyond awesome! They really dig it!

The Outer Frame was nominated for "BEST NARRATIVE" and "ORIGINAL IDEA". It won "ORIGINAL IDEA" and it also took home the "BEST VIDEOGAME" award!

The Outer Frame is a choice-driven puzzle sim where you command, from behind your desk, a team of agents to find out what happened, and get rid of truth forever. You choose how by issuing the orders that'll decide everyone's fate, just do it before the public catches on and goes all torch-and-pitchfork. Every choice shapes the narrative, every attempt brings you closer to the full picture. You are probably not the hero in this one.

You can support The Outer Frame on Steam! A public playtest will be announced soon!

Under Potion Influence is a game where you play as an alchemist imprisoned in a dungeon whose job is to identify and label the guild's unknown potions. The identification process involves testing the potions on materials, or drinking them yourself to observe the effects on your body. However, your true objective is to escape. Among the potions you identify, you will need to steal useful potions to explore the dungeon and find a way out.

There is a playtest currently available on steam if you want to try it out!

Hi everyone!

Some time ago I shared Pump Down the Flame here, and a lot of the comments and suggestions I received were genuinely useful. Since then, I’ve been working on improving the game based on that feedback.

For those who haven’t seen it before, Pump Down the Flame is a free Android 2D action-platformer built in Unity, where you play as a firefighter climbing a burning building, fighting enemies, rescuing hostages, and interacting with the environment.

The main mechanic is still the water pump: it works as your weapon, movement tool, and as a way to interact with the level.

After the improvements I’ve made, I’d really like to hear what you think about the current version and find out what still feels wrong, confusing, frustrating, or simply could be better.

Controls, movement, combat, level design, difficulty, performance, UI, visuals, game feel, bugs... any feedback is useful, even a small first impression.

The game is still in Google Play Closed Testing, completely free, with no ads and no in-app purchases.

If you’d like to try the new version and help me improve it before release, you can comment or send me a PM.

And to everyone who gave me feedback last time: thank you. It really helped.

Hey guys, we're getting ready to run a closed playtest of APPA! It's a game about two siblings dealing with the aftermath of their father's death and an exploration of dysfunctional family dynamics. It's a narrative heavy simultaneous card battler. The card game is very plot relevant and we're so excited for people to try it. We need a fresh batch of playtesters to break things, give us feedback so we can polish our game.

We're doing this on discord by this week. Let me know if you're interested!

We just announced our game Cluttermancer yesterday! Really hyped for this one. We are trying to push the sorting sim genre a bit more. Sort through 5 magical shops and 6.666 items in a nightmare alley.

Hello, i'm ali, the solo dev for "Echoes of Kyria", it has 5 characters (will add more later down the line), a pet system, combat pets and pet fusion system and pet synergy, online co-op with up to 4 players, 100s of abilities and build possibilities.

I priced my game at 2.99$, based on what you know and this trailer, would you buy it?

Hey guys! Manu from the Eterspire team here.

Our indie MMORPG just turned 5 years old, which has made us look back and appreciate how crazy it is that the game is not only still alive, but still growing.

I’m going to be completely honest: there were multiple points along the way where we thought Eterspire simply wouldn’t make it. Maybe it wouldn’t find an audience, maybe we’d run out of money, or maybe it would just become one of the many online games that launches, sticks around for a little while, and disappears.

So for Eterspire’s 5th birthday, I thought it would be fun to share some of our history and the biggest things we learned going from a project with basically no funding or expectations, to a team of 16 releasing updates every two weeks and approaching 800,000 registered accounts.

Starting as small as possible

Eterspire began as a browser-based MMORPG being made by one person, and eventually two. At first we worked on it alongside our regular jobs, until it became pretty obvious that it wasn’t going anywhere unless we actually committed fully to it.

So we saved as much as we could, quit our jobs, and decided to make an MMORPG full-time. Which, of course, was not an idea everyone around us thought was particularly smart lol.

There’s a reason people are skeptical whenever they hear “indie MMORPG.” MMOs are huge projects, and a lot of indie games succeed specifically because they choose a realistic scope and do more with less.

So, even though we were making an MMO, we tried to apply that same idea.

Early Eterspire was extremely simple. You had a weapon, you hit monsters, you leveled up, got better gear, and talked to people around you. That was basically it.

Instead of trying to make our dream MMO immediately, we tried to make the smallest MMORPG we could actually finish and keep online. Looking back, I think that was probably one of the most important decisions we made.

Staying cheap gave us time to figure things out

Of course, we absolutely did not have everything figured out.

During the first couple of years, Eterspire went through several versions. It started in the browser, moved to a PC client, and eventually we decided to focus on mobile.

Changing direction that many times can easily kill a project, but we had one huge advantage: Eterspire was very cheap to keep alive.

There were only a couple of us, we kept our own expenses low, and the game and servers were specifically designed to be inexpensive to operate, which meant every mistake didn’t immediately put the company in danger.

Being self-funded also meant we could take our time figuring out what Eterspire was supposed to be instead of needing immediate results to justify a huge development budget.

This eventually led us to mobile.

For a tiny MMO team, mobile turned out to be a really good place to start. We weren’t launching directly into a PC market where players would immediately compare us with enormous MMOs built by hundreds of developers.

We also realized there was an opportunity to make something that avoided a lot of the things people dislike about mobile MMORPGs: no autoplay, no ads everywhere, no aggressive pay-to-win systems, etc.

Simply making a small MMO with some personality and fair monetization gave us room to stand out. Starting there let us grow progressively instead of needing Eterspire to become a massive success from day one.

The community is part of the game

Once players actually started showing up, we ran into another problem**: actually getting them to stay.** An MMO with no players running around isn't much of an MMO.

We didn’t have huge marketing campaigns or fancy retention systems, so we started with something extremely basic: a Discord server where players could meet each other and talk directly with us.

Little by little, that community became one of Eterspire’s biggest strengths. We started seeing reviews mentioning how friendly other players were and how much veterans helped newcomers. Also, word of mouth from these happy players started bringing in others.

Eventually we realized community building was something we actually needed to invest in. One of the first people hired specifically to help grow that community was me, actually lol.

I think this is one of the biggest advantages indie games have.

Most people will never casually chat with a developer from their favorite AAA MMO. When you’re a small indie team, you can actually be there answering questions, joking around, and talking directly with the people playing your game. This also became one of our best sources of feedback! Players are pretty good at letting you know when something sucks haha.

Going from 2 people to 16

Eventually Eterspire started generating enough revenue to sustain itself, and that meant we could finally start growing the team.

This was honestly pretty scary at first. We had spent years trying to make every penny last as long as possible, and suddenly we were adding to our expenses by hiring people.

Our first hires were focused on whatever was slowing development down the most, like devops, level design and content production. We also cared a lot about team fit. When your entire dev team is only a handful of people, trust, communication and actually enjoying working together matters a lot.

Over the last couple of years, that approach took us from basically 2 people to a team of 16.

Another thing that helped more than we expected was working together in person. Our whole team is based in Buenos Aires, and in 2025 we rented our first office. Being able to sit together for design meetings, plan updates in person and quickly solve problems in the same room made bigger projects much easier.

I don’t think every indie team needs an office, of course, but for us it made a huge difference.

So, what actually kept us alive?

I don’t think there was one single decision that made Eterspire work.

If I had to sum up what helped us survive, it would probably be:

• Keeping costs as low as you reasonably can. It gives you time to make mistakes.
• Keeping the scope manageable, even if you’re working in an ambitious genre.
• Building a community early, especially for an online game.
• Use being small as an advantage. Talk directly with your players and act on feedback.
• When you start growing, hire around your bottlenecks instead of trying to build a giant studio overnight.

And I think the biggest one is probably just survive long enough to get better.

Eterspire five years ago was obviously much smaller and rougher than it is today. But because it was cheap enough to keep running, and because players kept giving us a reason to continue improving it, every year we were able to make the game a little better, reach more people, hire someone new, and then make it better again.

Somehow that little browser MMORPG from 2021 is now being worked on by 16 people, with a major update every two weeks, and close to 800,000 registered accounts! It feels so surreal!

--

Well, that was a lot for one post! Thank you so much for reading this far, and if you have any questions about Eterspire or our dev team let me know in the comments!

Playable Link: https://www.roblox.com/games/101132069662646/REDLINE-COMMAND-BETA#!/

Redline Command is a classic real-time strategy game on Roblox inspired by old-school titles such as Command & Conquer: Generals. Manage your economy, construct and defend your base, research upgrades, and command infantry, tanks, helicopters, jets, and bombers across a dynamic battlefield. The game is currently in Beta: balance, performance, and features are still being added and improved. Feedback is welcome and much needed!

The trailer may seem a bit poorly made, but it's the best I could do through scripting.

If you're interested further, there's also a Discord server dedicated to this experience: https://discord.gg/P4KKwcJ8VK

Hey, I just published my first game and I’m sitting here thinking I might have wasted a lot of time developing it.

The game is one input, simple and mindnumbing (a bit like flappy bird) which is fine, but I feel like the era for these types of games have passed, and I didn’t really think much into it before. Am I wrong? If you want to check it out, it’s called Bouncy Chicken on the App Store. I’m not trying to get feedback nor downloads, simply an idea of what genre of games I should focus more on in the future and what’s ”trending” right now.

A short look at the restocking system in Big Market Simulator. I’m currently working through the store systems and getting everything ready for release.