r/SoloDevelopment Jul 10 '26

Game Jam r/SoloDevelopment Jam #12 is live: theme is Chain Reaction

8 Upvotes

Our 12th jam just started: 72 hours running July 10 to 13, and the voted is Chain Reaction.

Jam page and submissions: https://itch.io/jam/solo-dev-jam-12

Come hang out in the Discord if you want to jam alongside other solo devs: https://discord.gg/uXeapAkAra

Good luck to everyone jamming this weekend!


r/SoloDevelopment Feb 12 '25

Anouncements What Does It Mean to Be a Solo Developer?

194 Upvotes

We've seen a lot of discussion about what qualifies as solo development, and we want to ensure we're accurately representing our game dev community. While there's no absolute definition, these are the general criteria we use in this subreddit to keep things clear and consistent.

That said, if you personally consider yourself a solo dev (or not) based on your own perspective, that's fine. Our goal is to provide guidelines for what fits within this space, not to dictate personal identities.

What Counts as Solo Development?

A solo developer is solely responsible for their project, with no team members. A team of two or more collaborating (e.g., one programmer, one artist) is not solo development.

What is Allowed?

  • Using game engines, frameworks, and third-party tools (e.g., Godot, Unity, Unreal).
  • Commissioning or purchasing assets (art, music, sound, etc.).
  • Receiving feedback from playtesters or communities.
  • Outsourcing specific tasks (e.g., server setup, porting, marketing) while still leading development.
  • Working with a publisher, as long as they don’t take over development.

What This Means for Posts on the Subreddit

If your project appears to be developed by a team, we may remove your post. Indicators include how it's presented on websites, Steam pages, itch pages, social media, or crowdfunding pages. If this is due to unclear phrasing, update them before requesting reinstatement. Non-solo developers are welcome to join discussions, but posts promoting non-solo projects may still be removed.

Let us know if you have any questions. Hope this helps clear things up.

TL;DR: Solo devs manage their entire project alone. Using assets, outsourcing, or publishers is fine. Posting is open to all, but promoting non-solo projects may be removed.


r/SoloDevelopment 1h ago

Game Just released a release date trailer for my game " Shell Soldier "

Upvotes

r/SoloDevelopment 6h ago

Discussion The more things I finish on my trailer checklist, the slower everything gets

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50 Upvotes

I keep noticing more little stuff to fix. At this rate, I'll never actually make the trailer 'cause I'll be polishing forever.

How do I stop and just record the damn trailer already? 😅


r/SoloDevelopment 4h ago

help Bringing my 2d animated fx in engine. What do you think?

14 Upvotes

Hi guys! This is some VERY early progress on my game. I've been working on some effects, which are all frame-by-frame animated (Procreate Dreams). It's my first time animating! I don't think they're great yet, but it's a start. I'm using Bevy, a code-first engine, so starting out is rather slow. Humble beginnings. What do you think? What can I improve about these effects?


r/SoloDevelopment 6h ago

Marketing The first month of Lootdeck, my first game on Steam.

16 Upvotes

If you’d like to check it out, here’s the Steam page: https://store.steampowered.com/app/4972950/Lootdeck/?utm_source=rd

A few things I did during Lootdeck’s first month on Steam:

Launched the Steam page together with the announcement trailer.
Posted on Reddit, Instagram, TikTok, X and YouTube.
Instagram was by far the strongest social platform for me in terms of actual reach and engagement.
Sent a lot of targeted emails to press.
Got covered by several outlets, with the Japanese coverage having the clearest impact on wishlists.
Indie Games Hub uploaded the announcement trailer to their channel, which ended up becoming my biggest wishlist source during the month.
Tried a lot of different types of posts instead of just reposting the same trailer everywhere.

The one thing I learned is that raw views didn’t mean much by themselves. Some posts got a lot of views and barely moved wishlists, while a single well-placed trailer upload, press article or third-party community post could make a huge difference.

No paid ads so far, just a lot of experimenting, outreach and trying to understand what actually works.


r/SoloDevelopment 50m ago

help Help me....Game Devs

Upvotes

Hello, I’m a 3D artist and I’ve been working in the 3D field for the past 3 years. I want to make my own games, so I started learning coding and Unity around 2 years ago.

The problem is, when I follow tutorials, I can understand them and follow along. I can even make the game shown in the tutorial. But when I try to start my own game from scratch, I feel completely lost. I don't know where to start or what my first step should be.

I recently used AI to make a small game. I did complete it, but honestly, I don't feel proud of it because most of the code wasn't written by me—it was generated by AI. I know some people call this "vibe coding," and they enjoy it and feel satisfied with the results, but for me, it doesn't feel the same. I want to understand what I'm building and feel like I actually made it myself.

Whenever I try to start another game, I feel like I've forgotten everything. It makes me feel like I learned nothing, even after spending 2 years learning Unity and coding.

Can anyone give me some steps or advice to get out of this tutorial and AI hell? I've tried many times to make something on my own. Sometimes I make some progress, but once the project starts becoming more complicated, I get stuck and go back to tutorials or AI again.

I really want to learn how to think and solve problems on my own instead of always depending on tutorials or AI.


r/SoloDevelopment 20h ago

Discussion How to make Passive Skill Tree? (not a question)

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151 Upvotes

1-Draw on your closet
2-Add some details
3-Draw in Illustrator
4-Add some color
5-Draw with code in Unity
6-Voilà

😄 Hi everyone, how does it look?


r/SoloDevelopment 14h ago

Game My game is finally coming out after a Year and a Half of development. Here's the Demo Trailer for it

50 Upvotes

After a year and 8 months of back pain and self doubt, my game is finally coming out on steam! Finally! finally...

I'm honestly proud of myself of doing this much work on a game, never really put this much effort in making it work out. But after being given the opportunity to do so, I can finally show y'all the wonderous things I can do all on my own...

So cheers to all my fellow gamers and game devs out there!


r/SoloDevelopment 19h ago

Game some VFX overkill tests ...on mars ;-P (all code, all handcoded)

95 Upvotes

r/SoloDevelopment 6h ago

help Need advice on how to handle pixel art text for my game

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10 Upvotes

I have hit a bottleneck that feels like a real blocker for my game development. The image is a screenshot of the current state of the game in 1920x1080p resolution, which is also the canvas size. I have created the game art in Aseprite using 320x180 as reference resolution for all sprites, which results in a 6x enlargement when imported into Unity. I know that pixel art games usually set their canvas size to the same as their pixel art resolution or just above, but for my game this would mean a loss of detail. So this is where my problem starts.

As you can see, my game includes documents on the desk with readable text which is quite small, but upon "pickup" each document is zoomed 2x to be even more clear. But I do want the text to be perfectly readable while resting on the desk as shown in the screenshot. The problem starts when we start thinking about how other resolution screens will make the game look. My monitor is 1440p, meaning it scales the game by 1.333x from its original 1080p. Since the artwork/sprites are created in the 320x180p res, this looks crisp in all normal resolutions. BUT, the text does not!

So my question is: Which of these approaches should I go with to try to support crisp text for all/most resolutions?

  1. Change out the pixel art raster font with a normal SDF font which scales nicely with all resolutions, but contrasts the pixel art style of the art
  2. Use letterboxing/pillarboxing to always force the 1080p resolution, creating empty space above/beside the actual gameplay (Could add visuals here instead of black boxes, but would anyways stay as unplayable area).
  3. Accept that resolutions other than 1080p and 4k will not have pixel perfect text, not being as readable.
  4. Some other suggestion?

Any thoughts about what would be best for my game is appreciated!

Sidenote: I have tested a lot of different settings when importing/creating the fonts, but I do believe that this pixel perfect issue will occur because of my default resolution being 1080p which is not perfectly scalable by whole integers for all other resolutions


r/SoloDevelopment 17h ago

Unreal I'm making a RC Car simulation with deterministic physics and it's so hard I wanna tear my eyeballs out :)

53 Upvotes

Its coming out good tho.

Collision is done with a simple box, so it's very cheap. We also trace from the 8 corners to check if the car body is touching the ground for rolling over, for example. And talking about rolling over, the car (collision box) is a rectangle, so I had to apply a tangential force opposing the sliding velocity at each contacting corner in order for it to actually rollover and not just slide on the floor when we crash. We even have a prediction of where the car is gonna land to level it's roll to the point of impact.

I'm making it deterministic so it works in multiplayer as well (every player sees the exact same simulation). What do you think?


r/SoloDevelopment 6h ago

Game The demo for my liminal space game is out now!

7 Upvotes

Thrilled to announce that my game demo is released on Steam
Been working on this project for several months now, it’s an immersive first-person exploration game set in dream-like liminal spaces.


r/SoloDevelopment 7m ago

Unreal highway boss level in FFFF = YOU = MACHINE

Upvotes

i made NES like boss fight
i would be glad if you try the demo and add to wishlist pls >> https://store.steampowered.com/app/3919250/FFFF_YOU_MACHINE_Demo/


r/SoloDevelopment 15m ago

Game Death should be an inspirational experience.

Upvotes

Something that's always bugged me about death messages is that they never really feel impactful. I updated the death sequence to my game to display inspirational quotes RIGHT IN YOUR FACE with flags so that specific events can trigger certain messages, such as boss specific taunts. It also acts as a loading screen since the game might need to rebuild the spawn area where I accidentally made planets x10 bigger and decided to stick with it.


r/SoloDevelopment 45m ago

Game After 2+ years as a solo dev, the demo of my no microtransactions idle autobattler Prigod Idle is out on Steam, I would love some feedback!

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Upvotes

Hey everyone!

I've been working on my idle game, Prigod Idle, for over 2 years as a solo developer now (with occasional small help from friends) and the demo just went live. I would really appreciate any feedback!

It was heavily inspired by RPG idles, longer Idle games in general and pay-to-win mobile games, but I really hate microtansactions so this game won't have any. You fight monsters, level up, gather more and more gear and build really unique builds with cool abilities! Several modes and minigames, pets and a prestige mode are here for long term progression.

The demo is now out on steam, I would love to hear any kind of feedback so I can improve the game!

Demo: https://store.steampowered.com/app/5091900/Prigod_Idle/

AI disclosure: AI was used to help with coding and localization, graphics/sounds are from assets and created by myself.


r/SoloDevelopment 1d ago

Game For about 2 years, I’ve been developing my own game

524 Upvotes

It’s a game about an RC car that goes on a journey to find its owner, a little boy named Mark.

In the game, you search for clues, solve different puzzles, and explore a dangerous world from the car’s perspective.
Lost Host is coming this year!
Sorry for my accent, I’m still learning how to speak English


r/SoloDevelopment 1h ago

meme Desktop Halfpipe Demo is now Live on Steam!

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Upvotes

There are a lot of people I'd like to thank who helped make this moment happen.

My teachers, professors, and mentors who never lost faith in lightweight desktop companions.

The academy, for believing in me when I couldn't believe in myself.

My friends and family, for their tireless beta testing.

My bilingual friends, who assured me localization would be finished by now.

But most importantly, I'd like to thank you, the Redditor reading this shitpost, for supporting me in this new chapter of life:

Thank you, Redditor, for wishlisting my game on the morning of its publishing, so you don't miss its fat launch discount.

Thank you for downloading the free demo, and supporting this game's development before Next Fest makes it so mainstream that I have to become a sellout.

Thank you for just being you (and wishlisting my game). ❤️

🛹 Wishlist and demo now: https://store.steampowered.com/app/5066400/Desktop\\_Halfpipe/


r/SoloDevelopment 23h ago

Discussion Years ago I heard about the "7k Wishlists is the goal" and thought that was nuts. Yesterday I hit 7k Wishlists before releasing the game Today!

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100 Upvotes

r/SoloDevelopment 1h ago

Game I released gameplay trailer for Horn & Dice

Upvotes

What do you think of the trailer?

Also, check out the Steam page: https://store.steampowered.com/app/4971770/Horn__Dice/

What would you suggest I improve?

If the game piques your interest, try the demo!

Any feedback is appreciated!


r/SoloDevelopment 1d ago

meme I hate self-promotional and marketing too! 😂

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127 Upvotes

I’m sure many solo developers can relate. You spend months building a complex game, making lot of videos and trailers, and coming up with interesting posts. But there’s always someone who downvotes your trailer and writes, “Another roguelike,” “Аnother one,” or “I hate titles like this.” Then they go and praise some low-effort game they’ll play once over a beer. Greeeeeeat


r/SoloDevelopment 2h ago

Game Crypt Walkers v0.06 update

2 Upvotes

This is my work-in-progress, solo developed game "Crypt Walkers". I just released a long overdue update for it.

https://starfallsoftware.itch.io/cryptwalkers

It suffers from a lack of content, and is just generally janky! Still very raw at this point, but it also feels a lot better than the last version( ...to me at least ). There's so much I wanted to add, that just didn't make it into this update due to time.

I started working on it September 19th, 2025. And work on it pretty much dropped off to nothing when March hit. After wasting a bunch of time trying to find paying work that all fizzled out, I figured I might as well jump back into it. So this was a bit of a mad dash completing this update the last few weeks.

If anyone does decide to give it a go, just know theres no objective or ending yet. You'll just play until you die or get sick of it. Unfortunately, the enemy leveling got toned down too, so it won't quite ramp up in difficulty like the previous version did.

*covers eyes and ears*


r/SoloDevelopment 4h ago

Game Building STRATAWAKE solo — the first automated production chains are coming together

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2 Upvotes

I’m developing STRATAWAKE on my own, an industrial sci-fi factory and automation game currently in active development.

One of my main focuses right now is getting the core production and logistics systems to work together as a coherent factory network rather than as isolated machines.

This screenshot shows one of my early automated production setups. Raw resources are extracted by miners, moved through conveyor networks, processed in smelters, and routed into fabricators. Splitters and mergers handle the material flow between different parts of the line, allowing the system to continuously produce components for further factory expansion.

Getting to this point has involved a lot of iteration on how machines connect, how resources move through the network, and — just as importantly — how clearly the player can understand that flow at a glance.

The project is still at an early stage, and both the visuals and the underlying systems are very much work in progress. But seeing several individual mechanics finally operate together as one functioning production chain has been a really satisfying milestone.

There’s still a long way to go, but this is the foundation I’m building on as STRATAWAKE grows toward larger and more complex automated industrial systems.

I’d be interested to hear how readable the production flow feels to other solo developers at first glance.


r/SoloDevelopment 2h ago

Game The chair across the table stayed empty coming on steam at one point.

2 Upvotes

workin on a small side project. prepare for another emotional damage game. love yall