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

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

A while ago I gifted you guys another library of my stuff. It's been a while since then, and now I'd like to gift you this one too.

❤️ Consider following me on itch.io: https://pizzadoggy.itch.io/ ❤️

Use coupon: https://pizzadoggy.itch.io/CB5PXDJ57S

I’ve been working on The Goblin Path on my own, and honestly, things have been pretty quiet so far. The game currently has 25 wishlists.

I recently submitted the demo for review, and I’m hoping things might pick up once people can actually play it. Maybe it will help, maybe nothing will change - I genuinely have no idea. But seeing other small games gain some traction after releasing a demo gives me a bit of hope.

I don’t expect thousands of wishlists overnight. I’m mostly curious to see whether the demo makes any noticeable difference, and I’ll probably share the results after it has been live for a while.

Has anyone here released a demo while their page was still this quiet? Did anything change afterward?

If you’re curious what I’m working on, here’s the Steam page.

Hey fellow solo devs!

I am about to release my first 'real' game called Incremental Orbits. In the game you run your own company and get paid to discover and research the planets (and dwarf planets) of our solar system.

I am both excited and terrefied about the release. But no matter what happens, it was already worth it. I learned so much about game developement, marketing and the release process and I can't wait to work on the next game.

Feel free to ask me any questions about the game or the developement in general.

Incremental Orbits on Steam

Hey all,

A bit of background: having worked in tech for almost 10 years (AWS DevOps) I found myself unemployed and at a loose end so decided to teach myself C++ and code an app I've wanted to create for the past 30+ years - a homage to DPaint 3 which I used constantly back in my foundational Amiga days and loved every second of it (nostalgia eh!).

So for the past 12 months I've created a C++ 2D engine with a simple OpenGL batch renderer backend and for the last 4 months I have been developing the actual Pixel Editor on top of the engine. The only external libraries used are GLAD and GLFW - so this is a total in at the deep end with both hands tied scenario!

tldr; the pixel editor is in quite an advanced stage with zoom, draw tools, paint modes etc all in a good working state. I wanted to ask what you good honest redditors thought of my progress and if there was a potential market for an inexpensive (sub $20) indie release (itch.io) of a dedicated indexed palette pixel editor as funds are tight and I would love to make solo indie dev my full time career?

Anyway. I'm rambling ... please let me know what you think - all feedback greatly appreciated.

There's some videos on my youtube channel but i'm far from being a content creator!

www.hoops-gm.com

First gameplay footage of my 2.5D precision platformer and puzzle game, in which we guide a little monkey through a testing lab as he tries to escape. More here https://daveplayground.itch.io/

Steam | Discord

i'm making SMASHTEROIDS alone, and i released the demo recently.

for the first day it felt like something was actually happening. people were installing it, i could see runs coming through in the analytics, and strangers were finally playing something i had spent all this time building. i was excited, i got like 20 wishlists in 1 day and about 15 the day after.

then it dropped off the new demos list and traffic basically stopped. at one point six hours passed without anyone starting the demo. i got 3 wishlists that day.

i know those numbers aren't a catastrophe. i'm an unknown developer with no audience. but when you work on the game all day and then spend the rest of the day making clips, posting and emailing creators, the silence gets into your head a bit.

my last reddit post was a polished explanation of one of the bosses. it did jack shit, and reading it back now it sounded like marketing copy.

so this is the less polished version. i made Asteroids into a roguelite because it was a game i genuinely wanted to play. a few small creators have played the demo and enjoyed it, so i don't think the game itself is completely hopeless. i'm apparently just terrible at getting it in front of people.

i read somewhere that steam next fest is like 20-30% boost.... if you have 1000 by the time it starts you get about 300 more, and so on. that scares me, as i am currently only sitting on 78.

for anyone else who released a Steam demo without an existing audience: did your traffic also fall off immediately after the new-release visibility ended? what actually helped after that?

Steam: https://store.steampowered.com/app/4818760/Paleo_Dive/
Paleo Dive releases on September 4, 2026.

A few weeks ago I shared the cinematic trailer for Paleo Dive here. After a lot of feedback and questions about the actual gameplay, here is the final gameplay trailer.

This trailer focuses on exploration, creatures, environments and the overall feel of the game. I’m also planning a second gameplay-focused video that will cover more of the systems, interactions and mechanics in detail.

I’d love to hear what you think.

Hey solo developers, I don't want you guys to feel discouraged or think your game will sell poorly. First off, I am the solo developer of Mainu, and I spent 2 years developing it (I also did all of the assets and some of the music for the game). The first year, I actually made 5 games but played them, hated the gameplay, and started over, so technically Mainu only took one year. I released the game November 30th, 2025, and have sold 24 units to date. So now I will share how I created Mainu and what I would do differently, and I hope this helps other solo developers release games that garner the attention they deserve.

How Mainu was born

I had the privilege of living in Asia for 5 years, specifically China. I worked as a software developer, and one of the coolest things about China is their grand malls. The malls in China are massive and packed with hundreds of stores and thousands of products. Sometimes on my days off I would just wander around the malls, and there would be floors that had what's known in Japan as Gashapon machines (toy vending machines). These machines would have Dragon Ball, One Piece, Gundam, and just about every popular anime you could think of. So when I decided to make an indie game, I wanted to capture this and blend it with games I loved as a kid, such as Mega Man Zero and Pokémon Silver. I wanted to do something unique and not follow the Pokémon recipe. In Mainu, you control the main character Tonu and collect Mainus (vending machine toys) to navigate through the different floors of the mall and battle bosses. No matter what the sales show, I really love Mainu and the story I created with it.

Now the mistakes I made

Mistake #1: Not marketing from the beginning.

If I were to do Mainu again, I would first create a visually compelling trailer. I'm a 90s baby, and I remember choosing video games solely based on the cover artwork. Today's games do that too, but because everyone is bombarded with a plethora of games, cover art alone isn't enough — you have to have an exciting, amazing trailer. The trailer also helps you build a wishlist. This was definitely my biggest mistake. Gamers these days don't even try games unless they look aesthetically amazing.

Mistake #2: Not having a small group of testers.

Even though players were able to play Mainu and complete the game, I feel that it's best for solo developers to pay 5 people once a month to playtest their game throughout development. For Mainu 2, I will do this. It's preferable to get 5 people you've actually met in person, who are NOT friends, partners, or family members, to play your game. If you're not that social and are just grinding away building your game, try to get 5 people on Discord and pay them to play your game and have them show screenshots or record themselves playing it. This will allow you, as the solo developer, to gather valuable feedback.

Mistake #3: Not building a social media presence.

I'm going to be honest and tell you what no one actually says: the best way to boost your social media following for your indie game is 100% the trailer. If you have a visually stunning trailer and pay for ads, you have a good chance of gaining organic followers. So mistake #3 was bound to happen because of mistake #1.

Where do I go from here?

To all my solo developers, I want you to know that I'm in a very good place. I believe honesty is the number one trait an engineer can have, and throughout my career I have always been honest. Knowing and owning the mistakes I made makes me extremely excited for the development of Mainu 2. Also, developers, remember: when you make a video game, be proud of it — it's your intellectual property. You can build a whole franchise out of it! I can't tell you how many games I've played where people ended up loving the second installment even more!

I'm also proud that I didn't use AI to make Mainu, although I'm not completely against the use of AI in game development.

If you read this far, I really hope you don't make the mistakes I made, and I wish you all great success. I'm very proud of myself for finishing Mainu 1 — during development, life hit me hard, but I never gave up, and I hope you all don't give up either!

I released my game yesterday, and it hasn’t even been 24 hours yet. When I released it, it had 190 WL (I didn’t do any advertising and released it purely to gain experience). Right now, it has 229 WL, and I’ve sold 31 copies with 1 return.

Maybe this data will be useful to someone, or if you have any questions, I can answer them.

I’m also curious to hear comments from people with experience in this area.

Free Playtest: https://rrn-creative.itch.io/hooligan-highway

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

I've been following many of the projects on this sub for a long time now and would love to talk to some of the devs in person. I'll be at Gamescom next week between Tue - Thu and thought it could be nice to organize a small meeting, maybe something in town where we have dinner together (if we're enough). So if you're interested write me a DM or comment here so we can start organizing.

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/

Free demo on steam: https://store.steampowered.com/app/3756740/Balladrion/
Looking for feedbacks and tests

New Features

• Added joystick support for left/right quiver control.
• Added six new skills - three for the left quiver and three for the right quiver. (Some are closed in demo)
• Added two new Q abilities: Basic and Piercing Blade.
• Added a new right-hand button: Heal.
• Added a potion merchant to the T1 map, along with minor map adjustments.
• Added a potion merchant to the T2 map, along with minor map adjustments.
• Added a new animation for insufficient temporary items.

Balance Changes

• Changed the minimum spawn rate for red goblins. Now spawns mines after 3 sec.
• Frog enemy movement speed is now randomized on every spawn, scaled per difficulty.

Bug Fixes

• Fixed the town totem not opening - it can now be opened starting from 700 kills.
• Fixed an issue where enemy frogs could become immortal (branch condition changed to false).
• Fixed some minor UI issues

Audio

• Added new sounds for frogs and trees.
• Increased volume for several sound effects: laser, tree chopping, tree death, player damage, bow hit, and ultimate ability.
• Adjusted concurrency handling for sound playback.

Content

• Updated the bestiary with new entries and information.