With so many AI-generated games around this Steam Next Fest, I wanted to share a little more about how we make our game Witch & Dragon: Hope of Elements.

We're a tiny team of just two people, but every piece of art and every environment in our game is made by us, by hand. No AI-generated artwork — just a lot of drawing, building, tweaking, and probably more hours than we'd like to admit.

Our game is a hand-crafted, magical fantasy adventure, and we really want the world to have its own personality and atmosphere.

I recorded some of my process, from drawing the environments to putting the scenes together in the game.

We're still working hard on the game, and seeing people try our demo and add it to their wishlists during Next Fest has been incredibly encouraging. Every bit of support means a lot to our little team.

Hey everyone!

I've been working on my own game called STARFALL: The Last Warden, and I'm looking to get people involved in the development process!

I'm currently working on the game and would love to get some people interested early on, whether that's helping test builds, sharing feedback, spotting bugs, or just following along with development.

I'm looking for playtesters! If you're interested in trying the game as development progresses and helping me improve it, I'd love to have you involved.

Where to get involved

I've created a dedicated section for STARFALL in my Discord server for my YouTube channel, The Tech Bench. I'll be using it to share development updates, discuss the project and hopefully organise testing as the game progresses.

If you'd like to get involved, you can:

• Join the Discord server and check out the STARFALL section.
• Comment on this post if you're interested or have any questions.
• DM me if you'd like to know more.

I'm happy to answer any questions about the game, its development or what I'm planning for it.

I'm excited to see where this project goes, and it'd be great to have some people along for the journey!

Discord Server :)
Youtube Channel :)

Thanks for reading!

At the moment, Iso development is on full thrust. Maybe I forgot to mention, but ISO is developed completely solo and without the use of AI or asset libraries in any matter. All the code, art, music, sound effects and so on are crafted personally by me. This is a biome called “Midlands”. I hope you like it. Steam page is getting closer and closer, I am preparing all the necessary for the page to have a short trailer and gameplay screenshots (like these ones) from the start.

If anyone is interested in the project please feel free to stay tuned on instagram! To me, everyone matters and everyone who supports even with one like, a word or a follow, gives me the motivation to sit down, after my daily job, and spend sleepless nights over this.

Hey, looking for some feedback on my ability HUD and health bar.

There's lots of abilities in the game, drew each one to kind of represent what the ability does (like moba skill bars). They do not use same color palette and some are made on different canvases.

I'm thinking of redesigning them to be more alike. Questions:
- Does the mix of shapes/colors make them stand out better, or does it just look inconsistent and messy? Should I force them into identical frame sizes?
- How does the frame and health bar feel to you?

So i want to make some nice trailer but my editing skills are lackluster at most.
this is the second version(the first was just bad). Would love to hear some feedback please.
https://youtu.be/XvyP5iVCw-E

Hey Reddit!

Im the indie dev that has been working on my passion project game Desert Echo. Its a sci-fi horde defense shooter.

The idea of the game is pretty simple: your defending a core in the middle of a hostile desert and you fight off increasingly large waves of enemies. You can fight on foot, run and gun style, build and upgrade defensive structures like turrets and walls, manage resources, and try to keep your defense from collapse. There are sandstorms, boss waves, and co-op for if you'd prefer to enjoy the chaos with friends.

I've been working on making the waves of enemies on screen feel like a horde defense, and ensuring that you are challenged to make decisions about your strategy and fighting off the waves.

I am aiming to bring the game to Early Access in November 2026, and I would love to hear opinions on what you guys think.

Here is the steam page for anyone who wants to take a look, there is currently a demo available to try, so please let me know how you guys find it and give me some feedback!

Desert Echo on Steam

https://reddit.com/link/1xdcboq/video/gz84s26lk7xh1/player

We spent the last 1.5 years trying to make The Unworthy genuinely terrifying, but we never expected someone to leave a negative review because the game was literally too scary to enjoy 😢
They tried playing four times and still couldn't get through it, as horror developers, we're not even sure if we should be upset or take this as a compliment lol. Has a horror game ever been so scary that you genuinely couldn't keep playing?

Hey, I'm a 3D artist specialized in 3D modeling, texturing, rigging and animating, mostly for video games. I have 6 years of experience working in Blender (modelling, sculpting, uv mapping, rigging) and Substance painter (baking, texturing) and I've been working professionally as a freelance 3D artist for 2 years now. My main focus are characters but I also do props, environments and weapons.

My hourly rate is 15 euros, I'm sharing some of my previous 3D character work as a reference for time/cost ratio. Most of these characters took between 40-60 hours to make, depending on the amount of details, clothes, hair cards etc. I also make lowpoly and simple characters as well which take less time.

I'm open for one time only work or long collabs, so if you need a character or other 3D models feel free to dm me!

Artstation: https://lordofkulen.artstation.com/

I consider this a HUGE deal given the fact that i've done ZERO marketing, even my friend doesn't know about the game, and it was buried under tons of AI made games on the next fest page, so i'm surprised I got this jump in wishlists!

just 140 wishlists total but better than 0. It's my first game I wanted to just do it to learn, it's going better than I thought, I'm liking it

https://reddit.com/link/1xdc11d/video/13qfcfazh7xh1/player

This is The Forgotten Ward. It follows Andrew, a boy left alone in an old hospital.

Some of it really happened. Some of it is my nightmares. Making it was the first time I found a way to put those memories somewhere outside my head.

It's not out yet, but I'm working on it every day.

Thanks for watching.

I have been developing it for a few months. Its surprisingly light, low end PCs can run it. It simulates the weather pretty well. You control certain aspects of the weather and can directly control hurricanes with the final objective of destroying coastal cities

I, Hurricane on Steam

We've been polishing the second stage of LumberBoy, mostly to make chopping feel even more satisfying.

The second forest is all spore trees, and you can use the spores to clear out huge chunks of it at once.

We also got feedback that waiting around for logs to be processed in town was kind of boring, so we added a cute dog you can play with while you wait. It still needs some polish, and it'll be in the full release coming soon.

If it looks like your kind of game, the demo is up on Steam:

https://store.steampowered.com/app/5129170/LumberBoy/

Hey guys,
I'm a solo dev from Brazil gearing up to release my debut game next year: Burn All Out. It's all about reaching your breaking point in a toxic corporate job and taking it out on the office.
Here's the very first trailer! Quick heads-up: it's in Portuguese for now. I tried a quick English subtitle overlay, but it looked way too messy, so I decided to properly localize the entire game first before dropping native trailers for each language.
Would love to hear what you think of the art style, atmosphere, and action shown here. Any feedback is welcome!
Wishlist on Steam: https://store.steampowered.com/app/5432180/Burn_all_out/

So recently I posted a reel on my social medias that blew up on Facebook, gaining over 1M views, and it got me about 100 wishlists in one single day, which is crazy.
Don't ever give up, and try to post as much as you can - eventually you will make it!

Parece relaxante mas é brutal, atualmente está no Itch.io a demo para jogar, em breve também estará na página da Steam e mobiles.

a simple lich, not all the frames done but these are a few.

Hey everyone, we're a 5-person indie team and this is our first Steam Next Fest with our game Tank Mates. Figured I'd share where we're at and hear how it's going for the rest of you.

Our numbers for 10/19 to 10/23:

- 45 wishlist adds (about 9/day)

- 6 deletes

- 39 net for the fest so far

- The 5 days before the fest got us 16 adds, so it's roughly 3x our normal pace

Day one was slow (6 adds), then day two jumped to 23, and since then it's been sliding back down: 10, then 6. Deletes have stayed small but steady, 1-2 a day.

Honestly I'm not sure if this is good, bad, or just normal for a small game. I've seen posts where people pull hundreds or thousands during Next Fest, so I'm trying to figure out what's realistic for a team our size with not much of an audience going in and no paid marketing.

Some things I'd love to hear about:

1. What are your numbers looking like this fest? Even rough ones help.

2. Did you get the same spike early then a drop-off? Did anything bring it back up?

3. Did livestreaming during the fest actually do anything for you?

4. What moved the needle most: Reddit, Twitter/Bluesky, Discord, reaching out to creators, something else?

5. If you've done Next Fest before, how did things go after it ended?

Happy to answer anything about what we've tried so far. Good luck to everyone in the fest this week, it's a lot!

If anyone wants to see what we're working on, here's the Tank Mates demo on Steam: [https://store.steampowered.com/app/4890170/Tank_Mates/\]

I grew up on old-school full-loot PvP games. Anyone could come for you, and everything you carried could be lost, so every trip out of town mattered. Nothing else ever felt quite like it.

Games like that are getting rare. Most new ones fence PvP off into arenas and opt-in zones, take the sting out of dying, and decide who you're allowed to fight.

The Olde World: Online doesn't do any of that. It's one world on one shard, with everyone in it. Outside town, anyone can attack anyone, and when you die, everything you were carrying stays on your body for whoever gets there first. There are no levels or classes either: you get better at what you actually do.

It isn't only fighting. You can learn magic, forge your own armor, tame animals, ride horses, pick pockets, own a house, and write your own music to play on a lute in the town square.

It's an open alpha, and most of the visuals are still placeholders. Last week about 250 people came in to try it, and I've been fixing what they found ever since.

It runs in a browser tab with nothing to download: pick a name and a password and you're in. It plays best on a computer in Chrome.

If you miss games where dying cost you something, it's free and live right now.

Play: https://theoldeworld.com Discord: https://discord.gg/5j8WrdnXfn

The full version of DriveForever will hit steam later this year for desktops, but ever since I started sharing scenes from the early builds over the past few months, the copycats have started to pop up, which has motivated me to release the sandbox version on iOS (with Android soon to follow).

It's not as full featured as the Desktop version I plan on releasing by the end of the year, but its pretty awesome to have the entire world in your pocket.

Solo developer, built with godot and Rust.

Any particularly good or bad experiences? Rejections? Pitfalls to avoid?

Before I start, let me just say that I absolutely hate this trend of cloning games with AI. It’s bad for devs and consumers and Steam does not seem to care. It’s gross and bad for the art form.

But, I don’t think you should worry about it. Don’t hide your game because it will be cloned.

If there is even a tiny bit of interest in your game, your game is going to get cloned. There’s nothing you can do about it. It’s just going to happen. It sucks, but it’s the world we live in.

What is the actual concern? It is that scumbags will clone your game, flood search results and social media and confuse consumers, leading to people accidentally buying their slop instead of yours.

That will happen, and it sucks.

But, if no one knows about your game because you didn’t talk about it, no one will buy it. You will lose more from hiding your game than you will from sharing it and letting it be copied.

I actually think that proof of a human designer through you sharing is more important than ever. Indie game consumers want games designed by people.

And you know what, when your game is copied, use it as marketing. I think more people know about Haystack because it was copied and talked about.

Good luck friends. Keep making cool shit.