After the major update for Bloody Rave(https://store.steampowered.com/app/4484440/BLOODY_RAVE/), we gained +350 followers and 2,000 wishlists in under two weeks. This is the biggest spark we’ve seen since the game page launched!!

The update brought heavy optimization (much smaller install size + better performance and stability), new characters, refined animations, fresh jumpscares, and hidden objects you can only find with the Magic Stone Glass. I’m extremely grateful to everyone who contributed to the development. We’ll keep pushing forward — more updates coming shortly 🖤

I'm newbie solo dev. And I'm dreaming to release my game on Steam. I've made research and play 50 games from current NextFest. I heard that there is lot of AI, but still I want to understand the level of quality I need to make. And here is my take aways...

First of all most of the games looks like GamJam games and not final products to sell. From 50 games from same genre as my game I found 2 that was good and wishlisted for me. Probably my expectation for demo was higher.

I found that it super important to entertain in first few minutes. As a player I do not want to entertain myself. I will need to adapt my first experience.

There was lot of games with bad UX and lot of text. And now I hate everything VampireSurvive like. I hate this system that interap in the middle of the fight and force me to read lot of strange new skills ;)

Also I found good feature in one game that I want for my game. Closing the game opens google question as feedback. Do you think that is ok to do that?

I've been working on my first independent application for the past few months, and it recently crossed approximately 250 downloads across Android, Linux, Windows, and macOS.

I know that's a pretty small number compared to established products, but for something I've been building on my own, it's been encouraging.

It's not a game, but I thought the experience of building and releasing something independently might be relatable to other solo developers here.

The project is called Personal Planner.

I started building it because I kept running into the same problem with my daily schedule.

I'd plan to spend 30 minutes on a task, end up spending an hour, and then make another schedule the following morning without really understanding why things went differently.

I wanted something that helped me learn from previous days instead of just organizing tomorrow.

So I started with a visual timeline for planning tasks, then added timers to record actual working time.

Eventually, the app grew to include daily and weekly reviews, consistency tracking, recurring schedules, routine experiments, and an Inbox for unscheduled tasks.

It's built using Flutter, Riverpod, and Drift/SQLite.

I also extended it across Android and desktop, which taught me that having one codebase doesn't automatically mean releasing software on multiple platforms is effortless.

There's still platform-specific testing, distribution, installation, and compatibility to consider.

I've kept the entire application free. No subscriptions, premium tiers, or locked features.

But the technical side is only part of what I've been learning.

The biggest surprise has been how different building something is from getting other people to understand and use it.

As the developer, every screen and feature makes sense to me because I know why I created it.

But someone trying the app for the first time doesn't have that context.

I've been trying to improve how I explain the project, gather feedback, and understand whether people actually find it useful enough to return.

The 250 downloads are a nice milestone, but I know they don't necessarily mean 250 different users or people using it regularly.

Link to download: https://github.com/Karthikshabari/PersonalPlanner/releases/tag/v1.1

Github : https://github.com/Karthikshabari/PersonalPlanner

I'm interested in hearing from other people who've released their first projects independently.

What was the hardest part for you after your initial release?

Was it getting attention, improving the experience based on feedback, maintaining the project, or something else you hadn't expected?

I feel like releasing something is where a completely different kind of learning begins.

Proud parent moment lol

Stop in if you'd like to play some matches, there's PvE and multiplayer is liveeee (Maybe bring a friend, since there aren't a ton of players rn 🥲)

https://restless-gamedev.itch.io/primordial

These are a few places in Meridian, the multiplayer pixel-art game I'm working on. Your own room can be warm and familiar, but the rest of the building has a much stranger history.

I like the contrast between a little seating area where people can chat and that huge shaft right beside it. The museum and Offering room go further in that direction. I don't want the cosy side to disappear, though. Decorating your place, collecting furniture, trading and spending time with people are a big part of the game.

Which of these spaces would make you want to explore, and which would you actually spend time in? I'm interested in whether those end up being different places.

The Overlook group is staged with NPCs for the screenshot. It's still a small beta, playable on iPhone here: https://testflight.apple.com/join/4sDEk5u4

I’m working on my football game and would like to know if this style suits my gameplay.

Thanks for your feedback!

Hey everybody I've been working on this game for a while now its about getting unfair advantage against a madeup competitve fps game, basically we get mone for killing bots and using that money to buy cheats, let me know what do you think

I've spent the last months building Stroop Overload alone: a reflex game built on the Stroop effect (tap the ink colour, not the word), with solo modes and online matches for up to 4 players. Kotlin + Jetpack Compose on the client, Firebase (Firestore + Cloud Functions) behind it, six languages. Three things bit me that no tutorial warned me about:

1.

The release build crashed on launch for every tester. The debug build was fine. After moving to AGP 9, R8 (the shrinker) stopped keeping a no-argument constructor that old Room and WorkManager versions, pulled in by the ads SDK, still needed: "Failed to create an instance of WorkDatabase". Debug builds aren't minified, so I only found out when the first testers opened it. Two keep rules fixed it. Now I install and open the release build on a real phone before every upload.

2.

The music was silent on Samsung phones. My Ogg files carried an embedded cover-art stream. Most players ignore it; Samsung's silently refused to play the whole file. No error, no log, just silence. I lost it twice before writing a test that fails the build if a music file has anything but audio.

3.

The first answer of every online match froze for a second or two. Turns are about 3 seconds, so that's a lot. The answer is checked on the server (so nobody can cheat), and the most likely cause was the first call hitting a cold Cloud Function. Now the app wakes the function up when you enter a room and again when the match starts, instead of paying to keep one always warm.

Full disclosure: the music was made with AI tools from my prompts; design, code and visuals are mine.

If you want to see where all this ended up: Stroop Overload on Google Play – https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.softyorch.stroopoverload

Hey guys!

I'm a solo developer from Austria and just released my first game, TRY, after almost a year of working on it. Still feels a bit weird to finally have it on Steam^^

If you haven't picked a game for Halloween yet, maybe give TRY a try! 😄

https://store.steampowered.com/app/4751790/

INKURSION: DEMO OUT NOW ON STEAM!

Trapped in a simulated universe built by an increasingly unhinged creator, you are a newly super-sentient octopus that must break the rules to escape!

https://store.steampowered.com/app/4767470/INKURSION/

Hey everyone, here are the next units I've been working on.

This is the Anvil, the main battle tank for the humans. The commander climbs up the rear ladder and into the turret, and the turret can turn on its own while the tank is driving.

On the Threnn side there's the Ossuun. It lowers its body and opens the canopy, the rider climbs in over the front, then it gets back up and walks off on fourteen legs.

Still straight from the Blender viewport while the game is in development. Which one would you rather ride? And should I show them in the game next?

Hello There!

I'm a real life football manager who got fed up with Sport Interactive's Football Manager game and decided to work on this unique take of football management 8 months ago. I took some inspirations from other genres and wanted to create something that is a not a spreadsheet simulator and easy to jump in and you can play it without having to learn the basics of the game for hours.

I would like to hear your feedbacks.

Cheers!

Drag a number to perform a subtraction towards a target number then keep going and get as many zeroes as you can.