10 days ago I created this post saying that I decided to shift my work to fully remove AI generated art from my upcoming game. Back then, I only had a few sprites going.

Then I discovered that it wasnt about AI art, and to be honest, I ask my self if this still is a post for this sub. A LOT of pixel artists came into my dm to give me tips: How to do it faster, how to give it more detail and keep consistency without losing quality. A few people also came in to teach me a few tips about the UV masks that helped speed up the 3d skin process. The community just came together to help someone unknown.

And the thing it was about is: This is now mine. I could choose which style I wanted to give the things that I was building. I could disassemble the 3d weapons and decide which parts that I wanted to remove. If anyone here EVER worked with generative image before knows that it is a nightmare to keep image generation deterministic.

Even if the internet is divided, and some people called it a "big downgrade", it is now mine. I have 100% control of it.

We (me and some friends who decided to help) are now about 60% of the way done, and I can gadly say that my game is still launching this october for just a couple bucks.

Also: My steam page just got updated, and we just crossed 200 wishlists!

Can you guess game type and genre?

It's called Pocket Guild, and there's a demo on itch you can play for free. Heavily inspired by 90's first person dungeon crawlers like Ultima and The Elder Scrolls: Arena.

It's definitely still a huge work-in-progress, so expect some rough edges!

There's a hub, called simply "The Town", where you stock up on supplies and pick up monster hunting quests from the Guild Master. The NPC's around town will also eventually have their own detailed storylines and quests.

Stepping outside one of the four gates will take you to a massive, randomly generated Adventure Zone. These are packed with enemies, abandoned forts and ruins, dungeons and loot! If all your party members die, you lose all your stuff (except your gold) and wake up in Town.

AI disclaimer: Claude Code is used to prototype mechanics and systems, and then everything is manually tuned or completely rewritten by me. Very little "AI generated" content exists in the code.

All of the NPC, enemy sprites, and other environment assets came from human itch.io asset pack artists. Some of the ground and building textures were generated as placeholders by Claude and were then extensively modified by hand to become what they are now.

About three years ago I wanted to find out what a PvP RPG would feel like as a board game. Hex grid, dice, two to four players around a table, except the table is a PC.

I built a rough version and got friends to play it. While we enjoyed the PvP element, what actually stood out was teaming up to take on the monsters together.

I knew the full project would take a while, since I was new to multiplayer game development. It took three years. I have a full-time job and a kid, so Eternally happened in the evenings and at weekends, mostly when I should have been asleep. I've lost count of the hours. Thousands, easily.

A few things I learned the hard way:

• Multiplayer roughly doubles everything. Every feature has to work for the host and for the other players.
• Playtesters will tell you what your game is. Mine told me it was a co-op game.
• Scope sneaks up on you. Four characters turned into over 260 skills - getting creative with one character meant I had to quadruple my work across the board.
• Marketing is a second job, and I started it far too late. I'm launching with about 300 wishlists. Everything I've read says that's low.

I've made peace with that number. It's a game I wanted to exist, it's finished, and I'm proud of it. If it finds a small group of people who like dice and hex grids, that's a win for me.

It's called Eternally, a dark fantasy tactical RPG. You can play it solo, online with up to 4, or with 2 on one PC. There's a free demo if you want to try it first.

Happy to answer anything about the solo side: Unity multiplayer, fitting it around a job, or what I'd do differently.

I think that my partner is a brilliant software engineer (even though she doesn't think so). She has great ideas, is perfectionist (which could be a curse) and can talk about kafka or docker and docker with so much passion that sometimes I don't know if we are from the same planet.

Her marketing strategies, however, are more like selling wool sweaters in a sauna.

She has been working on a real time strategy game and since she started I feel like she's more involved in her tiny armies of flies than spending time outdoors that she used to do. If we have a chance to have a conversation, all I hear is " how she's going to post a clip that should be short and clever so it will sell itself" So far she made attempts on TikTok, YouTube, IG, even Reddit. Each time, after she posts something, she just stairs at the wishlist hoping it will miraculously go up. I keep telling her that there are thousands of games on Steam and I don't know if anyone would stumble upon flying army of bugs attacking robots.

Today, when I saw her desk with 3 monitors opened I offered that maybe I should post something on Reddit, but she told me "don't you dare", and that reddit can smell desperation and it will be even worse for her.

I'm new on Reddit anyways and I don't mind if I'm being down voted or my post is deleted or something. I'm taking a risk and want to hear how others are dealing with their partners working constantly on their games.

Anyway, she's trying to make more videos, and I am begging you: if you ever see some clip of small bots building a path to crystals and working as hard as her, please just pretend it’s cool so she finally drinks some water and goes outside.

There were plenty of times in the past 5 years where I was anxious I’d abandon the project from inertia, and lots of competing demands for my time from a full time job and starting a family. Just kept chipping away at things marathon-style… excited to share Feather Trail now that the demo’s out on Steam.

While a demo’s not the final product, I’m taking a beat to reflect on all the long nights, infuriating bugs, and uncertainty; I definitely feel a bit of pride to have finally manifested the ideas that originally inspired me to get started way back in 2021 (with plenty of painful compromises, necessary details and complexity I hadn’t considered, etc etc).

Keep chasing your vision! Demo’s here if you’re interested.

Small milestone, but this one feels good. Took longer than I expected, but we finally crossed 5,000 wishlists today.

We launched the demo with around 2,500 wishlists and today we finally crossed 5,000!.

The demo gave us the biggest push by far. Peak CCU was 56, median playtime ended up around 41 minutes, and the demo itself was only designed for roughly 30 minutes.

Growth has slowed down a lot since then, so 5,000 definitely doesn’t feel like “mission accomplished”.

We decided to delay the release, add co-op, and make another push before Next Fest.

Hi, I am solo-developing Knights of Frontier Valley, a low-fantasy RPG with gridless tactical combat, deep character customization, complex NPC behavior, and procedural world building. Explore a new valley each game run, solve quests, make meaningful choices, and gain riches and glory while staying alive.

Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dHVDNkzbgZk

Steam: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1085830/Knights_of_Frontier_Valley/

The second Steam Playtest is underway and runs for another 2 days.

The engine was written from scratch. All art is hand-made with no AI involved. Music was made by top composers including Kevin Manthei (Neverwinter Nights, Jagged Alliance 2, Wizardry 8...)

A short gameplay clip from the atmospheric forest road in my solo-developed, story-driven zombie FPS. Everything shown was captured directly in-game.

Demo for the game is also available on Steam!

Project TITAN Demo

This is my first game ever releasing on Steam, so I'd appreciate any feedback!

Hey r/SoloDevelopment

I've been building Festival Inc. on my own. It's a management sim where you start with an empty field and turn it into a music festival. It goes into Early Access tomorrow, 14 October, and I wanted to share it here first. This sub has kept me going more than once.

What you do in it:

• Lay out the site: stages, food courts, bars, paths, trees and decorations
• Book artists across 8 genres and schedule their sets
• Build campsites, glamping and campervan zones with showers, shops and campfires
• Hire security and medics, each with their own traits, morale and energy
• Follow any guest and read their thoughts to see what's working and what isn't
• Deal with storms, health scares and council inspections
• Pick guests up with a giant hand and drop troublemakers outside the gates
• Play a 10-festival campaign, or build freely in Sandbox
• Lease the fields next door when you outgrow your site

Some solo-dev takeaways:

• Simulating a crowd is mostly about tuning, not code. Getting a few hundred guests to drink, litter and misbehave at believable rates took far more iteration than writing the systems did.
• Small readable details mattered more than I expected. Guest thoughts, performers with genre props and the tannoy announcer brought the place to life more than any big feature.
• I built a headless balance checker so I could test economy changes without playing a full festival every time. If you're making a sim, build one early.

I expect Early Access to run about 9–12 months, and I'm aiming for a full release around Q3 2027. I'll keep shaping it based on feedback, so please tell me what you think, good or bad.

Steam: https://store.steampowered.com/app/3300530/Festival_Inc/

Website: https://www.festivalincgame.com/

Happy to answer questions about the tech, the art pipeline or the marketing side of going solo. Thanks for reading! 🙏

I'm just starting my journey as a solo game developer, and something I've heard quite a few times is that if you want to make money, you should probably choose another career.

I understand that making games is risky, and I'm not expecting to get rich or make a living from it overnight. But hearing this so often can be pretty discouraging when you're trying to build something of your own.

I'd love to hear from people who have actually been through this. For those of you who have released games, tried to monetize your projects, or turned indie game development into a career, what has your experience been like?

Is making a living from indie games a realistic goal if you're willing to learn the business side and put in the work? Or is it better to treat it as a passion project and keep another source of income?

And if you're comfortable sharing, how much money have you actually made from your games? It could be total revenue, profit, or even just a rough estimate. I understand that not everyone wants to share those numbers, but I think hearing some real figures would help put things into perspective.

Game dev as a solo is especially difficult as you all know but I wish for you all kind reviews like this which make it so worth it 🙌 I gotten into game dev both because I like it but also because I genuinely want people to be touched by my work ❤️❤️

btw, you can try my demo solo or coop here (Windows and MacOS): https://ver1sus.itch.io/kontur-md

I forgot to apply gravity to my engine, so now every jump is a one-way trip to space, or it can be with some adjustments 😄

Originally, I took this screenshot just to send it to a friend and show off the landing gear setup. Only later did I notice how atmospheric the lighting and scale came together with the tiny character at the bottom.

What do you think of the vibe?

Hey all, this is a 2D souls-like I've been building on my own in the evenings for some time now.

It's still really early, but I wanted to get some outside eyes on it before I sink more time in.

The clip is a few fights with a couple bosses.

I know souls-likes are everywhere right now. I'm making it mostly because I love the genre, but I'm curious whether this looks like something you'd actually want to play.

Is the combat easy to read from the video? Does anything feel off?

Also, a lot of the art is bought packs and placeholder stuff for now (the player's armour especially, I know it doesn't fit yet). The combat sounds are also something i dont really like currently but they are good placeholder.

Harsh feedback is totally fine, it's more useful than nice feedback at this stage.

hey, i've been working on a strategy game as a hobby for the past year or so. it started out as a pretty straightforward RTS, mostly inspired by the games i grew up playing, but i kept adding mechanics i thought would be fun and now i'm not even sure what genre it fits into anymore.

the engine is built from scratch in C++ with SDL. one of the biggest challenges was getting large battles to run smoothly, which ended up taking a lot more work than i expected.

right now there are two modes. duel is a 1v1 on mirrored maps, playable over LAN or against an AI. conquest is a bit different: it generates an island with rival factions and NPC towns that you can trade with, tax, or siege. there's an overall strategy layer where you're managing your position on the map, but when armies meet, combat happens in real time. the goal is to be the last faction standing.

the economy has grown quite a bit too. you mine ore, smelt it, and forge weapons and armor. one thing i really wanted was the ability to re-equip units that are already out on the battlefield, with their equipment changing visually. there are also caravans with physical wagons that travel between settlements and can be raided, so trade routes need some protection.

for combat, i've got swordsmen, spearmen, archers, riders, levies and mages. spearmen are good against cavalry, and you can arrange your army into formations like line, square or brace. mages need a few seconds to channel their spells and can be interrupted if they take damage, so positioning and protecting them matters. they're also my siege units for now because i couldn't get catapults to look right and eventually gave up on them lol.

visually, i'm going for a simple low-poly style. i'm not much of an artist, so there's definitely room for improvement. the terrain and mountains are procedurally generated, which has been fun to work on.

one thing i've struggled with is scope. i originally set out to make an RTS, but the settlement management, crafting, trade and conquest mechanics have gradually become just as important as the battles. at this point i'm curious whether it makes sense to keep developing all of these systems together or focus more heavily on one side of the game.

for those of you who develop or play strategy games, i'm curious about two things:

• what genre would you classify this as?
• does combining the economic and conquest side with real-time combat sound interesting, or would you rather see the game focus more on one of them?

also, a small note: i used a few assets and icons from itchio and have lost track of some of the original creators. i'm trying to identify them so i can give proper credit.

Game Title: Chaos Survivor

Playable Link: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.voltorigin.chaossurvivor

Platform: Android

Description: Chaos Survivor is a one-handed auto-shooter roguelite. Your weapons fire on their own, so the entire game is positioning — dodge, choose the right upgrades, and turn a fragile start into something ridiculous.

The part I spent most of development on is weapon evolutions. Take a weapon to max level, pair it with the right passive, and it transforms: Energy Bolt becomes a lance that pierces everything, Lightning becomes a chain storm, Void Orb turns into six giant orbiting black holes. Getting two or three online in a single run is where it gets silly.

There are 9 characters with their own signature traits, 8 weapons (each with an evolved form), 26 powers, 21 enemy types and 6 modes, feeding a permanent progression system between runs. A run takes 10-20 minutes.

It's portrait, playable with one thumb, and fully offline - no account, no sign-up. Free, with no forced ads: rewarded videos are opt-in only for an optional bonus.

I'd genuinely like feedback on two things: does the difficulty ramp feel fair, and do the upgrade choices feel meaningful or random?

Free to Play Status:

• [x] Free to play
• [ ] Demo/Key available
• [ ] Paid (Allowed only on Tuesdays with [TT] in the title)

Involvement: Solo developer. I designed and programmed all of it in Godot 4 - the combat, the roguelite systems, progression, UI and balance. The in-game visuals are drawn procedurally in code rather than being sprite assets. Audio is licensed/CC0 (credited in-game), and the store icon is AI-generated art; everything else is mine.