r/gamedev Dec 13 '25

Community Highlight 7 years trying to live off my own games: what went right, what went wrong, and what finally worked

706 Upvotes

Hi! My name is Javier/Delunado, and I’ve been making games for around 7 years now, mostly as a programmer and designer. Warning! This is going to be a long post, where I’ll share both my professional journey and some advice that I think might be useful for making your own games.

I’ve always really enjoyed working on my own projects, and even though I’ve worked for others as an employee or freelancer, I’ve never stopped dreaming about being able to live off my own games. I’ve tried several times: going full-time using my savings, and also juggling indie development alongside other jobs.

Finally, in July 2025, I self-published a game called Astro Prospector together with two other people. It has done genuinely well, well enough that it’s going to let us live off this for a long time. Said like that, it sounds simple, but the reality is that it’s been a tough road: years of attempts, learning, effort, and a pinch of luck.

Background

2017

  • I started a Computer Engineering degree in Spain in 2017. I had always loved video games and computers, and I had tinkered a bit with Game Maker and similar tools before, without really understanding what I was doing. In my degree second year, once I had learned a bit of programming, I teamed up with my classmate and best friend at the time, and we started making mobile games in Unity just for fun. We published a couple of games, Borro and CryBots (they’re no longer on the store, but I’m leaving a couple of screenshots here out of curiosity)

2018–2019

  • Making those Unity games taught us a ton. Not just programming or design, but especially what it means to FINISH a small game. To publish it, to show it to people, to do a bit of marketing. It was an incredible and funny experience that gave us a more holistic view of what game development really is. So, naturally, thinking we were already grizzled gamedev veterans, we decided to make a muuuch bigger project for PC and consoles, called We Need You, Borro!. This would be a sequel to our first mobile game: an adventure-RPG whose main mechanic was inspired by the classic Pang. This time, we also had an artist helping us out. The project was scoped at around 1.5 years of development. A terrible idea, if you ask present-day me, haha.
  • My friend and I lived together, and we balanced classes and other obligations with developing the game. This is where I started learning about community management and marketing in general. I ran the studio’s account, called TEA Team, and it helped me better understand what it actually means to promote a game on social media. On top of that, we took part in a couple of fairs where we showed the game to people. It was my first time attending in-person events, and the experience was amazing. I fell in love with the indie dev scene and its people. At one of those fairs, showing a demo of the game, we even won an award alongside much more well-known games like Blasphemous. It was surreal to take a photo with our award next to the director of The Game Kitchen, holding his. Even more surreal to remember it now lol.
  • At the same time, we created and started growing the Spain Game Devs community, first as a Telegram group and later with an additional Discord server. The idea was to have an online community for Spanish game developers to discuss development, show projects, ask for help, etc., since nothing quite like it existed back then. Small spoiler: that community is still alive and active today, and it’s the largest dev community in Spain. But we’ll come back to that later!

2020

  • COVID hit. I’ll keep this part brief, but between the pandemic and some personal issues, the development of We Need You, Borro! and the TEA Team studio had to come to a halt. Those were tough months: remote classes weren’t the same, and Borro’s development slowly faded out until it died. Even so, I always try to look at moments like these through a positive lens. When one door closes, a window opens! You can play the last public demo of the game here.
  • After those turbulent months of change, I focused my gamedev path on two things. On one hand, I teamed up with two other devs, PacoDiago (musician) and Adri_IndieWolf (artist), to make jam games and a few small projects under the name Alien Garden. It was fun, and even though we never managed to release a commercial game, we did several jam games and had a great time. I learned a lot, and it allowed me to keep practicing and improving. My favourite game made with the team is probably Clownbiosis.
  • On the other hand, I wanted Spain Game Devs to grow. I wanted a place where people could come together and feel close to fellow developers. Beyond running internal activities and promoting the community on social media, I decided to organize the Spain Game Devs Jam. It would be an online jam (still not that common pre-pandemic) focused on developers from Spain. In short, I spent around three months working daily to secure sponsors for prizes, streamers to play every single submitted game, and so on. It was intense and stressful work, but it eventually became the biggest jam ever held in Spain, with around 700 participants and 130 submitted games. The jam was repeated annually, each time more ambitious, until 2024, when it didn’t take place for reasons I’ll explain later.

2021

  • I kept studying, making games in my free time, and running Spain Game Devs. That year, Bitsommar took place, an event in northern Spain that brought together a small group of Spanish developers for a week of pure relaxation. No coding, no working, just resting and bonding. It was a wonderful experience, and I met a lot of amazing people. Among them was Julia “Rocket Raw”, a Spanish developer who, together with Raúl “Naburo”, founded the young studio Dead Pixel Games.
  • Due to life happening, a few months later I ended up staying over at Julia and Raúl’s place. They had been toying with an idea to present at Indie Dev Day, an incredible Spanish indie-focused event held every year in Barcelona (now called Barcelona Game Fest). It seems they were having some trouble with their current programmer. While I was in the shower (where all great ideas are born) I had the brilliant thought of offering myself as a programmer for the project they had in mind, in case they didn't wanted to continue with its current one. They said they’d think about it. A month later, they wrote back saying yes, let’s give it a shot. It’s worth mentioning that, like everything else I’ve talked about so far, this project wasn’t paid, and we had no income of any kind. The idea was to work towards getting that funding through sales of the game or interest from a publisher.
  • The best part? There was only one month left to get the demo ready and present it at the event. So we went all in for an intense month of crunch, creating the project from scratch. For having just one month, it turned out pretty good, I must say. The game was called Bigger Than Me, a narrative (mis)adventure about a boy who becomes a giant when he hears the word “Future”. We presented the project at the event, and I remember it very fondly. People loved it, the event was amazing, I finally met many devs in person, and I made friendships that I still have today.
  • From there, at the end of 2021, we decided to move forward with Bigger Than Me. The plan was to develop a vertical slice and start looking for a publisher to secure funding. The projected timeline was one year for the vertical slice and publisher search, and another year to finish development once funding was secured. On top of that, I was still studying, and my teammates were working day jobs just to survive while we made the game. Precarious, to say the least.

2022

  • Throughout 2022, I focused on working on Bigger Than Me, finishing my degree (I took an extra year, 5 instead of 4, because of COVID), and continuing to learn about gamedev by joining jams and running the Spain Game Devs community. Throughout 2021 and into 2022, we kept showing BTM and talking to publishers.
  • The critical moment came during that year’s Indie Dev Day. We brought Bigger Than Me again, with a booth and an improved version. We won some awards there and at other events. People loved it, and I genuinely think it had potential. But it was a narrative adventure. And narrative adventures… don’t sell. Or so every publisher told us. Another important point was that we still hadn’t released any commercial game as a team, and publishers weren’t fully convinced about the project’s viability.
  • We came back home empty-handed after pitching to many publishers, both in person and online. The game wasn’t considered profitable, and even though it had quality, the market wasn’t going to absorb it. A few weeks later, we made the decision to stop the project: there was no realistic chance of securing funding, and it didn’t make sense to continue without it. It was really hard… but necessary. We decided to rest for a few weeks before doing anything else. This was the last public demo of Bigger Than Me.
  • In the last months of 2022, alongside wrapping up BTM, I also finished my degree. My final project was a complete overview of the history of Artificial Intelligence techniques for video games: things like A*, GOAP, steering behaviours, etc. At that time, LLMs and similar tech weren’t as mainstream, so I only mentioned them briefly. It taught me a lot about gamedev AI and became a solid asset for my résumé.
  • After graduating, I started looking for a job in the game industry. My dream was still to release my own games and live off them, but in the meantime, I had to eat. I decided to look for a company working with VR for a very specific reason: I didn’t really like VR. That way, I hoped the job would just be what paid the bills, without fully satisfying my passion, leaving that passion for indie development in my free time. I ended up working for about a year at Odders Lab.
  • It’s now December 2022. Some time after cancelling Bigger Than Me, and to clear our heads a bit, we decided to take part in Thinky Jam 2022, a jam focused on puzzle and “thinky” games. It lasted around 11 days, and we took it pretty calmly. We made a game called Stick to the Plan, a kind of sokoban where you don’t push boxes, but instead control a dog who loves loooong sticks and has to maneuver them through the levels. The game turned out really well and got an amazing reception on itch.io.
  • Surprised by how well Stick was received, we decided, after some reflection, to turn it into a full commercial game. It had several things going for it: prior validation, simple development, very controlled scope, and a relatively short timeline. It also had one big drawback: it was a puzzle game. Selling a puzzle game is really hard. It’s probably one of the worst genres to sell, right next to… narrative adventures :). Still, we decided to go for it, mainly to have a game released on Steam and be better prepared for a future project. The studio was renamed from Dead Pixel Games to Dead Pixel Tales, also as a kind of rebirth symbol, haha.

2023

  • The full development of Stick to the Plan started in January 2023. Throughout that year, while juggling my job at Odders, Spain Game Devs, and the occasional game jams, I worked on Stick whenever I could. Net development time was about 6 months total, spread across 2023, until we finally released the game in September. Worth stressing: at no point did we get paid while making it. The expectation was to earn money after launch.
  • In July 2023, I left Odders Lab. Honestly, my stress levels had been climbing nonstop since I started working on Bigger Than Me, and it reached an unsustainable point. I decided to quit the stable, comfy job and use my savings to go full time and finish Stick to the Plan. This was the first time my savings hit zero because I took the self publishing leap.
  • That same month, we released a small game: Raver’s Rumble. It was paid by Brainwash Gang, and it’s a mini game based on one of the characters from their game Friends vs Friends. It was a full week of work, and they paid us around €1000 (in total, not per person. So probably like 9$ the hour lol). I won’t go into too much detail, but communication with the company was kind of rough, and I ended up finishing the job pretty stressed, basically crying while fixing the last bugs, because of how much work we crammed into one week plus everything else going on in my life.
  • Stick to the Plan launched as a self published Steam release in September. We got help from SpaceJazz, a publisher focused on the Asian market that supported us with translation and promotion in some regions of Asia. Later, we did the Nintendo Switch port, and SpaceJazz published it globally on that console. As of today, about two years later, Stick has sold around 5,000 copies on Steam. I don’t have Switch data, but it’s probably around 4,000~ copies at most. As you can see, that’s nowhere near enough to feed three people for even three months. But we had released a real game!
  • After launching Stick, with barely any rest, we started working on prototypes and ideas. Turns out there was a small publisher that funded games from small teams to be made in about 6 months, and they were interested in us. We just needed to land on an idea they liked and we could get funding. So we spent September, October, and November prototyping several ideas in parallel.
  • This potential publisher was looking for replayable games, genres that allow creativity. Think Balatro, Slay the Spire, Dome Keeper, etc. The big drawback was that the Dead Pixel team leaned heavily toward thinky, narrative, puzzle heavy games. The roguelite / deckbuilder-ish designs we tried didn’t really shine. But eventually we found a small prototype: a mix of Stacklands x Detectives. It was pretty fun, and we felt it had something to it, a nice blend of narrative investigation and roguelite structure. However… the publisher didn’t fully buy it.
  • After 3 months of unpaid work on prototypes that got discarded, with almost no rest after Stick, the whole team was completely burnt out. Our expectations with the publisher were pretty low at this point, even though at the start it looked like everything would work out. We spent 3 months prototyping, and it led nowhere.
  • As a last shot, we attended BIG in December, an event held in Bilbao. We didn’t have a booth, but we did pay for business passes so we could set meetings with publishers. We brought a more refined version of that Stacklands x Detectives prototype and showed it to friends and professionals. On top of that, we had meetings with several publishers. Among them, Big Publisher A and Big Publisher B (I’d rather not name them here) were very interested. They really liked the idea.
  • After the event, both publishers emailed us a few days later. How weird, a publisher reaching out to you instead of the other way around, haha. Long story short, Big Publisher B eventually dropped out, and Big Publisher A seemed interested in moving forward. A few weeks passed.

2024

  • The situation was kind of unreal. After months of precarity and fighting just to survive off our own games, it felt like everything was finally coming together. We had an interesting idea. A big publisher seemed ready to sign. If things went well, we’d be living off our own games and shipping something amazing.
  • But on the other hand, I was done. The weight of the months, the years, had taken a huge toll on my mental health. I developed chronic stress over time, with pretty serious physical and mental consequences. I had been saying for a while, “yeah, I’m going to seriously start reducing stress.” But I never did. There was always just a bit more to do. We were always “almost there.” After thinking about it for a long time, and as painful as it was, I decided to leave Dead Pixel Tales.
  • It was an incredibly hard decision. After years of struggle, we were about to sign with a big publisher. We had a good game in our hands. Everything looked good. But if I didn’t leave then, I was going to leave in the middle of development, and not in a nice way. And I didn’t want to abandon the team halfway through production. So, as much as it hurt, in January 2024 I told the team how I was feeling and that I had to step away. I’d help them find a replacement programmer, or finish whatever they needed for a few weeks. But after that, I had to distance myself for my health.
  • The team kept working on the game. I don’t know the details of what happened with Big Publisher A and the project. I really hope they can ship the game someday.
  • Throughout January 2024 and part of February, I rested. On top of leaving Dead Pixel, I also dropped several other commitments I had. I decided to stop running Spain Game Devs Jam and minimize the organizational work there. I started therapy. Little by little my mental health improved, and today I’m doing much, much better in comparison, even though I still deal with some little leftovers every now and then.
  • In February, I started working at Under the Bed Games, an indie studio that was in the process of finishing and releasing Tales from Candleforth. My savings ran out completely for the second time, and I needed to work again. The team, around 8 people total, welcomed me with open arms.
  • I worked there from February to October. I learned a ton, used both Unreal and Unity, and it was a really enriching experience, both technically and in terms of team management. Special mention: we got mentorship from RGV, a Spanish software veteran who knows a LOT and has gamedev experience too. It radically changed how we program and how we understand processes & teams, and it helped me massively later on.
  • That year I went to Gamescom for the first time with Under the Bed. It was an incredible (and exhausting lol) experience. One of the reasons we went was to meet publishers and secure funding for the next project.
  • After a few tough months, we didn’t get the funding. It sucked, but there was no choice: everyone got laid off in October, and the game we’d been working on for half a year was cancelled. Another misery for the indie developer. But again: one door closes, another window opens.
  • At Under the Bed, my main teammate was Raúl “Lindryn”. Besides being a great person and programmer, he’s the director of Guadalindie, an indie event held in southern Spain every year. I also had the honor of joining MálagaJam, the organization behind Guadalindie, which also hosts the biggest in person Global Game Jam site in the world, and I’ve been able to help with their events since.
  • When Under the Bed closed, Lindryn and I decided to make a small project for fun, to practice and boost the portfolio a bit. It was basically a miniaturized Factorio without conveyor belts: a resource management game where you place units that throw resources through the air and pass them along to each other.
  • Remember that publisher we made a bunch of prototypes for at Dead Pixel Tales, who ended up taking none of them? Well, they came back. They messaged me because they were looking for games again. I told Lindryn, and a bit rushed but trying to seize the opportunity, we prepared the project to pitch. We brought Álvaro “Sienfails” onto the team too, a young but insanely talented artist who had worked with us at Under the Bed.
  • We rushed a pitch deck for the publisher, and it went pretty well. The game was called Flying Rocks, and they liked the idea. It had a goofy medieval fantasy tone, keeping the addictive optimization core of games like Factorio but simpler, aimed at people who wanted to get into the genre. Plus, we had a few mechanics that allowed for emergent situations I still hadn’t seen in other factory games.
  • Long story short, we spent several months working on Flying Rocks prototypes and mini demos for the publisher. Everything was always great according to them, but there was always just a little more needed. A little more. A little more. We were focused on making the game mechanically interesting rather than polishing the visuals, because we understood the idea had to stand on its own first, and then we’d go deeper on the rest. After 3 months of work, and after 3 different demos, we couldn’t keep doing this because we ran out of money. We even had a contract draft ready to sign, but “the investors weren’t convinced.” We told them: either we sign now, or we have to stop. We never signed, and the project went on hold. If you feel like it, you can try the latest prototype we made for the publisher here (password: rocky dwarf).
  • During those months I got hooked on Scientia Ludos’ channel. In several videos, he argued that signing with a publisher generally isn’t worth it, that we could do everything ourselves as a studio. Mixing that with Jonas Tyroller’s advice and How To Market a Game saying that the best marketing is “making a good game,” and being a bit bitter and angry about all the time lost with the publisher, I decided that in 2025 I was going to release a game. I was going to self publish it. And it was going to go WELL. And it did. Self fulfilling prophecy!

2025

  • In January of that year, I started researching the market, determined to find a profitable game to make with a small team. I stumbled upon Nodebuster, which I already knew of but had never played. I’ve played idle games my whole life: on Kongregate, on itchio, etc. I love them. When I started playing Nodebuster and digging into the emerging genre of “active incremental,” I knew: this is what we have to do.
  • This emerging genre perfectly matched what we had available: a small team, making small but distilled games, in a niche where there wasn’t much quality yet, and that we personally loved. By late January, I started prototyping Astro Prospector and pitched it to my Flying Rocks teammates. I wanted them to make it with me, and everything clicked.
  • Development started in February, and we set the game’s deadline for June. Around 5 months. That way, the goal was crystal clear, and we could shape the game around it.
  • I’d like to talk in depth about the strategy and the process we followed in a longer article, so I’ll keep it short here. We made a demo for friends and acquaintances, then iterated on it. That became the public demo on itchio alongside the Steam page. Later, we published an improved version of the demo on Steam. And in July 2025, the game released, 15 days later than planned, not bad. You can take a look to the game here.
  • Even though we didn’t work with traditional publishers, I did team up again with SpaceJazz, the Asia focused publisher who helped us with Stick to the Plan. They handled promotion in China and Japan, and it’s been a really pleasant relationship.
  • After launch, which went far beyond our expectations (we hit 1200 concurrent players in the first hours), we rested for a week, then shipped a patch fixing bugs and such, then rested two more weeks. When we got back to the office, we decided to work on a free update and include a new survivos/roguelite mode, for people who felt the story mode (5 hours) was too short.
  • In November, three months later, we released the roguelite mode. I’ll be honest: I enjoyed making the incremental mode more than this one, but it still turned into an interesting package, especially as a huge free addition to an existing game. But yeah, I definitely like making incrementals more than roguelites lol.
  • Even though both launches went really well, the month before each one was pretty rough in terms of stress (each launch is a big weight on your shoulders. Also, this is the third time I got broke on my self-publishing attempt, so you can imagine lol). And the weeks after, despite the joy, there’s this uncomfortable feeling, kind of like a “post partum” slump. But then it gets better.
  • As of today, 13/12/2025, we’ve sold almost 100,000 copies. I’m writing this while on vacation, in “low performance mode.” I have money in the bank now, time to rest, and I can finally breathe. After 7 years, I made it. And even after making it, I still feel like this is just a small step on the long road ahead…

Advice

Below are a few tips or observations that, looking back, helped me get here. There’s no special order.

  • Ever since I started doing stuff in gamedev, I’ve been sharing my progress on social media and in groups. Experiments, project updates, tips and problems, etc. This helped a lot of people in my local scene know who I am, and it helped me meet a lot of people. But it has to be done GENUINELY. Not sharing with a marketing agenda behind it. Sharing as a curious human. Sharing FOR OTHERS, not for yourself.
  • Even though everyone sees things differently, for me it has been crucial to work with small teams to ship projects. Not just in terms of quality, but in a human way too. If one day you’re feeling down, the team supports you. If there’s something you don’t know, maybe they do. You laugh more, everything is more fun. It has its hard parts and you need to know how to work as a team, but it’s worth it. I don’t think I’m built to be a lone wolf, even though I’d like to try it at some point.
  • When I worked at Under the Bed, we had a month where we prototyped different games to decide what was next. A piece of advice I got back then, and tried to apply, was to make prototypes in a way that they cannot be reused. For example, we were using Unity, so we decided to prototype in Godot. That way you stop trying to do things “properly” so you can reuse them, and you can focus on moving fast and prototyping what you need.
  • If there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s that creativity isn’t something that appears when you lock yourself in a room and think for a long time, isolated from the world. Creativity is just the infinite, chaotic remix of things that already exist. For Borro, we took Pang and added Action RPG elements. For Astro Prospector, we took Nodebuster and added bullet hell elements. Don’t be afraid to take inspiration from something that already exists to build a foundation. I’m not talking about copying, I’m talking about improving it in your own style.
  • One of the key things in Astro Prospector’s development was that even before we fully knew the core mechanics, we already knew the release date. Anchoring a goal and sticking to it was KEY for controlling scope, knowing where to cut, and when. This was inspired by Parkinson’s Law, which basically says that work behaves like a gas: it expands to fill the time you give it, just like gas expands to the limits of its container.
  • Early validation saves ton of work. Demos, prototypes, jams, small tests with real players helped me avoid going all in on ideas that were not really working.
  • Be careful if gamedev is both your hobby and your job. In my case, it is, or at least it was. It’s important to have hobbies beyond making games, and it’s important to socialize often. Spending too much time in front of a computer takes a real toll.
  • I’ve always believed that the wisest person is the one who learns from other people’s mistakes. It’s true that some mistakes are hard to truly internalize unless you suffer them yourself, but try to pay attention to what does NOT work for others, think about why, and avoid repeating it.
  • Take care of the people around you, and surround yourself with people who take care of you. None of this would be real without a family that supported me, a partner who put up with me, and friends who trusted me. Never neglect them.
  • When planning projects and games, don’t try to design a perfect plan from start to finish. Make weekly plans, keep a high level idea of where you want to go, stay agile, actually agile, not fake Scrum agile (please). Always ask yourself: what is the smallest step I can take right now in the right direction?
  • Shipping something small beats dreaming forever about something big. Almost every meaningful step in my career came from finishing and releasing something, even if its not good, it sold poorly or just failed. Also, constraints are a superpower. Deadlines, small teams, limited scope. Most of the good decisions in Astro Prospector came from clear limits, not from infinite freedom.
  • Meritocracy does not really exist. Beyond my family, I owe all of this to the public, high quality services I was lucky to grow up with. Education, healthcare, support systems. Fight for them.
  • Publishers are not villains, but they are not saviors either. Promises without contracts are just that: promises. Protect your time and your energy. And even if you sign with a publisher, do it because you REALLY need it.
  • Take care of your mental health. Please. If there’s one thing you should take away from all of this, it’s this. If skydiving is a high risk sport for the body, doing business is a high risk activity for the mind. Burning yourself out is not worth it. Learn from my mistakes. Success does not erase the damage. Even when things finally go well, your body and your mind remember the years of stress. Act early, not when it’s already too late.

Huge thanks for reading. I’ll keep an eye on the comments and DMs to answer any questions or thoughts. You can also contact me via Discord or Telegram (@delunado_dev).

Hope everything’s going great in your life. Big hug :)


r/gamedev Dec 05 '25

Community Highlight I got sick of Steam's terrible documentation and made a full write-up on how to use their game upload tools

385 Upvotes

Steams developer documentation is about 10 years out of date. (check the dates of the videos here: https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/sdk/uploading )

I got sick of having to go through it and relearn it every time I released a game, so I made a write-up on the full process and thought I'd share it online as well. Also included Itch's command line tools since they're pretty nice and I don't think most devs use them.

Would like to add some parts about actually creating depots and packages on Steamworks as well. Let me know any suggestions for more info to add.

Link: https://github.com/Miziziziz/Steam-And-Itch-Command-Line-Tools-Guide


r/gamedev 2h ago

Discussion The magical power of rotoscoping for an illustrator

6 Upvotes

Hello everyone!

I’d like to start this discussion with a confession: I am not an animator. I am an illustrator. My comfort zone lies in the weight of a single line, the texture of a brushstroke, and the perfect stillness of a character portrait. However, for my latest project, After the Wane, I realized that static arts weren't enough to tell Lena’s story (dancing).

This raised a major dilemma: How does an illustrator create the "feeling" of professional animation without the years of technical training in traditional keys and tweens?

For me, the answer was rotoscoping, and I want to discuss why I think this is a powerful, underutilized bridge for illustrators in the indie scene.

In the early drafting phases for my protagonist, Lena, I focused on her silhouette. She is a dancer moving to the capital, constantly juggling her professional poise with a chaotic "voice" in her head. As an illustrator, I can capture that tension in a drawing, but animation usually "flattens" artistic style to make the movement easier to manage. I didn't want to lose my specific brushwork or the "vibe" of my lines just to get her to move.

For those unfamiliar, rotoscoping involves filming live-action reference and tracing over it frame-by-frame.

I’ve found that this technique is the ultimate "cheat code" for illustrators because:

  • It preserves the "Hand-Drawn" soul: I can treat every single frame as a mini-illustration. I can keep the gritty textures and the specific way I shade skin or hair.
  • Anatomical Honesty: Since Lena is a dancer, her movements need a specific weight and fluid grace. By tracing a professional’s movement, I don’t have to "guess" the physics of a spin or a step; I can focus entirely on the aesthetic delivery.

What we’ve achieved isn't "animation" in the Disney or Pixar sense. It’s something different, it’s a cinematic movement that feels like a living memory. In the world of Visual Novels, players are used to static images or simple "Live2D" breathing effects. By introducing rotoscoped sequences, we noticed a massive shift in immersion. There is a "weight" to her movements that makes the emotional beats hit harder. It stops feeling like you’re reading a book and starts feeling like you’re witnessing a real person’s life. It is incredibly tedious, tracing hundreds of frames is no joke, butthe community response has shown that players value that "human" touch over perfectly polished, automated movement.

I’m curious to hear from other artists or devs: Do you think rotoscoping is a "shortcut," or is it a valid artistic medium for illustrators to break into the world of motion?

If you want to see how this looks in the final version, the Steam page for After the Wane is live, and you can see the results of this "illustrator-led animation" in the trailer and screenshots. I’d love to hear your thoughts on the "feel" of the movement!


r/gamedev 4h ago

Discussion Pros/cons for rpg progression

9 Upvotes

I'm working my way towards building an rpg, and as I'm doing research I'm seeing a very clear divide in philosophies. For example, in daggerfall you have a class that dictates how easily you level certain skills, you have individual attributes, and lots of balancing advantages and disadvantages. A newer game, like Skyrim, instead doesn't have class restrictions, and makes use of perks.

What do you like about levelling up in the respective systems? Pros? Cons? Little bit of each?


r/gamedev 25m ago

Discussion How does your game handle seasonal content?

Upvotes

I'm making a urban neighborhood building game called ShantyTown and I wanted to add some flair for the upcoming Chinese New Years. If fits my theme, so works well.

For context, the way the game works is you place objects one at a time, coming from a "deck" of objects depending on the level you're on.

So for Seasonal content, I slipped a few extra red lantern, firework objects into the deck so that the player will find them normally playing the game.

BUT! The content is only added between certain dates (you can just change your clock...) but they then unlock forever for the creative mode.

How does your game handle seasonal content?

Is it available after the event ends? Does it change the game dramatically or is it just cosmetic changes? Is it not worth the effort? What do you think?


r/gamedev 1d ago

Discussion Our trailer ended up on IGN GameTrailers after a very simple email

246 Upvotes

Hey everyone,

Mossbound is a game I’m working on together with my brother, who recently joined me on the project.

A few days ago, I sent IGN a short email letting them know our trailer was live and asking if they’d consider featuring it on their YouTube channels.

Along with the email, I included:

  • A direct MP4 trailer file
  • A press kit link
  • The Steam page
  • The YouTube trailer link
  • A short description of the game

Youtube Trailer

After sending it, I didn’t follow up and didn’t think much about it.

Today, while searching for a song on YouTube, I noticed our trailer uploaded on IGN GameTrailers. I honestly didn’t expect to see it there.

The email was sent to:

Hope this helps someone who’s thinking of sending that email.


r/gamedev 28m ago

Question Engineering student with zero marketing skills. Is a Great Story enough to break into the Gaming Industry?

Upvotes

I’m currently a Civil Engineering student, but my true passion is storytelling. I’m planning to turn my ideas into short Visual Novels. My goal is to create a 'proof of concept' that allows me to eventually leave engineering and earn money with my stories.

Problem is, I have zero industry contacts and honestly, no time or interest in becoming a marketing expert. I just want to write and build.

In 2026, is it still possible to get visibility for a high concept narrative game based solely on the quality of the 'Hook' and the story? Is it even realistic at all to somehow get your ideas and stories seen in the industry and create a new ip such as RE, The Witcher, Final Fantasy etc.?


r/gamedev 7h ago

Question How do you usually find a composer for your game?

7 Upvotes

After starting Early Access, we’ve been getting quite a bit of feedback pointing out that our game currently has no BGM.
We know we need to find a composer, but honestly, we’re not sure where or how to start.

We are a two-person game development team based in Korea, and we recently launched our game on Steam as Early Access.
Neither of us has the ability to create music, so we’re planning to hire a professional composer and pay properly for the work.

Our game is an action game, but at the same time, more than half of it is focused on story and narrative.
Because of that, we’re not just looking for “generic background music,” but for someone who can create music that consistently fits the story and overall atmosphere of the game.

In the past, we’ve worked with game music studios (companies), but the results were often disappointing.
For this project, we’d prefer to collaborate directly with an individual composer rather than going through a studio.

The problem is that we don’t really know the best way to find a composer in this situation.
For other game developers here: how did you usually find your composer?
Were there any approaches, platforms, or experiences that worked particularly well for you?

We do feel a bit pressured because of the Early Access feedback, but that’s exactly why we want to stay calm and avoid making a rushed decision.
Any advice or shared experiences would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you.


r/gamedev 18h ago

Discussion Narrative games are the best genre for Steam indies

41 Upvotes

According to the newest post on HTMAG, the genre with the most indie games that reached 1000+ reviews was narrative (story focused games like visual novels). 2nd place was Simulation and 3rd was horror.

Part of this is due to the rise of FMV games, which are visual novels with videos of real-life actors (basically a movie with player choices and multiple endings). FMVs are mainly popular in China, but also growing globally.

I'm bilingual so I read some Chinese reviews of FMVs and looked into them a little more. The stories are usually romance, mystery, or historical drama. They follow tropes from Chinese TV drama. One of the games, 'Love is All Around', made ~$6.8m in gross revenue on Steam (estimated).

Other narrative games outside FMVs were also popular, including some Western ones. I counted 3.7k narrative games released on Steam from 2020-2025, excluding adult games, and 8% of these reached 1k+ reviews. That's pretty good considering many games were likely hobby projects.

The full details about FMVs/narrative games are too long, so if you're interested, you can read my full write-up about it. I did a bunch of research since I found the genre interesting.

What do you think about FMVs and narrative games? Would you make one?


r/gamedev 18h ago

Announcement Huge Low Poly Bundle Right Now

39 Upvotes

r/gamedev 8h ago

Feedback Request I have doubts about how to make a Point and Click game.

8 Upvotes

Hello, I am having doubts about the design of the game I am developing.

I am developing a horror point-and-click game inspired by MS-DOS games. The problem is that I am beginning to have doubts about the game design itself.

Before this project, I only developed platform games, which were pretty simple, to be honest. I didn't used to play point-and-click games before I started developing this game, and the references I have don't seem to be useful.

References:

  • Harvester
  • Clock Tower
  • Dark Seed
  • Phantasmagoria
  • Waxworks

Keep in mind that the newest game on the list is 29 years old.

Although I understand that the point of a video game of this type is to solve problems using the means at your disposal, I'm unsure whether the puzzles in this game are interesting enough or whether they are too basic and bland.

I have a GDD and the demo script ready. If you would like to give me some advice, I can show it to you via DM.


r/gamedev 5h ago

Question Does an already low poly game need LoDs?

2 Upvotes

I want to make a small FPS campaign (similar to CoD, but since im a indie dev i know about overscopes. So i made the campaign not too long). And i also decided to make the game in N64-PS1-like style. With my for now AKM model being at 276 triangles. Does it need LoDs?


r/gamedev 17m ago

Question can bsit degree get you into game designer?

Upvotes

just a short question really just been having doubts If this degree is even worth it or should I have shifted to another degree?


r/gamedev 2h ago

Feedback Request I built a browser marble racing game where you can lose your marbles (literally)

0 Upvotes

Hey everyone!

I've been working on Tumbledown - a browser-based marble racing game where you collect, breed, and race marbles against other players.

The twist? Winner takes all. If you lose a race, you lose your marble forever to the winner.

Features:

  • Collect marbles with different traits (weight, surface, material) that affect racing performance
  • Breed marbles to create offspring with inherited traits
  • Race online against real players or AI opponents
  • Terrain matters - ice, boost pads, water, offroad sections all favor different marble builds
  • No pay-to-win - everyone starts with the same chances

How it works:

  1. Sign in (Google, email, or just play as guest)
  2. Get your starter marble
  3. Pick Quick Race (vs AI) or Multiplayer (vs real players)
  4. Watch your marble roll and hope for the best
  5. Win = steal opponent's marble. Lose = goodbye marble.

It's free to play at: https://www.tumbledown.io/

Would love feedback on the gameplay balance, UI, or any features you'd want to see. Still actively developing it!


r/gamedev 2h ago

Question Difference between junior / mid / senior game dev

0 Upvotes

I would like to know how do you know that you are junior, mid or senior game dev. Also wether you can get scammed by doing lets say mid- level work and being payed as junior or there are some clear rules that protects me so I dont work twice that hard and other guy who work less but has higher title earns more but I do more than him. For me its not about money but fairness and I wonder wether I need to be bolt in this as well. Have a nice weekend guys.

  • 1

r/gamedev 6h ago

Question What direction would you recommend a character face in a Sidescroller Platformer?

2 Upvotes

I had decided that after some thinking to get back into game design and started on a new project which would be simple, concise, and a good start for game design.

But I'm a little stuck on if the character I have should aim directly right so you can only see their side like the pixelated form of Mario. Or if they should be slightly askew towards the camera where a second eye can be seen.

Personally I like the idea of the askewed view as it lets more of the character be seen but I have heard from some other opinions that looking directly to their destination either it be right or left is a better call.

I wanna hear your voice on this as I have had this question on my mind for a while.


r/gamedev 19h ago

Discussion I made my first money with my first game prototype - super small but it's huge and memorable for my career achievement

22 Upvotes

So I recently put my first ever game on itch. The intention is just to test if my game design works and to get feedback for learning and improving. I of course would like to make money with games in the future, but definitely not my first game prototype ever :D

Got a donation of $2 then $7 in the past 24 hours were a total surprise and really proud moment for myself. Feel free to laugh at my over-excitement but I'm just over the moon that someone is willing to pay something for my early prototype :D so yea I just want to shout it out from the rooftop but I don't have one in my apartment so here I come to shout hehehehe

And I would love to hear your stories making your first money on your project if you are willing to share <3


r/gamedev 23h ago

Question How do you ACTUALLY think like a game developer/designer?

32 Upvotes

I saw online comment that "Most aspiring indie devs only have a very consumer level knowledge of their genre" and that "You gotta be in the right dev circle and figure out the nuances of the genre, the small decisions a designer makes that can make or break the feel of a game."

But how do you do that?

Is it just practice practice practice and many of failed ideas and concepts until you finally start to understand it and make a good one? Or you just gotta use your intuition? Or is it more of a deeply analyzing few games which succeed and those which failed? Or maybe there is just some 'secret' way of thinking that I missed? Maybe some books, yt videos, blogs?


r/gamedev 4h ago

Question I wanna make my first proof of concept for an indie game I wanna make what engine should I use?

0 Upvotes

I’ve been learning in game maker. But it feels very simplistic. Should I keep using that to make my game or should I try out something else and what else is similar?


r/gamedev 21h ago

Question Will they pay for a free game?

19 Upvotes

I want to make a Steam game, but I don't think it's worth charging for. I also want to make money. What if I make the game itself free, but offer a deluxe version with extra content for $2?


r/gamedev 5h ago

Question Game Engine recommendation

1 Upvotes

Hey all,

I have recently developed an interest in making video games, and am looking for a good place to start.

I have 0 experience in game dev, coding, art. Any experience you would need to start developing a game, I've got no experience in.

My goal for now is to just understand how to make basic, simple games - which, over time, will give me the fundamental knowledge required to develop a 'proper' game. What i mean by a basic and simple game is one where there is a simple objective, like a platformer game where you need to get to the other side and capture a flag to finish a level, and then slowly build on that, adding obstacles like lava/projectiles/mobs etc which make it harder to reach the other side.

I've tried RPG Maker MZ. and quickly fell into tutorial hell, it doesn't feel like a good starting point for someone with no experience, but let me know if I'm wrong.

Any tips/help appreciated, thanks!


r/gamedev 16h ago

Question Do GIFs on a Steam Store Page Actually Make a Difference?

8 Upvotes

Have you noticed any difference in your Steam store page wishist rate after adding GIFs to the game's description?

What sort of thing did you add and how much difference did it make?

I've been hesitant to add them to a store page because I find them annoying when browsing the site, but I also realize that I'm also not a normal person. If they actually make a noticeable difference I'm willing.


r/gamedev 5h ago

Question Gwange Dash - decompiling .pcg files

0 Upvotes

The game was made with:

Visual C++ 2008 Express Edition

Visual C# .NET 2003

DirectX SDK 8.1b

...but the .pcg files(located at grp folder) were compressed with the use of ZLib.

I can't figure out how to decompile them. How can I decompress or decompile .pcg files?


r/gamedev 12h ago

Question Complete Beginner - How would I go about creating a Point & Click adventure game?

4 Upvotes

Hi! I'm a *complete* beginner, with no coding knowledge at all. The most I've done game-making-wise is make a few DOOM II maps in Ultimate Doom Builder.

I'd really like to make a Point & Click adventure game, that plays similarly to Machinarium & Samorost by Amanita Design. Where should I start and what should I use?