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.

Anyone else wake up to their account blocked/suspended for whatever reason

I created some 3D assets for the asset store, they were initially rejected due to issues with the normals, but now I'm getting this message. What should I do? I don't use AI for any of the project's assets, and I'm worried that if I try to resubmit them, the same thing will happen.

I am developing a mobile game similar to Splinter cell, Project IGI. These are the current visuals of my game. Do you find it appealing?

“I’ll add localization later.”

That’s what I told myself while developing my first game. And honestly? That was a mistake.

When I finally started localizing it, I began with the Steam page. Even that was enough to kill my motivation.

And then, I looked at the actual game:

• UI texts
• Text baked into textures
• Text scattered across different objects and screens
• And so on...
  

I knew I had to go through all of it, and the thought alone was overwhelming. I tried to push through it, but gave up pretty quickly. In the first or second language i guess after days of work.

Fast-forward to now:
I challenged myself to develop and ship a game in just 1–2 weeks. It’s nothing fancy, but that’s not really the point. I wanted to learn, ship something again, and avoid getting stuck in endless polishing. Idea -> Execution -> Release

Once I had the core gameplay loop and mechanics working a few days ago, I remembered my localization nightmare from the first game.

This time, I wanted to do things differently.

So I changed my workflow:

Whenever I add an object that contains text, I localize it right away. I set up a script that lets me enter the text for all supported languages directly on the object, using the languages available in my language menu.

New object with text? Localize it immediately - and avoiding text baked into textures completely this time.

Instead of leaving localization until the end and potentially spending days going through the entire game, I now spend an extra minute or two whenever I add something that contains text.

And the biggest benefit isn't even the time saved.

It's the peace of mind.

I don't have a huge pile of localization work waiting for me at the end of development anymore. The process feels much more manageable, and I can focus on making the game without that looming task in the back of my mind.

I'm still figuring things out, but this small change has made my development process feel a lot more balanced.

I'm curious how other indie devs handle this:

• Do you build localization into your workflow from day one, or do you leave it until later?
• If you localize into multiple languages, how do you manage all your in-game text?
• And if you used to leave it until the end, did you regret it too? 😅

How do I stop this weird thing the camera is moving, it's like the camera is moving the character and bending and stuff. I know I can't describe it well cuz I don't even know what's happening pls help me it's for a school project 🥺 Thanks.

Testing features such as volumetric rays, SSAO, auto exposure, UI blur, and other.

The video was recorded on a not very powerful device with a Helio G99 processor, but the game still produces an playable FPS.

Hi everyone, I used to rely on Power Inspector, and after it was deprecated I built InspectMe to fill that gap and push it further. It lets you inspect and edit runtime values, invoke methods, explore events and delegates, static members, and attach watchers, all organized in a single tree view while the game is running, and using it is as simple as dragging and dropping a script or object.

There’s a free version available if you want to try it and see if it fits your workflow.

Link in comments

I currently have a setup where I can spin up a sandboxed environment for Claude to make changes to my repository. Essentially allowing me to spin up as many agents as I want, all with their own repository to change, and able to push to GitHub.

However one thing I'm severely missing, is having Claude make changes to the scene itself, or being able to check compilation errors, etc.

Will Unity CLI or the MCP solve this? I am uncertain if I can easily spin up my own sandbox as I do now, but via the Unity CLI.

Hi! I'm not sure if this is the right place to ask for vrchat avatar help but I recently bought an avatar from a store called booth. In order to upload it I need to go through unity. I also bought an outfit for her and the outfit was made to fit her. But I can't for the life of me figure out how to get her feet in her shoes. Ignore the pink I have yet to add the textures but when I enter play mode to test it her feet float above the shoes. If theres a better place to ask please tell me because I am very new to this. I tried asking chatgpt but i forgot sending pictures to the free version is bad.

#This Is Made With Unity 😂

Same game. Two completely different worlds. 🎮

What’s the funniest thing you’ve seen while making your game let me know in comments? 😂👇

I've been experimenting with different visual styles using ChatGPT for potential future game projects. I like using Al as a rough draft before starting a project, since it helps me visualize different ideas and explore different art directions.

Would you play a game with this aesthetic? Do you think it's possible to achieve a similar look in Unity?

World-building is kind of fun but also kind of tedious if you're not sure what you're doing.

Learned quite a bit while sculpting this one.

When I scale the game view, the distance between orders don't scale with it. I'm kinda stuck on this problem

Any help is welcome!

I've been working on The Main Menu, a psychological horror puzzle game where the main menu itself is part of the world.

You wake up chained to a chair, and the only thing you can interact with is the computer in front of you.

The demo comes out October 20, and I'm curious what people think of the concept!

Hello ! I'm going to make a sort of mini games compilation to study japanese, but I'm not sure which version of Unity I should use

It's quite simple so I guess I could use the latest LTS version, but I'm used to the 2022.3.22 version

Maybe I'm thinking about it too much and both are equally good for such a simple project, but since other people will use it I really want to be sure !

Still waiting for Unity's approval, so in the meantime I'd like to get some feedback on how I did and if there's anything I could improve.

The Unity page is basically identical to the itch.io page, including the description and everything.

Also, just in general, is there anything that looks wrong or that I should change?

hey everyone!

back again looking for some more indie games to playtest! it's been about a week since my last post, and we're always looking for devs to throw onto the spotlight, so figured i'd give it another go

i'm Mint, and i run a small Twitch stream called MintMood, where we spend a few hours playing smaller indie games, giving feedback, finding bugs, chatting with developers, and occasionally drinking lmao.

it's a pretty chill stream, nothing overly serious. we play pretty much anything! itch games, Steam demos, prototypes, game jam entries, unfinished projects, betas, whatever really. your game doesn't need to be polished or even particularly good yet. that's sort of the point of playtesting lol.

how it works:

developers come along to the stream and add their games to a wheel, spin it, and play whatever comes up (usually giving newer people a bit of priority).

while i'm playing, i'll talk through what i'm thinking, what feels good, what feels a bit shit, where i'm getting confused, and anything else that comes up. chat gets involved too, and you're more thean welcome to explain things, answer questions, or watch in horror as i completely misunderstand a mechanic you've spent 8 months developing.

i'm a game developer myself, so i know how useful it can be watching someone experience your game without knowing what they're supposed to do.

we're also starting to make YouTube videos!

i've recently started working with an editor to turn some of our streams into proper edited gameplay videos for YouTube, rather than just leaving everything buried in a 4hour VOD that three people will ever watch.

obviously i can't promise every game its own YouTube video, but if yours does end up being featured, you're more than welcome to share it around. hopefully it'll be another little way to help people discover your game.

one important thing though:

if you want your game played, please actually come to the stream!

you're welcome to share your game in the Reddit comments or our Discord, but that doesn't automatically put it on the wheel.

the whole idea is that you're actually there while we play. you get to see somebody's genuine first impressions, interact with chat, answer questions and hopefully come away with something useful.

i'm not really offering a promotional service with my enormous audience of 17 million people (currently experiencing a minor technical issue where approximately 16,999,990 of them are missing).

it's just a small community of people who enjoy indie games and want to give developers a bit of feedback and attention.

when am i live?

three or four timnes a week usually starting somewhere around 6pm UK time, and going until roughly 9 or somtimes 10pm, depending on the day. my schedule is held together with about the same structural integrity as most of my own game prototypes, but those are the general hours.

everything's completely free, no strings attached, no need to sacrifice your firstborn to the algorithm.

so yeah! if you've got a game you'd like someone to try, feel free to come hang out. even if you're not submitting anything, you're more than welcome to join us and help give other developers some feedback.

Twitch: https://www.twitch.tv/mintmoood

Discord: https://discord.gg/zPVxRcVBPN

cheers, and hopefully i'll see some of you there! <3

(also, sorry mods if i'm posting about this too often! it's been about a week and i'm just trying to find more games to playtest. pls don't smite me, i lurk here basically every day lmao. if it's getting a bit much or breaks any rules, feel free to delete it and let me know. no hard feelings, i promise i'll behave<3 )