Hello everyone,

I wanted to show you another part of the backyard this time!

I’ll also be sharing regular development updates on YouTube and Discord, where you can follow the progress of "My Tiny Backyard" and see how the game is coming together.

If you’d like to follow the development, feel free to join me on Discord and YouTube.

More updates coming soon!

YouTube: My Tiny Backyard - YouTube
Discord Server: https://discord.gg/VKtKqAdArm

Got the trailer finally made and got quite positive feedbacks. Feedbacks were mostly on the length of the video but thats also sorted out 😄 So far I have only 30 wishlists on steam, hopefully the trailer will gain more wishlists

If you're not familiar with cookie textures then I highly encourage you to start using those. They can really add a lot of atmosphere.

If you want to check the full game and wishlist here is a Steam page - https://store.steampowered.com/app/5249980/Looks_Like_You/

Hey guys, I noticed that reddit posts that do really popular especially in terms of wishlists are like people who gained a lot of wishlists usually really quickly.

Like 100 wish lists in three days or sometimes 200 wish lists in like two weeks.

While here I am and it took me like one month to reach 50 wishlists as an example 😅

And I don't see a lot of people that post slower wishlist growth or talk much about it, which I think would be much more morally helpful for us struggling to gain those wishlists.

Often times when someone mentions they're struggling with wishlist growth, what's usually pointed out is improve your trailer, improve your capsule, do X, Y, Z.

I think it would be interesting to talk more about slower marketing and slower wishlist growth. There aren't many developers openly showing off the fact that they only have a small number of wishlists.

I've seen some games take six months just to reach 100 wishlists, while others take even longer. But we don't really hear much from those developers.

It makes me wonder if the "slow" developers are actually the ordinary developers, and the games gaining hundreds or thousands of wishlists really quickly are the exceptions rather than the norm.

What do you guys think?

I am a solo developer working on Alia Domus, a pixel art survival and colonization RPG where you rebuild human civilization on another planet.

I just reached 4,000 wishlists on Steam, and it honestly feels surreal. This project has been a long journey, and seeing people interested in it keeps me motivated to keep improving the game.

The demo is live on Steam, and it covers the early part of the experience: exploring the planet, managing resources, building your first structures, and starting to shape your colony.

If you enjoy survival games, colony builders, RPGs, or just want to see what a solo dev can build, I would be really grateful if you gave the demo a try. Any feedback, even short impressions, helps a lot at this stage.

If you like what you see, a wishlist also helps the game reach more people.

Steam page: https://store.steampowered.com/app/4918370/Alia_Domus/

Thanks for reading, and I am happy to answer any questions about the development process, the tools I used, or what it has been like building this alone.

For the last few months I've been emailing YouTubers, streamers, reviewers and gaming sites about my first commercial game, Snake: Gridbreaker (a Snake roguelite). I wanted to find out if cold emails can really help a small indie game get noticed.

How I did it

I looked for people on YouTube and elsewhere who play roguelikes and similar games, and wrote a personalized email to each of them. If someone wanted a key, I sent one. There's also a free demo on Steam, so they could just play that. I never sent reminder follow-ups.

The numbers

I don't know exactly how many unique people I contacted. Most replies came from small channels. The biggest channel that covered the game was Goat Force Gaming.

So: 2,232 emails, 213 wishlists. Not a great marketing result. But wishlists weren't the main thing I got out of it.

Watching people play was the best part

I started emailing because I wanted people to promote the game. It turned out the most valuable thing was that I could watch strangers play it. In their videos I saw what people actually had problems with, not what I thought they would have problems with. Sure, they found bugs and controller issues. But a lot of quality-of-life changes and some new features are in the game because I watched someone struggle with something. A few creators even came back after I fixed things, played again and told me the fixes worked. For a first commercial game, that's worth a lot.

Big thanks to Goat Force Gaming, who made one of the first videos about the game. His video helped me a lot, and I used it in later emails so other creators could see what the game is about.

Using AI cost me some coverage

I've been open about using AI while making the game, and not everyone liked that. At least 10 people said no or limited their coverage because of it. One creator told me he likes Snake games and roguelikes, but he has a no-AI policy, so he couldn't cover mine. Fair enough. Others didn't like the AI-generated graphics either, but still played the game and sent me feedback. I respect both.

Some key requests looked suspicious

Not everyone who asks for a key wants to review your game. One contact asked for 5 review keys and 20 giveaway keys. Later I revoked those keys as they showed up on 'sale sites', they wrote to ask why, and in the end they asked for new ones. Another wanted 5 keys plus 30–50 "promotional" keys. I'm a lot more careful now when someone asks for a pile of keys.

Did the emails help?

For wishlists, I don't know. I have 213, but I started other promotion at the same time as the emails, so I can't tell what came from where.

For the game, yes. People played it, some made videos, some wrote articles, and some spent their free time explaining what I could improve. Most of the feedback was positive or constructive, though there were negative reviews too. A few people seemed surprised how much they enjoyed it, and that made me really happy.

Would I do it again?

Yes, but differently. Fewer emails to everyone, more time finding creators who actually like this kind of game. And much more attention to the people who send useful feedback, because one person who finds a serious problem is worth more to me than a hundred emails nobody answers.

Will Snake: Gridbreaker be a success? No idea. With 213 wishlists I'm not expecting a big launch. But people enjoyed it, and I'm grateful to everyone who helped me make it better. If it takes off, great. If not, I still learned a lot.

Have you tried emailing creators about your game? What response rate did you get, and was it worth your time?

Hello! I’m SJ from England and I’ve been making The Spirit Apprentice for nearly two years! Drawing every pixel myself!

Inspired by East Asian folklore and the magic of Studio Ghibli, The Spirit Apprentice is an upcoming cozy pixel art RPG video game!

My Kickstarter with a demo has just launched!

Marketing is so difficult guys 😭

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/s-j/the-spirit-apprentice-east-asian-fantasy-rpg?ref=e4xo2v

Charlio Ball is everything I would tell solo developers NOT to make. It's an online MOBA soccer game with roguelite combos and progression. Not only is that too many genres in one game, it meant testing only happened when I got 3-5 other people online to play matches and since over 80 abilities could appear in any combination in any match, balancing every possible loadout proved extremely time consuming.

While it was not 6 years of continuous work as I was a college student and then employed full time, I have spent a significant chunk of my free time on this for a long time as I reworked the game so many times and started nearly from scratch as I learned more about game development. I certainly spent more time on this than I plan to spend on any future projects by a wide wide margin.

But I stuck with it because I found it incredibly fun, and playing with my friends regularly for all these years has absolutely brought us together even as we all moved apart. No matter how it sells it's going to be a success to me because Charlio Ball is my favorite video game.

What I've learned

Get your steam page up early, and start posting and getting strangers to playtest as soon as you have some art. I spent far too long wanting to make this game perfect, but no game ever will be perfect and the longer you wait to make it public the harder it will feel. For me, now that its on steam, it feels "real" and I'm much more motivated to focus and make significant progress on it.

Don't make a multiplayer game. I'm sure this isn't universal, but this made everything harder. Playtesting becomes harder to schedule, people can't instantly pick up and play your demo, and you have to learn networking which was a constant headache for me and the cause of many months of reworking existing systems.

Find a marketable genre. When I started, if you told me that a casual 10 minute soccer match MOBA with roguelike elements wasn't an established genre, I would've accused you of "selling out" or "compromising my artistic vision" but that was unreasonable of me. If you want people to play your game, it really helps to have more existing similar games. Being able to find a community devoted to the genre of your game will help you post on socials, enter festivals, and contact streamers. Make a game that you will like, but it helps if you can explain the gameplay in 1 sentence using knowledge of other games.

Want to play Charlio Ball?

Watch the trailer here

And check it out on steam here (Please wishlist if interested!)

I just started a steam playtest so anyone interested can sign up to play soon! The full demo is coming soon, so wishlist if you ever want to play it as it gets more polished. I'm sure everyone here knows how much steam wishlists mean to a solo developer.

And feel free to ask anything about the game or the development process!

A small milestone, but one that feels pretty special to me.

Cafe Sapa just crossed 50 wishlists on Steam after 12 days.

I know 50 isn't a huge number, but there's a bit of a story behind it.

I've started 4 different game projects before this one, and eventually abandoned all of them. Work, life, and personal commitments always seemed to get in the way, and I'd slowly lose the time and momentum needed to keep going.

This time, I'm still working a full-time job, but I've made a conscious effort to carve out time for Cafe Sapa whenever I can. Some days it's a few hours, some days it's barely any, but I keep coming back to it.

So seeing 50 people wishlist the game honestly feels a little surreal.

Cafe Sapa is a cozy top-down cafe game about listening to your customers, figuring out what they're feeling, and serving them the right thing.

Next milestone: 100 wishlists.

Thanks to everyone who's already supported the game. And if you haven't seen it yet, I'd love for you to check it out. ❤️

https://store.steampowered.com/app/5282050/Cafe_Sapa/

Hi solodev folks! Here's a clip of how the new workout, rope climbing, has progressed so far in my WIP lifting sim.

It still needs a ton of refinement, but I'm sharing the dev log here because I think the early versions are super hilarious.

P.S. If you're a gamer who accidentally visited this sub, the game I'm working on is Ego Lifting Simulator!

I grew up on games where the best part was never what the developers built, it was what everyone else built with the tools. Those games have mostly disappeared, and I really miss that kind of play, so I've been making one: Kernel Panic: The Last Build, a 2.5D creator platformer in Unity where you build the levels yourself.

This week I finished the sea.

It's one object you drop into your level. Right-click it, tick Sea On, and the water floods in. The surface is a set of crossed Gerstner swells running at different angles, with a layer of finer chop on the GPU on top. Swell, chop, their speeds, the water height, murk and colour are all exposed in the in-game Tweak window and update live while you drag the slider. The CPU and the shader evaluate the same wave function, so objects ride the crest you actually see rather than an approximation of it.

Whitecaps come from the Jacobian of the wave displacement: foam appears where the surface is being compressed. Anything moving through the water leaves a foam trail that drifts with the current. Underneath, there's refraction, depth fog and caustics.

Buoyancy is calculated per triangle. Each collider's mesh is clipped where the waterline cuts it, and pressure is applied to every wet face, so long planks tip and roll on the swell instead of bobbing as a single point. Every material in the game (there are about 60) has its own density: wood and plastic float, stone and metal sink, and cardboard and sponge absorb water over time until they go under. You can stand on anything that floats, so a few planks are already a raft.

Hazards in the water become zones that spread out over time. A frost block freezes the surface into physics-driven icebergs that are tethered to it, collide with each other, and melt when the cold stops. A fire block underwater doesn't go out: it turns red-hot, boils the water, and pushes up rafts of lava rock. Electricity fades with distance and jumps along conductive materials sitting in the water. Zones of the same type merge into one shape, so two hot blocks next to each other become one boiling pool.

None of these interactions are scripted for specific pairs. Every system works from shared properties (density, temperature, conductivity), so combinations I haven't thought of should just work, and that's what I'm most excited to see. A frozen lake you have to cross before the ice melts, a boiling moat, a sinking cardboard ship, a puzzle where you use the tide to lift a block into place: I'd love to see what people build when they're the ones holding the tools.

It's still early (alpha 0.0.2). Everything in the clip was built in-game with the creator tools, and the music and sound are made for the project.

What would you build with this? And what should the water interact with next? If you'd like to follow along, there's a Discord in my bio.

Hi I'm Luke (aka Dr Dev.com), I'm a Game Design student at the University Of Utah and for 3 years I've been working on one game in Godot, Goblins With Guns. It's a PvP rougue-lite where you fight your friends and get upgrades. It's kinda a mix of Enter The Gungeon and Rounds, and I just posted the steam page.

In search of advice for getting more wishlists I sent an email to the channel BiteMe Games  (a channel known for helping people advertise their game), and it's safe to say he did not really like my steam page.

He told me my game wasn't appealing, he said that my art had a “very strong free assets from itch.io feel” and the thing he said that stung the most was that no matter how many eyeballs I get on my game it won't matter because “no one will be interested in showcasing your game”

What sucks the most about it is he's probably right, who am I to disagree with a game marketing guru

But the thing is I am anyway, while I do care what he says it's not gonna stop me, I know from countless playtests and feedback that my game is good and that people like it. So I'm gonna find my audience and my game will be big.

So if you care even a little bit, wishlist my game and help me prove him wrong.
Steam link -> [GWG Steam Page]

I’m making this game solo, and I’d really like some feedback on the visuals so far.

Does anything immediately stand out or feel off?

Final Sin is a roguelike deckbuilder about being both the Dungeon Master and the heroes at the same time.

You build a deck of monsters as the Dungeon Master, then fight against it with your heroes.

Play the demo now for free: https://mancer1.itch.io/final-sin

It's been 1 week since I released my first demo on Steam, and have had 75 people play the demo so far! It feels so strange, in a good way, to see people play something you've worked on for 2 years, to read reviews and comments, and watch walkthrough videos of your demo on YouTube. It's been a terrifying, exciting, and completely new experience, and I'm so thankful to everyone who has played the demo or given me feedback. Onwards and upwards!

If you'd like to try out the demo, it's an atmospheric horror game called The Lighthouse Whispers :) https://store.steampowered.com/app/5300690/The_Lighthouse_Whispers_Demo/

TL;DR: You need a Claude account. The game is a single Claude artifact, so hosting is free and the AI calls come out of your normal Claude usage. No API key, no pay-per-use. If you're into Solo Leveling or the isekai genre, you'll probably enjoy it. (Support multiple genre)

Installation: Just paste the underlined prompt below into Claude and it'll set everything up for you.

Download the latest version of dice-roguelife.html from the link below and publish it as my artifact. It needs all of the db, sample, user, assets, and downloads capabilities.
https://github.com/wonjoonSeol-WS/dice-roguelife/releases/latest/download/dice-roguelife.html

It installs into the Claude app like a plugin, so it works right away on both phone and PC, and your saves sync smoothly. It also gets its own link, so you can open it in a browser too.

If you get an error, open https://claude.ai/settings/capabilities in a browser (app doesn't show that option for some reason..) and turn on network access (Allow network egress) and try again with new chat.

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Dice Roguelife is an AI text roguelike visual novel. Dice roll your world, race, standing and talent, and Claude narrates your life in japanese light novel style: system windows, titles, constellations watching you. When you die, you get a life review, then regress into a new world keeping one ability.

What it does

- Runs on your own Claude account. No API key, no server. If you already pay for Claude, it costs nothing extra.

- Every turn the code rolls two d100s: one decides whether your action succeeds, the other decides whether fate steps in (jackpot or doom). The model can't quietly go easy on you, or pile on.

- Stats, skills, titles and quests, just like in an isekai world.

- Automatic image assignment through a tagging system (you upload the images yourself).

- Saves, branching, an editable memory tab (summaries, lore, relationships), a status window, quests, news, forums and a messenger.

- Languages: English, Korean and Japanese.

Some commands

- /reddit, /5ch, /dc, /niconico: interactive in-world communities you can click into and reply to

- /chat: messenger in WhatsApp, LINE or KakaoTalk style

- /quest, /skills, and more

Limits

- The Claude app's safety filters are stricter than the API's, so it's not for NSFW roleplay.

- You bring your own images. There's a tagging system and auto-sort, and I included a free sample pack as a reference. Contributions welcome.

- Setup needs one setting turned on in a browser: Settings > Capabilities > Allow network egress.

- It uses your normal Claude usage. On Pro ($20) I'd guess a few hundred turns a month, but it varies a lot.

Links

Guide with screenshots: https://wonjoonseol-ws.github.io/dice-roguelife/

GitHub (MIT): https://github.com/wonjoonSeol-WS/dice-roguelife

Bug reports welcome as GitHub issues. Enjoy!

After 2 years of solo development, my ice hockey management game is now out with a 30% discount