From the related articles from TheGamer here.

, the investigation began when Schedule 1 first launched at the end of March, and it'll be looking into "elements of the game's plot, mechanics, as well as UI".

A simple close looks will hopefully get this thrown out of the windows before it even get's traction, this is one of those frivolous approaches from a publisher that is pissed that their game did not blow up as the indie title of one person.

Do you watch streams or YouTube playthroughs of games you've worked on once they've been released? What do you think and how do you feel when you watch? Good things? Bad things?

I know words change meaning all the time, but I think indie game is a special case here. I was talking to a coworker of mine about what his favourite indie games are and he said with straight face "Dave the diver and Pentiment", I didn't say anything other than "that are great games" I must say that he is not very interested in the industry as the whole, so that for me indicated how normal people view indie today, it's just an aesthetic.

While I don't see that as a problem, but what pains me is that big corporations like Microsoft can spend 20m on a game and it would still be considered an indie by YOUR potential customer, meaning people who are interested in your indie are now expecting the same level of polish, finnesse and content as in games made by biggest corporations around.

Do you think my fears are justified? I don't mean that "boohoo we as indie should not polish our indie games", but more in shifting expectations from our potential customers.

things go consider before i start:

• my game is pure Co-Op, and the enemies are only npcs
• my game is a psychological horror FPS
• the ammos are rare, so guns will be overpowered but also less used
• there are more ways to defend yourself, such as melee, grenades and artillery (an example is Amnesia: the bunker)

i know that gun jamming is awful, mostly in pvp games, but i want to add more tension and awareness in game by giving a sense of untrust to your weapon.

and i know, guns should be very responsive because or else you could die for unresponsive inputs, but i want the players to play more defensively than directly attack enemies.

another programming detail, the guns will jam after an X amount of shots, not by chance, and weather conditions decrease the amount of shots necessary.

what do you think?

I made a little web app so one can remove and edit entries from a leaderboard because steam doesn´t have a built in solution for this and I couldnt find anything similar.

Its open source: https://github.com/Stefaaan06/Steam-Leaderboard-Moderation

Hy there! I'm a huge fan of turn based games, and I've been having fun creating this kind of games for quite a few years now.

When it comes to turn-based games, an important question is: imagining an enemy has an attack pool composed of several attacks, how the game randomly pick one of this attack? Like, what's the actual algorithm involved?

Personally, I usually go for a very simple algorithm:

- The enemy has an array of attack (it can be just one, or several, depending on the enemy).
- Each attack has several variables (damage, etc.), and one of the variables is the pick_percentage. It's a int from 0 to 100.
- When it's time for the game to choose the next enemy attack, I'll roll a D100 dice (figuratively, you get it).
- All the attacks that have a score superior to the D100 result are added to a temp array of attacks called possible_attacks.
- The game then randomly choose one of the attack from the possible_attacks array. Each attack has the same percentage of chance to be picked once inside this array.
- Depending on the game's rule, an enemy always has at least one attack that has a pick_percent of 100 (meaning the enemy will never pick no attack at all because the possible_attacks array will never be empty), or if I decide it's possible for an enemy to not attack, then the enemy will pass its turn if no attack is picked because the possible_attacks array is empty.

Of course, we can imagine some hard-coded rules like: if the enemy picked a heal attack and is full health, redo the all pick, or whatever, but this is more contextual, altough it's also an interesting design problem.

What I like about this algorithm is that I can add as many attacks as I want depending on the enemy and I don't have to change other's pick_percentage each time the total amount of attacks change (altough adding or removing an attack from the pool obviously change the attack's percentage of chance to be picked).

What I don't like, however, is that the actual real percentage of chance of an attack to be picked at the end is not obvious (because it needs to be picked first, depending on the D100 result, and then there is a second pick involved, and the % of chance to be picked then depends on the number of attacks in the possible_attacks array).

I guess a different way to do it could be to simply choose the number of attacks of the array and then make it so that all the pick_percentage combined is exactly equal to 100, for example.

I was wondering what was your favorite one? Do you have ideas of fun/interesting algorithms to try out?

Hey everyone!
I've recently started coding my own game - a 2d action platformer (think Mario meets Contra) and have reached the stage where I want some player feedback to refine my game.

As a newbie to both, playtesting and game development, I'm looking for some pointers on both.
What are some common pitfalls you have faced while playtesting your games?
How do you work around these pitfalls?
What challenges during the playtesting process should I specifically keep my eye out for?
Do I bother using 3rd party services and tools, or is it not worth the price and hassle? (This is a bit of a passion project and I am not sure how much I actually want to spend on playtesting - if anything).

Apart from answers to these 3 questions, any more information about playtesting difficulties or general pitfalls I should expect during this process would be REALLY appreciated!

Hey,
I’ve been building my own game engine over the last 4 years (not full-time, don’t worry, I’m not that insane) and figured I’d share some of the lessons learned along the way.

It’s a general reflection piece—no deep dives, just an overview of what worked and what really didn’t. Could be useful if you’re thinking about writing your own engine or already knee-deep in one.

If anyone wants a deeper dive on any of the topics, let me know. If it’s a big enough topic, I might write a follow-up.

I'm producing a 3D platformer, but I know from the outset that it won't sell due to genre saturation and also it's the worst selling genre on Steam. But that's okay. It's an experiment and it's something I enjoy. And nothing can take that away from me.
BTW 👍 Wishlist here! https://store.steampowered.com/app/456140/Bobo_and_the_Chest_of_Nightmares/

i was working on client project that seemed very simple and straight forward and i can make in 1 week.

the client mentioned that i am the 10s dev hes hiring because others abandoned the project.

wish didn't make sense to me since the idea of the game sounds very Simple

then i am months deep on this... 😂

i want to know if other game that look super Easy but are actually hell to develop

👍 Wishlist here! https://store.steampowered.com/app/456140/Bobo_and_the_Chest_of_Nightmares/

Unreal is strongly built with Multiplayer support in mind. When developing a Singleplayer game most of it can be ignored since the code simply wont run, but there is still a memory footprint caused due to this. Some engine changes can remedy this, the memory saved strongly depends on the type of game, though. Long version: https://larstofus.com/2025/04/05/how-deleting-multiplayer-from-the-engine-can-save-memory/

Hi, I'm Jerzy. One half of Clumsy Bear Studio. We are 2 idiots who decided to take all their savings and put into the idea of making a "real game". This is a story about last weekend and how we tried to launch our first Steam demo. As it will become very obvious when you read it, I have zero writing skills! but I thought I would share it anyway.

It was the most intense weekend of my life yet. It involved my partner Scott and me trying to finish the demo for Hungry Horrors and push it live on Steam, an earthquake, multiple flat moves, and cockroaches.

For a few months now, we’ve been living in South East Asia, working on our game while travelling. We decided to do so as our game is self-funded from our savings, and despite trying to live on a budget, London prices were melting our game budget insanely quickly. We didn’t want to give up on this dream because we spent all our money on grocery shopping, so we decided to move to South East Asia. This was something we had done before when I ran an augmented reality studio before the pandemic ended that adventure.

We have a 6-month digital nomad visa, a pricey but great flat in Bangkok with an amazing rooftop swimming pool. And we worked on the game. We got invited to the London Games Festival and decided that this was a great deadline and moment to premiere our demo on Steam. The demo was almost ready, just a few last touches.

The plan was simple: we’d push the last changes by Friday, do a day of testing and a soft launch of the demo, catch any bigger bugs, and fix them before the big marketing push on the 2nd and the festival on the 3rd of April. I would fly to London on 31st March, and Scott was staying in Thailand as his family was coming for a holiday and to visit him. We knew it would be an intense couple of weeks, but we were ready to tackle the challenge and hopefully rest afterwards.

On Friday morning, we were pushing the last updates to the demo. The plan was to commit changes and test a lot on Windows, Mac, Linux, and Steam Deck. Around midday, all changes were made and, before testing and committing to Steam, we decided to go for lunch.

Scott jumped in the shower and I was consolidating feedback from the last Itch version. I was sitting on the computer chair, writing, and first felt like a swing. I thought the chair was wobbly again, as I’d had that issue before. I tried to move it to see if it happened again, but it was stable. Then I felt a second swing. That was worrying. I thought maybe I was losing my balance. It felt like I had just got off a ship and had sea legs. I was worried something was happening to me, so I rushed towards the bathroom to tell Scott, in case it was just me. Then another shake happened. This time the whole flat shook slightly. That was confusing. It felt like an earthquake, but Bangkok doesn’t get earthquakes. I shouted for Scott to get out of the shower. He left and just put his shirt on, and the flat shook again. I grabbed my wallet and door key, which were in front of me, and shouted at Scott to get out of the building.

We didn’t know what was happening. Maybe there had been some kind of explosion. The walls and ceiling started cracking. We got to the evacuation stairs and started running. We were on the 10th floor, which in Thailand is high. We didn’t see or hear anyone, which was very odd, but we were running quickly yet steadily, trying not to break our legs or something. The stairs started cracking. Maybe it was some kind of pipe explosion, because Bangkok doesn’t get earthquakes.

We managed to get down and out from the back entrance. There was a lot of water falling down from the building. We saw a woman running towards us with a small child who was crying, shouting "What is happening?" We didn’t know. We got to the car park exit, but it had a massive gate and a lock we couldn’t break. We were still very close to our building, with walls too tall to jump over. The water was pouring down, and it was not safe, as we were directly under a massive balcony with an infinity swimming pool on the 41st floor, which was literally above us. I shouted to everyone to run to the other side of the building, where there was an open area towards the street and fewer skyscrapers. We got there, all wet, and saw the whole street of people running out from skyscrapers.

I remembered that not far from us, there was a flat area where there used to be parking, so we ran there to have some empty space and not be directly under tall buildings.

There were a lot of people there from a nearby hotel. One woman brought Scott a towel to cover himself, as he was still just in shorts. I sat down on the ground to calm my legs, and I felt another shake. I wasn’t sure if it was me because nobody else seemed to notice. I heard squeaking. There was a tiny rodent-like creature, like a gopher, held by a half-naked man in a towel. Also, a few dogs barking. A group of confused, barely dressed people and animals.

It looked like everything had calmed down. Actually, it looked like nothing had happened on the ground. Except for scared people everywhere, there were no signs of an earthquake. Street bins intact, not even fallen. Plant pots: fine. Windows: fine. Motorbikes: parked and untouched. So what was it? A gas leak? Bangkok doesn’t have earthquakes, so what could it be?

All I had grabbed was the key and wallet. No phone, no laptop, no way to communicate or check what was going on. But then we heard some people talking about an earthquake and showing each other videos on their phones. OK, if it was an earthquake, that means aftershocks, which can often cause the collapse of already weakened buildings. We didn’t feel safe there. Luckily, I quickly remembered that just a block away, there was an area with multiple low-rise hypermarkets and massive parking lots. Lots of flat areas with no high buildings nearby.

We quickly passed through massive traffic and walked towards one of the shops. I saw a woman inside trying to secure clothes racks in case of another shake. I got in and quickly bought a T-shirt for Scott. Outside the shop, the staff were handing out water bottles, pastries, and snacks. They had set up parasols for people to hide in the shade. That was really nice of them. The whole thing was a bit surreal. So many literally shaken people, some sitting on the ground crying, some walking around in bathrobes, pyjamas, or just shorts, most glued to their phones watching a flood of TikToks from the area. Some behaved like nothing had happened, just going about their day and clearly annoyed that some shops weren’t open. Like two different realities had suddenly merged together.

Because I’d picked up my wallet at the last moment, we were able to buy stuff. I popped into a nearby café to get some sandwiches, coffee, and water, but we stayed outside, avoiding the rooftops. Once we calmed down a bit and ate, I remembered we had passed this very old internet café. I only remembered it because it was very dim, dark, empty and looked sad, compared to the massive, multistorey, bright, loud, and colourful gaming cafés in Da Nang or Chiang Mai. It was in a relatively low-rise area and only about a 30-minute walk away, so we decided to go there. We managed to get internet and contacted our families. We weren’t able to log into most apps, as they all now require two-factor authentication through a phone or an authenticator app, which is completely useless when you don’t have a phone. We couldn’t even contact our landlord to say we were OK, or ask what we could do next.

By this time, it looked like everything had calmed down, so we decided to go back near our building and find out what was happening. We got there around 5ish, and staff told us technicians and management were in the building checking if it was safe to go back. Within two hours, they said it was all safe, and we could go back in and pick up our stuff. I went up with a few other people via the fire escape, and it was an interesting view. Water was pouring down the stairs. Some floors looked almost fine, with just a few cracks on the walls, while others were much more damaged, with broken tiles, cracked walls and ceilings. It was a bit scary, constantly thinking it might shake again.

When I got up to the 10th floor, unfortunately, the fire escape door was shut. It looked like the earthquake had destroyed the door frame slightly, and the door was completely jammed. So I went down and talked to the staff. They asked us to wait as they were sending a technician to open the door. An hour later, we were told all doors were open, so I went up again, still locked. I tried the 11th floor and tried to get in via a separate fire exit, but everywhere was the same. I went downstairs and spoke to the staff again. It looked like they were now making a list of floors that were still locked. An hour later, they said floor 10 was open, so I went upstairs, still jammed, no way to open it without tools.

Not going to lie; at this point, I was sweating, tired and really not happy. I went downstairs again and then overheard a staff member telling another tenant that technicians were on their way. So had anyone actually been opening the doors? Had anyone even checked the building? I wasn’t sure I could believe they had done that so quickly. Surely, it takes time to evaluate whether the building structure is intact and safe to go in, especially in a place where earthquakes don’t usually happen. So we waited longer and were finally told the 10th floor was open now. I went up again, and it was still locked.

I was so angry at this point, but then spoke to some people walking down (bless anyone who lived on floors like 30 to 45, I don’t know how they managed), and they told me there was a guy with a crowbar on the 16th floor opening jammed doors. So I found him and was finally able to get to our floor and into the flat to get our phones, laptops, some clothes and essentials.

Once downstairs, I started searching for a place to stay. It was 11pm and understandably everything was gone, and what was left was insanely expensive. We’re on a tight indie dev budget. Finally, I found a place in a nice flat area and we were so happy that this was the end of the drama.

But it wasn’t. It was just part one.

We got ourselves a couple of beers and snacks and took an extremely long taxi ride to the hotel. Bangkok was paralysed with traffic, as the metro lines obviously weren’t working. Finally, we got to the hotel, and on the spot,t I realised I had booked the wrong dates. I think the system didn’t allow me to book for the previous day because it was after midnight when I pressed the booking button. But they had a spare room, so we were able to stay. We got to the room, which was nice and spacious, a bit old-school but fine, until I went to the bathroom and saw small roaches running around. I also noticed them around the fridge. But we couldn’t move anymore. We were too tired and really just needed a nap to figure out what to do next.

We decided to go to sleep. The bedroom looked cockroach-free, and we would move out the next day. I called my parents to tell them more details while Scott went to shower, and then suddenly, I heard a noise and a scream. Scott had tried to avoid a cockroach while showering, but slipped and hit his hand. He said he was in a lot of pain, more than just from a small fall. So we started looking online to figure out whether it was broken, but everything we read seemed to suggest it wasn’t. Good job we had those beers, we put the cans in the freezer and used them as ice packs. We decided to go to sleep and see how he was during the night. We didn’t sleep much, still feeling wobbly from the earthquake, Scott being in massive pain, and being aware of cockroaches. I found some small eggs or droppings in the corner of the bathroom and didn’t even want to know what made them.

Around 6 am, Scott said the pain wasn’t going away and was still really bad. So we went to the hospital. We had been to this building before to get a prescription, and they have an amazing food court. Not just for a hospital, but in general. Multiple different cuisines and really good food, including fusion dishes like bao with green chicken curry. So we were excited that at least we would have a nice breakfast. It took until midday for Scott to be discharged with a fractured arm and a cast on his hand. There are still more tests to be done, but we got our food, so we were happy.

I started looking for another apartment, as we couldn’t stay in that hotel. I found an Airbnb in a perfect location and a quiet area we actually had wanted to live in originally. We were excited, finally, after 36 hours, I would be able to lie down, relax, chill out and gather my thoughts. We got to the apartment around 3 pm, and as soon as I opened the door,r I saw a dead cockroach, this time a massive one. I hoped it was just one, but then I opened the bathroom door and found two more. In the bedroom, more again. Around the fridge, even more. I was so upset and exhausted at this point. This place had great reviews online and looked safe. We were so tired and still had no place to stay for the night.

Luckily, the landlord was very nice about it. He was very apologetic and immediately gave us our money back. He was clearly in shock. Maybe cockroaches came out during the earthquake and then ate poison and died, but we didn’t want to test how many there were or whether any were still alive, crawling around at night.

We went to the nearest café to charge our phones and find another place. Meanwhile, we were trying to figure out what to do next, as our original landlord told us that management said the building was fine to live in and we could go back. I had been there and taken pictures. The flat had cracks all over. Nobody had yet been into the flat to check if it was safe. We are definitely not going to live in that flat.

After a very long search, I finally found a hotel that looked relatively new (hopefully no roaches) and flat (safer in case of aftershocks), and we got there late in the evening. The hotel was nice and clean and the staff were very helpful. So immediately after inspection, we decided to extend our stay for a week. And back to the Hungry Horrors demo, as this was what we were supposed to be doing 25 hours ago. The last thing Scott had implemented was small changes to Steam Cloud and mouse-only controls. I was supposed to be working on social media and website copy for the demo release and everything else for the London Games Festival.

But we found bugs. This time not cockroaches, but in the game.

We had had enough. We were literally about to quit it all. But we went to sleep and hoped we would feel better the next day.

On Sunday morning, we woke up and re-evaluated the situation. It was 8 am. In 24 hours I was flying by myself to London, leaving Scott behind with a fractured hand. I only had summer tropical outfits with me, and all of them were still in the old flat. On top of that, my legs were in pain. I could feel every muscle like a heavy brick. That was the result of running up and down to the 10th floor multiple times. It was the biggest workout my legs had had in ages. My walk was so bad for the next few days that people were moving out of my way to make room, as I appeared to have impaired mobility.

We decided to try to do it all on the same day. I went shopping, barely able to walk, and also went to collect all our belongings from the old flat. Scott worked on fixing bugs with his dominant arm in a cast. Both tasks took longer than expected. It was hard for him to even use the mouse with that hand, and I was moving much slower than I wanted. It took ages to pack. We had also rented monitors and computer chairs for work, so we had to move them to the hotel’s storage. It all took until late evening.

Around 7pm we were testing the game again. Some small bugs, some missing content, but it was in relatively good shape. Around 10pm we were done. I decided to do one more test while recording gameplay to share, and after an hour and a half of playing the demo, it happened. The princess couldn’t move. Her body was in two positions at once. This was a game-breaking bug.

We had to get the demo out on Sunday. I was flying all day Monday. Tuesday was April Fools, so the release could easily be taken as a joke. And on 2nd April we had planned a big marketing push to get the word out. The demo had to go live before that to make sure it was working properly on Steam.

It was really frustrating, mostly because we weren’t sure what had happened. I had been recording the session, and we could see the bug had occurred once I picked up a silver ingredient. But I had done that about five times earlier with no issue. So I took the laptop and tried to replicate it, replaying the same level over and over again. Suddenly, it happened while I was playing the game from Godot, and Scott was able to figure it out. It was a combination of me pressing everything very quickly and opening a chest while picking up ingredients next to it so fast that animations played at the same time, breaking the game.

Scott was able to fix it, and we moved on. At 2 am, we did one last test and got ready to upload. Finally, just after 2am on Sunday, we pushed the demo live. I had 3 hours left of sleep.

I’m writing this all from a hotel in London just after the London Game Festival Expo. I think one day I will write a part 2; I'd love first to know if it all led to massive success or failure, but currently, the jury is out!

Thanks for reading
Jerzy

I am completely blind, and I want to develop a game. I'm wondeing if there are any game engines I can use that would work with a screen reader. I don't really care what programming language I have to use, and my game only will include adio features and no visuals.
THX

It was really awesome to see such big studios unionize around the same time last year. I was was expecting a lot of continued momentum and updates on such influential studios unionizing but I haven’t heard a peep. What gives? I want to spread awareness and help solidarity in the industry but do these unions have no public or media facing apparatus whatsoever? Seems strange.

In a video game company, which degree carries more job relevance: one in software development or one in computer science?

I'm making my own physics code for our game and wanted to share how Minkowski addition / subtraction works. I made an interactive blog post for it here (currently requires mouse for interactions).

Minkowski subtraction is commonly used for detecting if two bodies are overlapping, used by algorithms such as GJK and MPR.

I'm very interested in feedback. Are you into learning physics engine related tech? Did you find the article useful or interesting?

It's been a month since I released Shtrek on Steam, and I just wanted to share a quick follow-up after my previous post here.

The response so far has been way beyond what I expected. Hundreds of players (or at least I hope everybody that bought it also played it, hahah), wishlists, and reviews - it’s honestly been a bit surreal for a small hobby project. Each day there is a new wishlist or a copy sold and it all happened organically. Most of the "marketing" was me posting on various discord channels and social media.

Since the game released, I've also had some really nice conversations with players and fellow devs and the local support has continued to be amazing. Definitely makes all those evenings and weekends feel worth it.

Now I'm playing around with Unity 6 and doing some early work on few ideas and concepts, currently in prototype stage. Still taking things slow, but excited to keep learning, trying and building stuff.

Thanks again to everyone who gave the game a shot or reached out! And again, to all the solo devs there, keep going, releasing a game is one of the best things ever.

EDIT: For anyone trying to google the game and getting Shrek instead, here's a Steam link https://store.steampowered.com/app/3503510/Shtrek/

Okay so I have dabbled in a few features in Unreal Engine 5 with some basic modelling, Blueprints, Animations and became somewhat familiar with the interface and everything. Yet it feels like I havent really made important steps forward. I tried watching and learning with tutorials, but that ultimately just felt like copying, even if I tried to change something to make it more individual. Then I started teaching myself through figuring out how to create simple locomotion but that became frustrating too. So I wanna ask you guys if yall got any input for me and maybe tips on how to learn the engine more efficiently. Especially Blueprints

Hi, I have a few projects that I'm really excited to make, but since I don't know much about making a game (something I've been studying recently), so I wanted to ask you guys a few questions, like:

How can I find people to help me make my game? How do I know if people will like my project? How do I let people know about my game?

I was thinking to become a (game) programmer. But there's only 1 problem, i have a potato mac laptop.

Like when you gonna start making game what's the thing that you gonna look into first

Is getting more obscure brands like RUF,Panoz,Ginetta,TVR easier for a racing game compared to more known mainstream brands?

Another question is using a car tuner as a substitute for a another car brand legal? For an example if a game studio were to use a Koenig Competition Evolution (Without any Ferrari badging) instead of the real Ferrari Testarossa can Ferrari pursue legal action against them?

And the last question is how hard would it to license a dead car brand for a racing game for an example brand like Saab? And other car brands which do not exist anymore/make cars anymore?

Recently setup a Ltd Company to release a game. Initially this will be on Steam only.

The government allows you to not register for VAT if turnover is less than a particular amount. This is obviously preferable in many circumstances (no 20% to pay!) However, Steam's gonna be charging and paying this tax anyway.

So, with that mind, I take it I should just register for VAT and get some of the perks in exchange. Is that correct? Or are there any good reasons to stay unregistered for now?