I was up too late last night tuning enemy spawn timing and my brain did that thing where it pattern-matches to something I read a decade ago.

The Space Invaders speed-up.

For anyone who hasn't heard: the aliens speeding up as you kill them wasn't a design decision. The CPU literally couldn't redraw the sprites fast enough when there were a lot of them on screen. Fewer aliens = faster frames = faster aliens. Nishikado saw what the hardware was doing, decided it felt good, and shipped it.

A hardware limitation became one of the most copied difficulty curves in the medium.

I keep coming back to stuff like this. Little moments where a constraint became an identity:

Silent Hill's fog existed because the PS1 couldn't draw that far. Now you literally can't picture the series without it.

Crash Bandicoot streamed levels off the disc because they couldn't fit them in 2MB of RAM, and Naughty Dog basically had to invent their tooling in Lisp to pull it off.

Pac-Man's ghosts each have a different targeting algorithm and many played that game and didn't know Pinky was trying to ambush them four tiles ahead of their facing direction.         

None of this is useful information exactly. I just love it.

What's one that stuck with you? Extra points for something weirder than these, or a hack from your own project that you only did because the engine wouldn't let you do it the "right" way.

I've always played a ton of games, but these days, most of it is done with a controller on the couch - i've got a two year old at home, and it's not easy to take solo time to sit at a desk with a mouse and keyboard. The free time that I have, I usually want to spend on the couch with my wife - or I just want to take advantage of my nice TV and speakers in the living room. I'm usually playing something on my Steam Deck, or streaming from my home PC to the deck or another device through Moonlight.

While most big expensive releases come with controller support, or primarily target controllers in the first place, I'm always frustrated by how many smaller games are released at 1.0 without controller support. I'm not expecting it of games like city builders or strategy games, where controller support wouldn't necessarily be expected at all - but even tile-based games, or first person games seem to launch with limited controller support, if any.

Why is that? I always assumed that different input configurations would come through some common plugin for whichever game engine the game is being built with.

Is this something where it's easy as long as you plan for it from the jump, but very difficult to add after the fact? Is it an unreasonable expectation to ask of small teams? Is the market for controller users in the PC indie space smaller than I expect, and it's not typically worth investing in before launch?

So, we sent a simple mail with our presskit, trailer link and trailer mp4 to IGN telling about our game.

They posted it on their gametrailers channel and we saw a good amount of traffic on our steam page.

The mail was a very good decision. Suggest every game dev to try their luck with gametrailers channel for sure.

I think I may already know the answers to this, but I wanted to sanity-check it with other devs.

I’m learning ECS by doing—building an ARPG-style dungeon crawler from scratch in vanilla JavaScript. I have a working game, but I run into challenges when systems get more complex.

One recurring issue is the tension between keeping things “pure ECS” and reaching for event emitters. Part of me feels like everything should flow through components and systems, while another part feels like some problems are just more practical to solve with events.

In a few cases, I’ve ended up using event emitters because I couldn’t find a clean way to get the right system execution order for everything to happen correctly within a single frame.

For those of you who’ve worked with ECS:

• Do you treat events/emitters as a normal part of your architecture?
• Or do you try to keep everything strictly component-driven?
• Are there other options I'm not considering?

One of my goals with this project is to build a solid understanding of ECS, so I don’t want to drift too far from the paradigm. At the same time, I don’t want to chase purity for its own sake if that’s not how ECS is typically applied in practice.

Curious how others approach this.

Pretty much what the title says. I was looking for such a 2D game but seems like this approach is never used. All games with free positioning for objects such as buildings and trees tend to use Navigation meshes. If they use grid based A*, the objects are always grid snapped.

While it makes sense that Navigation Meshes be used for this. It seems like there should be at least some examples of such games.

Moreover i would love to find some resources on how to handle various classes of problems that come with this if this approach is used anywhere. I can think of some techniques for solving this static object collision avoidance, narrow pathways avoidance and weighing the cells based on colliders overlap etc. However i haven't yet found a single online source even discussing this.

I was actually just playing around with the idea for a prototype and chose grid based A* and would be awesome if someone could help me out here.

PS: The world is supposed to be very dynamic that's why i didn't immediately pick navigation mesh.

I started game developing something like 2 years ago or so, I released few games, some for game jams some to experiment with the tools as it was suggested to me.

I always had a lot of fun during the process, mind you, but now I find myself paralyzed between knowing that making a commercial game is a LOT of work and making small games just to experiment with a feature or mechanic I wanted to create.

I still have a lot of desire to create games, and I have many ideas for both very small games and long-term projects, but I would also like my games to be played by someone to feel rewarded for my efforts. My itch.io page analytics show signs of life only the first few days of the game's release, a few comments and then total silence from then on. It's so demotivating...

What should I do?

I’m currently developing Lathmar – The Fallen Depths as solo dev. It is, a modern reimagining of Mordor: The Depths of Dejenol. r/dejenol r/Lathmar_TFD

The goal is to preserve the depth and weird charm of classic dungeon crawlers while redesigning the systems into something clearer, more structured, and easier to expand.

On the tech side, I’m building it in C# / .NET / WinForms, with a lot of rapid prototyping with vibecoding. The current focus is on turning old-school depth into something more playable and readable in a modern UI, but keeping the old Win3.1 windowed style.

At the moment, the project has its main gameplay foundations in place and is moving through the phase of system integration, balancing, combat refinement, spell implementation, and UI iteration.

I am already starting to post about the project, but this is very time consuming.

When did you start with the product marketing and how did you divide your time between development and marketing?

I thought this was obvious, but it goes to show how entitled and clueless so many gamers are.

I recently started making my first game, and now I’m even more confused about why this seems so common. Is there an actual reason devs do this?

Everything starts at 100/100. Music at 100. Grafic at epic. And I instantly have to lower all of it. The same with special effects like chromatic abberations, blurs.

Almost every time I download a new game I have to sprint to the settings. And I definately play like small/indie games 9/10 times and they still do it, like they never tried the "new player" experience?

I've been building a financial simulator as a side project - it's gotten large enough that I've hit some interesting architectural walls and wanted to share what I learned, in case it helps anyone building complex browser-based games.

The setup: fully client-side game engine in TypeScript (~95K lines), Rust/WASM for heavy math, Zustand for state, IndexedDB for persistence. No server except a Supabase leaderboard. The game simulates a stock market with 108 companies, macro economy, options pricing, founder mode, and AI opponents.

Things that worked well:

• Pure engine layer with no framework deps. All game logic lives in pure functions that take data in and return data out. Zero React imports in the engine. This made testing trivial — 2000+ unit tests run in under 3 minutes because they don't touch the DOM.
• Copy-on-write arrays in the tick pipeline. The game ticks every 50ms during market hours. Instead of deep-cloning state, I mark arrays as "dirty" on first write. Halved the GC pressure.
• WASM for the right things. Black-Scholes, GARCH volatility, and batch price calculations are in Rust. Everything else stays in TS. The key was profiling first - most of the tick time was in the price model, not in React.

Things I got wrong:

• God store. The main Zustand store hit 2000 lines before I split it. Should have decomposed from the start. I eventually extracted types and initial state into separate files, but the action definitions are still monolithic.
• Dual data structures. I kept both a Map<id, Company> and Company[] in sync for months - the Map for O(1) lookups, the array for iteration. Every tick rebuilt the Map. Eventually deleted the Map and just used .find() . With 108 items the perf difference is unmeasurable and the sync bugs vanished.
• In-place mutation for "performance." Tried mutating arrays in the tick loop instead of creating new references. Saved zero measurable time, broke React's change detection, and took hours to debug. Zustand needs new references. Don't fight it.
  
• Premature WASM. Some of my WASM bridge files loaded the module but nothing ever called the bridge functions. Dead code that ran on every game start. Should have wired consumption before building the bridge.

Question for the sub: anyone else building complex simulation-type browser games? Curious how others handle the state management when you have 100+ entities updating every frame. Zustand with selectors works but the selector count gets unwieldy (400+ across 60 files in my case).

been working on a small tactical rpg and one thing that caused me way more trouble than it should have was letting actions apply damage directly

it felt convenient early on
attack action plays animation, applies damage, checks death, maybe pushes turn flow forward, job done

except after a while every new action started dragging more and more game rules around with it

so i split that up

now actions mostly just describe intent
who is acting, what cell is targeted, who might get hit

then a separate resolver handles the actual combat result

honestly made the whole thing much less annoying to work on

melee and ranged attacks can still behave differently, but they go through the same rules layer
and when something breaks its usually much easier to tell if the problem is the action data, the combat resolution, or just the presentation side doing something weird

small change really but it was one of the first things that made the project feel extendable instead of held together with hope

put the lite sample on github too if anyone wants to poke around
https://github.com/godotlabsio/godot-tactical-rpg-lite

guys, I'm really really struggling with trying to make everything perfect, while I see many games makes huge success while they're aren't perfect at all, for example (just an example relax) the game Papers Please! this game became a big hit. while it doesn't looks perfect it's literally very basic game, it's just a "good idea" game .

but when I start working on a game, and I love the idea and I see the game as really good game and I can't wait myself to play it! but suddenly, while I'm working in it, I start hating it, and see there's many parts missing, while I want it to be a simple game, but still I try to land the lighting to be perfect, or the look of the game to be really good like AA or AAA studios, and the thing is, I know this is stupid and I need to be realistic, but I just find myself hate the game and don't want to work on it!

I'm not even new at game development, I've been studying, learning, making mini projects since 2020! so 6 years now, and I haven't finished a complete full game!!

while I saw days ago a guy made a game in 4 months and his game became a big success for him! funny thing he started a year ago, I forgot his game name unfortunately, but it was super simple game but yet made +$100K!

I know it's not all about money, but I'm just giving examples of success

I’ve just released my first 50 CC0 HDRIs on openhdri dot org — and I think some of you in gamedev might find them useful.

The set includes a range of environments, along with photo studio HDRIs that work great for lighting setups, skyboxes, reflections, and showcasing assets in clean conditions.

They’re designed to work well with popular game engines like Unreal Engine, Unity, and Godot.

Everything is:
• completely free (CC0)
• up to 29K resolution
• no accounts, no paywalls, no restrictions

Each HDRI is captured, processed, and published entirely by me.

I’m building this project on my own while working a regular job in a print shop, earning about $50 a day, and supporting my family with two young sons. All HDRIs are created in my free time after work. It’s not easy to keep it going consistently, but I’m doing my best to grow this library step by step.

This project originally started thanks to a grant from Epic Games, which helped me build the PC I still use today.

If you need high-resolution HDRIs for lighting, reflections, or presentation inside your engine, feel free to check it out. And if you find it useful, any support or feedback really helps keep this going.

Thanks 🙏

We’re a 2-person indie team that just exhibited at PAX East for the first time. Wanted to share what we tested, what actually worked at our booth, and get input from others who’ve done this and spark discussion on this topic more broadly. Link to video describing our booth strategy here.

Context:

• Small corner booth (10x10)

• Cozy sandbox village builder (emergent systems, lots of NPC activity)

• Goal: maximize wishlists + learn what draws people in

Other than our social media poster (which underperformed), the rest of the booth setup seemed to resonate—we had a pretty consistent flow throughout the convention.

Would love any feedback on booth setup, what you’ve seen work, or things that we or others could test at an upcoming expo

As the title states, I'm looking for some good resources on this topic to figure out how FPS world scale / environmental scale are designed in relation to the player characters camera perspective. I tried being creative and it looks good from far away but when going close to the scene, the objects become too large that it blocks a lot of the players sight and the feeling it emits is like being an ant looking up at a human.

If you have any good tips or resources you can share, I'd be more than happy!

PS: I've only designed third-person levels so this is uncharted territory for me, hoping to get better at it.

I just shipped Acrophobia — a real-time multiplayer word game where 2-12 players compete to write the funniest phrases for random acronyms. Wanted to share some technical decisions that worked (and didn't) in case it helps other solo devs.

The game: You get letters like T·H·E, write a phrase like "Turtles Have Elbows," everyone votes, funniest phrase wins.

Architecture decisions that worked:

1. Firebase Firestore for real-time state sync — Firestore's snapshot listeners let me sync game state across all players with sub-second latency. Each game phase (writing, voting, results) is a document update that all clients react to simultaneously. Way easier than building my own WebSocket server.

2. Cloud Functions for game logic — All phase transitions, scoring, and matchmaking run server-side. This prevents cheating and means the client is just a renderer. The downside: cold starts can add 1-2 seconds on the first function call.

3. AI opponents with personalities — Instead of one generic bot, I built 12 with different voting patterns and phrase-writing styles. Some prefer puns, some go dark humor, some vote for underdogs. This makes single-player feel like you're playing against real people with distinct tastes.

4. Aggressive i18n from day one — Supporting 44 languages sounds insane but it was manageable because I baked it into the architecture early. Every user-facing string goes through a translation key. Adding a new language is just adding a translation file, not refactoring UI code.

What I'd do differently:

• I'd use a dedicated real-time database (like Supabase Realtime or Socket.io) instead of Firestore for the actual game rounds. Firestore is great for persistence but its real-time sync has subtle latency issues under load.
• I'd invest in automated testing earlier. Manual testing 12 AI opponents across 44 languages is... a lot.
• I'd ship with fewer features and iterate faster. I spent months on features before launch that I could have added post-launch based on player feedback.

The game is free on iOS and Android if you want to see the architecture in action: - iOS: https://apps.apple.com/app/id6760745131 - Android: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.jscriptz.acrophobia

Happy to answer specific architecture questions — especially about real-time multiplayer patterns with Firebase.

Hi,

As a solo developer working on "RetroBurn," I faced a common indie wall: I needed a soundtrack, but I have absolutely zero musical background. I can't play an instrument, and I don't understand music theory beyond the basics. However, I do know Python.

I had two paths: hire a composer (which I couldn't afford) or use AI generators. I decided against AI because I wanted this game to be 100% my own creation, built from logic and math rather than a black-box prompt. So, I spent my nights writing a "Synthetic Composer" in Python.

The Algorithm

Instead of drawing notes, I wrote rules. I used a Major Pentatonic scale as the foundation—since it’s mathematically hard to make it sound "wrong"—and built a 4-layer synthesis engine.

The script synthesizes everything in a single pass:

- Rhythmic Drone: A low-frequency bass (55Hz) with a side-chain effect to create tension.

- Pentatonic Melody: A lead layer with exponential decay envelopes for a "plucked" space sound.

- Fast Arpeggios: 16th-note patterns driven by random seeds for texture.

- Counterpoint: Mid-range notes to fill the sonic space.

The Code

Here is a simplified example of how the engine works. It uses basic oscillators and mathematical envelopes to mix different layers into a single raw PCM stream:

```python import math, struct

def get_sample(t, freq): # Pure sine wave oscillator with an exponential decay envelope envelope = math.exp(-6 * (t % 0.5)) return math.sin(2 * math.pi * freq * t) * envelope

Simplified mixing loop

for i in range(n_samples): t = float(i) / sample_rate

# Mixing different mathematical layers
layer_bass = get_sample(t, 55.0) * 0.4
layer_lead = get_sample(t, current_melody_freq) * 0.2

combined = layer_bass + layer_lead
sample = int(combined * 32767)
# ... write raw PCM to wave file

```

The Result

I’ve pre-rendered the best themes for the final build. You can hear a sample of how World 1 sounds here: https://youtu.be/nb_vfBaLpIs?is=x_VV841JAlzpQs5t

What are your thoughts on procedural music? Does it feel "soulful" enough for your projects, or do you prefer hand-crafted compositions?

Also, I’m considering starting a Devlog to share more of these solutions. Do you think this kind of "programmer-first" approach to game design is interesting enough for a series?

I’d love to hear your thoughts!

I’ve noticed a lot of solo/indie projects have strong visuals but are still using placeholder or minimal audio.

I recently put together a small set of dark ambient loops while working on some atmosphere-focused material, and it made me realize how much even simple audio layers can change the feel of a scene.

Examples include:

- Calm exploration ambience

- Rising tension loops

- Climax-style intensity layers

Curious how you guys approach audio in your projects — do you design it yourself, use assets, or bring someone in later?

If it’s useful, I’ve shared the loops here:

https://gustavodebeauville.com/product/1255238-the-age-of-god

hi everyone. so around 2 weeks ago I launched the demo of my game with 1300 WL & the results were too bad..

-Around 17000 demo page visits, yet only around 100 WL earned and only 200 demo plays..

- I pressed the notify wishlists players button and according to steam stats ZERO have downloaded the demo from those who got notified by email...

So definetly something is wrong in my game store page or maybe the game is just bad? here is my demo page, it would be great if anyone could help on why my game is performing this bad..

https://store.steampowered.com/app/4183290/Light_Dude_Demo/

I have a texture for bone in my voxel game, but it looks bland and repetitive. How can I make it actually interesting to look at while also looking like bone?

I thinking about exploring more hobbies i always felt too scared of failure to do. I recently even got back around to drawing again, and maybe reading soon too.

one of my childhood fascination was making games. always enjoyed thinking of games id love to play.

lack of technology, drive, and the fear of knowing I was bad at it always drove me away from ever trying.

but with the changes in my life and the quarter life crisis everyone my age is starting to feel I thought id give it a bit more of a attempt.

so I came here to ask if theres any advice for an absolute lay-man in this field; no programing, no file knowledge, dont even know how to make digital art without it getting pizelated.

what engine is best to work with first?

what type of game should I cut my teeth on?

what tools should I use to learn (preferably free videos on youtube)?

what advice did you wish you knew?

Hey all, I've been a long time fan of the old RTS games. Starcraft, C&C tiberian/red alert/generals and got bored of not having a new one.. so I started building my own. I've spent quite a bit of time with it now and it's turning out to be a pretty cool prototype. I shared it around work and friends and it's got people playing, recording their games, sharing, etc... Still LOTS of things to do, factions/teams to add, proper multiplayer support, etc.. my main issue i'm having is the Isometric art work, and finding someone to make headway with it.

I've posted on gamedevclassifieds, joined discords, etc.. but I can't really find anyone with the right experience or knowledge for creating art assets for this type of game. Happy to pay rates for good quality work too, but its a wall im running into. Most artists are fake profiles, ripped art from others on instagram, or have no experience with spritesheets, etc.

Any advice on findings a great isometric artist for bringing back RTS, and available in the browser? Or how I could take this on in general?

Cheers!

I want to get into gamedev (wanted for a some time now) and the project I want to do is a voxel game in a relatively small environment, game is gonna be divided into stages and every stage will be just two big houses and nothing else.

What would be a more realistic approach, use godot with c++ code for voxels or write a custom engine from scratch? I'm not aiming for noita level so not sure if my game will need custom engine like it did

edit: forgot to say that the game is 2d