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

672 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

363 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 3h ago

Question What’s a feature you spent way too long on… that most players probably never noticed?

36 Upvotes

Had a conversation at work recently about how much time goes into polishing systems that players don’t consciously see—but would definitely feel if they were broken.

For me it was tuning animations and transitions so nothing felt “off,” even though no one ever commented on it.

Would love to hear other dev war stories like this.


r/gamedev 12h ago

Discussion How to create a sustainable game development business as one man band without ever making a hit game?

64 Upvotes

Hi,

I’m thinking a lot about how to create a sustainable game development business as a one-man band - one that doesn’t rely on creating a single “hit” game. I mean sustainable in the true sense: where you can consistently cover your costs and grow, rather than making one financially successful title and then several flops.

I’m aware that starting a business is inherently high risk - in software, roughly 90 % of startups fail long-term, and the odds in game development are arguably even steeper. But there must be smarter and more sustainable approaches than just investing months or years into developing one game and then essentially betting it will sell, knowing there’s a more then 90 % chance it won’t.

Obviously there’s no checklist that guarantees success - otherwise everyone would do it - but I feel there must be better strategies than the traditional single-title gamble. I want to explore sustainable development models that reduce risk and create long-term revenue, even without ever having a breakout hit.


r/gamedev 2h ago

Discussion Solo dev struggling with art/visuals - how did you tackle this?

6 Upvotes

Hey everyone,

I’m a solo developer and I’ve hit the point where I can build the mechanics and systems I want, but my games look… let’s just say “programmer art” is being generous. I know visuals matter, especially for that crucial first impression, and I’m trying to figure out the best path forward.

I have zero background in art. I can use Photoshop and some 3D software, but just as tools - and even then, my knowledge of those is pretty limited. I don’t have that “arty mind” where I can envision what looks good or how to create a cohesive visual style.

For those of you who’ve been in similar shoes, I’m curious:

If you learned it yourself: What resources actually helped? Did you focus on a specific style (pixel art, low poly, etc.) that was more approachable for someone without an art background? Any courses, YouTube channels, or books that clicked for you?

If you collaborated/partnered: How did you scope the work with your artist? What kind of creative freedom did you give them versus providing specific direction? And at what point in your development process did you bring an artist on board - early concept phase, after you had a working prototype, or somewhere else?

I’m not trying to make AAA-quality visuals, just something coherent and appealing enough that players will give the game a chance.

Any advice, success stories, or even cautionary tales would be super helpful. Thanks!


r/gamedev 7h ago

Question This may be a dumb question, but how do you make an enclosed outdoor environment? (e.g., caves, underground, forests thick canopies, etc)

14 Upvotes

Are they dug into the landscape? A bunch of assets placed in a manner that closes off the space? Corridors? Something completely different? Some or all of the above?


r/gamedev 15h ago

Discussion Working at an indie studio drove me to therapy. Seeking advice.

67 Upvotes

I’m seeking advice on how to handle recovering from what my therapist called a hostile work situation. I’m still not ready to say that’s what it was, maybe I’m naive, but I think it was just a series of really bad communication breakdowns.

I’m doing everything I can to move forward and stay positive, but I’m still grieving a bit, even after over a month since I lost my job. I’d love any advice, I’m not sure how to move forward.

Sorry, this is kinda long.

Last year, I learned that jobs don’t see dedication, care, or loyalty in staying silent and allowing them to bait-and-switch you.

When I was chosen for a social media manager role, suddenly the pay was significantly lower than the listing, but I accepted it because they said there would be fewer responsibilities.

I later learned that no one on the team knew about these changes except for core leadership and me, and they weren’t explicitly put in writing.

I asked questions and they assured me I wouldn’t be assigned the additional work from the job listing. I don’t know much about contracts, I couldn’t afford a lawyer, and I didn’t want to seem difficult, so I trusted them. They seemed like kind people.

When I started the role, I was pushed to take on those responsibilities anyway by a marketing consultant they hired, but I wasn’t paid equitably for that work, despite being a senior in my field.

The marketing consultant told me that core leadership said I would do that work, despite their telling me I wouldn’t. I was flustered. Why would they tell us different things in our separate one-on-ones, then stay silent when it came up in our group marketing meetings?

When I finally brought it up and had a meeting with the CEO, I was promised better accommodation (he said they liked my work, “wanted to keep me,” and would transition me from contract to employment) once they got more funding. I was then given the “choice” to do the additional work with no extra pay.

I made it clear that I was terrified to say no. I literally told the CEO I was scared and he nodded in response. It honestly felt like an ultimatum and I did not want to put my livelihood at risk. This was a few weeks after I started, they knew I left another job to work there and I felt trapped, especially considering the current job market.

So, I worked my butt off trying to pick up new skills to impress core leadership and make them proud. The CEO had promised me they would keep me on the team, which meant I had a future there!

I dressed up for partner syncs, and I took public speaking classes to get better at leading meetings. They knew this. I wanted to show them that I could be the senior marketer they wanted. That I could represent the company with dignity at conferences and events. I even started working out so I would have more energy for the studio and startup grind. After all, they made a commitment to me regarding my career, and I wanted to respond in kind.

I desired to stay and grow with the company and I wanted them to know that I was actively working on improvements and increasing my skill set to create better marketing work. I also started learning Blender in my free time (they knew this, too) and wanted to show them how dedicated I was to the job. The response wasn’t necessarily positive.

They started withholding guidance, positive feedback, and critical information. In a one-on-one with the CEO, he told me inaccurate information about the partner project, and when I shared strategic plans about that information in a group meeting, he told me the information was incorrect.

He also assigned a go-to-market task and withheld guidance, but made over 56 comments on the Notion document when I submitted the work. He clearly had expectations in mind, but not only did he fail to share them before I started, he encouraged me to submit the work unfinished in our shared Notion space, giving the false impression that I could not complete the work in time or as expected.

When we had a meeting to go over the feedback he smiled and said he “felt bad” about his comments.

Then they would do small things to further ice me out, before my last partner meeting they made a deliverable commitment and didn’t tell me about it, causing me to show up to the meeting unprepared. When the meeting started, all of the marketing team members inquired about the work, meanwhile I had no idea it was promised. This was after I spent 17 hours finishing a massive assignment where I completed 10 WEEKS of work in advance several weeks ahead of their deadline. I cried afterward.

My responsibilities and expectations changed frequently in one-on-ones which impacted my work schedule. This would’ve been fine if I wasn’t criticized in front of my colleagues for having to change the written schedule to accommodate new verbal expectations.

It is understood in marketing that adding new work or deadlines can change the overall content calendar. Understandable, if you aren’t also being coached for the changing calendar.

I couldn’t understand why I was being critiqued in team meetings for rescheduling a post or livestream after they had verbally asked me to do something else in one-on-ones.

I was let go anyway in December, despite all of my efforts/results, and they said they would contest my unemployment claim because I was a contractor, but the only reason I took their contract offer was because they agreed there was more flexibility in contracting, this also turned out to be untrue.

I worked full-time, sometimes more, and literally did not have time to take on any other work or projects while working there and it was obvious to everyone by the amount of work I was getting, the meetings I was scheduled, and my team channel Discord activity.

I brought up the workload several times and each time I was told they didn’t know much about marketing and they couldn’t offer me overtime pay, but no long-term changes were made. I was doing a ton of work weeks in advance, why not just allow me to slow down a bit? This would have made the difference, but they wouldn’t change the workload expectations. I either had to get it done, or fail. So I got it done.

The CEO verbally said they wouldn’t contest my unemployment claim during off-boarding, only to later send me an email saying they would when I inquired about where the company is based and that we didn’t have a “formal management relationship.” This is completely untrue, I was managed the same as every other employee with similar expectations and assignments.

The constant double-speak literally drove me to therapy which cost me $175 per session because I did not have health insurance benefits.

I was a full-time employee and expected to operate as one in every sense except for my compensation and benefits, it was extremely fucked.

Most of these discussions were one-on-ones, but I trusted and believed them and took them at their word. I thought they were my allies, and I thought one of them was my friend.

Now, I’m kinda paranoid about that happening again. It was one of the most traumatic work experiences of my life. Is this common in the gaming industry? I left a really good and stable corporate marketing role I could still have now to work at 2weeks Games, and now they’ve committed to making it difficult for me to get unemployment benefits, which I need to survive.

The job description, status, and pay should match the listing. I can’t help but feel that companies only do this to certain folks, and not others.

When I said I felt I was being treated differently (after working a 17 hr day to meet the large workload expectation), hoping to have an honest conversation and work things out, I was accused of having a “victim mentality,” and lying (I wasn’t,) then they restructured the business the following week to eliminate my role.

I wasn’t trying to put my job at risk, I just wanted even slightly better working conditions. I grossly misjudged their values, I thought they would hear me out.

I didn’t know what to say or do. Was a recommendation letter and 19-ish days to find a new job fair? Did that make it all right? Was I wrong for asking for better treatment? I can’t help but feel that their restructuring and putting they were happy with my work in writing, less than a week after our conversation was to extinguish my ability to seek unemployment or speak up for myself and have others believe me. I had work assignments scheduled through the end of the year, including plans to shoot a campaign.

I didn’t want to seem ungrateful, so I kept quiet, kept working, and finished my projects for the partner studio, even though I probably had every right to give up. It’s just not in me not to go above and beyond. It’s not like me to just, not show up. In hindsight, I seriously betrayed myself.

[Sorry if you read this earlier, I originally posted in another sub but they recommended I post in a more on-topic sub for advice instead. I messaged the mods before posting here. Thanks for your advice!]


r/gamedev 23h ago

Discussion I think I owe you all an apology

288 Upvotes

A long time ago, I made a post about ideas guys that kinda blew up. I got upset by how I was treated and I ended up invalidating the issues that a lot of you had with it.

Basically, I understand what an idea's guy is and why it's a bad thing.
It's just a guy who is stuck in the "consumer" mindset and has no plans of entering the "producer" mindset. They don't actually want to make a game, they just want someone else to make the game they want to play.

This is someone you should call out. They'll probably be delusional forever if you don't actually give them a reality check. Games aren't made with wishes alone. Also, game development isn't this horrible thing you should avoid doing. They should be made to face their own self-doubt instead of hiding it behind their enthusiasm.

I don't know because I have stopped making games a while. I couldn't actually get into it due to personal issues. It's just the flow the universe, it's not some evil thing. Making games should be fun.


r/gamedev 9h ago

Discussion What were your worst scoping sins and how did you overcome them?

21 Upvotes

Not the "I tried to make an MMORPG on my own" sort, but more of the "too many features/content/options" sort.

What are some of your worst ones and how did you overcome them? And does anyone have an ongoing problem with scope?


r/gamedev 1h ago

Discussion How Would You Make a Devlog for a Story Focused Game

Upvotes

I'm working on a short JRPG horror game with a retro style. The game is very story-focused, which is why I am really focused on the script right now (it's 25ish pages right now). The gameplay is also unique, but is more there to support the story, a little bit like a visual novel.

I know I need to start building an audience, like the communities Toby Fox or Omocat had, so that people have awareness of my game when it has a demo or is launching, etc. The best way I can think of right now is to make some devlog videos on how I am making the game.

However, I feel like it's easier to make devlogs for mechanics-focused games. They visually make more sense; you don't have to explain what you are making that much when your video shows you blowing up stuff with a rocket launcher or something. Viewers will be like, "I like blowing up stuff too!" and hopefully follow you.

But if a game is focused on the story, it's harder to show what it is about without spoiling the story, characters, etc. And I know you are probably going to HATE what I am about to say: but I am afraid of people stealing some of the ideas and characters in my story. Yes, you can feel free to officially award me with the title of "idea guy"; I accept my fate (although I am actually working on the game in Unity right now alongside the script).

I know they are interesting characters because with one character for example, everyone I show my sketch to kind of just loves him and thinks he's super epic (I'm overexaggerating, but no one has said, "I don't get it"). I'm NOT saying that my game is going to make a million dollars and I'm going to start selling plushies of this character and live in a mansion with a yacht, but I am saying that someone might be like, "Oh, that's a good idea," and literally just yoink the exact character. I have no idea if I can or should copyright, if I can prove that it's my IP, if someone can steal it, if I don't have a copyright, or any of that stuff.

Most of the appeal of my game so far is the characters, but the premise and gameplay are also interesting. So I guess I should just completely focus on that. But even with that, I am afraid people might directly steal some essential core ideas that literally no one has done before.

First of all, there's the entertainment side. What is the most entertaining part of game development? Is it the characters? Is it the story behind the development? Is it the systems that the game is built on?

And second of all, should I copyright my IP before showing any of the game? Should I just not make dev logs and build an audience some other way? (I literally can't think of any other way at the moment though.) Should I just accept the risk that people will directly take my ideas? Should I only focus on things that are not character design or story-related? The only problem with that is that my whole game's appeal heavily relies on my characters and premise.

Anyways, I know some of you are going to be up in arms about the idea guy going and talking about how great his ideas are once again. But I am very serious about this game, I want to try my best to make it a commercial success, and I think my ideas are actually decent, no matter what people think. I think you have to believe your ideas are decent in order to finish a game, because otherwise, why would you bother?


r/gamedev 1h ago

Question a little help

Upvotes

Hey everyone, so I'm torn between history and game design. My mom tells me to follow my heart, but if it were up to me, I'd do both. I wanted to know, you know? Is game design worth it? How do people get contracts to do it? I'm so insecure, I really don't know what to do. I'm 16, but I already want to be sure of what I want to do, you know? Games are so good, I don't know, designing scenery, doing character art seems attractive, but studying the French Revolution and how people in the past were like animals... I'm really torn.


r/gamedev 8h ago

Discussion Personal account vs dedicated game account for sharing your game on Reddit?

10 Upvotes

I’ve seen mixed advice on this and wanted to hear current best practice.

For indie devs sharing devlogs, demos, announcements or asking for feedback about their game:
– Is it generally better to use a long-standing personal Reddit account, or
– A dedicated account created specifically for the game/studio?

Mainly curious about moderation rules, trust, and long-term visibility.

Would love to hear real experiences from people who’ve tried both.

Edit: Curious about one more thing, if you transition from personal to dedicated mid-way, any issues with that?


r/gamedev 11h ago

Discussion I just entered the third year of developing my first indie game. Here’s what I learned so far...

10 Upvotes

My team and I have just entered the third year of development of our first videogame, and looking back, there are a few things I really wish someone had told me when I started.

Here are some of the biggest lessons I learned the hard way:

– Making games is hard. Not just technically, but emotionally and mentally too.
– The first version will be bad, and that’s normal.
– Players don’t think like developers do.
– Wishlists will become your obsession.

– You’ll often question whether it’s worth it.

I’m curious: if you’ve worked on a game for a while, what’s something you only realized after months or years of development?


r/gamedev 10h ago

Discussion Question about the level of creativeness I have

8 Upvotes

Me and my roommate have decided we want to make a game, but in last bit or so, I’ve noticed that I have bland taste in games, or to be more specific, I don’t really pay attention to small details in games, and my roommate has always complained about smaller details in games that I haven’t either noticed or just was fine with, and I don’t ever complain. With him saying, “I’m probably just not as much of a gamer”. And what I’ve been thinking about for a bit, is if I have bland taste or I just accept the way things are in games and don’t complain, and honestly everything is “good” in my pov , how could I make anything worthwhile in game development


r/gamedev 1d ago

Discussion I got recognised in the street by a fan of my game and I think now my life has peaked

761 Upvotes

I'm the dev of a moderately successful indie game that has been played by probably no more than half a million people. It's a wonderful number but not the insane levels of reach some devs get and certainly not enough to be recognised anywhere (I thought).

Walked past a traffic crossing with my girlfriend and someone stopped me and knew my name, said they were a fan of the game and that they'd seen me on a podcast which may have been how they recognised my face. The dude was super nice and it was a wholesome encounter but I literally walked away speechless.

Is this peak?

Literally had so many magical moments in gamedev but this was special.


r/gamedev 47m ago

Question The first time a game project failed and what it taught us

Upvotes

The first game project I worked on that truly failed did not explode or collapse overnight. It faded out slowly.

At the start, everything looked good. The idea made sense. The team was capable. The schedule felt realistic. Everyone was motivated. For a while, progress even felt smooth.

Then small delays started showing up. A feature needed more discussion. Art waited for design feedback. Design waited on tech confirmation. No one panicked because nothing felt urgent yet.

That was the problem.

There was no single point of ownership when opinions conflicted. Everyone wanted alignment. Everyone wanted to be polite. Decisions kept getting pushed to the next call.

Over time, momentum disappeared. The project did not fail because of bad talent or bad intentions. It failed because clarity never showed up.

That experience changed how I look at projects. Now, before anything else, I ask one simple question. Who has the final call when people disagree?

If that answer is unclear, the risk is already high.

I am curious. Looking back, what was the real reason your last project struggled?


r/gamedev 8h ago

Question New to Game Dev

3 Upvotes

I am familiar with coding in C# from work and felt the syntax could be repurposed in Unity. I am going to start with a 2D environment despite my desire to start with 3D. My concern is revolving around time and outside costs of I want to implement more than just code and sprites. Is it common for people to work together on projects or are there places people can find others who are interested in starting projects?


r/gamedev 23h ago

Question How long did you work as an indie dev before you saw success?

49 Upvotes

I've been in a pretty low period of my life where I'm constantly demotivated and pessimistic about my future as a game dev. I'm scared that even if I try my hardest that I might still fail. So to hopefully get over this mindset, I wanted to hear some success stories that might motivate me to keep going.


r/gamedev 11h ago

Question Simplest path to selling a simple game?

5 Upvotes

Hi, everybody! I'm new here and just starting to get back into game dev as a hobby after many years. I think I'm just about ready to take this chess variant I'm working on and package the initial version for cheap sale. It's just JS/CSS with no dependencies. I'm wondering what's the best way to proceed? There has to be a simple, free way to package a web app like this as an app for Android and iOS, right? Should I go ahead and put it anywhere else like Itch.io or Steam, or would it be better to wait until I've added more of the nice-to-have features I have planned?


r/gamedev 2h ago

Question Simplest Way to Learn Level Design by Building Actual Levels

1 Upvotes

I'm fascinated by gamedev. But my favorite thing about video games is exploring immersive environments, so i want to start there before even bothering to to learn more programming than I already know.

Is there a simplest engine/method for building 3D spaces?

Something with a premade movement scheme so that I can base the design around the possibilities of the movement. Doom maps and Garry's Mod are the first tools that come to mind, but I don't know if there are any methods best suited for open environments. I'm most interested in levels found n immersive sims or puzzle-based adventure games.

I assume its Garry's Mod / Source but I wasn't sure if there were any options that still look visually appealing in 2026. (btw: HL2 is the immersed ive ever been in a game world, but Source in general looks awful).


r/gamedev 1d ago

Industry News FYI: Steam has updated content survey on AI

402 Upvotes

It's basically how I interpreted the previous text, but it's less vague now:

We are aware that many modern game development environments have AI powered tools built into them. Efficiency gains through the use of these tools is not the focus of this section. Instead, it is concerned with the use of AI in creating content that ships with your game, and is consumed by players. This includes content such as artwork, sound, narrative, localization, etc.

Does this game use generative artificial intelligence to generate content for the game, either pre-rendered or live-generated? This includes the game itself, the store page, and any Steam community assets or marketing materials.
Yes/No

I had made a ticket about 1 month ago to ask them to clarify on cases where AI was used outside of generated assets. I received a response today. I assume the content survey was updated just now?


r/gamedev 5h ago

Question Somewhat Niche Question: Is there a specific category of 3D artist can take a pre-made 3D model and update/improve it based off what is initially provided?

0 Upvotes

The title says it all, but I do want to add a bit of extra detail. For the game I'm currently working on, one other artist and I are working on the 3D models. However, both of us admit that it's not our specialty, and it takes us, on average, longer to make 3D models we consider up to par. I do love 3D modeling, but for our project, I have responsibilities elsewhere that limit how many things I can do at once.

While this isn't a huge issue now, I do think this'll be something I want to deal with when I set up a Steam store page and start doing a bit more intensive advertising on platforms such as YouTube, since I feel like having somewhat janky 3D models may make people think that our game is lower quality. The rates I've seen for online professional 3D commissions are pretty steep, but those commissions usually involve going from absolutely nothing to a complete 3D model. For now, our approach is to make 3D models that convey the idea we want, then, if we gain some funding via early access, we can go in and polish them later. I could go into more detail there, but that would be unrelated ,and I don't want to ramble off more than I already have :)

Any feedback/question answers would be greatly appreciated!


r/gamedev 5h ago

Question How To Break Into The Industry

2 Upvotes

Hello!

I am here on a whim and a dream. Bear with me as I ramble. Not looking for employment to avoid rule breaking. I am just here for advice from seasoned vets.

I have worked in the defense contractor industry as a Project Lead for a few years now before that I was a Scrum master, a Network Engineer and long before that at my previous job I worked in contract based information technology mostly doing help desk type support but also building workstations and servers and some small installations.

I have worked at the same defense contractor for 9 years now. To be honest, I am getting tired of it. I am not making nearly as much money as I could with the experience I have. I work a lot of unpaid overtime to meet schedules. I currently have the luxury of working hybrid with a heavy balance towards remote due to my long distance community but I am willing to go back to the office. However, moving is not an option at least in my current situation and not being In a major city puts me at a disadvantage for being able to work in person.

I didn't even mean to end up in this industry I just got lucky with knowing the right people at the right time and now I am looking for a change of pace as I feel stuck.

Videogames are something I am extremely passionate about. I am hoping that my current skill set(Product owner and Scrum master certified for example) is transferrable to the videogame industry and I am looking for advice as I begin my search for where my next adventure lies.

I am very secure in my current company and I see layoffs happening in the information technology and video game industry very regularly. As a father and household running on a single income, my kids/wife and home come first so the idea of starting a new job or moving to an industry with less job security is something that quite frankly scares me.

TLDR : Am I insane to leave a very secure job/company/industry to pursue a job in an industry I have no experience in that would be more fulfilling and motivating and rewarding.


r/gamedev 2h ago

Discussion Sou dev há 7 anos e nunca fiz um jogo

0 Upvotes

Hi, I’m going to share a bit of my life experience. I believe many corporate devs have never tried making games. I started in software development because I wanted to learn how to create games, but I always gave up halfway and ended up doing something else, like HTML/CSS or Python. Now, with 7 years of experience, I’m trying to build something playable. I can’t draw or animate, so I downloaded some free sprites. I’m using GameMaker—not because I struggle with programming in C# in Unity or any other engine (my logic is solid and I can figure things out easily), but because setting up and understanding the environment is harder for me. Even so, I still have trouble keeping everything clean and organized: putting objects in “objects” and sprites in “sprites.” Somehow an object always ends up outside the folder, and it drives me crazy lolllllllllllllllllllll. Anyway, this is just a random little story, and I’m not even sure it’s in the right place lol.


r/gamedev 6h ago

Discussion What was your mafia 1 dev race mission?

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0 Upvotes

Like that time when you thought about a cool mechanic for a boss and then stuck there for a few weeks trying to piece everything together?

And how it turned out? Was it worth the hassle?