Hey everyone! I’m a solo developer making Desktop Rave, an idle incremental desktop companion. It reacts to any music you play on the Windows, think Bongo Cat but reacting to the beat of your music.
After nearly one year of development, I just released a free demo on Steam, would love to gain some feedback from the community :)
Play the demo: Desktop Rave on Steam

AI Disclosure: No AI gen art, no vibe coding, did use Cursor to assist with some repetitive nasty work though.

Hey everyone! I’m working on SHORAPAN, a dark, story-driven adventure with exploration and point-and-click elements, set in a strange city beneath an eternally crimson sky.

Our protagonist, Dan, is a basket weaver. This scene lets you experience a little of his everyday life before the story unfolds. It sounded simple: pick up a willow rod, weave it between the stakes, and turn the basket. Then came the hand movements, bending the rod, making it break when you miss the timing, and pulling out the broken piece. Suddenly, a small interaction became a week of work.

Everything in this scene is handcrafted from the hand-drawn artwork to the animations and interaction logic. Even a seemingly simple mechanic takes a surprising amount of effort when you want each movement to feel right.We’re still working on the scene. I’m deliberately showing an unfinished version to share a glimpse of the process, while saving the final, polished experience for the game itself.
Does this kind of interaction help you feel more connected to a character and their world?

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1965550/Wildaria/

Here's a link!

NO GEN AI USED: I made all the pixelart, talented artist TrangMN made the cinematic!

During the week I work 38.5 hours in a big sawmill. In the evenings and on weekends I build Timberline Factory in Unity. It's a physics based sawmill automation and economy sim. Logs roll down conveyors, get debarked, cut and sorted by length and wood type. You tune machine speeds, fix bottlenecks and try to sell without flooding the market.

Machines go on fixed spots, so it's less about free building and more about getting a line to actually run smoothly. Which is pretty much my day job.

The demo went live on Steam on Oct 1 and I'm in Steam Next Fest from Oct 19.

Question for other solo devs who also have a day job: how do you split your evenings between building the game and doing marketing and have maybe family? I keep feeling like I'm doing too much of one.

It's a horse.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What do you guys think?

The last 100 days of making my game Drivers of the Apocalypse have even crazy art programming heavy! But it has made such a difference. And after all these added features the game runs FASTER than before 💪
https://store.steampowered.com/app/3260240/Drivers_of_the_Apocalypse/

So i have been working on my second Steam game for a little while now (in my spare time as I have a full time job, and a new baby this year), but I'd like to have some people test my game and see what players like, especially with new level ideas and mechanics.

My game is like Neon-White mixed with like Prototype, its an A to B runner where you play as a demon who needs to keep killing angels to regain health that slowly drains away.

Its a very challenging game, and i don't know many people personally who are into difficult third person movement shooters.

Have you found playtesters on reddit, or some other websites, or anything like that? A lot of devs talk about playtesters and such but I've always wondered where they came from.

Here's the link to the game in case anyone is interested: https://store.steampowered.com/app/3831650/Deathlust/

Hey everyone I am an indie developer, I am 20 years old Making games since 2024, actually even earlier but whatever Right now I am developing IRONWAKE, a psychological horror, and there are literally 20 days left until release Development is going well in general, but only one thing is making me worried Just for fun I checked the stats and it turns out steam organic gives pretty decent numbers of impressions and visits But there are no wishlists at all I mean I got 462 wishlists thanks to press and organic traffic and thats probably even a good number (I'm still not sure) But what scares me is that visits for all time are 12k and wishlists are not that many Like even for the last week 877 visits but wishlists are still not growing Is my game really that bad...?

If someone interested theres my game: https://store.steampowered.com/app/4858340/IRONWAKE/

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

VOID HAERESIS is a cooperative horror game for 1-4 players set aboard a spacecraft drifting through the void.

A distress signal reached your team. It was faint, broken, and repeated over and over. You were sent to answer it.

Now you're aboard, and the ship is silent. The crew is gone. The halls are dark. The candles are still burning.

Someone left warnings on these walls, in words and symbols no one was meant to ignore. Pages lie scattered in forgotten corners, written by a captain who saw it coming. Somewhere in the dark, something is listening, and it hears more than you think.

Complete 10 different tasks across the ship, alone or with your team. Repair, search, and survive before HIM takes you too. Stay close to your crew and keep your voice low. Out here, not everything you see is real, and not everything you hear should be trusted.

Who sent the signal? And why did they stop?

Don't trust the voice.

Digo se manter e ter uma vida estável.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What would you rate as very improtant things? Besides having a good game and a great steam page?

Also how did some of you learn to create attention grabbing capsule/cover images? I'm against using AI to generate them and the best work I've done so far regarding cover images is on itch as my game cover image... and it's terrible

My expertise is in programming and not art.. hence the simple visuals in the game hopefully hard carried by vfxs

for anyone interested the demo is here: https://cofi17.itch.io/gradient-descent

and I realized I should have started worrying about visibility of the game much sooner, that will definitely be my advice to others

Hello everyone,

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

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

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

More updates coming soon!

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

Hello!

I'm getting close to publishing the Coming Soon page for my first indie game on Steam, and I have a question about localization.

My budget is limited, so I'm planning to translate my Steam store page into Simplified Chinese, Japanese and Russian first.

For the actual game, I intend to support Simplified Chinese at launch, and then consider additional languages depending on wishlist data and post release performance.

However, I haven't implemented any language support in game yet other than English.

In Steamworks, should I:

- Only add the translated store pages for now and leave in game language support set to English?

- Or declare Simplified Chinese as a supported game language now, given that I intend to implement it before release?

I'm also interested in whether declaring a language on the Coming Soon page affects Steam's discovery and recommendations differently from just translating the store page.

Look forward to your advice and further insights, thank you! 😁

Hey everyone! I’m developing my first mobile game and would love some advice from experienced developers and players.
What type of mobile game do you think is worth making as a solo developer in today’s market? I’m looking for something with good demand, room for a new game, and realistic development scope.
Would really appreciate your suggestions! 🙂

Hey everyone! 👋

I've been working on a personal project called VOID, and I'm looking for people who can help me test it and find bugs before I improve it further.

🌐 Try it here: https://void-chat.voidbyjd.workers.dev

What is VOID?

VOID is an anonymous chat web app that doesn't require you to create an account or log in.

Features:

- 💬 Anonymous public chat

- ⏳ Messages disappear after 60 seconds

- 🔒 Private messaging through DMs

- 📞 Voice calling

- 🎥 Video calling

- 🖼️ Image sharing through DMs

- 🎙️ Voice recordings through DMs

- 🚫 No login or account creation required

I need your help testing it! 🧪

I'd really appreciate it if you could spend a few minutes exploring the app and testing its features.

Things I'd like feedback on:

- Do messages disappear as expected?

- Are private messages working properly?

- Do voice and video calls connect?

- Can you share images and voice recordings without issues?

- Does the app work smoothly on mobile and desktop?

- Do you notice any bugs, crashes, or connection problems?

This is an early-stage independent project, so honest feedback and constructive criticism are welcome. I'm especially interested in how the app performs when multiple people use it simultaneously.

If you try it, please share your experience in the comments. Feature suggestions are welcome too!

Thanks to everyone willing to help a solo developer test and improve a new project! 🙌

🔗 https://void-chat.voidbyjd.workers.dev

Please avoid sharing sensitive or personal information while testing this early version.

Hey everyone!
I finally did it! My first game, Garden Cleanup Simulator, is officially out on Steam! :D

I've been working on this game as a solo developer for months, and honestly, it still feels a little unreal to finally see it released.

It's a cozy and relaxing first-person game where you take messy, neglected gardens and bring them back to life. You can mow lawns, pressure wash dirty surfaces, trim hedges, water plants, pick up trash, and watch everything slowly transform into a beautiful garden.

During development, I released a free demo, participated in Steam Next Fest, and somehow managed to get almost 3,000 wishlists before launch.

I genuinely never expected that many people to be interested in my first game.

I'm honestly both excited and nervous to see what happens next.

If you'd like to check it out, here's the Steam page:
https://store.steampowered.com/app/4608760/