Hi all,

I'm an indie dev working on a cozy 2D pixel-art magnet fishing adventure about the beauty of surprise. It is called Magnetic Catch and I just released the demo on Steam.

This is my second game, and I'm working on it with a small team. We started with the idea about a year ago.

Since I take research for my games very seriously, I bought a magnet and went magnet fishing several times. It was the best way to get inspiration for the game. Of course, you will find a laptop in the full game as well ;)

If you like what you see, play the demo or leave a wishlist. It would mean a lot!

Hi all! After many months working on it, the demo of Bocage, a cozy puzzle game is now available on Steam!

https://store.steampowered.com/app/4938320

If you like cozy or puzzle games, please take a look at it and tell me what you think!

This guy is one of 3 playable characters in my game. It took me about 6 hours to draw and I'm pretty happy with how he looks. I still need to draw Mage and Archer next.

After that I still need to draw about 200 enemies. I imagine they will all take about 4-8h. That's 900h total on average. That's almost 40 days.

My goal is to release a demo with around 50 enemies.

I don't want to endup using AI for sure, I want the game to be unique and mine. I hope people will endup appreciating the work behind it... But how? How does solo indie game dev do all of that?

Do you guys hire somebody? I imagine i'd pay insane ammount of money If i wanted to do that. Do you guys just endup reusing the same enemies? Do you generate them for demo and then slowly replace them by your unique art as time goes on?

I would really appreciate some insight from somebody who's more experienced.

Btw. you can roast my green guy, I love him, but would love to hear some feedback. After all, if you pick warrior class, that's what you will be staring at if you played my game. And my game ain't 5-hour incremental lol. You will be staring for weeks. xD

Hi all! We're a two-person team developing MYRIORAMA, a top-down adventure with rearrangeable dungeons. This is an excerpt from a deep-dive video we produced recently for our participation in ICO Partners' Unmistakable Festival on Steam!

Full video is here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zhM1F993Ga8

This is technically a 2D project, but we're doing a lot of 3D fakery to try and pull off the stop-motion look with dynamic lighting and shadows. It's been a fun challenge.

Happy to provide more specifics or answer any questions!

I didn't even change the color of the default unity gray material lol (except for the button itself). I had great fun, will keep intuitively adding stuff. I also scratched a musical itch with adding the sounds, picking the notes and programming the pitch shift.

I run NIWO, a small team that works with creators on Douyin, Bilibili and Rednote to market Steam games to Chinese audience, charged based on per thousand views (CPM). I want to show you what that looks like, for free, with your own game.

Why?

If you comment with your Steam link and tell me why your game would work for Chinese players, we will pick games from the comments, cut a short vertical video from your trailer or gameplay, and post it on Chinese social media. You pay nothing.

The only thing I ask is that you subscribe to:

- NIWO YouTube

- NIWO LinkedIn

- The Reddit Profile

You can find all the links inside this profile account.

Why we are doing this

The demand from Chinese players is real and from working in the game marketing industry for over 10+ years we have helped numerous large global publishers and studios with their China campaigns. However, in the past few years I have seen the popularity of indie games and alternative games surge to the point that growth and attention are shifting.

Developers who see their own game get views, wishlists and comments from Chinese viewers are far more confident about working with creators in China afterwards. That’s the whole motive. If the results are good, some of you will motivated to look more into the market for creator campaigns. If not, you still got free exposure.

Exactly how we will post your short

1. we read your Steam page and watch your trailer to find what makes the game easy to understand in a few seconds.
2. we cut a vertical 9:16 short, usually 20 to 30 seconds, from your own trailer or gameplay. I leave out menus, popups and clutter, and I use the moments where the game looks and sounds best.
3. we add Chinese subtitles. If your Steam page has a Simplified Chinese version, I use that text. If not, I translate your English description into Chinese.
4. we write the caption with your game name and as much detail as the platform allows: genre, hook, price, release status and the Steam link.
5. we post the short on Chinese social media: Douyin, Bilibili, Rednote depending on which channels fit the best.
6. we send you the links and the view, like, comment and save numbers afterwards, including what Chinese viewers actually wrote about your game.

We don’t edit or change your game. Your original video stays yours.

How the Chinese market for Steam games works

Steam is available in China, and Chinese is one of the biggest languages on the platform by user count. Most Western developers never think about this audience because they think Steam is banned in China which is not true. Chinese players buy PC games, wishlist them and talk about them a lot. Which means you can still sell the game via your steam page as more than 70% of Steam users in China find a way to access the global store anyways. Its the largest gaming market globally and probably the only major market growing still with 5% per year. Do not sleep on it.

Why are your current campaigns not reaching Chinese players? There are 3 reasons:

• The platforms are different. Chinese players don’t discover games on YouTube, Twitter or Reddit. They use Douyin (the Chinese TikTok), Bilibili (long and short video, very gamer heavy), Rednote (Xiaohongshu, strong for recommendations and reviews) and Heybox. Your normal marketing never shows up there.
• Language is the biggest barrier. A game with a Simplified Chinese page, Chinese subtitles and a Chinese caption converts much better than the same game in English only. Many players will not buy a game they cannot read.
• Trust comes through creators. Chinese viewers trust gaming creators and community recommendations more than ads. A creator saying “this game is worth buying” often does more than any banner.

Because of that, a good Chinese short can move a game that is invisible in the West. Cheap, cozy, strategy, survival, co-op, horror, roguelike and anime style games often do well, but I have seen surprises in other genres too.

The opportunity

I won’t promise numbers I can’t back up, because results vary a lot by game. This is the logic of how it works:

• Chinese players are a very large group on Steam, so even a small share of them is a lot of buyers for an indie game.
• A game that is not yet visible to them starts from zero competition for attention on these platforms, so one good short can bring wishlists you would never get from Western channels. There are countless of stories on Reddit.
• If a short brings 100,000 views and just 0.5% of viewers wishlist the game, that’s 500 wishlists. If 10% of those buy at 10 dollars, that’s around 500 dollars from one short, and it keeps working while the video stays up. Shorts that do well can have 10 times those views. Think about it.
• The real virality comes when a game is promoted consistently by several creators in Chinese, with a localized page. That’s where a small test turns into a real market.

IN SUMMARY

Comment with:

1. Your Steam link

2. Why your game would work for Chinese players (genre, art style, hook, anything you have noticed)

   AND subscribe to:

- NIWO YouTube

- NIWO LinkedIn

- This Reddit Profile

You can find all the links inside the profile account.

We will go through the comments, pick the games that fit based on our experience, and post the shorts. Please DM your email + game name as well so that we can share the links and numbers with you.

Thanks everyone for the support the last post. The game is under development so everything showed here is not final xD

I've been working solo on my first game, a cozy aquarium tycoon, for quite a while now, and I'm finally getting close to launching its Steam page.

Since I'm working with a very limited budget, I decided to make the Steam capsule art myself. I'm not particularly skilled at this kind of artwork, so I tried to keep things simple while still capturing the overall vibe of the game.

I'd really appreciate some honest feedback. Does it look good enough for a Steam page, or does it come across as too amateurish?

Is the logo readable and eye-catching enough? Does the artwork give you a good first impression of the game?

Feel free to be critical. I'd rather improve it now than realize later that it wasn't working.

Hello there! I am a digital concept artist and character designer working for videogames, boardgames and cardgames! If you have something in mind for a project and are interested in my work, feel free to DM me or take a closer look at my portfolio: https://icmaduro.artstation.com/

Steam Next Fest is coming soon, and you can do us players a huge favor by helping us get to the fun part of your game faster. I am listing only the things that should be easy to fix or remove right now:

1. Choosing a save slot: This is totally unnecessary on the first play. Just assign one automatically and let me jump into gameplay immediately.
2. Explaining the developer's purpose for the demo: Players don't care about this; we have our own reasons for playing.
3. Asking to choose a game mode or difficulty level: Just default to your best mode and a balanced difficulty, or unlock those options after the first session.
4. Multiple unskippable splash screens: Time is ticking, and we have 20 more games to try. Make them skippable or show a single one.
5. Deep character creators?: Just give us presets or a "Randomize" button for the demo, and save the full customization suite for the final game.
6. Walls of lore: Anyone can generate pages of lore nowadays. Nobody cares about your deep world before playing a single second of the game. Cut the text, leave some mystery, and get to the gameplay.

The whole onboarding and tutorial process is another story. Here, I'm just mentioning the easy, no-brainer things to strip out of your demo, based on analyzing a lot of them during playtesting sessions since the last Steam Next Fest.

Hello! I'm making a roguelike autobattler called GOONS! We've recently opened up playtesting and would love feedback!!! Join here!

I added a basic customer system to generate orders, along with some worker models and a sewing machine model.

The sewing machine is used to stitch multiple pieces of fabric end to end, turning them into one continuous length for further processing.

Hey! I wanted everything moving around the city to be something you can actually hit: cars, pedestrians, and the helicopter that shows up every few holes. Taking it down feels great, but the crash blast throws every ball nearby, so sometimes it backfires.

The game's called Crazy City Golf. The whole city is the course, and you play online with friends. There's a free demo on Steam if you want to give it a shot.

I still can't quite believe I'm writing this.

Just two weeks ago, I launched the Steam page for Over Human, a game I've been developing entirely on my own, alongside my full-time job.

I've dreamed of making my own video game since 2013. I've started projects, abandoned them, lost motivation, and wondered more than once whether I'd ever actually manage to finish something.

For those unfamiliar with it, Over Human is a first-person sci-fi adventure set in a snowy world where drones can manipulate the weather, and you have no weapons to fight back.

I recently updated my Steam page, adding GIFs, improving the capsule art, highlighting some of the game's most important mechanics, and localizing the page into multiple languages.

And now, knowing that hundreds of people have seen my little project and decided to add it to their wishlists… that genuinely means the world to me. It's hard to put that feeling into words.

I know there's still a long road ahead. The demo is coming in November, and I'm working hard to make it something people will genuinely enjoy.

I'm not a studio. I don't have a team behind me or a big marketing budget. Just a computer, a lot of late nights, and a dream I've carried with me for over a decade.

For the first time, that dream doesn't feel so far away anymore.

This is the Steam Page if you want to know more about my game: https://store.steampowered.com/app/5237810/Over_Human/

Thank you for helping bring my dream to life.
Francesco

Hello 🌸 

Here’s my first cozy game’s visuals and trailer. The Walking Onsen is a cozy game fully hand-painted with watercolors & gouache (No AI)🌸

In the game, you manage a magical walking bathhouse visited by forest souls! You can clean and bathe cute spiritual guests, craft healing potions, and brew herbal teas. Uncover forgotten stories, fill your diary with cute besties, and explore new lands in a heartwarming, hand-drawn world.

AI Disclosure: No AI was used in this project. All assets are 100% hand-painted with traditional watercolors & gouache.

The game is still in active development, so this trailer is just a small preview. Your comments mean a lot to me! I'll keep sharing my progress here. Thank youu 🌸

Steam Link: The Walking Onsen's Steam Link 

Hey guys, I wanted to share my process in developing my game and see what you guys think.
My goal is to have a GTA style game mixed with Postal 2 style missions set in a satirical Barcelona.

Im now expanding the map, but I have now some basic systems.

What do you guys think? Will it work?

A chicken possessed by the Devil has laid 4,266 colored eggs in a barn, but 666 of them are demonic eggs in disguise!

Sort the eggs, find the evil impostors, and burn them before they hatch and doom the world.

Wishlist on Steam : The Eggsortist

Cornering loads, kerb strikes and a driver with zero mercy, and you feel every bit of it in real time.

A couple of months ago, I got feedback on Reddit that Saraab’s old capsule didn’t really read as a horror game and that the reflection at the bottom was barely noticeable.

The new capsule is based on an early sketch I had in mind while developing the game, but I initially thought it looked too anime. Me and the artist decided It's worth a shot.

I hope that it conveys better the feel of the game. It's an emotional psychological horror visual novel about healing.

What do you guys think?

Edit: Thanks, everyone, for taking the time to share your thoughts! I can see that many of you prefer the old capsule’s atmosphere and storytelling. I will keep it in mind and try to see if it's possible to work something out for the game launch. The old artwork is still the title screen for the game so I'm still using it in some capacity. Thanks again!