Making a visual novel centered around contemporary dance without animation felt wrong, but as a micro-indie crew, we had neither the tech nor the budget for big rigs.

So we did the only thing that made sense: we reached out to regional dance schools, brought cameras into their rehearsal rooms, and filmed real choreographers. From there, our artist traced and drew every gesture stroke by stroke, roughly 15 individual hand-drawn frames for every second on screen to capture genuine physical weight and momentum.

Then yeah, After the Wane have no animation but only rotoscoping!!

Here’s a side-by-side of the raw studio footage and the final watercolor animation in-engine. What do you think of how the movement holds up?

Hello. I'm asking for help in publicizing the situation regarding the game "Heart Abyss" and the publishing house "Hero Craft". A couple of weeks before the release, the publisher removed the game's cover and replaced it with a AI-slope. Fans of the game (which has been in development for several years) did not like this. Publishers were extremely reluctant to compromise and agree to real art instead of AI content. The publisher paid for a new cover, but two days later removed it back with the reason: "Fewer views." It is impossible to estimate this in such a short time based on Steam’s capabilities. The developer doesn't like this situation, but the publisher firstly ignores him, and secondly bans and deletes everyone in the comments (in their public group) where people ask to remove the AI.

The game's release is already on November 3rd, but I (as a devoted fan) believe that the situation can be changed. I really ask for publicity for this case.

The publisher had also previously ignored the developer and, for example, had not launched a single advertising campaign for the game for more than a year.

Thank you so much to everyone who read and shared this!

Hello Everyone! I'm creating a PS1 era style game where you control a tank against the AI apocalypse where machines turned on humanity.

For those who grew up with these type of games and are nostalgic, you can play the Demo on steam! (and everyone else ofc)

https://store.steampowered.com/app/5152000/MAGNUM_Protocol

I used to genuinely enjoy this place, seeing new games and such. I really don't want to leave, but this sub is just a source of annoyance at this point. There's just so much AI generated crap, and having it shoved in my face everytime I open Reddit is really irritating

IDK man, I want to be part of a community of developers, but there's just none left here

Recently celebrated selling 100K+ copies of our game, over it's first month in Early Access.

Could not be more grateful for all the support we've gotten on this project.

It's been an incredibly long, strange journey getting to our first commercially successful game. 2 friends and I started making short punk games as Team Lazerbeam in December of 2014. Our games tended to defy genre, and were very short, alternative games with hand crafted art. Not the kind of thing you could really put on Steam and expect people to pay for, but we were stoked to self-publish them through itch. After 6 years we eventually strung together a longer experience (30 whole minutes of playtime!) and finally made our Steam debut, but that game bombed pretty badly. (That is to say, it sold very poorly, I still saw it as a creative success.)

I was always so stoked for any people that picked up on what we were putting out there. We had some decent numbers of downloads on our free titles. I was super proud of what we were making, and so grateful every time I saw one of our games resonating with someone.

Shroom and Gloom is our first proper, commercially released title. First time working within a more defined genre. First time releasing something that you could get lost in for hours. First release with a publisher. Basically, loads of firsts. Now we can add to that list, first Team Lazerbeam game to sell 100K copies. The fact that we hit that milestone in our first month on Steam is still mind blowing to me.

For anyone reading this that passionate about making things, I really hope this might give you some encouragement to keep creating. It might not happen for you overnight, but if you keep at it you'll be surprised where your art takes you. Or if you just reading this as an indie game fan, please know how impactful your support can be. It means so much to devs that people like you are out there, supporting unconventional games that are lovingly made by small teams.

I'm guess that out of the 100 894 copies that sold in the first month, at least a few of them could have been people that discovered the game through my last post on r/indiegames. If you're one of them, thanks for being getting behind this thing in these first days of Early Access.

Now the exciting part is what comes next!

I've been making this game on my own for about 3-4 months, and yesterday its Steam page finally went live. Its called Quack Back Home

It's a small, cozy game: you're a mother duck, a storm has scattered your ducklings across the islands, and you go and bring them home, one by one, by solving small puzzles. Nothing can go wrong. I wanted to make something you can play when you just want a calm evening.

If you've got a minute, I'd really love to hear what you think🦆

Now, I think that that's a LITTLE too high praise, but I appreciated it nonetheless!!

Afterward, we had a long, long fun chat about the game and their thoughts on it. The demo *JUST* came out, and they're already asking me to play more!

Posting the demo was a huge moment for me for sure... Moments like this make all the work I put into it worth it, though!!

If you'd like to try it yourself, the free Gauntleteer Demo is now available on Steam!

So many ai slop games are being posted here daily with no disclosure. A lot aren’t even just assisted with ai but completely ai generated. It’s getting out of hand. “Developers” stop saying “I made this game…” when you did almost nothing. I think of a saying often, “if you didn’t care enough to make it yourself, why should I care enough to use it?”

🎃 Tom the Postgirl 🎃

Join Tom, the village’s new postgirl, and get to know the locals, perhaps a little too well. Her method, although controversial, is highly effective: intense, obsessive stalking.

This absurd adventure follows the mischievous Tom on her delivery rounds, which always seem to go awry. No surprise there, since Tom spends most of her time peeking inside people’s homes whenever she gets the chance.

Join Tom in a charming village where every resident has something to hide. You deliver their packages, but what do they do with them once out of sight? Every window, every door, every crack in the wall is an opportunity to learn more about the inhabitants and their nasty secrets!

It will be available tomorrow on Steam and Nintendo Switch! If it sounds interesting, you can check it out here:

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2257440/Tom_the_Postgirl/

https://www.nintendo.com/us/store/products/tom-the-postgirl-switch/

AI disclosure: There was zero use of AI during the creation of this game. We made it with our hands and sweat!

Hey everyone! We’ve been working on Smalland 2: Lost Realms, and today we’re proud to share our first true gameplay trailer. We’re also announcing that the game is coming in 2027, as we want to take the time to listen to the community feedback and polish some aspects of the game.

Play solo or with up to 10 friends in co-op: tame creatures, build outposts, craft gear and explore new lands, with new perks, crafting and resource gathering systems, plus swimming, climbing and stealth.

We’d love to hear what you think! Some elements are still work in progress.

Feel free to wishlist the game on Steam if you want to support the project. See you in the wild, smalfolks!

What's interesting about remaking a 2D game in 3D is that it doesn't necessarily mean changing how the game feels.

With 3D models, artists can adjust lighting, camera angles and animations without having to redraw every frame from scratch. But the tricky part is keeping the original art style and movement intact. If you get that wrong, a remake can look technically better while somehow feeling worse.

Diablo II: Resurrected is a good example of taking a different approach: the original gameplay logic stayed intact while the visuals were rebuilt. And then there's Guilty Gear Xrd, which used 3D models and animation techniques to make characters look surprisingly close to hand-drawn anime.

It makes me wonder where the line is between improving old visuals and losing what made them special in the first place.

Which 2D game would you actually want to see rebuilt in 3D, and which one should be left alone?

Illustrations are self made. Claude helped with coding.

Feedback requested for website and games. Please post your comments in the original thread in r/Websites since I’m not OP.

Hey everyone! For the last few years I was working on a major IP project in connection with Paramount. I'm a solo developer so things take time and I realized that I needed a bit more to make the rest of the content and ship it as polished as possible so my publisher and I requested an extension.

Sadly, that time extension request was denied so I had to decide if I wanted to put myself through mountains of stress to ultimately put out a rushed game in a few months or walk away.

I chose to walk away and my publisher supported the choice. Thankfully, Paramount and I split in a positive way and I got to keep what I created. A few months later my publisher floated the idea if packaging the demo I had created for PAX as a standalone mini experience sort of thing if I stripped all the branding and IP specific stuff.

I figured that was better than letting it gather dust on my backup repo so I released a polished version on steam for free on Monday. I hope you can give it a shot in time for Halloween!

Thank you to this community for being so supportive for so many years. Im happy to see it out in the wild for people to enjoy. Happy Halloween and thank you again r/indiegaming community!

Playable Archive free on steam and itch

https://store.steampowered.com/app/5356470/Playable_Archive/

https://darkstonedigital.itch.io/playablearchive

Hi everyone! I'm a solo dev from Romania, and this is NOVA (unique name, I know). You own worlds, they grow fleets, and you send those fleets out to take the next world. The whole thing is played with one mouse.

It took me about a year to make. There are 12 chapters and 144 hand built levels, with suns, black holes, portals, orbiting planets and 7 rival factions that each play a little differently.

I'm not an artist, so I'll be upfront: a lot of what you see comes from asset packs. You thought I was going to say AI, right?! The UI is Reach by Michsky, the planets and skyboxes are from Parallel Cascades, the space effects are Space Graphics Toolkit by Carlos Wilkes, and the nebulas were made with Nebula Creator by LumaxForge Studio. There are also portal, station, ship and mine packs from ALinea, Sector 3D, VIS Games and TachyonCraft, and planet models from Game-Ready Studios. Those packs and generators worked wonders. They let me spend my time on the levels and the enemy AI instead of struggling with art I couldn't make myself. Still I spent more than a week on that ring around the planets just to make sure it works well and looks right to me.

Big thanks to my friends who played the early builds and had the patience to support me and give me suggestions on how to improve it.

The best part is that now I can just sit down and play it. After a year of building, it's so satisfying to see it all come together and actually have fun with my own game! And I still find things to improve on it! One friend is asking about multiplayer and I have no idea how to do that yet, but anyway..

It's out on Steam, and there's a free demo with the first chapter if you want to try it. I'd love to hear what you think! :D good or bad of course

This is Peak Demand, a small, calm strategy game where you lay out a city's power grid. The city grows a little every day, and the puzzle is fitting plants, substations and cables together so everything holds in the evening, when everyone comes home. You can pause whenever you like and plan while the city waits.

It's free on itch and plays right in the browser. There are Windows, Mac and Linux builds too: https://latroworks.itch.io/peak-demand

AI disclosure: I used coding assistants while making it, and some of the translations were done with an LLM. There are no AI-generated images or audio.

Hi everyone! I made a game based on What We Do in the Shadows for Halloween.
You can play it free here: https://edward-la-barbera.itch.io/laszlovania
Character Art by Lara K.
Choir Arrangement by Tiffany Palmer

Honestly, I can see why indie devs would be worried about this. You spend months working on a game, and now even showing a demo could come with that risk. Do you think devs will start keeping their demos private, or will most still share them anyway?

Inspired by Noita’s destruction, I’m making KUGELBLITZ, where every 64th pixel wants to kill you: the terrain is made of 8×8 rigid-body blocks with full physics instead of falling sand. Digging is core gameplay. You dig to find perks and to consume the ground.

Mass is the only currency. One of the strongest spells in the transmutation spellcrafting system, the black hole, is always cheap to cast. The real cost is indirect: everything it swallows is gone for good, and that’s mass you could have eaten to grow stronger.

More info and newsletter on the website. Claude is used in coding.

Do you like the premise? Why does or doesn’t it scratch the power-trip itch?

My buddy and I started work on our first video game in March and have recently released our demo, with the final game on the way. Epsilon Zero is our roguelike arena shooter, with random level-up upgrades, weapon fusions, and a variety of enemy types planned for the final release!

Our game gets better every day, but we welcome outside opinions. We are very new to game development. The demo is free on Steam, and we would be grateful if you gave it a look!

Shoutout to GenRootsArt for these masterpieces ❤️