Hello indie gamers,
after almost 5 years of development, we are finally releasing our game on steam, it had been a long journey, with many ups and downs, but the worst part was for me was marketing and social media reach, yeah man its not our strongest suit.

anyway, if you are interested in a local PvP shooter for 2-4 players, check it out here: https://store.steampowered.com/app/2927710/Shop_Town_Dooter/

we are releasing on April 1st because our marketing is a joke. see you in the Arena.

We’re two brothers making Moo Who?, a voice-driven multiplayer party game.

Animal players record their own sounds and hide among NPC animals. Hunters must watch, listen, and decide which animals are real players before using their limited shots.

This is our first trailer, and we would love honest feedback. Does the concept come across clearly?

Wishlist on Steam if it looks like your kind of party game!

Steam Link: https://store.steampowered.com/app/4948000/Moo_Who/

This is the first game I've ever made so seeing this number is honestly a little hard to process.

I started making Slotbound without any game dev experience. At the beginning I was mostly just trying to figure out if I could actually finish a game at all.

When I released the demo, I remember thinking I would be happy if maybe 10 people were playing it

and now it passed 100,000 wishlists

I have basically spent the last few months sitting at my desk working on this thing every day, fixing stuff, adding things, breaking things again

There's still a lot I want to do before release, and I am working on a pretty big demo update for Next Fest right now.

But yeah I wanted to save this moment somewhere.

Thanks to everyone who played the demo or left me feedback along the way.

Back to work :)

Hey r/IndieDev

We’re Naveen and Arvind, the indie duo behind Shuruka Boxing — a hyper-realistic first-person boxing game that launched on Steam on July 29, 2025. Despite our passion and hard work, the game hasn't gained the traction we hoped for. We believe it deserves a second chance, and we'd love your support to make that happen.

🎮 About the Game:

Shuruka Boxing offers:

• Realistic first-person combat with motion-captured animations.

• Dynamic AI opponents that adapt to your fighting style.

• Cinematic finishing moves and immersive sound design.

💬 Community Feedback:

While the game has received some feedback, we believe there's potential for growth. Your insights and suggestions can help us improve and evolve the game.

🔄 How You Can Help:

• Try the demo and share your thoughts.

• Wishlist the game on Steam

• Share your experience on social media or forums.

• Provide constructive feedback to help us improve.

We’re committed to making Shuruka Boxing the best it can be, and your support can make a significant difference.

Thank you for your time and consideration. We look forward to hearing from you!

Best regards,
Naveen & Arvind

/s

I've always thought that "zero tolerance" policy towards AI use is stupid and extremist, many indie devs got attacked for no justifiable reason, but the big walk situation is just out of hands.

Big walk devs (House House) are famously anti Ai, getting disqualified and then review bombed over fixing a critical bug (that they attempted to fix without AI) is over the top reaction by people who definitely don't understand what they're angry about.

there are people even saying that any game made with unity or unreal should be boycotted even if the devs didn't use Ai because the engine does.. that's crazy.

the reason I'm saying this is because I actually care about AI regulation, and I want the slop flood to stop, or at least be easily avoidable, especially on reputable platforms such as steam.

if you think we can bully Devs into never using Ai, you're being delusional, for several reasons:

1. Many people don't agree with your cause, this isn't how you gather support, many younger folks are completely conditioned to Ai, and older folks barely give an F. it's only our generations chance and responsibility to set things straight before it's too late.

2. Ai can be useful and doesn't automatically make your game soulless or slop, there's a difference between fully agentic workflows that poop slop in tonnes, or generating plagiarized art/assets, and using Ai in programming, bug fixes and problem tracing, creating developer tools.

3. Ai tools or traces of it exist everywhere now, if you want to be angry about the slightest use of Ai, start with deleting this app.

What do you guys think? https://store.steampowered.com/app/3045220/Mutant_Hunter/ - store link if you want to check it out.

Test it here: https://meticulai.com/games/last-drop/

Hi

I just released the first teaser for Soul Stream, a single-player 2D fantasy adventure I’m currently developing.

The easiest way to describe the core idea is probably: a fantasy adventure with a bit of Tarkov DNA.

You explore dangerous areas, fight enemies, collect items and loot, and try to make it back alive with everything you found.

If you die, you lose everything you were carrying.

So even though it’s a single-player adventure game rather than a PvP extraction shooter, I want exploration to have that same sense of risk and tension — deciding whether to keep pushing deeper for better rewards or turn back before you lose what you’ve collected.

The actual game will use top-down 2D graphics.

For this teaser, I wanted to introduce the world in a different way, so I experimented with a 3D clay-style look inspired by Dungeon Clawler intro sequences.

All of the actual in-game art assets are created in-house by me.

For the teaser, I used my own in-game assets as visual references in Higgsfield to create the initial video drafts, then edited and refined the footage myself to put together the final trailer.

So the clay visuals are specifically for the teaser, the actual game will keep its own top-down 2D art style.

It’s still very much a work in progress, but the direction I’m aiming for is:

a single-player fantasy adventure,

exploration and loot,

high risk when carrying valuable items,

and real consequences for dying.

Still early, but I’m excited to finally start showing Soul Stream.

Would love to hear what you think about the concept and the teaser!

Steam:
https://store.steampowered.com/app/3959870/Soul_Stream/

https://github.com/alla2001/material-painter

Where is Mr. Kim?

I shared it yesterday, and it somehow passed 100k views.

Think Where’s Waldo in Joseon-era Korea, except the village keeps moving while you search.

You’re looking for Mr. Kim. Straw hat, teal sash, nowhere useful to be. 🇰🇷

The demo has one map. I’m planning more maps and eventually a full Steam release, and I’d love to hear how this first little village feels to play.

If you find Mr. Kim, please ask him to stay put. I still have a game to finish.

You guys called out the AI art… so I rebuilt it!
A month later, here’s Blueprint Factory without the AI slop :)

I'm 45, solo dev from Estonia, and this is my first serious game. Been into ants since I was a kid.

It's an ant farm that sits in the corner of your desktop. The ants dig tunnels, carry crumbs and look after the brood. You plan rooms and upgrade them, or just leave it running while you work and check on them later. There's also a cactus that sprouts under the lamp, and sometimes the ants dig up mutations for it. One of them is called Do Not Lick.

I really don't know if this is only for old guys like me or if younger players will like it too. If you have a minute to look, I'd be grateful for any feedback here. Thanks.

Early Access on Steam, Nov 30: Antmates on Steam

We spent the last 1.5 years trying to make The Unworthy genuinely terrifying, but we never expected someone to leave a negative review because the game was literally too scary to enjoy 😢
They tried playing four times and still couldn't get through it, as horror developers, we're not even sure if we should be upset or take this as a compliment lol. Has a horror game ever been so scary that you genuinely couldn't keep playing?

Hi, my name is Amber, and I’m a solo indie developer. To be honest, I just want to vent a little and perhaps be heard by others who are also involved in indie development.

To start off, I’m a SOLO INDIE DEVELOPER HAHA! I don’t have a publisher or a team; I just have voice actors and beta testers, whom I manage myself. In short, there’s no one else to turn to for help, I do everything on my own. I’m not complaining, though - I love making games, and I love that people enjoy what I create! :D But...

I started building my game from scratch in January 2026. I’m just a digital artist. I didn’t know anything about music or coding, so I had to teach myself everything. Reddit, various forums, and knowledgeable people who were willing to offer advice were there to help, and I’m so grateful for that. Thanks to them, I was able to create something unique, and those who’ve had the chance to play it have really enjoyed it!

But problems began as early as August. Steam released an update (forgive me, folks I don’t have the full picture, so please correct me if I’m wrong!) that fundamentally changed the side festivals. As I understand it, you now need to have already established a certain standing or possess specific assets to even get into these festivals. In essence, following this update, the festivals no longer promote up-and-coming developers; instead, they focus all their attention on games that are already popular. This is truly disheartening for me, because the one festival I managed to get into brought me several hundred wishlists and now, it seems I won’t be able to participate in any others.

I had high hopes for the autumn Next Fest. I’d heard that the event provides a great boost to wishlists and that a demo is a fantastic way for people to discover your game! I was incredibly excited, hoping it would help me gather a decent number of wishlists and open doors to other festivals.

Unfortunately, Steam seems to believe that "AI slop" is far more important than quality work. I can’t blame them for wanting to make money, we’re all trying to do that, but it’s deeply disheartening that my game, which was built on the values ​​of authentic human creativity and the importance of REAL labor, has ended up buried under a mountain of AI slop. And it’s not just my game. I’ve seen so many other projects that look absolutely incredible, yet they’re forced to sit right alongside these janky, AI-generated imitations.

It’s painful and disheartening to realize that I could have churned out a whole heap of AI-generated slop in a month and perhaps failed just the same, but at least I didn’t waste a ton of time and effort only to lose to AI.

It’s disheartening that this situation won’t be resolved. It’s painful to see genuine creative work and effort competing against things churned out by an AI assembly line. I don’t know what to do; I just want to give up.

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.

659 hours in our demo for game "Focus Grove".

Not the full game. The demo. That's not a player - that's a believer. 🔥

As a dev, seeing something like this makes every late night and every bug fix worth it. Huge congrats to my team.

And if you're wondering how someone could possibly rack up that many hours in a demo - we're making a cozy productivity game with a built-in Pomodoro timer and other tools to help you actually get stuff done. People aren't just playing it, they're working in it. Every. Single. Day.

This is what passion projects turning into something real looks like. 🔥

If any devs want to try it out and let us know how you like it, we welcome feedback!

To all the haters out there - yes, my bills are paid by the AI industry (sorry I need to have a job in this economy); this is a passion project that I don’t get paid on or "promote" on reddit - I just wanted to show off our first achievement in over a year. :)

Hey!

I would genuinely like to open a discussion about AI in game development.

I work in a senior IT position, and when the AI boom first started, I was honestly afraid of it. When the marketing and media hype reached its peak, I even started feeling depressed about what it could mean for my career. I considered speaking to a psychologist.

Thankfully, I have a great team leader who supported me, pushed me forward, and had several helpful face-to-face conversations with me.

Eventually, I accepted that AI is not going away.

Today, I use AI almost every day in my job. As someone who spent years learning Kubernetes and earning certifications, it can sometimes feel uncomfortable or even painful to see AI complete certain tasks so quickly. However, it is now another tool that professionals need to understand and use responsibly.

Customers usually do not ask whether a solution was written by one developer, an entire team, or with the help of AI. They care whether it works, whether it is secure, and whether it is delivered properly.

Should game development not be judged in a similar way?

I have seen many interesting, creative, and funny games posted in this subreddit receive negative reactions simply because people suspected that AI was involved.

Instead of writing:
“This is AI slop.”

Why not provide useful feedback such as:

“The inventory design does not match the background.”
“The visual style feels inconsistent.”
“The interface is unclear.”
“Some assets need more polishing.”

That kind of criticism actually helps the developer improve the game.

Of course, there are low-effort games that use generated assets, copied mechanics, and minimal development time purely to make quick money. I understand why people dislike those projects.

However, not every game that uses AI is automatically a cash grab. A developer might use AI for research, programming assistance, placeholder assets, translation, balancing, brainstorming, testing, or accessibility while still spending months or years building the actual game.

Large studios are already experimenting with AI in different parts of development, and many developers use it in some form. AI will probably remain part of the industry, whether people like it or not.

That does not mean we should accept low quality, stolen work, misleading marketing, or completely unedited generated content. Developers should still be responsible for the final result.

But I believe that calling a game “AI slop” simply because AI may have been involved especially when the game itself looks good and plays well is often unhelpful and unnecessarily toxic.

Instead of attacking developers, we should explain what specifically looks bad, what feels inconsistent, and what could be improved.

I would like this discussion to be about facts, personal experiences, concerns, ethics, quality, and the future of game development.

Maybe we will disagree, but perhaps we can also find some common ground and understand each other better.

What exactly bothers you about AI in games?

Is it the quality, copyright concerns, job displacement, lack of transparency, low-effort content, or the use of AI itself?

I would like to open discussion about AI. Is it really that bad or people are just too afraid of innovations.

And last question. I was thinking how many people that blame AI are actually using it in any form. Don't take AI as a threat, take it as tool that helps you deliver your product earlier and in better quality.

I'm ready to eat sh*t, because it's reddit and I talk about AI... Anyway..

I feel like there's a lot of frustration with AI making its way to game dev world. Understandable.

But I feel like focusing on the binary of whether AI was used or not, is unhelpful in pin pointing the actual problems in the artistry.

If we increased the specificity of the critique, we may end up realizing what we actually hate is not the AI itself (unless mid psychosis), but that we actually hate: generic UIs, offensively "beautified" art assets, copy that feels like it came out of marketing brochure, lack of personable humanity in the script and other problems we could and maybe should identify regardless of what tool was used to make it.

Instead of discussion that'd actually identify the true problems, we get stuck on em dashes and AI disclosures.

What do you think? Is the SLOP label sufficient in distinguishing between good games and bad games?

EDIT: This is not about whether AI disclosure is good or bad. (Personally I think it's fair to have it). It's more about "Do we focus on the right things, when we critique games purely on whether AI was used or not?"

Left: the AI art from my demo.

Right: the new hand-drawn version.

I shipped the demo quickly with AI images, and now I'm redrawing them.

Which one fits my card game better?

If you'd like to see how the tile-based deckbuilding plays, the demo is free on Steam.

Give it a try, and a wishlist would mean a lot!

Demo Link

Edit: Some context. I've worked as a gameplay programmer for 7 years, and this is my first time seriously taking on art.

I honestly couldn't tell which style works better, so I just wanted some feedback.

Didn't mean to open a can of worms here, sorry about that!