Game Development

I have no real experience in art but yet i want to make projects like video games. What are some free ways to make 2d assets and packs for free, how do i learn, what style should i study, where do i find reference images/poses? etc.

I know i could use pre-made assets but i really want to try my hand at art.

Im trying not too make this post too long but feel free to add onto this if you wish.

I'm making a game about the 12 Greek Olympian gods. The idea is that Prometheus, the Titan who stole fire from the gods, instructs you, a duck, to travel to the realms of each god and steal their "fire" for the humans (e.g. mastery of the seas from Poseidon). It is a mix of platforming and puzzles where you can use the abilities of some of the nature deities (the four winds, Helios the all-seeing sun god, and Achelous the river god)

My question is, how should I make and/or get music for my game so that it fits with the theme of the game? Using something like Beepbox to make retro music doesn't really fit, so I'm a bit stuck. Is there a similar tool for making smooth/continuous music that doesn't require all too much musical abilities or is that not a thing? If there isn't, is there a place to find game music that's available for public use?

some screenshots for reference: (the first level is Dionysus, the god of wine and ecstasy)

Has anyone else done CS50? Kind of insane and awesome that a resource like that is just open to the world.

Anyway, I spent way too many hours on this, but Scratch is pleasantly addictive, and there are worse ways to waste time.

Hey devs!

I just pushed a major update for my indie game A Survival Game, built in Godot 3.5, and I wanted to share some of the highlights — both gameplay-wise and on the dev side.

🧠 What's New (Game Side) ✅ Trader system – You can now exchange gold for 100 points. Finally gave purpose to that shiny stuff.

✅ Gold Collection – Stickmen now pick up coins during runs.

✅ New Creature: Blat Choice – A sideways-walking crab (don't ask) that adds movement and surprise to exploration.

✅ Pets system – Passive income generators (stackable). A simple but fun economy element.

✅ Floating Texts – Visual feedback on clicks/points/etc, now optimized for performance.

✅ Tips system – Contextual hints for new players, to reduce early confusion.

✅ Difficulty tweaked – Slightly more forgiving... but still chaotic.

What I worked on (Dev Side) HTML5 Save System Fully Fixed Godot 3.5 doesn't have built-in robust HTML save support, so I had to manually manage saves using File.new() and redirect paths using OS.has_feature("HTML5"). Now working across HTML and Windows builds.

🪙 Gold Economy & Trader Logic Built a Trader node that checks your gold, deducts it, and adds score. All UI feedback uses Tween + floating text. Kept it modular so I can reuse it for shops later.

Creature AI – “Blat Choice” A simple crab enemy that patrols left/right and flips when hitting walls. KinematicBody2D with basic raycast checks. I wanted something dumb but reactive.

Pets System (Money Generator) Attached a passive timer to pet instances that adds money per interval. Very lightweight and expandable.

FloatingText Optimization To keep performance smooth on HTML, I use a pooled object system that reuses floating text labels instead of instancing constantly.

Next Challenges Saving pets and creature states between sessions

Expanding the Action Card system with triggers

Optimizing memory usage on mobile

Considering port to Godot 4.x or sticking with 3.5 for now

If anyone's curious about how I implemented the HTML5 save workaround or the floating text pooling system, I’d be happy to share code or breakdowns.

You can check out the game here if you're into chaos-based survival: https://danielgamedev14.itch.io/a-survival-game

Let me know what you think, and happy coding!

Just wanted to publicly announce this project at this point in time. All the info is on the GitHub page. If you have any feedback, or find any bugs or issues, please let me know in the comments.

Hey everyone! I'm Daniel, a 14-year-old indie developer and the creator of A Survival Game — a chaotic 2D survival strategy game with permanent consequences, card-based gameplay, and tough choices in a desperate underground bunker. You can play it here: https://danielgamedev14.itch.io/a-survival-game

The last update added new events, better performance, and polish to the survival mechanics. But now I’m looking ahead…

I need YOUR ideas for the next update! What features do you want to see?

New types of cards?

More bunker events?

Pets? Robots? Betrayals?

Permanent progression between runs?

Visual effects? Achievements?

Let me know what you think would make the game even more fun, chaotic, and re-playable! Big or small, serious or silly — I’m reading all suggestions.

If you're into survival games, design feedback, or just want to help an indie dev grow, I’d love to hear from you. Let’s build something cool together!

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/32753447

I recently noticed video about the SpacetimeDB and how it is used for the backend of Bitcraft. I got interested in that and noticed that it has (unofficial) Godot support. Have anyone tried to use this (or SpacetimeDB in general)?

What are your favorite Steam curators?

I'm looking to send my horror game to some curators for review.

@gamedev @godot

#GameDev #IndieGame #IndieDev #Steam #Gaming

Hey everyone! I'm Daniel, a 14-year-old indie dev, and I recently released my survival strategy game called A Survival Game on itch.io.

It’s a card-based, permadeath game where you manage a group of desperate stickmen stuck in a bunker full of bad decisions.

🔗 Play here (free): https://danielgamedev14.itch.io/a-survival-game

I’d love to see how different people play it — so if you’re into recording gameplay or just feel like sharing how your run went, I’d be super grateful!

📹 What I’m looking for:

Short videos (1–5 mins) showing how you play

Funny or unexpected situations

Feedback, ideas, or even bug moments

Feel free to post a link here or DM me if you record something! Thank you so much 🙏 – Daniel_Game_Dev

Have you ever found yourself in a conversation with people about Valve's anti-competitive practices? Well, I have. And I defended Valve's requirement to let customers choose their preferred storefront when buying games, as long as Steam keys were involved. After all, you end up getting to use all of Steam's features and services when you activate the game on Steam. We can argue about this, but it turns out, that was a red herring!

I've spend the better part of today digging through this newest class action lawsuit, again made by Wolfire, against Valve. (This has been going for a while.) I was compiling a response to each of the points in the overview (can't go through the whole thing, sorry), and there was one thing that stood out after searching for the "Price Veto Provision". I had heard people make claims to the same effect before, but they were never able to back it up. (And it being conflated with the "Steam Key Price Parity Provision" made it worse.) So here it is:

Valve pressures developers into price parity across different storefronts, even if Steam keys are NOT part of the equation.

We basically see any selling of the game on PC, Steam key or not, as a part of the same shared PC market- so even if you weren’t using Steam keys, we’d just choose to stop selling a game if it was always running discounts of 75% off on one store but 50% off on ours. . . . That stays true, even for DRM-free sales or sales on a store with its own keys like UPLAY or Origin.

When I looked for this quote, I found a podcast episode that I hadn't listened to (The Hated One, Episode 228 - More evidence of Valve enforcing price parity beyond Steam keys), but that thankfully provided some sources for more related quotes, from earlier lawsuits, such as:

“The biggest takeaway is, don’t disadvantage Steam customers. For instance, it wouldn’t be fair to sell your DLC for $10 on Steam if you’re selling it for $5 or giving it as a reward for $5 donations. We would ask that Steam customers get that lower $5 price as well.”

“If the offer you’re making fundamentally disadvantages someone who bought your game on Steam, it’s probably not a great thing for us or our customers (even if you don’t find a specific rule describing precisely that scenario).”

a Steam account manager, Tom Giardino, reportedly told publisher Wolfire that Steam would delist any games available for sale at a lower price elsewhere, whether or not using Steam keys.

The developer asked, “Regarding the pricing policy, can a non-Steam variant of a game be sold at a different price than on the Steam store page?” Steam’s response was “Selling the game off Steam at a lower price wouldn’t be considered giving Steam users a fair deal.”

These were apparently from 2017 and 2018, so things might've changed since then, but it's reason enough to question Valve. I unfortunately haven't been able to find much on these other quotes (search engine enshittification, or has this really not been talked about?), and I'm unsure why they're not also included in this newest lawsuit, but there they are. Hopefully this helps anyone who was misinformed or lacked proof, like myself. Also if anyone has related stories from gamedevs or articles that actually get to the core of the problem, I'd love it if you could share them.

Hey everyone! 👋 (again) I’m Daniel, a 14-year-old indie developer, and I’ve been working on a survival strategy game called A Survival Game. It mixes stickmen, hand-drawn chaos, resource management, and lots of dumb (but fun) decisions.

🧠 About the game: You control a group of desperate stickmen trapped in a not-so-safe bunker. Your goal? Survive as long as possible. You’ll need to fight monsters, manage food, make tough choices, and pray your stickmen don’t do something… stupid.

Each run is different thanks to random events, unique cards, and permadeath mechanics. There’s also a good dose of humor (because dying horribly should be funny, right?)

🆕 I just released a big update with:

10 new stickmen

New items, traps and events

Improved difficulty system

Even crazier cards (like "Mercy", which might save… or kill a stickman 😅)

🎮 Play it for free on Itch.io: 👉 https://danielgamedev14.itch.io/a-survival-game

💬 I’d love your feedback or ideas! I’m constantly updating the game and open to collabs with other devs too.

Thanks for reading! 🚀

And by revert we mean "keeps in but now with a dark pattern if you want to disable it"

I wanted to become a game developer for some time, and even tried following some tutorials for making video games, but i quit it due to not understanding the coding part, i did not really understand what i was doing.

Now i know a lot more about programming, but mostly just in java, however, i dont think it will be very difficult to learn new language, as now i understand many concepts of programming in general.

I want to learn to make games on godot, which i chose because it is quite popular and has a lot of documentation, tutorials, guides and community, which should be very helpful, especially for newbies.

As for a newbie in game development, what advice would you recommend me follow, to easily get in the gamedev? Maybe its some guides, some example or test projects, or something else, which i dont know about yet, everything will be helpful.

if you hear rat noises in A Survival Game BE CAREFUL!

a rat may be eating all your FOOD!

and if it runs out your stickmen may DIE!!!!

1 by 1 😉

play now: https://danielgamedev14.itch.io/a-survival-game

Ever wondered what happens when you mix:

Stickmen with anxiety,

A totally “safe” bunker,

A resource system that hates you,

And a card mechanic designed by someone who watched too much chaos theory?

Well, now you don’t have to — because I made A Survival Game: a simulation/strategy roguelike where you’re always one bad card away from total disaster.

👨‍💻 Why? Because I’m a developer with questionable priorities and too much love for watching virtual stickmen fail at life.

🃏 Features: A full card-based control system (because UIs are for cowards)

Resource micromanagement that makes you question your decisions

Stickmen that level up, change appearance, and complain a lot

Permadeath, obviously

A Monster Wiki, because everything wants to kill you, and you need receipts

A “Mercy DLC” where you can literally pay $1 to go back in time (feels very on-brand for debugging, tbh)

😅 Dev things I learned the hard way: Implementing permadeath logic is easy. Explaining it to confused players? Not so much.

Saving in HTML5 is a feature I now worship.

Stickmen animations don’t need to be fancy if they scream internally.

💾 Tech stack? Godot, lots of JSON, and the occasional sacrifice to the RNG gods.

💥 Play it. Break it. Tell me it’s terrible. Or great. Or both.

Link: https://danielgamedev14.itch.io/a-survival-game (Warning: may cause stickman-related stress.)

Ever wondered what happens when you mix:

Stickmen with anxiety,

A totally “safe” bunker,

A resource system that hates you,

And a card mechanic designed by someone who watched too much chaos theory?

Well, now you don’t have to — because I made A Survival Game: a simulation/strategy roguelike where you’re always one bad card away from total disaster.

👨‍💻 Why? Because I’m a developer with questionable priorities and too much love for watching virtual stickmen fail at life.

🃏 Features: A full card-based control system (because UIs are for cowards)

Resource micromanagement that makes you question your decisions

Stickmen that level up, change appearance, and complain a lot

Permadeath, obviously

A Monster Wiki, because everything wants to kill you, and you need receipts

A “Mercy DLC” where you can literally pay $1 to go back in time (feels very on-brand for debugging, tbh)

😅 Dev things I learned the hard way: Implementing permadeath logic is easy. Explaining it to confused players? Not so much.

Saving in HTML5 is a feature I now worship.

Stickmen animations don’t need to be fancy if they scream internally.

💾 Tech stack? Godot, lots of JSON, and the occasional sacrifice to the RNG gods.

💥 Play it. Break it. Tell me it’s terrible. Or great. Or both.

Link: https://danielgamedev14.itch.io/a-survival-game (Warning: may cause stickman-related stress.)

Very interesting stuff