Indie Gaming

I'm not a dev just sharing.

Dev social media

https://bsky.app/profile/seba-dev.bsky.social

Original post

https://bsky.app/profile/seba-dev.bsky.social/post/3motdy3x4gs2f

I got into making games because I love games. Not because I see players as a balance sheet to drain. But somewhere along the way a lot of the industry stopped shipping things you finish and started shipping things designed to hook you, time you, and quietly bleed your wallet on a Tuesday night.

Loot boxes that are just slot machines with extra steps. Countdown timers built to make you panic-buy. Hyped-up trailers covering for a launch that's broken or empty. Full price games that still nickel-and-dime you for the fun parts. That's not design, that's a casino wearing a costume.

To be clear, I'm not mad at charging money. I sell my own game, and there are optional purchases that keep the servers on and pay the people building it. Charging a fair price for real work is honest. Engineering addiction and hiding a hollow product behind a flashy trailer is not. There's a line, and a lot of people sprinted past it.

So here's my flag in the ground. Fair price. Finished game. No psychological traps, no dishonest hype. You buy it, you own it, you actually have fun. That used to be the baseline. I want to make it the baseline again.

Somewhere in a glass tower, a meeting happened. The question on the slide wasn't "is this game fun." It was "how do we get them to spend again before they notice they stopped having fun." That's the part that gets me.

I'm not against paying for games. I sell mine for less than a lunch, with a few optional extras that keep the servers on and let me keep doing this. That's a fair trade. You give me a little, I give you a whole world and I don't pick your pocket while you're standing in it.

What I'm against is the slot machine wearing a game's skin. The blinking timers built to make you anxious. The fun locked behind a wall so you'll pay to feel something. The hyped launch that ships broken because the marketing already cashed the check. Designing a game to drain you instead of delight you is a choice, and a lot of big teams keep choosing it.

So here's where I plant my flag. I'd rather make a smaller, honest thing that respects your time and your wallet than a shiny machine engineered to bleed you slow. If you're tired of being treated like a balance instead of a player, good. Come build the other timeline with me. We're still out here, and we're not selling you back the joy.

Just saw the PS3's XMB in an indie horror's trailer

Had to double check. Small "chotto a momentte" situation.

The trailer:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Xu5LKAnPPA

#IndieGaming #PS3

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.blahaj.zone/post/30613855

I finished this first game of mine about three months ago. Back then i was too anxious to post it. I would love some feedback on it generally. i am aware of some bugs, and generally know how to do it better nowadays, but i didn't want to touch the code anymore. I'd describe myself as Gamedesigner first, coder second, and artist last. so i would be especially interested in how the game feels to you.

Thanks to everyone who took time out of their day for this :3

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.abnormalbeings.space/post/5293159

The 15 games mentioned in the video, each with a short description/review segment:

• Unbox: Newbie's Adventeure
• Utopia Must Fall
• Chroma Squad
• Shadow Gambit
• En Garde!
• Tinykin
• Our Adventurer Guild
• Timespinner
• Renowned Explorers
• The Brutale
• Wintermoor Tactics Club
• Unsighted
• Wayhaven Chronicles
• Demon Turf
• Roadwarden

It's a retro inspired Arcade / Roguelite Shoot 'Em Up type game.

Wanted to let others know of this new weekly custom Steam Sale that is benefitting Whales & Dolphins worldwide via a charity group. There will be a Steam Daily Deal happening tomorrow (June 6th, 2025) to help support. Every sale in the group will donate a portion to the charity group.

I have 2 games in the sale myself, Rocket (a roguelite space game) and Drop It: Block Paradise (a physics puzzle game) that every sale I'll be donating 50% to the cause myself.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.abnormalbeings.space/post/3637775

The list, if you don't want to watch the (whole) video:

• Popucom
• Zefyr: A Thief's Melody
• Deltarune: Chapter 3 & 4
• Dragon is Dead
• Forgotlings
• Vilde
• The Alters
• Date Everything!
• Lost in Random: The Eternal Die
• Warton
• Dragonloop
• Crown Gambit
• Rematch
• Star Overdrive
• Outrider Mako
• Shuffle Tactics
• Ruffy and the Riverside

Hello, fellow playdaters,

I'm Morgan, from Random Encounter Studios and my brother and I just finished developing our first playdate game. Fell in love with the device a year ago and decided to make a full fledged game on it.

It's a modern twist on arcade classics shmups, lots of actions, level ups, perks and coins! The game is about 6-8 hours length, hope you'll love it.

I'm happy to announce that ARMADA is now out on playdate, available on https://random-encounter-games.itch.io/armada (not sure if I can link something in the post but hey, i'll try)

Feel free to ask me anything about the game/studio/playdate, will be more than happy to answer!

Super fun cozy fish game I discovered. Breed fish, sell em and create a fish tank for them to live in. Figured I would share with Lemmy as it just got released from beta and is current on sale.

Hope: A Sky Full of Ghosts is a sci-fi point-and-click adventure where you, as Agatha Hope, captain a disjointed crew on a stolen spaceship.

Your goal? Escaping the corporate tyranny on Earth.

Your decisions and wits will decide the course of the mission, your relationship with the crew and whether you survive or not.

It blends the spirit of old-school point-and-click games with a deep narrative full of character and secrets.

Dialogue choices, puzzles and minigames will help you unravel the ship’s secrets and reveal your crew’s motives.

Hey all, I made a lovecraftian game centered on text and symbols, exploring the disintegrating mind a la HP Lovecraft . The result is the short, minimalistic puzzler called The Stamp.

It’s centered around a cursed childhood symbol game and involves mirroring sentences using esoteric or mundane symbols. As it's a text-based game, there’s no combat or jump scares, just a slow descent into dissonance and seeking patterns in vain.

I really wanted the some of feel of stories like The Whisperer in Darkness and The Haunter of the Dark, where perception and language begin to slip.

If this sounds interesting, you can find it on Steam: 🔗 https://store.steampowered.com/app/3079840/The_Stamp/

cross-posted from: https://discuss.tchncs.de/post/34809899

This was originally developed in three days for the Cozy Fall Jam 2023, and the update has been in the works for over a year 😅

I finally took the time and added the finishing touches over the easter weekend!

It's a short and simple mini-statraiser/resource-management game about helping a wizard train for a magic competition. We worked on it as a team of eight and it has adorable chibi 2D art (by @MangoCake@mastodon.social) and a completely original soundtrack!

The update added more CGs, more random events, a reworked minigame and a revised script + lots of bug fixes and quality of life stuff. It's overall a more complete experience now^^

Playing it from beginning to end should take no longer than half an hour, please give it a try :D

Disclaimer: I am not the dev! Just a fan who follows them on Mastodon (@ColdEmber@hachyderm.io) and watched them develop this :>

There's a free demo, so please give it a try!