#indie game development

[wishlings]

Night-time is peaceful in the Wishlings world 🌠

[tipsheda]

🎮 Please, stay away IS NOW RELEASED standalone 🕹️

My first point-n-click game, inspired by old edgy flash games, is now available to be played in your browser. Also, the executables and other fun auxiliary material are available for purchase if you're into that.

https://tipsheda.itch.io/please-stay-away

[sock-devdiary]

The visitor, the Woodcutter, and the Wolf.

[efangamez]

Pride TTRPG Bundle Sale: Help a Queer Person Thrive! Buy nearly $70 of games for $25!

I am a disabled, trans, and queer game designer looking to live again to afford medication, sustained housing, therapy/psychiatry, and some money to save for emergencies.

This sale will help me to support myself as someone who makes less than $15,000 a year. I kinda wanna live a little and heal myself, and sadly, money is a big roadblock for me.

In this bundle, you can obtain:

GRIM, a retro FPS styled TTRPG inspired by Quake.

Neon Nights, a cyberpunk TTRPG with nearly infinite build variety, and it's two MASSIVE expansions!

Wrath of the Undersea, a TTRPG where you play as vengeful Eldritch peoples trying to reclaim the colonized surface.

Disk Master's expansions, where you can live out your Pokemon or Digimon dream on pen and paper!

There are also some stretch goals attached to the sale as well!

$500: This pays for debts and a month of groceries.

Will hold a Trans Rage Game Jam in July!

$1,000: This will pay for debts, groceries, and some cushion.

Will hold Trans Rage Game Jam in July AND will release GRIM: Eldritch Arsenal weapon pack for GRIM in August!

$2,000: This will pay for debts, groceries, cushion, and computer payments.

Will hold Trans Rage Game Jam in July, will release GRIM: Eldritch Arsenal weapon pack for GRIM in August, AND will have all games FREE during the month of October!

$3,000: This will pay for debts, groceries, cushion, computer payments, and gender affirming care.

Will hold Trans Rage Game Jam in July, will release GRIM: Eldritch Arsenal weapon pack for GRIM in August, AND will have all games FREE during the month of October!

$4,000: This will pay for debts, groceries, cushion, computer payments, gender affirming care, and mental health appointments.

Will hold Trans Rage Game Jam in July, will release GRIM: Eldritch Arsenal weapon pack for GRIM in August, will have all games FREE during the month of October, AND will release another one-page PWYW game!

$5,000: This will pay for debts, groceries, cushion, computer payments, gender affirming care, and mental health appointment, and will help SUSTAIN these things that are paid for.

Will hold Trans Rage Game Jam in July, will release GRIM: Eldritch Arsenal weapon pack for GRIM in August, will have all games FREE during the month of October, will release another one-page PWYW game, AND will host monthly game jams for the rest of the year!

$5,000+: Any money after this would be donated to trans non-profits where I reside and GoFundMe's for Palestinian families on the Operation Olive Branch spreadsheet.

PLEASE REBLOG IF YOU CANNOT SUPPORT!

[ellraiser]

I’m excited to announce that Mudborne’s new demo is out RIGHT NOW on Steam! I’m also excited to announce that the lovely folks at Future Friends will be helping to publish your new fav froggy game with me <3

A spiritual successor of sorts to APICO, Mudborne instead focuses on genetic manipulation and generational puzzles to create and discover all sorts of frog species, that act as keys to let you travel between the waking and dreaming worlds - the demo takes you through the main mechanics and creating 8 different species. If you love APICO I think you’ll love this, there’s a lot of stuff I’m doing differently but you should still feel right at home.

Whether you played the original gamejam version or not you’re in for a treat, as this is a completely new game, new art, new mechanics, new music, new engine - the whole works. I’m really looking forward to you all getting your slimy green hands on it, I hop you enjoy!!

[glugslove]

Don't want to solve puzzle, only want to electrocute self

[atwas-meme-ing]

HEY ALL!!! If you haven't heard, Unity is gonna start charging devs 20 cents per download. Not per sale, but PER DOWNLOAD. This applies to not only big-name games like Hollow Knight and Ori, but also smaller projects that might be free. This includes mobile games made with Unity, Undertale fan games like Undertale Yellow and Deltatraveler, and also, get this: Murder of Sonic! It was made in Unity, and so far, it's still free, but Sega's gonna hafta start charging for it sooner or later- IF they don't decide to take it down completely.

So, on this note, I have 2 things to say:

Get your favorite games NOW. Some devs, like Team Cherry, are talking about "taking their games down" (so much for Silksong- thanks A LOT, Unity!!!). I don't know if that means you'll still be able to play these games- like on Steam, for instance- if you already have them downloaded.

Please, please, PLEASE, support those games that are made with Unity. 20 cents adds up when there's a million downloads, and if it's like a mobile game, where people don't necessarily have to pay for it, that's going to COST the devs money- a LOT of money. I know we all hate the paywalls and "pay-to-win" schemes in mobile games, but let's be real- crap like this Unity thing are the whole reason those paywalls exist! These devs aren't doing this for free, they're trying to make a living! Even if you only spend $1, only 1 time, that is STILL going to be an 80 cent profit over the new Unity costs, and maybe, just maybe, give some game devs enough incentive to keep the game around.

I know Unity has a bad rep because it's easy to use and allows devs to release games that control poorly because you don't have to be good at coding to do it (*cough* Guardian of Lore *cough*). That's why I haven't used Unity, despite having several game ideas in my head, because I don't know how to code (yet), and I didn't want to release a game like that- and now I never will use Unity. But games like all the ones I've mentioned are proof that Unity CAN be used for good games, in the right hands. So please, if you love a game made with Unity, please support it, so the game doesn't go away. Don't send the devs into bankruptcy just because Unity is a money-grubbing so-and-so.

(Oh, I should also mention, for browser-based games, apparently this "per download" thing also includes "per BROWSER REFRESH". So, yeah, please don't blame the devs, support the devs and blame Unity.)

EDIT: It's not quite as bad as I'd thought. I knew Unity had a threshold, but I thought it was an either/or thing- either a certain number of downloads, or a certain amount of money made from a game. And, it's not, it's both.

So free games (like Murder of Sonic) apparently won't be affected.

Here's their pricing schedule once the threshold is met:

It still adds up for the smaller projects, with Unity taking all or most of the revenue from smaller games.

And one thing that's still bothering me: the install threshold is "life to date" and Unity is charging per install over the threshold. So, if a game's been around for years and had a million downloads and has made 200,000 dollars in the last year, they're gonna end up paying that 200,000 all at once.

At least, that's what I'm reading.

So, ok, I was wrong. Free projects won't be affected. But this is still awful, especially when it's first starting out.

EDIT 2 (2023-09-23): They've lessened the fees:

I'm still not using them. They never had a good reputation- I mean, there's good Unity games, but there's also a lot of bad ones because people can just release games with Unity with no coding experience. I want to make games someday, but I want them to be a good quality, so I'm waiting until I can actually figure out C++ (heck, I'm still wading through HTML, I'm nowhere near real programming languages). As long as I have to learn coding to make something good, I might as well find an engine that I can trust. I hear a lot about Godot. I also think I'll want to look at Monogame, because Monogame was used to make Axiom Verge and Celeste, and it's apparently based on the defunct XNA that was used to make Stardew Valley. Or I'll find something else. But not Unity. I just don't trust them.

[bestia3d]

made this for my gf! i am proud to say that she loves it!!! (it’s also concept art for my game of course lol)

[90percentstudios]

an update on bringing ckc to google play

this is partially a rant and partially an update on how porting ckc has been, ((it's probably very boring so feel free to read the tldr)). after having gotten the entire pa series on the platform i thought this'd go smoother, but i guess i was wrong. every time we submitted the game for review we were notified of an issue (which is fair, google's got policies and standards and whatnot, that's okay, and these were very fixable, albeit, required a lot of guessing and checking given how vague the issue notifications were, i'm just frustrated with the last issue):

issue 1: inaccurate target audience. google play presumed the game was for kids for two reasons: "animated characters in the app icon" and "multiple references to keywords related to children" in the app description. which means can't have cody in the icon (i tried a few different versions of the icon where i tried to make him look less toony, but had to resort to using the ckc logo because it seemed google just wasn't having it, though it's hard to tell with how vague their emails were). i also removed as many instances of the word "kid" as possible (so yup, can't talk about cool kids in the app description). thankfully they didn't make me change the game's name too. after a few resubmissions they've notified us of a new issue.

issue 2: violation of misleading claims policy. okay this was my bad, the changed icon was reflected in the google play store but not the app itself. fixed this real quick, and then they hit me with another warning.

issue 3: violation of broken functionality policy, "app installs but doesn't load". the game does load on every testing environment we use, on our own phones, we can make in-app purchases and everything. we kinda saw this coming though since we were issued this warning with all the purrfect apawcalypse games. a lot of other devs who use renpy have also complained about this. andy and i are pretty convinced this is an issue on google's end, but no matter how much pestering the renpy community does it seems like google's not interested in trying to work with us to fix this. purrfect apawcalypse seemed to be approved randomly after spamming submissions, so we kind of assume something about google's testing environment depends on... what tester you got? the time of day you submit? the freakin' weather? we planned to submit ckc for review again until:

issue 4: violation of enforcement process policy. app status: "suspended". yup, hours after getting an email about issue #3, cool kid cody got suspended because of "repeated app rejections". surprising, given we submitted ckc a total of 7 times, which i just didn't think was a lot given the dozens of times we submitted purrfect apawcalypse.

there was no heads up from google, no "you've got 1 submission left", no real back and forth with a human, which i guess is to be expected from the giant machine that is google but man, i would've loved if someone emailed us saying "HEY DUMBASS, you keep submitting this game but we have an issue with THIS part specifically, this word here, this part of the image here", instead of the same "app installs, but doesn't load" vague bs. give us something to help us fix the issue. i'm happy to fix it, just give me a logcat or something damn.

anyway, all this is to say i'm pretty disappointed with this whole process. i've submitted an appeal and if that doesn't work then at least google told us "you can submit an updated, policy compliant app using a new package name and a new app name". (so i guess we might have to change the app's name anyway? who knows). what's sad is this game was so ready, and why was this an issue with ckc but not pa? maaaaaaaaan.

tldr: we're having trouble getting cool kid cody on google play, we put in an appeal but there's just no knowing when ckc will be approved if ever.

[maevesweirdart]

hello everyone, my secondary art blog (@maevesnormalart) was deleted for absolutely no reason.

it’s not healthy to hold onto my anger, though, so instead of stewing in my rage, i’m using this opportunity to replace my now-deleted art blog with a new official promotional blog for my in-development indie CRPG, Bestia3D. (i am still stewing tho.)

my new blog is @bestia3D !!

(they better not delete this one too >:/ )

[rainspicestudios]

Happy 2025! [RainSpice Studios plans & updates for the new year]

Hey everyone! Happy 2025 from RainSpice Studios. I hope this year will be kind to everyone and that many good things will be coming your way.

And speaking of good things, I'm cooking some projects that are just itching to be released and available for download. But before we get into that, let us talk a little about the games that were released in 2024.

This won't be a lengthy recap of 2024, as the games speak for themselves, but I am still proud of myself for releasing a full game, a chapter one, and a demo, during a very stressful year both in terms of world events and my personal life (I graduated college, I'm moving, all of that good stuff).

Stardust★Arcadis was my first ever release, and a game I struggled to finish. I lost all of my progress because of PC issues, I rewrote the story a few times, and I released it after working on it since 2019 (2022 if the moment when my PC broke doesn't count). However I love the characters, I love the setting, and despite the many hardships of game development, I had a fun time working on it.

I'm planning to release more games in this universe in the future, including a remastered version of St★Ar.

The Code of Crystals started as a novel collaboration with my best friend. Said collaboration never got finished, and I had a lot of inspiration for stories I could tell with these characters, most of these darker than the original project. Thus I used the characters I made for this former collaboration and started crafting this narrative, and the release of Stardust★Arcadis AND the 2024 edition of Phantasia Jam was a perfect opportunity to get started!

Chapter one will be re-release this January and Chapter two will be released in either late 2025 or early 2026. Stay tuned for more info!

Enter the Eternity, oddly enough, also started as a collaboration, but the idea of a dating simulator with magical girls was too good to let it collect dust and never get finished, especially since its inspiration board kept drawing me in.

With my best friend's blessing, I could re-use the idea, so I created a new cast of characters and got to work, and had to do even more work after I found out that the backgrounds I bought from someone on itch.io were made with an AI image generator, which disgusted me so much it powered me to redraw every single background by hand and I will keep doing so for the entire game. While it is more work to do on my part, RainSpice Studios will never endorse AI generation in any shape or form.

At first I worked on it while I worked on Stardust★Arcadis, which explains why the demo was done on such a short notice, but it has now became my primary project for 2025 and I am aiming to release it around November/December at best.

What's the plan for 2025 then?

My primary goal is to release Enter the Eternity and my secondary goal is to release The Code of Crystals chapter 2.

I aim to finish all first dates for Enter the Eternity AND re-release chapter 1 of The Code of Crystals in January. The dates are already written and coded in the script files, so my focus is to add in all the sprite expressions, draw CGs and backgrounds, and add all the necessary music. As for TCOC, I wanted to remake its menus and add a scene with Eranis that I did not have time to add before the end of the game jam. While the UI code I bought doesn't work, its images are pretty, and I am happy with the result.

2025 will be another busy year for me as I try to find a full-time job to sustain myself, launch some new projects more-or-less related to video games, move out again, among some other irl things. But here at RainSpice Studios, I love making games, and will keep making them for the foreseeable future.

If you read down to here, thank you so much!

There's a lot to do so I'm going back to work 💪 I'll update you guys when I reach a milestone or I find something interesting to share.

So stay tuned! And as said, I wish you guys a kind, good, exciting, fun, and game-filled 2025. Thank you for your continued support and here's to more projects this year 🥂

============================

[RainSpice Studios itch.io] [Stardust★Arcadis] [The Code of Crystals] [Enter The Eternity]

[wishlings]

just a few of the food items your pet can eat and cook with 🍗

Keep up with our development and Join our Discord!

[tipsheda]

chair

[sock-devdiary]

Red seems to be preparing something. I wonder what exactly?

Figured I'd show a little snippet of gameplay! It's about time, right? Here's what I was working on tonight.

You might also notice some music made by @the-real-aurora-borealis

[efangamez]

Pride TTRPG Bundle Sale: Help a Queer Person Thrive! Buy nearly $70 of games for $25!

PLEASE REBLOG IF YOU CANNOT PURCHASE! <3

Join me in celebrating Pride Month by supporting me, a trans and queer creator looking for financial assistance to live life to the fullest.

This sale will help me to support myself as someone who makes less than $15,000 a year. I kinda wanna live a little and heal myself, and sadly, money is a big roadblock for me.

In this bundle, you can obtain:

GRIM, a retro FPS styled TTRPG inspired by Quake.

Neon Nights, a cyberpunk TTRPG with nearly infinite build variety, and it's two MASSIVE expansions!

Wrath of the Undersea, a TTRPG where you play as vengeful Eldritch peoples trying to reclaim the colonized surface.

Disk Master's expansions, where you can live out your Pokemon or Digimon dream on pen and paper!

There are also some stretch goals attached to the sale as well!

$500: This pays for debts and a month of groceries.

Will hold a Trans Rage Game Jam in July!

$1,000: This will pay for debts, groceries, and some cushion.

Will hold Trans Rage Game Jam in July AND will release GRIM: Eldritch Arsenal weapon pack for GRIM in August!

$2,000: This will pay for debts, groceries, cushion, and computer payments.

Will hold Trans Rage Game Jam in July, will release GRIM: Eldritch Arsenal weapon pack for GRIM in August, AND will have all games FREE during the month of October!

$3,000: This will pay for debts, groceries, cushion, computer payments, and gender affirming care.

Will hold Trans Rage Game Jam in July, will release GRIM: Eldritch Arsenal weapon pack for GRIM in August, AND will have all games FREE during the month of October!

$4,000: This will pay for debts, groceries, cushion, computer payments, gender affirming care, and mental health appointments.

Will hold Trans Rage Game Jam in July, will release GRIM: Eldritch Arsenal weapon pack for GRIM in August, will have all games FREE during the month of October, AND will release another one-page PWYW game!

$5,000: This will pay for debts, groceries, cushion, computer payments, gender affirming care, and mental health appointment, and will help SUSTAIN these things that are paid for.

Will hold Trans Rage Game Jam in July, will release GRIM: Eldritch Arsenal weapon pack for GRIM in August, will have all games FREE during the month of October, will release another one-page PWYW game, AND will host monthly game jams for the rest of the year!

$5,000+: Any money after this would be donated to trans non-profits where I reside and GoFundMe's for Palestinian families on the Operation Olive Branch spreadsheet.

PLEASE REBLOG IF YOU CANNOT SUPPORT!