r/gamedev

Earlier today I saw a post either here or in r/indiedev or something where people were talking about how if you want to get a job in the games industry it doesn’t make sense to do personal projects with godot because no studios use it. Arguments are saying that in an industry this competitive it’s a waste of time to work on projects that aren’t an exact match, even if having a personal project at all helps a little. The obvious conclusion being make games with C# in unity or C++ in unreal.
My issue is that I just greatly prefer godot over unity for ease of use and especially being open source. And unreal is just not the engine for the small scale solo projects I would be working on by myself.
Of course all this was talked about in that post but the thing I’ve been thinking about since reading that is what about my CS degree?? I’m closing out my 3rd year of college where I’ve been using C++ for the majority of assignments and projects, including a class where I am making a VR game in unity and I joined a unity project in the gamedev club at my school.
Is that enough to have a strong resume even if my main personal project work is in godot? I’ve taken part in 3 game jams now so I was planning to use this summer to make a full small game to put on steam as my kinda replacement for an internship. But now I’m worried that that won’t be a good use of time if I use godot. Should I try unity or unreal instead?

Hey r/gamedev!

I’m a solo dev currently working on Project Manager SIM on Steam. Naturally, I've been trying to post about my game in various subreddits to get some feedback.

But I've noticed a wild trend: whenever I post in any dev-related subreddit, I get a surprising amount of visceral negativity aimed not at the game itself, but at the concept of the PM role. I get comments like:

• "You shouldn't joke about this kind of stuff."
• "Why would you make a game showing how to be a bad boss? (I AM NOT!)"
• "In the current job market, this actually feels offensive."

It's just a game? It doesn't even lean into heavy, real-world corporate trauma that much. The civilization series allow me to nuke the world! And my game about management, not about torturing people or something...

I do get some genuinely hilarious comments too. Like*"Wow, a horror game where you take on the perspective of the monster, very cool."*

Many people also suggest "interesting" mechanics, like adding a feature to replace half your staff with AI, or an active skill to scream at your boss when he screams at you.

Here is the thing: I actually used to be a project manager in real life. Sure, maybe there are few people out there who hated me, but overall, I always had a great relationship with my team(s). We went through a lot of crunch and chaos, but we always found a way out of tough situations together.

So, my question to you all: where does this baseline, deep-seated hatred for the Project manager role come from in the dev community? Have bad PMs really traumatized that many people, or is it just an internet echo chamber at this point? Am I not allowed to mention my past job in public anymore XD?

No offense, just curious!

Hi everyone! I’m new here but I’ve been interested in coding video games for quite some time. I’m not really great at researching resources, navigating the internet is often difficult for me, so I’ve come here to ask for recommendations for beginner friendly coding software. Free would be great but one time purchases are also fine, just nothing that requires a subscription to use. Thank you in advance!

I want to hear your thoughts on this.

I wanted to find out how Cities: Skylines drives the constant motion you see in a growing city - residents looking for jobs, tourists visiting attractions, garbage trucks doing their rounds, even cims looking for love - and I couldn’t find much written up about it. So I decompiled the game and dug in. What I found is that almost every interaction in the game runs through a single, elegant system: a stock-market-style trading market.

---

I wrote this post a few years back, and recently updated it to add detail to areas I thought lacked sufficient explanation.

I found it really interesting to explore how Colossal Order built such a versatile system, I hope it will be an interesting read to anyone involved in game development.

Please let me know if you have any comments or questions! Thanks for reading.

Trying to set up version control for my Unity project. Does GitHub properly track things like component changes, prefabs, scenes, and newly added models/assets? Also, is Unity Technologies Version Control better than GitHub + Git LFS for Unity projects? What do most devs use?

So me and my friend are planning to publish game on steam and recently we heard that in order to do that you have to have a firm is this true?

We're exploring the idea of a YC-style accelerator for indie studios — small cohorts get $20k–$30k in funding plus hands-on launch support (Steam page, wishlist campaigns, influencer outreach, Next Fest pitching) in exchange for 15–25% of net revenue.

Before we commit to any assumptions, we'd love brutally honest takes from actual devs:

1. Would you trade 15–25% of net revenue for $25k + a structured launch system, or would you rather self-publish and keep everything?

2. What's the single biggest thing you wish you had during your last launch — or are most dreading for your first one?

3. Would you trust an accelerator with zero track record, or what would it take for you to say yes?

No pitch here, just genuinely trying to understand if this fills a real gap. Thanks in advance.

Back in 2021 I started making a civ themed roguelike and set up a Steam page, getting about 700 wishlists. Then life happened, had to pause development to finish uni and spent last two years working a full time job.

Now I am finally back and aiming to release this summer. Over the years about 200 people dropped the game, and now I have 500 left.

How useful are these old wishlists? Does Steam treat games with 500 old wishlists differently than a brand new page starting from zero?

Should I scramble and start a new page or no? Any advice welcomed.

New projects and games made in Unigine. C is a primary form of coding in Unigine

Hey everyone, I’m currently learning both Godot and Unity and trying to decide how I should approach my career path in game development.

I wanted to ask people who are already working in game studios or professionally making games:

• How much did you learn Godot before moving to Unity (if you did)?
• Did learning Godot help you professionally?
• Have you ever gotten internships, freelance work, or job opportunities because of Godot?
• Do indie studios care much about the engine itself, or more about programming/gameplay skills?
• If you switched from Godot to Unity, what was the hardest part?

I’m especially interested in hearing from gameplay programmers or indie studio developers.

Thanks!

Hi everyone,

About three months ago, I posted here asking whether having only 85 wishlists before Steam Next Fest was worrying for a solo-developed niche hidden-object game. A lot of people here gave me genuinely useful perspective, so I wanted to share how things actually turned out after launch.

I’m a solo developer with a traditional painting background, and I built Summer Adventurers: Mediterranean in Godot 3.6. The idea was to create a low-stress “digital vacation” experience using detailed photography, matte painting work, cozy atmosphere, and relaxing exploration instead of challenge-heavy gameplay.

What surprised me most is that Steam Next Fest really did give the game its first meaningful organic push, even in such a niche genre.

Looking at my recent Steam backend stats, the store page received around 1,047 unique visits over the last week with an overall Steam CTR of 10.5%, which honestly surprised me considering how small and specific the genre is.

The most interesting part is where the traffic came from. Direct Navigation became the biggest source, mostly driven by carefully targeted Reddit discussions in cozy/casual gaming communities. Search auto-complete was also unexpectedly strong, which makes me think a lot of people saw the game mentioned somewhere on mobile and later searched for it directly on Steam.

Another thing that surprised me was the audience distribution:
over half of the traffic came from the US, while Japan, Hong Kong, and Singapore also became unexpectedly strong regions for the game. It made me realize that cozy hidden-object games still have a much larger global audience than I initially assumed.

The biggest lesson for me is that niche games probably shouldn’t compare themselves to viral indie numbers. In smaller genres, impressions stay relatively low, but if the capsule art and Steam page communicate a very specific feeling clearly, the audience that does click tends to be extremely targeted and engaged.

Post-launch support also mattered far more than I expected. Over the last few weeks I’ve been updating the game directly based on player feedback — redesigning parts of the UI, improving progression clarity, reworking achievements to feel more relaxing, and adding more travel-journal style presentation to the locations. Every update noticeably revived activity again for a while.

So if anyone else here is making something small, unusual, or very niche:
don’t panic if your wishlist numbers look tiny compared to big indie launches. Finding the right audience mattered much more for me than trying to appeal to everyone.

Happy to answer questions about Godot workflow, Steam data, niche marketing, or cozy/casual game development in general.

Hello,I am developing a videogame since some time and now I want to pitch at one publisher in my country,incuding a vertical slice.

I just have a question,it's going to be a problem if I used a framework for only some mechanics? I added a lot of my logics in this time of development a vertical slice,but I want to know if this can be a problem for them. In any case,it's more about some mechanics-UI-HUD logic and placeholder assets that I have included in my project,but wondering if this can be a bad thing.

Do they really care about this? Because the concept is mostly original and I used a Game framework for help on some mechanics.

I'm planning on selling a game on Steam, and will probably reach out to a publisher too. I need some voice acting for my vertical slice and I'm in contact with the person who'll be doing the lines.

This is going to be a fairly short gig, probably under 500$ and no more than 5hs of work. It feels excessive to get a lawyer to write me a contract that states they don't own any part of my project, but it sounds like its a recommended thing to do in case a few years down the line they decide to sue me?

How exactly do people go about this, I also don't have a corporate/LLC yet, so its all under my name until I get closer to release and know more about the wishlist count and publisher situation.

Hi, so I want to make a game where you can breed animals and it follow semi realistic genetic rules. What is the simplest way to go about making the sprite that can have mix and match of certaine trait, for exemple a cat could have a strip texture over it that can be different color, it could also have spot and it could have stripes only visible on the colored spot with no texture on the white part. Sorry if the explanation is unclear. English isn't my first language, and I have no idea what to call the thing I am describing, so I couldn't find a tutorial for it. Thanks 😊

PS: I do not want to use AI for my game

I just found out about a game where the dev implemented their real hands as sprites, and I was wondering what other games do something cool with hands in FP.

I'm making an FP game and I wanna get inspired, bring it on!

I agreed to exchange playests with someone who wants me to playtest their game on Telegram. We agreed 30 minutes.

The player in question never even made it past the first part of the tutorial, claiming they were "softlocked" because they spent their gold on a recipe and thus couldn't buy the salt to cook the food.

Now, I know this is bullshit. The game gives you the salt for free, you don't need to spend a single gold to complete the tutorial and there's no video of their playthrough. If they had opened the crafting menu ONCE, they would have seen this.

The only feedback I got was they liked the visuals and sound and I should add instructions on how to open the menu.

I really hate the idea of not exchanging a playtest after I've agreed to, but my intuition tells me this person didn't actually try and play the game.

I'm thinking they opened the game for a couple minutes, did the bare minimum to prove they ran it once, gave a bullshit reason they couldn't continue, and try to get a real playtest from me.

What are your thoughts?