Hello Ortisha, thanks a lot, I really appreciate you reaching out !

I’m glad the post resonated with you, and yeah, it definitely sounds like we’re in similar situations. I’d love to chat, share experiences, and swap ideas about visibility and what’s working (or not) for our games.

If you’re up for it, I’ve setup a small Discord where i share game dev, updates on my game, and just vent a bit too, feel free to join: https://discord.gg/GuZrGWvR. Would be great to continue the conversation there !

Curlyy

Hi everyone,

I’m currently working on a small arcade game built around color and shape recognition, and I’ve been experimenting with a custom shader animation to support the core mechanic.

I’d love some feedback specifically on:

• readability during fast gameplay
• visual clarity vs. cognitive overload
• whether the effect feels satisfying or distracting

Any thoughts (even very critical ones) are welcome !

Here’s a short video showing the animation in action:

After working for nearly six years as an engineer in a large multinational corporation (a place where I slowly felt my soul leaving my body day after day), I decided to take a leap of faith and fully commit to a childhood dream: creating my own video game from scratch.

With only my programming skills and project management experience, I started learning Unity. Very quickly, it became obvious that this was something I had to pursue. I was genuinely happy working on it. Once I had a solid grasp of the engine, I set myself a clear goal: build my very first game. Something simple, not overly ambitious, that I could actually finish and share, hoping to get early feedback and validate this career shift.

The core gameplay idea came surprisingly fast: matching both the color and the shape of an object. The inspiration came from a well-known psychological test (Stroop Test) where participants must name the color of a word rather than the word itself. At first, everything aligns, the word “Red” written in red but soon the brain is deliberately confused, like the word “Blue” written in green.

I wanted to reproduce this cognitive interference in my game to create a real psychological challenge — one where players have to “retrain” their brain and develop new reflexes. The intended result was a game that feels extremely difficult at first, but where players can clearly feel their own progression as their brain adapts. Once the mechanic is mastered, the game becomes a pure reflex and focus challenge.

The very first playable prototype was ready within a week, and the feedback from friends and family was unanimous:

“It’s frustrating… but addictive.”

I watched people fail, instantly restart, and push themselves to adapt, improve, and beat their own scores and each other’s. 

I was thrilled.

I then spent three more months working relentlessly on the project: refining the gameplay loop, creating all the assets, polishing the visuals, designing the UI, implementing an online leaderboard, adding a game mode variant… and once I felt the game was mature enough to be shared as a free demo, I moved on to marketing.

I spent countless hours recording and editing a trailer, preparing the release, creating short-form videos (YouTube Shorts, TikTok), and writing announcement posts (Discord, X, Reddit). On launch day, I released everything simultaneously (Steam, Itch.io, YouTube…) and invested a small budget (~150€) to promote the videos.

 Results after 2 weeks:

• YouTube views (total): 35,000
• TikTok views (total): 16,000
• Steam + Itch.io page visits: 1,386
• Steam + Itch.IO downloads: 40
• Actual players* who launched the game: 1
• Feedback received: 0

* By “actual players,” I mean players I don’t know personally.

I feel like I missed something. I genuinely believe the game is good. My close circle does too. And yet, despite all the effort, I feel like I’ve hit an invisible wall. I know competition is fierce, and my game is probably just one among thousands but I never expected so few people to even try it.

A lot of questions are now running through my mind:

• Why is nobody trying my game?
• Is the quality simply not good enough?
• Did I choose the wrong path?
• Should this childhood dream remain just that - a dream?

Sorry for the long post. I’m not seeking attention, I just needed to share my story. If you’ve been through something similar, I’d genuinely love to hear your experience and feedback.

Hoping the echo of the void will eventually fade.

Cheers

Curlyy

Hi everyone !

I’m excited to share the first public demo of Warp Mania, a small sci-fi reflex-based arcade game I’ve been developing solo for the past months.

Play the free demo on Itch.io :  https://dna-games-studio.itch.io/warp-mania

What is Warp Mania ?

Warp Mania is a  fast-paced arcade game built on a simple idea:
Match your shape and color to pass through the incoming energy gates.

It starts easy, but quickly becomes a pure test of focus, precision, and reflexes.

I wanted to create something clean, readable, and satisfying, with a neon sci-fi aesthetic and extremely responsive controls. Warp Mania is intentionally hard, the kind of game that pushes your brain and reflexes to their limit !

Trailer / Screenshots

Feedback welcome !

If you decide to give the demo a try, I’d truly appreciate any feedback - difficulty, feel, readability, pacing, anything that can help me improve the game going forward. Thanks for reading, and I hope you’ll enjoy the demo ! 💙 

 - Curlyy / DNA Games Studio