itch.io

Clever idea. This game looks beautiful.

I actually want to point out something about your profile page, Alter, because I don’t see another way to contact you. Did you know your webpage link is going to something like a crypto porn site in Chinese? That’s unexpected.

For an active jam, go to the jam’s page and select the “Leave jam” link near the top.

For a past jam you did submit to, follow the link on your project page to the jam page created for that project. Select the “Remove this submission” link that’s near the top left.

For a past jam with no submission… I don’t know of any way to clean up our jams list.

Good job figuring it out. I’m glad it’s working!

That sucks. I had read thar Steam had backtracked on the policy change, but I guess it didn’t go far enough back.

Steam, but that site hides the games, too.

Some games are indexed immediately. Some take weeks (or months).

We’re expected to wait a couple of weeks before emailing the Itch.io about indexing. They’re chronically backlogged with requests. Multiple emails in one day for the same low-priority issue (compared to spam attacks, malware reports, life-and-death payouts) on the same day as the project was published likely won’t endear them to your concerns.

While you wait, you might want to reconsider the pictures of your latest game. In my personal opinion, they aren’t making your game look publishing-ready.

I ended up using the frost breath, with modifications, both for the cold and as a clump of falling powder. Thank you for the assets, CuteShadow!

https://falsfiction.itch.io/spirit-of-the-latch

I’m guessing your game’s black screen is an upload issue. Does your HTML version have a complete index.html file?

If it resolves (gets better) on its own, then it wasn’t anything you could have fixed.

Because the black screen is persisting, it could be your web browser, a corrupted uploaded, coding problem in the game, or something else. I’ll take a look.

Is it still happening?

I get a black screen after loading on my games immediately after upload. My guess is the server(s) need time to process uploads.

You might’ve gotten lucky with your first game.

I hope someone with familiarity with these repoers is willing to answer. I’m curious, too.

This project is a good idea that would be fun to design, but you want to know the situation is awkward, at best.

You’re using a large language model for the code yet care ask for the real skills of artists. Granted, mixed use is better for the real-life animals’ homes, to not support their destruction as fully as if everything came from generative models.

But I doubt an artist will trust designs won’t be replaced by AI-generated images later or bother to provide original work. I wouldn’t be able to shake off that feeling even if I was willing to promote the game.

My advice if you want any is to disclose where the images in the posts above are coming from and why human-made art matters to you.

An enticing start.

Agreed. Not knowing notifications disagree after a few weeks has caused difficulties for me before.

A workaround is to accept notification emails, but that has its own problems.

Not that it’ll be of any help to you, but because I want to make games about elves, I feel like answering the title question.

What would it take? Money to reduce basic life stressors and time to either learn how to make the planned games or to hire creators to help. A potential audience interested in the game to keep up morale. (Knowing I’m the only person my games to date are really for is sucky sometimes.) I’d also need a place to live where the games won’t put me and mine in danger for publishing and promoting the work, because the less established the themes and visual tropes are, the more dangerous it is where I am now.

FWIW, I am working on an elf-themed narrative game with multiple point-and-click challenges for a simple quest.

There’s another much bigger game that’s similar, featuring elves at the edge of a human realm as they attempt to reclaim the land, but it’s a background project developing over years. Honestly, I would be surprised if I’m not only able to finish it but release it while I’m still alive.

I have seen elf games online that might not be to your taste that are available, but they’ve been marginalized to the extent that it’s hard to get copies.

For the non-indie games, there are the classics like Zelda and RPGs.

Thank you again for following up. I’m sorry it didn’t work out.

I’d like to add: all three are pretty!

Top left. That one reads as a snowflake. The right and bottom look only like Medieval decorations to me.

Apparently, the distortion on my screen is worse than I thought. Thank you for the correction.

Game Jolt, as in the fan community site. That site looks like it’s entirely for kids. (I’m not one). Anyhow, it was easy to find this without registering.

The Game pages are categorized as All Ages, Teen Content, and Mature Content.

There were six entries in the Games section with Mature ratings. Some were actually for games. None look like they were made for adults. One had a Maturity with no sublabels on it.

The maturity ratings aren’t really age ratings on an adult-centered site as much as content categories self-selected by the page author.

I really can’t imagine this going far on Itch.io.

But FWIW, I partially agree with you. That rating screen is less intimating than the Sensitive Content screen for “Adult NSFW” here on Itch.io. Having the option to select from a list that auto-formats could be easier than us all deciding what and how to put in a content note on the game page.

In line with the previous question, I’m wondering if I made a mistake accepting the bundles while my split was at 0.

I interpreted the note in the email to mean the splits would be corrected after acceptance. But I read a post today that said bundles can’t be modified after all contributors accept it. We’re at only 20 pending contributors.

Did I lose the option to be paid for the bundle?

Update: This was already answered in the announcement topic.

https://itch.io/jam/power-of-pride-bundle-2026/topic/6052075/public-updates

One of the problems with age ratings is that they’re from opposing cultural standards. Age appropriateness doesn’t mean much on a site where we’re all from different countries and social backgrounds.

Like, nudity is all-ages in some cultures and inherently seen as representing adult-centered sexuality in others.

The definition of adult varies by legal jurisdiction.

Any depiction of gun violence is considered too dangerous for young audiences in some places and inherently dangerous in others. Same for mentions of drugs.

In the US, where Itch.io is based, the entire site is restricted on many student computer devices (often the only regular way to access the internet for Americans under 18) not because it has “NSFW” games but because it has recreational games not reviewed by an educations company.

GameVolt.com is UK-based (and formed only about five years ago). The UK has the Games Rating Authority and laws that require age ratings and publishing laws that equate digital works to physical media. The US has entirely different laws, publishing history, and politics.

In case you meant the other Gamevolt: Gamevolt.net is an Egyptian site made for Arabic games. Many games that are popular on Itch.io straight-up would be illegal there.

In my opinion, more disclosures of content on game pages by the publishers. But required age ratings here would make the current policy shift and deindexing/reviews entirely disastrous for the site.

Do you need AI to learn how to move characters? Likely no, you don’t.

The way this was done before the AI bubble formed a few years ago was to ask other game creators, programmers, or people who will help read through documentation.

Is disclose of the use of Claude or another LLM in making characters move? Likely, yes, that’s within the current definition of “AI assisted” if you keep any of the code generated by the prompt. (This is assuming there’s not a person on the other side pretending to be a Claude model.)

From itch.io’s guidance on the project edit page:

Please disclose if this project contains content produced by generative AI tools such as LLMs, ChatGPT, Midjourney, Stable Diffusion, etc., even if you hand-edited it

On topic, because this is an idea thread:

If you used AI in your project, you used AI in your project. Gamedevs who are purposefully using AI can be somewhat honest and click the Yes button. That disclosure a very simple task on this site.

What counts as generative AI is a difficult discussion.

But clicking a button for animation from a single image or for generating multiple pieces of “pixel art” on the spot (which that professional artists are paid hundreds of dollars to products) isn’t likely anything but a clear Yes.

I’m not debating. Rhetorical questions are a thing. So is changing one’s mind.

You come off as offensive, and I don’t feel like dealing with that without the filters in the blocking tool here.

You can still post. Obviously.

No one but the Community moderator is obligated to read your post or follow your orders.

The consensus among the creators I know seems to be that honest disclosure is best; but anyone who can should put noise, traps, popular public domain materials, or “poison” in each project to reduce the scraping’s efficiency.

May the models train on hundreds of bagel dogs that are given names like Caramel, Camel, and One-Eyed One-Horned Flying Purple Stuffy Eater for serious-sounding games with competing game mechanics.

I feel the need to step up and clarify several points for the internet record….

A single illustration is not the same thing as an animation.

“AI” image generators don’t work without a training dataset. The vast majority of those sets are full of stolen images and secret movement tracking.

If you used AI in your project, you used AI in your project. Gamedevs who are purposefully using AI can be somewhat honest and click the Yes button. That disclosure a very simple task on this site.

Balaclavas are worn the vast majority of times for warmth or for fire protection. That’s what the article of clothing is made to do. That’s why it’s sold in camping supply and sporting good stores (where handknitting for someone close by isn’t the norm).

The same groups trying to push the message that face coverings as criminal are also using abusive AI systems to take away codified civil rights.

A better analogy for the core discussion: You have a right to take a photo of your own face, but sharing your photo is not the same as Photoshopping it into a video clip of someone who had no consent.

By the way, pixel art doesn’t all look the same. I would suggest you go look at specific collections of different artists, who agreed to participate in the collections, so you might see how different the art styles can be for snakes smaller than 48x48-pixels. I would suggest that if what I could believe you understand it’s not okay to copy the images and try to pretend they’re yours. Additionally: some of us put hours into small art pieces to the style how we want. It’s annoying how AI users refuse to acknowledge there are techniques, personality, and human experience that go into real artwork. The same goes for animation styles– it’s not all the same.

The disclosure might be available in the same place for all projects. When you go to your Dashboard and select to Edit a game, do you see the “AI generation disclosure” section about three-fourths down the page?

That’s on the player’s side.

The player could be using Waterfox.

Awesome. Email sent.

Where did the pixel art in the generator’s dataset come from?

I’ve seen AI images here on Itch.io that appear to have been based on the actual art made by people I know from other sites. I’ve been wondering if that’s somehow a coincidence.

I’ve also seen pixel artists give up on sharing any art online because the constant scraping of all our work wore them out. Other pixel artists who used to lead drawing events pulled back behind paywalls to reduce abuse. With what I’ve witnessed in other art forms, it’s hard to believe the pixel “art” programs were built on as much stolen art as the other types were.

But it would be a tiny amount or comfort (with how the AI industry is burning up our planet, polluting essential resources for quick text-to-image-to-text and chatbot production, and spreading harmful propaganda developed by artist-hating fascists) if these responses from other pixel artists were from paranoia, not actual abuse.

(I know my writing, photos, and graphic designs were scraped without my consent. I’m not sure my pixel art has.)

Not to pile onto the diversion, but there are some concerning comments in this thread.

I know as a perpetually starving artist with an idealistic lean that working on creative projects while physically hungry is painfully difficult. Passing out messes with the flow, you know?

I’ve had to live outside permanent housing unwillingly, and the only random human corpse I’ve seen up close was an unhoused man who froze to death.

Being poor in the US, where I live is dangerous. Rich people here aren’t arrested for existing in public or hanging around their (one and only) home (when they have one). The rich are rarely killed waiting around in jail for months for a slow and unjust trial. But that happens to the poor at distressingly high rates.

Anyhow, with $11k, I’d repair my bathroom and food garden in hopes it will all endure the next weather disaster, replace my digital drawing devices and switch to solar, or I would take a much needed medical vacation to get the healthcare I’ve had to put off for years.

Your situation might be very different. If you had an extra car and no need to avoid the brink of your destruction, then it’s great that you’re helping with the cashflow to other artists. I hope your game development goes well.

But also… I’d like to point out that quality and cost are not equivalent.

To answer your question: I haven’t put in any money to my games. The cost has been whatever the increase in the power bill has been since I started running animation and audio tests late at night. That’s paid by my spouse’s hard labor while struggle to come out of chronic disability.

Actually, I feel bad about that… the extra energy use….

I enjoy how dynamic your art is.

How do you feel about communicating outside of Discord? If that would be okay, I would be happy to talk about my interactive fiction. I’m in the US, but I’m not tied to any particular timezone in my schedule.

I’ll likely be pulling back my creative ambition this month to work on a simpler project, a short story with a MerMay theme. The part I most need help with is on the character illustrations.

If you happen to look past my profile: the “Spirit of the Latch” characters have been extremely time intensive, made with pixel arts processes on broken devices. I don’t want to repeat that, personally. My illustrator for “Growing Mold of You” has returned his focus to his own writing. That’s pretty much all of my experience with character sprites, beyond sorting through assets and trying to figure out permissions. I don’t have strict preferences. Especially for this project, you’d be as welcome to ask a bunch of specific questions with check-ins as to do your own thing off of basic character descriptions.

This is unpaid, with a possibility of revshare if you would prefer hat.

Nice.

By the way, I love the name of the bundle. I’m surprised I haven’t seen that used before.

The irony in the original poster’s situation is that Newgrounds, like Itch.io, is a site that does compromise on AI use in projects. At least one of the most recognizable moderators there is a big defender of AI in art spaces (as irritating as that is to many members).

Newgrounds also a platform with decades-old arguments about what should be allowed. Tweening, for example, is as old as Disney animation, but it gets downvotes and loud complaints when it shows up in the top of the Movie portals. Tweening isn’t hurting people like the AI industry is; there are simply strong opinions there.

It was obviously the way the AI-generated content was presented that made the moderator angry.

Just go through the music that’s available for free to game developers on this site and choose one. You don’t even need to be as nice a community member as to leave a star rating or appreciative comment on your favorites. That would still be worlds better than ignoring all the actual musicians and their generous offerings round here.

As I said before. That’s why I’ll test out what Analytics picks up one of these days.

Still, there’s a lean toward moral stances there. Itch.io continues to promote X-Twitter, angered many gamers with its actions last year, and presents ads on download pages.

I figure the lack of posts about Itch.io in the Mastodon areas I hang around are an indicator, too. I post to #Itchio about once a month but seem to be one of the most active users of the tag. But me and server admins are wary of some of the biggest instances.

In the end, tho, there’s not enough info to know.

I agree that maintaining visitor privacy is good, actually.

Hi, Lila,

I’m Acin, looking to write and program a Steampunkish science fantasy with two potential love interests (male and female, with different intersecting storylines) and a choose-your-gender/-name protagonist who wants to help them save their city.

The characters are of two species, human and “demon” (might be renamed).

That would be, at rough guess, five main characters plus backgrounds for each.

My preferred method of collab is by a closed communication board here on Itch.io. Email is okay, too. I don’t go to Discord.

Yeah, one appeared immediately after I asked. Mastodonites just aren’t aren’t as interested in what’s on Itch.io.

do indie developers use any kind of analytics software to track their games?

Yes.

Or is it just “vibes”?

That, too. Not everyone looks at analytics.

I check the Dashboard Analytics areas here on itch.io out mainly as a way of checking visibility or out of curiosity.

Tho, in general, I feel descriptive feedback is much more valuable than statistics are. Numbers don’t say why someone visits, plays the game, or downloads (or attempts to) multiple times. Do they enjoy playing it, or do they resent ever learning of the game after dealing with a bunch of crashes that only they experience?

What should I do?

Finish the game first.

I have a suspicion that visits from Mastodon sites aren’t counted. Do you want to test this with me? Because the stats have looked off for a while now.

I could follow your itch.io link on Mastodon and poked around both signed in and signed out, then you could check if any visits show up in your analytics. l