itch.io

Yeah, it's a lot because you don't have a concrete path, once you place the first stepping stone, it will soon enough be easier. 

Fair enough.

No Problem.

I've gotten 135 downloads for my first game here in the first month, it's been 35 days now. 

My players come from Reddit, YouTube, Discord and Itch. 

I agree, we live in a world where the top want more and leave less and less for the little guys... aka us. 

Just so you know, you can learn Unreal Engine, just like I did.. I have actually been working on my very first game and I released a demo not long ago and I can tell you I have never made a game before and never touched UE5 before this project. 

I recommend is to write down the type of game you want to make, start small and simple, this includes the name of your game, genre, style and some basic features. 

Then hop on YouTube and just sift through the endless amounts of Tutorials that guide you through the basic common set ups and go from there. 

I'm a creative person myself by nature, love making stuff, drawing, 3d printing etc so this is just another medium I can build on, and also as a visual learner, you have 2 options to use when starting in unreal engine, C++ or Blueprints, most people use Blueprints becauses it's far easier for newbies to manage the engine. So don't give up.. 

Hey there, here is my game! 

Between Places (demo) You find yourself unhappy with life and end up in the backrooms. Between Places is an exploration based backrooms game with Sanity Management, Dsicovering alt routes, lost notes, one way doors and simple puzzles. 

This is my first game and have been working on it for the past 8 months in my spare time. No Ai was used to make textures, assets and models... they were all hand crafted by me. 

https://liminary-dev.itch.io/between-places-demo

For me it's backrooms games, my fav ones are 'The Complex' 'Escape The Backrooms' and 'The Backrooms: Let's escape together'

Unless the update is fixing critical bugs, the odds that people already playing will update is low.. esp if they see a warning that their save will be cleared. 

Best bet is to hook new players who haven't sunk in countless hours. 

Another method is if possible add teleport locations for players who already played the game to warp to where they left off.. ofc if your game allows it and doesn't break the game aka via skipping important areas that have to be played to continue etc. 

You got to promote your game every so often. 

Like for me example, I've released my first demo over a month ago but I still try to post it on itch and reddit every so often, I'm working on the full release but you have to keep promoting it. 

I think it's likely only possible if you've got a lot of games you've made, to make a living off just games on itch, you'd likely need between 1,000 and 10,000 games on itch to make a steady living, the odds that people buy a game is already low from a single creator so you'll need a lot of games to not only increase the odds someone buys a game but also enough people to make a living weekly. 

Unless you get lucky and one of your games blows up and gets tons of reach online, it's better to also post on other places like reddit and upload to steam. 

Hello everyone, I'm Liminary and I'm a first time solo developer, I am a creative person, love to work on my game, draw, watch Manwha's and anime. 

Feel free to check out my free demo on my first game! https://liminary-dev.itch.io/between-places-demo

Between Places 0.5.1 Demo 

Free Demo: https://liminary-dev.itch.io/between-places-demo

Between Places is a single player Exploration based Liminal backrooms game where you wonder and explore the eerie levels of spaces you shouldn't be in. Manage your sanity levels, find lost notes, discover alt routes and figure out simple puzzles, but the one thing to keep in mind... are you actually alone? 

This is my first game, built from scratch with nothing Ai generated, all textures and assets hand crafted with sfx and music sourced online. Patch 0.5.1 covers many ciritcal bugs along side other fixes and quality of life updates. 

https://liminary-dev.itch.io/between-places-demo/devlog/1651111/between-places-d...

If you are someone who doesn't like walking simulators, this game isn't for you. 

Hey all, A while ago I released my first game, it's a backrooms exploration based game, while the public demo 0.5 was good, I have sinced released a 0.5.1 patch that covered a lot more content along side fixing critical bugs, so if you are a backrooms lover and or want a free game to play, I'd love it if you played mine! 

https://liminary-dev.itch.io/between-places-demo/devlog/1651111/between-places-d...

For those of you who've played many backrooms game, what ones do you recall that you liked and enjoyed? And why those games you think made you like them? 

For me there are three games: Escape The Backrooms, The Backrooms: Let's Escape Together, and The Complex. 

These games inspired me to make my own backrooms game. 

The complex: One of the best walking sims out there and really makes you think you're inside it, from the small details and the overall eeriness. 

The Backrooms: Let's Escape Together: A more modern take on the backrooms in terms of the feel and visuals of the game, high detail and overall fun to play, while not many levels, there are still a lot to play. 

Escape The Backrooms: One of my first backrooms games I played, it is my most fav one out of all of them, the puzzles are mostly fun a part from a few that aren't that great, however the many many levels keeps me going and along side the sanity, monsters and puzzle machanics, it's always a blast esp with friends. 

Thank you for your comment and enjoying the demo!

Solo Leveling
That Time I Got Reincarnated As A Slime
Sword Art Online

Like I said, this argument isn't going anywhere. Good Day. 

"Creating ai images yourself is not as easy as it sounds. And it can be a lot more work than just browsing for free human made images" 

Yet you don't back up your own claim, you just say it does. 

"Also, you could have hand edit your ai images."

Once again you never claimed you did.

You claim you advocate for better arguments but you're doing what you're claiming I'm doing. 

"If you can shrug off ai usage as low effort, so can other people shrug off your browsing for the right image as low effort. How would they know that you did not just pick the first result. And if you think selecting the right images is creative input, well, crafting a prompt and selecting the right results is a similar level of input."

Biggest difference is people are more likely to spot Ai useage and have a negative reaction compared to an image that looks like it's low effort but real/from public domain. AI images all have that "feel" that gives off it's Ai, the errors in the image, the classic warm hue, missing limbs/extra limbs, background items that don't seem to make sense such as a distorted coffee mug etc. When a person looks at images from the public domain, they'll see no traces of Ai and care less about the effort behind it all. Sure it's subject to the views of each person as each person sees things differently but for the most art, a lot of people don't assume the image they are seeing is real/hand made. 

"In your reply just now you mentioned the stolen art argument. It's a blanket exaggeration and technically not correct."
Yet you don't back up your claims like I didn't.

"The training data could have been 100% consented or public domain. Especially for audio you will even find things that were trained with specifically created training material. This stolen art argument is short sighted and generalizes too much"
Yet again you don't back up your claims, "could have" how do you know it could? How do you know it wasn't? 

It's one thing to break down my own opinions and arguments, but you can't pick a part my arguments and pointout their flaws while also making arguments that are flawed just like my own, the very same thing you're pointing out that's flawed. 

"So my point here is: you want strong arguments against ai usage. Not weak arguments that might crumble under scrutiny or depend on personal opinion." 
Just like how you're using weak arguments (such as you claiming training data 'could' have been consented without backing this claim up) or based on personal opinion (such as That ai usage is low effort depends highly on the developer. You do not know how lazy they were.) is a personal opinion.

Lastly, 

"That ai usage is low effort depends highly on the developer. You do not know how lazy they were. " 
WRONG. Laziness/low effort is highly dependent on how the outside views you and your work. If you think you are not lazy but everyone thinks you are, the likely hood of you being right is fairly low.. It's one thing not to let others sway your thoughts, but if one always thinks "My opinion/how I do things is always right and everyone else is always wrong" is a fairly toxic way of thinking. 

"That art is stolen is a subjective opinion. If it were objective, ai would be outlawed and we would not have such discussions."
It's no an opinion, it's a fact that has been covered by media. https://www.theguardian.com/books/2026/apr/12/is-ai-the-greatest-art-heist-in-hi... https://www.judiciary.uk/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/Getty-Images-v-Stability-AI....

Also there is a website called "Seaartai" that has a ton of free use ai models that has a ton of image models that were used to train on a lot of artist's art styles.

You respond to my reply to OP trying to pick a part my arguments saying they're weak and have personal opinions.. but then you try to correct me with said weak arguments and person opinions.. surely you see the irony right? 

Anyways, It's clear this bickering isn't providing any useful point at all and I'll end it right here. 

Sorry, let me be more clear, when I say "lifting a finger" I mean go out and put the time and effort into trying to find a good website that hosts images, effort into sorting the images, searching for the ones you like and downloading them. 

So yes, I did lift a finger. Also the images I found esp on public domain were all made by humans. 

While writing a prompt is somewhat effort the same way I type in the pubic domain search box, but the big difference is how the images are. On one hand the images I got are human made, I had to go through tons of them to get the ones I needed, but on the other hand, you got yours via a ai generator, a generator that was fed stolen art as training data for you to get the image you want in 30 seconds. 

So using an Ai image generator is below the "Low effort" bottom of the barrel, cause it shows you can't find what you are looking for yourself without having to get some bot that was trained on stolen artwork that spit out content on mass. To be clear, what I did IS classed as low effort, but I didn't stoop that low that I had to use AI-generated images. And If I were to make a card game and publish it to the public I would create all the images myself. 

P.S: To be clear, I'm not telling you don't use Ai to make images, I'm just telling you my pov on the matter. Because using ai to make images for a game is the peak of laziness and one could be slightly less lazy by discovering what they need online that's already there. 

You could also compress the files in a zip. Or go through your game and reduce the textures by limiting their render sizes, I did this with my game, I managed to get my demo down from 1.19GB to 700 - 800mb. 

There is already fairly high rate of hate towards using Ai to make content for your game without the person lifting a finger. 

While you can do it, the likelyhood of people not buying your game may be high, esp if the word spreads that your game clearly uses Ai. 

Also if you're going to hand make indicators, board tiles and rule book, then finish it by making your own images for the cards. 

I recently made my own card game to play just with my family and I used nothing but free-license images and the public domain, and I printed and cut out, making the rules by hand. 

Personally, the only time Ai should be used in a project like making a game is brain storming and notes. 

Thank you! The game is a demo and I do plan to add more levels for the full release.

Thanks for your suggestion!

I assume you left clicked the item?

so established games get prioritised.. got it, good to know the blog post feature for normal folks is meaningless to use for the time being. Personally not really user friendly but since the site is free to use, it's whatever.

Hi there, I make a blog post in regards to upcoming game bugs I know of and trying to fix but the post has been stuck at needs approval for the past 14 hours. 

If posts are going to take this long to be approved, I might have to think twice before using this feature.

Thank you! Yes I had about 8 testers and happy you were one of them!

Thank you so much for your kind words!! I hope you look forward to the full release!

Thank you and thanks for making a video!

Hey there, thank you so much for playing my game! There is a few bugs with some stuff I'm trying to iron out but thank you for your feedback!!