itch.io

I like when random dungeons are allowed to get a little bit crazy. I used to play a lot of ZAngband (roguelike) and sometimes a floor would be super small, which often meant that it was packed with monsters and items. Other floors would have huge open spaces (like almost the entire level). It really helped to break up the monotony of predictably sized hallways and rooms. It made things more fun to explore and also introduced strategic decisions, for example when entering an open-cave style level you could easily aggro too many monsters and get surrounded, so finding a safe spot to use as a home base was more important. 

I think your email is not listed anywhere?

"I was thinking about midi music that would sound like pc music" seems pretty clear but ok

I have some MIDIs that I could send you, if you would like to hear them feel free to send me a message at: magicsofastudios@gmail.com

MIDI is a specific type of music file, not related to chiptunes in any way. It is actually a communication protocol for musical information, so for example you can send MIDI data to an external synthesizer and it will play the notes using its own sounds. But your computer can also play MIDI songs, it will sound a little different based on what system is playing it but the file sizes are incredibly small compared to real audio.

"Effective in communicating the game's play" is a really good way to put it.. that's what I would say about Baba is You, when you look at the screenshots you literally start understanding the gimmick and imagining how to solve the puzzle, before even playing the game.

None  of the things they mentioned are specific to puzzle games. Also there isn't a single reference to anything other than The Company. It is basically an ad. "Backed by private investors in the IT sector"

discord is OK but pretty annoying with their whole gamify everything crap... also their privacy policy is pretty bad afaik

I like how it went from "I kinda do art" to "I got hired to do video and level design" and you're not even out of hs... haha give yourself some credit!

Dang, it really uses that much battery? What if you use an in-browser client, wouldn't it pause when you navigate away from the tab? 

I haven't used IRC in a long time, I used to just join rooms and say "sup", heh good times

I spend a lot of time on www.doomworld.com because I'm into oldschool Doom and there's a big modding community there (and I've been a member there since 2003!) I think it will be harder to find a good forum if you don't have a specific thing like that in mind. Most forums revolve around a specific activity so I would think first about WHAT you want to talk to people about, then look for websites related to that topic. Try not to be too general - so if you want to hang out with game developers, consider narrowing it down to the type of game you are interested in. I mean, there are general game dev forums (this is one) but I just think it can be a better experience if the topic is more focused, because the community will hopefully be a bit smaller and more intimate. And, you'll have a common ground to start conversation from.

You can also really do it the old way by making your own forum :P

EDIT: just realized you made a classic Doom map, awesome!

I've been thinking about this a lot lately and have this festering plan to de-google and de-facebook my online life... but damn is it hard to kick the habit! It doesn't help that I actually have a life now... I should have done this when I was still in school and had outrageous amounts of free time, but back then web2.0 was just getting started and things didn't seem so bad.

Thing about itch is that it is very focused on projects, which is probably a good thing from a wider perspective. It makes the site a little more professional (a little). I mean, there isn't even an "off topic" section of the forum, which is where this thread really belongs. The lack of direct messaging also reduces the social aspect.

I would say don't just make a website, go visit other sites and specifically look for forums related to your interests. Many people are still out there posting on forums other than reddit. Also try looking for ways to chat with people, preferably other than Discord... IRC is still a thing. There are also some modern platforms like VRChat where people actually just hang out. 

There is a whole internet still out there, just because most people only visit the same 5 social media sites doesn't mean you have to. Webrings still exist even! But you will need to search for them the old way, with non-SEO search engines and a bit of determination.

That's brutal... but I don't think selling digital products will count as royalty income. That would be if someone was paying you to use your IP for example.

Hey... thanks for your message on Soundcloud, I tried to reply though and it just says "cannot send message." :( I'm not sure why

h

You could make a collection of projects that have used your assets, at least to keep track of the ones you know about.

You can also email the people who have purchased something, although I would be careful not to do this in a way that looks like marketing as the buyer email is only intended for messages specifically about the thing they bought.

lol Ignored

They have to cover up that the boss isn't actually fun :P

haha.. funny that you mention art rock because I'm in an art rock band >.<

I guess my point is, if you are willing to accept obscurity then you free yourself to do whatever you want. And, there are at least some people out there who will appreciate it, and even communities that are ready for the experimental and avantgarde. Small communities most likely, but isn't that going to be more like the Web1.0 experience? You join a forum and get to know the people there, form actual relationships, and share creations for the fun of it. But yeah, don't expect to make a living this way...

As I said I've been toying with game development since before 2000 so I wouldn't say I missed it, I spent many years using BYOND and even released a couple games there.

Since you mentioned music... there are people pushing the envelope, and listeners enjoying it. You just have to search for them. Like Sevish, who writes microtonal electronic music:

Cute, but you really shouldn't share your age online...

Troll games are not usually engaging. Maybe good for a laugh, but that's about it. The quiz is the only thing that really counts as a game in my opinion, and it is still a troll quiz. Kinda hard to tell what you're trying to accomplish here... if you want to engage players you'll need more than a few seconds of haha

It is interesting to read this at a time when I am just beginning to "go public" with my work - I've been a hobbyist developer since before 2000, and barely released (read: finished) anything in that time. It was only in the last few years that I started trying to A) actually finish stuff and B) share it somewhere other than a single forum. Dang, am I one of those bandwagoners? :)

I feel there is a bit of contradiction to what you are expressing here. You said that you enjoyed making games when it was just an underground thing, and now the space is crowded. But you also said that art games never took off. So if they didn't take off, how is that space crowded? I guess what I mean is, don't you have a choice as to who you are competing or not competing with? Can't you create the art that you want to create and say F-off to the asset flippers? If you stay underground, the exploding indie market will simply ignore you. You can only be butting heads with other people if you are actually trying to make a name or a dollar in the same market as them. You also said "there are way too many people trying to do the same thing." So? What is forcing you to also try the same thing? Do something different. That option is always available to you. Sure, you might not make any money or fame, but as you said the golden age was when people were just making and sharing freeware. That still exists, there are still communities of people who just make and share art without it being one giant branding/advertising shitstorm. YOU just have to put in the effort to find them, the same way you had to back in '00. The Stream will not serve it to you. Google will not show it to you easily. You have to talk to people, and look for different avenues of information (non-SEO search engines, websites by real people [check out neocities!])

As for the mistreatment that happened to you, I'm really sorry to hear that. Keyboard warriors can become a major problem if they all group up... I think this kind of thing did happen in the earlier days but today there's a much greater volume of people online, as well as bots to ruin your day. I'll put my armor on now before I make it big...

I'm a musician too and it is always nice to take a break from development to just focus on composing for a bit. I've been tempted more than once to drop games and just make an album, but then I remember how I promised myself that I would really commit to dev life :P

I think - and hope - that the saturation of the market can be seen as an opening for new innovations to rise above the flotsam. And actually, old innovations too. Specifically in the realm of mobile games, there's just so much garbage going on with micro-purchases, pay to win, poor gameplay and superficial rewards. To me this is a window of opportunity to say "Hey, here's something different - an actual good game for a normal price, without all that noise." I've heard several devs say that you can't be successful on mobile without having ads or manipulative spend-more tactics. I hope to prove that wrong, it might be an uphill battle but I know there are consumers out there who wouldn't mind paying $5 for a breath of fresh air.

Just a random example because I experienced it first hand, the last mobile game I unfortunately played was Scrabble Go. What a CRAP experience, literally every five seconds there's a damn animation of a chest opening and pouring out gems or tokens or who knows what. Watch ads to gain powerups. Horribly designed interface that struggles on old phones. But does it have any cool additions to the game itself? Not really... just a standard board, and you get powerups that help you by picking a word for you or something. There are other alternatives but most of them are just pretty straightforward scrabble-likes.

I want to see a word game that actually iterates on the core idea. How about custom board layouts? Not just rearranging the doubles and triples, I mean totally different configurations. Islands. Mazes. Anything you want. HOW ABOUT A BOARD EDITOR. Now players are creating custom boards and puzzles to share. How about some interesting game modes such as 2v2. Takes very little programming but Go doesn't have it, so that's +1 for your product. How about customizable themes for the board and tiles. +1 for your product.

OK I'm really rambling here and need to eat lunch, lol. But I'm just trying to provide a counterpoint to this sentiment that I have seen from others as well, that we're all just going to drown in the sea of "successful" indie developers. I appreciate you sharing your thoughts and the rough times you have been through, and it sounds like taking a step back to rekindle your inner artist is a really good idea. In general the way people use the internet is turning majorly into streaming, scrolling through a feed, basically just attaching an IV of information/entertainment to your arm without any critical thought or effort. However that is not the requirement, it is just a habit that the masses have fallen for. You have the option to connect to websites other than the usual FB/IG/Twitter circuit. You have the option to create art games in lesser known spaces, and ignore the pressure to turn yourself into a brand.

And WE, as developers and artists who don't want to support the current racket, have the option to create our own spaces and our own rules. After all the whole stream-everything paradigm pays next to nothing to the majority of creators. I'm opting out. I'd rather have to stay at my day job than to post vapid nonsense every two hours in order to keep my views up. 

Nevermind, this doesn't seem to work in comments, only on the forum?

yeah hold on, that was a comment... lol

That's in the profile, not in comments

No, I don't have any Russian or Chinese language support.

What I mean by "random" is just that they are hits from places that I didn't specifically post or advertise.

Views are going to spike on any platform when you have big updates or promotions.

I barely promote at all and still get views on my projects, sometimes very few like 1 or 2 in a week, sometimes more. You can see where people are visiting from so that definitely helps to determine what is working. It is also interesting because sometimes people come from pretty random places... I have had a few hits coming from russian and chinese search engines. 

NEAT

can you stop spamming about yourself on other peoples' threads? Thanks

Goddess, it really tickles me when people catch themselves red-handed ^.^

Minesweeper explains itself within one or two games, when you hit a bomb all bombs are revealed and it quickly becomes clear that the numbers indicate numbers of bombs. It took me a while to understand the flag thing but the core mechanic is very obvious.

not supposed to recommend your own game...

hmm looks like top-down shooter rather than FPS?

so respectful that you can't repeat the question

ah, well that explains it ^.^

playing other games and sharing feedback it's a good think to help other and show them what they need to do but those are the Developers and my target audience should be the Gamers not developers.

Well, this is primarily a developer's website. To reach a larger gamer audience you'll want to be posting elsewhere too, and having your games available on at least one of the big stores (google play, steam, etc). There is a population of non-developers here, it just isn't that big of a group. And a lot of them are really coming because they are enthusiasts, either of indie games in general, or of a specific niche within the indie sector. (People who come here specifically for visual novels are unlikely to be interested in your WWII shooter)

Already making devlogs and updating my games.

I know, but the one devlog I looked at was really just an advertisement. Normally you would just write about the update, what was added, things that were fixed, and your general thoughts. Some people get really into this and gain followers through writing about the dev process... I don't particularly like doing this but hey, it works for others.

i have no experience in editing itch pages.

There's a very simple built-in editor, just view one of your pages and click on "edit theme". You can change the fonts, backgrounds, add in=line images... a little work here goes a long way toward getting people interested in your work

play other people's games and give constructive feedback

post devlogs

update your pages (your games pages are just using default font and no background or banner images)

get an actual logo for your avatar :P

join game jams

I am hard pressed to find real world examples of pve.

Ninja Warrior :)

Not even 30 yet? You are young, and really it's not too late until you've passed on from this life. Don't compare yourself to people who struck gold when they were younger than you. It is totally pointless, you can't go back to when you were 18 and try again. You can only act TODAY. It doesn't matter if you are 30, 40, or 70... you can still be a game developer.

I saw a great video by the Math Sorcerer on youtube, about this exact topic. He was of course referring to learning math but the concept applies to pretty much anything. He related a story in which he was teaching a night class, so all of the students were a little older and had jobs and families to take care of during the day, but had decided to go back to school and were taking this math class. Anyway he started asking them how long it had been since they took a math class. One guy was over 50 years old and said it had been 30 years since he last took a math class. 30 years!

Another story in that same video involved a fellow professor who was much older, who remarked that when he was in college he could study for 8 hours straight, but now that he was old he could only do about 4 hours of intense math focus. So yeah, you might slow down a bit, but think about that... this guy in his elder years (I think 70s) was able to read advanced math papers for a solid 4 hours.

One thing that "keeps people young" is to continue doing such work, continue learning, continue growing. As you go through life you will realize that the people who can barely get off the couch at 60 years old are usually that way because they have been sitting on the couch for the last few decades. When you resign yourself to a stagnant life, your mind and body follow suit. If you tell yourself "I can't learn anything new" and stop trying, the process of learning becomes more and more difficult. Just like when you stop using a muscle, it weakens over time.

On the other hand there are people out there who are 60, 70, 80 years old and still learning, still doing the things they love, still moving. I play in a band with a drummer who just turned 75. He still carries his drums (we do help him, lol), he still learns new songs, and he's always ready to keep playing. So many times at practice the rest of us have said "ok, it's getting late, we should pack up" and he's like "I could keep going!". 

So anyway that's my rant about age, it isn't nearly as important as people make it out to be. What is important is that you keep using your faculties and pursuing new things. I won't say exactly how old I am (not very) but I can already see some of my peers basically giving up on life, ready to just "stay in their lane." But for me, I've been developing games as a hobby since I was very young, and only now (couple decades later...) am I really starting to put my work out into the world and trying to maybe make a career out of it. Some days it feels exhausting, and I do have a lot more responsibility than I did when I was 16. But it is also exciting to be still learning new things and keeping the dream alive. It makes me feel alive when other people my age seem dead inside, and that's worthwhile on its own regardless of how many sales or how popular any of my projects get.