itch.io

Marketing to non-gamers is usually, and pretty obviously, a massively bad targeting move. 

You are aiming for an audience that by definition doesn't want your game. I tried that once with a defunct site galileegames.com and thought it was a bad idea even then too and we got rejected on mobile stores for proselytizing with a game. Which wasn't my idea either, and after nine months developing a rather ill conceived game we ended up with 200 dls total in the end outside of both Apple and Google ecosystems. Wasn't my idea, it was my dad trying to 'help' my career by co opting it. Despite his absolute lack of understnading of gaming and never playing games himself. Then was pushed to work at nonPareil Institute for a couple years with no pay, ended up running a side hustle on eBay by the end of that and it worked well enough that I finally was able to persuade my parents that if they just stopped trying to assist me I could actually get something done. 

I love my parents. But they had no idea what they were doing when trying to 'guide' me into a career. And in fairness many things I did for a while after then failed hard too as a result of succeeding and scaling up too big too fast. eBay, Etsy. Both cases where the glowing reviews rolled in and more and more activity and while I kept raising prices it didn't stop and I got overwhelmed by orders placed and had to shut it all down as it was impossible to keep up. Now on itch the same boom is beginning to emerge but unlike those venues the products are digital and the sale volume can spike really high without ruining my life and leaving me completely sleep deprived and emotionally deranged. But I knew how to market. That is why these things worked until they didn't.

As for the idea that indie gamers are a clearly defined pool... they are not. There are many game genres and indies can succeed in a lot of them. Make a great indie game and there will likely be people there to play it. Minecraft started off indie and it's the biggest success story in gaming. A year ago Manor Lords was the most wishlisted game on Steam and it was a project by a solo dev. Indies, finally, are around 40% of video game sales made. They are as big or bigger than AA, AAA in sales volume. So indie gaming is not niche. It also is more respected than AAA lately as there is an understanding that indie devs actually care about their work and the projects are usually run by creatives who really want to make good games, not business execs who only care about optimal profit.

Basically when you are passionate about the work you are doing and your intent to create something great that enthusiasm is infectious and can build an audience. If you are convinced your game will be awesome, then you maybe shouldn't have qualms about putting it out there publicly and promoting it. Just tell people what you are doing. On social media, forums, in images of the project and video trailer on YT... it really can work. And when your actual goal is making a great game and not making a quick buck, it's funny how that emphasis tends to be what pays off. Just get addicted to the process of creating and not only the result. And if your qualms are still there about promoting your work, maybe your work needs more... work. It can be improved, the price lowered until it really is something you are proud of and truly believe is worth buying for customers. 

So here I am making a few indie games in background and launching a ton of asset packs in advance of that. 3d asset collections, seamless textures and decals, some VFX clips and a few tiny freebies around the edges. You can find that here: matthornb.itch.io and there are thousands of asset files already there and many more arriving soon,

Thanks to everyone who supported that. It's becoming something amazing, and I am thrilled that it is happening.  :)

Lost a hard drive suddenly in a storm out of nowhere once 15+ years ago before I was taking it especially seriously and some animations, recorded video files and game dev work down the drain back then but fortunately most of the really important stuff made it through. Now I make it a point to have cloud backup going on my work desktop! You should too. Personally I'm using backblaze but there are many good options out there. You should have a way to back everything up that's important if you can. There isn't really a good excuse not to. The typical IT advice is you ideally should have local backup of all important data (mirroring) plus offsite cloud backup. Three copies of everything across two locations means odds of stuff getting lost for good is very low. Make sure the backup system's automated and will keep up to date with changes with minimal time and fuss. 

matthornb.itch.io - asset packs - 3d assets, decals, PBR seamless textures, VFX clips. Many sales on holidays and well over a dozen 5-star ratings to date. Thanks everyone for helping me get this off the ground!

Well, we're assuming you have a game made and it looks decent or has some aspect of it that stands out and makes people interested in playing it. And if you did that, that's the first step and quite frankly the hardest.

Once that is done...

-Try setting up a blog or site or some sort of online venue to promote the game. Not necessarily a high cost one but (something) if possible.

-Have a trailer posted on Youtube for your project.

-post screenshots on the game page so people can see what your game looks like. 

-post those images on Instagram, Pinterest as these two social sites are especially image focused.

-tell friends, family locally and on any other frequented social networks. Maybe print off a few little business card type things with imagery from your game and a simple URL so they can find it online, and if the URL cannot be simple, then use a QR code maybe.

-Encourage ratings of your game, ask for feedback and/or reviews on the game page and you're more likely to get a few people doing so. It will establish trust from future players and will also help in itch rankings maybe.

-Discord, set one up maybe for your project to build community and answer questions, and have a banner signature linking to your game in any forums, bulletin boards you are established in.

-if your game is a paid product, obviously, then consider a free feature limited demo so people can try it. Also if it's a commercial effort, you may seriously consider paid ads on some limited scale. If you can fine tune them enough to make the resulting sales exceed the ad spend then you can just cycle money through and end up when a huge phenom.

-There are also ways if you don't have a marketing budget to harness existing playerbase as your best marketing option. Like a contest in which people submit fan art and the top five get a free copy. Or affiliate selling systems, which are not something I think works on itch but I haven't actually researched that, in fairness. 

-Consider building up revenue beyond the game itself. Ads on the site if it's a browser title, maybe crossposting to adshare sites like Kongregate, Newgrounds if that makes sense. Or selling extras like OST (soundtrack), artbook and making of materials etc. Or later DLC, addons. All of these are established tactics. There are many ways a game project can generate income. But my view is don't be excessive in  monetizing things, I try to underprice personally and am a player, not just a developer so really dislike ads interrupting gameplay. Sometimes treating players well and respecting your audience will work out great for you, too - as it builds community and good will that can make for a sustainable business longer term. Plus I just dislike being a jerk.

-Consider selling or exchanging  skills and assets. Music tracks, pixel art, 3d stuff, textures, sound effects, software tools and plugins. There has to be some part of game dev you are good at and if all else fails, and nobody plays your game then there may be some critical aspect of the game that isn't grabbing people and in fact is turning them away from being interested. Graphics and art style are the things that tend to grab attention initially, and well built gameplay gives the game longevity for players once they find you. If the graphics, sound or code is a weak spot and you have no clue how to do it well, consider trading resources with someone who has complementary skill sets, you help fill in a few gaps with their project while they help with the gaps in yours. Or you can just sell game assets widely for the sake of it making that a core product, as they're definitely valuable to people.

I have a few games moving slowly forward but mostly people are excited about my asset packs and find those to be why my profile is valuable - thousands of asset files in all, tons of PBR seamless textures, VFX overlays and decals, 3d asset packs. More arriving very soon.

matthornb.itch.io -  I have a bit of credibility in discussing this topic, as 10,000+ individual people have loaded 100,000+ pages on my profile, already, 120+ followers. 200+ sales made to date worth $400+, and 17 five star ratings. Of asset packs. I have some games inching froward but generally that's still a ways off from being ready to go. It gives you a pretty strong indication that I know how to do this.

It's sometimes a bit grindy posting batches of stuff across various social channels but it can go well. Even posting here on the itch forums now and then is marketing in some sense as long as that visibility gets people to discover that your work exists. So at least you did that, and that is most definitely a start.

Good luck!

You're right, it's now past September and I am *still* working on getting this wrapped up with a first batch of about 35 unique assets. I'm really sorry about the delay here. There's not really a valid excuse for it aside from just the rotation between seven other asset packs I'm rotating between, both updates to existing packs and planned added releases like Middle East, etc that themselves have people asking for launch soon. 

I am now really close, should have a release ready within a few days though. Probably by Oct. 15 or 16. Definitely a while before Halloween. Halloween is absolutely critical as a target for a horror collection I think, it has to be in place before then. And I realize this pack in particular is of value to the horror focused community on itch. I want to get it done well.

But ultimately maybe it's best to have something out by then even if it's not as complete a start as I intended. I might shave off one or two objects from my queue just to get this out in the next 3-4 days. Because it's definitely behind schedule at this point.

If you post a content update that adds something of value to the game, and associated devlog, that can give it renewed attention and create signals that boost it in site rankings for a while.

Also as usual I will advise posting backlinks - that is, mention your work on social media, post intriguing and compelling images / screenshots on the likes of Instagram and Pinterest, video teaser/trailer on Youtube, etc. That all helps people find the game and takes time but is not costly financially.

Similarly, forum and blog posts, if you have a blog, or some online forums, discussion boards you frequent then you may want to make a blog post, and make the game present as a forum signature. If you have a website set up for your game that also helps.

Finally, third realistic option is paid ad campaigns. If the game is a serious commercial venture and is a paid product it might be worth it. Find the right keywords relating to the game, or use banner ad spaces on sites which are relevant in audience. I know, nobody much does banner ads these days but if you have a beautiful, focused and legible ad and better yet, one that is animated, you can gain hundreds of thousands of views and dozens or hundreds of interested real people clicking your ad, for a dollar in the right spots. 

The fourth note here is if you have a paid game do have some freebies available eg a demo, and maybe extras like wallpapers, OST, making of materials, etc. Some stuff to draw people in who are not immediately inclined to buy.

Finally, the game has to be good, and look good and be playable and fun, and that is all the more true if it is a paid thing. All the promotion in the world will not help if there is nothing cool about your game that makes people want to play it.

There is a business concept called USP. Unique Selling Point. This is the thing that your game does that makes it distinct from others of its genre. It may be aesthetic (truly unusual art style and/or highly creative sound design), it may be a special unusual game mechanic or hybridization of some element of other genres, it may be a compelling and surprising story premise that hooks players.

In the case of some of my stuff I am trying to wrap up in 2026, it's the aesthetic that is the novelty. I have Miniature Minigolf, aka miniature miniature golf, a minigolf game with miniature art courses done in O scale, as in, I physically built them with a ton of model making methods, scratchbuilding them like a model railroad. And while the look is VERY handmade and stop motiony, the handmade courses were also scanned with NeRFs (neural radiance fields, a successor to older photogrammetry methods) so I could simulate water flowing through the courses in little creeks etc and have those fluids reflect a scan of the miniature surroundings. A few other digital animated elements are similarly well integrated in lighting and shadows and textured to look like little clay or scratchbuilt models, so the boundary between miniature and the occasional animated digital object is nearly indiscernible.

Similar aesthetic is being used in Miniature Multiverse, another little project in development,  which I have described as a Mystlike adventure game on the easier end of the genre (first person, panoramic 360 degree nodal interface like Myst III Exile, Myst IV, Scratches, Schizm...) but it is all first person exploration of over a dozen sprawling and very detailed, realistic looking scale mini model environs. Each with a few areas. The worlds all built in garage, on huge sheets of cardboard and there was a whole experimental process trying to figure out how to capture the nodes. And again, the miniatures and digital extensions had to match well. Models were matched in a mapping and planning phase, to digital settings built in parallel and the models were extended again with digital skies and seas and other stuff surrounding the mini worlds. So each node involved a lot of painting out of garage stuff to replace the sky, etc with a 3d skydome and not... garage roof. 

Be creative and do something that is like what other people are doing but with some twist that sets it as distinct from the rest of its category. That twist is your USP and creates a specific appeal your game will have that others won't.

Here's my profile: matthornb.itch.io. It's just a ton of gamedev asset packs now, but they're quite good and they have a combined total of 17 five star ratings so far. The asset sales will help me get gamedev projects over the finish line in the next year. Some 2026 indie game projects are teased as well as a handful of unreleased asset packs set to go live by end of 2025 so that clearly is confusing, especially with such items posted below some major paid asset packs that *are* released already and being actively updated and expanded now and then. I include the unreleased stuff as preorder material, in sales on holidays so you can get all asset packs with the 3000+ asset files and rising, and early preorders of indie games bundled all together for like $2 or less during most holidays.

My aim there usually is to price really low during sales and make up for it in volume of audience, and hopefully that will work.

So far it seems to be effective.

If you have gotten to the point where you have genuinely useful feedback, post it as comment or rating. 

It's really extremely helpful both to the developer and to other potential players or buyers if it's a paid game or other product.

Especially given hesitation of itch users to trust anything that lacks prior feedback. Nobody here buys, downloads anything if there is no feedback. So posting feedback can make a massive difference as a signal regarding the legitimacy and quality of a game or product. 

If there is a problem with it or worse it's actual malware, which has been known to happen on itch and makes people wary of downloading anything here, clearly a one star review helps protect future visitors and warn them.

And five star reviews that seem written by an actual human, likewise are a significant green flag and more so if there are a lot of them and they're from longstanding trusted user accounts that didn't just show up suddenly purely  to rate that one thing.

I've found many people on itch.io don't even realize the platform *has* a star rating system, and it's not that prominent, but the rating system does affect sorting and visibility in certain areas and does matter somewhat in that sense. But its main value is in establishing trust and an understanding of what content on itch is good and has value and what is not good, not valuable, or sadly in some cases is even harmful.

My experience says eBayers rate things almost every time, Etsians only one tenth of the time at best, and itch users maybe 1/25th best case. The 1/25 only happens when they're actively asked to do so and when they realize the content massively exceeded initial expectations.

People usually are more likely to rate when ratings and feedback are actively requested and encouraged on the page, and when the page has content that provokes a strong reaction either positive or negative. Studies seem to suggest what we'd intuitively expect - if the game or other listed item is of middling quality in the view of its players/userbase there is a much lower likelihood of them rating it.

If it is exceptionally good, or awful/broken/scammy, they will be more likely to post a review. So that will explain the prevalence of one and five star ratings above 2-4 star ones in general. 

Presence of feedback is vital. In my experience it is THE difference between a wildly successful product and one that's outstanding but completely ignored and never downloaded. When I first sold on eBay I had to lower pricing over and over to 90+% loss margin. Nobody bought what I offered. I was offering personalized art - paintings on canvas - and firstly nobody was thinking that was a thing you could find on eBay, nobody looked for it - but even as I promoted it and thousands viewed the shop, no ratings, no sales. '99 cents to have a painting personalized, made by hand with paint on canvas, shipped to you'. That was how low the pricing got. Finally someone took a chance on that and was completely blown away, just ecstatic. That I actually DID what was promised somehow for $0.99 and it was good. The same on Etsy, just absurd financial losses at the start, and yet four years later people were spending 20, 30x more on the same thing and the level of customer activity had spiked 1000x even as the pricing was 30x higher. The difference was the presence of hundreds of reviews. It was indeed the ONLY thing that mattered and ultimately both eBay and Etsy shops were forced to close as people were buying so much so fast I couldn't keep up with it even as pricing kept being incremented upwards.

After that I realized digital products made prior to sale, were a wiser bet. The product already exists, hundreds of hours of work poured into it in some cases, it can be posted and sold an indefinite number of times, without each sale involving a set number of hours making, packing and shipping. So that is what I am doing now and itch has an easy setup for it, no obsessive formatting concerns (Unity asset store has some fairly specific rules for how to organize, name, and showcase all assets and given the sheer number of game assets in my texture packs... just probably not worth it. 

I've seen this on my page ( matthornb.itch.io ) as there are now 17 ratings on my gamedev asset packs and they're all five stars. It was way less activity not that long ago. 

Now over $400 in sales on itch and over 2000 downloads, over 100,000 page views from 10,000+ people. Overwhelmingly, the visitors the first couple years did nothing except browse. Now people buy especially during sales on holidays when it all combined drops to under $2. My aim has always been to err on the side of underpricing and make up for the low purchase gain with sheer volume of activity. It is finally working out. Or starting to anyway,

And I just want to thank everyone so much who has helped that start to take off. 

It's going to be way bigger very soon.

I have a horror 3d asset pack now a few days away from launch, should be out by Halloween 2025, plus Europe pack, Middle East pack, Scifi / Space pack, Fantasy/medieval asset pack, and many updates to already launched texture and 3d packs... all of these additions should be out by end of 2025. Hoping to have the total released asset file count at  over 5000 by the end of the year. Right now? 3300+ asset files released and 300+ more across various packs and updates in progress on the brink of release.

But it would not be my primary focus now if not for all the feedback and positive ratings that helped me shift from having a store on itch that I promoted almost relentlessly and truly believed was promising but that almost nobody bought from to one that's suddenly increasingly popular. Those ratings MATTER!

That's good! You clearly moved faster on that news than some bigger developers and the responsiveness is appreciated. 

I figure even if nobody is replying with specific individual requests, you can kind of tell what developers here want to have available by what game devs are releasing. 

I see a TON of horror games for example so horror themed assets are something I am prioritizing work on now. There are both 3d and 2d games and you can drill down with tags to try to get a sense of the proportion of various types of styles, etc. And then build to cater to what people find useful.

I am about to release an update to my little freebie blood fx pack for instance as that is proving popular and I will soon have both a free and a larger paid horror pack added, plus updates in various other areas. Lots of new texture maps, 3d assets, etc. Some of those are more general purpose nature, indoor items. 

My asset pack shop is doing okay, has made a few hundred $ in sales to date, has 129 folllowers and 17 five star reviews but it's been many, many hours of creative work getting there and much more is still there to do.

( matthornb.itch.io ) - my shop.

First is putting the sheer labor and time in to make a polished project, have a game worth playing and visually appealing screenshots, video trailer showing what it is and what is great about it.

Then just promote like crazy once the game is completed and released. Social media posts, comments on communities you are active in. 

Paid ads can work if your game is a commercial venture but don't expect immediate payoff. Do some testing and find some ad spaces and settings that can result in net gain. Tweak the ads and do A / B testing to optimize both the ads and the game page. If your campaign is fine tuned well enough that the ad spend is profitable then go all in. If a $1 ad spend = say $1.20 in sales then you can just sort of keep ads running and cycle the earnings through for a while and build up to the point where you have a massive phenomenon. But that's not common. 

I am not a game dev primarily, but I am selling assets on itch like photo based PBR  texture maps and 3d assets, VFX elements and decals, so that is my focus here. And it is kind of working for me at this point or starting to, as I now have exceeded $400 in sales and have 17 five star reviews, 129 account followers, and various encouraging comments across a bunch of asset packs. Am also working on game dev in background and hoping that I can start ramping that up too soon to the point where a handful of projects are released over the next year. Which seems unrealistic maybe but given some of those date a few years back and are over half finished, it's not that crazy.

It is basically my full time focus now as of mid September. I had an Etsy shop up til end of 2024 and that is over, plus some successful gigs locally this summer (2025) that all mean I can push heavily into massive itch updates over the rest of the year at a pace that nobody has seen happening in the past. I am pretty excited about it but also aware that itch has limitations as a platform - and that it's worth branching out to sell things elsewhere too like Fab, Turbosquid, etc. It's a lot of hard work and creativity and thought and planning poured in but that ultimately is the only way to create a range of truly great products.

matthornb.itch.io <- my page.

This is extremely depressing and explains so much about peoples' hesitation around file downloads.

I am trying to sell asset packs for game devs and a few have taken off in a major way or started to, but others are going nowhere, which may be because of the sheer distrust most itch users have of everything that isn't, as you put it, 'green flagged' by a ton of prior positive reviews and comments.

Social responses, genuine honest ones, are essential to everyone. If a thing is genuine, make a note of that and make it publicly known that the content is real. If it is not safe, if it is dangerous, post that negative response and report the scam as soon as possible. Warn people if there is an active scam in place and inversely, encourage material that is authentic.

Also, while curation in a censorship sort of form should not be itch's thing, maybe a battery of automated virus and malware scans should be in place for files people upload. It could help limit this type of damage even if it fails to catch everything.

That's awesome knowing Butler has the higher file size potential as I didn't even know it did. I have had a pair of absolutely massive asset packs which were in the 1.2 gb range and mainly that's due to the high res video VFX elements. 

But I had little difficulty just splitting up that material into a list of a few downloads under a single payment.

Maybe some devs with really ambitious PC game work can consider splitting the game project into multiple files / packages as well with clear install instructions for how to assemble them in a single folder so it all works. Not an ideal solution but it is another possible workaround.

I have seen a gradual increase in payout times as well the past two years even before this issue emerged and my content isn't NSFW. 

But I am okay with it, mostly. I know itch staff are limited and that they're struggling with a lot of pressure in many directions. I want to say I'm grateful the platform exists and if it will help, I am open to raising the % of my sales given in support of itch staff from say, 10% where it currently is to 15-20%, which is still small compared to the 30% norm on the likes of Steam, Apple App Store, etc.

I believe leafo and other people working here are trying to fix this somehow and I'm rooting for it all to work out, as I still like itch a lot.

Intriguing story experiment and a promising Godot game prototype.

Hope you keep at it, building something bigger out from this early foray into development, and thank you once again for crediting me in your work.

Good luck with everything. :)

Thank you! It's great to see that people are finding this material useful. You didn't need to credit me [per the notes in earlier post] but all the same thanks so much for doing so.  :)

I'm a little behind schedule on it but a few new elements should be added to this pack very soon as well. As in, animated blood stuff that is actually pretty realistic, built with physics accurate liquid shader and fluid simulation. I'm working on that right now in between wrapping up the furniture 'electronics' update and getting ready to post that additional stuff to the furniture/interiors pack. 

Also the horror asset pack listing here will see a batch of .PNG cobweb decals added for free really soon too. The full release is pushed back to Sept. 2025 but that free part at least should be accessible by mid August. Still amazed by the supportive feedback from you and many others and in the case of the horror collection, it's not even launched yet but already somehow got a five star rating (!?) so between that and the obvious value of horror assets to itch creators it's clear that is a collection that needs to be fast tracked, with some free and paid 3d and 2d files made available as soon as possible. 

Definitely trying to build on all the resources here because people like you are clearly using them. Makes the work more rewarding, knowing people like it and find uses for it in all sorts of awesome projects. 

As noted in the image, six more VFX clips have been added to this package in the past week. And given how things are going I should be in position to pursue a major hardware upgrade by late August. Which will mean large scale physics simulated VFX elements showing up later on as well.

But of course 3d assets are also a priority, and game dev, and textures. I'm rotating through a LOT of tasks right now. But some of that stuff going on in the background could be revealed and made available quite soon.

Thanks for your query Tegurd.

Not any formal license here but basically with all the existing asset packs:

-any use in a derivative work - commercial or noncommercial, pretty much no restrictions on that and modifying the assets for a specific use case is fine or using assets unmodified, in a work that builds on them in some new way, new form like a game level, 3d art render, VFX shot or sequence, etc.

- no crediting of author required, but:

-only real restriction is don't redistribute entire asset collections as is or try to claim you made them, try simply to resell a pack I made, etc. 

Essentially common sense applies and in most situations you will likely to be able to use this however you want to, but if a specific ambiguous case occurs you can certainly ask about it.

As for the query some may have: Yes, I do have plans to expand this pack a bit with a few more elements soon. But a few other things which are now nearly done are going to be prioritized and those updates released first. I am optimistic no fewer than five asset packs should be seeing updates in the next 12 days. Some useful new material is pretty close now. 

There's not an official licensing rule at this time, pretty much any imaginable usage of these texture assets in other work is fine short of reselling/redistributing the package as is.

You can use the textures & decals as a resource in 3d renders, game levels, VFX shots with no particular limitation or constraint on such uses. 

As long as you're building something new using them instead of just taking the package unmodified and trying to resell it.

Attribution's not required. You can modify or not modify textures as needed for your particular scenes. There's no particular limit on how many are used in a derivative work.

No limitation on number of computers an individual can load it on or on number of creative projects using it as a resource. The goal is to keep things fairly open and basically ask for common sense to be applied.

The whole thing had to be restarted and pushed back for reasons I am a bit confused by - check the email associated with your itch account. They sent out a message to everyone.

I'm really starting to wonder what's going on too.

Is there an update?

Some old VFX clips, over a hundred weathering and detail decals, and about a thousand seamless PBR textures in a gigantic single asset pack.

Released in mid 2018, some updates and minor fixes to a few things six years later in 2024.

Check the supplemental files for all the content available. There are some texture updates and such separate from the main download. Not everything included can fit in a 1gb limit, so the downloads are split across multiple files and versions.

 Ratings, questions, comments and feedback welcome. I have some good responses relating to this already but not as much as I would have expected considering the sheer scope of this vs. some other significantly smaller asset packs with as much or more feedback.

Feel free to browse my pages on itch, other listings with textures, VFX clips and 3d assets are accessible there. All bundled together for under $2 during holiday sales..

Thanks for reading.

Indeed it's taking a bit longer.

Seems like itch staff now is taking a while to approve this and sort through everything. It's mid March now, still not started. 

Hopefully we will know more soon and have a heads up at some point shortly before the start. 

I have since found another way into the email account and also will note that the link you gave confirms that there are no issues with the submission. Still, thank you for making the link visible there.

Really hoping that when this launches the impact it makes in the situation will be substantial. 

So many people are suffering due to the horrors of war for no justifiable reason. 

Since early today my gmail app and account has had an entirely unexplained 'no connection' error yet nearly everything else online is working normally.

I have been unable to send or recieve email so have not seen any message you may have sent. I am approving or trying to approve my entry though for inclusion, for whatever it's worth and hope an email communication issue does not ruin that.

Never trust dentists who are sadistic!

The 'Little Shop of Horrors' Steve Martin dentist was played for laughs but a serious take on how bad things could get with a deranged dentist is a great horror concept. Kudos.

If you ever want a few more seamless textures, 3d models please take a moment tocheck my profile. Thanks!

Unsettling mood and tone builds effectively up til the end. Good work.

If you are ever in need of more textures / 3d stuff for future projects I will be expanding my collections over time so take a look. Thanks.

Got the unsettling cold horror mood across really well!

Chills and scares and unease attached to a supposedly nice holiday tradition. Nice stuff.

Matthew H, matthornb.itch.io

St. Nick? Not such a saint it seems.

Fun.

If you ever want any base textures for future projects, or lean low polycount models, check my profile. Am open to requests for particular types of things added. Thanks.

Nice work. Short but a good horror project and showed up at the exact right time for the holidays. 

If you ever want any low polycount efficient game assets, or realistic texture resources, as usual, check my profile as I've got many sets of things that are free or inexpensive. Thanks. 

Great. Nice idea and the graphics aren't bad for a free indie. If you want more resources to draw from in developing future game settings you can check out my profile here:

matthornb.itch.io

Thanks.

Let me guess: It's about someone dealing with schizophrenia?

But that's just my first guess - am about to give it a playthrough. It sure looks like you did something cool with this.

BTW: If you ever need any libraries of textures or low poly 3d assets I'm releasing a ton of them here:

matthornb.itch.io

(Thanks.)

Boklin is actually quite good but the particular very low poly art style seen in the main promo image and the game itself is likely a promotional problem. Add to that the lack of side images on the game listing and the entire opinion of potential players boils down to the single low poly looking header image.

It just doesn't look anywhere near as detailed as some other more popular examples of the adventure genre by other Icehouse creators and others in the specific category on itch such as colorbomb, much less the work of bigger puzzle adventure developers.

But even if you did manage to improve on detailing of graphics, it is admittedly just a niche genre these days and will likely never have a huge audience again even if done really well. Cyan has 93% positive user reviews on their VR remake of Riven, and 88% metacritic and even then that game, though a triumph in the category and the best work Cyan's done in years, and maybe ever, is still struggling to reach the break even mark as the remaining adventure genre audience is just... small. 

I worry about this myself on my own projects. My upcoming title 'Miniature Multiverse' now is a $1500+ production and 75% of the cost is raw materials. I have a TON of cardboard, chipboard, cardstock, sculpting tools, paints and clay and mini supplies and so many types of materials meticulously being built into over a dozen sprawling mini worlds.

Other costs include $200 for the Steam and Epic release fees, and a $150 ad spend going into launch when the time comes. It all is dwarfed by the personal cost of nearly a year of work altogether.

And I cannot help wondering if it has even a chance of making back the production cost. Much less justifying the time put in.

My goal with game dev assest packs here is to diversify, to have a fallback funding source in the event none of the indie game release coming up go well. I haven't seen that fallback go amazingly well itself either but it has raised a few hundred ($) by now which is more than many itch creators can claim. 

For a long time the fallback had been Etsy and it was most of my focus past three years but that did as much as it needed to, it is now on hold having raised a total of thousands in cash, and I am genuinely hoping I can keep things moving and make itch viable the next few months without that, focusing directly on going all in on game dev and asset creation, not printing services. It is a gamble and may not work out but I hope it does. This is what I want to be doing.

Matthew Hornbostel,

Matthornb.itch.io

I will work on getting this done for you as soon as I can. Its development will be prioritized even higher now vs. any other unreleased things placed in the bundle. I stated directly in the bundle notes, roughly 1/3 of listings in the bundle are games or a few asset packs which are actively being created / developed but at this time incomplete, and lack downloads for this reason.

On some, there is just not enough of the material ready yet for even a first release to make sense. 

But this one especially, is clearly close enough to done now that I can push it to the top of the queue and have a viable form of it posted within a week. 

It had only six completed 3d models when the deadline for submission to the Palestine Aid Bundle hit, and as of early 2024 when that happened I opted to attach the 2022 texture pack to the charitable project instead. This pack has been progressing only gradually since that time, often prioritized well below other faster moving projects here or on Etsy.

Thing is: I shut the Etsy shop down fully Nov. 2024, and since then I have been more fully focused on this profile.

That means a lot of new things people have been anticipating for months or years now finally can start to roll out faster beginning around Christmas. Not everything that has so far been unreleased of course, but a substantial number of things previously unreleased. And further updates to existing released packs. And that boost in the pace of updates moving forward should resolve a lot. I am hoping it will pretty much all be completed, out by mid 2025. Which would be amazing.

Scary and unnerving. Good stuff. 

If you want 3d packs or texture maps for future projects check here, maybe useful:

matthornb.itch.io

They just approved their entry. 

So I guess our concerns were unfounded, and we can move forward now.

Giving them a bit more time is certainly fine and I hope that last person contributing here is okay.

Based on what has been said it seems like they might be in crisis. I sold some personalized items on Etsy in the past where a customer was super communicative up until they suddenly weren't. Often it was due to them, or one of their family members, suddenly getting sick or having a serious accident. Or worse, someone died.

Bad things often happen. We will try to be patient and understanding, and helpful where possible.

If the final holdout cannot be reached and they are unable to participate then they can eventually be cut from the bundle. I bet there are tutorials on how to make that work on the itch Discord, or maybe it is discussed in a tutorial somewhere else online like on YouTube, some itch related blog, etc. 

And if Pixonix can't figure out how to do that, well:

I am not thrilled by the option of starting the whole process over but if we do submissions again maybe I can have 2 or 3 asset packs submitted next time to assist and not just the one. It's a learning experience not just for the bundle creator but also for many of us as participants. I didn't realize multiple submissions were even an option going in. Now, seeing what others did, I do. Maybe a few additional new people can contribute added valuable content the second time too to fill this out more. I mean, in the event we do have to restart we might as well expand on things a little bit the second time to improve the odds of the bundle being effective when it finally launches. If nothing else, that allows us to recover the losses from the material which got pruned out.

Very fast paced retro shooter with a fantastic edge to it, great work Hakita.

I am not that good at the genre so it's not my usual thing but can nonetheless appreciate what was done with this, and what you are trying to do here.

And am sorry your comment section has become such a colossal dumpster fire.

Hope your game dev work continues to go well.

-Matt H.

Okay, I just REALLY don't get what's going on here. 

But whatever. 

This is incredibly faithful to the look and feel of the likes of TTD, RCT and old Simcity games... and it is amazing that you did this as it is not in any way an easy genre to create a functioning game in much less one that has a consistent style with this nostalgic charm. 

Definitely following you now as your skill is clear. And the game itself shows early indications of a really fun design. I know it is not finished but there is a ton of promise visible already.

Not going to say my dev or asset pack stuff is in line with what you're doing aesthetically but my profile is here if you want to know a bit more about who just commented :) : matthornb.itch.io

Nice theme for a game. There is something unnerving about being off alone in a remote wooded space, and as with anywhere else, the scariest monsters there are usually in the end other people. 

Reminds me of my days in the boy scouts, almost.

I wish I were entirely joking - it was a messed up inner city scout troop so there really were... incidents. Like one boy throwing a rock at another and the response being a threat of knife stabbing. A tree illegally felled in a state park with the last second yell 'TIMBER' alerting the occupied tents it fell onto. Collecting scorpions in a jar and letting them loose in the troop minivan. Loading others' packs with heavy rocks as a prank right before a long hike. There was also one boy who tried to recruit the others in the troop to help him sell drugs.

The kids' totin chips (the rectangular cards that granted permission to use knives and axes) had so many corners cut we joked they were almost circle shaped. The typical pattern when someone finally had theirs revoked and the knife got confiscated was they would steal a knife from somebody else.

Also *so many things* got lit on fire...

But anyway, nice game, amazing for a first effort and it is good 3d environment with effective mood, especially nice work for a beginner.

I am working on some games too but mine are often longer and there are multiple projects in rotation so feature creep and slow development is a concern. The fact that you got a game done and just put it out there is a major accomplishment. 

I also have a TON (thousands) of varied textures and 3d assets that may be of use (with a bit more pixelation they could easily fit the PSX vibe as the models are fairly low polycount, very efficient and mobile ready and most of the sense of detail and realism is textures, not so much mesh. If you are curious about any of that, check that out here:

matthornb.itch.io

Thanks!

I just messaged two of those last four holdouts on the related submitted listings. 

Let's get this bundle moving!