itch.io

...

I thought "This sounds like Guns, Germs and Steel" before I even read the description. FWIW, historians generally hate that book and its world view probably shouldn't be presented as fact.

In terms of game jams, teams still tend to be on the small side so obviously roles will get "compacted" and team members will wear multiple hats. You also really do not need GDDs for the conplexity of the average jam game.

As someone who is a programmer by daylight, I want to do my own game design when I do gamedev so I am flat-out not looking for a game designer. For me, that's the "juicy" part.

So having some other skills (e.g. also being able to do art) are gonna increase your odds of being able to find a team where you get the "game designer hat" compared to if you only can do game design.

Best case would be if you were able to do solo projects, of course - that way, nobody can tell you what to do! So learning to program, at least in some sort of low-code environment, might be worthwhile. Or maybe you could try your hand at a board game, with zero programming required.

Will any of that stuff help you to break into the industry? Iunno. I'm not in the industry and have no desire to be.

Why should I bother watching your thing if you couldn't be bothered to write your thing?

Also, if I wanted to read a trailer script farted out by an AI, I could just ask ChatGPT to fart one out for me whenever I want.

(Also also, I have no clue what it means for a ladder to move "too intentional" and scripts generally are supposed to convey clearly what is going on.)

The quarantine warning always shows which countries the dev has connected from. This does not indicate that your travel history is the reason for your product being quarantined.

Itch does not disclose what exactly triggers their quarantine mechanism because that would allow bad actors to circumvent it. Possibly, your product was flagged during a virus scan.

Your product will be reviewed by staff eventually and unquarantined if it is legitimate.

Everything you've heard about game designers is also true about requirements engineers or business analysts in the wider software industry. If they just write a spec and then bugger off, things aren't gonna go well.

That doesn't mean they aren't "important", it means they have to be deeply integrated into the development process and iterate on their ideas together with team members from other disciplines (especially programmers) to deliver good work.

A prototype still needs to demonstrate some sort of quality and some sort of hook. Yours doesn't because it has zero visual components and I could only read like ten sentences before it stopped working. So you've utterly failed at both the "visual" and the "novel" part of visual novel. I genuinely can't tell if your "visual novel" is supposed to be ten sentences long (far too little to prove any sort of concept) or if your dialog system crapped out - either way, this leaves any player with the impression that you're incompetent and do not care about quality. At least add an end screen.

Even as a prototype, this needs to be better because this is just embarrassing.

You asked for feedback, I gave feedback on what little you have provided. If you don't like it, that's your problem. What the hell did you expect? There is nothing here to say anything positive or even value-neutral about.

And if you think what I did was give "style advice", you clearly didn't read my post.

Game softlocks after two or three choices. There's no background image up to that, and the UI is just Godot's support theme which does not set any kind of mood.

I don't think this is remotely ready to publish, even if you just want feedback.

It would, in theory, be possible for an emulated game image to contain malware if it can exploit a security flaw in the emulator.

I haven't heard if anybody has ever done that, though.

Most people have no idea what a .tar.gz file is or what to do with it.

If you're using GDScript, exporting a browser build and uploading it to itch.io should be extremely straightforward. Good luck!

What engine are you using, and is it an option to create a version that is playable in the browser?

If so, consider doing that. You'll get more players (and more feedback!) that way, because it decreases the hurdle for trying out your thing, and also decreases the risk of catching a virus by downloading something from a complete newcomer.

Yes, you should report it. If you get a ticket number, post it here because that seems to be the only way to get support to actually do something in a timely fashion.

This is how you end up on blocklists

Two points here:

a) even if your product is free, you presumably want people to use your stuff. That means you should make it easy to use your files for as wide an audience as possible. My point still stands.

b) when we say "uncompressed", we mean"losslessly compressed". Putting your stuff in  a zip file is fine.

c) a gigabyte is a lot of music - even in an uncompressed format, you can fit about an hour of CD quality audio in there.

(My points were losslessly compressed into 66% of their original size. I did not miscount or make a typo.)

You're not going to learn how to be a "great developer" by using AI.

Sure, spammer.

Sorry, I'm not in the habit of clicking spam links or doing "due diligence" on spammers.

For me, as a game maker, it is very important to see at a glance if a game asset is AI-free.

If the "No AI" marker (less of a warning and more a mark of quality) would be removed, I couldn't be certain if a product is AI-free or if the author just hasn't answered the AI disclosure question (esp. on older assets where the disclosure is not yet mandatory).

Since I refuse to use assets in my games unless I have confirmation that they are AI-free, removing this information would mean I couldn't buy assets on itch.io with the same confidence as I do now.

When browsing games, where disclosure is optional, positive confirmation that a game is AI-free is also important so I know that a game is worth my time.

As it is right now, the information does exactly what it is supposed to do.

You made three release announcements of this game within a week... the last one currently sits at 1 upvotes, which is not exactly "being received positively" and more "the default". Your game also has zero ratings and zero comments. Where exactly is this "positive reception"?

For purposes of trademark law, "Cave" and "The Cave" are far too close for comfort, imo.

If I search for "Cave" on Google, I'll get the geological thing. If I search "cave game" instead - whoops, I get the Minecraft thing. And also "Cave, The".

There's also the game studio CAVE, known for their shmups of course.

So this is an absolute nightmare in terms of findability (deliberately avoiding the term "SEO" here - this isn't SEO, it's just avoiding a massive footgun).

Still bad advice.

For one thing, it prevents people from actually finding your stuff on Google if your thing shares its name with a game by an industry legend, and a highly acclaimed game dev studio, and a predecessor of the most sold indie game in history

Fun fact: taking IP law advice from someone who doesn't know the difference between trademarks and copyright has never had bad outcomes for anybody.

"If you are providing a free service" - free being the operative word here.

In a previous post, Dave clearly tried to promote (vaguely defined) services for (vaguely defined) prices, advertised in a fashion that just reeked of beibg a scam (which is why the post was taken down, I believe). While Dave is still being very weasely, it looks like he wants you to hire him as a community manager. He still does not provide any evidence that he can deliver, so to me it still looks like a "take the money and run" scam, on top of Dave clearly not being good at communication, but all of that is irrelevant - the service they are trying to promote is not going to be free.

We have a forum for hiring / offering paid services, but even if Dave posted there, I'd still heavily suspect him of being a scammer.

Building trust is *your* job, and right now you are not doing it.

They have not released anything, so it absolutely does not belong in "Release Announcements".

that name is taken, mate

You are trying to promote your services in promoting a game here.

If you are good at promoting things, you should know how to promote yourself without coming off as a scammer, grifter or spammer.

"People on itch.io" ranges from hobbyist teenagers to professional full-time indie devs.

The utility of a press kit varies rather a lot, depending on if you actually get any coverage. For example, I do not anticipate any media outlets caring about my project, so why would I spend time making a press kit?

For someone who has some amount of klout, a marketable project, and ambitions to earn a living doing this, things definitely look different. But those people are a small minority among itch.io developers.

Looks like they didn't take any time to reflect on the feedback they got.

> It's more secure than rolling your own  auth

If you think that the two options are "use a third-party SSO" or "roll your own",  you should not be running a website.

> it means we're not storing passwords

If you think having your own account system requires "storing passwords",  you should not be running a website.

> We're pre-launch and focused on building the product,  not reinventing authentication.

You're not supposed to "reinvent" authentication, you're just supposed to set up basic username + password auth with one of the many libraries that exist for every web framework. If you cannot handle that, you should not be running a website. It is deeply worrying that you think this is a complicated task.

(Also, if you do not understand how a basic login system works, I do *not* want my Google account anywhere *near* your slopware.)

If you can't even be bothered to set up your own auth, you are obviously not a serious organization with any amount of resources. Why should anybody trust you?

> Google login is just for developers who want 

> to submit their game — it's the quickest way to verify you're 

> a real creator.

I'm not a Google SSO expert. Which metadata field, exactly, in my Google account says I am a "real creator"? Do "fake creators" just not have Google accounts? I am just a humble smooth-brained software development maid, please impart your wisdom on me.

I'm still not convinced there IS a preprocessor. Maybe your thing just works because your browser supports it, and two years ago it wouldn't have worked.

Maybe an issue with itch's CDN? Using a VPN might switch you to another exit node and circumvent the problem.

Still, this is just speculation.

I'd argue that when selling game assets, you should provide a lossless format like FLAC and let the customer worry about compression tradeoffs and target formats.

This sounds like the opener to some really shady scam - the appeal to novelty (China famously only was invented in 2022), flattering the recipient's ego ("you all have sufficient strength"), and a complete lack of detail, which will only be provided in private (where nobody can warn you if you're being scammed) after you've inquired (creating incentive for a sunk cost fallacy). Be careful, everybody.

Your network (mobile internet provider or WiFi hotspot) might be doing something wonky or block certain file types / file sizes. Hard to say more without more detail.

Unless you plan to sell your concept art and music to other game creators so they can include them in their own project, you do not have a "game asset" product, you have a devlog.

The new description feels a lot less like ChatGPT.

Your thumbnail has a nasty aspect ratio problem, and your description reads like ChatGPT puke. Neither of those inspire much confidence in the game.

Also, I don't *think* you're supposed to create a product page and announce a release if you don't have a product. Also also, your project is not a "Game Asset".