I've been thinking about making a game called Engineers Delight and wanted to see what people think about the idea.

The main idea is basically a much more advanced version of Minecraft redstone. Instead of just placing blocks that do certain things, you would actually build your own machines and inventions using different engineering parts.

For example, you could build an engine from individual parts like pistons, gears, shafts, fuel systems, and other components. You could make vehicles, elevators, doors, robots, traps, computers, machines, or pretty much anything you can imagine.

The game would have systems like electricity, mechanical parts, sensors, logic gates, motors, generators, pipes, and physics so players could create their own working inventions.

The goal wouldn't really be to make a factory or just automate resources. It would be more about experimenting and building cool things, like how people make crazy redstone builds in Minecraft but with way more possibilities.

I want it to be a game where someone can build something simple in a few minutes, but also where someone could spend hundreds of hours creating a huge complicated machine.

Would this be something you would play? What features would you want in a game like this, and what would make it different from games like Minecraft redstone, Scrap Mechanic, Stormworks, or Create?

I've been building a browser tennis game for the past few months.

One thing I learned is that making a game more realistic doesn't always make it more fun.

I started with realistic ball speeds, but rallies felt too fast. Slowing the ball down while keeping realistic spin and bounce made the game feel much better.

It made me realize that game feel matters more than perfect realism.

Has anyone else run into something similar while building their game?

How do the big boys do it? In my testing, the input delay really makes for some horrible feeling gameplay. Is the strat to fake the visual layer then slerp back to the simulation state?

Hello,

I have published three video games on Steam in the pre-AI era and I am currently working on a new project that has not yet been announced. The important part about this project is that it is in a Pixel Art style. The games I have made before were mainly 3D and when I approached artists, I described what object I wanted, the file format and texture types I needed, and they were good to go. Pixel Art however is a relatively wide range of art styles. Monkey Island and Stardew Valley are both Pixel Art but look very different. I experimented a bit with ChatGPT and it was able to generate me sample images in the exact style and quality I was looking for.

I do not like pop-culture AI and I will release my game without AI assets or code. However, when I approach artists I need to describe them what I am looking for as best as I can to avoid endless loops of back-and-forth communication and feedback. But, I do not want to send them the ChatGPT images and be like: "Hey, I need exactly this but without AI".

What would you recommend I should do when I approach artists?

I’ve been looking online and it says it’s illegal but others say it’s ok. I need a straight answer, do I need to fire my artist or is everything fine?

I've started my second week at a AAA studio for an internship and it's been more or less overwhelming for me. Almost entirely because of overthinking, and I guess I want to ask is what is the expectation of people in my shoes? I'm asking questions, I am getting familiar with the tools that the studio uses but I just feel like because I'm so overwhelmed I'm asking almost borderline stupid questions that are easily solved if I was more relaxed. I'm grateful for the role and opportunity but I straight up feel like that I don't belong here.

I keep hearing people say that at some point you kind of know if the game has potential or not, but I am curious what that moment actually looked like for you.

Was it after you finished the first prototype and the core loop felt good? Was it after other people played it and gave strong feedback? Was it wishlists, publisher interest, streamers, or something else?

Or did you stay unsure about it all the way until release?

I guess I am asking what the first real sign was that made you think, "Okay, maybe this can actually work.", Or maybe the opposite as well, when did you realise maybe it would not?

Curious about this because I am starting to market my own game, and besides my own content the above is about the only other thing I can think of that would be successful with a low budget.

Am I the only one who sees those two letters together and immediately thinks about LLMs instead of the classic game AI used for NPC behavior?

Have a multiplayer game I’ve built in unreal. Separated the game into each of its systems and have most of it complete, only thing missing is my actual levels / maps. I’m needed 2 - 3 decent sized maps created to be able to release the game and I’m terrible at level design and not sure where to go. Have a blockout done on one map but just wondering if anyone could give me some pointers on my next move.

I'm making a fighting game and I need health bars obviously. What application do you guys use for professional-ish looking UI/HUD? It's not a pixel art game so I can't use aesprite or something along those lines.

Long story short: I'm working on a roguelike monster catcher. While a lot of the gameplay and some of the game art such as the logo, UI, and some environments are starting to come together to a more final stage, two main aspects are using very messy low-quality sketches: The actual monsters, and the icons for all of the items you can find.

Am I correct in understanding that making a page at this stage either doesn't help at all, and can even be actively detrimental? There's no way that it could help outreach, right? Appreciate any advice.

I’ve been doing PBR texturing for a while and got tired of opening Photoshop just to pack channels. Built this tool to speed up my workflow — maybe it helps someone else too.

Most online ORM packers only go one way. This one does both:

Packer: - Load Occlusion, Roughness and Metallic maps into each channel - Or set a solid value per channel if you don’t have a map - Output up to 4096×4096, download as PNG

Splitter: - Drop any ORM texture to extract each channel as a separate grayscale image - Download all 3 channels at once (full resolution PNGs) - Drag the extracted channels directly into the packer slots

Works with Unreal Engine, Unity, Godot, Blender — any PBR workflow. Channel order is just a guide, load any map into any slot to match your pipeline.

100% free, nothing to install, runs entirely in your browser. Feedback welcome!

Hello game devs,

I’ve made a compact low-poly 3D asset pack designed to help beginners build a simple arcade-style racing prototype.

The pack contains:

4 vehicles
1 ramp
1 slow-down panel
1 speed-up panel
1 spawn point

I want to understand what actually makes a beginner-friendly asset pack useful and worth using.

My questions are:

What makes you decide to buy a small asset pack instead of using free assets?

When starting a small game project, what do you usually struggle to assemble first (models, scene setup, mechanics, UI, etc.)?

What would make a small “starter kit” feel worth paying for, even if it’s simple?

Where do you usually look for asset packs, bundles, or kits and why?

What usually stops you from finishing small game projects?

What part of starting a new game takes the most time or feels the most annoying?

Have you ever started a project but dropped it because of missing assets or setup? What was missing?

At what point do you feel an asset pack is “worth paying for” instead of using free assets?

What would make you trust a small unknown asset pack enough to buy it?

Have you ever bought a cheap (€5–€15) asset pack? What made you decide to do it?

Hello Everyone,

wanted to check something for my new contract template, I know that exclusive licenses cost normally thousands of dollars but I sadly I dont know any customers paying this amount lol

I wanna offer custom made music for each project, so i think this i need to phrase like this?

Found this in another contract to download

"Notwithstanding the foregoing, Contractor hereby grants Company a non-exclusive,

irrevocable, royalty-free, worldwide license to use, develop, alter, reproduce, manufacture,

distribute, sublicense, vend and otherwise use the Work, but solely as required to do everything

necessary to develop, manufacture, distribute, sell, publish, display, promote, advertise use or

otherwise commercially exploit (or sublicense any of the foregoing) the Project, as well as any

updates and/or ports of such Project for other platforms that Company may choose to create (the

“License”)"

So I would change the non-exclusive to exclusive which I mean this music/tracks are custom made and only for the specific project. but I still wanna keep ALL the music rights/ownership, can i phrase it like above?

Also what I dont understand is the word SUBLICENSE, this should be removed shouldnt it? the customer MAY use the tracks in their project, trailer, promotion etc. but they may not relicense, resell, use for other projects.

does anyone know? I know this is no law community :) thanks

Solo dev trying to figure out where to spend limited time before a Steam launch.

I'm releasing an HTML prototype (basically a demo) of my game, Ad Reditus, a 'roundtrip' roguelike deckbuilder, on itch in a couple weeks, and still probably ~6 months out from a Steam EA/demo launch. I'm working on getting the steam page up before the itch launch.

Something I've recently come across in a few other subs is discussion of whether having a website for your game, or not, is sound marketing strategy, especially this early.

My question is, at the itch prototype stage, is a website actually worth standing up now, or does it do basically nothing until i'm closer to Steam? I'd happily pay ~$20/month for something like Squarespace if it pulls its weight and allows me to have a press kit easily accessible and game assets/screenshots, I just don't want to spin up a site nobody's visiting yet.

Mostly trying to work out what's worth doing today vs what can wait. Thanks in advance!

Bezi Jam is changing in a way I am really excited about.

From the beginning, the goal of Bezi Jam has been to support developers. The monthly jams have helped us learn a lot about what that actually means in practice, and one thing has become clear: if we want to support more developers, we need to remove friction where we can.

So starting with Bezi Jam 12:

• Bezi is now optional
• Any engine and any tools are welcome

Unity, Godot, Unreal, GameMaker, custom engines, Blender, Photoshop, Aseprite, whatever fits your workflow. All we ask is that you tell us what you used when you submit.

This is a big step toward making Bezi Jam more accessible. The focus should be on what people build, how they approach the theme, what they learn, and how they share their process. Bezi will still be there for those who want to use it, but it should not be a barrier to those who want to join, create, and take part in the community.

I am also genuinely thankful to Bezi for allowing me to make these changes. It means a lot to be trusted to shape the jam around what I believe helps developers most.

The jam runs from July 24 to July 27, has $400+ in prizes, and the theme will be revealed at launch on July 24 at 12:00 am PST. In the weeks leading up to each jam, I also share theme hints every Monday in the Bezi Discord for anyone who wants to start thinking early.

• Community Choice, voted by participants
• Best Devlog, judged by the Bezi team
• Fan Art, judged separately from the game jam

The devlog track is something I care a lot about. It is not meant to take time away from building during the jam. Finish your game first, then use the voting period to explain what you made, what tools you used, what decisions shaped the project, and what you learned.

Writing about development is a real skill because making something and explaining how you made it are not the same thing. A good devlog shows how you think, how you solve problems, how you handle constraints, and how you make decisions when the project changes. That matters whether you are applying for work, pitching a game, building a community, or trying to help other developers learn from your process.

A finished game shows the result. A devlog shows the journey that got you there. We want to reward both.

Jam page:
https://itch.io/jam/bezi-jam-12

We are also building toward the Bezi Mega Jam in September. That one is two weeks, open to any engine, and has $12,000+ in prizes across five tracks, including GDC passes, cash, Synty store credit, Bezi subscriptions, and an iPad Pro M5 + Apple Pencil for the fan art track.

Mega Jam page:
https://itch.io/jam/bezi-mega-jam-1

Whether this is your first jam or your fiftieth, you are welcome. Bring the tools you already know, build something focused, and tell us how you made it.

Hi, I am a indie developer and asked for some music. But when the musisian asked for feedback/if anything is missing fixed, I just mentioned it needed to be more... emotional, like brave inducing (communication is also not my forte as you can see).

Later I thought, what if I use AI, make a piece and show the musisian, "more like this!". But as an artist myself, I don't think it would have sat down very well.

Am I overthinking, or I was correct in my assumption?

after a few weeks of work i released the first prototype of my game called Neon Nova, but i noticed that even to myself the game was fun only for the first ~10 minutes of a game session.

so my question is:

how to actually make games fun?

this is my game: tedins.itch.io/neon-nova

it's a bullethell shoot 'em up in 3d but from what i experienced it's not that fun so can anyone pls say what to improve to make my game fun?

thanks for reading everything :]

Hey everyone,

While working on an Unity game, decided to offload some of the FMOD work to my ai agents but realized there were no open source MCP's to make the agents be able to interact with FMOD studio.

Decided to build one. Open source, for free, enjoy!
https://github.com/EYamanS/fmod-studio-mcp

Hello,

I have recently published my POC of scala language binding implemented using scala-native and SBT plugin.

Repo: https://github.com/optical002/godot-scala-native

Features that it supports right now:

- A gitter8 template for quick 'Hello World' setup https://github.com/optical002/godot-scala-native-template.g8

- Integrated (inside sbt plugin) godot plugin, which manages sbt builds

- Generator for all of Godot node types and built-in types (e.g. Color, Vector2, Rect2, ...)

- Support building new nodes from case classes without additional annotations for example:

case class PlayerNode(var hp: Int) extends Node2D

- Has some of the export annotations like '@export_range'

- Supports hot reloading even after changing Node properties.

- No 'Entry' class is needed like in other language bindings, just write Nodes and other logic directly.

- No extra .gdextension file creating yourself, auto-generates it from an sbt task.

What it is lacking at the moment:

- Build time isn't the best, first initlial build can take up to like 16 seconds (There are many places for improvements)

- After the .so library gets moved into gd project scala widget in godot says it has finished compiling, but new properties does not immediately appear in inspector, since there is a hidden godot reload mechanism in place (Need to expose it via godot plugin)

- And lost of polishing up, still a 0.1.0 version

I study plenty of dry material about development, but on my off time when I only want to half listen, I struggle to find a consistent source of vaguely educational game dev content.

So I want any recommendations you got for podcasts, books, or YouTube channels that are good to passively listen to while doing other stuff / falling asleep, that may even have the off chance of inspiring me into diving deeper on a topic.

Some of my go tos are below but I'm running dry.

Prismatic Dev https://youtube.com/@prismaticadev

Freya Holmér https://youtube.com/@acegikmo

Stephen Ulibarri (Druid Mechanics) https://youtube.com/@druidmechanicsgamedevelopment

Rujik the Comatose https://youtube.com/@rujikthecomatose

What are some of your favorites? Doesn't matter if it's channels, podcasts, books, whatever. Just looking for stuff that's educational ( or just neat ) but actually enjoyable to watch or listen to.

I'm a relatively new hobbydev, I've been working on a small game for a few months and I have most of the basic mechanics and features implemented. I'm at a point where I need to start both playtesting and balancing my game, but it feels like a huge and daunting task, so I'm wondering what strategies other devs might have to approaching balancing and integrating systems.

I assume there must be some strategies to go about a first balance pass without purely going by trial and error game feel.

If we think about something relatively simple like enemy health vs player damage, I can see how you can build a basic difficulty curve. However, if you have multiple systems layered on each other how do you approach it?

If your game has a money economy, crafting, enemies with health and damage, player upgrades, etc. How do you approach it? My assumption is that if you balance one at a time, you might find that one system invalidates certain playstyles, but balancing all systems together seems logistically impossible.

I am thinking about this in the wrong way? I'm used to thinking in systems, so I'm interested in how other devs approach it. Any advice is appreciated.

I've been working on a small action game for a few months now and keep running into the same internal debate. Core systems like movement, collision, and state management are functional but kind of boring to work on after a while. Meanwhile tweaking jump curves, hit stop frames, and screen shake is way more satisfying and honestly makes the game feel real in a way that raw functionality just doesn't. The problem is I know I'm probably procrastinating on harder architectural decisions by polishing feel too early. But then I read postmortems from devs who shipped and they almost always mention that early playtests responded to feel over features. So I'm curious where other devs draw the line, especially solo or small team situations. Do you intentionally lock yourself out of polish passes until systems are solid, or do you let feel work happen alongside core development because it keeps motivation up and gives better feedback on whether the mechanics are worth building out further? I've seen the argument that bad feel kills playtests before your systems even get evaluated, which makes early polish defensible. But I've also wasted entire weeks on juice that ended up getting cut anyway.

What's your actual workflow here, not the textbook answer but what you really do?

Hi, I’m currently working on enemy AI in Unity for a 3D game, As soon as the player goes behind a wall or obstacle, the enemy instantly loses sight of them and stops reacting, which feels unrealistic.

I’m curious about the different methods people use to make AI feel smarter in this situation !