The Astronauts, a Polish game developer, created the award-winning mystery game *The Vanishing of Ethan Carter* and is currently developing the dark fantasy FPS *Witchfire*. Their success stems from "smart choices" in game design, such as efficient asset reuse, and assembling a highly talented and passionate team. A recent blog post discusses these strategies, citing examples from *Witchfire* and other games like *Expedition 33*. The post also highlights impressive fan creations, including a *Witchfire* D&D campaign and audio drama. The developers emphasize the importance of hiring top-tier talent and fostering a passionate, collaborative environment.

Schedule I, a solo-developed drug manufacturing and dealing simulator, unexpectedly became a top Steam seller in 2025. Its success stems from a combination of factors: a compelling crime theme filling a market gap left by the delayed Grand Theft Auto 6, a blend of simulation and action gameplay appealing to diverse audiences, and a fortuitous viral spread via streamers and TikTok. A well-received demo further boosted pre-release hype. While its ranking has slightly decreased, consistent updates are planned to maintain its long-term success.

FuturePerfect Studio's game, Void Climber, flopped despite a three-year development process. The failure stemmed from a weak core fantasy and lack of a clear, marketable theme, unlike successful competitors. Pre-launch data, including low wishlist numbers and demo playtime, indicated impending failure. The author analyzes successful climbing games, categorizing them as "absurd" or "refined," highlighting Void Climber's failure to fully commit to either style. The author concludes by prioritizing commercially successful games over solely pursuing "dream games."

Chris Delay's talk at World of Love (June 2010) demonstrating how was going to be in their game in developement at the moment: Subversion. This game from the creators of UPLINK and DEFCON was expected to launch in 2011. After its cancellation, most of the developed technology was repurposed in the game Prison Architect (currently in development).

This GameDiscoverCo newsletter discusses game discovery trends, including platform updates from Microsoft, Nintendo (Switch 2 launch), and Netflix's gaming strategy. It highlights the increasing use of AI in game development and the prevalence of game clones across platforms. The newsletter criticizes PlayStation's lack of wishlist visibility for unreleased games, contrasting it with Steam's effective use of wishlists to boost game discovery. This lack of visibility on PlayStation potentially buries high-demand games amongst low-quality titles. Finally, the newsletter analyzes the top Steam game debuts of the week for subscribers.

Den is a multiplayer AI agent builder that integrates with numerous popular apps (50+ integrations listed). It allows human-agent collaboration to streamline workflows, centralizing chats and documents. Users praise Den for its intuitive design and ability to understand business needs better than humans. The platform enables AI-powered task completion and artifact creation, improving team efficiency. Den offers a free version and a demo.

Jon Hanson's LinkedIn post details the successful launch of a game that sold over 6 million copies without advertising. The strategy involved a demo acting as a marketing funnel, a conversion-optimized Steam page, gameplay designed for virality on TikTok and Twitch, and authentic Reddit engagement. This approach, described as "calculated chaos," is presented as a model for indie game success in 2025. The post generated discussion, with some praising the strategy and others questioning its generalizability. Hanson's post highlights the importance of community building and strategic marketing in achieving significant sales.

"MinionsArt Tutorials" offers a variety of tutorials for shaders/shadergraph

Blueberry AI's Kiwi Engine provides a browser-based platform for managing 3D digital assets, eliminating the need for bulky software. Its AI-powered features, including search, tagging, and version control, boost efficiency by over 60% and reduce time spent on previews by 40%. The platform facilitates seamless collaboration among internal and external teams, improving workflow and productivity. It caters to various industries, including gaming, advertising, and industrial design, offering significant cost reductions and improved asset availability. A free consultation is available to assess individual needs and demonstrate the platform's capabilities.

This video chronicles Tynan Sylvester's journey in creating RimWorld, detailing his transition from solo prototyping to a successful Kickstarter campaign by adhering to a strict "value per cost" development philosophy. It explores the game's core identity not as a traditional simulation but as a "story generator," designed around "elastic failure" and simple visuals that encourage players to co-author unique, emotional narratives. The retrospective concludes with RimWorld's massive success on Steam, highlighting its continued evolution through a thriving modding community and five major expansions that have cemented its legacy as a masterpiece of emergent storytelling.

Today we are painting a landscape using #maths Support this channel: https://www.patreon.com/inigoquilezThis is the link to the real-time rendering code

Blendo Itch Uploader is a free Windows tool simplifying itch.io project uploads. It provides a graphical interface, eliminating the need for command-line tools. Users create profiles for their projects and upload builds with a single click. The source code is available on GitHub for further development. Despite generally positive reviews, some users have reported initial difficulties, prompting the developer to improve error messaging and documentation.

Roblox is introducing 4D generation, powered by its Cube Foundation Model, which adds interactivity to 3D objects. This technology allows players to generate functional objects like cars that can be driven using simple text prompts. Developers are already seeing increased player engagement and playtime with this feature. The system uses "schemas" to define object parts and behaviors, enabling dynamic functionality. Roblox plans to expand this to generate entire scenes and more complex interactive elements through natural language prompts.

Talo is a free, open-source game backend service offering leaderboards, player authentication, multiplayer, and more. It integrates easily with Godot and Unity via plugins and an API, simplifying game development. Talo provides a dashboard for managing game data, player accounts, and feedback, along with robust analytics and Steamworks integration. The service handles hosting and infrastructure, ensuring data continuity even with network issues. Data export is available, and the platform is open for community contributions.

A Reddit user analyzed data from 5,773 AA and indie games released in 2024 that earned at least $500 on Steam. The analysis revealed that the top 10% of games account for the vast majority of revenue in both AA and indie categories. Median revenue was significantly higher for publisher-backed games ($16,222) compared to self-published ones ($3,285). High-performing genres included NSFW, simulation, and strategy, while puzzle and platformer genres had lower median revenue. The data is available in a Google Sheet for further exploration.

One of the top requests I've had over the last few months is to create a beginners guide to modding. The scope of the project got a bit out of hand, but her...

The UK games industry received a £30 million government boost, aiming to foster growth and address skills shortages. This support comes amidst a challenging period for British studios, impacted by Brexit and post-COVID market conditions. The Game Business Show discussed this news, interviewing Ukie CEO Nick Poole, who emphasized the need for a growth mindset within studios. June's game releases saw mixed results, with some titles like *Rematch* and *Dune Awakening* performing strongly, while others like *MindsEye* and *FBC: Firebreak* struggled. The show also covered other industry news, including the closure of Hypixel Studios and a class-action lawsuit against Sony.

A video with a series of dramatic train crashes generated as a show by a user through BeamNG.Drive - a physics sandbox about vehicles on Steam.

The author, Shagufta Khan, believes the future of gaming lies in "Creation Gaming," where players actively build worlds rather than passively consume them. Drawing from her 18 years in media, she observed that people value what they help create, a phenomenon known as the IKEA Effect. Her studio, Second Quest, aims to empower players by providing simulation games as UGC platforms, utilizing AI to make creation tools accessible. Two current projects, "Model Trains" and "Lorekraft," exemplify this approach by offering expansive building and storytelling experiences. Khan's core bet is that fostering a sense of ownership and community through player-driven creation will lead to more engaging and lasting gaming experiences.

Launchpad is a tool designed to simplify game creator discovery and key distribution. It uses machine learning for smart creator discovery across platforms like TikTok, Twitch, and YouTube. The platform also offers tools for managing creator relationships and automating outreach campaigns. Launchpad streamlines key distribution with a widget for collecting creator interest and advanced key management features. This aims to eliminate the need for bulky spreadsheets and disparate tools for game developers.

This text is a standard website footer. It includes links to common website sections like About, Press, and Copyright information. It also contains links for creators, advertisers, and developers. Finally, it includes Google's copyright notice for 2025. The text is typical of a large online platform like YouTube.

This article discusses the order of operations in game design, highlighting the challenge of iteratively developing complex systems. The author suggests starting with the core mechanics, establishing player goals and obstacles, and using bounded randomness to test system functionality. Building a simple, linear mission or arena is recommended for early testing and feedback. Iteratively expanding upon this core, adding AI and content, while regularly evaluating the core gameplay loop, is crucial to avoid building excessive content prematurely. The author concludes that while no single solution exists, a structured approach focusing on fundamental interactions and progressive complexity is beneficial.

The Last of Us HBO series faithfully adapts the brutal death of Joel from the game, making the scene even more intense in live-action. The show adds a simultaneous attack on Joel and Ellie's community, Jackson, expanding the scope beyond the main characters' perspectives. This new storyline increases the tension and stakes, showcasing the vulnerability of the community. While mirroring the game's core events, the show enhances the emotional impact through added context and visual storytelling. The adaptation successfully delivers the shocking death while enriching the narrative for both game players and newcomers.

Eric Farraro's Substack post details the disappointing Steam launch of his game, *Bramble Royale*, despite positive reviews. The game, a deckbuilder, underperformed significantly against sales projections, selling only 621 units in its first week. Farraro attributes the failure to market saturation in the deckbuilder genre, a lack of a strong marketing hook, and a lengthy development cycle. He reflects on the challenges of indie game development and plans to focus on a mobile port and future projects, learning from this experience. Despite the commercial setback, he remains proud of the game itself.

Creating buildings in games can be challenging but it's a key part of environment art. From hand-placing modular assets to using full procedural generation, developers employ various methods to layout their levels. So, in this video, I'm going to walk you through how we can use Unity’s Spline Tools to layout wall and window meshes, and procedurally generate the shell of a building for us to use in our level design.

Learn the fundamentals of how to make online multiplayer games. Crash course in the fundamentals of computer networking and how to make multiplayer games.

In Unity game development, knowing how to communicate between scripts is essential for building clean, scalable projects. This tutorial explores the evolution of script bindings—from Unity’s built-in Find and GetComponent methods to advanced techniques like Binding objects, Object Resolvers, and full Dependency Injection (DI). You’ll discover how to get references efficiently, avoid common pitfalls of Singletons, and pass dependencies safely across your game architecture. We also cover industry tools like Zenject and VContainer, showing how they simplify DI. Whether for prototypes or commercial titles, this guide helps you build maintainable, testable, and high-performance Unity projects.

TechTarget and Informa Tech merged, creating a vast network of online resources for technology professionals. Obsidian Entertainment significantly improved its QA process for Avowed, resulting in fewer bugs and critical acclaim. Their key strategy involved training QA analysts to use the same design tools as developers. This "white box" testing, combined with traditional "black box" testing, fostered collaboration and efficiency. The result was a smoother development process, higher morale, and a better final product. This approach is now recommended to other game studios as a best practice.

The author reflects on the design and marketing shortcomings of Citystate II, a political and economic city builder, noting that its target audience was too narrow and divided between political simulation enthusiasts and Cities Skylines players. Despite positive feedback, the game's complex systems were often misunderstood and overlooked, leading to a lack of player engagement. The author identifies two potential paths forward: Citystate III, a gamified version of the original concept, or Citystate Metropolis, a sandbox-focused city builder. Ultimately, the author leans towards Citystate Metropolis, prioritizing construction and customization tools to appeal to a broader audience, while leaving the door open for deeper systems later. This decision acknowledges the limitations of gamifying complex political and economic systems and aims for a more accessible and engaging experience.

This document presents Seyed's Publisher List, a curated database of publishers funding premium PC/Console indie titles. It excludes publishers focused on AAA, F2P, or those not funding development. The list is not exhaustive and encourages community contributions to an open sheet, with data transferred quarterly to the curated sheet. The guide provides details on contacting publishers, understanding revenue and budget metrics, and publisher communication ratings. Users are advised to upgrade their browser as the current version is unsupported.

The GameDiscoverCo newsletter highlights the success of the unreleased survival-climber game "Cairn," which garnered over 500,000 demo downloads on Steam and PlayStation 5. This achievement is attributed to its excellent gameplay, methodical marketing strategy including participation in numerous Steam festivals, and effective use of Steam's demo visibility features. The newsletter also covers June's top-streamed games, with Grand Theft Auto V leading viewership, and notes the platform debut of Roblox and new entries like Mario Kart World. Other news includes Steam's new performance monitor and potential shifts in consumer spending on leisure activities.

God Mode AI is an all-in-one AI suite for game animation, offering tools for 2D and 3D asset creation. It features AI generators for sprites, scenes, pixel art, and 3D models, significantly speeding up the animation process. The platform uses a credit system with various pricing tiers, offering no subscriptions and pay-as-you-go options. High-quality, production-ready assets are generated, reducing costs and improving efficiency. Custom solutions are also available for enterprise clients.

This playlist titled "Game Performance Optimization" by Ben Cloward is an educational series for game developers focusing on techniques to improve game performance across engines like Unity and Unreal. It covers foundational principles such as analyzing bottlenecks before optimizing, and delves into technical topics like the graphics pipeline, forward vs. deferred rendering, and specific methods like occlusion culling, batching, and shader optimization. The series emphasizes that performance is the top priority in game development and aims to equip both artists and engineers with the skills to make games run faster and more smoothly.

Tools for game assets, improved export for Unreal, Unity, Godot

Top-performing games at Steam Next Fest often achieve success through a combination of factors, including early demo launches, viral social media campaigns, and established studio experience. Games like "Cairn" demonstrate the power of long-term demo exposure and extensive content creator outreach. "YAPYAP" highlights the effectiveness of leveraging platforms like TikTok and partnerships with services like Medal.tv for rapid visibility. While "Desktop Defender" represents a high-risk, high-reward outlier, the general consensus favors a well-planned, early marketing strategy. Ultimately, having a game with "magic" or broad appeal, amplified by external marketing efforts, is key to reaching the top charts.

This tutorial teaches game development math using C++ and the Tigr graphics library. It progressively introduces concepts like vectors, points, and transformations, building upon basic C++ knowledge. The tutorial uses practical examples, including drawing lines and points, animating a box, and implementing coordinate transformations. It emphasizes understanding the differences between points and vectors and provides functions for common vector operations. The final goal is to create an interactive animation using these mathematical principles.

Nitrode is an AI-powered game engine that allows users to design, script, and deploy games within a single platform. It features an AI-assisted visual logic editor, enabling intuitive game mechanic creation. The engine generates assets (sprites, textures, scenes) using AI, eliminating the need for external tools. It also produces clean, editable code based on the user's design choices. Currently, Nitrode is available for MacOS only.

Co-development in the video game industry often fails due to leadership avoidance, weak systems, and misalignment, not external factors like geography. Key reasons for failure include spec creep stemming from unmade decisions, the false economy of prioritizing cheapness over quality, and treating partners as mere "hands" instead of leveraging their experience. Effective co-development requires robust infrastructure for real-time visibility and trust, and it must be led by experienced individuals with the authority to make critical decisions. Ultimately, successful co-development is about orchestration and earned trust, not just outsourcing tasks.

TechTarget and Informa Tech have merged their digital businesses, creating a vast network of online resources. Separately, Valve is adding accessibility search functionality to Steam. Developers are encouraged, but not required, to input accessibility details for their games via Steamworks. This information will allow players to search for games based on specific accessibility features later this year. Steam will display accessibility features on individual game store pages.

The GameDiscoverCo newsletter analyzes video game discovery trends, featuring an April 2025 edition focusing on the poor sales of the roguelike deckbuilder *Bramble Royale* despite positive reviews. The game's failure is attributed to insufficient pre-release hype and a saturated market for deckbuilders, highlighting the difficulty of attracting attention in a crowded genre. The newsletter also includes data on March 2025's most-streamed games, showing *Monster Hunter Wilds* leading the pack. Analysis of Steam wishlist-to-sales conversion rates reveals that *Bramble Royale*'s performance fell within expected ranges but still significantly underperformed. The author concludes that standing out in the current market requires a more aggressive and dynamic marketing strategy.

This article details creating realistic vehicle physics in game development, focusing on car simulation. The author emphasizes prioritizing the desired player experience over perfect physics replication, illustrating this with examples ranging from arcade-style games to simulators. The core components of a vehicle simulation are the engine (and gearbox), tires, and chassis, each interacting in a feedback loop. Tire modeling is highlighted as crucial for realistic feel, involving concepts like slip ratio and the Pacejka tire model to represent the complex relationship between tire deformation and generated forces. The author provides simplified equations and code examples to guide developers in implementing these principles. Talk on YouTube - https://youtu.be/MrIAw980iYg?si=ygPpbiS-q3Vkb8HZ

Analysis of Steam's top 50 games from February 2023 to October 2025 reveals a trend of people spending less on games. While average prices have remained relatively stable, the median price has dropped significantly by 20% for units sold and 14% for revenue. This decline is attributed to an increase in popular, lower-priced games in the $5-$15 range. The AA game segment, priced between $25-$60, faces increased competition from both AAA titles and inexpensive indie games. This shift suggests a changing consumer spending pattern on Steam.

Playstack's marketing of Balatro, a poker-themed roguelike, defied conventional methods, focusing on streamer engagement. Recognizing that gameplay was best experienced firsthand, they targeted smaller streamers playing similar games. This strategy built a vocal community, generating buzz and attracting media attention. This "Wheel of Attention" marketing cycle fueled Balatro's success, leading to over 5 million copies sold. Playstack's intentional campaign demonstrates the power of community-driven marketing in the indie game space.

NobodyWho is an open-source framework enabling local deployment of large language models (LLMs) without cloud infrastructure or scaling issues. It uses llama.cpp and offers a user-friendly interface for running LLMs, accelerating processing via GPU. Several example games built with NobodyWho are showcased, demonstrating its versatility. Troubleshooting sections address common issues like model file location after export and compatibility problems on specific Linux distributions (Arch, NixOS). The license allows commercial use but requires open-sourcing any modifications to the NobodyWho code itself.

This collection showcases a wide array of game art and technical art techniques. It delves into specific game examples to explain visual tricks like faking reflections, creating volumetric effects, and optimizing rendering. Topics range from complex shadow rendering in "Infinity Nikki" to the practical challenges of shoe models in game development. The articles also explore creative uses of shaders, textures, and geometry to achieve stunning visual results.

Shader creation and other game dev tips and tricks in Unity and Unreal. My opinions are my own and do not represent the positions of my employer. Ben Cloward has been a game dev for over 20 years and has been creating shaders since 2003. He was a co-creator of ShaderFX, a plugin (originally for 3ds Max) that allows artists to create real-time shaders using a node-based interface. ShaderFX is now built in to Max and Maya as the main way that real-time shaders are created. Ben was the original author of the Uber shader used in Maya's viewport. In 2007, Ben joined Bioware in Austin, Texas as a Cg Supervisor focused on graphics, performance, and shaders - on titles such as Star Wars The Old Republic, and Anthem. Ben now works for Unity on the Shader Graph team. Ben has given numerous talks at industry events such as Siggraph, and GDC. He loves to share what he has learned.

Sandustry is a forthcoming factory automation game on Steam, developed by Lantto Games and published by Hooded Horse. Players explore and mine a fully destructible world, automating complex production chains. The game features procedurally generated worlds and diverse biomes, emphasizing resource management and base building. It's a single-player game with Steam Achievements and Cloud support, available in multiple languages. Currently, no user reviews are available as the game's release date is still "Coming soon".

Cozy games, a growing subgenre, offer relaxing gameplay focused on building and community rather than destruction. These games, exemplified by titles like *Animal Crossing*, have surged in popularity, particularly during the pandemic, providing players with a sense of comfort and connection. Research suggests that playing cozy games can improve mental well-being and reduce stress, comparable to mindfulness meditation. The genre's inclusive design and focus on positive interactions create welcoming communities both in-game and online. This contrasts with negative perceptions of gaming, with studies now highlighting the potential mental health benefits of even casual play.

This article by Richard Meredith details a technique for basic multithreading in Unity to optimize the flow field algorithm in "Bad North." By moving the costly flow update to a separate thread, the main thread's processing time was significantly reduced. The author explains the challenges of thread synchronization and data sharing, ultimately proposing a solution that involves restructuring data into separate sets for results, pending changes, and working data. This approach ensures threads operate on their own data, preventing conflicts and achieving thread safety. While this method introduces a one-frame delay and copy overhead, it offers a clean and simple way to offload background tasks in Unity.