itch.io

I think things like your game are a great thing to do. The world got this way by all the wrong people controlling the conversation.  They don't want YOU to have an equal voice. What information can be shared online without getting yourself and humanity's champions black-bagged is next to nil, but we can make statements publicly that calls them out. The best use of art is to expose bad government and shame rulership. This is the work that I have decided to dedicate my life to.

I am excited to find this. Picross is pretty much the only game I play on steam anymore and this is a definite improvement. I had an idea to do this, but I think your way is better than what I was imagining.

It needs a "Next Level" button on the completion screen.

There is some buggyness in the functionality of the X marks. When I added some Xs in color #2 mode, I couldn't remove them by just clicking them again. I went back into both-colors mode and reset those tiles and that cleared the Xs.

I agree with YeahEsCereal, a brief tutorial screen would help. All it really needs to point out is what the numbers on different sides of the board mean. It stumped me for a moment.

I see you've said there will be no further updates, but if you do take another whack at it, I suggest these things:

The way the Xs are handled needs to be re-thought. I think I'd be nice if Xs change colors just like the filled tiles do, and if an X of one color can add onto a filled tile of a different color.

Remove the exclusive color modes. I felt like the fun died when I found that. The challenge was more fun trying to fill in all three colors together.

For the simple little thing that it is, this is great, thanks for making it. I had fun.

I was into this until the fifth paragraph, where you begin talking about politicians and 'the government' as if it is a legitimate body of government. The USA is ruled by a terrorist occupation force that only presents itself to the world as the nation's government, while the nation gets no participation or representation in it, and no say in its activity or behavior.

To then go on to say "we must not violently retaliate" is as to say the rulership's militia can go on slaughtering us and the parasites can go on enslaving us, but we would be wrong to seek satisfaction of the urge to bring the terrorists to justice and should instead bet our lives on nickle-and-diming our way to progress. I don't feel a vengeful revolution that brings the rulership of the USA to be lined up on their knees in the street while they await their turn to have their skull stomped into the pavement by their own slaves would be inappropriate.

Rulership is a problem that does not solve itself because you ask nicely. The american people have already blared their rejection of the governance through all the cities that have revolutionized, but the rulership, being the terrorists that rulership typically is, throws martial law around like morning-after pills in sunday school with the pontif. And thanks to the censorship infrastructure set up by VICE president Joe Biden, it goes on invisibly to the rest of the nation and the rest of the world.

The american people have been pushed well beyond settling for happy-time kumbayas around the campfire with the rulership. They've had enough chances to step down so the nation can have a at last establish legitimate government of our own, and it's now much too late to abdicate their throne. We are uniting against them, our revolution will be vengeful, and our justice will be swift. All their kind must be made into a proper example that the future of the world will never forget.

We need to get all the recalcitrant groups together and get on the same page about this stuff, and how we can respond to the problems productively.

A lot of the 'fuck capitalism'-ers seem to have values with a lot of overlap with the anti-rulership crowd. But the people who are urging revolution to liberate humanity from the terrorists that rule us never have a single thing to say about capitalism, and the people urging revolution to end capitalism never have anything to say about humanity's emancipation from the rulership.

There is definitely some crippling loss of communication happening and I bet if we could just get past that wall to meet each other half-way, we'd find ourselves over the top to initiate a global revolution, purge the parasites, liberate humanity from rulership totally and permanently, and make classism and capitalism nothing but a good lesson and a bad memory.

I don't know how to bring everyone together like that. I'm open to suggestions. Thanks for making your game and participating in the jam!

Neato! Drawing prompts always make for lots of fun. My only real complaint on "Such Art" is how crummy the prompts are. Your cards & dice model adds a great tactile element to prompt selection over programmatic generation.

I see that this is set up so that it can be printed. That's a considerate touch. I can imagine this being a great compliment to things like art conventions. You could stack up hundreds of them with some tables and pencils and let visitors go nuts. But on the digital side of it, have you considered making a prompt + art tools all in one type of game? For example, consider GIMP. It's an excellent digital art application, it's open source, and the general usage license allows for modifying it to make and distribute your own version. You could take just the basic tools and canvas sections of GIMP's source code, plug a prompt generator into it, and wrap it up with a handy interface. I have occasionally wondered why nobody has done this yet, since both art prompts and art games have made themselves known to be mighty fun.

This game deserves a team to hammer the whole rest of it out already. For all the wise-cracks about 'the dev' being 'lazy' on finishing features, this seems like a top-notch and very enjoyable indie game that is easy loose track of time in. Every time it feels like I have seen it all, a whole new big section of gameplay opens up and the adventure continues. I just feel like I will die of old age before I get to see it finished! Supporting this development financially is high on my priority list for if I ever have the freedom to have money of my own.

On a critical note (Spoilers! New players pls cover your eyes.), Marla's behavior late in the 'nap time' content breaks character for her in an unpleasant way. She jumps from being the shy intellectual girl to manipulative and coercive. I thought she was a great character until all that started. Perhaps your future writing could make considerations for smoothing that out a bit? Maybe you can find some way to make her a bit more consistent?

I enjoyed this, though the first map with encounters took me  a few tries. Plus it's always great to see new pieces of work calling out the disastrous direction the USA is heading, so that adds to the fun. I've had a mess of ideas for this general theme. I could spend the rest of my life on them and probably not make a dent.

Your portrayal of anarchism is a bit on the cartoonish side. I think this might rub a lot of life-long anarchists the wrong way. Maybe you'll look at ways to clean that up as you work on it more?

There is certainly a mountain of things you can bring into this design, I hope I get to see where you go with it. I think it would be good for the mobs to gradually become more life-like resemblance of the real militia as their levels increase.

Good luck!

I have some thoughts if you are interested in exploring options to improve this game.

At the start, I was surprised to find that genocide and slavery were not 'upgrade' options, since I was getting instructions from "God". I realize I was thinking in the context of the god of modern christianity, and maybe this is some cool god that isn't into all the terrorism stuff, since the god never actually gives its name. With that said, consider giving this god some detail in their identity. For example you could give it some wacky motive or guiding philosophy that the player would not anticipate.

The God character props you up as 'an overlord of humanity', which I interpreted as you are one of the terrorists commonly referred to as 'rulership' in its modern context. This makes a bit of inconsistency because the modern concept of rulership wasn't invented until using monies became normalized across cultures. Before monies, the closest thing humanity came to having overlords was community roles like tribe leaders, which is quite different. Back then, distinct tribes would simply massacre each other, not subjugate or rule. Since trading was invented before money, an overlord shouldn't be possible until at least trading. Consider an alternative, such as perhaps a 'major god' giving the instructions, and you are a 'minor god' instead of an overlord.

I noticed I don't get the chance to teach humanity to invent clothing. Was that intentional? Hey, skin is fun, a nudist planet doesn't bother me one bit, I just wasn't sure if that was a bug or a feature. If it's a feature, consider maybe calling it out somehow. It might be a fun chance to add some comedy to the game. Although, the invention of clothing had tremendous impact on humanity's survivability, and is likely a pivotal point of our existence ever since. Without it, humans would have been at greater disadvantage against their natural predators and 'exposure to the elements'. Similarly to this, the invention of knives is noticeably absent. In reality, knives were invented first, then clothes, then fire.

I suggest changing 'pottery' to "Furnace", and preceding that with "Containers". The first containers were likely made from woven stalks and vines, while pottery is really just one little part of a broader practice of burning mud or clay, which included making things like bricks, statues, and utensils. To specify just pottery seems weird. You could make similar consideration on changing 'metalworking' to "Metallurgy'.

The list of 'things to learn' has a disturbing lack of disciplines like the natural sciences. I think you could have two lists, the 'practices' and the 'disciplines'. Disciplines would be upgrades that improve the effectiveness of the practices. For example, biology, botany, and chemistry would all be some things that could improve farming. Chemistry and physics would be things that can improve metallurgy. Physics itself is such a broad discipline that you could break it up into several distinct fields.

One discovery that seems like it belongs in the later half of the list is fundamentals. Realizing things like light, air, and heat exist has dramatically ramped up humanity's inspiration and creativity for manipulating our environment. That lead us to discovering other fundamentals like gravity and entropy, which has ramped up our inspiration even further. The fundamentals are maybe the most important human discovery since the hammer, knife, clothes, fire, and infrastructure.

Prestige or end-game idea:

As humanity advances into improving their comprehension of nature, it threatens your own existence because they realize that literally everything can be the result of natural forces and you, as a god, are entirely unnecessary and therefore probably not real.  At some point, humanity starts upgrading itself, producing points of their own that you don't get to spend. If humanity's points generation gets higher than yours, you lose. You have to start attacking humanity with natural disasters, which destroys a random upgrade when successful (maybe theirs or yours), in effort to keep humanity's points down. If you destroy too many things back to zero, it's like a full reset and you start over with a freshly ignorant humanity. I can see some holes in this idea, it definitely still needs some work, but maybe you feel it's worth exploring?

As it presently is, I agree with the previous commenters. This game is too basic, it doesn't have any hook for the player, it doesn't give you any reason to care about the goal, it needs more to it.

When there is a new update, my security software always blocks it and I have to wait until it passes inspection. I recommend getting them certified by service providers before posting so people's security software will recognize it. This also incentivizes spacing out the updates with more time to include more development instead of many small and rapid updates. It means for you less time on correspondence with those providers, and for your players less time bumping into security software freaking out.

For example, from .88 to .90, the .88 just got inspected for me to run, but now a new version has to be inspected.

I can't log in the 0.88.

After name and pw, it is grey screen that does nothing.

A 2D MMO off to a really good start. It has enough content right now for a few hours of gameplay, + PVP (which I have not experimented with since I was the only player on at the time). It has some quests, crafting, grinding, and a proper boss that will smash you if you try to fight it by yourself.

https://snakechips.itch.io/project-mmo

I hope this project will go a long way.

WOW. You are doing a proper job of this! 5/5 I recommend!

My mind was blown by how much stuff you have created for this being a 5 month project. Are you a solo developer?

I played for hours and had a lot of fun. It's like harvest moon and final fantasy got nasty and had a baby. The slime king killed me so I still have more to go back for. I'm just very impressed by this.

I didn't figure out how to use the quickbar in the bottom right corner of the HUD. I ended up keeping my inventory open the whole time and switching equipment/eating potions from there.

One problem I noticed is the mouse cursor gets locked to the window and I did not find any way to release it. Alt + Tab to another window was the only thing that worked. Maybe add release the mouse with escape key, or just not lock the mouse to the window at all.

Movement control died for a couple minutes when I read the magic tutorial book. I don't know how I got it back but it was frustrating.

Using wood to make a fire worked fine in single player, but on the server it stopped working. I had a lot of wood, like 45+. Maybe that had something to do with it? It worked to do the beef mission but not afterward. The wood would still get consumed, but no wood was placed on the ground.

At one point, the fireball stopped working. I dropped the book and picked it up again and that fixed it.

Also the cooking is wonky. I wasted a lot of dead cows before I got 3 raw meats to cook. It was the same with cooking fish.I haven't tried bread yet but I will now that I got tons of wheat from the dungeon.

Keep up the good work! More content! More monsters! More NPCs! More crafting!

Anticipation for seeing what all you've done for the update is really getting to me. Do you have any thoughts on an ETA for us? Even maybe a guesstimate?

Do you still run your own official server, or is it now only the local method?

The purple rock is a bit tricky because they don't stack, each piece requires its own inventory slot. There is a key to open your full inventory and see how many slots you have. It might be TAB? If not then just try different keys till you find it. Once you find that inventory screen, you can see how many free slots you have, and dump anything that is not a priority. Then you should be able to collect the purple rocks for the warp engine.

I did exactly what you did and flew to the moon the long way. It would be fine if there was something fun to do along the way, like monsters to fight or a puzzle to solve.

This is a really good little idle game. I usually play idle games just to keep myself sane while I have to kill some time, but this one I actually found fun and wanted to finish it. I think you could expand this into a longer game, perhaps including things like prestige mechanics and even some premium feature so you could get a little something back from it. Thanks for making this. :)

Well, golly. I'm going to have to keep an eye on this game. You're on to something very fun.

I hope future development will add an interstellar environment. Warping between planets is fine but warping between stars would be exciting.

I was disappointed to discover that you did not use life-like gravity simulation. I prepared to go into orbit and then scratched my head at what I was seeing instead.

You should add a controls screen asap. I was confused about how the inventory works, and didn't discover the inventory screen until after a 45 minute flight to the moon. A little list of what keys do what things would have made a big difference.

I think you should not make the planets on the star map selectable. It's more fun to look at the map and try to figure out which way to fly. Maybe they should be selectable on a 'easy' difficulty mode.

I made an airlock to protect my ship's oxygen, and then realized that was completely unnecessary because it doesn't work the way I assumed. I think you should make the oxygen machine get destroyed if it is left on while exposed to an un-sealed environment. That would make that aspect of the game more challenging. A short-term oxygen supply inventory item would also be nice, so you don't necessarily have to die because your oxygen machine popped.

I'm sure you have a roadmap laid out already, but I suggest making failure mechanics a priority would be a good idea. I was so careful to land gently every time I moved my ship, then I once crashed and the result was disappointing. Later I flew straight into the star. I mean, I got right in the middle, as close as possible. The result there was also pretty disappointing. So, setting up all the ways the player should die or lose will make a big difference in the experience.

One problem that stood out to me- the adventure sort of defeats itself once you get the stellar drive. It's cool, but it suddenly kills the excitement after about five seconds when you realize it is now super easy to get anywhere. I think progressive levels of propulsion power leading up to the stellar drive would be a good way to go.

I got hours of enjoyment out of this game and I hope I get to see you take it a long way. Good work all around. :)

Thanks for this suggestion. If all my effort proves to fail and I have to give up entirely when my deadline hits, then I will look into this more. I am doubtful that it would be worth enough to earn my freedom, but it might still have some potential.

It needs to be 3D be as a 3D artist, my imagination is most active in three dimensions. Even when I was a child, when all the games I had ever played were 2D because 3D technology hadn't been invented, 3D games were all I could imagine. Recent advances in 3D are getting closer to making things I drempt up 30 years ago possible. In an environment where it is possible for an engine to match that format of its user's inspiration, it needs to.

Ah, well I am sorry to hear you are in a similar situation, then. I have looked into O3D, and passed it up because they use visual scripting, just like Unreal.

Since there are indeed so many currently treading water without an engine to stay afloat on, including many displaced from Unity, like me, and since the world of game engines is so problematic with very few that actually check the boxes of what a developer needs, I wonder if that might be an indication that it's a proper time for us to network and create a new one responsive to this need. One that hits all the basics, is equipped with straight-forward methods, and doesn't constrain the user's creative freedom. Existing engines always give me the impression they are designed by market managers and created by software developers. There really aught to be an engine designed and created by game developers.

It is looking increasingly like there is no way for me to make use of Stride engine. It's not yet a fact, but pursuing it continues to lead to only more problems, and it is taking more time than I can continue to pay. Considering how much time I have spent on that, I am now feeling too pressured to try to tackle Titan engine, and am sinking into certainty that I have no other option but to settle on Castle engine. So, I don't know if that info is any help to you. Maybe you have more open doors than I do, but if you're serious about considering other engines to switch to, maybe Titan and Castle are a starting point.

I forgot to mention this in my first response, but actually model the anatomy you are studying as you go. You don't need to make highly detailed or precise models, but building a 3D human piece by piece will go a long way for your comprehension of the whole structure, and also it will be practice modelling organic forms. I suggest starting with the axial skeleton, then move on to the appendicular skeleton, then the skull (which is waaaaaay complicated), then the muscle groups from inner-most to outer-most. If you really want to top-out, you can study sub-cutaneous blood vessels, but that's not essential.

Also bare in mind that males and females are skeletally distinct, especially in the skull and pelvic gurdle. After studying anatomy, you'll want to learn about the sexed distinctions. In addition to sex, human from different regions of the world have skeletal distinctions. For example, African people commonly have jaws, chins, and nasal bones that protrude almost a whole centimeter more forward than the rest of the world, and many Chinese people have nasal bones that turn inward instead of outward, compared to the rest of the world. Research into details of this kind will become essential in the future, when you want to design an original human character. You'll want to know what are the skeletal distinctions that might by found in that character by sex and region, so you can make a mock-up to model your mesh around.

You're absolutely right that it is a long journey, but, consider these things:
It's no different from studying a coffee cup, except a human is far more complex than a cup. For anything you want to model, you will need to study it, no matter how simple or complex it may be.
Whenever you see 3D humans that look not-quite right and compare them to some that look just fine, the difference is often that one of those artists has not put the proper time into studying human anatomy, and the other artist did. That knowledge is the difference between them.

I wish you luck!

Hi, thanks for replying.

I don't at all "curse" clone generators. Game clones are like clichès, they are popular for reasons, I understand that. For people who simply want to reinvent their favorite FPS, there are numerous ways they can do that, and I'm happy for them. But a clone generator won't suit my needs. I need a general-purpose engine that will not constrain my options in unnecessary ways, because my inspiration usually involves things that I've never seen done in any other game, and I'll have to design and program it myself.

Coding is not an issue for me. Each time I've decided on an engine to stick with, the first thing I do is learn that engine's scripting language if I don't know it already. I'm certainly not an expert programmer, but I have no problem scripting what I need, if I can actually find an engine to work in.

Graphics and audio is not an issue for me. I am a 3D artist, and I make my own sound effects and music.

The holdup is not all the things surrounding an engine, it's simply finding an engine (suitable to the general-purpose need I described) that I can get working. Unity is spoiling because it is ready to get and go right away.  There are numerous unity-like engines (ie the list in the original post), but the get-and-go setup is not so common. From installers that don't work, to total lack of documentation, most engines have problems that make them useless, and the only way to know is to take the dive and give one a shot. I spent months learning Godot before I gave up. The same/similar is true for several other engines.

Unity has been turned into another clone generator. It's perhaps the most versatile clone generator around, but it makes things I want to do impossible. Beside that, they, as a company, have totally lost my confidence. I won't even play new games made with Unity, those crooks cannot be trusted at all and their crap can stay the hell away from my computer. I took some time to check out Unreal a couple days ago (another respondent suggested it), that's one I'll consider a last-option. For one, it uses visual scripting, and that's the brakes. I will prefer Castle or Titan, where I can write out a script in the conventional way, before Unreal. Also they make their engine only available through Epic. I didn't think of listing this as a qualifier, but having to go through a service like Epic for an engine is also the brakes. That's the only reason I don't consider Leadwerks, they are only available through Steam. If you have to rely on one of those services for your engine, and something goes wrong with that service, then all your work is in jeopardy. A proper engine has the reliability of being standalone.

I appreciate your advice that "If you want complete freedom, you have to develop your own engine", but I don't believe that's true. There are SO MANY engines. Surely, SURELY there has to be one out there that is actually useful in a non-clone context. Over the last few days, I have come to feel like I am getting closer to one. I have found information that I believe may lead to a solution to Stride's big problem, which would be a big relief, but I'm having to wait on other people for help with that, so that progresses at their convenience. The Titan engine installer has passed AV inspection, so that one is now a possibility that I need to take a closer look at if Stride turns out to be no good. In the unfortunate situation that Stride and Titan prove to be non-options, then, my plan presently is to fall back on Castle. Castle is the one fully-working engine I have found that is get-and-go ready and has everything I need. But ooooh I really want to avoid it if possible, because that one's design direction makes it a big gamble, and I don't have anything to wager that I can afford to lose. That's the whole point of this thread, for if anybody knows of an engine I haven't tried yet that will be a better option than Castle.

Modeling humans requires human anatomy study. It's extremely unlikely that you will ever model a believably proportioned human unless you have fully learned the skeletal and muscular structure of the human body. Once you have made yourself an expert on human anatomy, modeling a human body will feel no different from modeling a chair or a coffee cup.

I know that may sound like a lot of work that you won't feel like doing! But trust me on this one, if you try to start modeling humans (or anything else) without doing the proper anatomy study first, you will always feel lost and confused like you have no idea what you are doing and everything you make looks wrong and you won't know why.

Youtube channels "Sam Webster" and "Viren Kariya" have a lot of excellent anatomy videos. Kariya has real human bones that he holds in his hands and moves around and explains every tiny detail, and Webster has muscular models, as well as videos about organs, blood vessels, all sorts of anatomy-related material. But, these things will only get you started. You'll also want to take advantage of the information in encyclopedias, wikipedia, other youtube channels, etc.

Once you know the anatomy of the thing you want to model, you'll feel like, 'wow, I can't believe this was ever a challenge for me.' This is the solution to the roadblock you are experiencing, don't try to skip it. It is the answer, even if it is not the answer you want.

Note that the current standard of photorealism is scanned models. No manner of modeling technique will reproduce the same graphic impression of a scanned model. If you're modeling humans yourself, don't let yourself get wound up in the trap of comparing your best work to scanned models. That will only ever make you feel inadequate when your work may be perfectly fine.

What do you mean? Start my own original engine? I would prefer to do exactly that, but that will take much more time than I have. If I could go back in time and tell myself to do that 15 years ago, then I'd be free by now and doing whatever I want.  Now I have about four months left to try to salvage as best as I can. I can't develop a game that is it's own original engine in that time.

I never considered unreal engine because it is based on UDK, which was a FPS clone generator. I may have found a way to solve the problem with Stride (presently waiting on a reply from Stride's dev community), but if that falls through then I will take a closer look at Unreal. Thanks for the suggestion.

'game assets for income' If that is a real possible thing, I would definitely be interested. But, that bumps into the problem of the time it takes. This is not a hobby for me, I have been putting all my time and energy into starting a game development project for years. The engines I listed in my original post are only a few compared to how many I have poured weeks or even months into learning, to then only discover they are dead ends for one reason or another. I spun my wheels in Unity for like 4 years before I realized why that was never going to work out. That's why this has been so extremely frustrating for me. I've never had the time to explore other options because this is the only option I've been able to find and it has taken everything out of me and I'm still at square one. All I need is a damn chance. If I could just find something that can give me a chance, I'll stop at nothing to make the most of it.

A clone generator is a game engine designed to streamline the creation of a specific type of clone, like RPG Maker. For example, there are a lot of clone generators for RTS and FPS, which give you very little control over your design except for what is relevant to the established conventions of their type of game. Clone generators are not designed to facilitate creative freedom, and it is anywhere from very difficult to impossible to create any type of game feature outside the scope of that engine's clone model. To contrast, a game engine that is not a clone generator is one that makes the most basic necessary features accessible, like a 3D environment ready to have any kind of art and code added into it, and a library specialized for doing things in 3D space, but makes no other assumptions about the nature of the project the user intends to create.

"clone generation architecture AI" by that I am referring to the clone generation features that have been developed into unity over the last few years. They've been systematically replacing their basic features with automated features that take control of your work and pre-process it into some form they assume you want. The last time I worked with Unity, I couldn't even import an animated mesh because the damned AI kept saying it was a humanoid model and therefore has to be assigned some ridiculous humanoid-model-rules that automatically separated it into animation clips with pre-defined physics-based movement and stuff. That was when I knew I had enough and it was time to find a proper game engine. I'm glad I did, because Unity has become a sinking ship since then. 

I need to find an engine I can start developing with yesterday. I have spent the greater portion of the year running through the gauntlet of what is probably every publicly accessible game engine relevant to current standards (ie not including engines that were abandoned in the 90s).  Nearly all of them have terrible little quirks that disqualify them as valid options. Does anybody know of one you could point me to that might solve this need? I'm running out of precious little time to get some work done, or else I'll have to abandon this pursuit all together.

The best options I've found so far, and why I'm still looking:
Godot - would be my first choice, but there are no learning resources for new users to get started (except their 2D engine, which is not relevant to me).
Stride - Great engine, like Unity but without the assholishly abusive and exploitative data farming or the clone-generation architecture AI that limits what you get to do with it. I would be working with Stride right now except that it requires to run Visual Studio for creating release-builds, which is not possible for me, and there doesn't seem to be any alternative method. Anything I develop with it would be useless.
Castle - A great infant-stage game engine being developed, but it's design is focused on hobbyists who just want something to dabble in. I need something I can create a saleable product with, which makes this a bad match-up for me (but one I fear I am about to have to settle on if I can't find an adequate option). I just know it'll bite me in the ass down the road if I get too invested in this one.
Titan (Esenthel) - Seems like a good low-level engine with powerful graphics pre-built into it, but only if you can get it installed. The installer from GitHub doesn't work and the downloadable installer from the Esenthel website hasn't passed AV inspection, and seemingly isn't going to.    That problem has been resolved! So this is now an option.
Torque - Has been in some transitional state for the last six months without any bulletins or announcements of what is going on. 90% of the manual is blank and there is only a few references to the engine online aside from that. So it's not too different from Godot that way.

Valid options:
Must be 3D, must have efficient physics (ie not java-based), It can have Visual Studio dependency, but can't require running visual studio, and it can't be a clone generator. I know, this standard invalidates 99% of all game engines, but such as these simply are not valid options for me to do what I need.

I am extremely frustrated and about ready to burn down the world. The possibility of creating a game that I could potentially sell is the only avenue to income I've been able to find, and failing now might as well be the end of the world for me. If that sounds over-dramatic, keep in mind you don't live my life and probably can't imagine the circumstances I am dealing with here. This is my only way out, as far as I've been able to find. If anybody can open the door I've been looking for, pleeeeease spill the beans.

Sorry I haven't gotten in touch yet. I'm not ignoring you, it's just that life happens not at all or all at once and right now is an all-at-once moment. You'll hear from me soon. :)

I hate to say it, but I have to agree with you on the point that graphics matter. I try to maintain that I believe quality of graphics has nothing to do with the quality of a game, yet I find myself instinctually glossing over games that don't have eye-catching graphics, and stopping only on the ones that are fun to look at. There's no getting around it, your would-be players will skip past your product if it doesn't look the way they need to to.

I'm willing to do that with you, if it's something small and simple. That might be a lot of fun. But I have to stay focused on my main objective, so I can't make any commitments to anything big right now. I need income and the chance to produce and sell a videogame is the only opportunity I've been able to find. This is not a hobby for me, it's a possibility of freedom. We'll need some way to plan out a project between us that is better than just putting our whole conversation right here in the public forum. Forgive me, but I am uneasy about sharing my email address. Maybe you have a suggestion?

This is a thing that should generally be planned from the start of the design. If you have designed and produced something meant to be sold, you are making sure to take all consideration of things like audience and competition into account. And for the prospective consumers who are not comfortable with buying from an unknown publisher, you're publishing a free separate demo version so everybody can try before they buy.

If your product wasn't planned to be sold, then those considerations have been weightless, and you've probably made a game best put up for free.

Like androidlove I also have no income, so the only things in my life are whatever is made available for free, and the people publishing free games might be the only reason I haven't gone insane years ago (at least I think I haven't...) . Buuuuut itch takes commissions from sales and I <3 itch so I appreciate also those creators who are selling their games because they are supporting the itch that makes all these free games in one place possible. So, create something silly and simple to share with us all for free, or create something marvelous enough for people to pay money for. Whichever is your inspiration, you are doing it in the right place.

So you're a programmer who's skills are minimal on art, and I'm an artist with inadequate programming knowledge. Hahaha what a cruel world. Maybe someday we'll develop something together? Not today, but I think it's a door worth keeping open.

Private messages would be a benefit too haha I am surprised that is not a feature on a site like this. Nobody wants to flood the forum with things that could be discussed 1 on 1 so in that way it kind of discourages reaching out to find people to team up with.

If you're into it, so am I. Maybe some other people will take interest, also. I am not presently developing anything. Right now I am doing a lot of study and experimenting to learn what I need to get started in that. I am approaching this from the background of a 3D artist. My art needs are licked because I can make anything I want, so now I am learning the programming and how to properly compose a game from end to end. It may still be a good while before I can actually produce something. So, if you're in any sort of hurry, don't put any bets on me, otherwise I look forward to finding ways we can support each other's work. :)

And, your english is a-ok. I wouldn't have guessed it is not your native language.

I'm 100% down with the colaborative > competitive culture. We get into orbit much faster if we build a rocket together than if we spend all our time knocking each others' down. imo Indie creators aught to be setting themselves apart from the cutthrough industry by forming bands that build each other up. Networking for testing, feedback, and promotion of each other's work would mutually benefit everyone involved.

In a way, that's kind of a part of what Itch.io is, in general, but it matters that people can enter into an agreement with likeminded creators, rather than setting up a public system and thinking that is good enough. I suspect there are already such groups out there who are happy with their membership and not making themselves visible to the rest of us. I don't have any work published yet, but when I do eventually get the chance to, participating in such a group would be ideal to me.

5/5 Excellent advice. This aught to be a sticky in the general development forum.

I was pleasantly surprised by this. The player movement could use to be a little faster for dodging the hostiles' missiles, and the missiles themselves could be a bit smaller. But I had fun and I freaked out when I found the boss.

Looks nice to me! It really shows you put effort into the look.

Wizard is one of those weird words that just naturally sounds very wizardy. I wonder if you might be able to play it up even more in the logo with some snazzy lettering?

I think that's generally where film adaptations from videogames go wrong, the reason they frequently go bad. Industry in a classist society is a naturally talent-prohibitive system. When a videogame with a story that demonstrates talent has a film made from it, there is a chance adjacent to zero that any talent will be involved in the creation of the film. As for talented film writers and designers, t won't matter if the game is story-heavy (like Ocarina of Time) or not (like Dungeon Defenders).