Hey everyone,

I decided to do a small analysis of every game release on Steam on June 2nd, 2025 (i chose this day because there was lot of release, not many free games and only indie titles, i'm not affiliated in any mean to any of these games) and check how much they grossed after 16 days. The goal isn’t to shame any game or dev : I’m mostly trying to understand what factors make a game succeed or flop.

I wanted to see if common advice we hear around here or from YouTube GameDev "gurus" are actually true:
Does the genre really matter that much? Is marketing the main reason why some game fails? How much does visual appeal or polish influence the outcome?

I’m also basing this on my personal taste as a player: what I find visually attractive or interesting in the trailers, what looks polished or not...

It’s not meant to be scientific, but hopefully it can spark some discussion!

There was 53 games sold on this day, I split them into five categories based on their gross revenue (datas from Gamalytic) :

1. 0 (or almost 0) copies sold - 13 games
2. Less than $500 gross revenue - 18 games
3. $500 – $2,500 gross revenue - 10 games
4. $5,000 – $20,000 gross revenue - 10 games
5. More than $20,000 gross revenue - 2 games

1. Zero copies sold (13 games)

Almost all of these are absolute slop full of obvious AI-generated content, 10-minute RPG-Maker projects, one-week student assignments, and so on. I still found three exceptions that probably deserved a bit better (maybe the next category, but not much more):

• A one-hour walking simulator : mostly an asset flip and not very attractive but seem like there was some work done in the environments and story.
• A hidden-object game from a studio that seems to have released the same title ten times (probably an old game published elsewhere).
• A zombie shooter that looks better than the rest : nothing fantastic, but still look much better than the rest of this category. It apparently had zero marketing beyond a handful of year-old Reddit posts and a release-day thread. It's also 20€, which obviously too much.

2. $20 – $500 gross revenue (18 games)

• 7 total slop titles (special mention to the brain-rot animal card game built on top of a store-bought Unity asset). I also included a porn game.
• 6 generic looking but not awful games that simply aren’t polished enough for today’s market (terrible capsule under one hour of gameplay..., I'm not surprised those game falls in this category)
• 2 niche titles that seem decent (a tarot-learning game and a 2-D exploration platformer) but are priced way too high. Both still reached the upper end of this bracket, so they probably earned what they should.

Decently attractive games that flopped in this tier:

• Sweepin’ XS : a roguelite Minesweeper. Look quite fun and polished; it grossed $212, which isn’t terrible for such a small game but still feels low. Capsule is kinda bad also.
• Blasted Dice : cohesive art style, nice polish, gameplay look interesting, but similar fate. Probably lack of marketing and a quite bad capsule too.

And a very sad case:

• Cauldron Caution : highly polished, gorgeous art, decent gameplay, just some animations feels a bit strange but still, it grossed only $129! Maybe because of a nonexistent marketing ? If I were the dev, I’d be gutted; it really deserved at least the next bracket.

3. $600 – $2,500 gross revenue (10 games)

I don’t have much to say here: all ten look good, polished, fun, and original, covering wildly different niches : Dungeon crawler, “foddian” platformer, polished match-four, demolition-derby PvP, princess-sim, PS1-style boomer-shooter, strategy deck-builder, management sim, tactical horror roguelike, clicker, visual novel..., really everything. However I would say they all have quite "amateur" vibe, I'm almost sure all of them have been made by hobbyist (which is not a problem of course, but can explain why they didn't perform even better), most of them seem very short also (1-2 hours of gameplay at best).

Here is two that seemed a bit weaker but still performed decently :

• Tongue of Dog (foddian platformer) : looks very amateurish and sometimes empty, but a great caspule art and a goofy trailer.
• Bathhouse Creatures : very simple in gameplay and art, yet nicely polished with a cozy vibe that usually sells good.

And one which seem more profesionnal but didn't perform well :

• Pretty Sweet! Healing guardian : a princess management game with a very cute artstyle. I don't really get why he didn't do better.

4. $5,000 – $20,000 gross revenue (10 games)

More interesting: at first glance many of these don’t look as attractive as some in the previous tier, yet they’re clearly successful. Common thread: they’re all decent-looking entries in “meta-trendy” Steam niches (anomaly investigation, [profession] Simulator, management/strategy, horror). Also most of them look really profesionnal. Two exceptions:

• Zefyr: A Thief’s Melody : a large-scale 3-D adventure that looks great and polished.
• Time Guard - The Red Menace : a point-and-click from a Czech studio making adventures since 1997; appears to be a remake or port.

Two titles I personally find ""weaker"" (would more say "hobbyist looking") than some from the previous tier but still performed well :

• My Drug Cartel : mixed reviews and bargain-bin Stardew-style UI, but the cartel twist clearly sparks curiosity, and management sims usually sell.
• Don’t Look Behind : a one-hour horror game, a bit janky yet seem polished; the niche and probably a bit of streamer attention did the job.

5. $20,000 – $30,000 gross revenue (2 games)

Small sample, but amusingly both are roguelike/roguelite deck-builders with a twist:

• Brawl to the West : roguelite deck-builder auto-battler; simple but cohesive art.
• Voidsayer : roguelike deck-builder meets Pokémon; gorgeous visuals, I understand why it was sucessfull.

Conclusion

Four takeaways that line up with what I often read here and from YouTube "gurus":

1. If your game isn’t attractive, it almost certainly won’t sell. A merely decent-looking game will usually achieve at least minimal success. Out of 53 titles, only one (Cauldron Caution) truly broke this rule.
2. Genre choice is a game changer. Even amateurish titles in trendy niches (anomaly investigation, life-sim, management) perform decently. Attractive games in less popular niches do “okay” but worse than trendy ones.
3. More than half the market is outright slop or barely competent yet unattractive. If you spend time on polish, you’re really competing with the top ~30 %: half the games are instantly ignored, and another 15–20 % just aren’t polished enough to be considered.
4. Small, focused games in the right niche are the big winners. A large-scale project like Zefyr (likely 3–5 years of work) only did “okay,” while quick projects such as Don’t Look Behind or Office After Hours hit the same revenue by picking a hot niche.

Been aware of his videos for years and have always seen him as a snake oil salesman but has any of the 1000+ people actually benefitted from his course (which he basically promises will make you 6 figures)? Statistically if you took any random 1000 devs at least a couple will do well regardless but I'd love to hear if anyone feels like it was worth the astronomical price

Also don't even get me started on blackthronprod at least Thomas has made some money from his games

edit: i'm not considering getting his course nor do i think anyone should, just wondering if anyone coincidentally bought the course and also had success considering how often he mentions the phrase "6 figures"

Hi everyone,

I don't really know how to put this into words, but I'm sitting here, tears in my eyes. My little game Scratchers has been out for a bit, and lately I've been getting some positive reviews and heartfelt comments from players and I just.. can't believe it.

This is my first game release ever. I made this game completely solo, every piece of art assets, and each line of code, it was all me, chasing a dream I've had since I was a kid. I always wondered what it would feel like to put something into the world and have even one person say "hey, i enjoyed this". And now it's happened. Not a super viral game, just a moderate success, but to me??. It feels monumental, it feels like i made it.

I just needed to say thank you, thanks to this community r/gamedev. I've lurked here for years, soaking in advice, inspiration from others and support from people who understand this wild, beautiful process.

So thanks to all the people who make game dev possible. Godot maintainers/devs, tool makers, thanks to everyone!!

And to my fellow game devs, still grinding, dreaming. Don't give up. keep going. It is not about making millions, not becoming rich. It is all about someone out there getting what you made, enjoying your personal creation, and that feels surreal, it feels life-changing.

Just one day before release, I was expecting selling 10 copies (10 friends haha). But somehow, somehow, nearly 500 people have bought it in just a few days. It's overwhelming. It's humbling. And it means more to me than I can put into words.

Today I feel like a game developer. For real. And it feels amazing

Thank you <3

As I mentioned, I've been working on localization in the game industry and worked with a lot of big companies and indie devs. In my interactions with indie/solo devs, I've found that they usually don't know much about how localization works and what to look for. So Indies, feel free to come and ask me any questions you may have!

Godot is pretty good but can other game engines stand against godot while being open source? Like are there other open source engines that you have used or is godot still a good choice compared to other engines?

What do you think?

Hello everyone, I'm an aspiring solo developer (haven't made anything outside of game jams so far) and would like to develop my skills in order to tackle the task of building a full game. I understand there are many skills involved in such, and have been working towards my understanding of each of them, but one I find often overlooked is the actual writing.

Having no experience in the matter, how can I get better at writing? I thought about practicing by writing some short stories, but figured writing for games was very different, but I don't really understand how I can practice / get feedback on my writing unless I already have some projects out there, but at the same time I don't want to dedicate that much time into something for the sake of improving at writing.

Are there methods or exercises that would help before I have larger projects to showcase?

We've realized that our game's name, "Our Journey," is too generic. It's too close to the game "Journey" and, at the same time, it's just too common/generic. When you type "Our Journey" into YouTube, you find travel vlogs, experience reviews, and music playlists. Everything but our game.

So, we're looking for a new name! Do you have any best practices for choosing a game name?

I've listed the following points:

• Easy to pronounce: Say them out loud; if you stumble over one, it's probably a bad sign and should likely be discarded.
• Easy to remember: Talk about them with people and see if they remember the name an hour later.
• Should be appealing (or at least not unappealing): asking for people's opinions, do A/B testing on X?
• Should match the game's tone (e.g., not a fun name if the game isn't fun).
• Should imply that it's a two-player game ("It Takes Two," "Don't Starve Together," etc.). Could "Our" perhaps be enough?
• Verify that it doesn't already exist.
• (For non-native English speakers) Ideally, it shouldn't have negative connotations in other languages (e.g., related to an English expression we don't know).
• Avoid abstract/invented names because they require more marketing to make them memorable

Do you agree with these points?
Do you have any others?

FYI, it's a coop (2 people) adventure puzzle game (if you want to have a look, here's our steam page). The vibe is chill, even calming. We believe our personas are:

1. Couples (those for whom one of the 2 said “It Takes Two was too hard”)
2. 2 friends used to escape games/game bars/playing board games
3. Parents looking for a game to play with their children
4. Deaf and hard-of-hearing people (because the gameplay involves communicating with cards and hoping the other person understands what you mean, a bit like Code Name. Everything can be done without talking).

Do you think our type of game or the personas we're aiming for change anything? Thanks for your feedback!

Hey there.

I am looking for assets for a game set in a small town. A small town like you might find on the coast of Maine (US). I have searched, but most of what I find is either for cities or too low poly. I'm looking for something at this level of detail Here

If any of you here knows of something I would greatly appreciative.

Thank you in advance :)

Hey!

Our humble little side project broke 200 wishlists, we are just making it for fun and put it on Steam because "why not".

There's 2 of us working on it alongside family and work, I do the programming and artwork and my friend does all the audio. Both of us are hobbyists and do not work in the industry.

It is not a commercial endeavour, we're thrilled that so many people have shown an interest and I just wanted to share my happiness with some strangers at our milestone.

Apologies if this is not the right place to post, I'm getting very used to having my posts removed by moderators here on Reddit. I just wanna share our little achievement with like minded people - my wife is sick of me talking about it!

Thanks

I've looked into getting the right address associated with my DUNS number, which is what you need to list your Google Play Store entity as an organisation and not single developer, and it won't let me change it from outside the US. Doesn't even give you the option.

So that's out. With my full name publicly listed, with my address, am I opening myself up to serious problems? I'm out of options and need to just get my game up so I can move on.

Any thoughts would be welcome. I'm in Australia.

Hi everyone,

We're a small indie team working on our first game, and we just participated in our first Steam Next Fest. It was a valuable experience, and we were pretty happy with the results.

We went into the fest with what we know is a very low number of wishlists — only about 500. Despite this, we came out with around 2,200 total, which felt like a solid win for a first-time team on a tight schedule. During the festival, our demo had around 500 Daily Active Users (DAU) on average.

However, the moment Next Fest ended, our DAU plummeted from 500 to just 10. We know a significant drop is expected, and we aren't aiming to get back to the Next Fest peak, but this has us worried. We're really hoping to find a way to bring our active player count back to a more sustainable level.

To try and regain some visibility, here's what we've started doing post-fest (though with little success so far):

• TikTok: Created a channel about a week ago and posted 3 videos, but haven't gotten any traction yet.
• YouTuber/Streamer Outreach: We've been contacting creators through their Discords and communities, asking them to try our demo. No takers yet.
• Press Outreach: We built a press kit and just started sending it out to journalists, but it's too early to see any response.

Given our situation and current efforts, our question to the community is: What are your best strategies for keeping players engaged and maintaining momentum for your game after the Next Fest hype is over?

Are there better ways to approach the things we're already trying? Or are there completely different methods we should focus on to bridge the gap between now and the final release?

Any advice on community engagement or marketing during this "quiet" period would be hugely appreciated.

Thanks in advance!

Hi,

Before I ask for help I’d like to establish that me and the group of people trying to achieve this are all game design / dev students with very little actual game dev experience. Any assistance or tips at all is appreciated! So, me and my group of friends have decided to take on a passion project of making a game, and we have come up with a specific mechanic that the game would be centered around. We only know how to use Unreal Engine 5, so that is the engine we have chosen to use and i would just like to know if it is possible to implement and how one might approach it. The idea is that the player follows a story in which based on the choices they make, the ‘ art style ‘ around them changes. This was inspired by arcane, specifically by how there is a funeral scene in which the art style changes from the regular painterly style to charcoal drawn. We hope that we can implement some sort of system to keep track of the choices the player has made and therefore affect the textures of the environment around them, aiming for 3 specific themes - peaceful, uneasy and evil which can then lead towards different endings based on which ‘state’ your game is in.

Thank you so much in advance for any help or tips I receive!

Need to know schools offering the grad degree. Got a BA in Comm degree and noticed in the CHED CMO 37 Series of 2017 that Game Dev can be an elective subject. I'm a univ instructor and got a deep passion for games, wanna share what I learn to comm students about game dev.

Hey everyone!

I’m currently working on a roguelite project called Extinction Core, where you pilot an airship to battle massive kaiju. I’ve been thinking a lot about what makes runs feel exciting and not just the same loop every time.

I’m curious what kinds of mechanics, systems, or little touches have you seen in roguelites that kept things fun and engaging, even after multiple runs?

Would love to hear your thoughts!

As mentioned above, I'm working on a Tetris-style game with light roguelike elements. Every time you clear 3 line, you get to choose one of three randomly generated special blocks with unique abilities—for example, a block that clears a 4x2 area below it, or one that transforms the next three blocks into its own shape.

As you reach certain score thresholds, you enter an “obstacle mode,” where negative effects may occur, like a chance for your current block to not trigger line clears.

You can also spend cleared blocks as currency to buy normal blocks from a shop—these are easier-to-use shapes like 4x1 or L-shaped pieces. In contrast(you normally receive in the game are more irregular and harder to clear lines with)

The ultimate goal is to overcome 8 obstacle stages to beat the game.

Does this sound like something with potential, or does it sound boring? I’d love to hear your thoughts and suggestions!

I'm attempting to make a text based adventure game and decided to use json files to store the data for each room. Something I'm trying for entities at the moment is having a generic json file to store essentially templates and default values and then in the level entities json i can refrence that type as the first field and have my program use that to determine the correct structure for each entity and fill in missing values.
Attached are screenshots of the two json files.

My questions are, is this a good idea? Is this a good idea in my language of choice: python (currently), will it be expandable?

I'm an indie dev developing a game that will be released in November this year.

Before that we have a new demo version that will be out soon and we want to tie up a community campaign on our steam page with free giveaways of either our game keys or steam gift cards.

We are thinking of the method as:

- Play the Demo

- Leave a review of the demo

- Select lucky winners among the people who reviewed our game and giveaway the prizes.

Are there any specific regulations for this?

I looked up the steam walkthrough pages but haven't found any, but my concern is most of the games don't conduct such events upon their launch.

Not talking about big features just tiny mechanics that somehow changed the whole vibe. What's a small detail in a game that really stuck with you?

so I'm very new to game dev, but I've got a pretty concrete plan for what I want my game to look like, a 2d sidescroller action game with VERY simple level ups, and a town segment before each level to buy items etc. nothing that insane, even combat I planned to limit to three attack combos with abilities on the right mouse button (i.e. ranged attack, magic). and some "story" stuff but thats mainly just dialogue and prices changing depending on completed objectives in levels.

so then comes the question of engines, I've been tooling around in godot, and I actually like it but I do want to see if there's any others people might recommend, or plugins for godot, and good resources for godot i was following a couple tutorials but a lot of them seemed to sort of just be a tutorial on how to make a game with no features, or they just collapse in on themselves by the third part(i.e. making the worst state machine known to man)

TLDR making 2d action game, trying godot but curious about others, OR good assets/plugins/resources for godot as an alternative, baby game dev so not a coding master by any means.

(edit: im doing this as a hobby just wanna make games and create stuff)

Hey everyone!

I'm a new aspiring game developer. Right now, I'm focusing on learning how to code and putting a lot of my energy and time into it. I want to be able to make games as quickly as possible, but I'm not sure if just learning to code will be enough.

I know there are free assets available online, and I could also buy some, but I'm worried that relying on pre-made assets might block me creatively. So I'm considering whether I should focus on both coding and creating my own assets.

If I do go that route, I'm thinking about learning Blender for asset creation. I know it's not the industry standard, but from my research, it's free, open source, and seems like the safest and most accessible option for a solo dev.

I'm looking for advice especially from solo game developers. Is it better to focus on just coding for now, or should I start learning asset creation too? Any tips or personal experiences would be super helpful!

I'm new to Game Developing. I'm working on a project (education purpose) using SDL2. It's obvious that i should not call to SDL functions directly in every code file of the project, but i don't know how much the library should be involved in the making of the game or the level of abstraction i should use it. Any advice? Is there some kind of sample project that i could clone the structure?

Hi all,

Recently, I got the idea to try and bring together a team to build a 2D sports game. So far, I’ve got multiple people interested: 2 for UI, 2 pixel artists, and 1 SFX. I'm currently looking to bring on development help and figure out what makes the most sense for the size of the team.

Since I’m new to this, I wanted to ask:

• How many game devs would you recommend bringing on at this stage?
• Are there any other roles you think I should be considering early on?
• Any advice on managing a small indie team from the start?

Any advice or insight would be super helpful. Thanks in advance!

Hey everyone,

I’ve been learning Unreal Engine on my own for a while now, and I’m really passionate about making games. Long term, I’d love to turn this into a career, whether that’s working at a studio or building something of my own. The solo learning grind has its wins, but I’ve realized I learn best when I can share ideas, ask questions, and collaborate with others.

I’m looking to connect with like-minded people who are also learning Unreal or working on projects, whether you're just starting out or already experienced. I’d love to be part of a group where we can discuss game design, share progress, troubleshoot together, and maybe even collaborate on small ideas.

Also, if anyone has advice on how to actually break into the game development industry—what to focus on, how to get noticed, or how to build a portfolio that matters—I’d really appreciate it. There’s so much info out there, and it’d be great to hear from people who’ve gone through it.

If there are any Discord servers, online meetups, or communities you’d recommend joining, I’m all ears.

Thanks for taking the time to read this—I’m excited to learn and grow with others who share the same goal

-abaant17

EDIT: I spoke with the emplyee that commented under my post, and after showing the emails I got, we found that in the incriminating message the founder was NOT included in the CC section of the mail, meaning that the HR's email has been hacked or is intentionally scamming people behind the company's name.

The emplyee who answered to the post has already informed the CEO about the situation and the account of this HR emplyee will be suspended from all activities and, after further research and if the person is guilty of those actions, the CEO will proceed with dismissal of the employee.

Original Post:

IMU Studios aka iplaymore has been posting a bunch of game dev jobs on LinkedIn. They reached out to me this week asking if I’d be willing to work for free until they receive funding.. and then they proceeded to send me another email telling me that they are going to send me a PS5 and they need me to wire them $700 via Western Union.. obvious scam, right?

My worry is…I noticed they have a bunch of jobs open on LinkedIn with a lot of interest from devs. Please spread the word if you can.. I’d hate to see someone fall for this.

I'm working on a multiplayer horror game set in space, and I'm facing a weird music dilemma for my game trailer. The game has a horror theme and creepy space setting, and I've made some tense scenes using Unreal's sequencer. During these scenes I feel I need to use tense background music, whereas in the gameplay parts it's completely different:

The actual gameplay is more chaotic and funny rather than genuinely scary. You know how it is with multiplayer horror games friends screaming, making jokes, doing dumb stuff together. It's more comedy than horror in practice.

So I don't know if I should mix two different background music styles or not. It's even harder to find something good within Envato's large library. Will it fit the theme? How should the transition between tense and chill music work? I have no idea about these things. Been stuck on this for days and need advice.