I was getting drift between the quest modal, ground arrow, minimap, and atlas in Realm of Echoes. I replaced the duplicated handoff logic with one tracked-objective state that every cue reads from.

That fixed stale markers, but it also made the opening feel over-directed: accept the quest and four systems all point at the same target. My next pass is to remove one cue instead of adding more logic.

I’m leaning toward cutting the center prompt after the first objective. Which cue would you remove?

Developer disclosure: some 3D assets are Meshy-assisted; this UI and runtime integration are custom.

Hi everybody! We're the creators of Rogue Waters and Hard West 2, and we're super excited to announce that after months of hard work our new tactical game, Nightmare Frontier, is out now! We'd love you to check it out and let us know what you think: https://store.steampowered.com/app/3310950/Nightmare_Frontier

Hi everyone, I'm continueing to refine my game pre-launch. I have a demo which is releasing in September and would really appreciate any feedback you have as this is my very first game!

Here is my fourth devlog for my mobile game Tiny Fantasy World. Here I go over my combat system, let me know what you think!

So, I think it’s worth talking about my plan for BotHacker and how it differs from other games in this genre. If you’ve played the game you’ve probably noticed two main differences: No random encounters (wild bots visibly roam the overworld) and the unique energy system used in battle.

No Tall Grass

I’ve never liked the jarring feeling of running through grass and getting jumpscared by a random enemy, nor the lack of agency of just hoping the RNG showed up with the monster I was looking for.

Giving each bot its own wandering NPC allows a lot of options. For example, you can flee from a battle and come back. Because of that I’m looking into keeping status effects outside of battles and allow them to degrade over time rather than each new encounter resetting some or all.

You can also dodge around bots if you want to avoid a fight, adding an alternate way of getting through a higher-level dungeon than direct combat.

Right now each wildbot has a few values applied to give it a distinct movement style.

SightRange: When do they spot you and change behavior (chase or flee).

Speed: How fast do they move between tiles.

IdleTime: How long after a step do they wait before taking another. DoesFlee: This is just true or false and determines if the bot will run from you or try to attack.

To compare, the player has a Speed of 1 at a walk and 2 at a run an IdleTime of 0, so in most cases a wild bot is going to be far slower than the player. This early I’m making them very slow with only a few being as much as Speed 1, with Pack-Rat being 1.3 only it flees. Later I mean to add more complex things like jumpers that don’t walk, but leap between tiles, fliers that ignore collisions and specialized behaviors like surprise attacks from cover, or a charging state that is much faster but can’t turn or redirect and can overshoot or collide with walls.

Energy 

The energy system in battle is somewhat complex and differs between each bot. Rather than each move having a set number of charges to use, they each an energy (EN) cost to use. This changes play so that early level moves don’t get instantly trashed for stronger options  because  our bot may not have a high enough regen rate to sustain a more powerful move. There are three main stats at play:

EnStart: When entering a battle this is how much energy the bot gets at the start of battle. EnMax: This is the maximum capacity the bot can have. EnRegen: This is how fast the bot can recharge, which happens every turn after all actions have finished. 

There’s also two more hidden variables for each, called Limit and ScaleLevel, which define what each of those values will cap out at and which level that will happen. Elect-Ant for example has a Regen that starts at 3 (level 1) and a limit of 6, but will not reach that until level 90. Not great, but early game bots will be weaker.

Compare that with Pack-Rat with a starting regen is 1.8, a max of 5, but will reach that max at level 30. Great for early game, maybe not so great later.

Then there’s Imp, which has an EnStart of 20, a EnMax of 20 and regen of 0! That gives that bot a limited number of attacks before it has no options. That is until we get into positive energy moves. Recharge is a move that grants the user 12 EN. There are also moves that increase or multiple regen rate and those that add EN incrementally over several turns.

I also have a Status Effect called Overcharge that increases regen by 50%, but will damage the effected bot unless they are a Voltaic type. Now, combine that with the move Discharge which has a damage value determined by the total available EN, will use up all energy and also cure the Overcharge status, meaning a bot that can apply Overcharge to itself and has Discharge has a powerful attack combo.

This is an example of how I’m moving Status Effects from being purely negative to having complex interacts. Jamming for example is applied to your own bot, but the effects are applied to it's enemies, while Malware is a repeat damage status, but it can spread if either bot uses a Cyber type attack on the other.

Status Effects

I decided I didn’t want to limit to just one at a time. This may end up causing issues with balance, but I kinda want to see how broken things get. I kinda love a good broken system because ‘broken’ suddenly becomes the new meta. Plus, although other games seem to have only a few ‘official’ Status Effects, there are a bunch of others that don’t get an obvious tag but still play much the same. 

 Currently I have: Burn, Rust, Overcharge, Irradiated, System Lock, Malware, Jamming, Stunned, Frozen, and Magnetized. That doesn’t include buff and debuff to the stats. I’m working on making each fulfill a unique niche while giving some extra flavor and complex interactions between types.

Element Types

Coming up with a good list of Types that fit this world, offer unique interactions, weaknesses and strengths has been a challenge. Likely this list will change as I go but currently I have: 

Hydro, Thermal, Cryo, Voltaic, Polymer, Titanium, Steel, Rust, Atomic, Lead, Magnetic, Sonic, Aero, Cyber.

This provides a lot of great matchups but you’ll note there is no clear or obvious trifecta for starters, and that’s something I struggled with for a while. The classic: Water, Fire, Grass doesn’t exist. 

In the end I went for Hydro, Thermal, Polymer with the final forms being Hydro/Titanium, Thermal/Magnetic, Sonic/Polymer, which works out to a complex but effective counter triangle.

Initially I was thinking of my type chart in comparison to other type charts, and ascribing comparisons to each, for example Rust has functional similarity to Poison, but if that’s the case Rust is also kind of Ground because I use it a lot for construction or mining bots in lieu of an actual ‘Earth’ element. Ultimately any comparison falls apart upon examination.

What’s planned for the Future?

Combat Systems

I’m working on adding two-turn attacks for moves that have a charge up turn and those that have a recharge turn after, and also queued actions, attacks that take a turn or so to hit, but the user isn’t locked into that action, can act independently, and the attack will still follow-through even if they were downed in the interim. I have a list of features I want to add for various attacks with unique behaviors. I’ll be working on getting more of those in to add additional strategies. I also have plans for “battlefield effects”. Kind of status effects that alter the battlefield and everyone on it. That system is currently in the planning phase though.

Attack Anims

I reused a lot of attack animations to get the current movesets in for the itchio build, and mean to get more VFX and SFX set up for those. There’s a lot so I’ll be prioritizing early game and animations I can apply (temporarily) to several. Probably one of the most difficult parts of this game was getting GameMaker’s sequences to play nice with my animation system. It has some particularly odd ways of playing and storing data that require a whole converter. If that interests you maybe I’ll explain further.

More bots and Upgrade forms

I currently have 17 bots, 9 tier-ones, 5 tier-twos and 3 tier-threes.

I’d like to finish the forms for the bots I have in game sooner than later. Elect-Ant needs Pupa-Cell (I’ve teased their art a bit) and Elektrosect, Pack-Rat will get Cargo-Cart, Toasty will get Roasty. From there I have a list of 101 total bots I’d like to add from which I will be working through slowly. 

Expanding the World

The next area I’m planning is a new town. If you go north from the abandoned Tech Campus, you’ll reach a town I’m calling Malefactory (Malefactor? Get it?) which will be overrun by brigands who use mostly steel types. 

This is where I’ll be introducing more battles with other Bot Hackers. How that plays out is going to be interesting because I DO NOT want to do the “you made eye contact with me” thing. They may end up chasing the player like the bots do, or following other behaviors.

It seems like I'm the only one how want to just go to a network share an an application after I login and the files are just there. No having to go mount anything first, what a wasteful step that is. :) So after making a gnome extension for gvfs mounts/shares, I thought it would be great if I could mount other types of storage the same way and even sync data between them. I got close to buying rcloneview for its paywalled features when I decided to go do my own thing, introducing Mt Sync: https://codeberg.org/gavindi/MtSync

Sharing since maybe just maybe there's someone else who misses the Windows "reconnect drive at login" feature..... 🤷‍♂️️

Hey everyone! I’m currently developing my second commercial game. I really hope I can finish it because I’m loving how it’s turning out! I released my first game recently and am already diving back into the work—hehe.

The premise goes something like this:

You’re trapped in a prison much like Alcatraz. But there’s a catch: nobody actually dies. Whenever someone dies, they’re instantly revived to continue their punishment forever. The only way to escape this eternal loop is to participate in (and survive) a series of deadly minigames in pursuit of freedom.

I want to wrap up the initial version with at least 10 minigames and a main menu, then release a quick demo for people to test. It might take a little while, but I hope to have something playable by the end of next month so I can start promoting it properly with a demo.

Since I still need 3 more minigames to hit my demo goal, I’d love your help. What kind of quick, tense, or chaotic challenges would you like to see in a game themed around "prisoners fighting for their lives"? All the minigames I’m developing will support up to 4 local players; I want to create some real chaos and ensure the minigames are dynamic and fun.

Drop your ideas here—I’ll check them all out! What do you think of the premise? I’m reworking a project from a game jam I participated in a while back, but I’m making huge improvements this time. I plan to add dozens of character faces; I’m even going to ask communities to draw faces and send them to me so I can include them as prisoners in the game. Later on, I might open up sign-ups for something like "Be a prisoner in my game"—it’s going to be a blast! XD

In this blog I cover the technical bits of the new features I added.

- how to communicate between nodes in Godot

- how to randomize attributes

Hey everyone! Mad Merchant is finally here with its official gameplay trailer. Our game is launching on July 20th!

We would love to hear your thoughts on our game, where you keep an armored train running across the wasteland and travel to dystopian cities to trade.

As an indie developer, you are our greatest support. Don't forget to add the game to your Steam Wishlist to support us at launch—it means the world to us! ❤️

🔗 The link for the Steam page and wishlist is in the comments!

🦋 BENEATH THE WINGS OF A DYING KING - THE BLEEDING LORE OF ATLAS VANE

Greetings, weary travelers wandering into the eerie, mist-enshrouded world of Wandering Relics.

After countless sleepless nights lost in the dark—meticulously refining every shadow, every layer of silk—I can finally bring this official Character Sheet into the light. Today, let us unveil the first haunting secrets of Atlas Vane — The Sovereign Enigma (The King of Shadows) on the dying planet of Aurelith.

When I first put pen to paper for Atlas, he was never meant to be mere eye candy. I wanted every elegant brushstroke, every shade of color cascading over his silhouette to speak the silent poetry of a perished race, a ruthless biological curse, and a possessive love that suffocates the soul.

🎨 Cryptic Whispers within the Design

His majestic wings draw their breath entirely from a real-world creature of the night—the Attacus atlas moth. The violent bleeding of burning orange fading into brick red, only to wither away into a pale violet-white lace at the edge, is a visual metaphor for the eternal, decaying twilight of the Cathedral of Dust where his lonely throne resides.

The intoxicating contrast between his untamed crimson hair, his bare chiseled chest, and a face drowned in profound, melancholic sorrow is the exact alluring "vibe" I conjured for the devotees of Otome and Dark Romance. Even the gilded Art Deco filigree gracing the corners of the canvas breathes in perfect harmony with the grand, rotting architecture of the planet's ancient halls.

📜 The Obsession of a Monster

If you dare to step into Atlas’s route, do not pray for a tender, sweet romance. This is Hardcore Psychological Horror, after all!

Atlas lingers ten steps away in the absolute dark, weaving a web around your psyche. He will distort your very reality until you blindly believe the entire universe has turned to ash, leaving only him as your sole sanctuary, your only god, the only air you are permitted to breathe to survive.

🎮 Dare You Step Inside and Face Him?

Will you be the savior to warm the frozen heart of this desolate king before his flesh completely petrifies into stone? Or will you carelessly surrender your true name, allowing him to rewrite the very fabric of your soul?

The free Demo of Wandering Relics is now officially live on the shelves. The doors to the ominous matchmaker's shop swing open silently, and the suffocating gray mist awaits your first step...

See you beneath the heavy shadows of the Cathedral of Dust!

We've published our latest development update, sharing some of the improvements we're making based on community feedback, a behind-the-scenes look at development, and a preview of what's coming next for Golf 5 MAX.

If you'd like to see what we've been working on, you can read the full devlog here:

👉 https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/3929380/view/716784848176414812

As always, we'd love to hear your thoughts and feedback. Thanks for following the journey!

Built a new area for my game. Welcome to Frostfield Village, situated at the comfy unison of frosty peaks and snowy fields.

Spent a lot of time hand crafting each of the houses (and some special ones too) and also the giant dragon totem for their divine dragon deity.

It was time consuming but I had a lot of fun while building it. Hope you'll like it :)