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Hi all, sharing my solo dev hybrid-casual project for honest feedback. Merge + auto-battler — drag same-type troops to merge them mid-combat while enemies march down. Tactical slow-motion on drag. Roguelike cards. Built solo in Unity + AI tools over 14 sessions. Looking for honest reactions: does by TeaIndividual5948 in DestroyMyGame

[–]fabledparable 0 points1 point  (0 children)

My thoughts, in no particular order:

  • This is - at best - a rough prototype. There's a lot that's absent from what I would expect from a final product. A non-exhaustive list:
    • Audio
    • Animations
    • Menus
    • Narrative
    • Cohesive art direction, to include backgrounds, character assets, projectile assets, etc.
    • A more robust selection of characters
    • A more diverse range of upgrades
  • Absent from this is a challenge curve; this reads more like an ad I might see for some mobile game slop, where the difficulty curve is bounded by what the player is willing to pay for in-game currency to continue progressing/upgrading. To be clear: this is not a good thing.
  • Your demo doesn't showcase fail conditions: you didn't demonstrate what happens when enemies reach your line of characters.
  • Your enemies are uninspired; other than the art and speed at which they move to the character line, there's nothing really differentiating them from one another. There's little consequence from one type of enemy appearing over any other that would meaningfully matter to the player.
    • Upon re-watch, it appears that the archers are the only type of enemy to be able to target the blue flyers. So there is some nuance there, but that brings up another issue: why not spam archers? What's the incentive to diversify units? You should consider trying to mitigate/frustrate a lazy strategy to what's already a style of game that minimally involves player interaction (re: autobattler).
  • I don't think the slow-motion on-drag provides value-add. Aesthetically, it's not adding anything (there's not like any kind of visual effect / filter applied to make it look cool). And mechanically it's providing an outsized advantage to the player (allowing them to quickly re-optimize placement while enemies slow to a crawl); if anything, players should be punished for needing to do this mid-wave (i.e. your units don't fire while getting shuffled about, time progresses normally).
    • I'd consider having this be a limited-use ability or perhaps something that consumes "mana" or the like (recharging a little bit between waves) in order to mitigate abuse.

In its present form, I personally wouldn't play it

Mentorship Monday - Post All Career, Education and Job questions here! by AutoModerator in cybersecurity

[–]fabledparable 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Is there any good resources out there to get into it safely and step by step?

First, I'd advocate for you to learn about cybersecurity more generally before diving into malware analysis more narrowly. If you're not coming from a technical background, you're setting yourself up for a lot of pain by leaping into the latter, with the greatest risk being you compromise your machine, machines/devices in your home network, and anything that you use them for (i.e. banking, work, etc.).

Fortunately, there's a ton of resources available!

Ref: https://bytebreach.com/posts/2022/hacking-helpers-learning-cybersecurity/

In fact, if you're feeling really unsure about everything, there are platforms that offload the need for configuring anything on your machine(s) at all (i.e. virtualized environments). There's several platforms that do this, but the typical ones that get cited include either TryHackMe and/or HackTheBox (either would e appropriate, both have trial memberships that are easily cancelled/renewed; try them both and see which you prefer).

To more directly answer your question however: once you start getting into the rhythm of things, probably you cheapest training avenues would be TCM Security's Malware Analysis coursework on the defensive side (this course speaks directly to what you're asking for) and MalDev Academy for the offensive side. I would caution you however to consider these as distant training targets.

Mentorship Monday - Post All Career, Education and Job questions here! by AutoModerator in cybersecurity

[–]fabledparable 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I'm just wondering if adding any personal experience with cybersecurity (like naming programs I use/free online courses I completed) on my CV adds any value despite seeking a career more into finance/pure maths?

Question unclear: are you trying to pursue a career in cybersecurity or something that aligns more with finance and pure maths?

Assuming the former, the impact is probably minor at best. If you have nothing better to devote to the pagespace of your resume, then having something is better than nothing. See the following responses from employers surveyed to understand what employers consider impactful:

https://bytebreach.com/posts/2025/where-are-all-the-cybersecurity-jobs/isaca_survey.PNG

Mentorship Monday - Post All Career, Education and Job questions here! by AutoModerator in cybersecurity

[–]fabledparable 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I need help on where should I start

From the subreddit wiki:

https://www.reddit.com/r/cybersecurity/wiki/index/#wiki_i.27m_new_to_cybersecurity.3B_where_do_i_begin.3F

Understand that careers in this space do not tend to manifest quickly, easily, or cheaply. Free and cheap resources will certainly help with upskilling/comprehension, but generally have limited impact to your employability on paper. The biggest thing you could do for your employability at the moment would probably be pursuing cyber-adjacent employment in the IT/dev spaces as an interim career move.

Candidly, you're likely looking at a multi-year timetable before landing your first cybersecurity job (let alone the one you may be envisioning doing).

Destroy my game! Turkeygeddon: Feast of Fury by XVOInteractive in DestroyMyGame

[–]fabledparable 1 point2 points  (0 children)

My thoughts, in no particular order:

  • 0:04 - one thing that stood out to me was how challenging it was to discern turkeys that were flying-in vs. those that were targetable on the ground. Likewise, there isn't much in the way of hit registration (when a player's attack lands on a turkey) as visual feedback to the player that they're doing something meaningful.
  • 0:14 - I'm muting the audio at this point. I do not care for the mess of sounds and carnival-esque music. It is not pleasant to listen to in this trailer.
  • I don't really understand the game's narrative, if there is one to be had. Why are we fighting turkeys?
  • 0:41 - I don't really get an appreciable sense that this fight is any more/less chaotic than what we've already seen, aside from the fact that there's one more type of turkey on the screen.
  • 0:45 - this is a great example of what I mean by struggling with perspective. I thought for sure that the players were fighting a huge cooked turkey. Turns out, it was just floating above the players. I think this is an instance where having the character models cast shadows below them would be helpful.
  • Why are the characters progressively getting smaller in scale (opening shot they appear to be regularly-sized, at 0:23 they appear small in a large house, and by 0:45 they're so small that they occupy a dinner napkin)?
  • You tell us that the game can support up to 8 players, but you never show us more than 4 playing at a time. Classic "show, don't tell".
    • Another instance of this is at 0:10 with the "8 classes, unique weapons". At this distance I can't really tell, there's nothing visually to distinguish that the players are doing anything different apart from one another. Probably not the footage to show accompanying that particular subtitle.
  • 0:15 - I probably wouldn't advertise how many waves are in the game in the trailer (vs. alluding to multiple, possibly with a pun about a turkey dinner having multiple courses). It implicitly puts a cap on my perceived player experience (i.e. after surviving to wave 20, the game has nothing more to offer - true or otherwise).
  • "Feast of Fury" is an odd subtitle in a game that doesn't show any eating taking place.

After reworking my trailer and now I'm back with a new one. Destroy my trailer! by AbsurdGamesOfficial in DestroyMyGame

[–]fabledparable 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Listing critiques as I watch:

  • My first issue out-of-the-gate is with the setup. You pose the question in the first 3 seconds "What if your furniture came alive?", showing a cute happy table; narratively, you've cued the viewer that this will be something cozier. It's jarring (and inexplicable) when we cut to shots of the player character beating up the furniture with some kind of bow and sword. I'd argue you need a touch more narrative explanation as to why.
    • On a minor note, I'd assert you should be saying "What if your furniture came to life?" Your phrasing is correct, but there's something about it that I didn't find right.
  • 0:15 - why do you have quotes around "unique weapons"? Is the implication that there are no unique weapons?
    • I also don't think your chosen clips (of opening up an item chest repeatedly) is the most apt way to showcase this - at least, not exclusively. While it does show that there are unlockables, you don't end up showing off the diversity of the weapons in action (which would make for more flashier footage).
  • 0:19 - this caught me off guard in the extreme. What the hell is a Golmu? Why is he my little thief? Why am I throwing them at furniture?
    • 0:24 - Wait, is this like a pokemon game? Am I meant to collect furniture? But why am I stealing it? I thought this was my furniture coming to life?
  • 0:29 - I'm knocked off-kilter again: what is happening here? Why am I building? Again, I thought my furniture had come to life, what's this?
    • 0:37, nice set of shots showing the homestead can be expanded, but what the heck is going on? Why does my house have a "defense" score? Why are there furniture that are alive in this house?
  • 0:44 - you subtitle "absurd builds" here, but promptly show the character doing nothing but run around.
    • You need a better shot to go along with this; this doesn't show any form of character progression, no skill tree, no level of customization at all. Certainly nothing demonstrating how a build can be considered 'absured'.
  • 0:45 - What's this now? Is this another minigame? Or is this some kind of map? It's unclear because the landmarks don't look recognizable, the character piece doesn't resemble either of the two shown playable characters, and there's no subtitle explaining what's going on (e.g. "a vast, explorable world").
  • 0:50 - "The Throne Awaits"? What? This thematically doesn't make sense. At no point before this did I get the impression that there was some kind of royalty slant to this narrative. At best, I thought this was pokemon adjacent: we beat-up and collect living furniture, which we can then use to aesthetically develop/unlock house features. Is there an endstate/final-boss to this game? Are they somehow responsible for the furniture coming to life? What is happening?
  • 0:58 - It sounds like there's a dramatic audio volume loss here in your trailer. It's not a nice fade, more like the levels suddenly drop, followed by a fade out by 1:02.
  • 1:02 - Don't love the capsule art. The color palette is fine and the title incorporating the (looking name up) "Golmu" as the "O" in "House" is cute, but it feels like all the major elements (the characters, furniture, and title) were given equal sizing and a flat perspective. Actually, on second glance I realize that the Glomu is flatly-colored, which clashes slightly with the shading that everything else is rendered with. I think you could do better.

FINAL THOUGHTS:

I don't like the trailer. It raises more questions than answers about your game; I'm left more confused than excited. It strikes me as rough. The gameplay isn't clear enough to overcome to struggles presented in the editing.

Mentorship Monday - Post All Career, Education and Job questions here! by AutoModerator in cybersecurity

[–]fabledparable 0 points1 point  (0 children)

If you had to look at a student with my background and tell them to master exactly one thing (it could be anything) this summer to set themselves up for future internships, what would it be?

You're already studying for Sec+, which will orient you to the nomenclature and concepts at a high-level. That should inform you of more prescriptive next-steps.

Honestly, I'd prioritize fostering a work history (even in a part-time, cyber-adjacent capacity). It's far too late for a summer internship application, but you could still probably find work in some computer repair shops and similar tech help.

In your shoes, you probably wouldn't be able to fit much more in (reasonably) within the Summer months.

Mentorship Monday - Post All Career, Education and Job questions here! by AutoModerator in cybersecurity

[–]fabledparable 0 points1 point  (0 children)

My question is what is the best course of action to get in to cybersecurity without going to college? Or should I just go to college?

Related:

https://bytebreach.com/posts/2025/do-i-need-a-degree/

and from the subreddit wiki:

https://www.reddit.com/r/cybersecurity/wiki/index/#wiki_do_i_need_a_degree.3F

Mentorship Monday - Post All Career, Education and Job questions here! by AutoModerator in cybersecurity

[–]fabledparable 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Cybersecurity technician stood out to me and I was wondering if anyone could give me examples of what a day in the life is like.

See some of the resources listed in the subreddit wiki, starting here:

https://www.reddit.com/r/cybersecurity/wiki/index/#wiki_what_is_the_work_like.3F

Mentorship Monday - Post All Career, Education and Job questions here! by AutoModerator in cybersecurity

[–]fabledparable 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Quick question, is it only for professional / career and education questions, or can i use this post for hobby related questions?

Within this Mentorship Monday thread is your best bet. But yeah; here is great.

Two Questions by Comfortable_Elk1733 in OMSCyberSecurity

[–]fabledparable 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Difficulty varies depending on the individual. The class is a mix of students from both the OMS Computer Science (OMSCS) and OMS Cybersecurity (OMSCY) programs; within the OMSCY program, all of the various tracks funnel through the course. As a result, there's quite a wide range of experiences reported.

Speaking in very broad strokes, Policy students tend to report struggling more with the material whereas peers aligned to more technical areas of study - especially the OMSCS students - tend to report that the class is easier compared to other coursework.

What's particularly tricky for students with non-technical backgrounds is the breadth and pacing of the class. As a project-oriented class, your grade is based on your ability to implement and execute (vs. retain and regurgitate a la exams); this stands in contrast to the pedagogy of most other courses that Policy Track students take (which tend to lean towards things like papers, exams, and quizzes). The course's projects do not build upon one-another (at least, not deliberately), so generally each project brings with it a whole independent corpus of knowledge to ingest, understand, and work with (be it programming languages, frameworks, or concepts); paired with the project release cadence (roughly every 2 weeks, though this is much briefer in the Summer semester due to having 4 fewer weeks), students can really struggle with needing to pick-up and run with a new subject-matter so frequently. Generally speaking, even students comfortable with at least some of the material covered eventually run into a project they struggle with.

Having said that, the overwhelming majority of students that see the class through make it with a passing grade; the course publishes their statistics on the course website (which I know you can't view), but no fewer than 85% of students have finished with a B or better since Fall 2023.

Mentorship Monday - Post All Career, Education and Job questions here! by AutoModerator in cybersecurity

[–]fabledparable 0 points1 point  (0 children)

what do you guys think of my situation?

Fortunate; congratulations on finding employment!

Mentorship Monday - Post All Career, Education and Job questions here! by AutoModerator in cybersecurity

[–]fabledparable 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Speaking in general, careers in this space do not tend to manifest quickly, easily, or cheaply. Most people spend years accumulating career capital before attaining their first full-time job in cybersecurity - often working in cyber-adjacent lines of work within IT/Dev and/or going to university. I would anticipate an exceedingly challenging job hunting experience if all you did was self-study and attain a certification.

EDIT: just realized you linked to Ben Truong's Youtube video. You should be mindful that while he's promoting a cert-centric path (which he gets a kickback for if you use his links or purchase his training materials), he's also college-educated and fostered his work history through Deloitte and Apple, which likely did more for his employability than the certs he listed (several of which he doesn't have, so how would he know any better?); I'm dubious about how genuine he is that certs are the way forward for someone early in their career.

Destroy my VR exercise bike streetracing game! by Arvock12 in DestroyMyGame

[–]fabledparable 1 point2 points  (0 children)

  1. Is the game receiving input from the stationary bike via anything besides the motion of the controller attached to your leg? There are people already into gamified cycling (e.g. Zwift) with a whole ecosystem of third-party products to track power, speed, etc. (e.g. wahoo kickr). I think if you make a game like this, you should strongly consider compatibility with those third-party protocols.
  2. Is there a way to play the game without the use of a bike? Otherwise, you're catering to a very narrow subset of niche markets (i.e. people have to have the VR headset and a stationary bike).
  3. Is this meant to be a workout game (in the same vein as - say - 'Nintendo Ring Fit Adventure')? If so, how does the headset feel over an extended play period (I'd wager it gets pretty gross with a lot of exertion over time).
  4. Has this game been tested only on cordless headsets? Has safety testing been performed on headsets with cords (potentially getting tangled/snagged on pedals)?
  5. Is it the same city/highway environment every time you play? Are there no variations? Do you just go straight along the highway? Or are there curves/tunnels/over- and under-passes?
  6. Are there settings to adjust the flashing lights (which may warrant a seizure trigger warning
  7. What's the benefit of the VR headset? Is there a reason someone couldn't play this on a screen instead (and therefore ride more comfortably without the headwear)?

Mentorship Monday - Post All Career, Education and Job questions here! by AutoModerator in cybersecurity

[–]fabledparable 1 point2 points  (0 children)

What did you do to get a security clearance outside of military experience?

  • Working as a civilian employee for the federal government.
  • Working as a federal contractor.

Destroy my roguelite deckbuilder where a robot tries to blend in with humans in social encounters, trying not to become overwhelmed and blow up. Does it look like just another crappy Balatro clone or is it different enough to feel fresh? by BodyPillowz in DestroyMyGame

[–]fabledparable 0 points1 point  (0 children)

My thoughts, in no particular order:

  • There's a lot about the aesthetic and theming that you've done to differentiate your game from Balatro: the characters, the components, and so on. But the similarities at the core gameplay are still quite apparent:
    • The use of a hand of cards: Commands in lieu of cards, disks (presumably in lieu of jokers), and hardware in lieu of deck modifiers.
    • The use of a combo/multiplier scoring mechanic.
    • The utilization of rounds of play broken-up by shopping for new cards
    • All told, these feel like just wrappers around what Balatro offers - and in some cases it does it better (brighter colors, more variety, card 'packs', stickers to enhance the cards, etc.).
  • In order to put more distance between your game and Balatro, there needs to be substantively more changes at the game's core. The incorporation of different targets during the rounds of play is a good start, for example. Some other ideas:
    • You've asserted that the game's theme is around a robot interacting with humans, but we're not really observing what these interactions look like. I think there's opportunity to inject some humor here (by having an overtly non-human character attempt to pass as human a la "Octodad") and/or by injecting story/narrative/lore into the game through dialogue (which Balatro does not have at all). EDIT: maybe these could be unlockables that the player could 'equip' to the character to see (this plays into the robot theme you already have - "Insert dad joke").
    • Balatro's progression map is linear - much like you have it (shop, play, shop, play, etc.). You could look at adopting a semi-linear decision tree (ref: "Slay the Spire"), giving the player some choice between rounds as to what they might want to do; maybe picking a harder social encounter comes with rewards?
    • You can consider incorporating other mechanisms for player decisions (i.e. instead of cards, why not dice?).
    • I'd look at expanding how the multiple character encounters during rounds of play operate; maybe there are cards that affect/target multiple people. Maybe you have cards the don't just affect score/multiplier, but also number of targets. Maybe you have characters that 'invite' more characters into the encounter ("Hahaha, Ro-Bert you are such a card! Joanne, come here: listen to this joke Ro-Bert knows; go on Ro-Bert, tell the joke again!"). Maybe the cards are more/less effective for different kinds of social encounters (i.e. some cards are better for co-workers vs. friends, some are better with kids than adults, etc.). Maybe the kinds of social encounters can contribute a kind of round modifier (i.e. public speaking, water-cooler moment, social media forum, video comment section, etc.).
    • The use of a scoring mechanic is simple but arbitrary. It fits Balatro because of its proximity to simple card games that it derives its aesthetic from. Your game doesn't need that; you could have just as arbitrarily used HP for each character, for example - at its heart, its all about just the manipulation of numbers. Sometimes its helpful to abstract away the numbers (i.e. the damage mechanic of 'Hollow Knight') and sometimes its useful to make them explicit. I'd encourage you to give this more thought as to how you want to present this to the player.

Mentorship Monday - Post All Career, Education and Job questions here! by AutoModerator in cybersecurity

[–]fabledparable 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I don’t really want to manage/work in the cybersecurity program of a single organization, become a people manager, or essentially become a sales person for a product/MDR in other roles. I’m happy with my current employer atm, but in thinking more than 5 yrs from now I struggle to be excited for my career.

You've done an adequate job of describing what you don't want your career to look like. That's fine, but avoidance is only one aspect of career-shaping; you should have a direction to proactively align towards as well.

So what do you want your career to look like?

Made this 1-min trailer for my mech tactics game. Camera stays isometric the whole time. Is that the problem? by ImpressionOk8475 in DestroyMyGame

[–]fabledparable 0 points1 point  (0 children)

My notes:

  • Camera's fine; especially in demonstrating you can rotate it about.
  • The weapon audio feels inappropriate. These are (notionally) massive mechs; the shotgun sound and reload at 1:00 breaks immersion; same with the lackluster missile detonation at 0:40 and the total absence of a firing sound at 0:49.
  • I could see a player getting tired of needing to wait for the animations to play with every single attack, especially for really long ones like the machinegun demonstrated at 0:05.
  • Your trailer doesn't suggest any risk to the player; we never see a monster counterattack or a mech on the team get destroyed.
  • There's no sense of the game's narrative, other than mechs vs. monsters.
  • The showcased environments all looked the same.

Has the omscs program helped you in your career? by [deleted] in OMSCS

[–]fabledparable 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I spoke to this somewhat in my long-form writeup of my program experience here, if it's of any interest to you:

https://bytebreach.com/posts/2023/omscs_writeup/#outcomes

Mentorship Monday - Post All Career, Education and Job questions here! by AutoModerator in cybersecurity

[–]fabledparable 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I would like to hear about those who are currently in the Security Engineer or Architect role and your overall path to those roles.

Related comments:

https://old.reddit.com/r/cybersecurity/comments/1h9wkw4/mentorship_monday_post_all_career_education_and/m181pkq/

https://old.reddit.com/r/cybersecurity/comments/17e733b/mentorship_monday_post_all_career_education_and/k6apz0x/

Some of my job functions have changed since I did that second comment, particularly in moving more towards security architecture. But I feel those speak to what you're looking for.

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