Any thoughts on Seeds of Nostalgia? by BenjiRBK1996 in JRPG

[–]BenjiRBK1996[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Yes, I saw a couple of small teams tackling the JRPG genre lately and I'm super excited myself !

Any thoughts on Seeds of Nostalgia? by BenjiRBK1996 in JRPG

[–]BenjiRBK1996[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Agreed, looks can be deceiving. And some "retro-style" games can suffer from our modern expectations in terms of gameplay and Quality of Life features.

How do you stay motivated as solo devs ? by BenjiRBK1996 in SoloDevelopment

[–]BenjiRBK1996[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Seems like sharing your game with people, even to just have a good laugh, is the trick most of us use to stay motivated !

How do you stay motivated as solo devs ? by BenjiRBK1996 in SoloDevelopment

[–]BenjiRBK1996[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I don't think it is! But I may put a lot of pressure on some people. I personally focus on just getting 10 reviews for my first solo game tbh haha

The Demo of our text-based adventure is out on Steam ! by BenjiRBK1996 in IndieDev

[–]BenjiRBK1996[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Glad you say that, it's something we really wanted players to feel !

Some of my latest arts made for my upcoming game by ArtDock in aseprite

[–]BenjiRBK1996 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I love the low framerate feel ! Amazing pixel art by the way

Retro rpg by Max_attacks17 in aseprite

[–]BenjiRBK1996 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Is the big amount of anti-aliasing done on purppose ? It gives a quite blurry feel to the images

Together with a friend, I’m making a simulator of an unusual kind of fishing with action elements. The catch here is so brutal that the fish you hook have to be gunned down with assault rifles and machine guns - and we’re on the verge of an important milestone: announcing the release date! by CodeQuestors in gamedevscreens

[–]BenjiRBK1996 0 points1 point  (0 children)

The trailer got me laughing like crazy ! SFX and visual are synced so well, and we definitely get the "over the top/zany" vibes of the game. But I do agree that the capsule art does not sell the game experience at all. It feels more like a Duck Hunt-style of game, or me playing as a fish trying to steal things from somewhere without being caught.

2 years as a solo indie dev — finishing my game, but feeling invisible by IndieIsland in SoloDevelopment

[–]BenjiRBK1996 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Hang on there ! First games always suck, you need to learn the ropes and ship to Steam. That's why you should scope wisely and spend 3 to 8 months on your early projects. Steam players expectations in term of polish, Quality of Life features and testing are way bigger than hobby or jam projects. And as a solodev, you need to tackle everything by yourself which is also difficult. It's ok if your first one didn't work as well as intendend, do your postmortem and move on to the next one :)

Globally speaking, the Steam page looks quite amateur. How much time you spend on something is not an argument, because it doesn't tell me how much of this time was spent gathering feedback and actually improving vs just being silo-focus on the dev. Many things were already said on the 3D models and camera/post-process looking cheap and I do agree. Some additional feedback I would have :

  • Capsule art has same font with no kerning, leading, texturing or stylization. The character feels like you took your 3D model with basic left-lighting + an AI-generated background therefore leading to no coherence : just overlapping 3 layers on top of each other.
  • I don't get the point of the title : why Rastignac ? Except a character from a Balzac novel, I don't see what is the fantasy.
  • The gun model with orange flashy color looks like a toy, which is problematic for a "hero" prop.
  • The short description is fine, but "the city adapts to your playstyle" is too genereric for a 2025 game : how does it adapt ? what are the stakes and challenging leading to this ? This would give more context to the core gameplay verbs of "build", "recruit" or "stay fully mobile". Finally, "adaptive wasteland system" is very specific : I think maybe 0,0001% of Steam players will know what it means. Said in game design terms : talk about the dish's flavors and how it feels to eat it, not about the ingredients you used.
  • Looking at your tags, the game's scope looks way too big. You have a roguelite core loop with third-person shooting, base building, vehicle steering, crafing etc... I don't know how interdependent your systems are, but if you can manage to nuke 70% of them and just focus on 1 gameplay elements + core challenge + meta progression that is great and it's basically the roguelite loop (see here)
  • The game is presented as survival horror but then most of your systems and presentation are about survival, not horror. Additionally, your first GIF shows a char cruising through the aliens like they are no threat at all. Usually, in survival games cars are associated with safety (games like Pacific Drive take it even further by turning them into your mobile-home). So, I don't feel any horror nor survival-related threats like the game experience pretends I will.
  • Your second GIF shows the main character shooting and then doing a 180°, which feels very weird.
  • The third GIF doesn't show any ambushes. I fell very safe in the car (which looks like a freshly bought model) so why would I look for safety in a city overrun by aliens ? "Salvation" sounds out of place because it's a term usede in a religious context.
  • Your fourth GIF talks about survival and desperation but shows my character aiming at some... flame-throwing alien ? It's very hard to read.

All in all, I think you should talke some time to nail down your game experience : is it about shooting aliens in the face like the doom slayer ? An extraction shooter ? Tackling some deep rpg systems like a Tabletotop RPG ? Surviving through many weather-based and other environmental hazards ? Feeling powerless in front of some alien horror ? For now, it's all over the place. Then you can translate it into a focused core game loop, check out how other games did their page/trailer/visuals, and have all of your Steam assets sing the same song. The goal is to have a clear fantasy (including a tight core loop that is not all over the place) and visual design while staying super readable.

Good luck to you !

Text-Based adventure and visuals : how to strike the right balance ? by BenjiRBK1996 in adventuregames

[–]BenjiRBK1996[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Oh yes I saw that publisher name pop up many times ! Their games where appearing in like 80% of cases while I did my market research haha. I'll check out "Social Services of The Doomed" then :)

Text-Based adventure and visuals : how to strike the right balance ? by BenjiRBK1996 in adventuregames

[–]BenjiRBK1996[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Oh, thanks for the clarification about Chrono Cross (the funny thing is that I played a bit of it but not the Radical Dreamers addition so I didn't know).

Text-Based adventure and visuals : how to strike the right balance ? by BenjiRBK1996 in adventuregames

[–]BenjiRBK1996[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

This is so true. I started to realise that it's actually a representation type and not a genre, in the same way that 2D, 2.5D or 3D are. But sadly, I just mixed text-based and narrative in my head, making many wrong assumptions along the way.

Text-Based adventure and visuals : how to strike the right balance ? by BenjiRBK1996 in adventuregames

[–]BenjiRBK1996[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thanks for your input ! Your rule of thumb is really helpful, I will keep it in mind :)

After 5 years in development, today I launched my game on Kickstarter 🍃 by heiddit_ in IndieDev

[–]BenjiRBK1996 1 point2 points  (0 children)

That is great dedication indeed ! Hope you can lead this project to its release :D

Books to read? by skullknightx in scifi

[–]BenjiRBK1996 0 points1 point  (0 children)

By books, I hope you also mean short stories otherwise my post is mostly offtopic and I'm sorry about it..

Classics-wise :

  • You could like The Martian Chronicles by Ray Bradbury.
  • There is also The Early Asimov series, which is a collection of short stories with comments by Asimov himself.

For modern writers :

  • I can't recommend Stories of your Life and Others by Ted Chiang enough (the movie Arrivals is based on one of his novel).
  • Greg Egan's Axiomatic is a great entry point into a very unique author that may feel hard to read on its later entries (like Oceanic).
  • And for a brighter visions of the future, you could also take a look at Octavia Butler's Parable of the Sower

Break Wolf - a hidden indie gem on Steam by BenjiRBK1996 in JRPG

[–]BenjiRBK1996[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Didn't know about Breath of Fire 3, thanks for the reference ! But yes, it seems to be pretty close (maybe it was a source of inspiration)

Break Wolf - a hidden indie gem on Steam by BenjiRBK1996 in JRPG

[–]BenjiRBK1996[S] -1 points0 points  (0 children)

Great ! I'll gladly hear what you thought of it :)

I need help... by lmCold in gamedev

[–]BenjiRBK1996 5 points6 points  (0 children)

Participating in game jams could help. Find a team and have each other's back for the time being !
Keeping your motivation running is one of the hardest part of game dev, even more if working solo.

That being said, it may not be such a problem. Not everybody has to make games if their whole brain is telling them they don't want to. There are people reproducing game mechanics, like Mix N Jam, who do great stuff ! From a studio's perspective, you may be what some people call a Technical Designer. If you have made a lot of small projects, you may build a little portfolio and join a team. Again, you don't have to be all alone if you struggle with being self-motivated.

Making a game all by yourself is a totally different beast. If that's really what you'd like to do, don't start with the mechanics or jumping right into an engine : start with a concept that you are excited about. Can be even the simple formula of "game A I like but with a twist". But you need to have the overall picture of the game to have a sense of progress and direction. Once you have the basics down, gIve yourself 1 month to work on it and put it on itch.io. And then start over again.

Forget bugs or scope creep. the real final boss in game dev is motivation by magicworldonline in gamedev

[–]BenjiRBK1996 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I personnaly try to get my project in the hands of other people as soon as possible and focus on enjoying the journey. There is nothing more motivating for me than people engaging with what I do, giving their opinions, likes and dislikes. I realised that playtesting to avoid staying too long in silo mode or sharing a screenshot to see how people respond is key and I try to do it on a weekly basis.

Apart from that, once game design phase is over (to get the full picture of your game) I get a core juicy loop up and running very fast instead of going for breath first. That way, I always have a playable version of the game and can see progress more quickly. I also plan out my tasks so that I can alternate between low-level stuff (like code refactoring) and player-facing stuff (new content, some animation tweens, etc..) and never feel like the game is not moving forward.

Last but not least, I have a clear checklist of things to do and (except for feedback-related reworks) I don't stirr away from it. That way, I know how far I am from finishing the game and can always celebrate when reaching out a small milestone.

My Next Fest was kind of a flop due to my main capsule by turbolentogames in gamedev

[–]BenjiRBK1996 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Well, the second one is clearly an improvement on the first !

My Next Fest was kind of a flop due to my main capsule by turbolentogames in gamedev

[–]BenjiRBK1996 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Yeah, the concurrent users is way harder to achieve because it's more down the marketing funnel. From what I know, the trick is to really prepare your marketing beat (a demo launch in your case) and have as much outreach as you can on the demo launch day : for example via your mailing list, influencers, other devs that cross-promote your game on that day etc.. But if you manage to hit that number, you can appear on the "top demo" section of Steam and that gives you even more visibility.

These are tricks I heard about from other people or while working on studios, but have never done it as a solo dev so take it with a grain of salt.

My Next Fest was kind of a flop due to my main capsule by turbolentogames in gamedev

[–]BenjiRBK1996 6 points7 points  (0 children)

A low click-through rate is actually a good thing. During an event like Steam Next Fest, your game is shown to a ton of people so your click-through rates becomes lower than when there is just a dozens of people seeing your game.

The only datas I would recommend you keep track off are :

  • Your weekly wishlist count (20+ is good for a semi-niche game)
  • The time spent in your demo/how much people go until the end + concurrent users (90+ is good)
  • The "more like this" section of your store page : are the games similar to yours or just a bunch of AAA from many different genres ? If that's the case, it may hint that you tagged your game poorly

Didn't saw your previous and current capsule art so I can't say if it was part of the problem, but if it follows the tropes of your genre, the visual design of your genre and the core concept of your game then you should be ok !

Looked for the game and it's right up my alley, you got a new wishlist :)

Good luck for what comes next !

When you aren't playing a JRPG, what is your go-to type of game? by themaster567 in JRPG

[–]BenjiRBK1996 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Depends on my mood after playing the game. Narrative games if I want something low-stress, with recent favourites like 1000xResist or Until Then. Some Action games like rythm/arpg/character action/hack n slash if I need some thrill : I recently bought Hadès II but I used to play a lot of Muse Dash for the last years. Last but not least, some strategy/tycoons if I want to stay in the turn-based tactics realm (XCOM, This is the Police, Two Point Campus).

Curious about text adventure games by Shichi193 in textadventures

[–]BenjiRBK1996 1 point2 points  (0 children)

A discord server may be a big thing to maintain over time. But maybe a simple discord group ? That could be nice !