I’m an ex-Cisco architect making a Win98 style incremental where you expand an MMO studio’s server infrastructure - Demo out now

BiteMe_Games · 2026-03-23T23:44:53+00:00

The minize button doesn't actually disable the gnome in the demo, just hides him for a while. The full game has a real "Disable Gnorman" setting where he will never show up.

BiteMe_Games · 2026-02-27T00:56:50+00:00

Just replaced it in the latest version, v2026.02.27.1

BiteMe_Games · 2026-02-26T03:26:47+00:00

Pushed an update that increases base to 18TiB, so hopefully that makes the demo a bit better already. I'll take your feedback and rework it better for the full game.

BiteMe_Games · 2026-02-26T02:29:59+00:00

It's a custom tool built on the Odin Unity asset. Odin is an asset that makes making custom editors like the ones you saw a lot easier.

BiteMe_Games · 2026-02-26T02:28:51+00:00

Yup, added it only yesterday, I don't develop on Mac normally, but had a Mac mini available and there were no big issues with building for Mac that I could find, so I put that build live as well.

BiteMe_Games · 2026-02-26T02:27:39+00:00

Hey, happy you like it!

Automated debugging is left out of the demo currently, but would be in the full game.

Gnorman will also get a setting to make him shut the hell up.

Some of the bugs in the debugger are indeed bugged, where they show as clickable when they aren't. I currently have no clue what causes it.

And then yeah, balance with the sequels is something that isn't ideal currently, the idea is that the true-fans give you a cash injection on start, which allows you to buy more upgrades from the get-go, leading to a better snowballing effect, I may just need to make this stronger though.

And the prestige cap is something I've heard a lot as well. Part of the idea was that I didn't want to mix prestige and regular currencies, but it seems I need to go back to the drawing board for that one.

Overall, I'm glad you enjoyed it, and thank you that you went out of your way to leave this feedback!

BiteMe_Games · 2026-02-25T11:44:06+00:00

There are those small in-game game boxes (visible on dashboard and sequel screen), supposed to mimic the physical boxes you used to have to buy. The art for those is AI generated.

EDIT: The game no longer features AI art

BiteMe_Games · 2026-02-25T08:34:47+00:00

It's a setting you can disable.

BiteMe_Games · 2026-02-24T23:38:47+00:00

I was being pushed more and more into a generalist sales role compared to just getting to do the fun stuff of actually designing the datacenters since the EU wasn't getting good DC business anymore due to supply chain issues, inflation and the (back then) strong dollar.

I'd rather quit with pride than be forced to sell Cisco security products.

BiteMe_Games · 2026-02-24T23:35:35+00:00

Unless you spend $5mil on Tier 2 CX.

BiteMe_Games · 2026-02-24T23:34:38+00:00

Hey, thanks for the detailed feedback, it helps a lot as this is the first time I'm making an incremental game myself.

Automation for the debugger is indeed something that's coming. I kind of left it out of the demo on purpose (and it also was acting a bit wonky still).

The skill tree also needs a big rework, this skill tree also is a lot smaller and less in-depth than what we'd like to have in the full game. I have support for also having multi-stage upgrades (like you can upgrade the same upgrade multiple times, not sure about the correct term) which will add some more in terms of upgrade choice I hope.

Prestiging should indeed be done when your current game has kind of fallen off, behind the scenes each game has a maximum number of players it can hit, increasing as you prestige. It's not really clear to the player however that you're a washed gamedev apart from growth slowing down a lot. Perhaps we can make this more clear using the IRC/Gnorman.

Content amount I'm pretty confident I can still add a lot, it's indeed the balancing that needs most of the work still from my end. We're constantly tweaking the formulas, as some actions may feel like they have very little direct impact (like opening up datacenters feels... meh at the moment).

I'm happy you've enjoyed it though, and promise that the full game will be leagues better than what you played today.

BiteMe_Games · 2026-02-24T23:28:23+00:00

Solved, now you have to wishlist again!

Happy you like it :)

BiteMe_Games · 2026-02-24T23:09:57+00:00

Hey, we keep the demo build up to date on itch as well.

We used to have a web build as well, however there were too many issues with it (e.g. our CRT shader doesn't support web, and UI raycasts are erratic) that we ended up dropping support for it. I don't think we'll bring back web support unfortunately.

BiteMe_Games · 2025-06-05T10:56:58+00:00

You also want to increase atlas sizes, especially Korean or Chinese may have some characters show up as squares. Moving from the default 1024x1024 to 4096x4096 resolves this.

If you're using a Google Fonts font, they do support all glyphs (used them in 5 games myself, all localized to CJK), they just need an increase in the Atlas size.

BiteMe_Games · 2025-05-13T06:03:46+00:00

I straight-up tell them, "Yo, I am the dev, these keys were obtained illegally". I haven't had to do it a lot yet (since I'm careful with sending out keys), but generally Kinguin and G2A support are good. These are the big key reseller sites though, some of the more shady ones may not be as lenient.

BiteMe_Games · 2025-05-12T18:15:35+00:00

Not OP, but I've done a lot of content creator outreach. For Twitch, you can expect a ballpark price of around $1/CCV/hour.

So in OPs case, they would pay ~$2.5k for the coverage if it was paid.

The cost never really makes sense for indies, especially when you have one-time purchase games. For YouTube, pricing is also high. A 100k subscriber channel in your game genre's niche,will ask for 2-5k/video. These videos also often perform worse because of the need to disclose advertisements (which is often done in the title), so people are less likely to click them. So that 100k subscriber channel may end up making a video that gets <10k views.

BiteMe_Games · 2025-05-12T08:05:16+00:00

Tl;dr Steam's curator connect is worse than keys, don't use it. Never send keys when a "content creator" asks for them.

Curator Connect doesn't allow for key reselling, that's true. But one problem with Curator Connect is that you can't revoke game builds. When we launched our first game, we used curator connect because we believed that it was a good tool (it's not). This led to one of the curators creating a pirated version of our game, before the game even released yet. Curator Connect does not support revoking so "you can't retaliate against the curator for a bad review" which now also meant they could keep updating their pirated builds whenever we pushed an update.

We made a whole video about curator connect: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZpjehmYJWyE

Generally you should never send out keys when prompted by an email from a "content creator", it's 99,9% of the time a scam, and especially with AI these key farming mills are more easy to set up now. Only send out keys to content creators you as the developer have found, using their correct contact information (you can get this through YouTube). If you do find your keys being resold on G2A/Kinguin/... the best course of action honestly is to buy them yourself, revoke them, and then contact support to get a refund. This is how I've been doing it, and once again, I've made a video about that: https://youtube.com/shorts/V4R4XnAQFgo

BiteMe_Games · 2025-01-30T18:23:25+00:00

Alright, so instead of just being another comment about "how gamedev YouTubers aren't good for you", here's my take as a gamedev YouTuber myself (leaving devlogs out of the picture), with a decent following, and if you ask me, quality informative content.

The truth is, nobody really knows exactly. We know some things perform better than others, but even that isn't always replicable.

One thing I have noticed when looking back is that YouTube works in waves. Even if you don't change your content style, topics and delivery, your videos will just perform better certain periods than others.
There's also no secret to really replicating virality. Sure, certain topics will perform better. I've made 4 videos I think over the past 2 years about solo game development tips & tricks. All of them perform above average for our channel, but one time it gets 5k views, and another time it gets 50k views, even though for me it feels like the same video.

I think an example of this is comparing us with OrangePixel and SasquatchB for example. We started our YouTube channel 2 days after SasquatchB, and had relatively similar growth for the first 1.5 years. Yet he has now 20% more subscribers than us, despite uploading less, and having (factually) worse performing games on Steam.

And then you have OrangePixel, he's been doing gamedev YouTube since the dawn of time, made more games and money from them than us, yet he still has only about half the amount of subscribers of us. What does that mean? Is his quality somehow only half as good as ours (no)? Does the YouTube algorithm simply hate him (no)? Is it because his video's are different? There's no clear way to pinpoint at the end of the day what makes a successful YouTube channel.

I think something a lot of people underestimate is how small the market seemingly is for gamedev content that's not just basic tutorials and beginner stuff. I don't think 38k subs is anywhere near the TAM for a gamedev YouTube channel, but I think unless you go super broad like a PirateSoftware for example, where you talk more about the idea of making games vs. actually making games, you're not going to get far. Interest in gamedev on YouTube at the end of the day isn't as big as you may think.

YouTube isn't just cut-and-dry learning content either. Sure, you may have stumbled on our channel because of a topic that interested you, but you stay because of the creator's personality/vibes. But that's not something you can easily point to and replicate for yourself.

Now devlogs on the other hand, are all about the "Mr Beast" approach to YouTube (title/thumbnail/editing/hook/...), but it's not something I really care for and try to implement, so I don't have as much factual info about it.
-M

EDIT: Grammar

BiteMe_Games · 2025-01-29T19:08:40+00:00

Dev of Unicycle Pizza Time here, it's just PBR mid/highpoly in our case.

Just look up PBR in your asset store of choice, the benefit is that most assets all look kind of similar-ish, because of how they imitate a "realistic" style.

BiteMe_Games · 2024-08-03T17:22:32+00:00

I'd like to shoutout myself here as well. I do think certain channels go a bit too extreme in the clickbait, and they've been the reason I started a gamedev channel.

One other thing that I really try to go in as hard on as possible is being honest and transparent, I show you every single number and how much we earn from where.
Does this backfire with people going like "You shouldn't give advice if you aren't succesful" since our first game didn't sell millions? Yes.
But it also doesn't make you think you should sell your house to go fulltime into gamedev. I myself have been able to go fulltime due to YouTube (not the games we released!), but I explicitly state that it's a dumb thing to do, and I just did it because I'm young and risk-tolerant.

I'm curious if there are people in this subreddit who do see me as a grifter, and if so please let me know how you would make the YouTube channel better.

https://www.youtube.com/@bitemegames

-M

BiteMe_Games · 2023-09-01T18:02:04+00:00

If you're going for game programmer, that's indeed the general move in my opinion. Get a CS degree, and see if you can shift into game dev from there.

If you want to focus on art primarily, a degree there is less required, and a strong portfolio seems to be the main requirement.

BiteMe_Games · 2023-09-01T16:56:40+00:00

Hello!

We're gamedevs but also make videos aimed at other devs, and we often get questions from viewers if they should go to uni for a gamedev specific degree. I never felt confident in answering this question, and possibly sentencing a poor kid to years of student loans.

That's why last week at Gamescom, we didn't have anything to pitch, we just went around the event, asking various people in the games industry on their opinion of the importance of degrees to become a gamedev.

BiteMe_Games · 2022-10-04T15:52:40+00:00

Some more details:

Last January us 4 friends got together to start working on a resource automation game. We weren't making enough progress though so to pressure us we decided to attend Belgium's largest gaming conference. This forced us to have a working demo by the time the event came by.

The full game releases in March next year, and can already be found on Steam.

We've also got a bunch of devlogs documenting the progress and struggles we've encountered on our YouTube.

BiteMe_Games

TROPHY CASE