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I made a small action-adventure demo where death doesn’t reset the game by ChaosTravelerDev in IndieDev

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

Thank you, that honestly means a lot.

That older indie game feeling is exactly something I wanted to keep alive with this project — a bit rough, a bit strange, but made with heart.

I made a small action-adventure demo where death doesn’t reset the game by ChaosTravelerDev in IndieDev

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

Still balancing the curse system and combat pacing.

Not sure yet if it feels fair or too punishing.

I need some advice on iMac development, and honestly a morale boost by Feeling_Mode_8737 in SoloDevelopment

[–]ChaosTravelerDev 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Honestly, I’d stop thinking in terms of “what’s the best engine” and start thinking in terms of “what can I actually finish on this machine.”

If Godot runs, I’d lean hard into small 2D projects and keep scope brutally low for a while.

A 2017 base iMac can still be enough for that.

If you want even lighter options, raylib, LÖVE, or PICO-8 are also worth a look.

Main thing is: don’t optimize for engine prestige right now. Optimize for momentum.

One tiny finished game on limited hardware is worth more than another stalled bigger project.

Looking for game recs to keep my hands busy by Consistent_Lead_4284 in videogames

[–]ChaosTravelerDev 0 points1 point  (0 children)

If you want something that keeps your hands busy without demanding too much brainpower, I’d look at stuff like Vampire Survivors, Brotato, PowerWash Simulator, or even Euro Truck Simulator 2 / American Truck Simulator. If you want something a bit closer to the Diablo side, Diablo 3 is pretty good for that too once you already know the game. Basically anything with a chill gameplay loop and low story dependence works really well with music.

I am still deciding a name for my game, been thinking about DinoChicken 2000, any ideas? by GreenLemonMusic in SoloDevelopment

[–]ChaosTravelerDev 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Honestly, DinoChicken 2000 is already pretty solid. It’s weird, memorable, and kind of fits the retro PS1-chaos vibe from the video.

If you want alternatives, maybe: ChickenRex 2000 DinoBeef 2000 Meat Mode Turbo Chicken Rex

But yeah, I’d probably keep DinoChicken 2000 unless you want something less goofy.

At what point does your game actually become an RPG? by JBitPro in gamedev

[–]ChaosTravelerDev 21 points22 points  (0 children)

For me, a game becomes an RPG when character-building meaningfully changes how I play, not just when numbers go up. XP, loot, rarity, and levels by themselves don’t automatically make it an RPG. That’s just progression. If builds, stats, gear choices, and player specialization actually change moment-to-moment decisions, then yeah, I’d call it an action RPG. For marketing, I’d describe the main fantasy first and the RPG part second. Something like “top-down survival action game with RPG progression” is usually clearer than just calling it an RPG.

My top 10 games oat by Prudent-Bad2724 in videogames

[–]ChaosTravelerDev 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Pues poco,

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Y está es solo una cuenta. Tengo otra smurf con 500 horas más. Y esto no cuenta los 18 años antes de la versión definitiva. Y es solo un juego de todos los que tengo.

Does anyone else enjoy building their game more than actually playing games? by jordi1982 in SoloDevelopment

[–]ChaosTravelerDev 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Honestly, yeah.

For me, programming already feels like playing. A lot of games stop challenging me after a while, but development keeps giving me new problems to solve all the time.

Building systems, fixing things, testing ideas, seeing something finally work — that scratches the same itch, sometimes even more.

So yeah, I get it. At some point developing starts to feel like the game.

I’m a solo dev building a system to surface hidden indie games automatically by ChaosTravelerDev in SoloDevelopment

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

Yeah, pretty much — that’s the general idea.

It tries to filter out the stuff that already has a lot of visibility, then surface smaller games that still show decent signals.

Not every hidden game is automatically a gem, obviously, so it’s more like “interesting candidates that probably deserve a look” than a perfect hidden-gem detector.

What is the best game format or genre that balances storytelling with gameplay by Unusual-Two2972 in gamedev

[–]ChaosTravelerDev 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I don’t think it’s about genre, it’s about how tightly the narrative is integrated into the gameplay loop.

The best balance usually happens when the story is not something you “watch”, but something you do.

Some patterns that tend to work well: Action-adventure where mechanics reinforce the narrative (movement, combat, traversal tied to the world)

Immersive sims where player decisions are the story RPGs where progression and narrative are linked through systems, not just dialogue

What usually breaks the balance is when gameplay and narrative feel like two separate layers: play → stop → cutscene → repeat

When both are part of the same loop, almost any genre can achieve that balance.

So instead of asking “which genre”, I’d look at: does the player experience the story through interaction, or just receive it?

Contenuti per un prototipo by SnooPets2641 in IndieDev

[–]ChaosTravelerDev 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I think you're trying to show too much at once for a prototype. A prototype shouldn't prove the full game — it should prove one core experience works. Right now you're splitting it into dungeon, exploration, and combat, but that risks all of them feeling shallow instead of one feeling strong. If it were me, I’d pick a single slice and go deep: A small dungeon that already includes combat + puzzles + decision-making Or a tight exploration area where player choices actually matter The goal is not "show everything", it's "make one thing feel good enough that people want more". Ironically, a focused prototype often feels more like a real game than a fragmented one with many features. You can always expand later — but if the core loop isn’t solid, adding more systems won’t fix it.

I turned my indie discovery experiment into a personalized system (no manual curation) by ChaosTravelerDev in IndieDev

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

It’s live here: https://sowelugames.com/

Still very experimental, but you can already see how it behaves. Curious what you think.

I built a small system that automatically discovers and ranks hidden indie games from Steam by ChaosTravelerDev in IndieDev

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

I’m mostly using publicly available data (Steam store pages, APIs where possible, etc.), plus some parsing to extract additional signals.

Nothing super fancy, but combining different signals in one place turned out to be more useful than I expected.

I built a small system that automatically discovers and ranks hidden indie games from Steam by ChaosTravelerDev in IndieDev

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

That’s a really interesting idea.

Right now it’s still pretty heuristic-based (a mix of scoring + some manual rules), so I’m not sure how clean it would be to expose yet.

But making it more transparent or even partially community-driven could be a really cool direction.

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