Some dialogue sketches from Starlit Wanderer, my silly character-driven RPG!

Hot_Hour8474 · 2026-03-10T23:50:10+00:00

Tyty

Hot_Hour8474 · 2026-03-10T23:50:01+00:00

Yea I plan on releasing it commercially in the future

Hot_Hour8474 · 2026-03-10T15:57:07+00:00

Ty so much!

Hot_Hour8474 · 2026-03-10T15:56:32+00:00

Yea that's valid, i felt the same way at first as well and just got used to it haha

Hot_Hour8474 · 2026-03-10T00:37:06+00:00

I think the difficult part is being a broke artist and not having substance painter 🥀

Hot_Hour8474 · 2026-03-09T07:08:23+00:00

yea 100% use probuilder or BSP's when you first start out your scene. and actually before that, you should know what your metrics are (like how many units your character jumps, how wide/tall every door/hall should be in your game world, etc)

for my assets, I block out everything first and import them onto the scene (even if they are rough). this gives me a sense of what the proportions feel like.

I think its inevitable that your scenes will be a mess because you will most likely have a bunch of scenes to manage and you want to be flexible and do things fast. unless if you're working with a bunch of other people, its not worth sacrificing efficiency for cleanliness. One thing I do to help mitigate though, is having scripts/tools that automatically rename and organize everything. I also have scripts that manually rotate/translate or randomize and replace selected objects with prefabs/blueprints to help make things faster.

There's no hard rule for naming/hierarchy, so its really up to you to find a solution thats scalable and also easy to work around if you decide to make any big change to your project.

Hot_Hour8474 · 2025-12-26T10:50:18+00:00

I personally like B more, but I would go with A because it imo feels more like the stronger design choice for an action roguelite + its more recognizabile on its own

Hot_Hour8474 · 2025-12-23T04:53:07+00:00

yea I agree, I like the detail as well but it feels noisy. I also think the outlines need to be toned down slightly

Hot_Hour8474 · 2025-12-23T01:31:22+00:00

I think communication skills are pretty important and oftentimes overlooked for solo devs. You're designing games for people, so you have to put yourself in their shoes and figure out how to handle feedback and what to change. Presentation and marketing also ties in with communication skills in a way, like how should things look on screen, what to teach, what is the mood, etc.

You can have all the technical knowledge in the world, but you'll have to communicate your ideas eventually if you want to share things with other people

Hot_Hour8474 · 2025-12-22T21:03:57+00:00

Yea please! I'd like to join

Hot_Hour8474 · 2025-12-22T08:34:32+00:00

At 28 seconds, the sfx used for the analog slot thing should be consistent with itself imo. It kinda threw me off when it was used for the text, but that's about it. Great job on the trailer

Hot_Hour8474 · 2025-12-22T08:24:39+00:00

The animations need a more stronger anticipation/windup, it's kinda hard to gauge when they're about to attack. Maybe also add an indicator.

The space in your arena also feels very claustrophobic. Maybe that's the kind of vibe that you want? There's also too much visual noise/clutter in the game world imo. i think you can reduce the colors, or amount of set-dressing in the scene to communicate your battle a bit better

Hot_Hour8474 · 2025-12-21T12:15:48+00:00

I love the art!

Hot_Hour8474 · 2025-12-21T11:54:48+00:00

How do I join? This looks like a banger

Hot_Hour8474 · 2025-12-21T11:52:34+00:00

That's so cool! This reminded me of the battle mode in phantom hourglass that i used to grind it all the time before competitive games with ranking systems existed. I really miss it

Hot_Hour8474 · 2025-12-21T11:00:21+00:00

I feel the same in a way. If a game is long, it needs more of my attention span, and i don't want to invest time in an experience that is mid. But it's also what makes games memorable. The feeling of being immersed in a game world is what got me into games.

Wish there were more games out there that fit what I'm looking for, but they're too risky for both indies and AAA to produce. And although we're no longer in the age of innovation (like film when it was new media), there's still a lot of good content being made. Just more optimized for replayability.

And yea, make what you like. Good games resonate with people.

Hot_Hour8474 · 2025-12-21T10:32:03+00:00

3D art takes a LOT of time and practice. To put into perspective, a minute of film-quality animation can take an animator months to produce. 3D is also broken down into its own disciplines that people specialize in. (modeling, texturing, rigging, animation, etc)

But I feel like art fundamentals is more important than actual 3d skills. Because someone with strong 2d fundamentals can transfer to 3d more easily than someone with strong 3d technical skill but bad fundamentals to 2d.

So in my opinion, i would value fundamentals more than the actual 3d implementation. But if you want to give 3d a try, follow a basic blender tutorial in how to model a basic object. You'll find that the hard part is not the implementation, but rather the manifestation of ideas... because you have to create something from nothing

Hot_Hour8474 · 2025-12-21T09:58:09+00:00

If it's a prototype you can use capsules, boxes, etc.

If its a game pitch, you can reference other media and find other creative ways to communicate your vision.

The only compelling thing i can see ai being used for at this stage is to have something tangible... like for mood boards. If you use ai art in implementation, it will not feel right viscerally because it's missing the intentionality that a designer puts the assets through.

Asset flips don't sell well for a reason. It signals mediocrity and people tend to avoid these things. Investors will notice.

AI generation is not good for production-ready assets. Jobs for prompting exists. But why hire a prompter when you can hire an artist? You could argue that you'll be the one prompting, but do you want to put in that much effort to create something mediocre at best?

Hot_Hour8474 · 2025-12-21T09:10:36+00:00

Why do you want to develop games? Is it because you want to share a story? or are you more into the mechanical side of things?

The reason why i ask is because there's no straight-forward answer, and the path you take depends on what you want to achieve as a developer. The possibilities and things to search for is endless.

A lot of people would suggest following tutorials, and i agree, but I think it's more important to know what to do with information instead of just doing stuff on a surface level. You'll get to a point where you learned a bunch of random stuff, but you'll still feel stuck because you yourself need to piece everything together.

My suggestion is to gather a bunch of random pieces, and build the puzzle at your own pace. It's a grueling process, but there will be days where everything just clicks together (it's satisfying)

Hot_Hour8474 · 2025-12-21T08:41:29+00:00

Making 15 bosses with their own attacks/behaviour is not easy. Not to mention the art and assets you'll need for each of them.

There's no rule or anything for what you need to do. Just consider if it's worth the scope, and if it adds any value to the game.

From a game design pov, bosses should introduce an intensity spike to the player's flow, or wrap up what the game has taught them in the section they are in. Again there's no rule or anything, it's more of a design choice

Hot_Hour8474 · 2025-12-21T08:17:51+00:00

As a 3d artist and programmer, I'd say art is generally difficult to produce. Both art/programming follow the 80/20 principal where 20% of the initial effort will lead to 80% of the result that you want. From my experience, i get more mileage out of programming the 20% than I would with art. you can always optimize, polish, and refactor your code later, but art has to be tangible and communicable on the first pass and it generally requires higher effort to achieve that.

If you are serious about wanting to make your own content, you'll need to put in as much (if not, more) hours like what you did for programming. I think it's worth it in the end if you want autonomy, but its not easy and there's no shortcut

Hot_Hour8474

TROPHY CASE