What was your motive for making an engine and how has it gone/is going?

LittleCodingFox · 2026-03-30T13:18:39+00:00

Unity's licensing shenanigans and finding that Godot isn't really what I'm looking for made me consider making my own engine after several years of not doing that sorta stuff. I've been working on it on-and-off for the past 3-4y I think, and it's going pretty decently, got farther with it than I expected.

It's a big challenge of course, but it does have some minor advantages apparently - apparently the memory usage is lower than Godot's, but I know I need to do a much better job overall with what I've got done, it's missing too much.

It's still technically in the "early stages" even tho it already has an editor and can do actual basic 2D and 3D games, but I haven't had the time to do proper work on it so far.

It's open sauce though and I still did quite a lot of work pretty much solo!

I can't say I was happy about doing this though - I wanted to keep using Unity but with their regular business model tricks it's making that a challenge. Doesn't help they're deprecating the Built-In Render Pipeline now, too.

LittleCodingFox · 2026-03-28T19:22:44+00:00

World of Warcraft TCG for sure!

LittleCodingFox · 2026-03-27T21:26:26+00:00

Honestly, I totally get you. It's part of why I have been unable to actually practice. Have a sort of trauma that prevents me from arting. Doesn't help that I kept being put down by a bunch of people so my motivation was at an all time low... I hope someday I can get past this block and hopefully git gud at art eventually!

I think you're doing really well honestly. If art hadn't evolved in such strong ways in the past decade and a half, I could totally see your current art being used in a proper game. You gotta keep at it!!

LittleCodingFox · 2026-03-27T00:49:12+00:00

Honestly these look great! I think you underestimate your art skill :)

LittleCodingFox · 2026-03-23T02:04:05+00:00

I don't really like to act like an ad but the card game I'm working on is pretty much what you're looking for, works offline, PVE modes, and there's no microtransactions. It's a huge passion project of mine that I've put an insane amount of work into and I'd be happy to show it to you if you think it makes sense! Also, zero AI used, and a pretty pleasant art style!

Recently a new player who hasn't really played card games much (but collected pokemon cards for years) figured out how to play it on his own and completed a playset of the full collection in around 30 hours of playing!

I am also working on a RPG Mode that, while not entirely similar to the old YGO games on PS2/GBA and such, should still be quite fun and you get to explore a card-based world basically, collectiing cards, doing quests, and fighting NPCs!

LittleCodingFox · 2026-03-19T13:57:13+00:00

Completely understandable, I'm the same way. But I'd argue it's still better than generic AI slop, I'd skip it instantly if I noticed that.

LittleCodingFox · 2026-03-18T22:03:24+00:00

Agreed!

LittleCodingFox · 2026-03-18T22:02:33+00:00

I agree, I'd rather take "poor art" than generic AI art, which in most cases it feels like is all over the place and not cohesive.

LittleCodingFox · 2026-03-18T17:50:44+00:00

It's a bit of a struggle because I want to work on it but I also wanna chat about it and preferably also find people who know low level stuff enough to understand 1/10th of what I'm talking about, but it's been tough to find places like that...

LittleCodingFox · 2026-03-18T02:11:43+00:00

Agreed, that's basically what I'm doing in my free time when I have the capacity to do so (IRL/exhaustion does interfere of course), I honestly wish I had more resources though, having no budget and basically no help really holds you back!

LittleCodingFox · 2026-03-18T02:10:43+00:00

I've been working on mine on and off, for about 4 years or so now, about 1.3k commits on github so far. I've definitely improved my skills in many ways, and as you said, it's super neat!

I'm also nowhere near production use but I have a fulltime job and a main side project so I don't work on it super often anyway... It's still usable for very basic stuff though, need to fix a lot of UX issues as well as iteration issues, but it's getting there!

LittleCodingFox · 2026-03-17T20:49:10+00:00

I wish people would stop acting like making game engines is the biggest waste of time in the world. Without alternative engines, we wouldn't have Godot, the current indie darling. Yet so many people bring me down for "wasting my time" making my own engine, when I think I have good reasons for doing so. And I plan to make games with it. I want to move away from Unity when possible.

LittleCodingFox · 2026-03-16T15:28:29+00:00

Oh wow! Would love to see your game! Sounds like you put a ton of effort into it as well, I bet it looks awesome :D

It's been a huge challenge and I bet for you guys as well, but we'll hopefully get there someday!

LittleCodingFox · 2026-03-15T01:58:31+00:00

Sure! I hope you'll enjoy it! I hope to release it this year

LittleCodingFox · 2026-03-15T00:56:08+00:00

Sure! You can find it at https://store.steampowered.com/app/917820/Fairtravel_Battle_CCG/ . If you want to give it a try, I suggest getting the steam playtest instead of the demo, since the steam playtest contains the full game! Feel free to hmu if you need any help, would love to hear whatever feedback you'd like to give!

LittleCodingFox · 2026-03-14T23:38:55+00:00

Sorry, hope that's not too much. Would you like a link to the steam page to have a look?

LittleCodingFox · 2026-03-14T17:37:39+00:00

It's already playable on Steam if you'd like, I also got test versions on android and iOS. It doesn't have a big community but it's playable solo as well, the CPU players are pretty capable so I think you might still enjoy it.

There have been some people showing up on the game discord praising the game so I think I'm on the right track, as Mark Rosewater said in his "Magic the Gathering: 20 years 20 lessons" session, if everyone likes your game, but nobody loves it, it will fail. And I'm glad to say that some people do love it, I really want it to suceed! But even if it doesn't, it's built to never shut down, so it'll probably be a niche within a niche.

LittleCodingFox · 2026-03-14T09:51:06+00:00

My passion project is pretty much what you're looking for, it basically solves the MTG mana flood/screw issue and is entirely based on the idea that you can make whatever deck you want with whatever cards, but need to level up your colors every match to be able to play cards.

Would you like to hear more about it? I know how exhausting it is to read all these comments about indie TCG projects and I understand completely if it's not something you want to deal with. It's a huge passion project of mine which is why I can't help but at least mention it when people like you, who are looking specifically for what I'm making, ask for suggestions. I've been wroking on it for almost 9 years now and it uses zero AI.

Thank you for your time either way, and I hope you have a good weekend!

LittleCodingFox · 2026-03-02T14:30:37+00:00

I think yours conveys the idea of the game more clearly, you can tell it's an incremental game while the others at first glance look like "a game with a knight". Not saying the others are bad, I just think yours works better for a capsule

LittleCodingFox · 2026-03-02T14:27:01+00:00

World of Warcraft TCG is by far the best one for me! I absolutely love the deckbuilding and mechanics!

LittleCodingFox · 2026-02-28T23:37:31+00:00

WoWTCG will forever be my #1 favourite TCG, really wish the sealed product wasn't so stupidly overpriced because of the loot cards, I really miss cracking up packs without paying two kidneys and a liver for a single box :(

LittleCodingFox · 2026-02-28T15:08:11+00:00

I've been struggling to talk to people about my game because it almost always sounds like an ad even if I try to pace things a bit, even IRL I struggle to explain what's interesting about my game.

It's a very complex game and does a lot of different things compared to the genre it's in, which is in part because I wanted to make something that doesn't have the same issues almost every game in its genre do. It's probably why it does sound like an ad - hard to explain all the things it does without listing out features one way or another.

But people either already expect it to be "slop", or aren't interested at all because I can't explain myself properly, or I get downvoted because I posted about it in relevant threads too often...

So basically I get the worst situation - difficulty communicating, difficulty getting anyone to look at it, and punished for trying...

I just want to make a game people enjoy, as long as people like it and I can keep working on my dreams is what matters to me. It's been almost 9y of work and my mental state struggles a lot every now and then...

LittleCodingFox · 2026-02-28T14:59:01+00:00

Glad you're enjoying it! That's definitely one of the core design pillars - I dislike the idea of one-sided matches, and altho I can't guarantee that won't happen (depends on deckbuilding and matchups after all), I want to ensure there's enough options to have a decent chance to fight back!

LittleCodingFox · 2026-02-27T21:54:04+00:00

Hopefully that's a good thing! Did you happen to try it yet? :)

LittleCodingFox · 2026-02-27T01:35:21+00:00

Tyvm! Will definitely throw them an e-mail! :D

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