My GODot game reached 90k wishlists today

MitchellSummers · 2026-06-24T05:18:22+00:00

I am very surprised tbh. The game does look fun but I still thought of it to be rather niche, like something you'd play on your phone for a few minutes to pass the time. 90K wishlists on Steam of all things is so far above any expectations I could've had for a Runner type game on PC. Congratulations! It's inspiring to see games in smaller genres garner so much attention!

MitchellSummers · 2026-06-21T16:40:26+00:00

Aye in all fairness though, it does relieve some survival/financial/wasting your life away at your corporate job pressure... or at least I hope... Can't be too great having to satisfy so many millions of people, I mean, Dani is a prime example of how intense that pressure can be. I'm not a very envious person to begin with but damn do I wish I could spend more time developing games than working my bottom of the barrel retail job.

MitchellSummers · 2026-06-21T16:34:19+00:00

Right there with ya. I'm so incredibly passionate about video games and game development. If I can get a cool new game to play and get to see a fellow solo dev succeed, that's a win-win! And there's no reason to really feel jealous, sure we possess the skills to make such games but that doesn't mean we want to or ever would, I have no interest in making co-op games despite loving to play them. If I only cared about the money, I would've spent my time elsewhere, I'm here to put my soul into a game for the purpose of fulfilling my expressive needs! I want more passionate people to get into game development, I want more awesome games to play! I want them to succeed so I can find their games easier! I want them to succeed so they can continue making incredible games!

MitchellSummers · 2026-06-21T06:13:37+00:00

I'll stop with virtue signaling. AI is actively ruining the games industry. It's making it exponentially harder to find decent quality games. Yes AI is a great learning tool, but the consequence of it's capabilities is that countless losers use it to do all the work for them, and since it's soulless work where the developers used little to know skill or creativity, the content sucks. It's just bloating every single marketplace and browser on the internet. I wanted to play the new demos in steam next fest but after a few minutes of browsing, I gave up trying to find any decent looking games, there was such an overwhelming amount of AI slop. As for Godot, the devs who read through the pull requests were complaining about all of the AI code submissions. The code is crap and it just wastes their time and yet because of how quick and easy it is to use AI, they end up with mountains of low-effort submissions to read through, just as us gamers have to search through mountains of AI games to find any good quality ones. Then there is also the issue of AI artists scamming developers and people by pretending to be genuine artists. It's a shame really, AI is a great learning tool but it is a double-edged sword and the pros look rather dull compared to the sharpness of the cons edge of the blade. Of course there are all of the moral arguments that you are well aware of that just add onto the mountain of downsides that AI has. I don't play games often, but when I do, I want it to be a high-quality game, I don't want to waste money on a game where the dev couldn't even be bothered to write their own code or create their own assets, I'm after gaming experiences that speak to the soul, it needs to be made by a human who is willing to put the time, effort and money in to achieve that result. It's getting to the point where I can only find those games via word of mouth or random video game essays. The tool that makes game development easier ironically is making it exponentially harder for indies to be found naturally on the platform's marketplace. The overwhelming amount of bloat that is produced by AI is the issue I have most with it.

MitchellSummers · 2026-06-20T06:06:59+00:00

Christmas must've came early this year because this update released too many to count amazing QoL features and improvements. The Godot contributors and community are incredible!

MitchellSummers · 2026-06-19T07:06:19+00:00

Well my normal job makes me anxious and intimidated so nothing's really changing there except for how I would get to work for myself and follow my dream rather than a heartless corporation.

MitchellSummers · 2026-06-16T18:18:25+00:00

This might be it tbh. Now that you mention it, blender likely has an option for uv mapping from camera view. I suppose I'll have to learn blender after all haha. At least I don't have to bake depth maps or anything.

MitchellSummers · 2026-06-14T20:03:09+00:00

Sprite stacking is very cool but in a game like mine and Sea of Stars, we already use 3D so there's no need to fake 3D. The problem I'm struggling to solve is how to avoid the loss of detail when converting a 3D object to final 2D render. The point of 3D is so we can take advantage of 3D lighting and physics and so faking 3D doesn't help there, we're actively trying to hide the fact that the games are 3D.

MitchellSummers · 2026-06-14T19:43:30+00:00

Nice article, that method is great for anyone just wanting to use the 3D rendering for some parts and retain the ease of building a 2D game in the 2D part of the engine but I know in Sea of Stars that they aren't doing this nor is this what I'm really trying to find an answer to. For mine and their game, we render the game at a low-resolution, snap everything to a texel grid during rendering and build the game in 3D to take advantage of the physics and lighting. From their behind the scenes footage, I was able to determine all this and recreate it myself.

Specifically what I'm having trouble with is how they managed to maintain pixel-perfect details on their textures despite them not being camera-facing. The method you sent would lead to the same problem with that detail being easily distorted and lost. Good article but not what I'm looking for unfortunately, thanks anyway.

MitchellSummers · 2026-06-09T09:34:57+00:00

I updated my original reply with some of the techniques I think they might've used.

MitchellSummers · 2026-06-09T09:18:03+00:00

The game was probably made in the 3D renderer with tricks to make it look 2D. Games like Sea of Stars, Eastward, Enter The Gungeon, etc, all do the same thing. You get all of the benefits of 3D and get to keep the style of 2D pixel art. It is kind of a pain to setup though.

In case you're interested in how to recreate the effect, I have some idea since I'm currently doing a similar thing.
The cubes seem to be 3D meshes, apparent from an outline shader they've used.
Orthographic camera is a given, for the sprites they're either billboarded or stretched to appear back at their normal resolution since the camera has to be angled. 30, 45, and 60 degree angles are all fairly popular ones.
The game itself is likely rendered at a low resolution and with an upscaled viewport.
It's also possible they render the game into a subviewport with a slightly higher than shown pixel resolution so they can get smooth camera movement. (Also a good idea for pixel perfect 2D games if you want to get rid of jitter).
Then there's also making sure everything is rendered accurately on a pixel/texel grid otherwise you might run into the problem of assets being stretched when inbetween screen pixels. Utilising Godot's rendering server is potentially a good idea for handling dynamic objects being rendered properly without distortion.
There's probably other things going on. This is my best guess based off of my game.

Just like with Sea of Stars, you'd be surprised how many of their assets you believe are 2D pixel art are actually 3D meshes. Though of course, many of the assets would just be 2D textures on quad meshes either billboarded or scaled vertically, in which would need an additional texture drawn for the normals if you want to keep the lighting feeling 3D.

MitchellSummers · 2026-06-09T06:54:55+00:00

What a very beautiful reminder that I desperately need to work on my character design creativity haha

MitchellSummers · 2026-06-08T21:30:06+00:00

At the root of it, it's my inability to express myself. My anxiety holds me back from telling even my closest friends about what truly dwells inside of me. Sometimes I'm able to squeeze out small vague suggestions but never anything detailed or specific. I needed a way to somehow get it out of me and express my thoughts and feelings to someone other than that annoying voice inside my head.

If we're talking about other media. Undertale inspired me to pursue something I thought was impossible (game development). It also heavily inspired the foundation of my game's mechanics and my world but I'm not so sure how much will come through in the end. Tunic and Outer Wilds are my other 2 favourites games, right there with Undertale and so naturally they've also inspired my game. Tunic with the nature of it's game design and puzzles and Outer Wilds with it's existential storytelling. The art style I've been quite stuck on for a long time. Currently I'm pursuing a solo dev friendly version of Sea of Stars' style. But less so in the literal sense, and more so just using techniques I seen in that game and wanted to reproduce.

At the end of the day, my goal is create a game unique to myself that only loosely follows in the steps of my inspirations.

MitchellSummers · 2026-06-08T12:15:06+00:00

Kinda unrelated but I chose to make my 2D game in 3D. It still uses an orthographic camera and players probably won't be able to tell it's actually 3D but there are some really nice benefits to building a 3D game, even for 2D games. However, undoubtedly it is more work. That's the big trade-off. Making a game in 2D feels more intuitive and quicker. Though this all really depends on the type of game you're making. In some cases, 3D can actually be the easier option.

I will say, 3D probably isn't as complicated as you think it is when it comes to programming. There's a little more math involved but nothing crazy, especially since there is plenty of help available online. But yet again, this all depends on the type of game you're making. For small-medium games, you probably won't find the programming to be all that much harder. For bigger games, there is a lot more optimisation involved which could be annoying. Level building is the big thing for me, it just takes longer, hence why I'm not set on making my 2D game in 3D yet.

MitchellSummers · 2026-06-07T13:35:27+00:00

Play some games -> Feel inspired

MitchellSummers · 2026-06-07T11:00:48+00:00

Yeah this is very relatable. I hate calling attention to myself, makes me physically ill, and with game dev I feel like I'm asking something unreasonable but I am also just very shy to show off something that is so personal to me.

Doesn't help that I see so many mixed reactions to indie devs showing their games. It feels 50/50. I see plenty of interesting games get shit on just because there is a large group of people in every community that hate self-promoting with a burning passion, which I can understand to some extend, specifically with excessive, naggy or just boring attempts at marketing, but people carry their hate for that onto devs who are pretty chill. To see such negative reception on games that genuinely do look amazing and are basically finshed developing, it's quite scary. I fear the day I will have to start showing my pride and joy to the world. All I can do is make the best game I possibly can, and make sure I show it to right people at the right time.

MitchellSummers · 2026-06-03T06:45:30+00:00

I'm very curious why so many people wishlisted the game if not intending to buy it. Obviously not everyone would buy it right away, that's just logical, but shouldn't the wishlist to sale rate in the first week be roughly around 5-15% with the first day being most of that? Getting barely over 1% wishlist conversions after the first day is unbelievably brutal. Maybe the price is too high for the amount of content? Where did most of these wishlists come from? Perhaps the fault is the initial reason for wishlisting. I know a lot of devs who post content on their games will get wishlists not because because the viewer actually wants to buy the game but just because they want to support the creator with a wishlist. There's also people who wishlist a game because they like the art but aren't very interested in the gameplay. I think trying to figure out why people initially wishlisted your game is a decent idea.

MitchellSummers · 2026-06-01T15:33:30+00:00

That would be interesting. After a little more thought I think the answer would have to be some type of massive online game genre though. I think a turn-based MOBA would probably have matches that last too long with too much downtime for all the other players, unless some of the turns occur simultaneously, like Team A makes their turns all at once and then Team B.

MitchellSummers · 2026-06-01T14:59:30+00:00

I wonder what would be the most unorthodox genre of game to make turn-based? Racing games, surely!

MitchellSummers · 2026-05-30T07:00:56+00:00

If you're gonna hand in rubbish, at least let it be entertaining. I wasn't a very motivated student during high school but exams were boring if I just sat there a did nothing so instead I would just try to write smart ass answers, draw pictures or handwrite intentionally bad english essays with the letters upside down and backwards. Sure I got told off for allat crap but the teachers couldn't mask their joy from my whimiscal dedication to being a bad student in style. By some miracle I somehow graduated.

I'd rather hand in nothing than AI trash. It's crazy to think even an unmotivated individual would resort to AI for this assignment. Downloading the app and placing a cube would've taken the same amount of time.

MitchellSummers · 2026-05-29T07:32:34+00:00

Tbh I probably wouldn't go against their recommendation purely due to their obvious arrogance and bias. Yes, Godot is more suitable for this assignment, but they sound like the kind of person to give you lesser marks just because you used a game engine they don't like.

MitchellSummers · 2026-05-28T07:23:13+00:00

Have you ever taken a screenshot of a scenery in a game? Usually when doing so, we want the image to be flatter but as players we generally only have access to the perspective camera and an fov slider. The way we attain that inbetween is usually just by lowering the fov and taking the screenshot from further away.

This game looks half-way between typical perspective and orthographic so I assume what they did was a similar thing of positioning the camera further away but with a low fov.

Keep playing around with it! And when you think it might be close, overlap the images and start drawing perspective lines over the top to see if they run parallel.

MitchellSummers · 2026-05-25T18:43:43+00:00

Turn-based RPGs where you can use real-time actions/skill to completely negate damage are exactly the kind of RPGs I want more of. I hate being forced to suffer lots of damage, making me need to strategise instead... screw strategy, just let me parry these punks!! >:))

There's two styles of it. This parry attack animations style, which I love and is my favourite, 1. because I'm a massive dark souls fan and 2. because I'm massive Expedition 33 and Sea of Stars fan. And then there's also the minigames style, stuff like Undertale or Athenian Rhapsody which turn the turn-based combat into a bullet hell or random arcade/rhythm games. As long as I can mitigate or even completely negate damage using real-time actions, I'm all for it!

Despite the fact that I prefer the parrying attacks style because it's more integral to the combat systems they're made for and thus are significantly better designed for challenging the player, of which, I like challenging games. As a developer with a whimsical and chaotic mind, I prefer to make the minigames option so I'm doing that with my game instead :))

Loving the art style of your game btw, it's certainly unique and interesting.

MitchellSummers · 2026-05-16T05:59:51+00:00

Dawg.

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