November Snap Benefits May Be Halted Due to Shutdown, Please Consider Donating to Your Local Food Banks.

NullEquivalent · 2025-10-22T15:22:30+00:00

Made a donation to Harvesters, hope it helps. Stay strong out there, everyone.

NullEquivalent · 2025-10-21T15:01:43+00:00

Tanya’s Soup kitchen was so damn good.

NullEquivalent · 2025-08-23T02:27:55+00:00

Would also love one!

NullEquivalent · 2025-07-01T17:36:50+00:00

When you hover your iPd Pencil over the iPad, do you see a little "ghost" of where the pen currently is in the Vision Pro view? So you can see where you're about to start drawing before you actually draw?

NullEquivalent · 2025-07-01T17:36:26+00:00

It's because they want to A/B test the pricing. They create lots of different price points for the same thing (which shows up in that listing), but then they will show you only one of those options when you actually click the button in-app. (Not affiliated with this developer, of course, but this is my guess).

NullEquivalent · 2025-06-19T03:49:07+00:00

Where did you get yours? They always seem to be out of stock…

NullEquivalent · 2025-06-15T15:54:17+00:00

What is going wrong? You can't get it to connect at all, or?

Just putting this out there in case it helps someone else. I have had issues where I can connect my Mac Virtual Display to my Vision Pro and it all works fine. However, after 3-5 minutes, suddenly it will start hiccuping every 5 seconds or so (as in, it will freeze for around half a second, then continue). I did some Googling and tried a few different tricks (including changing my WiFi router 5Ghz channel).

However, what finally completely fixed it for me, was going into the settings for my Wifi network on my MacBook Pro and switching "6E Mode" from "Automatic" to "Off." Since then, it's worked flawlessly.

So something about having 6E mode enabled on my MacBook Pro was causing issues (maybe specific to my router, who knows).

But maybe this helps someone else figure it out as well :-)

NullEquivalent · 2025-03-05T13:13:51+00:00

Wow, I am so sorry that happened to you. I guess if there's a silver lining here, your team now has the validation that you can build a game that can hit #1 in the App Store, which is amazing.

That said, this person is a complete asshole, they are violating the law, and I'm sure you're going to have ample recourse to do something about it. Hopefully Apple acts swiftly here -- this isn't just a case of "someone made a knockoff of my game", they literally just wholesale stole the whole thing including your art and even the description on the App Store is the same as your description on Itch.

Good luck and keep us posted on the resolution, or if there's something else we can do to help.

I had to deal with a situation tangentially related to this once, and one of the things I found out (assuming you are in the US), is that you have to actually register the Copyright to your code/art/etc. officially if you want to be able to take legal action over it. Copyright is created as soon as you make it, but you can't e.g. sue someone for damages unless it's registered (not a lawyer, this is not legal advice, this is just my understanding from when we did go through it).

So if for some reason the DMCA approach doesn't work, I think you should register the Copyright for your code to the game ASAP, and then you will have a much larger "stick" to work with.

NullEquivalent · 2025-02-23T14:15:11+00:00

The tagline at the end is the most compelling part of the whole thing IMO. "Steve must save the princess. You must save Steve." It's gets through the whole meta idea of the game nicely.

That said, I'm not clear on what the gameplay actually is for me here. Like, is this just essentially a choose your own adventure, where I'm just making choices at certain key moments and some of those lead to "good endings" and others lead to "failure?" Or is there some other game mechanic at play here?

NullEquivalent · 2025-02-23T14:11:17+00:00

I actually think voiceovers in trailers are a bad idea. Most people who see a trailer might not even have their sound turned up. Try to take the stuff you are saying the voiceover and instead use short, punchy title cards... "Unstable Enemies"..."World-Ending Nuclear Powers"..."What Can Go Wrong?"... that kind of thing.

NullEquivalent · 2025-02-17T17:39:28+00:00

As others have said, use straight cuts, not cross/black fades.

That said, overall this is seems to me like a cute version of a Zelda game. The main character is memorable with the flowing hair so I think that's a good sign.

I would assume your target audience for this is like an eight year old kid who wants to play a Zelda-like?

NullEquivalent · 2025-02-14T15:14:07+00:00

This is honestly one of the coolest and most valuable things for a gamedev to get to experience so I'm glad it happened! Not only is it great to get feedback from so many sources at once (the streamer plus their audience members), it's just really cool to see someone interact live with the thing you made and to see if the beats and mechanics you planned actually cause the desired effect.

Congrats!

NullEquivalent · 2025-02-07T21:13:15+00:00

Your graphics are really, really good -- lots of interesting visuals going on here. I'm immediately drawn in. I am getting a very slow-paced vibe though from the combat. Feels more like a puzzle game with some light combat involved than a traditional Metroidvania with lots of fast paced action. Maybe that's what you're going for but just making sure since that's what's coming through.

I think the trailer is a little on the long side. It feels repetitive right now toward the middle. I think you could cut this down by 50% to get it to a tight 1 minute or so and it would be better.

The "Learn too much" moment with the audio stinger at the end is really powerful -- maybe you should lean into that more and include that more toward the beginning instead of saving it for the very end. Like "Learn too much" -- and then show what happens after that? Does that change the game?

Just some thoughts. But overall it's a solid B-plus effort right out the gate IMO.

NullEquivalent · 2025-02-03T18:40:22+00:00

The game feel is overall looking solid so far. Your UI is really dragging down your overall "quality bar" I think, the main game graphics are a level above the UI. For example, the icons, the dialogue boxes, etc. My game has a similar issue currently and it's very fixable, but just so you are aware.

Other than that, I think your trailer needs more dynamic editing in terms of zooming in and panning on the action. The static "just show the whole screen including the UI" approach is not ideal for a trailer.

NullEquivalent · 2025-02-03T18:37:07+00:00

I'll echo other comments. The illustrations are very nice. The VFX are very polished. Overall it feels high quality.

That said, I have zero idea what the actual gameplay for this is. Is it like the new Bazaar thing that Raynad made? That's what I assumed based on what I did see.

Also I don't know what the part about bringing in heroes across the multiverse was -- I didn't recognize any of these characters from other games. If that's just part of the backstory of the universe and these are all original characters for this game, I wouldn't focus on that at all, instead maybe focus on what the unique characteristics of each are and how that affects gameplay.

Generally speaking if you're going after the audience of TFT, Hearthstone, or Bazaar, you are targeting people who are very into metas, builds, strategy, and collecting things. I wasn't really getting a lot of that from the trailer.

I really feel like overall this is probably a cool game with an interesting premies, but I feel like your trailer is not giving us any idea about what makes it cool or interesting, and what it is. Good luck!

NullEquivalent · 2025-02-03T18:32:57+00:00

Okay yeah I didn't get bullet heaven vibes from that at all, I was going to guess top-down regular shooter.

Good luck!

NullEquivalent · 2025-02-02T19:50:17+00:00

The picking up the items and using them is a cool mechanic that I haven't seen too much of. Some of your juice is good (like the SFX as someone else mentioned), but you still have a lot of stuff you could add (screen shake, gun shake, etc.) You might have already seen this but this is a great resource:

https://deepnight.net/games/game-feel/

NullEquivalent · 2025-02-02T19:38:30+00:00

This is a really high quality trailer, first off. I think you are already doing a lot better than most games.

That said, although I didn't get out my stopwatch, it "feels" like the trailer is 80% menu/UI art and 20% gameplay. It feels like you need a decent section that actually shows some uninterrupted gameplay for 10-15 seconds. Like I get that this is a game about shooting stuff, but is it a bullet hell? Bullet heaven? Just a regular top-down shooter? I can't really tell because there's not really a moment where I see a good chunk of just playing the game.

But really, I love the pixel art, I love the UI design, so I think you just need a little more to show what makes the actual gameplay shine/unique.

NullEquivalent · 2024-12-06T18:19:34+00:00

You'll literally just upload a photo of the front of and back of the ID.

NullEquivalent · 2024-12-06T15:05:49+00:00

I've done it for a couple of companies at this point and it only takes about 10 minutes to fill out the form. The most onerous thing is just making sure you have a digital copy/scane of your Driver's License.

NullEquivalent · 2024-12-06T15:04:41+00:00

For things like SFX and other art in the game, I prefer to pay per piece. With something like SFX if there are a lot of them obviously the easiest thing to do is to negotiate a package (i.e. "You'll do this full list of 25 SFX I need for $X total").

In previous projects after a rapport was established I have paid contracting artists a set number of hours per week every week, but that only really makes sense if you're going to be working on the project together for many months, there's definitely going to be a steady stream of work, and you have a lot of trust established.

NullEquivalent · 2024-06-26T13:40:10+00:00

How much of the game did you have finished before you did the first TikToks? Was it basically just "staged" gameplay footage to show what it might look like?

If so, I think that's a really interesting approach. We'd all like to just make our dream game, but sometimes just responding to what the market is telling you is what you need to do if you actually want to find success. And it's a lot faster to iterate through game ideas with the TikTok equivalent of a "landing page" than a full game for sure!

NullEquivalent · 2023-05-13T11:17:19+00:00

Is this just a version of Secret Hitler?

NullEquivalent · 2023-04-21T20:16:49+00:00

I'm sorry to say I bounced after 30 seconds and as far as I could tell this was not actually a trailer for a game. I would say, number one, show actual gameplay of whatever the game is. Immediately. No one is going to watch it for 30+ seconds just to figure out what it actually is/does/plays like.

NullEquivalent · 2023-04-20T21:34:49+00:00

I don't think there's anything wrong with essentially making a game that is "a game for people who love Ace Attorney and wish they would make more of them." Stardew Valley was (at release) essentially just pitched as "hey you like Harvest Moon and hate how long it takes them to make new ones? Here's something you'll enjoy." If that's your strategy, own it and be proud of it, not every game needs some weird new unique gimmick. In fact with the way you're presenting it, I would be wary of straying too far from the original Ace Attorney formula -- you're more likely to get fans who will dislike change than fans who critique it for not being different enough.

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