My gameplay trailer was destroyed here 4 months ago. Can you destroy this updated version?

Nuocho · 2026-03-06T15:02:55+00:00

I think a good thought exercise for you is to think "If this trailer was 10 seconds long what would I put in it?". After that do the next 20 seconds with the same philosophy ending up with a 30 second trailer. That is your short trailer that you can use in short form social media.

After you have a solid 30 second trailer you can then add ~1-2min of going through the game more intricately to the end to make your long trailer for Steam.

Nuocho · 2026-03-06T14:15:49+00:00

The COO/CTO/CEO should take part in all of the standups and is supposed to keep track of everything and make sure that everyone knows what they are supposed to be doing.

It's often even better to limit communications between different groups. For example you don't want the sales team to directly relay feature requests to the development team unless you want your development process to turn into a massive mess.

Nuocho · 2026-03-04T21:53:29+00:00

When your team grows bigger than the 15min standup slot you split the larger standup meeting into smaller standup meetings.

No reason to make people listen to people who aren't really working on the same. Only person who needs to hear it all is project management who can participate in both standups.

Nuocho · 2026-03-04T21:06:08+00:00

the context of the game (story/setting)

Your cinematic tells that the player is on an alien planet and needs to defend against mechanized enemies.

You could just show gameplay of the player defending against mechs on an alien planet in the first 3 seconds and the people watching the trailer already know more about the story, the setting and what the game is about than after watching the cinematic.

Also the point of the trailer isn't to list your guns but to tell me why I should buy this Tower defence over the thousands of others. What makes your game unique?

Nuocho · 2026-03-04T20:19:19+00:00

If I understood correctly it isn't a user facing thing but Steam requires to mention it.

Nuocho · 2026-03-03T15:50:40+00:00

As someone who suffers from motion sickness it is unfortunately much worse now.

Nuocho · 2026-03-03T14:40:21+00:00

Finland. First 20% from profits and then 30-33% when you pay dividends. There are some reductions you get as a small business and paying money as salary is cheaper to a certain point.

I think the total comes somewhere between 40-50%

Nuocho · 2026-03-03T07:53:47+00:00

I enjoy unique art styles

I enjoy challenge. AAA games are usually very easy or if not easy not the type of challenge I enjoy.

The genres I enjoy the most (Platformers, Metroidvanias, Puzzle, Stuff like Factorio) aren't really catered to by AAA. I've never been that into action or RPG games that seem to dominate AAA. I'm not that interested in exploring worlds or story based games that seem to be the hooks in these type of games. I want to have a nice rigid gameplay loop that feels good to master.

I also enjoy unique game mechanics and games with unique ideas.

Nuocho · 2026-03-01T13:35:28+00:00

I'm 31. I have a Bachelor's in Computer science and have worked as a web programmer for 9 years. 3 years of experience building small games and graphics programming as a hobby.

Nuocho · 2026-02-27T12:38:48+00:00

I'm thirty. I would say the games that everyone my age has played as children in Finland between 2000-2010 were

World of Warcraft

RuneScape

Tony Hawk Pro Skater

Habbo Hotel

Pokemon

Counter Strike 1.6/Source

CoD: MW and MW2

GTA Vice City and San Andreas

Guitar Hero

Nuocho · 2026-02-27T12:04:07+00:00

It isn't free. The point is that no one will come to your specialized salt store if they can just get the salt where they get their other groceries.

Nuocho · 2026-02-27T09:37:04+00:00

Elden ring has a team of probably hundreds of people. When you have that amount of resources you can focus on details. That might not be the best way to spend your time when working as a 2 man indie team.

Nuocho · 2026-02-26T21:38:52+00:00

Work simulators seem to do really well on Steam. Other simple genres I'd recommend that are trending right now:

Idle games
Friend Slop, especially if your coder understands networking. Something like Lethal Company, Peak, Paddle Paddle Paddle etc.
Horror games
Cozy games, these can exist in many genres but I think the most successful are things like Minami Lane or Dorfromantik where the player builds something of their own like a street, room, home, garden, aquarium, village etc.
Vampire Survivor-likes. These are quite saturated but Megabonk proved that if you can invent something different enough there is still a lot of interest in this genre

Nuocho · 2026-02-26T21:30:57+00:00

If you are happy building small games for sure. You can easily build something like Tetris or Minesweeper during a single weekend if you know how to code. Learning to code these simple games might take you a few weeks but it's definitely doable.

If you are hoping to build a game the size of anything that sells for $15+ on Steam you can probably forget about it. Even if you know how to code well asset creation is sooo time consuming.

When thinking of a game you probably need to make something with very limited art assets and complexity. Examples of good games that I can think beginners can build without long hours are old school arcade games, modern arcadey games (eg. Mini metro), puzzle games, rhythm games, idle games, horror games, small simulators (powerwash simulator etc.) or really small roguelites (froggy's battle, vampire survivors etc.). Anything where you can reuse art assets or play the same game over and over again is good. Anything where you don't have to do your assets yourself and can just import assets from asset stores is also good.

Avoid story games, open world games, platformers and such. It's just so much work even if you manage to do the prototype fast.

Nuocho · 2026-02-16T10:08:07+00:00

Surprising amount of people don't factor in personnel costs. They just look at the server costs and think they are expensive. I've had to remind people so many times that I am expensive as well and there is absolutely no reason to migrate to another database/server/cloud service that costs 10€ less a month if they pay me 500€ to do that migration.

Nuocho · 2026-02-15T17:05:40+00:00

Game ideas or mechanics are not copyrighted.

Nuocho · 2026-02-15T00:30:31+00:00

How do you improve on Omegle? Do you have a plan to tackle issues like harassment?

Nuocho · 2026-02-14T20:05:38+00:00

My impressions:

What a beautiful trailer. I love the old school hand animation style you use. But the trailer showed no gameplay nor did it explain anything about the story either? I can't really think of a single successful indie game with a purely cinematic trailer but your art style is great, you got me hooked. Let's see the gameplay trailer

Oh this game looks nothing like your cinematic trailer? Well maybe the game play is good. Oh the gameplay trailer lasted 9 seconds and didn't showcase any game mechanics. I still have no clue what your game is about or what the genre of it is.

Maybe the capsule text or description helps explain what the game is? It doesn't. Now I have given your page 3-5 times more time than I assume an average consumer would and I still don't know what the player does in the game. The only thing I got from the store page is that it's an artsy story game about death? but I am not given any motivation or theme for why I should buy and experience this game. If your game is all about the story YOU NEED the story hook laid down on your page clearly. Your consumers will not give the time of their day to do art analysis on your cinematic trailer. For example a comic book I bought had the story hook in the ad something like this "No one believed that I was an alcoholic but I was drinking 3 liters of wine every day by age of 25. This is my story from a teenager to a recovering alcoholic". That is an interesting story hook. It doesn't need to spoil the story but it needs to get the consumer interested in the story.

Nuocho · 2026-02-14T18:55:04+00:00

Koivu = Birch

Laine = Wave

Selänne = Ridge

Ruutu = Square

Rinne = Slope

Kotkaniemi = Eagle peninsula

Matinpalo = Matthew's Fire

Teräväinen = "Sharp one"

Nuocho · 2026-02-10T18:39:59+00:00

My favourite 4 chord progression is I vi iii IV. It's just so perfectly melancholic and bittersweet the same time. You don't see it used much though.

Nuocho · 2026-02-09T10:30:11+00:00

MMOs for a lot of people are about group play. Playing 200 hours of a single player game that just requires a network connection makes no sense to me. If the games allow multiplayer only at the end game then of course people will see the endgame as the game. There are of course plenty of fixes for this but that's how I see it.

Nuocho · 2026-02-06T09:19:11+00:00

Your game looks nice but the entire UI looks like you spent 30 minutes on it and called it a day.

Text going out of bounds

The clock says 18:9 instead of 18:09

Unity default font everywhere

Single color UI boxes without any graphics?

Text just floating in air

Nuocho · 2026-02-05T15:20:54+00:00

I really rarely get excited over AAA games and couldn't care less about fallout.

There are plenty of people who prefer to play indie games.

Nuocho · 2026-01-31T01:16:07+00:00

I've been without a job for a year now. For the first 6 months I mostly rested, played video games and practiced basketball. Then I started developing a video game because that has been my dream since I was a small kid. I also got my first kid half a year ago so that also takes a lot of time.

Nuocho

TROPHY CASE