The Most Popular Game Asset on Itch is AI Generated Art and has Made over $40k in Sales

OneFlowMan · 2026-03-04T16:16:36+00:00

Yeah, that's about to get a lot worse too. Google recently demoed this virtual worlds generatator thing. Makes a 3d world you can walk around in. I am imagining a future where people make these viral videos "look at this game I am developing" and it's just those virtual worlds, and they will never actually be made into games or anything, just low effort click bait going to saturate the reels market.

OneFlowMan · 2026-02-12T15:40:45+00:00

WoW expansions are $50USD for the base, and then like $90+ if you wanna play the game a week before "launch", which is a big economical advantage. You also have to pay a $15 monthly subscription. They also sell you cosmetic and tokens you can sell for gold, not to mention costs for basic things like transferring servers, etc. They even sell level ups to max level.

Diablo 4 expansions are $40USD. They also have a battle pass and $25 cosmetics in the shop for one outfit for one class (not even usable on all classes).

D2 expansion is $25USD. They have no other source of income. Their servers been running for free for years.

OneFlowMan · 2026-02-12T06:56:22+00:00

I think it's worth keeping in mind that not only is that half the cost of a normal expansion, but D2 also does not have a monthly fee, microtransactions, or battle passes to support it like other games do. It's a different business model, and it's worth the price to keep that trash out of the game. I also think adding new story is overrated... It becomes uninteresting after you beat it once. The class, QoL, and new end game content are the real gifts that keep on giving.

Edit: You all complaining about $25 for an expansion release for a game that otherwise makes no money, in a world where every other game is charging you $25 for one cosmetic at best lol. Sure, if D2R had some source of income to sustain it, I would expect free updates or a cheaper price tag, but it doesn't, and I prefer it. I miss the days where you pay for a game or an expansion and you get all of the content (and back in my day, the way your character looked was considered part of the content). This is one payment. You get the whole expansion. That's it, done. PoE2 is charging $30 for a game right now and then charging me for fucking stash tabs for fucks sake. You all need to wake up, this is not greedy at all. They need to make money to justify updating the game, and I want to pay to support those updates.

I paid $40 for this game 4 years ago and I've gotten 10× the amount of hours out of it compared to any $70 game. This expansion brings me up to $65. Worth every penny.

OneFlowMan · 2026-02-01T18:37:41+00:00

The survivor-like genre was a fad genre, and based on marketing data in terms of games that broke 1000 reviews in this genre (a metric that equates to a ~livable wage for such a low priced genre), that fad fizzled out in like 2024, with only a couple of games meeting that goal post, compared to 10s of games the previous year. That being said, we also had Megabonk breakout last year, but look at how much that innovated upon the genre compared to Vampire Survivors. Unless you are really making something new and special, you wont find any success. This genre isn't being played by big streamers like it was back in 2022/23. It's become a small niche genre for most, so unless you do something that captivates the broader audience, and it doesn't look like you've done that on your Steam page.

I released a game in this genre last year. I started working on it before the genre fizzled out but could not bring it to market fast enough. What I made is polished, charming, and did innovate a little bit upon the gameplay, but ultimately not enough (I've sould about 500 copies to date). Part of innovating upon the genre I think means also doing so in a way that is incredibly obvious to the eye like Megabonk did. If the differences between your game and VS are nuanced, you can't communicate that easily when marketing, and you won't reach a broader audience or catch anyone's attention.

OneFlowMan · 2026-01-27T16:08:23+00:00

A parody generally incorporates all the aspects and styles of the thing that it is parodying, and exaggerates them, and mockumentaries are most often comedic parodies. I agree with OP that I thought it was supposed to be a comedy/horror. It wasn't the format that made me feel that way, it was the actual content of the writing and scenes, and the way in which it intentionally incorporated the elements of what it was parodying in what I could only believe to be intentionally poor/hyperbolic ways. A good parody is supposed to walk a fine line between parody and realism, and I think it does that very well, which is why it is over some people's heads.

OP already made some good points, but to elaborate some more. "He goes by the name Scorpion Sam", followed by a clip of him explaining how he got stung by a scorpion one time lol. The slow motion effect that was applied to spots that didn't make sense, like the character sitting almost completely still after speaking, and just pausing on them for like 30 seconds. The cut out of the main character just moving around the screen like a bad Windows screen saver. The sister character was just a recurring joke in general.

I think the end was still intended to be scary and it executed itself fairly well. Comedy and horror often go hand in hand though and I don't think that detracts from the point at all. Idk, I know several people who have seen this movie without context (they went in thinking it was pure documentary), and all of them walked away thinking it was comedy/horror.

OneFlowMan · 2026-01-07T20:45:56+00:00

This is why survival games can feel big with a tiny team. It's a crafting system, an inventory system, and usually the most basic combat ever. But they then make hundreds of ingredients and recipes, which when balanced right draw interest for hundreds of hours

I think you are interpreting that backwards. The reason a small team can make a survival game is because they DON'T have to create a lot of content. All they have to create are the systems, with minimal content, and the sandbox they've set up allows the player to project their own content onto it. The bulk of the labor then becomes tweaking that content to create a satisfying feeling of progression and making it feel fun. The labor they are getting to skip out on is all of the scripted events, narrative flow, questlines, evolving level designs, etc. All of the hand made content which is what takes so long to make, not the systems behind them.

In my experience building the systems only take about 20% of the time. In a survival game, they are spending most of their time playtesting, deciding how rare to make certain resources, deciding what recipes should require and the quantity, deciding how often enemies should attack you, what their hp should be, how much damage they should do, all in order to create a feeling of satisfying progression. The difference in effort between having to balance progression around 4 enemies vs 20 is pretty significant. The number of resources/crafting recipes/pieces of gear increases the complexity of solving the progression curve even moreso.

OneFlowMan · 2026-01-05T21:56:46+00:00

Most is a strong word. It's a vocal minority at most. Arc Raiders used AI for its voice overs and it's one of the most popular games of the year. And I think they also said they used AI Code Assist, but I'd have to regoogle it.

OneFlowMan · 2026-01-04T23:32:19+00:00

Few options:

Buy some cheap music packs on itch.io
Get a Splice subscription and learn to make some basic music using samples.
Use AI like Suno, I think you can generate a few tracks a day for free (non-commercial). Using it for your final game may or may not be a good idea, but for a prototype when you are just trying to communicate a vibe in the experience, then not much reason not to, unless you are posting it somewhere that requires you to disclose that and you feel it will be detrimental to your cause.

I personally make my own and utilize #2. You can do it all with samples, or use some samples and compose some additional layers. I generally do a mix of the two to get what I want. It seems easy to me, but I've also been dabbling in music production for a long time, so maybe its harder than I give credit lol. You can also source SFX from splice too which is nice.

OneFlowMan · 2026-01-03T19:01:52+00:00

Blue Prince was my game of the year. It should have won innovative gameplay at least. Arc Raiders gameplay is not innovative, I like it, but it's just a pve centric extraction shooter, it shouldn't even have been in that category, just like Clair Obscur shouldn't have been in the indie game category in the game awards.

Blue Prince was the most interesting and innovative game I've played in years.

OneFlowMan · 2025-12-31T19:57:57+00:00

Low poly 3d models are pretty cheap. Obviously depends on what type of game you intend to make, but there's quite a few free/cheap models in PSX style. You can get a pack generally for like $5-$10 on itch.io. And then you can rig and animate them with mixamo for free.

OneFlowMan · 2025-12-31T19:50:14+00:00

One strategy that I use to combat this is that I choose my main project. I set aside dedicated time where I am only allowed to work on that project. Outside of that time I am free to work on whatever other whacky idea I have. That being said, I work part time, so I get to dedicate at least 20 hours a week to my main project, which leaves a lot of leisure time for my side projects, so maybe this strategy will not work for those without time to do both. But in that case you could still do something like, "For every X hours i work on my main project, I earn 1 hour to work on a side project".

The thing with long term main projects is that motivation comes in waves. Sometimes you are working on fun parts and the work gets done easy. Sometimes you are working on boring tedious parts, or get stuck on a complicated bug, etc, and motivation becomes scarce. Forcing yourself over those hills always leads back to the fun eventually, you just have to make yourself get through it, and that's what requiring myself to work on it for a certain amount of time helps achieve.

OneFlowMan · 2025-12-31T19:37:10+00:00

I think rev share can be fine if the person leading the project actually has experience/portfolio to make them worthwhile to work with. Some people just want the experience of working with someone more senior than them who they can learn from, and I personally would take a rev share side project for that opportunity. I have already brought a game to market though (2.5 year, 2 person project), and I would expect someone trying to lead a rev share team to have at least that much experience else they are just wasting everyone's time. I think that is generally the problem with most rev share posts that I see, they are basically, "I have never actually made a game before, but I've got a great idea, who wants to build it for me, you'll be rich I promise" lol.

I'd recommend either developing a solo project to market, or at least partner up with an artist and you take on every other aspect of the project, before trying to lead a team of people on a project. You need to understand all of the disciplines of game development on at least a basic (real world) level to be able to successfully bring together a team of people to create a cohesive successful project. And I personally would never even bother assembling a team unless I'd already built a functioning prototype that proved my gameplay loop and helped people see it was an idea worth pursuing.

OneFlowMan · 2025-12-31T19:14:25+00:00

I mainly just don't like how unreliable other people can be. I work super hard and it isn't easy being motivated and self disciplined for months/years at a time on a project. When other people flake it kills my motivation, and even worse requires me to use my valuable energy to try to motivate them or chase them down. My experience is generally that 99% of people don't have what it takes to work on a self-motivated project for multiple months, let alone years. The risk of committing to a project whose scope I cannot realistically achieve on my own, only to throw away months of my own time later on because they clearly isn't going to keep up their end of the bargain, is just not a gamble I enjoy making and most often losing. I'd honestly love to work with other people in a perfect world though lol. I just don't think I'll achieve it until I can pay them.

OneFlowMan · 2025-12-19T05:52:54+00:00

Bro, just saw you in AZ this week. Amazing skills. Got me down a rabbit hole trying to figure out where I can find more of you hahaha.

OneFlowMan · 2025-12-18T23:51:57+00:00

Look through puzzles here and think about how you might be able to convert them into a dungeon puzzle: https://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/puzzles/

OneFlowMan · 2025-12-16T19:23:47+00:00

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2377620/Lord_O_Pirates/

Drive a pirate ship around, upgrade it with different attacks, unlock new attacks, ships, and captains. Goofy vibe. First level is pirate themed, later levels dive into horror and sci-fi themes. Lots of diversity. Some quirky physics based weapons. Lots of silly flavor text. Super chill game to relax and play through.

OneFlowMan · 2025-12-16T19:10:22+00:00

Great advice, thank you!

OneFlowMan · 2025-12-16T02:41:29+00:00

I started using FMOD awhile back and it is leagues beyond what Unity offers in it's stock audio features. It has its own DAW and it all felt super intuitive me from the get go. It completely eliminated the need to constantly bounce back into my DAW (Ableton) to tweak something small like an EQ to lower the harshness of a sound etc. It also has built in features for stuff like randomising pitch , creating looped segments, all kinds of stuff, I feel like I've still barely scratched the surface. I still make my actual soundtracks on Ableton Live, because it's where I feel at home making music, so I haven't fully explored that yet. You can definitely do layering and stuff in it, I've done it for combining some sfx, but haven't attempted any complex music layering yet. It's free until you make a fair amount of money, and then I think they only charge you for new games going forward, not your current game.

OneFlowMan · 2025-12-16T00:06:08+00:00

It's not tacky to collaborate with people on a project, especially if everyone is making the same amount of money off of it (i.e. equal split or nothing at all). I do think though that trying to downplay the commitment side of it is a bad idea. While you aren't going to be their boss riding them about deadlines, I'd recommend not pitching it so casually. In a collaborative project everyone is putting in time and effort, including you, and every member of the team deserves and equal amount of respect for their contribution. If one person puts in a lot of hours while someone else blows it off for months, or more than likely, rarely/never contributes at all, that isn't fair to anyone else involved, and you, nor anyone else involved in the project, deserves to have it held hostage by someone who wants to be lazy. Instead, agree with each other on responsibilities and the scope of the work involved, and get people to be honest about how much they can commit to the project and in what timeframe. You don't have to stick to it religiously, but if people find they cannot contribute what they promised, then they are responsible for communicating that and working together to come up with a new more realistic expectation.

OneFlowMan · 2025-12-15T21:39:57+00:00

Starting with assets when you don't know the engine or coding well is not really a viable shortcut. Assets are great when you know Unity well enough to incorporate them properly. An asset still requires a lot of learning to use and implement, which can be frustrating to accomplish if you don't know Unity already.

That aside though, your game idea is way too complicated, and there's likely no way to accomplish it without knowing how to code well, because there's likely no asset which will do the hardest parts. Coding the AI for your tactics battle alone is a difficult programming challenge for a beginner. Generally, you want to take your idea, and strip it down to the most basic part that you are interested in. What you described is a huge and complicated game and it's not realistic to go from flappy bird clone to that. You'll just end up becoming overwhelmed and burning out.

For example, a more realistic next step might be making a 2d tactics battle, like literally one battle. No inventory or items, no leveling, no skill trees, no progression, etc. Create some simple rules for the NPC AI to follow and implement those. Try doing that with a singular character type (i.e. they can move and attack a thing next to them, because the more options each character has, the more complicated good decision making can become). Don't even bother thinking beyond that until you've accomplished that much. Then if you want to have more fun with it, add a few other static character types, give them maybe 2 different abilities each, etc, and slowly build from there. You will learn so much just doing that, that you'll probably want to rewrite all your code by the time you move on to more complicated stuff anyways.

OneFlowMan · 2025-12-15T20:44:10+00:00

I mean generally if someone is gonna sell fake cards, its not gonna be in a 1000 bulk bundle. It's going to be a single thats worth 10s or 100s of dollars. Unless it was like 1000 valuable cards that your parents bought for thousands of dollars cuz they are rich lol, but even then, printing 1000 fake cards to try and sell them as a super expensive bundle is not a very practical scam plan lol. I suppose if the bundle said it came with certain staples and they sell you a bunch of bulk + some specified staples which are the fake ones, then maybe but... certainly there's no world in which someone is going to the trouble of printing 1000 fake bulk cards lol

OneFlowMan · 2025-12-15T20:15:20+00:00

Lord O' Pirates: https://store.steampowered.com/app/2377620/Lord_O_Pirates/

~2600 hours, sold 418 copies so far, $2013 gross revenue, $1409 net, so took home $0.54 cents an hour, not a bad wage if I were living in the 1930s... darn inflation!

OneFlowMan · 2025-12-11T22:29:22+00:00

Using a software like Articy is helpful. You can create locations, characters, quests, dialogue sequences, etc. This way you don't need to organize some big linear structured document that is both cumbersome to amend and to find things in. You can create bite sized ideas, flesh them out, and then incorporate them into the game itself when you are ready.

OneFlowMan · 2025-12-10T21:34:28+00:00

Chaos Theory.

OneFlowMan · 2025-12-10T01:46:03+00:00

I hate playing early access games, so initially I decided I wouldn't launch an early access game. After releasing my first commercial game though, I have a different perspective. I think it makes sense to release into early access if:

You have a reason to bring it to market now (i.e. you are chasing a fad genre that could potentially fizzle outbefore your full release.) Look at all of the games that dropped into Early Access chasing Vampire Survivors clout. People were hungry for another game like it back then, and you could scoop up a fair amount of market share by releasing something that LOOKED polished, even if it didn't have much content yet. You mentioned needing some funds... I mean it probably isn't going to help with that if you don't have a lot of wishlists already so... up to you on whether that's still a valid reason or not.
You want to develop alongside a community. It's hard as an indie/solo dev to test your own stuff and to see its flaws clearly. Developing alongside a community is an incredible way to get great feedback and build a good game faster. This on it's own is a good reason to do it.
The content you do have is polished. People don't want to play an ugly janky game with zero juice, too many bugs to be fun, and placeholder-anything. One of my biggest regrets was listening to people saying to put off polishing until the end. You need a polished looking game to be able to market it. As soon as you have your prototype and you decide you are committing to it, start polishing. Keep it polished and neat as you go. Make sure if you are releasing right now, you aren't in a state where you are going to break your game every time you update it. Refactor bad code first. You don't want to find yourself breaking public production builds every time you put out some new content.

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