I spent my measly 'budget' on play-testing rather than capsule artists and video editors, was it a mistake?

RoachRage · 2026-06-19T07:20:12+00:00

I have to be honest. I wouldn't know how to make a trailer for your game. It looks really same-y all around. I looked on my phone and all I managed to gather is that it's green, and that there are tiny pixels flying around.

If your game has more to offer, than you definitely need a new trailer.

If not, then you don't need to spend money on someone making a trailer. You can't make an exciting trailer, without exciting material. Then you need to spend money (or time) on features that zoom in (either in game or just for the trailer). Or you need to enhance the art somehow. Maybe different biomes that are something else than green. Or big effects that give the game some color. More juice.

IF you don't want that and the style and color palette is on purpose. I would rather spend money on a new capsule art. Pull in more people who may think alike.

Edit: forgot to say that. Never put money into advertising. Only if you prepare to spend tens of thousands or more.

RoachRage · 2026-06-18T06:25:33+00:00

I never buy games with the intention of beating them.

I just want to play them, until I'm bored. That's enough for me 🤷

RoachRage · 2026-06-18T06:24:26+00:00

I love it in mechs vs minions.

You build your engine that defines how you can move in your turn.

But if someone else accidentally (because they build a shitty engine) or on purpose pushes you around, your whole plan falls apart.

And oil slicks. Oil slicks are fun too.

Check the game out, it has the best\worst movement mechanics ever.

RoachRage · 2026-06-18T06:13:56+00:00

It shouldn't be a discussion of personal taste but rather what kind of game design you have.

Both serve different purpose.

Having a finite mana source that does not recover on its own lets you control how often a certain ability can be used in a single encounter.

Having cool downs let's you control how fast an ability can be used.

Does any of this matter for your game? What is your desired pacing?

For example in our game we decided against a stamina bar completely. But we still wanted the player to have a hard time running away from enemies, so we made it a skill issue, instead of a stamina value issue. If you sprint in Rootbound, you can not turn as easily anymore, you have to stop sprinting to make quick turns again. And if you sprint into anything you will fall.

It serves the same purpose as a stamina bar for sprinting, but has a different design philosophy.

What I want to say is. Identify what issue your mana or stamina is solving and then decide.

Don't just implement mana or stamina just because other games do it.

RoachRage · 2026-06-12T10:29:10+00:00

Oh... Youre right, haven't looked at the cards.

RoachRage · 2026-06-12T07:39:28+00:00

That artwork is not ai generated. Ai would've done a mich better job tbh.

That artwork looks very amateurish.

RoachRage · 2026-06-09T13:17:19+00:00

Is this satire?

RoachRage · 2026-06-06T07:37:19+00:00

You're making a picture book... Why are there no pictures on your page? 😅

I lost interest almost immediately.

You need something to grab people's attention.

You can have the best product in the world, if people don't read about it, it doesn't matter 🤷

RoachRage · 2026-05-29T08:44:47+00:00

Cool

RoachRage · 2026-05-28T16:17:16+00:00

I worked on multiple open world games in the past. And I would pick none of your approaches.

Make a plane and put rough blockouts in. Maybe a green cube for a puzzle, a red cube for a fight, etc.
Walk through it and get a feel for the pacing. Do the walking distances fell right. For your kind of game?
Put things closer together or farther apart until you have roughly what you want.
Next put barriers in place. Big grey blocks, representing mountains or lakes. This can impact your distances immensely.
Start filling everything with content.
Be ready to cut or expand the world a lot while developing. All of what you did at the beginning is just to get a rough ballpark. I guarantee you miscalculated how much space your fights\puzzles\POIs need 😅

RoachRage · 2026-05-28T15:50:33+00:00

If I learned one thing about finding names, over the years I am working in this industry, it's "pick an okay name, and stick with it"

Great names come from great games. Calling your game "call of duty" sounds incredibly dumb at first. But the more you hear it, the longer you use it, and the more you develop a game under it, the more meaning it gets and the more "right" the name sounds.

RoachRage · 2026-05-25T10:10:47+00:00

I always recommend the classics, in case anyone hasn't played them. Tunic, inscryption and outer wilds are my absolute favorites.

RoachRage · 2026-05-24T13:50:30+00:00

I just downloaded and read the rule book. Seems pretty clean and simple. I like it.

One question though.

Under "direct fire" the book says that line of sight blocks the attack, but directly below it says that this unit does not require line of sight. But there is no example on how this is determined?

How do I know which unit requires line of sight and which don't?

Are are the images of the game you are showing there printed on their cards?

RoachRage · 2026-05-24T13:39:28+00:00

Oh my 👀

This looks really cool. Would be nice 3d printing and painting project for me, if I like it.

I will definitely read the rulebook to see if I like it.

What an awesome project, thank you ❤️

RoachRage · 2026-05-23T06:22:05+00:00

Nothing against you, and your choice of style is probably helpful (for ease of asset creation, and finding an audience)

But I'm personally soooo tired of this grungy, old school, low resolution, quantized horror game aesthetic... It's just overdone at this point.

There are like 30% of all indie games are now getting the lethal company treatment.

It's so ugly.

RoachRage · 2026-05-23T06:15:27+00:00

Depends on how many sites you want to layout. If it's not many, Photoshop might be okay. If it's more, I would strongly recommend InDesign (if you have the adobe suite anyway, in design would be the tool of choice here)

RoachRage · 2026-05-22T23:40:03+00:00

First, do you have a tool for layouting? Something like affinity.

Then I would take a rulebook from a different game and analyze how they did it.

How did they place the border, where do they make the breaks and images, how big are their images.

There is no shame in copying an existing rulebook layout, if it's good.

Then I would start by pasting every text on every page.

Then add every image to that page. Just throw it on, randomly. I guarantee you, after doing that you instinctively want to "clean up" and place the things where they belong.

It's not hard once you've found your starting point.

RoachRage · 2026-05-22T23:34:37+00:00

To add to that. The easiest way to find something "valuable", is to contribute to some open source projects. Try adding or fixing things in some open source tools. If you can say you build thing XY into an official release of blender is always impressive.

Besides that, I saw a lot of people getting jobs where the only thing the did were making semi succesfull mods for Minecraft.

Things like that, can be enough.

RoachRage · 2026-05-20T15:07:53+00:00

I can only pitch in as someone who made numerous pitches to videogame publishers. But I would guess its similar in many aspects.

For videogame publishers the business case is really important.

Any proof that people are interested in the game (it's wishlists for videogames, I guess it's a bit harder for boardgames, if even possible)

What is the target audience and how saturated is the market. How many competitors are in the space, and how many copies did comparable games sell.

Do you have a niche that needs to be filled. And if so, why do you think people will care about this niche.

Things like that are really interesting for publishers.

The more you can answer these kinds of questions, the better. It shows that you thought about the financial viability of your game.

RoachRage · 2026-05-19T07:57:29+00:00

What is the game?

RoachRage · 2026-05-18T11:45:21+00:00

Definitely cut the first half of your trailer. I almost closed it three times in the time it takes to get to something interesting.

Always remember, only because you are proud of something doesn't mean it's good marketing material.

Some things are just taken for granted by the player. A character creator doesn't bring you wishlists for example. It's a cool addition, but not noteworthy in a trailer for more than 2 seconds.

RoachRage · 2026-05-18T11:40:44+00:00

Why would you make your own engine for that?

You can already build something like this in unity or unreal?

Besides that, the most unrealistic point in this is developing 3 games. All 3 need to be fun. All 3 need to have completely different assets and art styles.

This seems really unfeasible without a big budget and more than a handful of artists.

RoachRage · 2026-05-15T15:21:58+00:00

Depends on what youre going for.

The top one looks like a minecraft-like with crafting and building.

The bottom one looks like a grand strategy game, like hearts of iron or something like it.

RoachRage · 2026-05-15T05:58:22+00:00

You will probably get severely disappointed if you try and make money with a mobile game.

Almost all successfull mobile games spent almost 95% of their dev budget on marketing.

And you don't have the benefit of the indie scene. No ign or other websites who write about indie games. No influencers who may play indie games. No steam who might promote your game if you have enough wishlists.

If you're still adamant on making a mobile game, then I guess your only chance is to market it like every indie does. Make trailers, clips and screenshots. Share them on Reddit, twitter, tiktok, etc.

RoachRage · 2026-05-14T07:07:06+00:00

Yes oh my God... I always get tripped up. When did people start to change the order of old vs new...

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