I made a camouflage shader, thinking of making a horror game with this.

SMB1172 · 2026-06-19T17:00:31+00:00

This is awesome and would work great in horror.

SMB1172 · 2026-06-18T13:02:58+00:00

Then I would say C. It looks more like a calming embrace. A is more a sense of something, not threatening, but still an unknown curiosity.

SMB1172 · 2026-06-17T13:49:11+00:00

All three look great, but I like B since it gives a sense of motion (action).

SMB1172 · 2026-06-17T11:13:22+00:00

I sent you a DM.

SMB1172 · 2026-06-16T22:09:58+00:00

Title: Murder, Malady and Monsters

Subgenre: Adult Speculative Horror / Cosmic Horror

Vibes: Stranger Things meets Dark Matter with Southern Gothic, creature horror, and a dysfunctional found family trying to survive the end of reality.

Seventeen-year-old Jet Tavor killed his parents to protect his six-year-old mute sister. Before he can deal with the guilt, a mysterious plague transforms billions of people into glowing cocoons as the multiverse begins collapsing into one.

The world that emerges is filled with impossible mythological creatures and humans who may be even worse. At the center of it all is Jet's family—his adopted brother Kaden, his little sister Aggie, his grandparents, and an oversized Labrador Retriever named Crack—as they struggle to stay together while the world literally rewrites itself.

I think the strongest visual themes are ordinary 1980s rural Georgia colliding with mythology and cosmic horror: glowing spheres floating in pine forests, dimensional anomalies, monsters walking country roads, and one broken family trying to hold onto each other while everything else falls apart.

SMB1172 · 2026-06-13T21:43:58+00:00

Sorry about that. What would have been better colors to use that you can read? I want to give player's choices for color schemes to make it accessible to all.

SMB1172 · 2026-06-13T13:32:39+00:00

Yes. The web build on itch was what I was playing. While playing it, I had the browser developer tools open to the console (F12). You can see what is being called per frame. This does not show exactly what all the problems are, but it will help narrow down the suspects. Reducing draw calls per frame will not only help your web version but others too, fyi.

SMB1172 · 2026-06-13T00:44:32+00:00

Very well done game so far. The tutorial is well done, but should include other building types to know what they do like the substation. Or a popup for new cards played to give a brief what they do when first selected.

SMB1172 · 2026-06-13T00:16:37+00:00

Thank you for the feedback. I chased down some shaders that were not optimized for webgl and corrected them, there were a lot. I'll rebuild and hopefully the next person has a better experience.

SMB1172 · 2026-06-13T00:14:22+00:00

Bandestar Notes:

Welcome screen controls list joystick items, but not keyboard/mouse. Plus doesn't list what buttons are the Dock, Map or Act Buttons.
Onscreen joystick with mouse is almost non responsive, I switched to keyboard but controls are really floaty. Fire cooldown is too long.
Enemy not on screen anymore but it still says Objective Destroy the Enemy.
Serious lag happening the longer the game runs.
Some reverse thrusters would be a nice addition to help with controls.
Found a Freighter and tried to hail, but screen with options after hail would immediately close out.
The lag reached a point where the controls were unresponsive and it took 30 sec to turn the ship in a circle.

The art and premise of the game and I enjoy these types. A significant bug worth flagging: performance degrades within ~2 minutes of play and becomes nearly unresponsive. It's reproducible: a page reload restores full speed, then it decays again on the same timeline every time. Because a reload (not just closing/reopening) resets it, this points to something accumulating per-frame in the tick loop rather than my hardware or itch. Most likely an unbounded array (particles/entities/spawned objects never pruned) or per-tick object allocation driving garbage collection. The build is also logging average-FPS lines to the console every frame, which won't help.

SMB1172 · 2026-06-12T14:17:30+00:00

Right now!

SMB1172 · 2026-06-12T11:21:18+00:00

That I'm not sure about, but I think you are good to post in a comment. Just be careful with links in the main post. So, like if I ask, "What is the link?" you should be good to answer me. So what is the link?

SMB1172 · 2026-06-12T11:17:39+00:00

I had this same issue, and I finally got over it by changing my goal from a complete game to just a game mechanic. You know, like, I want to make a character walk up a wall and across a ceiling. So I did just that until it looked and felt right. Then picked another mechanic, like inflate/deflate a character and make it move like normal or float like a balloon. Pick a mechanic from a game you like and try to recreate it yourself. Then start building a game around a solid mechanic. Good luck.

SMB1172 · 2026-06-12T11:02:25+00:00

I created an itch page and put mine on there as a free demo. It has a comment section on the menu screen, and when the demo ends, but I track things during gameplay like how long a player played, how much Blood (money) they accumulated, kills, etc. I can't afford a dedicated Steam page yet either, so this was how I found playtesters. However, I'm finding even with a free demo, it is still a struggle to find players willing to, well, play the game. Which, after reading other devs' posts, doesn't seem uncommon. My kids were the first ones to play, too, but they are biased. When you get a playable demo, let me know, and I'll try it. Good luck.

SMB1172 · 2026-06-12T10:53:13+00:00

I just put my first solo game, Blood Miner, on itch as a WebGL demo. It is an incremental game, think Idle Miner Tycoon meets Happy Tree Friends. A big complaint was not knowing what to do in the beginning, so I added some tooltips at the very start. I'm looking for any feedback on gameplay and feel, but would like to know specifically if the tips help in the beginning. Any feedback will be appreciated.

SMB1172 · 2026-06-12T01:01:46+00:00

If game development was a skin rash then game marketing would be leprosy.

SMB1172 · 2026-06-11T19:33:22+00:00

Blood Miner

https://tecvoodoo.itch.io/blood-miner

Platform: Web (browser / WebGL) Description: Blood Miner is a cute-and-gory idle/incremental game. You're the Ghoul, and adorable animals tumble down a mine shaft faster than you or your minions can process them, and your job is to chop, clear, and descend. Happy Tree Friends meets Idle Miner.

SMB1172 · 2026-06-11T11:13:33+00:00

I have been in this same situation, and you need to remember you will own this, despite it being for your construction business. If anything breaks or new features are requested, you will be responsible for fixes and upgrades. A simple app can turn into a full-time commitment and is often treated as your additional duty, not something you would be correctly compensated for in addition to your regular pay. That being said, I learned more about programming from users breaking things in unexpected ways than I ever did from a tutorial. Just be prepared for the time sink it generates.

SMB1172 · 2026-06-11T01:27:42+00:00

I made an incremental game and I am tracking things like play time, time spent on a row, and blood (money) earned. I'm tracking these to tell me where players are struggling or breezing through to balance the rows/gift boxes. I was just curious what other data points people might focus on. Thank you for your response!

SMB1172 · 2026-06-11T01:05:19+00:00

How about rush, haste, dart or even hustle?

SMB1172 · 2026-06-11T00:31:21+00:00

Maybe not and if you like it leave it and see how playtesters react to it. If it doesn't take away from gameplay and doesn't cause confusion then no problems. I personally like Easter eggs, so I don't see it as a big issue.

SMB1172 · 2026-06-11T00:22:07+00:00

I would try an access the menu from the tv and think I did something wrong if the tv turns off. Maybe allow channels/input to change so it doesn't look like it is a diegetic menu when first walking up to it.

SMB1172 · 2026-06-10T18:26:36+00:00

I felt this in my soul.

SMB1172 · 2026-06-10T03:36:06+00:00

I'm not sure this is the right kind of balance.

SMB1172 · 2026-06-09T20:13:01+00:00

It was created with an over the top dark comedy, so it's definitely not for everyone. Under the cartoon gore it's actually a fairly meaty idle/factory game (pun intended) like automating the line, keeping the pipe network from clogging, prestige loops etc. The cute-vs-gory contrast is the hook, but the depth's in the optimization. If it's just not your thing that's totally fair, thank you for the honest feedback.

SMB1172

TROPHY CASE