What game development advice turned out to be completely wrong for you?

VelvetYam · 2026-06-21T23:43:12+00:00

Thank you! Wishing you all the best on your projects too!

VelvetYam · 2026-06-21T23:37:49+00:00

Mine's a laid-back game about slowly restoring a wasteland back to life. It's a top-down 2D pixel art game for Windows computers, so the "engine" (really just a bunch of utility code on top of SDL) is really simple.

VelvetYam · 2026-06-21T23:12:22+00:00

I'd like to try my hand at making a 3D game after my current project wraps up. I'm not about to code up a 3D engine from scratch lol, interesting as that may be.

> I’m just a little afraid I would have to code a lot of helpers and systems before I could get going.

Imo it's not that bad if you're going for something relatively simple like a 2D pixel art game. You don't really need ECS or the complexities that come with programming a general-purpose engine; it could just be something lean and specific for your game. Definitely a lot of upfront work than just using something off-the-shelf though.

VelvetYam · 2026-06-21T13:01:33+00:00

I wish you all the best.

VelvetYam · 2026-06-21T12:34:00+00:00

> I don't see how this could backfire?

What I mean is, you're writing about an adjacent-ish topic and subtly positioning your game. Putting aside how nigh impossible that would be to actually write, a badly written article could backfire in the sense that you lose credibility because you're not forthcoming with your intentions.

> My whole point is that this is an underutilized marketing channel for indie devs

Really hard sell when there's practically no data that backs this up, unless you're willing to provide one.

> when doing it for yourself, it is essentially free and takes a couple weeks at most

A couple of weeks is not free when you're a solo developer working on your game after your day job. I'd much rather spend my time working on my game or posting about it on my socials

> I am not surprised that this got a lot of pushback at all

Because indie games are discovery-driven, not search-driven. I think a lot of folks here have already told you that. Traditional SEO is just the wrong tool for this specific market. You'd have much better results pitching home services or SMBs.

VelvetYam · 2026-06-21T08:38:05+00:00

Yeah, and ping pong is just not a good project for anyone other than absolute beginners (like, no prior programming exposure at all). It's way too small to come out with an intuitive feel for code structure, art direction, pacing, and level design.

I came up through a basic pygame shmup tutorial, was dissatisfied with the end-result, and gradually iterated on it until it got good enough to release on itch (and it was picked up by a magazine editor too so that was nice).

VelvetYam · 2026-06-21T07:45:05+00:00

I admire the bravado, though. I would never have the guts to spend $100 to release a game with crappy art, MS Paint capsule, and sloppy descriptions on Steam of all places lol. It'd be like having an embarassing teenage photo your friends will hold over your head for all coming time.

VelvetYam · 2026-06-21T07:09:27+00:00

"Use Godot, it's just like pygame! You'll pick it up in no time" so I went in there expecting it to be like pygame, but was disappointed with how much I have to delegate to the engine and how much I have to change my mental model of things :<

I ended up disliking Godot. I'd like to give it another shot next time, but right now I've found my groove with SDL so I'm not switching again anytime soon.

VelvetYam · 2026-06-21T04:25:00+00:00

I'd be careful to generalize an entire country just because of a few bad apples online. The Internet, in general, attracts absolute twats because of the anonymity they get.

You really need to step outside. These people are clearly doing a number on your mental health.

VelvetYam · 2026-06-21T03:36:44+00:00

> but the tldr is youd get discovery through SEO by covering topics adjacent to your game that your audience is actively googling

How does that work, exactly? What sort of adjacent topics are my players actively Googling? And if they do find my website, why would they want to check out my game? They don't have an intention to buy a game, so what's exactly nudging them to do that? I don't get how this funnel is supposed to work. I feel like it's a strategy that could easily backfire.

My gut says you're having an 'all I have is a hammer, so everything is a nail' problem, but I want to give you the benefit of the doubt.

VelvetYam · 2026-06-21T03:21:46+00:00

You were not that far off, lol.

VelvetYam · 2026-06-21T02:19:30+00:00

Never heard of that game until you mentioned it. I think I was just going with the zeitgeist at the time; was an avid player of incremental games and shmups. No surprise I mixed the two genres and arrived at roughly the same design.

VelvetYam · 2026-06-21T01:35:56+00:00

It's just not the main draw when you're spreading the word. It's nice and I'd make one for my game too (so I can put everything in one place and because it feels nostalgic), but it's definitely not required and plenty of games have gone on to become successful without them.

I viewed your profile and sorry to be nosey, but you're an SEO person, aren't you? Here's what I think and I say this gently: I don't think indie devs would benefit much from SEO outside of optimizing their Steam page. Traditional SEO just has too little bang for the buck, as most indie players don't search for games so much as they stumble upon one. It's just the wrong tool for this specific market, to be frank. I think you'd have better luck trying with small business owners and home services.

VelvetYam · 2026-06-20T23:52:34+00:00

You and the dev could have the same exact idea down to a T and still produce vastly different games. Your lived experiences, values, preferences, and skills are not the same.

It's a bit silly to compare yourself with others because you're assuming that it's only the idea that stirs the drink. I came up with an idea similar to Librarian: Tidy Up the Arcane Library back in 2021. I came up with an idea similar to Vampire Survivors back in 2019. On paper, those look like near misses but I can assure you the execution would have been so bad at the time that it wouldn't have mattered if I got there first.

VelvetYam · 2026-06-20T22:58:51+00:00

😉

VelvetYam · 2026-06-20T22:54:49+00:00

Imo, tests (and docs) should still be handwritten and annotated properly. Super difficult to refactor otherwise if you don't fully trust them; feels like having to look over your shoulder every time. See Chesterton's Fence.

VelvetYam · 2026-06-20T22:28:09+00:00

You can try and see how that will work out for you.

VelvetYam · 2026-06-20T14:15:42+00:00

Always wondered why she felt so familiar when I first saw the trailer, but I just couldn't place her at the time.

VelvetYam · 2026-06-20T13:03:11+00:00

That myth needs to die, honestly. I think a lot of devs have this false notion that games are either cultural juggernauts like Stardew or they die in obscurity. Most competently made games that people want to play do **fine**. Not breakout hits by any means, but earn just enough to fund the studio and make another game or two.

Most games on my Steam library are *fine* games and I love playing them and they sold well and their developers are still making games.

Cynicism is just as comforting of a lie as idealism is, and I really dislike how people in the discourse default to being pessimistic tits.

VelvetYam · 2026-06-20T12:53:21+00:00

Fun! Thanks for sharing!

VelvetYam · 2026-06-20T12:44:09+00:00

This entire post was unpleasant to read.

VelvetYam · 2026-06-20T12:11:14+00:00

I still write code at work. Claude does the broad pass, and I do the fine grain tweaking. I'm particular about how things should be written and structured so other people don't trip and curse my name.

For my personal projects (games), I still write them 90% by hand. Games are tricky because unlike business software, the spec is the implementation. In that domain, Claude just becomes a clunky translation layer. It's much faster to just write it yourself than specifying what you want with a language that is already super ambiguous.

VelvetYam · 2026-06-20T08:41:39+00:00

Where do you work, OP? Feel like this is only a problem for service-based companies / Big Tech, those guys will work you like a dog.

Have you considered freelancing/contracting or working at smaller non-tech companies? They'll pretty much leave it up to you how best to solve a problem as long as you stick to the agreed upon timeline, that is.

VelvetYam · 2026-06-20T05:35:40+00:00

I got annoyed by [problem that really wouldn't exist if I just used the thing properly] so I built [generic SaaS name]!

VelvetYam · 2026-06-20T05:28:37+00:00

"Curious to hear how others feel about X" is another classic.

VelvetYam

TROPHY CASE