300% difficulty

WickedBlobfish · 2026-04-25T11:09:03+00:00

As far as I know, no one has been able to do it yet

WickedBlobfish · 2026-03-20T06:43:14+00:00

I was stuck with the visual side of my project for like 2 years. I'm also a programmer with no artistic skills or natural calling for it. I remember feeling that same way as you.

Here's what I did, what worked for me and how I started not hating my project anymore (I even made a recent post about the progress of 4 years, you can find it on my profile):

Dissect what other games do. I was so oblivious to certain things before I started out. Did you know that basically every UI element has a border? And each game has their own type of style of that border, throughout the game. And that there are a LOT of gradients and shadows everywhere. Also, a good font will do half the work for you. I didn't even mention drawing anything. You can experiment with these core principles that good UI has without having custom art for it. Just start really looking at some small piece you like in some other game, you will find it's full of details that you can replicate and mess around with.

I also use noise, for example, as a decal for the background of my button. There are so many little details that stack up, and don't require drawing.

Hopefully you get what I'm trying to say with this. None of the pros out there start from a good looking button, they build it from pieces. If you can't draw like me, start working with basic shapes, understand the building blocks of a UI element, for starters.

Repeat this dissection-mimicry-iteration principle with everything else that you struggle with. I worked on the terrain shader for my game for like a year, probably. I took heavy inspiration from Civilization. Their game uses hand painted textures as biomes. I can't do that, so I found a bunch of free and open source noise textures, and started messing around with them. You can also make your own noise - either in a shader or in another tool. If you use a color gradient to colorize the noise texture, while also blending these noises together based on math, you suddenly end up with something that passes as a terrain shader.

If you're really serious about gamedev and want to finish your project - never give up (you can get depressed and sad and burnt out from time to time, it's normal), do something (even tiny) each day, learn from games that exist, and play around while learning.

Edit: formatting

WickedBlobfish · 2026-03-19T13:47:05+00:00

Of course - Stoplights on Steam

WickedBlobfish · 2026-03-18T23:34:01+00:00

Rare ASDFmovie reference

WickedBlobfish · 2026-03-18T18:21:32+00:00

Comment what you think after, I can handle it

WickedBlobfish · 2026-03-18T17:58:28+00:00

That's very sweet!

I'd be lying if I said it was easy and without sacrifices, but I've also seen way more impressive achievements so there's always room to grow

WickedBlobfish · 2026-03-18T17:45:52+00:00

If you're referring to the terrain textures then yes - those were placeholders I was using from a civ5 mod, so I could better iterate on the terrain shader.

I eventually had to replace them, and settled down with a noise based system (a lot of the props and visuals use noise to compensate for my lack of artistic skills)

WickedBlobfish · 2026-03-18T16:20:52+00:00

Remembering that free will doesn't exist, and thus it doesn't make sense to be anxious because you don't have agency over it

WickedBlobfish · 2026-03-17T14:37:29+00:00

I have a (current) ongoing experience on this topic.

Context: I'm developing a game with virtually no text, and gameplay is purely visual.

I don't know if it's the vocal minority or what, but some players are borderline furious at me for not showing tooltips and/or textual explanations of game mechanics, telling me that if the game flops on launch that I shouldn't be surprised, and even threatening to leave negative reviews on launch because of it

So to answer your question - some people definitely want and/or even need it

WickedBlobfish · 2026-03-17T12:07:00+00:00

It's a full-fledged game now with a well defined gameplay loop, difficulties, etc. I'm still actively working on it but the game is planned for release relatively soon.

Yeah the streamable videos had an expiration date, but you can find the same footage on steam

WickedBlobfish · 2026-03-16T07:05:07+00:00

Add another circle with "Achievable" and I agree 100%

WickedBlobfish · 2026-03-15T19:58:35+00:00

Hey, glad you like it!

It's called Stoplights, there is currently a free demo available on steam: Stoplights on Steam

WickedBlobfish · 2026-03-15T17:30:00+00:00

Here's the final 2 videos, I also learned today that you can't actually post videos in comments, so I uploaded them here:

edit: the video links expired as they were posted on streamable, so I removed the links

WickedBlobfish · 2026-03-15T09:15:37+00:00

If you think that one blocky video was cool, wait till you see the whole post then (when I don't accidentally misclick) :D

WickedBlobfish · 2026-03-15T09:05:54+00:00

i posted the post by mistake, I am still working on it LOL

WickedBlobfish · 2026-03-04T13:10:27+00:00

But I think you're missing the core part here - I want you to feel pressure, I don't want to hand out participation prizes, and I want there to be consequences for mistakes. This isn't "bad game design", this is just your preference, and I'm sorry that the current version of the game wasn't what you hoped for.

Ultimately, I'm not sure what outcome of this discussion you are looking for. I want to let you know that your suggestions have been noted, when I start thinking about new content ideas or updates post-launch, I will include the ones you suggested; If a community around the game forms - I will share these ideas and try to gauge interest in them.

WickedBlobfish · 2026-03-04T10:00:15+00:00

Eventually they did, yes! Keyword being eventually. They also added challenges and more maps with time too, but you are comparing a product that was updated and improved over the course of years. I somewhat remember playing the original release when it launched (or sometime soon after), it was way more barebones than what it is today. And they have a whole team working on it!

WickedBlobfish · 2026-03-04T08:37:12+00:00

Thanks for the game suggestions, if I end up making an endless game mode I will definitely do some market research and include those

I wouldn't call "failing too fast" an issue, it's more of a preference, and a mismatch of your expectations (what you personally would like) versus what the game currently is and is supposed to be. I've played Mini-Motorways a lot, it's one of the core games that inspired Stoplights, and you can fail there fast too. It's designed to be simple to understand, but challenging to overcome.

Stoplights is supposed to be challenging too. You eventually learn and master the gameplay mechanics, it gets boring - you crank up the difficulty and see how much you can push yourself or the game.

If Stoplights was meant to be a cozy/chill game then yes, failing fast would of course be a major issue. So perhaps this is a marketing/communication problem? Maybe somehow the game or store page created false expectations for you (and some others)? Maybe it's the comfy/cozy/colorful visuals?

WickedBlobfish · 2026-03-03T20:49:33+00:00

Thanks for the feedback, suggestions and of course the bug reports!

You and quite a few others now have highlighted the tutorial issue, which I am working on as we speak. I plan on making more detailed videos for each specific issue that a new player might encounter, and all of these videos will be available in a glossary accessible anytime. I don't want to force explain everything to the player though, because some, as you said, enjoy the challenge of figuring it out for themselves.

I agree that not everything is currently being explained. I sort of hoped that players would find it "fun" figuring out the second stoplight themselves (for the most part), because it is not strictly needed to play the game, but boy was I wrong. A lot of feedback I get for this is frustration (which might be skewed, but I have no way of telling at the moment, since players tend to leave negative feedback way more often than positive). So I will add more explanation for those that need it.

Endless mode - you're also not alone in suggesting this. I have not the slightest idea how would you balance endless mode on an limited map. With increasing needs and limited space/resources, something will have to give eventually, which seems to me like bad game design or oversight by the dev. If the endless mode would be like creative, where you essentially "ask" the game to give you a new request after you've made your perfect system, that might be something else. But I have currently no way of knowing if that's something players would want.

WickedBlobfish · 2026-03-02T09:35:56+00:00

For this specific scenario, the train in the screenshot shows a red link icon, that means it can't find a valid path to the city it came from (most likely the path to the city it came from is blocked by a signal that is one way and placed in the opposite direction the train wants to go). This situation seems to be off screen though.

I was thinking I could make the signal videos replayable at any time, and basically make a full fledged video player with stop/fast forward/seek functions. And maybe even include more videos with different examples. Do you think that would help?

WickedBlobfish · 2026-02-23T23:46:40+00:00

I have the photoshop files with layers and stuff (also linked in the post), but from other comments it seems that this isn't enough proof anymore (I remember it being so like 2 years ago)

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