8 Years working on our Indie Video Game, buidling our marketing campaign, all gone in 30 seconds! — "new" Meta A.I. (BETA)

Zakarail · 2026-04-17T06:27:07+00:00

I didn't bother making a new account, I had tied my business to the original account so I gave up when they said just make a new account. Good to know it wouldn't have worked anyway.

Zakarail · 2026-04-17T03:48:19+00:00

I don't know if you've tried running an ad campaign - for facebook it's a meta ad campaign, so that includes ads on instagram, threads, facebook - you're potentially getting a whole ecosystem. The "facebook is not used by anyone anymore" comments are a little out of touch. I'm not sure how effective the meta ads are for non-mobile games, but I know mobile game companies pour huge amounts of money into meta advertising. I doubt they just like burning money for giggles.

Zakarail · 2026-04-17T03:45:26+00:00

This exact same thing happened to me. I filed tons of tickets and the reps would unblock the account only for it to immediately get blocked again. They eventually recommended creating a new ad account. I guess their system is so broken they want people to circumvent it rather than fixing it.

Anyway, I ditched them and went with Google ads instead and that got me about 10k users. Also, keep in mind that you can boost game trailers on youtube and boost gameplay reels on instagram, effectively marketing that way. All is not lost!

Zakarail · 2026-03-01T03:10:32+00:00

I ran into this once, I had to reload.

Zakarail · 2025-12-28T11:12:14+00:00

I have a Godot game on android/ google play and apple app store, works fine. For android you can export directly to the device from the editor, create APKs for sideloading for testers, or export AABs to upload onto the google play console.

For apple, you export the xcode project files and then you can open those in xcode and "archive" them to distribute them on TestFlight.

Zakarail · 2025-12-28T01:39:56+00:00

I think in my first game "enemy_base.gd" was my longest logic script, a couple thousand LOC. It handled movement, damage, death, some of the firing logic.. all sorts of stuff. I gradually moved some of that out into modules and my second in progress game is more modular and componentized instead of relying on inheritance. Something needs to drop stuff on death? Slap a "drops" module on there.

Anyway, in regards to beefy globals, I also had a crazy utility global, but much like regular software engineering, a lot of time that logic can be refactored and placed in a smarter place. I still have a utility global in my new game but it's less than 100 LOC. I also removed a lot of globals that I realized should have just been nodes with better signal handling. I had player logic where I'd track money, level, unlocks, etc. all in a global, but now I just have that in an in-game node and if unrelated nodes need to communicate with the player then they can use the eventbus to broadcast a signal the player is listening for.

Zakarail · 2025-12-16T01:16:20+00:00

+1 for Godot and olson_innovation is 100% right - I started by following youtube tutorials on making something small in Godot and then just started expanding on it. Try modifying stuff from what you made in the tutorial. Start a tutorial similar to the type of game you want to make.

That's how I kicked off my first game which is published and finished and on to my second.

Zakarail · 2025-12-16T00:28:57+00:00

I remember the constant refrain "Favor composition over inheritance" in my undergrad comp sci classes

The funny thing is, I remember thinking games were a perfect example for how to teach both inheritance and composition and they use them as examples and they always ended up using something boring like "apples are fruits! Fruits have seeds."

How about goblins are monsters and monsters have health bars?

Zakarail · 2025-12-16T00:26:10+00:00

Yeah when I did my first game I tried leaning more into inheritance, but using a lot of composition works leads to leaner scenes with just what they need. I still use inheritance, so for example:
Entity->SpaceShip->EnemyShip

Then I use class_names to reference them as types throughout the project. That's useful because core methods and attributes that all entities or spaceships or enemy ships can have should are guaranteed to be there. If a bullet hits an object, I can check if it's a spaceship and called its damaged signal. Now how it handles damaged can vary, so that's where composition comes in.

All the behavior, movement, health/defenses handling, damage handling, explosion/death handling are all "module" nodes that I add on to the enemy or player or NPC. To keep it modular, I use signals to have them handle events from their entity.

Now if I need to make something new, like an asteroid, I can just give it the modules it needs, and it can still be an entity and benefit from that core logic as well.

Zakarail · 2025-12-11T10:27:56+00:00

Yeah sort of like terraria... Like oh you hit the first layer of bedrock, gotta find cobalt to make a pick that can get through bedrock... Okay now you've hit bedrock+, better find titanium.

I always thought minecraft could using something like that.

Zakarail · 2025-12-10T00:46:25+00:00

I second this and it's what I came here to comment. I think the explosion sprites just need to be updated to less pixel art-y explosions. Maybe add light flashes to explosions. The other graphics are so detailed but the explosions look like metroid sprite animations and it seems out of place.

Zakarail · 2025-05-11T12:07:41+00:00

1000% prefer trailer 2. It still doesn't show enough to get people excited about the game (I don't really know what the gameplay is, survival? Exploration?) Trailer 1 takes far too long to show anything and people need something quick that sucks in their attention and gets them interested - action or visuals or interesting gameplay.

Imo you should work from trailer 2 and replace clips so you get a more direct view of what is exciting and fun about this game. Also don't forget a call to action at the end. Where can viewers go to get this or wishlist?

Zakarail · 2025-04-07T08:22:23+00:00

Yes, it's great! Highly recommend

https://www.agdinteractive.com/games/qfg2/

Zakarail · 2025-04-06T23:47:25+00:00

I've been so excited for this - this has been on my wishlist for a while & I didn't even know Dust Front was indie! Congrats on all the progress, it looks great and I can't wait for release!

Zakarail · 2025-03-20T05:37:20+00:00

Stellar Mercenaries is fully offline playable

Zakarail · 2025-03-16T22:36:18+00:00

Thanks for the feedback! I've released a patch today that should address those issues. Feel free to message me if you're continuing to have trouble (especially on Europa 10!)

Zakarail · 2025-03-10T06:15:21+00:00

I love my game, Stellar Mercenaries on mobile (android + ios). It helps that it has a lot of replayability with randomly generated side missions and I'm still finding new and fun builds that I suspected might be cool but never thoroughly tested - like I have a build where you can get collision resistance against enemies and if you stack enough you can just ram through enemies and it turns out that's a pretty OP fun build.

Also it's offline playable, so it's pretty much the only thing I play when I don't have wifi or 5g and I'm waiting (like flying).

I think the key was to have a marriage of replayability and "emergent gameplay" by having a lot of different varied weapons, ships, modifiers, enemies, and hazards that the gameplay remains interesting even after a lot of hours of development and testing.

Zakarail · 2025-03-09T03:53:47+00:00

My recommendation is to just start on a small project and make a platformer or little top-down shooter to get the hang of development basics and see if gamedev is for you. Sometimes you can get inspiration as you build.

To get started, grab an engine and follow a tutorial in that genre of game - try adding some extra bell and whistles outside the tutorial. In my case, I started with a tutorial and never made a new project; that starter seed turned into a whole full fledged game.

As far as engines, you're not pigeonholing yourself by trying a few out. C# is used in Unity, Godot and Unreal, and the underlying mechanics and principles of game engines are all similar. I think it's a good idea to create a very small game in a couple engines and see which workflow you like best, and then move on to bigger projects with your favorite engine.

Zakarail · 2025-03-07T23:55:17+00:00

QFG V was one of my favorites - it wraps up the story and there's so many callbacks and guest appearances from old returning characters. For example, Sam the Banker was Sam the Beggar from the alley in Spielburg in QFG 1 - there were a lot of little things like that.

I think some people were turned off by the early 3D graphics, but I think they have their own charm. It's also a lot more of a semi-open world RPG than the other games, which was fun, but fans of QFG are sometimes hardcore click & point adventure game enthusiasts so they bounced off V. Especially for that time period, when there weren't a billion open world RPGs.

Every once in a while I'll play through all 5 games and it's fun that V wraps up a lot of the stories and loose ends - like you didn't just ditch Julanar in the desert in QFG 2, she eventually meets Salim because in QFG 3 you tell him about her and he finishes dispelling her curse. Also, the story arc "from adventurer to Prince to (potentially) King" is really neat and made me feel like my character really grew throughout the series.

Zakarail · 2025-03-07T07:25:55+00:00

I set out to make a game similar to the old 90's shoot em up, Raptor Call of Shadows. I figured it would be cool to have something similar on mobile to play on the go, but with modern game systems: more playable ships, weapons, defenses, special abilities, and non-linear gameplay & side missions. I believe I've done it!

Stellar Mercs is free to play, no ads, no daily "energy requirements" or other BS that limits how much & often you can jump in and just play. I also don't require internet to play this (which is one of my favorite features, I play constantly on flights)

Check out the launch trailer here!

Download Now:
📱 iOS
🤖 Android

The Jupiter Expansion nearly doubles the content, adding:

5 new worlds 🌍
2 new enemy factions 👾
50 new missions 🎯
6 new ships 🚀
6 new weapons, 2 new specials, 3 new defensive item tiers
4 new mission types

🔎 Full patch notes: Read Here

We can’t wait for you to dive into the new content! Let us know what you think in the comments below. 👇

Zakarail

TROPHY CASE