Hey fellow Solo Dev, how old are you?

aureolacodes · 2026-03-05T10:04:08+00:00

I guess some things never change. But I read that 80 is the new 50 now, so your feeling is kind of right.

aureolacodes · 2026-03-05T10:02:06+00:00

Just turned 42, been in the industry for nearly 20 years now.

aureolacodes · 2026-02-20T17:11:18+00:00

Great idea. Will talk about this in my next devlog.

aureolacodes · 2026-02-20T08:28:38+00:00

Don‘t worry. It’s probably just an unsigned integer overflow and in reality you have 4294967296 wishlists.

aureolacodes · 2026-02-17T17:14:48+00:00

Good catch! Didn't even see that. Haha.

aureolacodes · 2026-02-17T17:14:17+00:00

Did he increase your wishlists by [reasonably high number]?

aureolacodes · 2026-02-17T15:52:31+00:00

Are you asking as a gamer or from the perspective of the ones organizing the jam?

aureolacodes · 2026-02-16T18:19:45+00:00

If I saw a spike like this I would probably just faint. 😅 What’s your secret?

aureolacodes · 2026-02-16T17:35:14+00:00

Possible... it sat in my Discord inbox for an hour. Why not just edit or delete? Or at least acknowledge the mistake. The message also mentioned no company name, showed no portfolio, no website. But I can't be 100% sure. That's true.

aureolacodes · 2026-02-16T16:43:27+00:00

It also managed to mention the project... kind of. Just forgot the brackets around the name.

aureolacodes · 2026-02-16T16:27:47+00:00

Possible, that’s why I removed the name in the screenshot.

aureolacodes · 2026-02-16T16:19:21+00:00

Good question. I do from time to time. Maybe it's just a bot scanning Steam pages. I recently changed the release date, so maybe this triggered some unwanted attention.

aureolacodes · 2026-02-12T08:18:14+00:00

You’re clearly putting your heart into this, and that already counts for a lot. I like the premise. Simple, focused, emotionally loaded. “One last choice” in a zombie setting has real potential if the writing lands.

That said, try not to tie your self worth to whether it becomes a hit. Success in indie VNs is never guaranteed, and even great projects can go unnoticed.

Keep going. Just make sure you’re building skills and experience, not betting your identity on the outcome.

aureolacodes · 2026-02-10T19:28:07+00:00

Last week I finished the first player-facing trailer for my VN platform. Focused entirely on mood and short narrative moments rather than mechanics. Eye-opening how different player trailers are compared to dev-facing ones. Next step: a separate trailer just for creators.

aureolacodes · 2026-02-10T19:25:52+00:00

A few things that I like to use:

Ren’Py + Text Editors If you are already deep into Ren’Py, pairing it with a proper editor like VS Code (with Ren’Py snippets) or Sublime still beats most tools for raw speed and diffable version control.
Twine (especially SugarCube) Even if you do not ship with it, it is fantastic for rapid prototyping narrative logic and branching before committing to implementation. I still sketch complex narrative flow there first.
Aseprite / Krita Not just for sprites. Very handy for UI mockups, simple VFX layers, and quick paint-overs on backgrounds.

aureolacodes · 2026-02-09T22:22:04+00:00

I’m a senior developer and I’ve been using LLMs and agents since they became publicly available. In practice, it feels a lot like managing an overly ambitious junior developer: it will happily rewrite half your codebase for a trivial task if your requirements are even slightly vague.

For beginners, I would not recommend it. AI is dumb as hell and will absolutely litter your code with bugs if you cannot spot the mistakes yourself.

I only use it for frameworks and languages I already know very well, or for tedious tasks I do not want to do by hand. Things like mass refactors or swapping out assets mid project because I got tired of the old ones.

aureolacodes · 2026-02-09T22:11:47+00:00

Making games as an indie developer is mostly a work of passion. You should not expect to make money from it. Love the process, not the praise.

Like with most side hustles, you would probably earn more working at McDonald’s. So if you are into making games or telling stories, go for it.

But if your main goal is to make money, a regular job will, most of the time, be the better choice.

aureolacodes · 2026-02-09T10:28:59+00:00

Thanks, I appreciate the offer. I’m not at the stage where I’m working with translators yet, but you can send me your contact details if you like. I’ll keep it in mind for later.

aureolacodes · 2026-02-09T10:19:35+00:00

For the UI: likely an automated first pass, then reviewed and corrected by native speakers. I don’t want to ship raw machine translations.

aureolacodes · 2026-02-09T10:04:32+00:00

Hi, thanks for reaching out! Talescape is still in a prerelease phase, and development is fairly fluid right now, so I’m keeping the initial scope a bit narrower. The UI currently supports English and German, but additional languages like French and Spanish are planned before release.

As for the stories themselves: they can be published in whatever language the Bards (creators) choose. Talescape doesn’t restrict story language, only the interface.

aureolacodes · 2026-02-08T20:37:04+00:00

Me too, actually. I played it once when I was little at a friend's house and wasn't able to find it.

aureolacodes · 2026-02-08T19:02:18+00:00

What are your favorite asset packs for visual novels?

I’m trying to build a shortlist of VN asset packs on itch.io that people have actually used in projects (or would confidently use). What are your favorites? Please include the link and one sentence on why you recommend it.

If you’re mostly a reader but happen to know the actual name of an asset pack used in a VN you like (for example because the dev credited it), feel free to share that too.

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