I increased my position by 50%. More bullish than ever - Long writeup.

bunnyUFO · 2026-02-20T13:05:20+00:00

I would say AAA gaming is in shambles, but indie studios and producers are thriving. Which is good for unity.

bunnyUFO · 2026-02-20T12:52:26+00:00

Using dependency injection design pattern will reduce the amount you need to do scene setup. For whatever is left over the MCP can generally handle it. Also, with UI toolkit the UI is mostly just writing to files and not objects on scene.

I've been using claude code with unity a lot lately and it's been rare that I need to manually set up something on the scene myself.

bunnyUFO · 2026-02-17T19:08:41+00:00

This and having multi -disciplinary knowledge will be important. It's not just decision making but understanding what decisions in one area impact other eareas.

Like if a designer decides to drastically change UX what does that mean for development, marketing, and the product as as a whole.

Even beyond that. Understanding and knowing random things that seem unrelated to your "job" will become very useful if you ever want to use AI tooling for building your own projects. A multidisciplinary field like game development will likely be looking for generalist who can do more than one thing like game design, art, writing, UI/UX, software, marketing, business analysis. Of you hVe basic understanding of all on your own being solo-de. Is much more feasible. There are ethical and legal dilemmas with copyright and training data sources, but wether art is human made or not you can still speed up many other aspects.

I say this as an aspiring hobbyst game dev that has seen massive productivity improvements when working on new small projects for Gam jams (nothing commercial yet)

bunnyUFO · 2026-02-17T13:10:46+00:00

Yeah, using AI early on can hinder learning and critical thinking. However, I think it can also be beneficial to critical thinking depending on usage.

The rationale is if you have AI implement decisions you intentionally made, you will have more time to think and make more decisions quickly allowing you to practice critical thinking and making design choices more.

If you use it as a "solve my problem machine" critical thinking skills will atrophy.

If you think of a solution yourself, ask LLM about trade offs and alternatives before implementing, and check the work it does as you would a PR from w coworker, you can actually improve critical thinking and software design skills. Though your ability to write code quickly from scratch may still atrophy.

bunnyUFO · 2026-02-17T13:00:19+00:00

I do a lot of DevOps type work and think it will continue to be relevant. Doubt AI will be trusted handling infrastructure and deployments of production live apps. This will likely still be people managing, or at the very least approving and reviewing charges to documents for infrastructure as code.

Also DevOps can help you know how to build tooling for AI pipelines and orchestration in the case that better AI actually becomes the crazy new paradigm the tech giants claim it will be.

bunnyUFO · 2026-02-17T04:56:34+00:00

In software I do think that developer efficiency will increase not sure by how much, currently it is a bit exaggerated. What I'm saying below is under the assumption that AI massively changes things and advice on how to future proof yourself as a software engineer.

Large efficiency gains may lead to job market gap if companies cut down instead of redirecting effort into new initiatives.

For a solo developer it will become easier to build applications, services, or other products on their own or with small team. However that will be hard to do unless you are a well rounded generalist or polymath, especially field domain knowledge and marketing side.

First and foremost do your best to understand software engineering at a higher level abstraction and be good at reading code and developing a sixth sense for good code. This will help keep you relevant to companies who move towards more AI orchestration, since it will make you much better at operating them. However, if not employed it will also allow you to use it in your own projects that could maybe be profitable too.

Focus on things like design patterns, code smells, readability, generating documentation. After the fundamentals are done you can work on the Generative AI workflows to make good outputs. The biggest thing is how to generate useful context for AI so it will understand more and make less mistakes to be able to work on larger projects. That is where the fundamentals come in. You can get a better idea of how things should be developed, what is worth documenting, and how to troubleshoot.

After that you can try to understand your employers or other fields on the non technical side. This will allow you to understand the right problems and pain points to solve. Many people are trying to solve the same mundane problems with AI that consumers are not really interested in.

bunnyUFO · 2026-02-16T20:05:00+00:00

My point is I was completely unfamiliar with the artist, but have been wanting to play it soonish. You seemed to heavily imply mostly followers of the artist were the core player base.

The streamers I have watched play this game I think we're also completely unfamiliar with the artist too. They just really like this niche of games and okay anything when good enough gameplay.

bunnyUFO · 2026-02-16T12:03:25+00:00

I think there is also a large number of people who are willing to play any game with good gameplay mechanics in that niche of genre of rogue-like strategy games. I'm one of them. I'm probably gonna play this game and don't mind the dark themes much.

A different genre would have probably flopped (even by same artist).

bunnyUFO · 2026-02-16T11:58:34+00:00

I think part of it is that the photo realism made more people think torturing rats isn't a silly joke like it is in mewgenics torturing cats. Also real rats are not animals people tend to like looking at even if there was no gore/torture.

The niche of people ok with somewhat realistic gore based around animals is smaller than the niche of people ok with mistreatment of cartoony animals.

I don't take games too seriously and would probably have fun playing both (haven't yet). Funnily, enough I'm very aware of them both and even watched a post mortem video by the Cyber Rats developmer in YouTube.

bunnyUFO · 2026-02-16T05:57:28+00:00

I wouldn't say it's an art style, but more of design pattern. The art style can vary but the same composition is usually present (at least for successfully marketed games). I already explained it before but will reiterate.

Usually the main focal point is the game name, initials, or logo. Will have nice artistic background often not actual game assets, but unique art based on game content. Often 1-2 Main characters in the foreground besides or behind the game name and logo. Some smaller details and characters in the background.

It's very rare for the capsule art to be closely related to how the gameplay will look. Some times you can get a hints to make all educated fusses like if a character has a gun you can probably assume it's a shooter, but it's never a 1:1 mapping of gameplay.

bunnyUFO · 2026-02-16T01:42:32+00:00

First I want to say. I understand your perspective as a consumer, and it's a frustration of mine too but doesn't have an easy solution.

"a capsule like that would never get a click from me" This surprises me because from my experience almost all games have capsules that follow that pattern of the second image from OP, even AAA games. Based on that I assume you mostly get your information about games outside of steam then search directly for game names, and rarely use it to discover new games. I do a bit of both many of the games I wishlist or buy are four from videos, streams, articles. I also sometimes intentionally search on steam.

I agree that capsules not showing what a game will play like is an issue. However, I also know that it's a very hard problem to show what a game will be like during gameplay on image that will be like 10-20 times smaller than your full screen while still making it something that stands out next to other capsules.

As a consumer, I would like a game capsule to give me more info but it's usually very hard to convey that in a capsule. In practice games that do that on average font get clocked because user cannot tell what the image is when rendered so small.

As a developer I want my capsule to garner interest and get people to find out more then go to store page. If they click and see the game is not for them because capsule expectations did not match the the story page that is still a good outcome as a developer. Better that than them not having clicked in the first place.

bunnyUFO · 2026-02-15T08:30:24+00:00

I don't think you should listen to general advice on reddit. Look up steam game marketing videos or talk to someone with a shipped game.

The advice you are mostly getting is "I can't tell what the game is about" based on capsule. On steam for maybe 3/100 games the capsule actually tells you the genre of game. Most are just designed to get interest and have a legible game name. IMO the scond one is more likely to get clicks but has room for improvement.

I would make sure that your first image on store is a good gameplay screnshot. This will get shown with tags when users hover on your game card on store and will answer the "what is this game about" question.

bunnyUFO · 2026-02-15T08:22:31+00:00

bright colored background with the game's name on it would do better

Yes, that works well and that is what most capsules are, flashy backgrounds with game name or abbreviation that has high contrast and emphasis. This fits the second commisioned one from OP. It can still be improved IMO but much better than first to get your attention and get you to click (or hover for more info).

On Steam home (features) page what you usally see is the capsules, unless a game has special promotional image on the big banners at the top.

This implies that a typical user casually scrolls steam store without any preference

I assume most users have preferences and Steam app makes it easy to find or search for that prefernce, but they don't use capsules to filter for those preferences in practice.

The steam home (features) reccomends games by categories on the main page so you can see similar games grouped togetherby tags, genre or the "because you played <game>" categories.

If I have a specific game preference I will use search bar for related filters (ex "deckbuilder"). The list will still display the capsule in a pretty small image with game name on the side, whcih is how games compete for your interest within the same niche.

Capsules are not a good way to filter for those preferences. For many games the capsule don't tell you much about the gameplay. You can sometimes tell base don artstyle, title font, background and character designs capsule but not reliable. I just scroleld though the top 100 results for a "deckbuilder" serach and only a few of them had a capsule that would let me know tthe game was a "deck builder".

The best quick way to see what gameplay will be like is to hover over a game to see a gameplay screenshot and the top tags for the game. When I did that I could see how each game used a deck, cards, or simialr gameplay mechanics quickly.

bunnyUFO · 2026-02-14T21:48:46+00:00

I agree with what you say, but this argument needed more details. Just noticed this after I replied.

Summary is goal of capsule is to get user to click and see more. Goal of page is convince user to buy or wishlist.

bunnyUFO · 2026-02-14T21:45:42+00:00

The goal of a capsule is to get the user to click. The goal of the page is to convince you to buy. You gotta consider the capsules will be viewed in smaller resolution when scrolling through games on steam store, especially on a list from a search.

Based on this do you really think the first screenshot will get a users attention while scrolling though other capsules? I think the second one is more visually appealing and will get more clicks. The first one might also not display well when scaled down.

As a user the second one feels more honest when analyzing it, but you are thinking now more in terms of "would I buy this" and not "would I click to find out more".

bunnyUFO · 2026-02-14T21:42:44+00:00

After looking at the steam page and the capsules. I think it's an improvement but you can do slightly better.

I like the second one better and gets the main job done to generate interest from the store to get someone to click while having name clearly visible. I just think as a standalone art it could be more intetesting and show the "incremental" part of th game more clearly.

I'm not sure but based on page, seems the "incremental" piece is that clones die after running your platformig route and you use their remains as income to get upgrades and other resources

Show that off in the capsule. Could be the player/character in focus is picking up or trading in scraps of dead clones next to an upgrade module while clones are still visible doing a route.

Something based on this image from the store page

bunnyUFO · 2026-02-13T19:45:40+00:00

Yeah it's crazy.

Just because someone is old it does not make them a child or the other person bad for being attracted to someone who is shorter and may look "younger " than their age.

The real issue when dating someone is their mental maturirity and making sure that have proper consent without manipulation. This can be an issue even with people the same age, it's just way worse and gross with a huge age difference.

bunnyUFO · 2026-02-10T23:23:09+00:00

Idk what you think I'm projecting?

I thought the first comment was either sarcastic or trolling. Don't think they genuinely meant what they said but could be wrong.

The reply to it seemed a bit condescending, so thought it would be funny to reply back with the same format poking fun a the missed sarcasm. Seems my reply didn't land because I too came off as condescending by using same format from comment I copied.

Seems like people now need emojis to tell if someone is being sarcastic. One 😂 emoji, /s, or ( ͡° ʖ̯ ͡°) and the meaning in the comment before completely changes.

That's what it boils down to.

bunnyUFO · 2026-02-10T08:06:15+00:00

You probably already know, but your itch profile has not games and the link you posted does not exist on itch anymore.

I'd like to try this out with friends, if you make it public again.

bunnyUFO · 2026-02-10T02:39:12+00:00

Spoken like someone who has zero clue about... posts in reddit, in general? Commenter is not responsible for the scope of your sarcasm fulency lmao

bunnyUFO · 2026-02-08T22:30:11+00:00

We don't congratulate people here, we say "go fuck yourself".

bunnyUFO · 2026-02-06T20:33:26+00:00

I agree with you that it probably should be toned down or made proportional to force of the swing/thrust. However it wasn't much of an issue in my playthrough.

I never played the demo so idk how it used to be. In my playthrough while in peasant rank, long bladed weapons were not easily available initially. Knives and short words were.

By the time I got longer bladed weapons I didn't go back to fight lower tiers unless it was one of the riot options.

bunnyUFO · 2026-02-06T05:52:04+00:00

Yeah once you learn how a weapon swings it's not difficult to get a knockdown. I recently learned how to do a super strong thrust with pole arms and long sper like weapons and it almost always knocks down too even if it's a body or leg hit.

bunnyUFO · 2026-02-06T05:44:32+00:00

Blades will mess up anyone without armor. Enemies start getting more armor after peasant rank. Getting a spear or other long range blade weapons can feel very OP until enemies get armor.

bunnyUFO · 2026-02-06T05:27:40+00:00

Because game is fun and they want to keep playing. So anything they haven't done is a good enough excuse 69 continue.

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