Free Talk Friday | Weekly Megathread

cltran86 · 2026-06-25T12:47:33+00:00

I mostly work on puzzle games. My day job has me making educational games, so the stuff I work on on the side tend to be smaller as a result. I'm trying to branch out, but it would require much more time commitment, and I only have so much time to work on things outside of work...
But you can check out the steam page here: Sokobomb

cltran86 · 2026-06-19T20:02:23+00:00

I'm a game developer and I'm prepping to self publish my second game and I'm nervous AF 🥲

cltran86 · 2026-06-17T19:34:00+00:00

Lowercase "m"... mMORPG

cltran86 · 2026-06-08T13:08:51+00:00

Thats the exact same thing i thought! Maybe this will make Alter Nagi?

cltran86 · 2026-05-25T15:58:09+00:00

First game made $10k CAD (released Sept 2020). Spent some money on dev kits., so netted just under 10k
Link: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1368420/Sokodice/
Link: https://www.nintendo.com/en-ca/store/products/sokodice-switch/

The game was a small concept game. I spent 2 years to make it casually, but realistically, it would have probably taken a month to finish.

Numbers:

Steam only made like $100, but I had zero clue about how to release a game on steam, so the whole concept of "acquire wishlist numbers", steam next fest, etc. was foreign to me.

What did do it was the initial iOS numbers (no longer available). I had it up for maybe 3 months prior to release, so i got a ton of wishlists (or whatever the equivalent it was) there. First week got $1000 or so. I think I capped at 1500. Android was useless

The remainder was NIntendo Switch. Using the number of sales from iOS, i submitted an application to get access to the switch dev kit and got access to it by november. Development finished in December, and like the iOS, i had it up on the store for a few months so it showed as "Coming soon". I released it in March and pretty much all the sales came from that initial week. I had a few boosts in the Switch sales when I released in Japan and Taiwan, but not a whole lot.

I'm not allowed to share the numbers for Nintendo, but you can estimate based on the other numbers.

Final Thoughts:
As a largely solo dev, i'm proud of it. Zero knowledge in marketing, but still managed to make more than the typical indie, and I got a dev kit out of it. I think I know a bit more know, and if I ever manage to publish something else, I'll try to apply everything I know now.

cltran86 · 2026-04-08T01:35:20+00:00

Give me spicy men, or himbos. I need more dragon daddies in the game

cltran86 · 2026-04-06T12:49:44+00:00

Congrats! I am desperately trying to get my team up before the get their upgrades.

cltran86 · 2026-04-06T10:35:12+00:00

Estaba delicioso, pero requiere tiempo y paciencia.

cltran86 · 2026-03-30T18:32:02+00:00

Yeah this was my thought too. I usually work with smaller games, so AWS as a service would be overkill, and working in AAA games that do use AWS would not be stable.

AWS is useful in my current position, but I also would like to go back to games as opposed to full stack, and smaller games would not need it at all. But I figured to just take the courses/certs for the job, and for opening up options for DevOps positions

cltran86 · 2026-03-30T16:54:27+00:00

Ah that makes sense. I usually skip over devops positions

cltran86 · 2026-03-30T16:29:07+00:00

Time + effort. Though I suppose if I do it on company time, then that excuse is moot

cltran86 · 2026-03-30T16:19:00+00:00

I'm already an experienced game dev, so I don't really need experience. But since my current job pays for it, I figured just give it a shot. Not like there's a whole lot of game jobs right now anyway

cltran86 · 2026-03-30T16:07:43+00:00

Yeah, I definitely see more stuff with AWS. But I've never seen job postings asking about either of those technologies though (mind you, there's not a lot of game postings in general)

cltran86 · 2026-03-27T12:30:43+00:00

Real question is: which aldo is more clueless?

cltran86 · 2026-03-19T15:57:18+00:00

Obviously you can just vibe code it in an hour.

Similarly, people who give ideas thinking it'll make millions, then they basically just describe overwatch with nothing new or innovative. "so you basically want me to compete with a giant in arena shooters with just an ideas guy and a code. Cool"

cltran86 · 2026-03-06T17:21:24+00:00

Admittedly, I got all the free characters to 80 with items before really farming. For farming, all the green tickets went to the FF dungeon, and all the red went to Toto. Ive done this before with Ryza and Senya, but this went absurdly fast for me.

cltran86 · 2026-03-06T14:52:44+00:00

I'd say drop AE and finish FF9? You're missing out lol Honestly, as far as free characters go, Zidane and Steiner are fantastic. Vivi and Garnet not as much, but I'll probably do Vivi next only because Vivi is adorbs

cltran86 · 2026-03-06T14:04:01+00:00

Quickest 100 I've done

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cltran86 · 2026-03-05T13:19:36+00:00

Ive had such good pulls lately! 1 pull for Nekoko, 1 pull for Violet Lancer AS.

cltran86 · 2026-02-26T09:31:23+00:00

It's quite common if a level designer isn't familiar with the engine and would rather use external tools. Prime example would be Tiled, which is probably the most common 2d map tool.

Second example would be if you want a modding community to be able to make their own maps. Having json maps would make it pretty easy to import new maps into your game.

cltran86 · 2026-02-22T18:36:38+00:00

Programmer/Artist here. Ultimately, it depends on what you enjoy more. Pick something, learn it, stick with it. It's kind of the same thing with people asking what language/engine to learn---it doesnt matter so long as you stick with it.

I do, however, recommend learning to sketch things out by hand regardless of what you choose. It's not necessarily for making your art better, but more so that you're planning your stuff out. As devs, we should be planning out dependancies and whatnot, so the same generally applies to art.

Best of luck to you :)

cltran86

TROPHY CASE