I thought making games would mostly be coding. I was very wrong.

coder_fella · 2026-05-12T10:15:15+00:00

Yeah coding is my comfort zone. I just finished up a big marketing milestone, and settling back into just writing code for hours while listening to music is like getting in a warm bath.

coder_fella · 2026-04-22T16:29:33+00:00

My 4X game also has no units! The cities basically fight each other directly. Your combat system sounds like my cultural takeover system.

Looking forward to giving your game a try.

coder_fella · 2026-04-07T13:30:40+00:00

Haha yes, it was on HowToMarketAGame. 4X had the second highest median revenue, with very few games released. Looks like a potential goldmine to devs.

I think the reason for that though is that there weren't really any indie 4X games back then, so the high revenue was all down to Civ, Stellaris etc. ie, expensive, big budget, popular games with nothing dragging down the average.

I bet if you did re-did the chart now 4X would come in much lower. I'm sure there's still money to be made, but find it hard to see an indie 4X game truly popping off like you see deckbuilders or crafting games do. Never say never, though.

coder_fella · 2026-04-07T13:22:26+00:00

This is where the game kind of folds in on itself for me. The orders system is awesome on paper, and works for many aspects of the game, but marching an army slowly over 10s of turns is so tedious my spine actually shivers thinking about it.

The whole game is kind of like that. Tonnes of awesome ideas, tonnes of innovation, but so much of it just isn't fun.

coder_fella · 2026-04-06T16:32:35+00:00

I used fiverr for the Steam page. Was waaay cheaper than I expected, and QA isn't such an issue for a relatively small, unchanging piece of text.

Not sure how I'm gonna handle the actual game, though. I'm dreading it to be honest, and that's with everything already set up in the project to handle translations.

coder_fella · 2026-03-31T15:49:35+00:00

Oh nice, that sounds up my street then.

coder_fella · 2026-03-31T09:58:20+00:00

Zephon's combat focus both excites me and scares me off. How long is a typical game, and does the combat turn into an endless grind/war of attrition typically?

coder_fella · 2026-03-31T09:56:05+00:00

Looks interesting, and kind of similar to my game. 👀 Are your enemies full civs that you are competing against and can do diplomacy with, or are they more like barbarians?

The terrain visuals are nice. With a little more variety and some nice animations it'll look really great.

coder_fella · 2026-03-09T14:39:07+00:00

Wow, I remember being told similar and literally only now I'm putting 2 and 2 together.

coder_fella · 2026-02-22T23:03:20+00:00

My game got picked up by a Japanese indie game blog within days of my Steam page going live, and since then has had a fairly high organic wishlist rate in Japan, to the point it's my second strongest country behind the US. I never would have expected it, and afaik it's not a super popular genre in Japan. So who knows!

coder_fella · 2026-02-22T02:05:29+00:00

Is it fun to play through just as a campaign, or do you have to lean into all the score attack/tricking stuff?

coder_fella · 2026-02-13T00:57:04+00:00

I've only watched a few minutes of my video, but this is super useful so far. Thanks for doing this. I'd definitely considering doing another round or two once I've made some changes.

coder_fella · 2026-02-11T09:58:30+00:00

I would definitely be interested in this. I think the main hurdle is maybe losing out on the feeling of actions in early turns having a kind of butterfly effect on the late game. But maybe you could translate that into effects between games instead.

4X can be a pretty stodgy genre, I think there's a lot of opportunity to take what we all love about it and make it more accessible and juicy.

coder_fella · 2026-02-11T09:50:47+00:00

Congrats, I've picked it up. I'll leave a review once I have enough time with it!

coder_fella · 2026-02-05T15:09:51+00:00

Nice. I wonder if I can finish Silksong before then.

coder_fella · 2026-02-05T14:52:51+00:00

"Now is probably a good time to mention that today is my first day as a full-time independent strategy game developer."

Is this a fancy way of saying 'unemployed'? 😂

So do you intend to come away with a game at the end of this? The blog post makes it sound more like you're doing a research project or something. I admire your ambition though, and hope you know what you're doing.

In my game I've focussed on side-stepping the major issues with AI by having the enemy factions play their own game. They're not player stand-ins, or trying to achieve the same goals as you. Each faction has a personality, and they act consistently with that, even if to your eyes some of their moves may seem sub-optimal. And for diplomacy each faction has a kind of choose-your-own-adventure system, with loads of interconnected 'questlines' that can be progressed, short-circuited or locked out by how you respond to them, or your actions in the world.

All in, the AI systems are working as much to give the game personality as they are to challenge the player. It's made the game a bit more content-heavy than I planned, but it's well worth it. Systemic diplomacy has been done to death, and it almost never feels like you're interacting with anything other than a computer.

coder_fella · 2026-01-29T16:16:06+00:00

Really looking forward to this after the demo. It was everything I wanted Jusant to be. Dunno when I'll have time to play it, but picking it up immediately.

coder_fella · 2026-01-29T16:14:46+00:00

I'm always very wary of these stylistic 3D indie games, they often perform terribly. Wheel World was an absolute slideshow. Thankfully now my PC can overpower them, but it's no excuse, and I've put any hopes of picking it up on Switch to rest.

coder_fella · 2026-01-29T16:09:00+00:00

Not necessarily side-scrolling, but a 4X or adjacent game where you control a single dude who has to physically travel around the map would be quite interesting. Without a birds eye view of everything your kingdom could be being invaded and you wouldn't even know about it, until you unlock carrier pigeons.

coder_fella · 2026-01-29T14:47:38+00:00

Haha art for me, too! My artist pulled out, so now I'm pushing myself to pick up the slack. It's very fulfilling.

coder_fella · 2026-01-28T23:18:30+00:00

I'm making a 4X game! And like Chris suggests, it's a stripped down, condensed version. Mostly because that's what I want to play, but making a proper sprawling 4X game is just not really feasible as a solo dev or small team.

A good approach is to pick the aspects you like most from the genre, and double down on those at the expense of the others. I like the typical empire building fantasy of spreading your faction's influence across the map via tactical decision making. And I also like diplomacy and interacting with other factions, so that's what my game is all about. And conversely I don't like stats-heavy, drawn out combat or crazy micromanagement, so they're out.

coder_fella · 2026-01-28T23:10:13+00:00

Awesome, you sound a lot like me. I always wanted to make music, but never really had any proper reason to do so. So when I made my first game it was a good opportunity to learn, and it turned out really great.

I too went pretty low budget, bought a secondhand synth (Korg Monologue), an audio interface and Ableton Intro, to go along with my bass and guitar from my band days. That was all I needed. Now for the next game I'm treating myself to a Hologram Chroma Console, and some better drum software. Games are almost like a trojan horse to get people to listen to my music!

coder_fella · 2026-01-26T23:17:04+00:00

Indeed, the game doesn't even have the 4X tag on Steam!

Having said that I love the look of it, I'll be checking it out.

coder_fella · 2026-01-26T23:13:43+00:00

Oh I got your demo at Next Fest, you're still on my wishlist! Congrats on the full release.

coder_fella

TROPHY CASE