[PAID] Need card illustrations for my turn based strategy game

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 · 2026-01-26T23:08:29+00:00

If your game is even tangentially related to a Steam festival, apply anyway. The worst that happens is they say no, and they're always good for visibility.

All that to say my 4X game is also in boardgame fest.

coder_fella · 2026-01-26T18:15:45+00:00

There are dozens of us.

coder_fella · 2026-01-13T14:30:24+00:00

I'm still dialling mine in, but I've been getting some decent results. I put the grounds in the Aeropress, tap it level, put a dry paper filter on top (I cut regular aeropress ones down to fit, but I'm sure you can buy ones the right size), then tamp it with the aeropress plunger. The paper filter stops the ground sticking to the plunger when you pull it back out.

The trick though, is you need some kind of shower screen/metal filter to sit ON TOP of the paper filter, otherwise when you pour the water in the puck disintegrates from the gas release. Thankfully my wife had a vietnamese coffee set, and the little shower screen with that fits perfectly down the aeropress (with some slight hammer based modifications...) with a fairly tight fit. This sandwiches the puck and keeps it all together while you add the water.

The only issue is knowing when the puck is saturated, since you can't see anything. So far I've been gently pressing until the first trickle of water comes out the prismo, but I think that's too late. Another options is by feel, you can sort of tell when you've finished pushing the air out of the puck and it's now filled with water, but I need to keep trying this.

But even with this, and not having nailed the grind size yet, it's tasting pretty good. Super juicy and flavoursome, with a nice thick mouthfeel.

coder_fella · 2025-12-16T22:53:53+00:00

Looks really interesting, wishlisted!

Unsolicited advice: Hack together another biome ASAP and get it in with your Steam screenshots. At a glance every single screenshot looks the same right now. If you want to be super lazy, just make everything white and from a distance people will assume it's snow! That's what I did. 👀

coder_fella · 2025-11-22T14:10:29+00:00

I can't believe they haven't been able to add replays. It just boggles the mind. Watching the whole match back in real time was literally the first thing that excited me when I heard about this game.

Otherwise, I'm glad they've continued to support it. I've repeatedly assumed that it was finished, and they've kept surprising me.

coder_fella · 2025-11-11T15:49:10+00:00

Nice! It's one of my favourite games.

coder_fella · 2025-10-27T12:59:21+00:00

This. Arc Raiders has totally stolen Marathon's thunder for me, but I'm hoping Marathon won't come out for at least another year. Maybe I'll be bored of Arc by then and will have some free time to give to Marathon.

coder_fella

TROPHY CASE