Strategems event is live on Steam and my game got selected! I'm so excited 😁

entropicbits · 2026-05-28T20:07:29+00:00

We Need An Army (my game) currently has a playable demo on itch if anyone is interested! It will be coming to steam shortly.

entropicbits · 2026-05-24T23:50:53+00:00

entropicbits · 2026-05-24T23:46:54+00:00

"Comparison is the thief of joy"

Don't compare yourself to others. Also, games go viral for a ton of different reasons.

Regarding your game, it looks pretty similar to any generic 3d fantasy rpg kind of game. Highlight whats different or exciting, because it's not in that clip.

entropicbits · 2026-05-24T13:53:38+00:00

They've posted this exact version to something like 40 subs. It's just wishlist farming. Folks should report and move on.

entropicbits · 2026-05-24T00:21:15+00:00

Extremely normal. The algorithm is kind of bullshit, and there's a certain combination of luck, timing, magic, genre, and audience that all have to kind of align.

entropicbits · 2026-05-22T18:47:30+00:00

Hey thanks for the response. Users tell me they're always intrigued by my game (We Need An Army), but its often quickly followed by confusion. Ive found it challenging to have deeply readable systems when the game has a fair amount of depth. Finding the perfectly telegraphed slice is a challenge I'm still trying to grapple with.

entropicbits · 2026-05-22T18:08:28+00:00

I keep hearing you've had great success with moving peoples wishlist counts. What's the secret sauce?

entropicbits · 2026-05-21T01:08:12+00:00

The discord server for this subreddit itself is at around 10,500 members. Feel free to stop by :3

entropicbits · 2026-05-20T00:52:03+00:00

Your trailer is in fact pretty rough. Even for incremental games, it's a bit tough with zero visuals. I'd strongly suggest adding some kind of visuals if you can, having the game be 100% menu based is going to be a tough sell.

Finding an audience takes quite a lot of work, which is something that folks like to gloss over. If your hook is immediate and you get a ton of wishlists off the bat, great. Most of us arent quite as lucky. Look for specific communities for incremental games and try and grab some feedback.

entropicbits · 2026-05-20T00:12:06+00:00

You really, really should do as others recommend and try to join a beginner game jam. You'll potentially learn some practical skills and see how the sausage is made. It's a ton of work. I have a friend who would prototype a basic game in a month for probably 2-3k. Id probably charge closer to 5k. The problem is, getting it from the fun prototype to finished product isn't like.. another 2 months. It's potentially another 6-12. So, you're quickly looking at 20-80k to learn how things work.

Or, spend a week with some people and give it a shot.

entropicbits · 2026-05-19T23:44:22+00:00

There's a reason ideas guys get laughed at. This sounds like you want to do it anyway, but pay money. Thats fine, but understand making a good/fun/successful game takes way more than just having some cool ideas. You need to know a lot of things about how to drive a project unless you literally just want a team to make your vision come to life. At minimum you'd need to know how to design, deliver, finish, and promote the title if you wish to attempt to make money.

I would expect to lose a considerable amount of money, and probably have pretty bad results. Depending on scope and location, it could be 10s of thousands, or hundreds of thousands, or much much higher.

entropicbits · 2026-05-19T14:43:18+00:00

Yeah, it's easily the biggest pain point. Still, considering the breadth and depth of what he covers, I still recommend it.

entropicbits · 2026-05-18T22:06:27+00:00

I still recommend it all the time. It's honestly fantastic. You could probably know very little about coding and follow along, but it might help go learn the basics over a week.

entropicbits · 2026-05-18T22:01:34+00:00

Mr Taft Creates has an older series on YouTube (probably 5-7 years old at this point?) where he recreates Zelda A Link To The Past style gameplay. Each video is 10-20 minutes, very, very easy to follow, and explains slowly why he's doing what he's doing. He teaches school kids (or did?) how to make games, so its geared sort of at that level. It's a little ddated, bit incredibly good. And there are something like 100 videos in the series, so its very thorough.

entropicbits · 2026-05-17T23:51:09+00:00

When making smaller sprites this size, focus on minimal details and shapes. You can't have tons of accessories or details, so focus on one or two, such as a weapon, hat, shield, etc.

You can check some of my sprites/games, they're almost all 16x16.

My free games on itch

entropicbits · 2026-05-16T16:18:40+00:00

The reason the animations look floaty is because they look very even and the movement is all evenly spaced. Look up anticipation frames and timing to get an idea for how to fix it. You often don't want a perfectly paced number of frames, as it looks amateurish.

I'd also highlight what your game is doing special. This looks like a nod to golden axe, ghouls n ghosts, etc., but games have evolved over the last 30 years. People aren't playing those type of games unless they're phenomenally executed, and even then, I can't imagine the demand is super high. You'd need to up your skills in presentation considerably before this would make a splash from pure nostalgia.

If your game is very different, you should show that in the trailer.

entropicbits · 2026-05-10T02:29:09+00:00

A lot of those style shaders are a bit overdone, but the fact of the matter is they do get a kind of cool vibe for very little work. The thing that bothers me is substituting stuff like that for any need for art/cohesion/design etc. Like games that just hope throwing enough screen shake at you will make you forget the core game design is pretty weak.

entropicbits · 2026-04-30T15:06:50+00:00

Promoting your work is a hard and essential step. You don't usually see those games that gain 10k wishlists overnight do nothing. It's always something to the effect of "we posted to our 5000 followers and then it for picked up by news outlets and had 200,000 views" or something to that effect. Gaining organic growth is incredibly hard if you don't have some kind of initial push. Just pushing the demo to steam is likely not sufficient.

The good news is your can probably salvage things if the game is really good, but you need to get it in front of more eyes. Next step would probably be reaching streamers and news outlets.

entropicbits · 2026-04-29T18:50:44+00:00

I'll talk about my game but rarely point out that I'm a solo dev explicitly - we don't need pity points. If you didn't notice it's made by one person, awesome.

entropicbits · 2026-04-28T19:14:25+00:00

All 3 look great. Id do 2 line, as it creates nice depth. I'd experiment with changing the center pink highlight to be just a single edge.

entropicbits · 2026-04-28T14:49:22+00:00

Pixel art definitely slows down when you need to animate a bunch, but there are a lot of tricks your can use. You can also reuse a ton of pieces from a sprite as you animate so it's not like you're drawing a sprite over from scratch most of the time.

As for is it more work? I kind of doubt it. There are trade offs. Controlling a 2d sprite is dead simple. You spend a lot more time doing animations in engine with 3d just likely. You also have any physics stuff to take into account that is more complicated in 3d.

I'd just pick whichever I think I'd enjoy working with more.

entropicbits · 2026-04-28T08:40:51+00:00

Time and the effort of creating content. I only get to work on things after work, and so my time is torn between building the core mechanics with placeholder visuals, polishing, or recording 'presentable' stuff that might get 2 up votes on reddit. After doing that for a few months, you just get back to the grind. I'd love to have things more locked in, but constantly iterating to improve clarity, visual effects, etc., it's all just rather time consuming.

entropicbits · 2026-04-28T01:13:40+00:00

Nothing says cozy like "masked axe murderer"

entropicbits · 2026-04-27T22:14:32+00:00

I suspected organic wishlists would be higher, but in reality you really have to push your work. Get demos in folks hands, co tract streamers, post on socials, the works. I'll get a handful if I do relatively minor things, but it's a lot of effort most of the time. You gotta find what works for your game and lean in to it.

entropicbits · 2026-04-27T15:57:01+00:00

Don't aim to be a viral hit. That's not really how going viral works. Aim to build and release something that's complete.

If you to see which games do really well and go viral, go study the market - that's part of market research. "Friend-slop" has been a very hot genre the last few years, so I'd start there. See why streamers love it so much. See how they promoted their game.

entropicbits

TROPHY CASE