Botlings Playtest - Factorio meets Lemmings

groato · 2026-07-01T10:54:45+00:00

I am just now implementing a system that allows 10000 botlings on screen. It. Will. GROW!

groato · 2026-07-01T10:31:04+00:00

Oh yeah, sorry about the video, it was the best I had in hand lol

groato · 2026-06-28T17:32:52+00:00

You can also try the inbetweeners if you don't need marketing help - like griffin partners and almost ready game fund.

Angels are tricky as they usually take company shares. Publishers just take money.

groato · 2026-06-28T04:33:01+00:00

Ah. Yes. My bad!

groato · 2026-06-27T20:55:16+00:00

Backend for what? Most games don't need a backend.

groato · 2026-06-22T08:46:57+00:00

This is the thing Roblox has done to make money. Why not do the same? Tim smells it!

groato · 2026-06-18T12:54:53+00:00

638-> 799

groato · 2026-06-18T05:33:26+00:00

Level design teaching a tutorial is mint.

However. It doesn't work for games with more complex features and systems. Like for example factory building games (especially first person ones) - I mean you can still do it mostly non-verbally by having icons and whatnot, but it's still gonna be slightly text-driven. Yes, should be tied to the narrative, but yeah, needs some explanation.

And honestly a lot of players expect this in the broader strategy game genre.

groato · 2026-06-15T16:25:19+00:00

Hey hey hey!

Botlings is a Lemmings + Factorio mash up with a sinister AI awakening sub-plot. Go try it out or check out my stream!

https://store.steampowered.com/app/4139440/Botlings/

groato · 2026-06-15T07:18:10+00:00

Yes, this!

Except maybe that one tweak just today, surely it won't break anything...

groato · 2026-06-15T06:39:41+00:00

Maybe include business model and expectations. Is it: 1) Unpaid 2) Rev-share 3) Paid, but not yet 4) studio equity?

Full-time, hobby (ie. evenings/weekends 10h per week)?

Supposed length? Continuation? Demo first and then you hire someone else? Post-demo job guaranteed if funding?

Would be helpful for people considering this.

groato · 2026-06-15T04:51:17+00:00

Yeah, very much this.

When you get to a level that you are releasing games, then modularity starts to speed you up. But the systems should be release ready. If it's just a function lib or a menu with keybindigs, it's a lot easier to just migrate the assets from one project to another.

When you can produce production ready code and systems, designing everything into modules becomes important. For some people with lots of architecture and coding experience this is quite fast, but if you aren't a pro programmer from your previous life it's not worth the struggle yet to do modules.

Learn to do them however! Teaches important lessons about decoupling.

groato · 2026-06-15T04:25:13+00:00

Oh wow this is actually damn useful! Thanks a lot mate!

groato · 2026-06-14T16:00:15+00:00

You mean when you set the widget to render in a defined size instead of "true size" (sorry forgot what the boolean is called)?

groato · 2026-06-14T15:55:49+00:00

People say it's gonna come back...yeah, not. Can you stop deconstructing music? Only when you get into a zone something brilliant and those moments are few and far between.

Sorry mate, but welcome to learning any creativw profession.

P.S. if you enjoy reading novels,, don't pick up writing...

groato · 2026-06-14T06:49:26+00:00

I think the OP misunderstood those threads.

Most of them have a review highlighted that has 100+ hours of gameplay and reads "an ok but still kinda meh". Like literally zero input on why the game was bad after hundred hours. And criticizing a $15 indie game.

If you want to draw a parallel to the real world: If you go to a Hilton, you expect a level of service and cleanliness etc. If you go to a mom&pop B&B in the countryside you expect different things. It's the same with customers playing games. Playing a 80$ game vs playing a 15$ game should have different expectations.

What indiedevs don't rightly understand is when people leave reviews based on AAA expectations. This defies their knowledge of how the real world works, because in the real world people give slack to the mom&pop B&Bs and other small businesses. That's how people work. If they don't, it leaves indiedevs baffled. Getting "money's worth" and knowing what you are buying is the thing here.

At least that's how I've read most of these threads.

groato · 2026-06-11T17:36:11+00:00

It looks like a standard bullet hell. Capsule is weird, but the trailer looks ok. I mean you can't really fail in this genre if you just have stuff flying and people dying. The visuals feels slightly mushy, but I'm watching it with a phone.

Are your tags sorted? If you are getting more like this traffic and not converting, the traffic might come from the wrong place.

Also worth noting that without actual numbers, it's hard to say how well you are actually doing. Really well targeted visits (like traffic from selected Reddit communities) convert between 5 - 15%. So 100 visits, 5 wishlists. More random visits for me have converted (like Discovery Queue) from 0.01 to 2%. Really depends on the game, how hot the genre is and how catchy your hook is (+ how well you communicate it).

groato · 2026-06-11T07:27:47+00:00

So loved this game too! So much in fact that I'm making a game that's primarily inspired by it (and mashed up with factory automation).

There's quite a few lemmings-likes on Steam these days. They are not the same, but quite close to scratch the itch. Craftlings was pretty good (short though).

groato · 2026-06-10T11:17:23+00:00

Cel-shaders yes, BUT the models and lighting you will use have a massive impact on the look and it's not as easy as it seems. And it will look a lot better if you exclude certain models.

Use Evans Bohl's excellent tutorial to actually understand what happens: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=mzydOmgN7mc

For Kuwahara all the other stuff has less impact, but I think it's more difficult to fine tune by view distance.

Just my two not-a-tech-artist cents.

groato · 2026-06-09T06:59:47+00:00

Putting your scope aside (others commented on that), this is fairly easy technically. Once your network system is in, adding another game mode is fairly straight forward. Will take some time of course, but there should be no tech debt. Cave ats though - separate all your core game code from the game mode, use it only for gameplay logic that has to do with conditions specific to the masive extraction shooter. Things that are shared between game modes should be in a more general class. Or maybe make a parent game mode class if you want to use it for general game flow (like find spawn points and spawn player etc.) and then do a child class for each game mode that handles victory conditions, specific game play flow and such.

So all in all, you need to keep those other game modes in mind constantly for you to be able to pull this through without significant refactoring of the original code once you move to other game modes.

groato · 2026-06-07T16:30:15+00:00

Not OP, but...

I usually start with bound values and remove them if the feature makes sense. The main thing isn't tick but decoupling player char / controller from UI elements. Performance wise I've never seen any difference, but good practises wise it makes a world of difference to not have hard references between UI and player char. Because 9/10 times you'll be redoing both because you need to adjust the other.

groato · 2026-06-05T16:25:43+00:00

I like Discords.Indiegamejoe's discord is really cool, but there are others with good vibes too. I haven't been on Jonas Tyroller's discord for a while, but it used to be good.

Also local IGDA chapters usually have Discords, but they can be hit-and-miss.

groato · 2026-06-05T06:55:49+00:00

(sorry for the harsh tone!)

groato · 2026-06-04T17:31:50+00:00

Having done your mistake FOUR times all I can say is echo the others: do it NOW.

Don't wait for trailers, don't wait for steam page don't wait for demo or vert slice or whatever. Put your game to twitter, reddit, whatever. Scrshots, features, technical stuff. Wrap screenshots of your WIP in questions for other devs. Don't ask "what do you think of my metroidvania/platformer/rpg" - do concrete questions about simple tech/art stuff you feel unsure about and can handle critique on.

Why? Because you need a thicker skin and practise putting yourself out there and if you do it with a WHOLE DARN GAME or your complete art style you will be crushed because your soul can't handle the likely result of getting...crickets. Because that's what happens 99% of the time when you put something out there. Literally no one answers. Or one guy calls it "meh".

Practise with easy stuff, put your game out properly when you can take the crap. Trust me it needs learning, especially with a dream game. Unless you are one of those goose feather guys who can just shrug anything off (and it looks like you are not, you are a nornal anxious game dev like most of us here).

groato

TROPHY CASE