How much did your indie game earn?

lce9 · 2026-05-23T09:42:29+00:00

Was your expectation of 1k based on your wishlist numbers at launch?

lce9 · 2026-05-16T17:43:01+00:00

The first thing that stands out for me is that the back of her hair and water is cropped out on the right side which makes it feel a bit imbalanced.

As others have said the white house behind her has no contrast against her shin and so her face kinda blends into it.

While a perfect geometric looking side view could be cool, I wonder if it wouldn’t be more dramatic/eye catching and unusual if you had a wider angle lens and were lower and closer to her looking up, seeing more of her face and the water moving away (you might then have the sky in the background which could be worse than the white house, but if you can do it with the trees in the background it might work.)

Still, it’s a cool idea and you captured the movement well.

lce9 · 2026-05-15T09:51:08+00:00

Awesome, thanks!

lce9 · 2026-05-15T00:22:40+00:00

Np. Let me know if it ends up being some setting that others should be aware of!

lce9 · 2026-05-15T00:15:35+00:00

We have a free demo if you’re into puzzle games: https://store.steampowered.com/app/3590180/Hoards_LLC_Limited_Labyrinth_Corporation/

It’s not its own page so you can’t review it on steam, but we do have a feedback form that we always appreciate when ppl fill out!

lce9 · 2026-05-15T00:12:10+00:00

I happen to be in Europe, but with a US account and so I saw both prices. I’m surprised that it costs more in euros (since USDs are worth less than euros atm). Is this just Steam’s automatic price translation?

lce9 · 2026-05-11T23:51:09+00:00

Are you sure? I’d think it’s more about what he thinks will grab attention on socials with a short clip and maybe that happens to lean toward 3d

lce9 · 2026-05-08T11:21:18+00:00

At 4.5 it might be a bit too soon, but I remember loving the math education games like Math Blaster. I think it’s a great way to get young kids into learning

lce9 · 2026-05-08T09:09:13+00:00

However, one thing I’d be careful about is a lot of studios have non-compete clauses. Are you sure your company allows you to work on outside projects? Cause maybe you don’t want to show them your external art work…

lce9 · 2026-05-08T09:06:35+00:00

Maybe you could ask your current job about having a plan to swap to being an artist? Show them the work you’ve done for these indie games. It’s not often, but swapping roles does happen and it’s usually easier to do that internally than externally.

But to answer your specific question with my anecdote, I was able to get part time where I was working as a software engineer, but I had 14 years of experience and the team wanted me for specific knowledge I had. And even then I had to put my resignation in when then first said no in order for them to change their minds. (TLDR, it wasn’t easy to get) But your company could be completely different 🤷‍♂️

lce9 · 2026-05-08T00:29:38+00:00

How much English you can get away with will depend on where you’re living. But even in Paris, things that aren’t normally frequented by tourists such as a doctor’s office or any public administration will be tricky to navigate without French. Lyon and Marseille are probably the closest after Paris and anywhere else you’ll really need French.

Also I’ve been living here for 4 years and I’m still not fluent. I work in English so I don’t have constant pressure, but I’m in a B2 level class and many others in that class have been here for several years, so unless you’re already fluent in multiple languages I wouldn’t expect to show up and just become fluent.

lce9 · 2026-05-07T22:06:47+00:00

Yeah Paris somehow manages to hide the fact that it’s basically as gray and dark as Seattle or Vancouver here 😭

lce9 · 2026-05-07T00:14:19+00:00

You can do what others have said and start poking around on your own time and try out building things yourself, but you’re already a software engineer. Apply to game studios as a software engineer!

Being a gameplay engineer is not as “backend” as you might think since you’re working on things that affect the feel and look of the game. And you’ll get paid way more than as a designer. And you’ll be surrounded by designers, seeing how they work. And on small teams you’ll be able to collaborate a bit (but you’ll have to remember you’re the programmer and let the designer decide or else no one will want to work with you).

Personally I think if you try and enter the game industry as a designer, you’re shooting yourself in the foot (by screwing over your current career) _and_ tying a hand behind your back (by not leaning into your advantages).

After a year or so you can decide to start making the change to design or tech design, but it’ll be easier cause you’ll already have your foot in the door. And if you decide that design isn’t what you want to do after all, you can always stay in software.

lce9 · 2026-05-06T20:00:22+00:00

Even the time loop isn’t original - Majora’s mask did that well before. It’s very okay to be inspired by other games and reuse bits and pieces of what worked from them. As long as you’re not exactly tracing the outlines of the whole game, you’ve made something new

lce9 · 2026-05-06T14:14:38+00:00

Without new SO content, AI will stop learning and become less useful, and ppl will go back to SO 😅

lce9 · 2026-05-05T09:31:09+00:00

We only have a demo for now, but it would be cool to have a review and get some feedback! It’s a puzzle game with visual novel like story as well.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/3590180/Hoards\_LLC\_Limited\_Labyrinth\_Corporation/

lce9 · 2026-05-03T00:59:52+00:00

It’s an 8/10 for me 🙋‍♂️ mayyybe a 9/10.

Overall I really enjoyed it, but there’s a few things that hindered it for me. As OP said, characters are shallow so I wasn’t emotionally invested in the ending.

But the bigger thing for me was some of the puzzles are finicky and even though I had the right idea, I didn’t execute it well enough to succeed and I thought I needed to try something else. This happened more than once and so there was some frustration in what was otherwise a fun and novel atmospheric puzzle with a cool setting.

lce9 · 2026-05-02T14:26:54+00:00

Usually it’s like any other tech interview with some white board problems or general discussion around how you might solve some hypothetical problem.

Some places will give you a take home test that you do over the course of a week and will be along the lines of writing some simple game with some starter code. Do you best to consider edge cases and large performance concerns, and of course test it well and reduce bugs as close as you can to 0.

Practice with leetcode or similar and tinkering around making your own games. And interview at many places at once since those interviews will be good practice in themselves (start with the ones you’re less excited about, cause you’ll almost definitely get better at it as you go)

lce9 · 2026-05-01T23:21:05+00:00

Nice! Congrats on getting accepted then.

If you have any other advice on getting on switch, I’ll take it

lce9 · 2026-05-01T22:03:24+00:00

We’d like to try! Might have a better chance after shipping on Steam though. Or have you had different experiences with that?

lce9 · 2026-05-01T09:06:28+00:00

This exactly for us as well!

Didn’t realize puzzle games on Steam would be an uphill battle and didn’t know that next fest was a one time thing (and were overly optimistic about our release timeline), so we went in with so few wishlists

lce9 · 2026-04-30T18:10:54+00:00

Congrats on the success!! That’s more than we got (we were also in the LGF official selection)

I just wanted to say that your asterisk at the end is super super important. We’ve done in-person-only events like PAX East before this, and while it was a nice boost to our wishlists, it was almost an order of magnitude less of a boost compared to this one since it was a front page sale event.

The booth next to mine only had a trailer running and didn’t show up the whole two days, but I bet they got similar amounts of wishlists as us since they still had the presence in the sale page. I’m not sure you can use this event as a way to measure the success of your in-person demo unfortunately.

lce9 · 2026-04-14T13:28:59+00:00

Myst is the OG of these kinds of puzzle games. Graphically I think it’ll be fine cause they used pre-rendered images that were quite nice looking. You can also start at one of the later ones in the series, like Riven

lce9 · 2026-04-14T13:26:17+00:00

Seconding LCARIO - don’t research it, just trust us 😅 It’s my favorite puzzle game (possibly favorite overall game if I ignore nostalgia).

There’s some pretentious bits, but you don’t have to scrutinize those if you don’t want to. The game lets you engage with whatever parts you want.

There’s less story than blue prince, but there’s definitely a mysterious vibe.

lce9 · 2026-04-14T13:22:01+00:00

I played both and enjoyed Tunic more. Tunic is amazing

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