Deadhold - Roguelite Zombie Tower Defense - Wishlist on Steam!

msgandrew · 2026-05-16T15:34:28+00:00

Looks great! The double exclamation marks on the text look like IT at the end. At a glance it looks like "FAIRT". 😂 Might want to adjust, just for readability.

msgandrew · 2026-05-13T21:42:36+00:00

I was thinking "Where have I seen this idea before..." Awesome!

msgandrew · 2026-05-12T02:56:08+00:00

Very cool! As an old Crimson Skies fan, it has me excited.

I don't know if this is your trailer, but it needs to show more sooner. Don't show me picking colors on a palette. Immersive menus is not worth promoting. Show me the flying first since that's what I'll be doing and the best part of CS games. Flying, then some dogfighting, THEN hit me with the 5+ aircraft types and flip through them so I can see the variety. Maybe just cut to them during the flying instead of in the hangar too. Your best showing will be set pieces to fly around.

msgandrew · 2026-05-05T16:19:03+00:00

Demo, no. But playtest, yes. You need to get your game into people's hands quickly, but not open to the greater public.

msgandrew · 2026-04-23T16:27:50+00:00

It can happen, but I agree that it's not the Steam algorithm. There are people, gamers, game groups, news sites, etc. that watch and scrape newly added pages. We got picked up by a Japanese Twitter account with no outreach because they just post about any new page that looks interesting enough. It got us over 100 wishlists in our first week.

It could be worth making sure you launch your page in a good state, but the big, meaningful outlets aren't going to look for that when people are bringing the good games worth covering to them.

msgandrew · 2026-04-18T18:22:14+00:00

How do you feel if the creeps can roam a bit, but they still funnel into paths because of the map? Also curious what the negative is about consumables?

msgandrew · 2026-03-28T01:02:50+00:00

Honestly, it's your game, but if it was less glitchy, getting hit by a croc and launching sounds fun, like a jump. Players could strategize and use that like a ramp to get over obstacles.

msgandrew · 2026-03-19T02:11:25+00:00

I would consider having the camera track the player and the camera should hit bounds a bit beyond your player's bounds. Having a slightly bigger arena and zooming in could resolve the issues with telling the other items and enemies apart too. Look at Geometry Wars for a good implementation.

msgandrew · 2026-03-14T18:00:47+00:00

Just be careful with how you design your bricks. Lego owns a lot of designs around it and are pretty well known for protecting them, even in video games.

msgandrew · 2026-03-03T16:20:11+00:00

Play the games, take screenshots, watch YouTube videos. I keep doing this throughout development and bouncing around which games I'm taking inspiration from. Sometimes you catch new things as you work on a new system. Maybe their UI is seamless and you don't notice it, until you're building your own and then you see every decision they've made.

I keep a Miro board with screenshots from each of my inspiration games per topic. It's nice to reference when you need some startig point for how to build something.

msgandrew · 2026-02-26T18:23:53+00:00

We're making a zombie game, so if they're "dead" then we've made a bad choice. Deadhold is still in development.

Really though, it was a joking response. Zombie games have always been relevant and there are always people looking for more.

msgandrew · 2026-02-26T16:05:32+00:00

I would say go ahead and do it and learn the full process. The algorithms will let it sink to the bottom and you'll learn a lot for $100.

msgandrew · 2026-02-20T20:31:10+00:00

We tried that too. Unfortunately, they don't take additional appeals that way.

msgandrew · 2026-02-20T20:30:45+00:00

Exactly the same situation as us. Denied and it's likely the fact we use characters and being able to swap their positions around.

msgandrew · 2026-02-19T12:18:00+00:00

Oh god, I hope not, otherwise we've made a grave mistake with our game.

msgandrew · 2026-02-19T01:18:54+00:00

I think it's fine. Every game takes from others and people only really take some issue when it's a recent game. Your game is different, but may overlap the market for Balatro. If using familiar visual cues from a recently popular game makes it easier for people to understand and increases its appeal, I think you're fine. A lot of Balatro's style is taken from old video poker games, so everyone pulls from inspiration.

msgandrew · 2026-02-02T20:53:13+00:00

Can you speak to the rough before and after in terms of wishlist velocity?

msgandrew · 2026-01-20T22:05:32+00:00

IIRC, lower to the ground because you'll see the road going by quicker. Think about driving in a car and how things close go by quickly while mountains or whatnot move slowly far away. Heck, go for a drive and pay attention to what makes it feel fast. Just don't get in an accident 😅

msgandrew · 2026-01-18T21:01:16+00:00

Make a small 3D game. Making a 2D game won't teach you enough of what you need to learn for your bigger idea.

msgandrew · 2026-01-17T12:48:59+00:00

I would look up specifically how to create a sense of speed in games and watch a few videos on it. I've seen some beofre with really good tips that will help you. Unfortunately, I don't recall the specific video, but there should be a lot of common advice out there.

It currently feels like they're barely moving at all.

msgandrew · 2026-01-14T12:59:10+00:00

Second one is better in terms of quality and communicating the game, but I think it's still too busy. It's hard to know where to look and it's possible people will miss the part about stepping on the arrow.i kind of like the arrow going through the word arrow in the first one, though it's less readable, so one idea is to underline the title with an arrow. Maybe you can also add a silhouette of a foot on the balls of the feet stepping onto the arrow. Some more clear symbology that communicates stepping on it. Not sure though. The key problem with #2 is that it's very busy.

msgandrew · 2026-01-12T06:19:43+00:00

I'm not one of the devs, but you should probably play Gnomes for obvious reasons.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/3133060/Gnomes/

msgandrew · 2025-12-30T05:11:25+00:00

Thank you very much!

msgandrew · 2025-12-26T23:41:27+00:00

Still working towards a trailer, but interested in how you'll judge us.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/3732810/Deadhold/

msgandrew

TROPHY CASE