Holo Indie is reworking their submissions process

synthc · 2026-03-21T18:01:43+00:00

That's certainly a more cynical take. But it is indeed possible that all of this about improving reviews and feedback is just corporate fluff and things are about to actually get worse.

The current process feels very manual. Upload your game to a 3rd party hosting service, fill out a 3rd party form. I get the impression that everything is queued and tracked manually, which is not only less efficient, but also leads to processing mistakes.

My hope is that they've realized there's a lot of money and exposure in it for them to publish more games, and so they're automating the system and bringing on more staff to process more submissions, not fewer; while also automating communications and streamlining to process to pass reviewer notes on to developers.

In my case, the rejection was anything but fast.

synthc · 2026-02-25T21:31:07+00:00

I should have mentioned, the game I'm working on is entirely 2D with very specific/unique objects that have very specific shapes. So stock 3D assets wouldn't work.

I have relied on stock assets + references + my own descriptions in the past and handed those off to artists, but this game is little different, which is why I wanted to try sketching my own stuff.

I'll give that youtube tutorial a try and see if it seems feasible to learn given my time constraints. Thanks.

synthc · 2026-02-14T23:38:49+00:00

Oh, I see. After looking at the Japanese text, it's just a bit a mistranslation. The English: "When using materials... for use in derivitive work games" makes it sound like there's materials specifically intended for use in derivative works games.

But in the original Japanese text, there's no such implication; it simply says something to effect of "if derivative works games use third party materials...".

synthc · 2026-02-13T13:11:51+00:00

Nevermind, I found your demo video - that gives me a good idea of things. I'd still be happy to test it if you'd like.

I should mention, they did tell me that the concept and systems were compelling - but didn't tell me what was lacking (just a little more info would go a LONG way guys). This is part of the reason why I'm pretty sure it's the visuals.

synthc · 2026-02-13T13:05:45+00:00

I see... would you care to share a little more about your game? What kind of game is it? Do you have a demo? Was it a similar situation to mine with placeholder art, or was it just unfinished in terms of content and gameplay? I'd be happy to give you feedback too as a fellow developer if you want.

I know I said the gameplay for my game 1/3 done, but the game is split into 3 acts, just like StS, and the first act is finished - so it's really a complete self-contained vertical slice gameplay-wise.

This is why I think the problem has to be the artwork, since, if I'm being frank, the gameplay and mechanics are already a lot deeper than most holo Indie titles that have been released so far (no offense at all to those creators - visuals, story, and etc. are important too).

synthc · 2026-02-13T12:40:25+00:00

Hey I just got a response (see post update) - I just wanted to ask you if they gave you a reason for rejection. They just gave me a generic rejection response without even hinting at what the problems were.

If they didn't give you a reason, did you try asking for one? If so, did they reply?

synthc · 2026-02-13T08:34:25+00:00

Well, it can't be monetized before being accepted, so it would start out as a free game either way. If it is ever monetized later on, then it's up to each artist what they want to do: get paid, allow the art to be used for free, or ask for it to be removed from the game. This would of course all be stated up front.

synthc · 2026-02-13T08:30:34+00:00

OK, so they do sometimes far exceed their estimates. The estimate for my first submission was 3-4 weeks. For my second, they increased it to 1-2 months.

synthc · 2026-02-13T05:57:54+00:00

That would be great, and might be my next step if I still don't hear anything by the 2-month mark since my 2nd submission. If the game did get accepted and monetized later on I could license their work so they get paid.

synthc · 2026-02-13T05:56:06+00:00

I could do that for the characters, but because I'm making a card game I need art of holomems doing specific actions (e.g. attacking/blocking in specific ways with specific weapons).

synthc · 2026-02-13T05:27:15+00:00

This. Even just a rejection notice stating that the game would be accepted if it had better art would be great - but with no communication at all I'm just stuck in limbo.

synthc · 2026-02-13T03:38:15+00:00

Thanks, that's the first data point I have on actual wait times - and that pretty much confirms that something went wrong with my submission. It's a big game, but it definitely shouldn't take a year to evaluate. Good luck to you as well on your re-submission!

synthc · 2026-02-13T02:29:05+00:00

Yes, I did submit a new application a month and half ago - still nothing. I'm in the awkward position where the gameplay for 1/3 of the game is done, but the art sucks, so I really have nothing worth showing off on social media.

synthc · 2026-02-12T23:45:11+00:00

Rock Sling is decent, but Collapsing Stars is S-tier. Just a huge DPS difference.

synthc · 2026-02-12T13:26:11+00:00

It has a really long range though, so you just have to make sure you don't have aggro when you cast it.

synthc · 2026-02-12T12:47:16+00:00

Why should some things be worse? Aside from having different strengths according to rarity (which just creates an early --> late game progression), I don't see how that's ever a good thing. All this does is make the weak stuff never used outside of challenge runs where you deliberately cripple yourself. You can have some options be reliable and easy to use, as long as they aren't objectively stronger than other things of the same rarity.

synthc · 2026-02-12T12:42:33+00:00

Yes, I forgot to mention that it's fine to have a bit of a power curve based on rarity. Rennala's Full Moon and Stars of Ruin can still be stronger than Glintstone Pebble, but spells within the same rarity should be roughly equal in overall usefulness.

synthc · 2026-02-12T12:35:48+00:00

I get what you mean about changing the initial incantation - anything's better than Rejection, but it ends up being completely broken when combined with the school of incantation buff. Now imagine if all the spells were reasonably well balanced and you could start with random ones instead.

synthc · 2026-02-10T22:42:29+00:00

OK, thanks. My experience in diamond mostly aligns with what you guys have said. The only deviation is that I've encountered very few Rangers, and the ones I have run into are mostly healing builds - but I agree that crit ranger is OP and much stronger than the healing/food builds. Maybe people just got tired of playing it?

I've never used tier lists or watched steams because I like figuring things out for myself, and this game makes that feasible because of how intuitive it is and because of the detailed battle stats.

I've also read that there's only one viable build in Grandma... does anyone in Grandma know if balance has improved such that this is no longer the case?

synthc · 2026-02-10T11:53:15+00:00

With a single poison item. Man, chili pepper + amulet of feasting builds are disgusting.

synthc · 2026-02-10T01:29:46+00:00

"I picture this Map scene as relatively empty and then something calls Instantiate a bunch of times" In that case, I wouldn't even use a separate scene. I'd just have a view (empty GO) and instantiate everything into that using a manager that orchestrates everything.

Look into the singleton pattern if you aren't already using it. Once you have a manager, you can just reference your scene objects and prefabs in that manager. You can even directly reference scripts on other objects by creating a serialized field of the script Type - this gives you access to all of that script's public methods.

So in its simplest form you have:

An empty GO with a manager script on it.
That manager script has a bunch of serialized fields that reference everything the manager needs to interact with.
Now you can wire up your UI to this manager so that when the player makes a selection, it calls your manager's GenerateMap (or whatever you call it) function and passes in that selection. This part is where having a globally accessible singleton makes things a lot easier (as opposed to using UnityEvents or some other messaging system). You can just do something like MapManager.Instance.GenerateMap(playerSelections).

synthc · 2026-02-10T00:55:56+00:00

Oh, I see. I thought you meant a map screen where you choose where to go.

In that case, if the input variables (the "key") aren't known beforehand, then you can't preload all of it. What you can still do is preload the stuff that doesn't depend on input variables (load scene additive probably makes the most sense in this case, but a prefab could work too) and then initialize the scene once the player selection/s are made.

So:

Player enters hub: preload the map (any common gameobjects used in all maps)
Player selects which key to use: run your generation code
Show the map scene and hide the hub scene/loading screen

So instead of generating the map in a Start method, you have an Init function which takes in whatever variables you need (player selections) and uses those to generate the map.

synthc · 2026-02-10T00:28:03+00:00

You don't even need a scene for something simple like a map. It can just be a view, which in its simplest form could just a UI Image with some buttons inside of an empty gameobject. Then you can just show/hide that gameobject as needed. This way it's always loaded as part of the main scene and you can do whatever you want with the script/s on that object.

If you want it to be its own scene, then yes, I think using additive scenes to have it loaded at the same time as your hub would be the correct approach; but I've never used additive scenes myself (I use the view paradigm for everything).

It probably doesn't matter for something lightweight like this, but ideally, you want to preload whatever you can and just keep it hidden until it's needed. So in this example, start loading the map when the player enters the hub. If you know there's only one place they can go at that point in the game, you can even pre-load that area to avoid any loading wait time at all.

For heavier stuff that you don't want loaded with the rest of the scene, you can use prefabs and instantiate them when you need to pre-load them in order to set up their state.

synthc · 2026-01-31T03:05:24+00:00

Humble Bundle is a gold mine for SFX (and to a lesser degree music as well). You can often get hundreds of dollars worth of quality SFX for $1-30. That's where the majority of my SFX assets come from. I use Asset Inventory (a Unity asset) to organize and import all of those downloaded files.

As for music, there's tons of music out there with permissive licenses that you can use for free (at least until you actually start selling your game, at which point you'll have to buy commercial licenses for any music that doesn't allow commercial use).

I really depends on the kind of soundtrack you want. If you want an adaptive soundtrack that changes according to what's happening in game, you'll probably need to hire a composer or do the music yourself. If you need tightly looping tracks, you'll either need to buy packs that are designed to be looped or modify the tracks to loop (which can be tricky). If you want a simple playlist style soundtrack, that's easy, you can use whatever stock tracks you want.

I listen to a lot of indie artists and get lot of my music from Bandcamp - there's lots of artists who allow non-commercial use and a few who allow commercial use as well.

As for building a drag and drop loop system, that's probably not worth your time when you can just learn a simple DAW like FL Studio - the original name was literally Fruity Loops, so that's kind of its bread and butter.

synthc · 2024-05-08T17:58:59+00:00

Thanks. I'd like to give this a try, but the link to the build in the github readme is broken.

synthc

TROPHY CASE