Let's Review Your Games — Ep. 036

great Thanksgiving and I hope you had a great Thanksgiving, too. And if you didn't celebrate Thanksgiving, you should. It's great. Hey, I wanted to say a huge before we jump into these three games. And by the way, the games are linked below if you want to check them out while I'm ranting here. Um, but before we play these games and offer any constructive criticism or let's call it feedback, constructive feedback, huge thank you to all these new students. I'm not going to say all these names right now. I'm going to say them at the end of today's live stream because there are a lot a lot of people who enrolled and these are not all the names. Um these are the names that uh were recent uh who enrolled in full-time gamedev. But uh huge huge thank you to all the students who have enrolled in full-time gamedev during the Black Friday sale. I went ahead and extended this for 24 hours and that's because it's Cyber Monday. Apparently that's a thing that we all need to do, right? Cyber Monday. So, what we've got 18 hours left to join

officially 18 hours after this, it's it's done. The biggest sale event of the year is completely done. This thing is massive. Full-time gamedev is 50% off, which is my course that teaches not only how to make a game and code a game in Unity, GDAU, or Unreal. Uh, you can take your pick, by the way. You don't have to learn all of them. You just pick one engine. Uh, it also teaches how to hit the Steamfront page. Um, how to get wish lists, how to secure a paycheck and an advance from a publisher with just a demo. I've done that three times, by the way. Um, how to get funded on Kickstarter. Um, I've done that two times, by the way. So, if you want to learn from somebody who's actually been in the trenches and is currently in the trenches, I'm currently working on my third commercial release, which is called Twisted Tower. Uh, and it's published by 3D Realms. if you want to learn from an actual indie game developer, one who's actually in the trenches making games, but also you want to learn 2D art, 3D art, and also how to do YouTube content uh for your game. And by the way, that's those are free

courses that are completely free just for this sale event. If you want to learn from someone like that, click the link below, see if it's something you're interested in. The best part about this is look, I have 4,500 students worldwide and a lot of them have actually gone full-time, which is really, really cool. And guys, I'm not going to sit here and tell you it's easy, okay? Um, but these are actual students. And by the way, if you if you think that they're not real, just go ahead and look them up. They're they're real people. Reach out to them. See see what they thought about the course. But they all went full-time, which is super duper cool. And by the way, if you're a student, let me know in the chat what you think about the program. And anyway, guys, I just want to let you know that that is well about to expire here. We've got 18 hours left. I'll give you a big fat shout out tomorrow in the live stream for tomorrow. But after this guys, it is over. Okie dokie. Come on in guys. Let me see if I get this chat box open. It always has a hard time showing up here. I think it's going to show up here in three, two, one,

three. There it is. [laughter] Okay, I'm not even going to answer the question about batches because I'm super duper embarrassed by it. It's not good. Um, I'm trying to figure it out. Um, okay. Okay, let's go ahead and jump into these games and take a look at the first game. The first game is called Daisin. Daisen is our first game. First thing I'm going to do, I love to do this, is look at the Steam page here. Um, I try not to read the reviews, but Daisin is uh, let's see what it says here. I don't love the name. It's not super easy to remember. If it was Daisy, that would be pretty cool. But I bet you there's a game called Daisy. Nope. Is that how you spell Daisy? Yeah, there it is. You could call it Daisy with a Z Y. Z Y. Daisy. Yeah, you could call it that. Kind of like Daisy, but Daisy. I just

think this is really hard to remember. I saw this game last week and I totally forgot the name. Um, so I don't know if it's a memorable name to be honest with you, but I love the front cover. I think that's really cool. Um, character is memorable. Looks fun, interesting. Forget about ammo. Forget about reloading. Don't let your weapon overheat. I guess that's cool. Yeah, Daisin is a fast-paced shooter. Step into the role of a girl plunging into chaos to unravel the anomalous influence spreading across the land. I don't like that word, anomalous. Do you guys like that word? Okay. Okay. I don't know if I love the word anomalous because I don't even know what that means. You got to you got to you got to aim for that lowest common denominator. People like me, you know, dummies. I don't know what that means. All right, let's hit play here.

Okay, I get it. Pretty cool. I actually like that trailer. I think we'll talk about this when we open it up. I [snorts] think visually the game is close to being unique, but it's not there yet. It feels a little flat. Um, the game feel looks awesome. We'll see how it plays. Um, but I kind of wished it felt more like this. I wish I had more of this flare here. Maybe some cell shading. Maybe some painterly effects. Um, the colors, the color scheme. I wish it was like yellow and red. Um, we kind of have that here, but it looks a little acety. So, my theory is we could actually It looks kind of back roomsy, too. I'm not

sure why. But I kind of wish that we had, you know, um more interesting colors and and graphics and effects. And so we might actually open up Photoshop here so I could sort of show you what I would do with the art. Um not that I'm perfect, but I feel like I could offer some thoughts here. But I actually really like this front cover. I think it's really cool. It doesn't look like AI either. Do you guys think that looks like AI? Let's do a little vote. Did you know I'm going to make this up, but did you know that I think the community can pretty much with with 99% accurate accuracy, I think a community people, real people are the best um litmus test as to whether something is AI or not. They just know. So, what do you think? Is that front cover AI? Yes or no? I would love to talk to Gavin. I think we could learn a lot from Gavin, honestly. Um, and that's that's uh two

star games. I'd love to have Gavin on and so I'll reach out to him and ask him when he's ready to talk. Um, he probably needs some time to just reflect on kind of what happened [snorts] with Cuffbust. But I think, hey, if we have somebody who went up the mountain and they come back and they say, "Hey, there's that wasn't a good path." I want to hear from that person. I think that's a person we should listen to. Um, the hand position is weird. It's actually not. That makes actually a lot of sense. I think that's perfect. Yeah, I don't think it's AI either. Let's hit play here. So far, the Steam page is fine. I think the game art is going to be kind of something we need to critique. Okay. Lots of caution, lots of warnings. I don't know why this is absolutely necess ne necessary for an indie game. Okay, you have to click for that.

Okay, it's a another warning about Okay, I don't I don't I don't feel like we need all these warnings for a demo. Okay, now we have the studios, but these you can't click through. Okay. All right. All right. All right. Let's go. Let's go. So, with a demo that's kind of unknown that people aren't really playing a lot of, I wouldn't do 30 seconds of fade in, fade out, fade in, fade out. I would get to the I would I would jump to this main menu in two seconds. Two logos, logo, logo. Let's get to the point. You know, um, one of the reasons why, well, anyway, let's just let's just play here. [snorts] That feels great. What's my rule, guys? My rule is that I wish you would have told me I was peeking. Am I peeking?

Okay. Uh, one of my rules is that if the menu has sound on it, it's probably a decent game. If there's hover sounds, it's probably a decent game. Let's see if that suspicion is correct. Ah, there was no click sound. So, all right, let's go to the training sphere. I don't know what this is. Hey, can you guys tell me does this make sense to you? It's cool. I just don't know what it means. Tutorial Lumen Ignis arcs.

I don't know what that means. Hm. Okay. Well, let's just do the tutorial here. I want I wanted to hear a sound there. Sound. So, yeah, a lot of unfinished sounds here. [snorts] Um, yeah, there was no click sound and there was no hover sound there either, but let's go ahead and take a look here. Hold on one sec. I'm going to turn it down for you guys. So crouch is control. Boy, it really should be C. If I'm going to be sprinting with shift, it's really hard to press crouch at the same time.

I'm not sure if those sound effects are random enough. It should be just randomize the pitch. Okay, we got a trap door here. Good. Jump. Crouch. It's kind of hard to see. I would definitely consider um increasing the the brightness of the lines on the ground. the the objects there are casting shadows and it looks like there's holes in the ground, but I don't think that that's there are no holes, but it just kind of feels weird. Um, yeah, but let's keep going. Feels good though. The character controller feels really good. I wish there was footstep sounds when I land. Give me a reward sound. Come on, reward

me. Mission complete. Complete. Complete. Give me something. Um, control control as as crouch is fine. It's just you have to hold sprint and then you got to go to crouch. So, that just feels weird to me. I feel like C makes more sense. This is debatable. Okay. Anyway, so the main thing is is I think sound. I think this game really needs some some sound. And I wonder if we should do a quick Premiere. Uh I think you guys know though. I don't think I need to open up Premiere here to show you how we could make this sound more interesting. I'll just use my mouth. Interact. F. Ooh. Oh, that's great. Hey, I love that you can see her fingernails. That's awesome. It's a little dim.

The lighting's a little dim in this game. Let's see if I could brighten it up. Nope. Can't brighten it. Yep. Definitely give me the ability to brighten things. It's a little dull. Would you guys say it's a little dim? Look at that hand. Um like in the brightest spot. I think this is like the brightest spot. It's a little gray and dull, you know. So, we'll open up the uh Photoshop and and do some color tweaks here in a minute. That feels great. I wish that that that sound when you're hitting And by the way, if you guys think it's annoying that I'm offering critique every 5 seconds, go ahead and get a play tester to play your game. Especially a play tester who's their job is to play test. So, like for me, I've mentioned this before. For me, I have um 3D Realms. They're coming in. Saber is, and by the way, Saber's awesome. They're

coming in and playing Twisted Tower. And they are hyper critical. Every little thing, and that's what makes a great game. That's what makes a great game. Okay. So, what I was going to say was I wish it was this look. Okay. So, watch this. Uh I think it's every two shots. So, I wish it was pp. And so, what you could do is you can have a shoot sound, an impact sound, and then like even a bell sound. Give me like three a third really epic like fun impact sound. Who cares? Who cares if it's not realistic? We're not here to play a realistic game. We're here to have fun. Okay. and give me a jump sound. You had a cute girl on the front cover on the Steam page, right? Let's hear it.

Let's hear her voice. Let's do it like a cute anime girl sound. Good reticle there. I love that red reticle. By the way, game feel is really good. It feels great. I don't hear any footsteps, though. And I want to hear jump sounds. That feels good. So, the weapons look very basic. Um, I wonder if we could because this game has a like a colorful, playful feel to it. I wonder if we could jump it. We We'll We'll do it. We'll jump into Photoshop and play with the colors of the weapons and the color scheme of the world. But, we're still in the training mode here. Nice shotgun. Cool. That's awesome. So, it's overheated. I want to hear that sound. I want to hear

when it's uh done. Feels good. It feels really good actually. I love the movement. I love the controls. I love the Okay, E is swap between weapons. And I can swip switch between all three. Sweet. That feels great. So, I would love the sound to be more of like a metallic sound when I'm switching weapons. [laughter] Like a crunching sound. Feels awesome. Really good. Really good.

Okay, we'll see. We'll see how the AI reacts to bullets, but right now it doesn't feel like the bullets are hitting anything because there's no reaction. You want like a like that. So, give me a sound. [laughter] Mission complete. Very good. Some kind of fun explosive sound towards the end there. All right. My health is low. Okie dokie. What are those? Residue. Okay. So C is heal. So, I guess if that's going to be the control scheme, you could make it like R or something,

but great. Oh, keep playing. So, I want to hear the sound. So, the main problem with this game, the the the good thing about this game is the game feel, the UI, uh the punchiness of it, uh it feels solid, it feels rigid, it feels like it's real. There's a lot of sound missing from this game. So, for example, when the enemies spawn, when I initiate and see an enemy, I want to hear [laughter] when I enemy gets hit. Those sounds are not only important for immersion, they're important to let the know let the player know that, hey, there's zombies around. Um, they just spawned behind you, bro. All right, here we go.

I like that healing mechanic or that healing animation. That's pretty cool. All right. They're a little too fast to begin. Um, yeah, this is a little too hard. Uh, they're a little too fast. I can't really keep away from them. I would slow down the zombies a little bit. That would also make it uh in allow me to skip that intro sequence. But those zombies are super fast. Um I I kind of feel like the zombies should just just barely be able to outrun you. Good grief.

a little hard. Yeah, this game needs some juice for sure and a little bit of balance cuz this is way too hard. And it's not cuz uh it's not it's not like it's actually hard. I'm just still trying to figure it out. So the weapon overheats, so you just got to be careful with it. I get it. I'm learning.

Got him. Okay. Yeah, I'm still figuring it out. So, I don't really Oh, mission complete. Something like that. Some kind of fun sound. Give me Let me hear her voice. Something. Yeah, I only had one weapon there, so it was kind of weird. At least I think I was pressing the 1, two, three, four, and I was trying to scroll and nothing was happening. Okay, Lumen, Ignis, and arcs. I don't quite know what this means. Is this clear to you guys what spears are? I guess they're just like training levels. Um, well, let's see here. Okay, I beat those. All right.

It's a lot of training. I just kind of want to play the game. Let's see if we can just play the game. Although, let's just see here. Yeah. So, when you're running and sprinting, it's kind of hard to get to see to control from there. What's that? What is that? I don't know what she's doing, by the way. Right there. Do you guys know what she's doing? What is that? All right, let's I just feel like all these training

levels are kind of I'm going to end this mission and see if we can play an actual level. I'd rather I'd rather the developer just reskin these tutorials as actual levels. Let me know in the chat what do you guys think? Yes, reskin them as levels. No, make them all look like tutorial levels. Yes, reskin them as levels. No, keep it as as it is. Um, let's uh skip here. She's adjusting the tie. Okay. She's like, is that how you adjust a tie, though? I feel like she should do this. Good job. Great work. Something like that. Amazing. I I just feel like she should just do this. I did a great job. Very nice.

Okay, let's see here. Sandbox. They said have fun on your own. Oh, really? So, there's training spheres and then there's the sandbox. Okay. So, This is cool. We have one of those issues with um mouse UI. I've seen this problem before in previous games. We talked about it last week. If you're going to show a highlighted button on the mouse, it gets really tricky because it could confuse people. A lot of people will think orange is selected. A lot of people might think white is selected. So, you want to make sure you're either flashing it. I'm assuming the white one is selected, but it can be really

disorienting at first. Oh, I wish I had a a a um a cursor. So, there's no hit sounds either. So, it just feels really odd. Okay, so let's go ahead and go back to the main menu. Um, and by the way, guys, feel free to check out the uh the it's the last day for the fulltime gave death sale below. It's 50% off for Cyber Monday. Um, it's basically it's the same as Black Friday. I just extended it another day uh for Cyber Monday. So, check it out. It's 50% off. You're going to learn everything I've learned in the last decade of making indie games. From pitching to publishers to actually making a game, hitting the Steam front page, getting funded on Kickstarter, reaching out to the press, getting press coverage, getting YouTubers to play your game, the whole nine yards. On top of that, you're going to get my 2D and 3D art programs completely free. And also, for this sale only, my YouTube course as well. So, check it out below. I've got 4,500 students worldwide, and this will end in

18 hours or I think it was 16 hours. Okay, we're gonna we're going to go back to the training sphere. I just wish that the game kind of jumped in and let me play an actual level. So, we're just going to It just feels a little disorienting. A lot of a lot of training spheres and I'm not quite sure why these can't just be regular levels. Cool music. Yeah, I think this game suffers from um what a lot of games suffer from. By the way, it feels great. The game feels awesome. Um, it's very punchy and a lot of the sound design is spot-on. It definitely feels halfbaked. Um, if it's fully baked, it could be awesome. Um, but we're going to jump onto the next game here. Overall, overall, I think that it needs a lot of sound work. I think it's um the

fact that it's just training spheres right now. I mean, that's like what that was. You might be saying, "Well, Thomas, just get through the training spheres." It's like, well, that's potentially 30 minutes to an hour of training spheres, you know? And so, I think that um I think if I was the developer, I would incorporate a lot of punchy um story beats, set dressing, uh set design, themes, levels, biomes, and and and incorporate those into the training. um as opposed to them being training spheres. Most people don't want to play that. Am I wrong? Do we agree? This is not for my ego, by the way. Yes, I agree with Thomas. No, I disagree with Thomas. Yes, I agree with Thomas. No, I disagree with Thomas. And by the way, if you disagree with me, that's okay, okay? I'm not going to be upset. So, please be honest. We're trying to help the developer. I want the developer I want them to make a great game, and I

think that they can. Yeah. So, go ahead and let let the developer know. Yes, we we agree they need to reskin. That's a long that's a long time to play a grid of like a a a tutorial grid. That's a long time. Like that was like three levels per chapter. It's like 12 tutorials. Um so I wouldn't do that. I want to see this guys. I want to I want to get to know this character. Uh I I feel this is my sort of final my if I was to like advise the developer, which the developer may be more talented than me, who knows? But if I was to to and I'm not that talented, um but if I was to advise the developer, I'd say reskin all of those tutorials to be actual chapters.

um actual levels in an actual themed world. Uh make the art style much more interesting with watercolor textures, vibrant colors, make the pistols and the shotguns and the automatic weapons. Make them look anime. Make them look almost like toys. Really interesting. When that when I see that girl, I want her to say something. I want her to say, "I've got this. It's getting hot in here. I don't know. That's [laughter] It's getting hot in here. And then adjust her collar. Something stupid. I would rather it be stupid and cheesy than nothing at all. Okay. So, give me something. Getting me excited here. But you want you want something. You want this anime character to be present. Okay. So, that's what we're going to do. Um, or

that's what I would do if I was the developer. I see something here and what I played didn't feel like this. Also, cell shade this thing. Use Tuni Colors Pro as an asset. Get rid of the specular. I saw a lot of specular. I would I would get rid of the specular. I would get rid of the normal maps. I would get rid of the metallic. I would add uh rim lighting to the uh organic models. And then I would make watercolor textures everywhere so it has this soft velvety anime studio Giblly feel. That's what I would do. All right. [laughter] Oh yeah, Thomas is spitting gold here. [snorts] Um, and I would maybe I can voice act. I didn't know I could do a a cute anime girl. Uh, let's see here. What else we got? You guys ready to move on to the next game? Um, where did it go? Oh, here it is. Backrooms the project. You guys know I

love Back Rooms despite it being sort of an old I mean A24 is making a Back Rooms movie next year which is crazy. I feel like they're a little late to the game, wouldn't you say? Yep. Anime shading, baby. It's just toune shading. It's basically no specular. Kill the specular and you've got tune shading. Night drive interactive. The following is a demo version. Blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah. I don't want to read that. But that was kind of funny, I guess. And by the way, for those of you who are saying, "Thomas, you're impatient, guys. I'm being a game a your audience." They're all going to act this way. They're not going to be prim and proper and think correctly about your game.

They've got thousands of games in their library. They're going to be thinking that way. Quit with this. Let's go. Let's go. Move on. I want this to you. What What I should have done, what this game should have done here is Back rooms the project and it's on and I could just get playing here. Give me a sound. Even like VHS tape clicks like you like you remember the buttons you could press on a VHS for those of you who are from the 90s just a switch sound a subtle switch sound. Um, type in switch or click or button click or VH VHS click on freesound.org artless.io and you'll get something. Okay. So far so good. Oh, good. The keyboard works. That's amazing. So, uh, yeah, let's click new game here. Very good. Very nice sound.

I would love to hear that sound. the pitch shifting slowly as it tracks. Okay, it's not now. Oh, I love that I could see my shadow and I love that I could see my feet. That's so great. Creepy doll. I love the back rooms. Very good art style. Um, good lighting here. Very cinematic. I love that it's 4x3. That's funny.

Follow the arrows. So far so good. It feels great, honestly. Really good back rooms game. Really streamable. They definitely nailed the aesthetic here. This light has no power. So, some of the sound effects are a little odd. Um, like my feet moving. It sounds almost like I have earplugs in. I kind of want to hear subtle carpet sounds. Don't move. Stay still. God closed its eyes. Okay, so it's

something. As long as I don't move, I won't get hurt, I guess. Got some normal maps there. Good. I don't love the UI. It's too high to reach. Very nice. Good. Good use of specular there as well, actually. Interesting. It's like a decal that shares it shares the UV with the wall. I've never I don't know. I've never really se seen that before. I guess this is Unreal. So, I don't understand Unreal. All right. Another doll.

Hello. I love this stuff. This is so fun. Oh, so you can get a lot done with sound and triggered sequences. Um, so for example, we're what I guess we're five minutes into playing. Some of the things that immediately come to mind, and again, these are not things I'm just pulling out of my butt. These are things that I've learned over the last 10 years, but also that my publisher is helping me with. Now, not all publishers are evil. Some publishers are actually very helpful. Uh Chad, he works at Saber. Um he helps me a lot. We'll play test together and he'll talk a lot about sound and triggered sequences. So, for example, he would say, I'm just thinking what he would say. If I were to press R

on this, you'd hear the sound of a of the material. You'd hear a subtle sound of wood or clay, right? Apparently, I can sprint, which is fine, I guess, but it makes it less scary. Okay. Preliminary report. Research team ruptures from expedition. Reports strange occurrence. My team is dispatched to the location of the occurrence. We arrived at the site. Site is taped off. Equipment set up. Transponder transponder ID is retrieved. Dispatch confirms it's Dave. Camera and triod are set up to document the incident. Cool. Yeah, the UI is is kind of rough. I like

these these these little buttons and icons down here feel very assety. If I were the developer, what I would do is I'd use a very clean half-like lifeesque UI. It's just a simple icon. Um, I'm going to just show you. Sorry guys. I think this is going to be really helpful to the developer. Um, stuff like this. Hang tight. I'm gonna open up Photoshop here. Oh, did it say made with Unity? That's awesome. It looks very Unrealish. It does look like uh Unreal. It looks a lot like Unreal. Um, sweet. Well, good use of lighting. Light Unity lighting usually sucks. So, I think the developer is doing a great job uh with the lighting. Um, so what I would do here if I was the developer, I would get make the UI really, really clean. I would do something like this.

I'm going to turn that down for you guys. Okay, so here's what I would do. I would do nice clean margins here. I would use squares. Actually, back rooms feels like it's a square kind of world. Um, or a square kind of UI. And I would do something that's kind of retro right here, like a little pixelated yellow bar here. Something like that. That's kind of cool. And then I would do um very clean, simple squares like this. So, uh, it was something like a mouse. Let's let's open up a noun project. Noun project has all your icon needs. It's what I've been using for the last five years. Um, I'm going to type in mouse.

Give me a sec, guys. You want a real clean mouse. Here it is. This is great. So, I'd grab this one here. A as for the the controller, the character controller feels awesome and the the the the lighting, the world, the sound design is awesome. It's doing exactly what back room should. Um, here's what I would do right here. Okay, so something like this. Um, and then I would use not a uh full white, but instead I would use an off-white in the same hue. For some reason, that color didn't work. Hold on a sec. I think it was set to overlay. No, it's set to color. Okay, there we go. I would do this. I wouldn't even use black there. I would just do this. There we go. I would do that.

You could probably get away with just using that yellow right here. No, it's a little too Yeah. So, let's let's change that one as well. Something like this, guys. Ladies and gentlemen, something like this. And I would use Cory or new. Uh the same font basically as what we're seeing there. Why not? You know, why are we using a different font? unify the game. Okay, one of the big problems with games is they're just not unified. Um, the developers, for some reason, they're scared. I don't know why developers are scared to match their UI to their game. It's this weird phenomenon. I don't understand it. Um, they oftentimes have totally different fonts in their game than they do on their main menu or their UI elements. I don't understand it. Um,

so something like this. And then this one's going to say maybe let's let's make that a little smaller. There we go. That's it. Um, and then same over here. I'm not going to highlight the mouse buttons. I'm just going to do this really quickly and then we'll jump back into the game. And then this is like rotate. And then what the the other one was like collect or something like that. Um, which could be like a hand icon. Okay, just something like this. I don't know. Hopefully you guys get the point. But clean always wins in my book. A lot of people are trying to be too creative with their UI or they'll they'll feel like they need to go buy a bunch of packs. It's like, no, keep it clean, baby. Keep it really clean. Clean and simple and match it to your game. That's all. You want consistency,

you want aesthetic, and then you also want functionality. You want all three present in your UI. So, this in my opinion feels way more uh matchy matchy. Now, what you could really do is you could take all of these and then you could blur them just to to mimic what what Unity is going to do with some post-processing. Something like that. Does that make sense? Something like that. We could probably make this a little darker and maybe even do a blur. I'll show you one sec. There we go. So, this in my opinion matches the game. Does that make sense, guys? That matches the game, whereas this

not so much. Um, I even feel like this matches the the the '9s aesthetic. Right now, if you really needed to match the 90s aesthetic, we could just do 90s scan lines texture. And you could have this overlaid um on top of it. You could do something like that. We're just going to set it to overlay. Um and then we're going to put it on top. That's not going to work, by the way. Let's do this. Let's color overlay this. We're going to set this to Ah, yes. I'm just going to take that. And then I'm going to mask this. That's all we need to do. There we go. And then we're going to remove that. Uh, this should be Wait. Oh, invert. Sorry. And then set it to overlay. We'll just do like two of those. One of them is just going to be um fully black. You just want that subtle texture. Just like that. Something something like

that to match the aesthetic of the 90s vibe to match the 90s aesthetic. Something like that for me makes way more sense visually as opposed to this. Does that make sense, guys? This This And I I understand the whole 4x3 thing. It really drives me crazy, though. I It's cool at first and it's cool like to feel like we're in the 90s, but I wish we could change it to to 16 by9. That might be an unpopular opinion. Okay. Oh, yeah. Same here. I just clicked and then it it it puts the live text up. Make that live text again. Here we go. Um, make the live I'm sorry to keep doing this, guys, but I guess we're just going to do a lesson in UI. We're do something like this. I don't even know what that texture is that I got, but whatever. Um, we're going to take this here and I'm going to overlay

it. And you can do something like this. Let's just do a little bit of Lauraum. Solar end solo dorit demo. I'm going to take that and we're just going to grab uh this color here. There we go. And then all we got to do Whoops. Why is it doing that? Mother efer. Hold on. As long as you set the uh the UI to the screen space, you can apply all of your post-processing to this with and so it would look something like this. There we go. It looks something like that. You just want to make sure you darken it pretty significantly. There we go. So something like that in

my opinion feels like it matches the game's aesthetic more than this. This feels a little bit asset. So the UI in this game is I think the weakest part. Let's keep playing. UI, it's so weird. UI and sound are like the things that are so simple in my brain. I'm not saying I'm perfect by any means, but like all you got to do is kind of just keep it simple. Follow some really nice padding and margin rules and font rules that have been around since the 90s. Just follow those rules, honestly, the 50s. Uh, just follow those rules and you'll get decent UI. Um, okay. Now, I don't think the I don't think the developer is breaking any like margin rules or like padding rules or anything. I think overall it looks pretty good. I just don't understand the whole like low resolution icon of R and

examine and rotate. They just look really cheap. Okay. All right. Let me turn the sound up here and let's get going. So, yeah. I I think the sprinting, unless I'm mistaken, maybe we haven't gotten to the full game yet. Um, this isn't a real door. That's funny. Uh, unless I'm mistaken, I feel like the sprinting is going to hurt the game. That's scary. I love that. Oh, those are cool. I like that. I want to put feet in my game. I like those. What? How is this possible? He got no clipped. So, let's see if I can figure out what

just happened. Hold on. Oh my So, I'm completely lost. I can't I don't know where I am. I can't see anything. Okay, I'm gonna hold shift and run forward. There's no run stamina. I hear a sound, but there's no like running sounds. Unless this is a feature of the game, I don't love this.

Whoa, that's so creepy. What is that? Oh, I just That's so disorienting. I kind of love this. I just fell in a hole. Yeah. Let's replay the tape. That's so funny. I kind of love that. All right. All right. Here we go. So, I don't know if that That loading took too long. My opinion is yes. I kind of feel like you just need to sort of do a little rewind symbol and then I'm spawn right where I was. Um

I'm actually having a lot of fun though. Coffee dude. I kind of just wish that we could turn off all of this post-processing. I know it's an aesthetic with back rooms games. I I get that. It drives me crazy though. I'm gonna turn it off. It just feels so much better to have things nice and clean. Uh 3140 by 2160. 3840. 3840 by 2160. Oh, yes. So much better. Uh motion blur, depth of field, good job to the developer. Great, great job. Seriously, with all this stuff, I am so grateful that you let me do this.

I don't understand how to get rid of the uh chromatic aberration, though. I know I'm annoying. This is just my brain. I get really annoyed. Oh, that is so Oh my word. This is so much better, guys. This feels so much more professional. I understand. I understand the VHS aesthetic. I get it. I personally feel like it's going to age about as good as Instagram filters aged. My opinion is strip it, make this the default. This is so much better. But I want to leave a vote to you guys in the chat. Yes, get rid of it. No, uh, type yes if you want to get rid of it. No, if you want to keep it, yes, get

rid of it. No, if you want to keep it. There are so many I'll make my case. There are so many games out there that have a gritty VHS filter on top and it annoys me because it's just constant. Every game comes out with these just they just have like a stack of 20 filters. Uh it's not necessary. This feels so much better and it's way more streamable. Um this looks way better. This looks like Valve made this as like a side project with their source engine. Like it looks so good and it honestly it looks like Unreal. Okay, so this we're in a little puzzle box so maybe the developer wants us to hold shift. I freaking love this though. Um, we

should definitely have some I'll show you guys in a sec here. I don't know if they're using ProBuilder or um a bull a boolean tool, but if I was the developer, I would be doing this. We talked about this last week. Actually, it's important to do some kind of framing when you're making shifts between textures like this. So, you want to frame it like that. and then obviously do it here as well. Right. By the way, those of you just joining us, feel free to check out the Cyber Monday sale, Black Friday sale. It is upon us. This is the last day. Okay. Last day. So, check out the course below. Yeah, you should do something like that. Um, yeah, if you want to learn how to everything I've learned in the last

decade of making indie games, check it out below. Yeah, a framing like that makes it look so much more professional, but that feels a little because that doesn't happen in real life, but that's that's nitpicky. All right, let's keep going. Okay, so Thomas, pay attention. Sorry, I'm just I'm just looking at the art style and stuff. Don't move. Stay still. Yep. Okay, so we've played a lot, right? We've run around. We've gotten lost. I'm a little confused, but that's okay because there's a back rooms game. I'm also talking a lot. That said, you may want to give me some triggered sequences. So, for example, if I'm standing right here, let's say I start the level. I think I started it here. Let's say I start the level here. Yeah, I think I started here. If I start here, let's pretend we're starting the game over and I begin

walking. It doesn't have to be anything special. It can be a sound. I step right here and that light goes and shuts off and glass. That right there makes this game feel like it's worth its $5 or it's $10. Little things like that. I understand back rooms is liinal and it's subtle. You want to be very gentle with back rooms. You don't want to put too much in it. I get that. I'm walking. I'm exploring. I come over here and I hear a door slam. Footsteps. Very subtle. Little sound triggers, right? Okay, let's keep exploring. He wants a hug. Okay, nothing in there.

I noticed there's some framing, but sometimes there's not. Uh, like some molding, some trim. So, that's a little interesting to me. Not sure why. Okay, so that arrow wanted me to do what? Sorry, I'm talking a lot and I'm not thinking about the actual puzzle. Okay. And I don't remember exactly what to do here. Oh, that looks so much better. Like if we take a screenshot of this guys and we put it in the game or in Photoshop here. See here. One sec. Yeah.

If we take this screenshot, I want to show you how beautiful and clean and professional this looks. I take this. Look at this. Hang on. Yeah, look at this. So professional. I love it. Something like that. Okay, let's keep playing. Resume. Put down. Okay, so what was I supposed to do? A little lost here, but that's okay. That's part of the part of the charm of it. Okay, let's keep playing here. Maybe I need to find a a cart to move or

something. And y'all feel free to pipe in if you Okay. I don't I don't fully understand that, but Okay, I'm I'm I'm lost. And I understand that that's the goal with back rooms, but I feel like we need to guide the player a little bit more. Um,

unless I'm just completely stupid here. Was there a ladder on the ceiling in the room you spawned in? Or was I tripping? I don't know. But we're gonna look around. Is this a co-op game? Maybe that's the problem. It's not now. Yeah. a little giggle, a chair moving, or it's as simple as, for example, I walk in this room and a chair is sitting there and it goes and moves over when I ray cast at it. Little stuff. The ceiling tile. Oh, yeah. That was the ceiling tile. That's right. So, am I uh missing something here?

So, I picked up a camera. Does anyone know what that meant? Am I missing something? Is this a back rooms thing? The problem with all the back room spin-offs is they rely on stacks and stacks and stacks of backroom games and the tropes. It's a problem. It's not a problem, I guess. It's just if you're new to playing back rooms games, it can be confusing. There's a ladder on the other end of the hole. Wonder if you can reach it by going around. What hole? What hole?

I got to find the freaking ladder. I love the aesthetic of back rooms games. I could live in this. I just love this. It's so cozy. But I'm a little lost. You can use the light of the camera, but it needs to be powered up. How How do I know that? Yeah. A little bit of sign. Okay. Totally different area. How did I miss this? I could definitely use some signposting. So, I can turn those on.

Okay. All right. We've got some Yeah, I kind of wish there was a little bit more signposting. I I definitely had trouble finding this area. I don't even know where it is, honestly. Where is it? I want to make sure I don't lose this area. I get it. It's back rooms, but like I'm not scared. So, like being lost isn't particularly tense. Um, because I'm not scared. You need to give me a reason to be scared. Okay, give me a sound there. Okay, so I need that for something. Okay, so that was our first triggered sequence. Here's the problem.

That I think that just spawned. Um, I would have missed that had I not done this. A lot of players, they might do this and they're gonna completely miss that. So, what you want to do is you grab that. The flash occurs and it's big fat. This whole area is like one big message and it's got a flickering light over it. So, what's it say? Green means go now. Okay.

So that I think we're starting completely over or Okay, good. It saved. Very good. Don't move. Stay still. Green means go. So I'm trying to figure out the mechanics of it. Oh, I got to get the Okay, got it. Got it. All right, let's see here. Also, why am I wearing normal clothes? I thought back rooms I was supposed to be wearing like a yellow jumpsuit or hazmat suit.

So, I would Yeah, I would have missed that. Green means go now. Well, where's green? So, can he see me or not? Yeah. So, the the confusion there is the message on the wall says he can't see, right? Um, so let's try and figure this out. Okay, let's let's see here. I want to give this game its uh be patient with it and give it what it deserves.

All right, the problem is I don't know what I'm supposed to do with that screwdriver. Guys, let's think about this. What? Go toward the green. Green means go now. Then what am I supposed to do? So what what does that mean, guys? Go. Green means go now. Go where? Uh, and what's the screwdriver for? The wood door. But okay. And I kind of wish that uh I kind of wish the uh we we have the

screwdriver first or we have the screwdriver already. So I would put the checkpoint right here. I drop the box. I get the screwdriver. Right here is the checkpoint. So, there it is. All right. Where do we go? What do we think, guys? Go into the dark area with the flashlight. I don't Okay, I feel like I don't have a flashlight. All right. Green means run. Okay, I did. But where?

F for flashlight. I tried that. H. Let's keep trying. in here. We're going to We're going to give it the time of day. All right. There's no no flashlight. Okay. There's a click sound actually. I just don't know for what. Okay, there it is. Okay, so we have a feedback issue um for or it's a it's a Yeah, it we're getting weird player feedback. I press F here. When I first got that um VHS camera, if I have never played a back rooms game in my life, or let's say it's been a long time since I played a back rooms game, I may grab the VHS camera and totally forget and not know that that's a flashlight. And so I need an on-screen tip that

appears and says press F for flashlight. That flashlight I should get a little indicator that appears on the screen at the bottom lefthand corner. If if I can't see it its usefulness here, right? Um if I press F here. Okay, we can turn it on. Got it. So, there was a little confusion there when I got it because it's so bright right here. I'm like, I don't I can't even hear that. Can you guys hear that? So, you're saying it said it, but it was pretty quick. That's That's great. I'm glad it said it. Um, however, a lot of players are distracted. Streamers who are going to be playing this game are going to be distracted. So, also people are dumb like me. So, they're going to miss it. I'm not trying to be mean or overly critical. Trying to

help. All right, here we go. We're going to go into that area. So, this is kind of fun. All right. So, the monster is coming. Okay. Okay. Okay. So, I just I just made a lot of covered a lot of ground, which is fine. Um, what? No, that's not fair. Okay. Is that fair?

Yes or no? My votes no. But is that fair? So, I apparently I can't get in the water. Everything like there's a lot of game design issues with this demo. It's not a graphical issue. The mood is awesome. That's great. Great job with the trig triggered sequences. That's awesome. Great physics there. Great water. Seriously, that's amazing. Um, that was perfect. Thank you so much for doing that. Sounds like I'm praying. Read the sign. Okay, but the sign.

Okay, the sign is behind me and I'm running away. That's That's not fair. the the player should never have to learn a mechanic by dying. Okay, Gordon's got the toolbox key. He should be dropping in any moment now. That's funny. That's great. Good job. Graphically really good. Game looks awesome. But don't touch the water. You think that's the joke? How many more signs do you want?

Well, it's not the amount of signs that's the problem. It's that there was no sign. The sign is right here. Maybe it's a joke. If it is a joke, uh, make the respawn not punishing. So, the respawn takes like five seconds to restart. Five to like eight seconds. It It should be much more instantaneous. If it's going to be a joke, I need to quickly respawn here, and I need to know that it was a joke. Um,
that's cool.
Awesome. That that was great. We got some cool uh world building and interactivity. Okay, so let's see what I missed here. I love how this feels.

Nice. Good sound effects there. All right, what have we got? So, I can't jump in there. So, I'm assuming I can't grab that briefcase. Can I drive this around? Okay, I need a key for it. All right, let's move on to the next game, guys. Uh, overall overall,

um, I think there was a lot of good stuff there. The the character controller is awesome, minus the camera effects. It it's really crisp and beautiful. The graphics are great. The art style is very consistent. Despite, I'm sure, using assets, it still looks very consistent. Um, the sound design is good. The mood is just right for a back rooms game. Um, the art uh the I'm sorry, the coloring perfect for a back rooms game. The uh Enderman chasing squiggly monster thing works. That's a back rooms monster works. It's fine. Um, there was just some design issues. A few design issues. Number one, getting lost immediately like that soon. It's not my cup of tea. It's hard though. It's really hard to critique a back rooms game because there's certain tropes that people expect. So,

yeah, got a little bit lost. It took me a long time to find that one area. Um, wasn't quite sure how to use the flashlight. For dummies like me, make sure you you leave the press F for flashlight and make sure that it's actually useful immediately. This is, I think, a pretty Yeah. Yeah. I I'm I'm 99% sure about this one. You should have the item you get be useful immediately. So, that room, it should be dim and dark in there, except for like subtle yellow light. When you get the flashlight, when you press F, it should work. Because when I first got it, I was like, it's so bright in here. What's the point? So, all right, let's go. Let's go. Um, next up, ladies and gentlemen, next up is a game called Alfred's Alien Abduction Adventure Demo.

So, so excited for this one because I love Alien Abduction stuff. I love that so much. Before we move on, one quick reminder. This is the last day of the Black Friday sale. I extended it by 18 or 24 hours because it's Cyber Monday. It's Cyber Monday. So, if you guys want to get 50% off my massive program about how to make a game studio, and you want to learn from an actual indie game dev, I'm currently published by 3D Realms, finishing up my third commercial release. Um, check it out below. You're also going to get my 2D and 3D art programs and my YouTube program completely free. So, if y'all if you want all this stuff in one place and you want to master indie gamedev in 2026, from marketing to hitting the Steamfront page to getting wish lists to pitching to publishers to making 2D or 3D games to learning Unity, Unreal, or GDAU, whichever one you want to learn, it's up to you. How to reach out to streamers,

how to do 2D art, how to do 3D art, and learn what's absolutely necessary. And you're not going to learn the fluff, the junk, all the chaotic mess of things that everybody tells you you need to know if you want to learn from somebody who's actually doing it right now. Um, and I've been I've been featured by Time magazine, Washington Post. Um, I've been featured by PC Gamer. Um, I've hit the Steam front page several times. I've also um been published three times, actually four times. The first deal was bad. I was 18. That was a bad deal. So, I kind of ignore that one, but I've been published four times. I've been kickstarted twice. I've had Jack Septic, I play my games. I've had uh I made a game for PewDiePie one time and played the game with him. Uh Game Grumps and Play my games. Matt Pass play my games. Point being, credibility. Trying to give you some credibility. And also check out the reviews of the students who did go full-time with the help of the program. All right, let's jump into the next um

next game. Alfred's Alien Abduction Adventure. Let's go. What are my plans after Twisted Tower? I'm going to do a big fat rebrand for the channel. Big fat rebrand um for the podcast and then um sort of brainstorm the next game. BWC News Bridgewater Chronicle. Local man uh abducted by aliens. Truck breaks down on Bridgewater crossing. Witnesses repeat report witnesses report strange green lights in the sky above. Tech billionaire Elon Nusk acts a bridge asks a Bridgewater Chronicle report alive on air. Do you like BWC? Duck Gate, the mayor of Bridgewater, has been caught in a scandal involving more

than 3,000 rubber ducks. Not I'm I'm confused by this. Um I don't know why this menu is like this. It feels confusing. I'm going to leave it up to the chat. Does this make sense to you? Also, this is AI art and I don't love AI art. Sorry. I know that's really uh it's getting to be unpopular to say that. I just don't like it. All right, let's go to new game here. Okay, my mouse is inverted by default. Bridgewater. I should Okay, I couldn't read that. Okay, this truck is the coolest thing about

me. It never breaks down. Very weird. I would speed that up. Get some voice acting in here. Looks like I'm walking the rest of the way home. I don't have my phone with me. Oops. Yeah, speed that up. Um, let's get some voice acting in there. Feels very slow. What's the strange green light up ahead? Okay, so for some reason the mouse was inverted when I was in the car and now it's not inverted and the character controller feels good. Uh, I would add some ambient light here. But anyway, let's keep going. What I mean is you can have a point light here as well in addition to two spotlights.

And that point light can fill in this area here subtly and it acts like uh indirect lighting. It has that vibe. So what I do is I put a I put a point light here and it floods. I'll show you. Hang tight. Here we go. I'll just show you guys what I mean. Uh, what you could do here is this. This feels really flat um and harsh. It's not really how natural light works. And the problem with Unity, and I'm going to assume this is a Unity game Unity game, is you really have to fake indirect lighting. Um, so if you put a point light like there, it's going to subtly create um indirect lighting. But of course, it wouldn't light the sky, right? So you it

would be something like this. Be something like this. Whoops. Yeah. Yep. We're going to use a gradient tool here. There we go. And then I'm going to invert the selection, do a brightness increase, and you would have basically a a rim light naturally on the car. So, that's that's what would happen if you had a point light there in addition to the spotlight, the two spotlights. Let's get rid of that here. There we go. That's what you would get. And this is what you have now. Do you see the difference? All right, let's go. Whoa. My sprint UI is in the middle of the screen. I would put it at the bottom. And honestly, just use a little, especially if you're not if you don't have a gun, just put it a little circle

that fills up using the um the slice tool, the slice tooling in the Unity sprite component. Oh no, aliens. Whoa, really quiet. We need to put a 3D audio source on there. When it comes over me, I need to hear it. It needs to sound scary. Can't move. I'm paralyzed. So, let me show you guys. Okay, so we got some good music. I'm going to show you how we could change the coloring here to look a little bit more dramatic. This game is very slow. We need to speed this up by three, four times.

What's happening? [panting] What is happening? We need some voice acting. Something to scare us. Okay, good. That felt good. Good 3D audio there. Cool. [sighs] Speed it up. Let's go. Move forward. Quick. Quick. We can't get away with stu Stanley Kubri pacing in 2025. Okay, we've got some texture, we got some not texture. Um, everything has a very flat specular, which looks cheap. If you're going to have flat specular, just get rid of all of it. Um, Whoa. What happened? Where am I? I saw something light flying. Okay,

it's not right. I do not know what is going on. Everything needs to be sped up. Double the speed, triple the speed of this game is screaming that I need to get out of here now. And before they come back, I do not think I have been probed yet. Yeah, let's speed it up. Um, here's what I mean, by the way, guys, with how we can I'm going to make this look 10 times better. Let me just show this is for the developer. This is not Mozart showing off in Amadeus. That's not what this is because number one, I'm not Mozart. And number two, I'm not trying to show off. I'm trying to help. Okay. So, I'm going to type in storm cloud skybox. And I'm going to grab a skybox here. Something really simple. Uh, this is good. I'm gonna watch this here. Let's open up Photoshop here. And I'm going to add this skybox to our blue.

And if the developer is watching, keep up the good work. Keep working hard. All of this stuff is very straightforward and not hard to learn at all. Um, I'm saying that to encourage you that you can you could practice throw in this stuff into your game. Give it a skybox. Okay? give your G. Look at that. 10 times better. Uh, this texturing here is super flat. I don't know why. So, let's go ahead and grab this this gray. Actually, I could probably just grab it with the because it's so flat. I could probably grab it with the magic wand tool. Let's see here. I'm going to merge all this together. Uh, actually, let's just do this. Merge this together here. I'm going to grab this gray. Yeah, we're we're close to being able to just get the gray portion. I'm going to set it to five. Yep. And just grab the gray here. And what I'm going to do is I'm going to crank up the contrast of this texturing. There's a there's a fundamental um issue with the

lighting in this sequence which makes it feel odd. Um and it could be that we just need a single directional light in the scene and that's all we need. Um hang on one second. I'm going to grab this and do a contrast shift. Let's do a crazy contrast shift here. There we go. I'm going to go a little bit harder. It'll make sense, I promise. What you want is you want to see the texture. There it is. You want to see the texture and also it's super gray when everything else is blue. So, what you want is you want a directional light that is soft, like a soft blue. There we go. Bring it down. And the road you can't see. It's just black, right? So, what we want is we want a

directional light. I'll show you what I mean here. We want a directional light that Yeah. There we go. Is highlighting what we can walk on. Do you see that? All right. So, what I'm going to do here is add sha uh shadows here to mimic what that directional light would do. If you had it pointing from the left to the right, it would do something like this. I'm just going to sort of fake it up here. Um, yeah, it would cast shadows across the road like this, making it feel dramatic. Watch. You see that? I'm going to bring this down a little bit. Okay, that we also need this right here. Hang on one sec, y'all. and then we'll

jump back into the game. There's Yeah, there's just you could solve so many of the problems with the cheap visual look with a skybox and lighting. Um, so that it's encouraging. I hope the developers encouraged because you can you could fix a lot of this stuff with just uh with decent lighting. I don't know why that's so bright there. Let's see. Yeah, there's some kind of weird It's almost like the directional light in this scene. This is going to be my guess. I could be completely wrong here, but it's almost like the directional light is pointed like this. And so you're getting some light here casting through and then everything else is just flat. Um, so I'm going to kill Let's see. I'm going to merge all this together here and I'm going to make this look better somehow. Um, I'm going to grab

this color here just to mimic this for now. Okay, there we go. And then all you do is you add a subtle bright light to the player. Just a subtle bright light. And that light will be highlighting what's in front of me like this. All right. Now, let's talk about Oh, by the way, you'd also want a soft a soft point light. I'm going to do select modify feather by 150. Um, hang on one sec here. modify feather. You you do a soft point light that is adding a subtle green to everything around that saucer. Okay. Something like this. I'm going to keep it the same green and then

we'll work on we'll shift the entire hue of this thing so it doesn't look so cheesy. But it would be something like this. But of course it would only be uh it would only be changing the color of the actual road. But you just want that subtle shift of color. Sound design is good though. I'm listening to it right now. Yep. There you go. All right. The blue is is a bit strange and also it's flat. So what you want is you want Okay. a little bit of a hue shift at the horizon with a brightness as well. So, we're going to do this. That already looks better, by the way. Less contrast, but we're going to do like greenish hue here so that there's a subtle effect of fog here. Here we go. Drop the saturation. There we go, Tommy. You got it, buddy. And then I'm going to make sure though that

it's only relevant to that horizon. It's not going to be relevant to this. Not really. I'm doing my best here, guys, with the 2D image. Um, select inverse so that there's nice contrast here. And we'll we'll we'll mess with the color in a sec. Okay. And then also just um that right there is driving me nuts. There we go. Okay. Yay. Okay. Um, let's just make it green so it matches. There we go. So, sort of a green horizon here. [sighs] And then we're going to go to the skybox here. And we're going to change the green to be less saturated, darker here. I'm going to make sure that red in the road is gone. I think it's killing the scene. There we go. And then a subtle vignette, my friends, at the top of the skybox is always a good idea. Okay.

There's a little bit of magenta in there that's driving me nuts. There it is. Okay, so there is our coloring and our texturing of this scene. Then I can add a little bit of bloom. Use some post-processing. Don't worry about it. I'm going to crank up I'm going to mimic po uh bloom in Unity. Just going to mimic it. Crank up the brightness of certain things. Set it to overlay. And I'm going to set it to black. And then I'm just going to add in with my brush just to show you where the bloom should be. It should be like here, here. There we go. And then, hey, a little bit there, a little bit there. And then finally, use volutric light. There's plenty of free assets. Or you could honestly mimic this with a a flaring cone with a gradation

in the albido as long as it's unwrapped properly. Doing that and then you could just do this as well. Does that make sense, guys? Okay, I'm going to grab all that, merge it all together, blur it. You can mimic the bloom here. There we go. Uh, we could probably add a little bit of brightness to this. Drop down the contrast so it's a little bit more dramatic. Um, and then we're going to go to the green. Crank up the saturation here. There we go. Honestly, I could probably Let me show you something here. If there's a point light, I totally forgot about this. If there's a point light here, it's going to it's going to illuminate the base of the um Yeah. It's going to illuminate the base

of the the flying saucer. So, something like this. Hang tight. Hang tight. It'll look good. And you you'd also see light here being pulsing out of this And then finally, I'm just going to fade this. There we go. All right. Okay. That's the idea here for what this could look like with the proper understanding of lighting, color, color theory, and and and post-processing, and a good skybox. Um, where did I get this? I'm trying to show the before and after, but I'm going to make sure that this uh also what I would do with the UI,

I would put it down here. Hey, we can we can use Corer. It looks kind of like a kind of looks um a space. And I would get rid of the humor. I would make it serious. What is that thing? Is that a UFO? You've got to be kidding me. I would put the um dialogue right here. I'd add a little bit of an outer glow to it. Make it match the Remember, make your UI match your world. And that's it, man. That's it. It looks 10 times better. [snorts] Make sense? All right. Hope that helps. Okay, let's keep playing.

Oh, I love that. It looks like perfect dark. Um, the UI. Okay, I can barely see and I can't change the the brightness. So, we should be using lighting to highlight the path. And right now, it's very dark. That the UI feels great. Or I'm sorry, the uh the movement actually feels really good and the clicking feels really good, but I cannot see a thing. Thank you. I agree. Wait, was I just in here?

Yeah, we we definitely need some ambient light. Okay. So, that's odd because light's coming from behind this, but there's no shadow, so it's really disorienting. Actually really like the atmosphere and actually really like games like this. So, I want to encourage the developer um master lighting a little bit more and and and resend the demo to me and hopefully I'll see it. Um, you can email Thomas at fulltimegamedevub.com with all caps. I made the alien game and I'll see about looking at the the the lighting. But right now, it's just so hard to see anything. I mean, I don't even know where these lights are coming from. That's what's so weird. It's almost like the game is lit with light probes or something. No, no. It's almost

like the specular information is there, but there's no albido information, like actual lightness values. So, I It's so hard to see. I don't know what I'm looking at. Looks like this section is still under construction. Okay, so that brought me out of the game. I would get rid of the humor. Yeah, like these. I understand that this is emissives, but what all you got to do here is you've got to put a point I'll just show you. If you put a point light in the center of this room, um, what it's Look at that. There is information there. Look at that. There's

information there. Um, what you would do is the point light would simply brighten up. I mean, this isn't amazing, but I'm just going to show you what it would do. Get this opacity up. It would crank up the the lighting of the hall here just one point light and then you would obviously it would be a little bit red, right? Just a subtle red light right here. Right. That's the idea. But that's what I'm getting. The information is there. There's something there. I just can't see it. I really like I like the feeling. I

think the art style is fine. If it was super pixelated, it would work even better because you would get away with all this mismatched UV unwrapping. You could get away with it. Um, if you if you chose, hey, I'm going to make a pixelated retro style game with retro UI, retro music, retro sound, you could get away with this. Yeah, there's so much specular information, but there's no light information. It's almost like the developer has a really bright monitor and um yeah, they're developing under false pretenses, which is a big problem. A lot of developers do that. They get super bright gaming monitors and then they wonder why everybody says the game is super dark. Okay, so doors doors need Okay, if this was a door right here, let's pretend

this was a door. We need something like this. Some emblem that's glowing to say, "Hey, I'm a freaking door." Some little emblem like this. It's an age-old game design rule. Give me an emblem, something to tell me that I can open this. But you should know. No. Don't assume that. If I could see, it'd be so much uh I'd be more inclined to solve this puzzle.

Whoa. fun. Yay. This is fun. So, it's like Portal So, the problem with big open spaces in games is that if you're not giving the player like signposting, they can get lost really quick. But I think we're okay here. What is that? Whoa. All right, we got it timed.

All right. Okay, guys. [sighs] What we're going to do is we're going to do a final vote. I feel like I gave every game um a pretty good amount of time today. We've been streaming for almost two hours. Um it does need a little bit more love. I would say that game needs more love. So, what we're going to do here is I'm going to throw a poll up and the poll is going to ask you guys which game you liked the best. And obviously guys, it's not that we're trying to be mean here. We're trying to let developers know, hey, you've got a winner on your hands. And for the other games, for the other games, we're going to say, hey, your game needs some more love. It's it's it's not about it's not about critiquing the game so much so that the player quits. It's that we're saying, "Hey, if you fix these things, your game will be 10 times better." And sometimes it's just little things like we discussed. All right, I'm going to set a start a poll. Which game was best? Simple question.

Uh, back rooms, the project, Daisy, Day Zen, and then Alfred's Alien Abduction Meth Adventure. All right, guys. Only if you've seen every game. [snorts] Daisen. Daisen. Only if you've seen every game can you vote. Now, if you haven't seen every game, I think it's fine for you to just scrub back. Spend about two minutes here scrubbing and looking at the games and thinking, okay, which one here do I think is the best? Okay, so I'm going to go ahead and start the poll here. And again, the links are in the description. If you liked any of these games, please show the developer some

love and um wishlist the game. All right, the poll has started. While that starts, I'm going to do my due diligence here and just let you know as a PSA, one final, and I mean final, because today is the last day to get 50% off full-time gamedev. I extended the Black Friday sale for 24 hours because today is also Cyber Monday. Uh that's just what companies do. They just keep adding days. So, we've got another sale event day, which is Cyber Monday, which is basically just Black Friday again. This is it, guys. This is it. After this is over. It's over. This is the biggest sale event of the year. 50% off my massive program. I think it's like 50 hours of content. I've got over 4,500 students worldwide. 50% off. You're going to learn how to get uh and go ahead and vote. Please vote. Um you're going to get uh 50% off my master program, which includes how to hit the Steamfront page, how to get wish lists, how to get publishers to publish your

game, how to pitch to publishers, um how to stay motivated, how to make a GDD that's well effective in helping you not only finish your game, but make something that's actually good. Um how to do a Kickstarter campaign. Did I say that? How to do a Kickstarter campaign. How to make a game in Unity, GDO, or Unreal. You can take your pick, whichever engine you want to learn, how to code, but you're also going to get my 2D art program, my 3D art program, and my YouTube program completely free. And hey, I'll also throw in my stream my game program, which teaches how to get streamers to play your games. Now, here's the thing. Everything I teach in this is stuff I've done. Okay? Now the stuff that I haven't done is like for example a big portion of a 3D art program is actually taught by my 3D artist who did 3D art for Twisted Tower Filipe. So you're learning from people who are actually making games. Now I I teach like 90% of this stuff. Um it's just Felipe does the 3D art stuff and then um

the GDAU and Unreal stuff is taught by uh GDAU and Unreal developers. But 90% of this stuff is all taught by me. Someone in the trenches making indie games full-time. Okay? So, check it out below. See if it's something you're interested in. If you don't believe me, you can uh well, take a look at the reviews. See what you think. People actually went full-time, which is really, really cool. Am I promising anything? Heck no. Am I telling you it's easy? No. Am I telling you that it's possible? Yes. Let's make 2026 the year where you give it a shot. Okay. 50% off. This thing is huge. Biggest sale event of the year. Okay, let's take a look at the final results of the poll. You guys ready? Back rooms the project wins at 49%. Daisen Daisin at 39% and Alfred's Alien Abduction Adventure at 11%.

I think this is good. I think this is good. I think we've got a reasonable result to the poll. I think that everybody got about what they what the game deserved. All right, guys. Had a blast. And huge huge thank you to And by the way, please please wish list the games below if you thought they were interesting. Okay, guys. Um, I'm gonna say all these names because I told you I would and I'm very, very grateful to all these students. Thank you for joining Fulltime GameDev. Jason, Nola, Christa, Juan, Jose, Ran, Ryan, Thei, William, Dustin, Hammad, Cameron, Farhan, Pedro, Dmitri, Paul, Sean, Ciao, Jack, Simon, Robbie, Simon, Phillip, Pablo, Isaac, Kevin, Gustavo, Justin, Alexander, Alexandro, Alexandre, nice, Lewis, Jacob, Rasim, Cole, Cult or

Citerado, Mechley, Austo, Jeff, Palace, Kieran, Margin, Giant, Amay, German, Jeffrey B, Forzo, C, Meyers, Jonathan, Mark S, S. said, "Sald Games, Jaywas 999, Ericson, Geronimo, Michael, Alex, Morgan, Luke, Yay, Timothy, Jerry, Gary, Trey, Amy, Michael, Roy, Mark, Rocky, Ally, or Al, Ally, I think that is Jesse, Martin, RZBM, Joshua, Eric, Harbo, Stephen, Kenny, Aaron, David, and Joshua. Thank you so much for joining Fulltime GameDev and supporting the podcast, supporting the channel, supporting the last leg of Twisted Tower. That's my game. Uh the last leg of development. It means the world to me. I love you guys and good luck on your