Let's Review Your Games — Ep. 039

and a happy new year, and everybody's happy, and I'm thrilled about the new year. And happy new year. Today's going to be a fun day because we're going to be live streaming your games. The goal with this is to make you feel horrible about yourself in 2026. It's going to feel like, well, a hot iron deep into your soul when I critique your games. That's the goal. Obviously, that's not true. The goal is to make sure that you guys get some constructive criticism as best as I can um and offer some feedback that really does help you. I want to help you guys. I want you to succeed this year. I really, really do. Um making games is tough. It's really, really hard. Um the indie game career is not for the thin-skinned. It It You got to be tough. And so, I want to help you be tough, and I want to offer feedback. And we're all going to do it together, right? We're going to do this fun live stream where everybody shows up and offers feedback for for three different games. And at the end of today's live stream, we're going to vote on our favorite game of the three games.

Um so, I'm super duper excited. I love doing these things. Um I don't get to do them often, but when I do, I have a blast. Huge thank you. Wow. Wow. This was incredible. Over the weekend, so many people enrolled in my massive course. It's called Full Time Game Dev. Daniel, Alp Oh man, that one's tough. Alpi Alaglu, Michael, Chris Wow. Christian, it's a beautiful name, but wow. Christine, Armando, Shawn, Tim, Daniel, Xander, Peter, Marty, Adrian, Alexander, Edgard, Yianni, and Ben, welcome to Full Time Game Dev. It means the world to me that you enrolled in the program during the New Year's sale event. There's one quick question I want to ask you guys. How does somebody like Thomas, who I'm just I'm not like a genius, okay? And my games aren't viral, believe me. But how does someone like Thomas get games like this on Switch, right? That's a Korean version, which is really cool. I think that's Korean. Is that Korean? Anybody Korean Korean in the chat?

Or how does he get games like this in a deluxe copy for my game Never Song? How do I do that? Well, I teach it in the program. I teach it in this program called Full Time Game Dev, and these big sale events, Black Friday and New Year's, they really do only happen one time a year. Um well, they sometimes they happen during like the summer and stuff, but
[snorts]
these don't happen all the time. They're very infrequent. So, if you want to get 50% off Full Time Game Dev, you want to get a shout-out in tomorrow's live stream, you want to get my 2D art program and my 3D art program completely free, enroll now before the time is up. In fact, I think this sale might end earlier than 8 days because they're just selling much faster. There's only six uh 60 seats available. 40 have already sold, which is awesome. And also, you might be wondering, well, well, what about other students? You know, have other students been able to do what Thomas has done? Right? Well, what I teach has helped all of these students. These are real reviews. You can reach out to them um on Twitter. You can Google them, find these

individuals, and reach out to them and ask them if the course helped them. These are reviews from them that they mentioned to me that the course did help them go full time, which is incredible. And that means money, right? Money to go full time with publishers, with Kickstarter, with crowdfunding, wishlists, hitting the Steam front page, getting press coverage, um learning 2D art, learning 3D art, learning how to code, learning Unity or Godot or Unreal. You can take your pick, by the way, whichever engine you want to learn in the program. It's up to you. Everything I just mentioned there, that's that's like the full gamut of what it means to be an indie game developer. You're not going to be taught this honestly, on places like Udemy or Skillshare. Um you you're you're going to be taught this from an actual indie game developer, and that's what makes my course special. I'm actually in the trenches currently working on my third commercial release. You can Google it. It's called Twisted Tower. It's awesome. I love the game. I think it's something really proud of. And it's published by 3D Realms. So, if you want

to learn what I've learned in the last decade of making indie games, check out the link below and see if it's something you're interested in. I'll give you a shout-out in today's tomorrow's live stream, just like I did with these students. Okay, let's go ahead and jump in now that I'm done shilling my course. Let's go ahead and jump into today's live stream and take a look at these incredible games that were submitted.
[snorts]
Come on in, guys. Come on in.
[clears throat and cough]
This I need a new mic microphone stand. This is officially falling apart here.
[snorts]
It's cuz I keep grabbing it. It's like a a nervous tick. Um come on in, guys. Welcome. Welcome. Welcome. Let me see if I can get this chat up and running. It usually shows up right here. Costco didn't have the coffee I like. Can't taste it. Like a little dirt. How do you manage work from home all day long, whole year? Don't you get homesick?

Well, you I think you'd be Yeah, I think you're talking about cabin fever. Yeah, I do a little bit. That's why I'm building a new office. I have a Well, we're building a new home. Um we got some property last year or 2 years ago, and we're building a a new home, and I'm I'm doing a big office above the garage, and it's spacious, and there's a nice view. And so, that's the goal is to have a little bit more space. I've been sort of in my own little office right outside my kids' bedroom. Um been doing that for about 7 years, so. Yeah, we're we're live right now. Um Whoa. Uh Mr. XB, you don't have to apologize. Um okay. Let's see here. Let's jump on in. First game we're going to play today, ladies and gentlemen, is Lawn Care Simulator. And I know this isn't probably a super unique game in the sense that I'm sure there's other Lawn Care Simulators out there. I've I've been wanting this kind of game

since I can remember. Seriously, since I was like 14 or 15. In fact, I made a flash game about mowing the grass. It might be in one of my videos I've done, but when I was like 16 or 17, I did a flash game about mowing the grass because I love mowing the grass. It's about the manliest thing that I can do, and so, it's something I'm really proud of. Um so, let's go ahead and hit play here and take a look at Lawn Care Simulator. And the link is in the description if we want to support the developer and wishlist. What's the goal of playing? Offering feedback, okay? Helping the developer make this game better, okay? All right, let's listen to the music here. So far, so good. Oh, this feels great. Good music. Okay, I would change the um I would make that highlight and not get darker. So, this it feels a little

grayish, and I don't know why. It's not very vibrant. Um so, what I would do if I was the developer. By the way, this looks incredible. This really does look good. It's just not very vibrant, and I can't put a finger on why. Let's see if I'm it's my monitor. I'm going to open up Photoshop and see if we can make this more saturated and more vibrant. Um my theory is is that the developer developed this game on a on a very vibrant monitor. One that perhaps, you know, is much more vibrant than most monitors. That could be the case. So, let's go ahead and see if my suspicions are correct. Feels very dim. So, I'm going to go ahead and take a look at Photoshop if we can brighten this up. But I would consider making the buttons um highlight when you hover over. So, like this button here, it doesn't It's hard to tell that you're hovering over it. So, what I would do is I would do something like this. Just brighten it up.

Like that. So, when you hover, you just see a little bit of a highlight. That would be more satisfying. All right, let's see if I'm incorrect here. I might be. No, yeah. Yeah, I would do something like this for pretty much the entire thing. So, let's see here. Yeah, so here's what it's at, guys. Here's what it could be. Now, look, not all monitors are the same, so it's up to you guys to tell me. Am I crazy here? Um how's everybody feel? Yes, crank up that saturation and contrast, or no? Yes, no. Yes, no. Yes, no. This is really helpful to the developer because they may see this on their monitor. But if most of us see this, it's a problem. We need to increase that vibrance.

Um it's 2026, baby. Every game is sugary and bright. Yeah. The background image is AI? I don't know. Let's just not as Let's not assume that, but anyway. So, this is super bright. Yeah, that feels great. This does not. Okay, let's put play here. Free play. Let's do career. Music is great, guys. Um it's the annual Trimsdale Moethon. You were given a wi- wild card invitation to the final round. Can you compete? Yes, let's mow some grass, baby. Mixing gas and oil, press anything to continue. That's a little That's really big, that font. Um press ASWD to move around. Welcome to the Trimsdale Moethon, where the top lawn care experts compete. Run through the gauntlet of lawn care trials and leave low no blade untouched. Um okay.

Just had that say okay. Acknowledge is kind of weird and it's again, I can't tell I'm hovered over that. Press C to highlight. Sometimes it can be hard to track down the final blades of grass. Press C to highlight. Uh lawn care workers can be extremely loud. Ear protection important. Remember to put on your headphones if it gets too loud. So, I feel like I'm getting kind of a wall of text here already. I don't like this. I don't like all this and I don't like all this and this all at once. Just start me with one thing. Press E to equip mower. That was a lot to remember. Um for for a dummy like me. Did I do it? Oh, I didn't get it all.

Okay. Weed eaters are critical for cutting blades of grass in the hard-to-reach areas. Okay. That feels great.
[laughter]
I love that. I love it so much. Makes me happy. Good job. Press click to leaf blow. And that very nice. Hey, hey. That feels great. I want to know how they did that. That's great. All right. Press click to pick up the trash. Okay.

Oh, we got ourselves a chainsaw. So far, so good. Seriously. Um I have some thoughts on like the loop and stuff, but I think this is just training. Um so, we'll see. I'd fix that sound. The sound is a little weird. Oh. Okay, what else we got? What what what did it say? What did it say? That grass sound is a little annoying. I would smooth it a little bit. Uh

Yeah, it's a little it's a little off-putting. Graphics are good though. I'm not sure what I'm supposed to do here. What did it say? What did I miss? Weed pull. Okay. I guess I just need to do it by hand. So, it's much slower. That's kind of cool. Hey William, how you doing, buddy? I remember that. How you doing, bud? Come on in, bud. All right. We got a edger here.

William, were you Andre's roommate? Trying to remember. Very good. Oh my goodness, we got a riding lawn mower. It It feels kind of weird that I'm getting everything at once, but I guess it's just a tutorial. So. Very nice. Okay, so I'm really hopeful that we can go to the wish fulfillment here. Guys, what's the wish fulfillment with this game? Does anyone know? And by the way, games are uh games are wish fulfillment. Most games are. Even like horror games. It's some kind of fantasy that we can engage in. Otherwise, we don't really want to play. If we if we can't jump into a world that we want to be in and be the hero or do something that's

desirable and exciting that we can't do in the real world, sometimes the game isn't very fun. So, who knows what the wish fulfillment could be for this game? Does anyone know? Cleaning satisfaction is definitely one of the uh wish fulfillments. I'm not sure if you're responding to my question, but that is one of them, which is you start with something really messy and the desire to be alone, not have your kids screaming in your face, be all alone in a yard and just mow. My dad used to do that and he said it was the best day of his week, best time of his week. And now I understand it. That's one of the wish fulfillments, but we could we could go so far as to say that you want to be in an acreage or you want to be in a big property and you just want to mow. Yes. It's about being satisfying, 100%. But let's give a little If you throw in some wish fulfillment in there alongside of the satisfaction, it's a double whammy.

All right. Ooh, running a successful lawn company. Yeah, making some money. That's true, too. Okay. Um we have a shop here. So, I got a push mower. Ooh, I can buy a real mower. Got it. Um let's go to career here. For some reason, I can't click on it. No. Why is that? What's going on? It's kind of weird. So, I can't select that for some reason. No. What's going on? So, I can't exit for some reason. Um Is that it? Is that the game?

Hey Unwritten World game. Thank Thanks for the uh 3333. Thank you for the donation. That's awesome. Um I don't understand what what to do here. So, we got ourselves into a glitch. Yeah, we're in a glitch. It's a big one, too. Am I missing something here? Yeah, thriving. 100%. That's it That's another wish fulfillment. Always consider the wish fulfillment, guys. Um Consider, okay, what am I trying to make people like What's the wish that I'm trying to give people that they're going to fulfill when they play my game? And um I'm hopeful that this game has that. For me, the wish fulfillment would be you start on a small little property. It's someone else's and you have your own home as well. And so, you go through the neighborhood

and you mow different properties. And you get paid more and more and more and you upgrade your equipment, upgrade your equipment. And as you upgrade your equipment, you can upgrade your own property until you have like a 3,000 acre property. And so, all that money is being put into your your business and also this giant lawn that you own. That's the one that you can be proud of. Um So, that's what I would do. Um Going to have to exit the game. We got in some kind of weird glitch there. Let me open it up again. As a gardener in real life, I'd like the levels to be in funny places, too. Palaces, rooftops, clifftops. That's really fun. I like that. Okay, so I I just bought my um first mower. Okay, but now I can't get out of it again. So, let's see here. I don't know what's going on.
[snorts]
Um But the game feels good so far. Um
[sighs and gasps]
Yeah, I would say the sound is is You're

right. I agree. The sound is a little off. You don't have all the items needed to complete this level. Visit the shop. Okay. Okay. So, we're in a glitch. Um We can't play anymore, sadly. I don't know what's going on. Yeah. Sorry to the developer. I don't I don't know what to do here. If the developer wants to show up in the chat and you guys can shout at me. If the developer has maybe pushed a fix really quick or they have a a trick to get past that, that'd be awesome. We're going to move on to the next game. This game is called Kaput or Kaput Mortem. Something about this game resonated when I saw it. It gave me childhood memories in the '90s. For the best possible experience, wear headphones. This game is meant to make you feel vulnerable.

A controller is recommended. Conventional keyboard and mouse controls are also available. Okie dokie. That feels pretty good. I like that cursor, too. It's like this. This feels great. Oh, yeah. Let's go. Wish fulfillment with shooters is power fantasy, 100%. Or being the hero. Most of us aren't brave enough to be the hero. But in a video game, you feel like you are. You are using a keyboard and mouse instead of a controller. Please give me choice. We're going to use a keyboard and mouse just cuz my son has been hogging my Xbox controller playing uh Minecraft. France, 16th century. A traveler arrives at a long abandoned village. I like this font. Once plagued with a mysterious disappearance and bad crops, now rotting at the foot of anonymous ominous tower. The edifice built by alchemist decade ago

is rumored to be the source of the village's misfortunes and a home to great evil. Sometimes, seduced the buckons the traveler to venture inside. Oh, I love those buttons. That feels pretty good. Oh, good sound. Finally, UI sound. Exactly. Oh, this is great, man. Oh, we got sound effects for footsteps. My dude. Yes. Oh, this feel Let's change the Okay, so right off the bat, awesome graphics. Gives me that classic early 2000s vibe that I am obsessed with, that I salivate for daily. Uh really good. Who can tell me the one thing that kind of bothers them? Can you guys guess? There's one thing that's bugging me.

Does anyone know? There's one thing that's really bothering me. Nope. Nope, it's not the leaves. It's not the compass. The field of view is a little tight. So, at bare minimum, expand the field of view for me. Right? Um I don't mind the repeated trees. I don't mind the sound. I don't mind any of it. It's great. Really, you should let me walk over there. And you should put some kind of fence or something. That's kind of ridiculous. It looks so fun and vast, yet I'm stuck on the path, and that's kind of annoying. I think it'd be more effective if it was uh foggy and cloudy, but ooh, I like that. I love that fog rolling over the hills.

That's awesome. Yeah, I know options menu is a big one. We should be able to immediately make adjustments to the field of view. Um yeah. Press and hold left shift while moving the mouse to move your hand. Wiggle wiggle wiggle. Can you imagine walking around like that? That's how I walk around. I love how empty it is. It feels great. Ooh. Ooh. I love I love skyboxes like this. They're kind of janky, but it's great. I love seeing things in the distance like that. Kind of janky. I love it. This is great. This makes me so happy. I'm getting really nice vibes.

Whoa, my hand moved. Whoa. Oh, there we go. Oh, I can move my hand. That's awesome. This is so fun. Oh, good. That's great. Feels really good, honestly. So, you hold shift and you can move your hand around. That's great. I'm in love. I'm in love. The atmosphere is right up my alley. Strange. Oh, it's a flower locked behind a metal gate. Am I getting survival horror vibes? Yeah. I freaking love this game already.

Good music. It's like straight-up BioShock. It's awesome. Let's go. Wait. Down? Okie dokie. A strange apparatus. Perhaps there is something that I could put in inside of it. That's great. Oh, man, I love this game. It's so crunchy. Oh. Our first puzzle of the day, ladies and gentlemen. Mhm. I'm all about it. I'm all about it. Oh. A thing of wheat. Oh, [screaming] yeah. Wingardium Leviosa.

Rick the Sempra. It's so crunchy. Everything is crunchy. That's great. Oh. The movement is definitely slow on purpose. This is great. Living quarters. I am going to eat this game up. I love this stuff. Oh.

Listen to that crunchy footsteps. Great ambience. A holy book. Tab? What do you mean tab? What are you talking about, tab? This sound is great. The audio is great. The post-processing is not too much at all. Great job to the developer. This is solid development right here, seriously. Rock solid. I I will say I I I really wish there was some kind of quick premise. Imagine this, guys. 5 minutes in. You wake up and you say, Uh
[sighs]
where am I? What year is it? All of a sudden, you're like, oh, I don't know who I am. And I I don't know why I'm here.

The problem is right now is I don't know who I don't know if I don't know if I'm I'm supposed to know who I am. So, I would really recommend to the developer some kind of premise. Give me a quick premise. Um give me a goal. The depths of the tower is a portal to hell. And there, you will find your daughter. I can rescue my daughter at the depth of the depths of hell. Okay, let's go. Let's do this. Give me a destination. Press left control to crouch. Fiyat intas. La mort. La de mean. La la ba la ba la. Ooh, I got myself a Yes. Good job. Woohoo. Good job. I'm very excited about this game. And and mainly because it it reminds me of my own games. Um it has that kind of rhythm and loop.

And and I I grew up on these kind of games, so it's just stuff I love. I really do love these kind of games. Excuse me. Is anyone here? Is anyone here? Is anyone here? Hello? Hello? Hello? Nope. Ooh. [screaming] Push.
Nothing in here. And also, I love that the game isn't dark. So many indie games are so dark all the time.

Send us a new shipment immediately. The previous one was destroyed by the villa villagers whilst in travel and transit. I cannot express how eager I am for the moment when we won't need those wastes of flesh any longer. Was I a slave? Ooh, ghost. That was scary. Yes. I got a cane.

The first paragraph reads, "The human condition is that of a caged animal, complacent with the labor it's forced upon itself. Farmers, artisans, and poets, buffoons toiling day and night on meaningless things." Nice. I love that. Okay, let's see here. Do I need to use this cane for something? To grab something maybe? Probably. Yeah, I would say the only thing that I want from this game is give the character an a some kind of identity or or some kind of lack of identity even. By telling me I don't know who I am, I've lost my memory. Give me one little tiny mystery

that needs to be one tiny little glimpse of a mis- mystery like, "Why am I here? Who am I looking for? Why do I go into this tower?" That really helps me out a lot. It makes me want to keep playing. Oh, we found ourselves a toilet. Okay. Let's grab some of that turds. Oops. Ah, Thomas, what are you doing, dude? That was kind of weird. I would definitely fix that. That felt really unfair. I kind of just randomly had to do that. Um just make it work. Don't don't make it super precise cuz that was really confusing. I almost gave up.

And I'm really impatient, sorry. Um okay, let's keep going. Oh, yes. Environment's awesome, seriously. This is great. I'm really really impressed. The laboratories. Are you eating an apple with the snake? This is great. Look at these models. Classic. Something is blocking the door. Oh, the doorknob is entwined in a thick membrane. Oh, we got a letter there. All right. So, we got to find three pieces.

Great sounds, really. Something is blocking the door. The doorknob is entwined in a thick membrane. The doorknob is entwined with a thick membrane. Huh. Left click to attack. The sword animation is a little strange. This is kind of how it seems like I'm I'm doing it. It's like I'm holding it like this and it's like this. So, yeah, I don't know. I'd probably just like this. Make the camera wiggle a little bit. Come on. That's a strange way to use a knife. Well, let's go kill all of them. What?

Okay. Yeah, give me broad in the range, maybe use a sphere cast instead of a ray cast. All right, let's keep going. What else we got? So far, so good. Ooh, great job. Feels classic. So classic. I love this stuff so much. A fetus. A member. You know, and I don't know how many assets were used in this game, but it doesn't feel assety. It really doesn't. It's a really good work. And it's okay to use assets, but this doesn't feel very assety. The first paragraph reads, "The human soul and spirit are resources with an outrageous amount of untapped potential.

Alchemy must evolve past the simple transmutations of physical materials and instead explore how the medical metaphysical can be exploited." Hmm. By the way, those of you just joining us, remember you can join full-time game dev below, which is my massive program, which teaches you everything I've learned in the last decade of making indie games, like securing funding from publishers, um how to hit the Steam front page, how to secure funding on crowdfunding, um how to reach out to the press and get press coverage, how to make your game in Godot, Unity, or Unreal, how to code. And you'll also get my 2D and 3D art pro programs completely free. Check out the reviews on the website. I have students who actually went full-time with the help of the program, which is really really cool. And again, it's taught by somebody who's actually done that, um and that's me. I've gone full-time three separate times. I'm currently published by 3D Realms working on my third commercial release, Twisted Tower. Click the link below, check it out. If you want to make 2026 a year where you advance in your

journey to making indie games, this is the program for you. Check it out below. And by the way, if you're a student, let me know in the chat what you think about the program. Okay. I've got some kind of spice. Is that the number four? Some kind of spice. We read that. Oh my goodness, do we have ourselves a puzzle here? An ingredient puzzle? Let's go get our sword. Ugh. Ooh, we got ourselves a slug. I love it. Where's my sword though?

It's kind of scary, isn't it? I love that. Ooh, ee. That's great. I love that. Good sound, too. I just don't know where my my sword is. That's great. Where did my sword go? Come here, dude. Where did my sword go? Maybe it went back on the shelf or something. What am I doing? Where did my sword go? I'm locked. Or I'm lost. Oh, that one opens.

That's great. That was scary. That actually scared me. Press Q to see your healing herbs. Left click to regain health. I just wish I knew how much health I had. I'm not sure. Press R for sword. Okay. Yeah, give me a to the developer, give me a little hint that appears on screen when I get hit for the first time, I it needs to press all you need to say it needs to show press R to equip sword. I understand the beauty of not having UI, but that was really frustrating. Thomas, you should have known. You should have remembered. No, it doesn't work like that. Not in game dev. You got to make sure you're teaching people and they're not going to remember. You have to tell someone like three or four different times. Um so yeah, you need to put R unless I missed it, which even if I did miss it, it's not really my fault, is it?
[gasps and laughter]
And and trust me, this isn't just me, okay? This is when I'm doing play

testing with my play testers and they complain about something, I don't ever I rarely write down in my notepad cuz I always have a yellow notepad. I never write they were too stupid. I always go, "Okay, for some reason they didn't get that and I need to reinforce, reinforce, reinforce."
[snorts]
I love the art in this game. It's phenomenal. Very good. The developer is very talented. Okay, let's go kill that um Come here. Come on. Come get me. Are you running? Aw, you scared? That's disgusting. Very disgusting.

Yeah, it feels it feels a little slow, the the attack and it doesn't feel very exciting when I kill an enemy. So, the best way I can describe it is even if we're even if we're we're playing a game that's slow and more like survival survival horror, I think it's still okay to to give the player a little bit more um juice. So, instead of this do this. And you can have a cool down, meaning I can't go ka ka ka ka. It's That's fine. But when I stab maybe even make the enemy flash white, okay? Give me more particles. Put some blood on the tip of the knife and when he dies, maybe have him go tons of blood pops out and pieces explode, right? Just like five different gut pieces just explode and he disappears.

That would be so much more rewarding. Instead, we had a death animation that was kind of boring um and slow. So, I would consider that if I was the developer. Yeah, it it just feels very lame. The art is great. The animation really struggles. Oops. Sorry, buddy. So far pretty freaking awesome. I think this game is pretty sweet. Uh it requires patience for sure and that's okay. That's I think that's its genre. Um let's move on to the next game here and take a look, okay? So, we've just played Lawn Care Simulator. We got to a bug. Is the developer in the chat, by the way? Um yeah, Morrowind vibes for sure, absolutely. Um Yeah, I only play Steam games. I'm not going to risk downloading a zip file.

Um Deep Shiel another Did I just play this? No. Another spooky looking classic retro game. You guys know I love this stuff. Arrows Oh, that feels great. Very loud. Whoa. Sorry, guys. Now, when I click this, I better hear Nope. I need to hear a a lock-in sound. Every time I press an accept button Warning!
[screaming]
This game contains flashing lights and other graphical effects that may not be suitable suitable for people with epilepsy.
[clears throat]
Pretty good. Awesome. Make sure that when I'm I'm using the keyboard

uh new game is not highlighted. Now, if I move my mouse away, it's fine, right? The way you solve this I've I had I dealt with this for like 8 hours one day.
[snorts]
The way you solve this if this is in Unity and it looks like Unity the way you solve this is you move the mouse to the right-hand corner of the screen. Now, I'm sure there's plenty of other ways, but that was the best way for me. And it I know it sounds like a really strange approach to fixing that. But that was the best way. Make that fog match the background. That fog is too bright. You need to you either need to brighten the horizon or make that fog match this color right here. Cuz it looks really disorienting. Great music. Man, [music] this looks like it could really use some uh Guys, I'm going to get copyright copy copyright struck. But we're going to just go straight up to Vangelis. Listen to this.

Can you imagine? Hang on a sec. Let's find a good one. I freaking love Vangelis. Is it Vangelis? Vangelis? Vangeli? Listen. Start official. Oh, let's go. Can you imagine? Music is everything.

Woo! Yeah, you temporarily move the mouse, yeah. Well, there I go. I had to get my uh my Blade Runner hit for the year. Um now we now we just lost copyright for the video. Oh, well. But hey, let's let's turn on some music. Ready, guys? This is good music, too. Yes. Got some synthwave. Yes. I love this.

Do you like our owl? Do you like our owl? I need sound more than music.
[laughter]
Yeah, give me some sound, man. We're so close. Agent Svidius you have received a new assignment. And by the way, I have a video coming out all about voice acting. Get some voice acting for your demo, okay? It's going to make your demo stand out so much. Go to voices.com. It's not sponsored. Go to voices.com. Get yourself some some voice acting. I would shut off the music here. I would have to go

And this is the voice acting you could use or do. Agent Svidius you have received a new assignment. 9 hours ago, we received a disturbing report from the geological station located near the town of Shiel. [music] Geotechnical drilling was being conducted there to investigate deposits of an unknown unknown gas. The last report indicated the discovery of extensive deposits of this gas. Preliminary laboratory analysis suggests that it may affect the cellular structure of organisms, but no further data has been received. Reach Shiel, determine what happened and secure [music] access to the deposits. The syndicate cannot lose this resource. Depart immediately. Yes, sir. I love that CD. I wish you it played the sound of a CD. Oh, yeah, baby. Okay, so the Already, I kind of feel like the field of view is a little small. Give me a field of view slider, please.

There we go. And I want to see it change in in pause mode. I don't feel like that camera range did anything, which I don't even think that was field of view, but anyway, let's keep playing. Give me footstep sounds.
[laughter]
Okay, we have a little bit there. Jump sound is all right. Um in the menu, you can check the control mappings. Okay. I It's better to teach me one control at a time. The environment analysis function highlights usable objects. Icons display the player's vital parameters. Wow, yeah, we can't do this. You got to do it slowly. I'm not going to remember remember any of this. On the map, you can find main routes and markers for important locations. You need to teach me one step at a time. Um Yeah, this is way too much. This is called a wall of text and I'm not going to remember any of this. It's almost

useless. And what I mean by that is 20 to 40% of your players are going to get annoyed with this. They're not going to remember it. And so basically you're going to have 40% of players 20 to 40% of players and I'm pulling that number out of my butt. 20 to 40% of players who don't know how to play. So teach me one step at a time. You can drink water directly from barrels or from a canteen. You can refill the canteen by using it on a water container. That's cool. Manage your inventory in the safe storage. You can store items you don't currently need. Okay, so I don't remember half of that because I have the memory of a goldfish. Note added. Okay, how do I open my notes? How do I open my notes? Yeah, you got to teach me stuff. Remember when games came with manuals? Well, we're we're not in that era

anymore, are we? There's a water barrel. I would put a little water icon on there. And maybe have that glowing blue a little bit. If that's my health, I would make it glowing or have like a subtle like a sheen going up it. Good music though. Oh, there is footstep sounds. Yeah, they're very soft. We're going to bring the music volume down. I don't know what I just picked up. Okay, cool. I got a crowbar now and a gun. Oh my goodness. That confuses me. Yeah, I don't know if I would

put that there if it can't be broken cuz now I'm like I guess the crowbar is useless. There's my storage. Cool, that's fine. So far the game looks awesome. It plays really good. The character controller feels great. The graphics are awesome. Um I'm getting a ton of classic vibes. Okay, so Yeah, kind of a game design mistake there in my opinion is having a wooden crate there two wooden crates that clearly look like they should be broken. And also this is like classic Half-Life. The UI looks like Half-Life. I've got a crowbar, but I can't break boxes. So it's very unsatisfying. So just get rid get rid of those if I can't break them. Or make them steel. Okay. Yeah, it does sound like a John John

Carpenter soundtrack. Give me an auto save sound. Something like that. Some kind of auto save sound would be nice. Steam coming out of the ground? Nice. Oh. So give me some sound when I get when I get a hit, I need a
[snorts]
I need a smacking sound when I get a hit in. There's a sound. But for some reason I'm not getting that when I hit the actual enemy. There we go. So yeah, the sound the feedback is not perfect. Um and it and it needs to be. If you're going to have a melee a game where you have a melee weapon, I need really solid feedback. It's a It's a punch sound like that mixed with a crunch sound

mixed with a slashing sound and then a splatter sound. You want all four. Bam, right? That feels pretty good. So so what was the mission again? I can't quite remember the mission. Dragons tech or dragons teeth. So that would have been scarier. Okay, so that looks like a um Is that a fuse model? So that's fuse. Um which is fuse is a steam character creator tool. And so that the models don't are they're a little out of place because the rest of the game feels really retro, but the models feel very high res. So if I were you, I would bring this into blender, decimate them

down and then lower the resolution and also um reduce the shine. I feel like the a lot of the game feels very flat and that's a good thing. Look, we've got no normal maps, we've got no shine, we've got no metallic. Everything's very flat. And then all of a sudden a high resolution character with high resolution textures and high resolution poly count and shine and normal maps comes out. It feels It feels like it's not in the same um in the same graphical family. Okay. But But so far so good. I mean so seriously, so far like pretty pretty good here. Um Yeah, seriously. Just a little bit of polish here and there. Yeah, like this guy feels like he matches pretty good. Um I can't I'm just pretty sure she's from fuse. Yeah, that's fuse which is a valve character creator.

Give me a plastic sound. So it create a plastic tag for these. That's so weird. The mesh kind of has a bounce to it. I like that. That's great. Some decals would be nice. Okay, let's keep going. So far so good, seriously. Um I'm just kind of nitpicking the the game feel which is really important. Um Yeah, it's not very scary. Yeah, let's talk about that. Great. Thank you so much. Um Camille, thank you so much. The jump scares I I haven't gotten scared once. You really need to reconsider. Like this jump scare here, I walked up and read this. This lady, we could have had a first encounter sound. And the way you do that is basically you say if the player has zero enemies following the player and it's been let's say 10 seconds since the last encounter, play an optional jump scare.

So imagine if I was reading this here and you heard and this enemy comes running up and it goes That would have been so scary. But I was like, oh, bam bam bam, dead. It's all about the sound. I really like the the the graphics. I feel like it's a little flat. I would consider um potentially reducing the fog, honestly. Yeah, there's no there's no enemy sound there. Yeah, I would be careful with the the the obvious fuse and mixamo animations. And I I'm guilty of this, too. Um I've just I've started noticing a lot of games with the same sort of animation for for mixamo from mixamo and I'm I'm starting to wonder do I need to go and tweak my animations because that animation I've seen a lot in indie games. Um

Nice, so far so good. Yeah, that that That's pretty good. Yeah, so so here's the thing about hitting enemies. You will obviously want that smack sound with the guts coming out. But when he dies, I want to hear a and and gut splatter every way everywhere and I want to hear or We need a lot of different sounds playing from enemies. You want an awaken sound
[clears throat]
or or right? And then when he gets hit
[cough]
and then when he dies,

you want something like that. That made my neck hurt, but you want something like that. You want these three different sounds. You want follow sounds as well. So for example,
[snorts]
when I'm running away from an enemy, let's say I'm chasing he's chasing me for like 3 seconds. I want to hear and then it randomly plays another sound. So right now, I don't really know what the difference between all the different enemy skins are. They all feel like about the same thing, yet they're all skinned differently.
[sighs]
Which is disorienting. Um I'm not quite sure what the the enemy roles are. And that's Believe me, that's a problem I've I've had with my own games. So. The music is dynamic, but it feels a little feels a little strange. It changes too quickly. Um there's not really a fade or a lerp.

I think honestly this game is a solid game. I think we're just missing that juice. And that juice is what's going to make this game shine. If I were the developer, what I would do is instead of if instead of continuing to get this game to its its finish line, what [snorts] I would do is I would take the feedback that I've mentioned along with playtester feedback and specifically for and this is I'm I'm trying to encourage you the developer. You have something good here. Go in and crank up that juice. Everything I mentioned, crank up the juice. Because right now it feels very um flat. The juice. Not the graphics, not the music, not the ambience. The juice. Like that. There's no sound. I need a That could have been an awesome jump scare, but it wasn't because there was

no sound. Imagine if that was and like a scary sound. Well, there we go. We had a encounter sound there. Yeah, when I hit an enemy, they should They should they should pop backwards. All those little things. Give me a radical flash, a red radical flash, you know?
[snorts]
All that stuff is insanely important for game feel. Yeah, the this game is is close. I think it I I think it can be something special. Um it's just the juice. There's a juice problem. I would also make that that crowbar a little bit bigger. It feels small for some reason.

Cool. Very cool. Way to go, Deep Shield. I think Deep Shield is a solid title. I think it's mainly missing juice. It feels quiet. And it feels unfinished. Now, a lot of you are probably thinking, "Well, it's a demo, Thomas." Well, guys, you want your demo to be Honestly, you want your demo to be like the best thing. Um maybe even better than you could dream your game would be. And what I mean by that is put everything you possibly can into that demo before you release it. More than you could probably fit into the full game. So like that first level is like the greatest thing you've ever made. That needs to be your demo. It needs all

the perfect juice. All the screws need to be tightened. Now you might be thinking, "Well, Thomas, the Twisted Tower demo wasn't perfect." Of course it wasn't perfect. And honestly, I look at it now and I go, "There's so many things that I should have done differently." But when I released that demo, I released it with every ounce of effort I had, especially when it came to juice. Um so just keep that in mind with juice. You want your juice to be cranked up to to level 10 in terms of its effectiveness and its tightness and its polish. That doesn't mean you put blood particles everywhere. That's not what I'm saying. Um you really just want to follow good juice principles. So yeah. Uh you don't really need blood dripping from the crowbar necessarily, but like some blood on the crowbar. Like you want to make sure that every those tiny little details you're emphasizing at the beginning of the game. Um Also, by the way, there wasn't a strong

motive for the player other than do research and go find out what's wrong. There's not like a really strong motivation. Often times just making it personal with like relational is really really effective. Um so for example, your your your ex-wife your wife cheated on you. Um And the the her lover is the CEO of this massive corporation. And you Now you have a double motive, right? Go to go take down this a-hole that cheated on your wife, right? That's what I would do. I would put in something personal in there um to make this double interesting for the player. Okay, so we're going to jump into the polls here and we're going to vote on our favorite game for today's live stream, okay? Um so let's go ahead. I'm going to go ahead and pull up the live stream.

Let's see here. Pull up this live stream and I'm going to put the poll in the chat. Give me just a sec, guys. We have Lawn Care Simulator, The Alchemist Tower, and Deep Shield. Okay, give me a sec here. Which game was best? Who's going to be the winner, guys? What do you think? Which game was best? We had Lawn Care Simulator. What else was it? Um The Alchemist Tower. And also Deep Shield. Now before I post this, let's let's just try and recall together and encourage the developers of these games. Number one, I think all of these games are worth pursuing.

I think all of these games are games that the developers can actually make some money on uh in 2026. I really do. So I think all of the developers, and I wouldn't just say this randomly willy-nilly. In fact, I don't think I've ever said this. Um but I think all three of these games are solid titles that should be completed and should be polished and released and I think they'll be they they're they have the the potential to be successful. Uh I think all three graphically, the graphics are good. Um I think that the the mood in the last two was really nice, but that's Thomas. Thomas likes those dark gloomy games. Um I think all three of them had a juice problem. And in fact, I think juice is usually the problem with most indie titles.
[sighs and gasps]
There's a focus on depth and length and the quantity of puzzles and the quantity of enemies and the quantity Like imagine this. Here let's Here's something that I find really helpful.

Le you know, it How long did it take the developer to create all those skins for those enemies for that last game? Maybe not long, but five times as long as it would have been just having one skin. Imagine if they said the develop the developer said, "We're just going to have one skin and we're going to really focus on that that crowbar being really fun and punchy and juicy and gross and snappy." So instead of focusing on quantity and depth and breadth, you go, "Nope, we're going to fine-tune a few things and do them really really good and tighten the crap out of the polish of the game. And that's what we focus on." It's like two things. First-person controller, really fun crowbar. Boom. You have a good demo. But so many developers, they spend so much time on and I this this is coming from personal experience. This is why Twisted Tower has taken me 4 years.

You still focus on all these things that nobody asked you to focus on. Instead, focus on making that demo tight with just a few tiny little mechanics that are super duper fun. I know what you're thinking, "But I want this and but I want that and and I want this." And I'm going through this right now with my own my own game I'm working my fourth commercial release that I'm going to start working on in the middle of this year. I'm thinking, "Oh well, I want I want it to feel like Wind Waker and I want it to have all the the the mechanics from Wind Waker and blah blah blah blah blah blah." And it's like, "Yeah, but you can't do that, man. You don't have a thousand people on your team." Focus on a few things and do them really really good. That should be the mantra and the mindset of an indie. Um The vote's about to come. Okay, so the vote is starting in 3 2 1. While you guys vote, another huge thank you to all these students who joined Full Time Game Dev. And if you want a shout-out in tomorrow's live stream, um feel free to check out Full Time Game Dev uh the New Year's sale. And again, I

mentioned this at the beginning of the video and I appreciate you guys let me do these ad reads, but go ahead and vote while I do this ad read. You may wonder, "How does Thomas do this, right? Thomas doesn't make viral games." Right? But somehow he got his game a physical copy in I think that's Korea. Or Thomas somehow got his game, you know, sold to Apple Arcade or put on Nintendo Switch and he got physical copies. How did they do that? Well, it's working with publishers, it's working with platforms, it's it's it's doing crowdfunding campaigns on Kickstarter. It's learning how to hit the Steam front page. It's knowing how to reach out to the press. It's knowing how to make a game in Unity or Godot or Unreal. You can learn any of them by the way in the program. It's knowing how to do 2D art but focusing on what matters. It's knowing how to do 3D art but focusing on what matters. So, if you want to learn all that stuff from an actual indie game developer who's in the trenches currently on his third commercial release and it's called Twisted Tower and you can look it up on Google.

If you want to learn from an actual indie game dev in 2026 and you want to make 2026 the year where you finally stick with a game idea and you release a game and you can say, "Man, I finished a game and I did everything I possibly could and I did the research and I followed somebody who actually did it." If that's something you're interested in, click the link below because this sale isn't going to last forever. Um this it'll actually end sooner than this because we're selling they're selling much faster and there's only like 60 seats left. So, if you want to join Full Time Game Dev, click the link below, get 50% off and my 2D and 3D art programs completely free. And look, don't take it from me. There's actual reviews. Yes, these are real reviews on the website of students who actually went full time, which is so cool. I'm not going to take credit for them going full time. But the course helped them. Helped Chris Stare, Everflux, Bart Mamzer, Andre. These students I reached out to to get their reviews and they came I said, "Give me your honest review." and they gave me an honest five-star review. Felipe went full time. Soltar, full time.

Antonio. Pretty cool, right? Students went full time. There's over 4,500 students worldwide. Am I saying it's easy? No. Am I saying that anyone can do it? Anyone can try to do it. But making indie games is not for the thin-skinned. That's what I'm here for to help you with, okay? Um so, click the link below, check it out, see if it's up to your interest and thank you as always guys for supporting the channel. And also the last 10% of development of Twisted Tower. Uh you guys are awesome. Okay, let's go ahead and jump into the um the poll and see who won. I'm going to guess this one's actually pretty hard. Um I'm going to guess that the third game won. Because it's kind of like more dynamic and probably more uh enticing to a broader audience. But it that's a hard to tell. So, let's go ahead and take a look here. Um the poll started.

Okay, Alchemist Tower actually won. Okay. That was my favorite one for sure and I feel like the most polished. I just assumed that Deep Shell was more more uh marketable, but I guess I'm wrong. Um yeah, way to go to the Alchemist Tower. That's awesome. Way to go to the Alchemist Tower. Overwhelming overwhelming um positivity for the Alchemist Tower. Um so, that's awesome. 73% Congratulations to the Alchemist Tower.
[gasps]
I think the Alchemist Tower should be really really encouraged by this because it means that there's an audience out there and that they're seeing an obvious um they're seeing an obvious commercial viability to it. Um because of that, because we know who won, I think what we want to do is we want to go ahead and take a look at the Steam page. Um oops. That's not the right one.

Is it the Alchemist Tower or a Caput Mortuum? Wait a second, we got ourselves a problem. Why is it called the Alchemist Tower? Why did I write that? Why did I write that? Does anyone know why I wrote the Alchemist Tower? Because it's not, it's called Caput Mortuum. Why would I write that? Thomas, are you still working on Brave Boy? No, that game's dead. Hm, why did I write that? Does anyone know? Nobody knows. Surely there was a reason why I did

that. My theory is that that was what it said on Twitter and I wrote it down. Or is that what it's called in Steam? No. Regardless, it won. So, I don't think I don't think we had any uh bad data there. Um maybe we're thinking about marketing the game and creating a name for it, sure. Black Lantern Collective franchise, let's see what uh what kind of games they make. Lots of games, so they've got a formula for sure. Lots of sort of retro games. Um Caput Mortuum, let's take a look. Uh so, this game has overwhelmingly positive. It's at 95%, so isn't that overwhelmingly positive but you have to have 500 reviews? Um it's at overwhelmingly positive. And it looks like it's made maybe 300k?

Two No, no, no. Like maybe $200,000? I could be wrong. It came out um 6 months ago. Or whatever. 5 months ago. Can I do the math? 8 9 10 11 12 1. Yeah, 4 5 months ago. So, yeah, I think it's doing pretty good. Pretty good. Um so, congratulations to this developer. It looks like you've done a really good job here. Solid reviews. Um let's take a look at the uh I would say the name is not my favorite. I wish it was something more like the Alchemist Tower. [laughter] Um So, uh travel back to the 16th century France and delve into the mysterious depths of a seemingly abandoned Alchemist Tower. That's probably it. Do you dare brave the horrors that beckon you beckon you below? Deeper still. Yeah, I I I don't have a problem with the uh

the description because it's just this classic game. It's like something you'd read on the of a of a physical box in the gaming section at Walmart in 1998. And that's great, you know, even this front cover has that classic vibe. I love it. Very solid title. Congratulations to the developer. Love you guys so much. I hope that was helpful. Click the link below to check out Full Time Game Dev if you want to learn how to make games in 2026. Other than that guys, I will see you in tomorrow's stream. Um but