Let's Review Your Games — Ep. 041

Hello, hello, hello. Come on in, guys. Welcome, welcome, welcome. We're going to be playing some games today. The goal with these live streams is to make you feel horrible about yourself. Make you feel like, "Wow, why did I even make this game? What is wrong with me?" No. The goal, obviously, I'm joking. The goal is to make you feel encouraged, but also it's going to sting a little bit because not only am I going to offer feedback, the audience watching this live stream is going to offer feedback as well. The goal is to make your game better. And the only way to make your game better is to stick it in the oven and let it bake. And sometimes that heat is difficult to handle, but you can do it. Okay? All right. So, we're going to play some games today and offer feedback. Come on in, guys. Welcome, welcome, welcome. And by the way, I wanted to say a huge huge thank you before we get started. Huge thank you to my new students at Fulltime GameDev, which is my massive course

which is currently on sale for the New Year's the New Year's event. Shreith S. Joseph Podor, Michael, Justin, Sebastian, Ryan, and Nathan, welcome to Fulltime GameDev. And guys, for real though, you got one day left. One day left for the New Year sale to join my massive course called Full-Time GameDev. This is a course that's taught by an actual indie gamedev. That's me. Thomas, you're not an indie gamedev. You're a YouTuber. Well, hang tight. Hold on. Don't be so crazy. Don't be so nasty. That's my first game, Pinstripe. And then this right here is my second game called Never Song. This is the collector's edition. I really like it. And this is like the cool like I don't know, it was released in Korea or something. It's pretty sweet. And then my third commercial release is called Twisted Tower. Just to give you a little bit of credibility, but hey, you don't have to take it from me. There's also some reviews on the website. Click the link below. Look, what do you have to lose? You got a day left, so might as well just click the link and check and

see what this course is all about. You get lifetime access. You get to go at your own pace. So, if you want to make game 2026, maybe even 2027, the year that you master gamedev and start making indie games and release an indie game, check out the reviews here. See if it's something that interests you. These are people who actually went full-time with the help of the program, which is just so cool. That's so cool to see these students who went full-time with the help of the program. And look, if you interested in the course, here's what it is. You're going to learn not only how to hit the Steamfront page, how to get press coverage, uh how to do a crowdfunding campaign, how to uh pitch to publishers and get funding with just a demo, but obviously you're going to learn how to make a game in Unity, GDO, or Unreal. You can take any you can learn any engine, take your pick. You don't have to learn them all, just learn one. And you're also going to get my 2D art programs and my 3D art programs completely free. There's like 20 seats left. These have been selling really fast. You've got a day left for real. And then the the for real and then the course goes right back up to its higher

price um after this next 24 hours. So, click link below. You got 30-day money back guarantee. No questions asked. What do you got to lose? And by the way, if you're a student in the program, let me know what you think about it in the chat. All right, my friends. Let's go ahead and jump into some games here. Look at that. Oh, I can't wait to release this. Oh, yeah. Look how many hours I've spent on this game. That's my This is my third commercial release. 662 hours. And this is after we I started tracking the the play time. Is that it? That's crazy. 14 and a half hours played in the last two weeks. Okay, the first game is called Berounded. And I love the logo. Oh, that's so beautiful. It's so simple and clean and spooky and it's just everything I want. Let's go ahead and take a look at berowned. BR betrayed made with Unity Top Hat Studios.

[snorts] If you want to submit a game, follow me on x.com/toomasbrushdev for all of your game submission needs. Delicious cold coffee. I love it. Okay, for some reason I can't hear the audio. I'm not sure why. Let's go ahead. Give me a sec here to take a look and see what's going on. There it is. Okay. What do I think about this main menu? Well, I think it looks cool. I think it's a little [sighs] Okay, I need to show the developer kind of what I'm thinking with this menu. It looks a little cheap. And the reason why, let me show you. It's a little fuzzy. I'm I'm sorry. The the It's not very contrasted. The whites are just really muddy.

Um, and the alignment is off with the with the the UI elements. So, let me show you kind of what I'm what I'm hoping to see with this UI. So, I'm going to close this out really quick. And this guys, this is not random. For those of you who are joining the stream here, this is not just like, what is Thomas doing? I do this a lot. I'll take screenshots of games and I'll I'll try and, you know, make the main menus look a little better because it just looks doesn't look great. Um, this stuff I'm going to just fill that in really quick. That's too close to the bottom of the screen. So what you want to do is you want to um have very clean simple text and you want to use proper uh principles when it comes to UI alignment. You want to have clean padding. You want things to actually be centered or actually be left aligned. You want to follow some um some standards you set for yourself. Uh this I would make it brighter.

It's a little dull looking. There we go. Um, that sun doesn't have to be, but the logo I feel like if you're gonna if you're going to make it bright, make it bright. Um, okay. In terms of the text, right, I would have it smaller. It's really big. And a lot of indie games, they their text is always really big and it makes the game look really cheap. Um, so what is it like? Play settings. Uh, credits. I'm just going to put random stuff here. And then quit. Um, the font choice was it was it like a let's see here. It was a something like a Corer kind of font, honestly. Let's take a look. Sorry, I need to look at it. But, uh, yeah, something like this. Give me a sec here. We want it to feel professional and clean. This looks like a indie game right here. It doesn't have to.

Just because you're making an indie game doesn't mean it has to look like an indie game. This feels cheap. So, the font is I don't know why G is lowercased there. Um, but here's what I would do. I'd do something like this. And I would do um I think one of the fonts that I really like is Michelle. We're just going to use Michelle for now. Uh, no. What's it called? Well, okay. Okay, I'm going to I'm going to follow the standards that have been set for us by berown here. It's some Sans font. I'm going to use Sans font. I would I would do honestly I would do uppercase really clean monoserat and then I would do white here and then I would do something like this and then now if the developers watching and

they're like Thomas I don't want you to change the fonts I understand you can use the font I just don't know what font you're using. Let's just maybe increase this a little bit and go smaller. There we go. That looks professional. Let's go pretty hardcore. Extra bold for this. And then we'll do light for these. Or maybe regular. There we go. And then is there a color a pop of color we could use? No. But maybe what we could do is do like a lower a grayer color here. There. There we go. Like that. That works for me. So, really clean, really professional here. And then 13th Street Studios 2025 down below. So, this to me is where I want where I really wanted to focus my energy for you guys.

We want a nice standard here for margins. Okay? A lot of developers, they eyeball their margins. So they just go, I'll put that there and maybe I'll put that there and there. That looks unprofessional. What you want to do is you want margins. So what I do is I'll just do a square like this. Check one, two, and two. And then I'll do something like this. I'll line it at the bottom. I'll something like that. And then I'll just do it on the right as well. And then I'll do these at the top as well. like this. So now we have and then I can bring out the rulers here and just do like that. And I actually put this inside of Unity when I'm laying out the UI. So I'll take this giant image and I'll put it in Unity so that I always know where my margins are when I'm laying out my UI. So now I can be super precise here. Look at that. Okay, let's go ahead and find a a Discord logo

and like a Twitter logo and stuff um and put it in there. So, same principles apply on the right side here. Okay, very clean, white, right aligned that Twitter logo. Yeah, we'll do a Twitter logo. whatever. It's not Twitter, it's X. But I'm just going to do Twitter for now just to sort of speed up the process here. Hey guys, come on in. Welcome, welcome, welcome. And again, for those of you who are just joining us, remember there is a link below. If you're I just want to let you know because the sale event is ending. If you want to join the course, my massive gamedev course, it is currently 50% off for the next day. And after that, it's over. It's over. So, there's our logos. There's our fonts.

Um, we remove our uh elements here. And now it's nice and clean. Nice and clean. Okay. Uh, demo. I would use the same font. I only like to use two, maybe three fonts in my game. Um, that's what I would do. That's it, man. In terms of highlighting it, if you really want to do a glow, um, I guess that's fine. I don't love it. It kind of looks a little cheap to me, but hey, let's try it. I would make it look like it's glowing, right? Like it's actually glowing. So that's what I would do for the menu. It's much cleaner than this. This feels cheap. This feels like Whoa. Is this

like is this made kind of like a double A studio? Maybe. All right. Select a control scheme. ASWD is rotation. Okay. Tank controls. Cool. Okay. Good. For the best experience, play with headphones. Play in the dark. Got it. So, there's no way to like advance through this. So, it's kind of frustrating. It's automated, which is really frustrating. I don't need all this honestly. Looks great.

Let me close my window. That looks awesome. Honestly, really great. Beautiful graphics. Yeah, I'm not sure what the the cut scene is trying to say. It's kind of just more ambient landscape visuals. So, I'm not really learning much about the story. So, I'm not quite sure what the goal is here. I would definitely put some voice over if you can. Give me as quick as you can give me a motivation. Let me know why I'm doing what I'm doing, who I am. But maybe that's going to happen here. So, let's take a look.

uh to answer your question about UI and Photoshop and then I'll I'll move forward with this. Um to answer your question about UI and Photoshop, it's a combination, right? I do all of my I do my concepts in Photoshop for all of my UI. Once I get uh once I approve the concept, then what I'll do is I'll lay out all the graphics and then I'll separate them out by layers and then I'll import the PSB file, a Photoshop big file. And all of the sprites import into Unity by default. You just have to in install the PSB importer in the package manager and then I'll lay it all out in as UI elements. Live text obviously is not rasterized images. Live text you actually have to type it out in Unity.
[sighs]
Did I really doze off? We had a couple drinks before I laid down to rest for a bit, but [sighs] damn. How long have I been asleep for? It's odd Vicki didn't make me wake up.

Where did she even go? Vicki, where'd you go? So, I felt like there was a couple sentences there that were redundant, but let's keep playing here. Is is that Vicki in the painting? I thought she said she wanted to capture the landscape, but it looks like she decided on a self-portrait in the end. Wait, what's with this black dress? I can't imagine her ever wearing anything like that. Well, it's something new, I guess. I like it.

I like the graphics. Looks good. Great use of lighting here. Pretty solid um vibes. I like it. Good ambience. Good sound. Good sound there. The feet are hitting the the feet make a sound, a different sound based on the material, which is great. Bonus points if you can change the uh the sound of the feet when I touch grass. Um, yeah, I like the camera movement. It's actually really nice. It's like a a dynamic camera, but it's fixed as well. It's kind of a combo. Let's take a look. Look through the binoculars. Yes. Yeah.

The the the UI is really hurting the game if I'm being honest. And and and let me I might I might take a screenshot and show kind of what I'm thinking here. Oh, it's a beautiful view. You can even see the amusement park from here. There's a small pier setting up sitting upon the water below. Thomas and I would often fish upon that shore together in the daytime. Like good old father and son activity. It's a real shame he couldn't join us today. Yeah. So, like uh let me show you. Uh we've done enough UI stuff. Let's move forward. Captain's Captain's Smaldings. So, it should be Captain Smaldings Amusement Park. Captain's Smaldings Amusement Park. Oh, are there people over here?

Oh, it's a radio.
Radio has been left behind here.
Distorted voices and idle chatter can be heard over the airwaves. Yeah, let's turn it off. Thank you. Oh, good ambience. This feels great, honestly. Really good job. Wasn't someone just here? Yeah. Look, I want to show I really do. I want to show why this um this UI could could really be cleaned up a little bit. I just feel like something feels cheap about it. The way I would go about it is a nice clean

alpha out box at the bottom. And I understand we're going with a retro vibe here, but I would do something like this. a little line here or something just to create a flourish. Increase the brightness here. And then I would use I would potentially use a pixel font. Honestly, I know that goes against what we did on the menu, but do I have any pixel fonts? I really should. Let's see here. It's going to be a Sarah font or sans sarif font. Yeah, I would do some kind of pixel font. Um, let's see here. Or even better,

let's find a pixel font. Just kind of want to show you guys why UI is so valuable. And it's it's a it's lowhanging fruit. If you can make really beautiful UI, especially with your main menu, it kind of convinces the player. It's more of like a marketing tool almost. It convinces the player as they're entering the game, as they're coming through that front door, per se, that you've made a good game. And all you really needed to do was create good UI. Um, that's my theory, at least. I'm looking for a good font here, guys. One sec. I'm going to try a pixel font and see what it looks like here. This one's called Pixel Mix. Hang tight. We're going to see if this looks any good. It probably doesn't.

I just installed you pixel. There it is. Yeah, I do something like this. And then you always want your whites to always be basically the same hue. You could left align it if you wanted. This kind of stuff is so important, guys. Um, and then there's a little arrow, a little pixelated arrow.

That is so pretty. And instead of it saying in a long sentence, press E to continue, all we need is this. The way I like to do it is um somewhere over there maybe and then just write an E and darken it and then boom. And this will be dynamically swapped out based on if you have a game pattern on it. So that's what I would do for the text as opposed to that. Does that make sense, guys? I feel like that looks much more professional. Um, and look, if you don't want to do that uppercase, you could do uh just standard, right? Something like that. Maybe you could increase the spacing between the sentences so it doesn't feel so dense, right? Shrink the size a little bit. That's what I would do. Okay, let's move

forward, though. Wasn't someone just here? If it were me and I was working on this game, I would consider remshing the character. He looks kind of asset if I'm being honest. He He looks like an asset. And I would decimate him a little bit and make him look a little bit lower res. If we're going to go with this low res look and have pixelation filters, we want the main character to match that. And so I would consider doing I would do that. I would make him look like Silent Hill. How do you submit your game? Um it's uh x.comomasbrushdev and you'll just just follow me and and you'll see when whenever I'm going to do a live stream. I let everybody know and they can submit their games in the comments. Hey, the level design feels

good though. Um it really does. Great use of sound. That was awesome. The creaking a hammock. Very nice. Someone let their music player here. Brilliant. I like the graphics. It's very sunny. I kind of wish it was cloudy, but that's just preference because I'm not really scared. I'm just a little bit bored, honestly, because there's no tension. I'm just like, "Okay, if you're gonna make me move around with tank controls and it's going to be slow, you got to make me look scar. You got to be scared." Now, I'm sure I'm sure the developer is going to make me scared. But even like Resident Evil, what was the one before Village? Even that one before it got scary, it was still like grayish. Uh, let's go to our our scans here and we're going to go yellow. shift it to

the yellow and desaturate it. I would consider doing this if I was the developer. Um, kind of a a grimmer look. Um, move it towards the green and desaturate it and then contrast it. I would consider doing something like this and have a subtle, it's not necessarily horror music, but something close, something eerie. Uh, I'll I'll just use one of my songs as an example so that I don't get flagged here. Um, this one is from Twisted Tower. Let me open it up here. This is one I wrote a couple years ago. Give me just a sec. I'm just trying to show you guys why it might be it might be valuable to make it a little bit glooier because it's tank controls and it's slow. If you're going to slow me down, I I want a little bit of tension that this

is personal preference. A lot of this stuff is honestly. Um yeah, let's see here. There we go. So, like maybe something like this one. Let's just listen and see. Maybe this will and then you'd have like thunderstorm thunder clouds or thunder playing. Yeah, something like that. I just think a little bit of eeriness

would help. Now, you don't want to go full horror because I'm sure we're going to jump into a full horror game. But yeah, even seeing that that girl running, uh, having it a little bit glooier, I think would help a lot. Where is everybody? Yeah, it's I'm I'm supposed to feel empty. I'm supposed to feel tension. I would make it gloomy. I would get rid of that skybox and I would make it just a bluish gray. Let me show you guys why skyboxes you often times don't need them in a horror game. Um like this right here, for example. If I were to take this and just match it to the fog color. And by the way, the fog color is right there. You can see the full solid tone of it right there. Look how gloomy this looks without the skybox yet. I haven't really changed anything. I would do that if I was the developer. I would make it feel like because now

there's tension and all I needed to do was remove the skybox. So that chick ran over here. Okay. Okay, I can't get over there. Oh no. Careful. Don't let me get blocked. So far, the game feels really good, though. Um, really, really satisfied with it. I'm I don't know where I'm going or why I'm doing what I'm doing, honestly. It's a little boring. There's no real motive in my brain. And you might say, "Well, Thomas, you missed it at the beginning. You missed it. It was 30 seconds in." You want to reiterate the motive. Reiterate. Reiterate. Reiterate. Reiterate. There she goes again.

Darling, is that you? What? Oh, damn it. This enough joking around already. [snorts] Okay, so we're chasing a girl. Yeah, the running animation is a little It does look like he's kind of got to go go potty. So, yeah, the running animation isn't isn't wonderful. I've seen worse. I I don't know if I would fix too much. Um,

Vicki, where the hell are you? So yeah, I've been playing for about 30 minutes here. Well, in reality, it'd be like seven minutes, and I haven't really done anything. You know, I'm just running. And one of the biggest, I think, mistakes a lot of developers make, including myself, during the beginning of my game's development, is I thought that I needed way more at the beginning than I did. We ended up cutting about 60% of the levels or the level size, especially at the beginning of the game, because you just didn't need it. Oops.

So, yeah, we started out with a splash screen that said, "This game is offensive, and I'm just playing it, and it's one of the more unoffensive games I've played." Now, you're probably thinking, again, you're probably thinking, "Well, just wait and be patient." If you're gonna release an indie game, I don't know if you have the luxury of asking your audience to be patient. So, let's let's keep going here. Why am I the only one here? Something's not right. You got to be kidding me. This is my diary. I don't remember bringing it with me. How the hell is this even here? Notebook and map. Press M. Oh, there we go. Uh, I must find Vicki.

Okay, so there's our map. Um, well, I just feel like I explored a ton. So, I'm wondering if I go outside, do I get the map back? Let's see here. I don't want to go back there. I need to go to the parking lot. Go to the basement. Yes. I'm sure there's weapons and puzzles and monsters. We haven't gotten there yet, but I just feel like it's started it's so far it started pretty slow. That was a long walk to get to this, right? So, I can't see anything. I have no idea which direction I'm facing. So, you really want to be careful with this. I can't see a thing. There we go.

Hello. Every Halloween they dress up this mannequin in a creepy costume. It's great for scaring off the pesky kids. Good. We got a flashlight. What is that sound? That's great. I love that. What was that sound? Oh, she fell over. I got a key. Feels like it's following me. What the hell is going on?

Turn off the radio. Okay, so this is interesting. that that introduction area. If it were me and even if I was like a publisher and I was working with an indie developer, I would tell them to just make that introduction so freaking short and get to the fun. That's what I would do. Oh, good. Change of day or time. That's good. That's what we wanted. Um, okay. I got a key here to get out. I thought I just collected a key. Did I not collect the key? We'll go back down.

I've got the key and now I don't have the key. Uh oh. If you guys know what's going on, let me know. I feel like I got in a glitch. There are multiple tabs. Okay, there we go. Items and then supplies. So, it's hard to tell which one I'm on. Oh, red is the is the highlighted one. Yeah, I would make that like white or blue. And then the other two are just not a color. Okay, so there's items. Got it. Okay. I didn't know which tab I was on. It was kind of hard to see which tab I was on.

I would make items highlighted white and then the other two don't have a highlight. The red makes it feel like it it's disabled. Um, so yeah. Okay, let's go back. Sorry, I There we go. The door is locked. I need to open it. Okay, there we go. Great. Nice. This feels great. Good job, developer. That sun lens flare needs to be called out. Is the sun in front of the mountains? What is that?

Let's go figure that out. Graphically, the game is great. Lighting's awesome. Yeah, for some reason the sun is not being called out. I don't know what these gates were never closed before. Oh yeah, Morpheus. I've seen you finally woken up. To be honest, I don't even know what to tell you. There's no point introducing myself. You already know my name after all. I like that sound. That's good. But I will tell you this. You'll find your darling wife soon. Just don't count on a warm welcome. Oh, believe me, there's a big storm coming. That feathered bastard might interrupt us again, too. So, listen real carefully and let us know, guys, in the chat. Do we know what's going on? Um, if you want to break through the

cycle you're trapped in, you're just going to have to kill them all. No remorse, no compass, no mercy. Those hands of yours must be eternally marked with blood. Okay. So, let me know in the chat. This is for the developer. Do we understand what's going on? And if we don't understand what we go on, are we interested in what's going on? Let me know in the chat. I'm a little unmotivated and I think it's because I don't really care about my wife. Like, there's no reason to care about her. And I've I've had this problem too with my own games where you create a a a real desire to find her. Also, I don't know, was she taken by that guy or is she running around the woods in a black dress. Um,

to be honest, no. Too much text. No idea what's going on and the game is boring. Okay. No. And no. So, let's talk about potentially helping the developer with the motive here. Start me with a reason why she why you're madly in love with your wife. That's the first step. Or it can be the second step. You could do the why you're madly in love and then the kidnapping. Or you can do the kidnapping and then quickly let me know why this is so important. Um, so it could be it could be that you um you were a single parent for a decade and you met this woman and she reminded you exactly of your first wife. It's just her hair was blonde

and you cried the night you were married because she was able to help take care of your kids and it she just naturally fit in to the family and it was almost like your ex-wife or your dead wife was back. There's this motive. There's this oh my goodness, I love this woman. She's she's my rescuer. Right? Then when she goes missing, it's so much more impactful. And you want to get her. Also, let me know that she's struggling when she's kidnapped and taken. Hear her screams. Hear her on the phone. Help me. Help me. Don't have her just running around in the woods. Now, we haven't played a lot, so I don't know. But I'm just trying to help the developer know that in the first, let's say, 10, 20 minutes here of game play, you really want to create a strong strong motive and desire to run around with tank controls. If you're going to force tank controls, you got to number one, give me a strong motive and setup

to give me the desire to use slow tank controls. Number two, create tension so that the slowness of my movement is the feeling is reduced because I kind of want to be slow because I'm scared about of what's around the corner. That's those are my two cents here. Overall, the game feels great. Um the graphics are solid, the music, the vibe. I think this game with the right polish is going to be really great. Um, so those are just my my thoughts here. This this grayish tone here, um, the grayish the grayish ocean menu, if you guys remember the menu we created, that tone in my opinion should be that intro sequence. That intro sequence should look like this or it should start. Here's a here's one

other quick idea. If you're going to use beautiful blue skies, what you do, this is just my opinion, but what you would do is you'd start with intense happiness. Imagine the first, let's say, five minutes of this game, blue skies, and you're laying there and you're like, [sighs] and there's beautiful music playing. Um, [singing] your wife is laying on your chest. And she says, "Ever since I met you, I felt like [sighs] I felt like finally someone understood me." And you say, "I feel the same way. No one's ever understood me. I always felt alone, but now you're here.

And then you wake up and it's gray and bleak and dark. You hear a scream and you begin the journey. You start with that sunshiny happy moment where you create the connection with the wife, then you take her away. That works. That's what I would do if I was the developer. Okay, moving forward, ladies and gentlemen. Moving on. I think overall the game is solid. I think it needs some screws tightened. I had this exact situation happened with my game, Twisted Tower, and the person, I will tell you, do you guys know who the person was that critiqued me? Do you know who it was? It was the CEO or the CCO of Saber

and he's a legend. His name is Tim Willlets. He said the same thing to me. It's boring. Motivate me now. And that's okay. Okay. Here we go. Life is a cockroach. You all ready to roll? We haven't installed it yet. So, any other thoughts here, guys, while this installs here? Any other thoughts? Let the developer know in the comments. While you do that, again, huge thank you to all these new students who joined Fulltime GameDev. We're about to jump into the next game. While it installs, just one quick shout out, guys. You got a day left. Seriously, this closes in a day. This is the New Year sale. It's basically the same as Black Friday, guys. Holidays are always big sales. Once these are over, it's over. This kind of sale event's not going to happen for a while. 50% off. Massive sale. 2D Art Pro and 3D Art Pro.

My programs, my art programs, completely free, but only for this program. You're also going to get two hours with me in a private group setting with like 10 other developers. Um, it's usually 10 to 20 that show up and we do a private Discord call where I analyze your game. I answer questions as best as I can. So, you're going to get two hours, one hour each that happen in next week and the week after. Uh, you're going to learn how to pitch a game to publishers, how to hit the Steamfront page, how to do crowdfunding, how to get press coverage, how to make a game in Unity, GDAU, or Unreal. You can take your pick. Check out the student reviews here. These are students who went full-time with the help of the program. So, it's the link is in the description. All right, guys. You ready to roll? All right. No, these are not games played by members of my program. These are just people who follow me. Um, Thomas, I'm a graduate uh student at Duke University

getting my masters in game development. Do you play itch demos? No, I play Steam demos. You ready to roll here? Life of a cockroach is ready to roll. Let's hit play here. Thomas is 100% spoton with the fonts and UI. It looks like every other indie game currently. Who who said this a shame walk of shame? Who was that? Is the developer in the chat? Cuz there that is not a walk of shame. What are you talking about? If the developer is in the chat and and said that they're doing a walk of shame right now, don't be stupid. That's not what I like. Serious. I'm trying to help. I'm trying to be loving and kind here. Don't be that way. You are not You did not make a bad game. That's a good game. It's a solid title. You need to tighten the screws. Don't Don't disparrage yourself.

If you disparage yourself, you're doing what a lot of developers do, which is they think because their game gets criticized during play testing that somehow the game is something that the game sucks and it needs to be you need a walk of shame. Play testing is time is a is a time to toughen up. You play test, you get feedback, people tell you what sucks, and what do you do? You clean it up, you fix it, and in two weeks, suddenly all those problems are gone. Imagine how quickly you could take the feedback we've gotten here, implement it into what what is apparently a solid structured game, a solid structure for a game, fix the UI, make it a little bit moodier in my opinion, give me a motive, let me fall in love with the woman, just like the main character did. take her away. Give me a motive. Give me some jump scares.

You're solid. So, don't take a walk of shame. I'm trying. Seriously, I'm trying to encourage you if you if the developers in the chat, I'm not sure if you are. I'm trying I'm not trying to be mean. I'm trying to encourage you. This is what you have to do. You have to play test. And so, what we're doing right now is play testing. Um, he got a solid title. We just need to tighten some screws. Okay. Um, I just want to make sure the developers in the chat and that they know that what we're doing here is we're trying to be helpful. Um, Mateo, is it Mateo? Are you the developer? Who's the developer? Raise your hand. Who's the developer? Who is the developer?

Is the developer in the chat? No. And by the way, if the developers in the chat, do you know how many legal yellow legal pads that I filled up in the last three months of testing my own game? I think five or six yellow legal pads of play testers. Fix this. Fix this. Fix this. Fix this. Fix this. What you just got is nothing. That like you could solve that stuff. No problem. That stuff's easy. Um you're fine. Oh, the Thomas the Walk of Shame was about someone liking pineapple on pizza. [laughter] Well, anyway, if the developer does watch this and they feel like, you know, the criticism was painful, hopefully they they they

feel better after my little pep talk there. Um, okay. Here we go. Next game, ladies and gentlemen. Okay, this menu, there's no music, there's no sound. I've got a really blurry f uh logo there, which scares me as a player because it's a giant red flag that how did this pass, you know, how did this get past the developer? So, this this is low res, but this is high- res. So, we got a problem already. We got mismatched resol resolutions. There's no sound. There's no music. Let's hit new game. Why is there no sound? Yeah, we need music on the main menu.

Something like that. Give me a sound on the main menu. Like the sound of feet like that. That's great for the sound for the main menu buttons. And when you uh press play, I need to hear like a crunching of a cockroach. Give me some music. Okay. So, I don't know what that UI element is there. That yellow long thing kind of looks like a pregnancy test. I don't know what that is. Graphics look good though. The character controller feels real good. That is awesome. I love that. Now, a real cockroach could go straight up that, but I do like that. That That is a great mechanic. Wow,

that is rock solid. Seriously. Oh, I've seen that asset before. That's a free asset on Unity. I used it last week. I'm not I'm not complaining. Oh, man. Let me walk on the ceiling, bro. Yeah, we really need to have that. So that I think the mechanics here are actually very clever, but they're unrefined. I really need to be able to walk on any surface. That's that that would be the core gimmick of this game. Honestly, I think it's a brilliant gimmick. The core gimmick should be I should be able to walk on any surface, upside down, backwards, forwards, you name it. That should definitely be the uh the gimmick. And certain surfaces you can't walk on, like soap or

steel or like things that are really shiny, you can't walk on. Give me some French fries. So, we're on level one. I guess the goal is to just eat food. Tuna. No tuna. So, we're looking for food. Okay, let's look for food. I don't know what that map is up there. I would make that sound sound more like a a cockroach. Honestly, we've all had that happen where a cicada or a cockroach into your face. We want to hear that sound. The camera rotates pretty good with the cockroach. I just think the cockroach it's a little odd that the the rotation speed for the cockroach is so lurppy,

but it's not a huge complaint. It feels Yeah, it feels tanky. Um, which is fine, I guess. I mean, [sighs and gasps] we'll see what level level two entails, but if it's as simple as just collecting old scraps of food, I worry that that is not interesting enough. If that if it's just a scavenger hunt game with no real threat, um, we might have a problem on our hands. Okay, we eat food and now there's food everywhere. But for some reason I I can only eat certain foods, which is fine, I guess. Carbo up. Um, which it's that's fine, I think. But it is a little strange that you can only eat certain foods despite there being plenty of food all over the place.

Like if if it's a scavenger hunt game, I'm going to be looking for food, right? Um, and so I see food everywhere, but I can't eat it. So it's like what? Yeah. But but there's something special here. Um Oh my goodness. So I can get an upgrade. How? All right. Let's Let's figure out how to make this game a little bit funner. I'm going to go to uh artlist.io and find some fun jazz. Let's type in jazz. I I hear some kind of like swing or something like that.

Yeah, there it is. Yeah. What is that? Hey, you look good. Better than ever. What is this all about? I must be dreaming. You'd better get used to it as soon as possible. From now on, this will be your body. What? Am I a disgusting cockroach, too? No offense. That's how it looks. Don't you see? Anyways, if you need anything, let me know. I need you to leave me alone. I have to get out of here.

So, I don't know how to get an upgrade. That needs to be taught for sure. Yeah, you need music. If it's going to be this kind of arcadey, very simplistic game, we need some arcadey music, honestly. How do I get an upgrade? One upgrade available. Where? Got to teach it. Oh, there it is. What is that? This does sound like a cockroach, doesn't it? Oh, yeah. Music makes things so much funner.

All right, let's find another one. So, this is called Five-Sighted Cube. It's a m artist on artless.io O and they are awesome. This is like perfect music for a cockroach. It also reminds me kind of like Sims. Yes. I don't really know what to do. You got to tell me. You got to guide the player in the first five minutes. Tell them what to do. Tell them what to do, ladies and gents. Also, reward exploration. If I go into the fridge, you got to reward me. Nope.

Yeah, I don't really know what to do. Uh, thoughts on toune shaders? I love tune shaders. I'm obsessed with toune shaders and I have to resist the temptation to make all of my games tune shaded, which I think I may be making Twisted Tower tune shading next week, honestly. Um, this game would benefit from toon shading. Okay. Well, I don't really know what to do. Not Okay, there's more food over here. That food spawned for some reason. So did that one. Oh, I found a lollipop. See how this music makes the game funny? Oh my goodness. Is there a dayight cycle?

I don't know, man. Okay. Yeah, I feel I feel like I feel like we got the gist of that game. Um, I'm going to go ahead and set up a poll here for you guys um to to vote on your favorite game for today. Let me go ahead and set that up. So, the the two games we're voting on are Be Crowned and Life of a Cockroach. Okay. Be Crowned and Life of a Cockroach. I'm going to start a poll here. Which game was your favorite? The Crowned or Life of a Cockroach? And I'll I'll do a couple other questions to see like if the answers

change. So, we're going to start with what was your favorite. Then the next question we'll move in. Which which game do we feel is going to make the most money? That's a fun question. Uh which game is going to get a very positive score? Those kind of questions. I kind of want to see what y'all's answer is there. All right, let's start the poll. While the poll runs, while the poll runs. One final shout out here. Thomas Schilling his course here. But really, it is a great course. Honestly, it's a great course. Over 4,500 students worldwide. Everything I've learned in the last decade of making indie games and selling them to publishers, getting funded on Kickstarter. One of my Kickstarters did over $100,000. Um, how to work with publishers. This was published by Serenity Forge. This was published by Serenity Forge. This game was published by This is Pinstripe. This was published by Armor Games and the Switch copy was Serenity Forge. Um, but also you're going to learn 2D art and 3D art. Um, with my free, these

are free just for this sale event. You got one day left. One day left. If you want to learn how to make games, but also learn how to sell them and turn it into a sustainable business, check out the link below. And if you don't believe that the course has that to offer, obviously I can't make any promises, but I can tell you what my students have done. These are students who went full-time with the help of the course, which is super duper cool. Um, that's about it. Yeah, one day left. After this, this sale event's over. Won't happen like this for a while. Black Friday and New Year are my biggest sales. Okay, let's go. Let's take a look. Um, but crowned is at 80%. And life of a cockroach is 20%. All right, let's let's reframe the question. Okay, I'm going to close that poll. One sec.

Hang tight. Sorry, I deleted the pinned comment on accident. Um, [snorts] we go and then we're going to do the poll. The next question is, which game will make the most money? Okay. Which game do you feel will make the most revenue? Be Crowned or Life of a Cockroach. We've got berown at 54% 57%.

H yeah, both games are finished and polished. Of course, assume that both games are going to be finished and polished and released on Steam. What do you guys think? Which game is going to get the most revenue? What do we think? You can do fully released games. That's fine. For for if you guys want to submit your fully released games for me to play, that's fine. You're such an idiot. Which game do you feel will make the most revenue? Be crowned is at 57%. I'm surprised it's at a 50-50 split. To me, I think it's really obvious. I think the crowned will easily make the most money. Okay. Um, let's do another question.

Ready? Let's start with berown. And why are we doing this? This is for the developer. These are the kind of questions, by the way, guys. These are the kind of questions that I ask on my uh play testing form. I'll have players submit their feedback on a play testing form. These are the kind of questions I'll ask. Okay, so here's one of them. Um, what score do you think be crowned will get on Steam? Overwhelmingly positive. Very positive. positive. Is it mixed and then positive? I can't remember. What are the steam scores and their numbers? Okay. So then it goes to positive which

is 80% or more and then after that is mostly positive. Okay, so this is great. This is this is the kind of stuff I ask guys on my play tests. So, what score do you think will get on Steam? Assuming that it's polished up nicely, the issues are fixed. Um, let's take a look and see what do you think the score is going to be. And look, we've got um 275 people watching. This is this is great. You developers right now, I just want to tell you how lucky you are to to watch this. The developers have been crowned. This is going to help you so much because this kind of information helps you know where you're currently at with your game. And by the way, that first 10 minutes is really what people are going to review your game on.

That's my opinion. I also think I'm right. The first 10 to 20 minutes, that's where people formulate their opinion of your game. All right, so we've got positive at 60%. And then we've got mostly positive at 24 and then very positive at 17. So it should land somewhere on the positive scale assuming things get polished up nicely. Okay, let's go ahead and ask the question. The same question about Let's go ahead. Whoa. Let's go ahead and ask the same question about the Roach game. What score will The Roach Game get on Steam? Overwhelmingly positive. Very positive. [snorts] Positive. We're gonna go down to mixed just because I don't feel like the game is at a current state where

it may end up at mixed, but it may end up at overwhelming overwhelmingly positive, especially if it's like four bucks, you know? So, I don't know. But let's start the poll here and take a look. Throw Asmin Gold in the background of the Roach game. What did you say? Throw Asmin gold. Where was that in the background of the roach game and you have a banger. [laughter] Oh man. So, let's take a look here. Yeah, mixed is is showing up here at 60%. Yeah, it's it's there's a lot of screws that need to be tightened for that game. I would h this is this is what I would do if I was the developer for that game. I would make the sole focus of that game. It's not it's not platforming.

It's none of that. If you can walk on anything, but it's a puzzle game. That's what I would do. Walk on anything, but you can't fly just yet. Maybe you get an ability to. And you [snorts] can walk on ceilings. You can walk on desktop monitors. You can walk underneath a table. It's super tight. The controls are really, really tight and you can walk on anything, but there's puzzle elements. So, there's certain surfaces that you can't walk on. There's certain surfaces that deal damage. There are uh collectibles. Uh there are buttons. There are keys. And you may even get away with it being a rage game. If you slip off of a surface, you fall all the way down. So, I would maybe do like [snorts] it's a really tall building or something and you're going

from floor to floor to floor to floor and you can fall down. I would make the graphics hyper tuny. I would do no no specular, no metallic, no normal maps. I would do very flat coloring. I would probably do no lighting. It would be unlit and it would look very stylized and edgy. That's what I would do. Oh yeah, you need a giant human trying to squash you. Dude, you could make it a horror game, too. That's a great idea. You have like one human. It's like a it's like a baby and it's like running through the environment and you're you're constantly sneaking around as this sole surviving cockroach. That would be awesome, too, man. I love that. That's the game. It's like back rooms, but you're a cockroach. I think that would be awesome. That's how you sell it. So, that's what

I would do. [snorts] All right, guys. That was so much fun. I hope you guys had a blast. Look how low I am. I love you guys so much. And be sure to check out the course below. Um.