Let's Review Your Games — Ep. 051

doing today. Come on in. Welcome, welcome, welcome. This is going to be a really, really fun live stream because we're just going to be playing your games. We're going to play three games that one of you submitted or three of you submitted. And the goal is to completely dismantle all confidence that these developers have in their game, right? No, obviously not. Obviously not. The goal is to help these developers, right? So, I'm going to offer critique and you're going to offer critique in the chat and we're just going to help build these games up, help the developers kind of understand maybe some ways they could fix these games, make these games better. And also, we're just going to talk about what's good. And at the end of this live stream today, hey, we're going to vote on our favorite game. Come on in, guys. Let me get this chat box up on here. Hello, Prit. Prit. Is that Prit? Hello. Hello. Uh, Quirk X official. Come on in. Come on in. And by the way, guys, want

to say a huge, huge thank you to students who joined Fulltime GameDev, which is my massive gamedev course. Jan, Rita, George, and Jake D., welcome to Fulltime GameDev. And by the way, guys, if you're interested in joining Fulltime GameDev, every season once we have a seasonal shift, I'll do some kind of sale event for my massive gamedev course. In this case, it's the summer sale. The summer sale is one of my bigger sale events for my program, Full-Time GameDev. Look, if you want to learn from an actual indie game developer, somebody who's been published on three separate occasions. This is my um this is Pinstripe. This is Never Song. These are two of my games on Switch. And then I also have a game called Twisted Tower. Twisted Tower is Oh man, guys, it's so close. It is so close to being done. But Twisted Tower is right here. This is Twisted Tower. So, what's my point? My point is if you want to learn from an actual indie game developer, a game developer who's gone

full-time on three separate occasions, what I mean by that is whether it's publishers, whether it's Kickstarter, whether it's hitting the Steamfront page or doing deals with Apple, it doesn't matter. I've figured out how to bring in revenue for just demos. I I'll take a demo and I'll convert it into a paycheck and go full-time. And I've done that on three separate occasions. So, click the link below, check it out, see if it's something you're interested in. And look, if you're not interested in what I have to say, at least read the reviews on the website of students who actually went full-time with the help of the program. Andre, Chris, Bart, Everflux, Felipe, really cool stories here of students who went full-time with the help of the course. And hey, what you're going to learn in it, what is uh let me think here. There's a lot to learn. um how to get publishers, how to do Kickstarter campaigns, how to hit the Steam front page, how to reach out to the press and market your game, how to get wish lists, how to actually make a game, whether it's uh made in Unity, GDAU, or Unreal. You can take your pick in the course. Um also, my 2D program for 2D art or my 3D

art program, which is brand new, those are going to be included free. And hey, I'll also throw in a YouTube course, totally free, that teaches how to do devlogs and how to build a YouTube channel around your games, right? So, click the link below, check it out. You get 50% off, but it's only for 14 more days. And I'll also give you a shout out in tomorrow's live stream. Okay, let's go ahead and jump into the games, guys. You ready to play some games? Let's go. So, the first game we're going to play today. First game we're going to play is called Appalachia. Appalachia. Monkey says, "Welcome back, Thomas." Yay. I missed the series. Let's go. Does it include the 2D course as well? Yeah, it does. Like this is the this is one of the bigger sales. This it's massive. I think this is as big as the Black Friday sale if I'm being honest with you. Um that was last year. So yeah, 2D course and then also the 3D 3D art course which is brand new. We just redid the whole

thing. Um so that's totally free. Okay. So Appalachia. Appalachia. And yeah, guys, if I've been distant, it's because I've been What do you think? Who can guess why I've been super distant? Can anybody guess why has Thomas Brush not been on YouTube? What's What's been going on? He barely posts anymore. Coffee AI 2011 says, "I'm here for for Julie London." How did you know that? How did you know that? Good job. Look, I'll show you. You were right. This is a great album. The one of the best albums ever written. Um, incredible music. Okay, ready guys? Vacation. No, no, not

vacation. Although I did go on No, I did. I went on vacation last week, but no, I've been finishing up Twisted Tower, getting that freaking game done. How many of you are working on a game right now and you're thinking, "When this game is done, I don't even care how well it does. I just want to be freaking done." This is called Appalachia. Let's go ahead and play Appalachia. I'm excited. Okay. And if you want to submit your games, go to x.comomasbrushdev and then you can submit your games whenever I mention the ability to play games. All right, spells here. How you doing? Codeex game says me. My six-month game is now two years. Lol. Exactly what I'm feeling. That's from Lepore. All right, let's turn this down a little bit. I love this music. This is great.

Oh, good job. Oh, yes. Oh, that feels good. Okay, let's go to new game. The last step. The last stop before heading up in them woods. I can't read what that says. Let me close Discord really quick. All right, let's turn it up a little bit. I'm just repeating what people say. But the folks at that gas station down the road, they got real quiet when I told them where I was headed. Real quiet.
I'd love subtitles.
One guy just goes, "You dropping someone off up the holler." And I'm like, "Yeah, you know, normal job, regular Tuesday, right?" Guy just stares at me. Doesn't blink.
It's too dark. Then he says, "Too dark.
Don't stay after dark.

I love the vibe and the music.
Now listen, I'm not superstitious or nothing.
Voice acting's good.
Three rat infestations and a Yankees losing streak in the same year. I got thick skin. But then the lady behind the counter, she leans,
I don't know who's talking.
Tell me where the bathroom is and she goes, "Sometimes things walk down out of that mountain. Walk, not run. walk like they got some place to be.
Let's see if we could turn the uh
Anyway. Anyway, listen. None of my business. That's your business.
Okay, that doesn't actually do anything.
Staying up here. Me? I'm heading right back to civilization. Street lights.
That's me. Not sure this number still works for you, but figured I'd give it a shot anyway.
I know you said to hell with this holler, but we could really use your help. I I'll explain what I'm feeling in just a second.

Tag along on a few of my paranormal hunts. And this idiot must have ran off in the woods on account of these voices we've been hearing up here. One of them sounds just like you, believe it or not. Bring that gear you used to mess around with. That thermal imager and EMF reader. Whatever is out here will give off some type of signature.
Okay, there we go. It was just really Okay, let me let me focus for a sec.
Hold on. I think I Hey, get back here. Hey. Hey. Damn dogs.
Yeah, it's hard to forget that day.
What is happening?
Shining into the woodline. Whatever that was looking back at us did not look like it wanted to be seen.
I don't know what's going on. Okay, so couple thoughts here. The game started at a really low resolution. No idea why. Need to make sure that it starts at least 1080p. It's okay, I think, in my

opinion to default to 1080p. So, if you want to default to 1080p and then let me go up to 4K if I want, that's fine. Oh, we got Exorcist music playing, which is awesome. Thank you. Number two. So, music's good, vibes good, voice acting was good. Give me subtitles. You need to pause the the voice acting when I hit pause. Um, you need to give me a minute to figure out who's talking. So, I just [music] heard three different characters. I have no idea what they said and I also have no idea who they were. Um, some of them were crispy sounding, others sounded like they were in my ear. [music] So, I don't know. I was really confused. If you guys have any ideas in the chat what just happened, please let me know. But I could not figure out what's going on. Um, press apply for brightness. Yeah. Okay.

So, brightness sliders are interesting. I kind of want to see the brightness changing. So, [music] um, that's where that's where I what I would do if I was the developer. I would have it change uh the moment that I make a change and then hit apply. I want to be able to see it, you know. Okay, let's go back. See if that's dark enough. This looks a lot better. I would fill in the shadows a little bit more with just some subtle ambient light and then use fog to create um basically a limit to what I can see. So, that fog's great. I would just give me some ambient light and maybe some um you could you you could do some bounce lighting or you could just use ambient lighting from the skybox and just fill in the shadows a little bit. Now you're probably thinking, "Well, Thomas, but I don't want to see the shadows over there because I won't be scared." Well, that's why you use like fog to sort of fill in the just darken things, but I want to

see in front of me. Or you could put a point light on the player, a subtle point light. I think Resident Evil Village does that. Okay, so I'm pretty, you know, lost, but that's okay. Let's keep let's explore. So, this feels out of place graphically. Let's keep going. I love this character controller. He's really, really smooth. Feels great. That was a crazy hill. So, whenever you have a path with terrain, it's good to have it go in like this, not out. Paths go in because they've been tread on. So, I would I would make that go down a little bit. Sound is good, though. It feels great. Um, the vibes are good. Lighting is good. Sound is good. Explore the Did I just go down? Okay, let's go this way. What's this? Yeah. So, I would say that the reflection probe is a little odd for your metallics. It's fine.

Make sure those go in the ground. Not a big deal, though. Uh, a change in sound with footsteps are really great for horror games like this because it it makes it feel more immersive. So, having this change to wood, maybe have dust particle sounds play even. You could even use a sound trigger and just have or like the sound of wood dropping. You could have a crack and then [laughter] And it sounds like wood dropped when in reality it was just a sound trigger. So that kind of stuff is really really important in the first five minutes of your game. Okay. I can't see anything. Do I can I do a flashlight? Slide down the side of the hill. That feels really unrealistic. Like it kind of takes me out of the game. It feels so This just feels like a

terrain tool, you know? The terrain tool was like, click, click, click, and it was done. So, you want to be careful using the terrain tool. Yeah, our reflection probes are kind of off right now. It's causing some weird um specular and metallic. So, I would try and re-ake those. All right. So, I'm not sure where to go. Okay. Got a backpack.
Finders keepers.
I can't see anything. Let's Let's go to brightness. Let's crank it up as bright as we can and see if we can see. No. Can't see anything. Can't see anything. Um, can I use it? Okay. I got a lantern. Can't use it. I got a pocketk knife. One is for the pocketk knife. Good. How do I use the the lantern? I can't use the lantern.

I do hate I do hate uh baked lighting. I I It's not that it's a bad thing. Baked lighting is a great thing. And when you're a when you're a hardcore professional at baked lighting, um it looks amazing. Baked lighting is just very very limiting. Um, so yeah. Okay. I can't see much and I'm at full brightness. There's a flashlight. Okay. But let me turn it on. So, I got everything I need, but I can't Make sure you um

remove the hand or change cameras so the hand is always in front. But you should probably just remove the hand. Just literally deactivate the hand when this comes up. Um okay. So I'm looking at a radio. Okay, that feels good. Okay. I just don't know how to use a flashlight. So, I don't understand how games can be performant without baked lighting. That's from Gaspro. Well, Gaspro, is this from personal experience that you're struggling with? Like, are you have you have you found it very um that your games suffer when there's too many lights? Yeah, baked lighting is 100% used abundantly. It's It's used all the time. I found that I could get away with real-time lighting when I limited my

shadows. So, so, okay, one of the things you want to do with kind of a horror game like this, I'm I'm going to assume this is a horror game, is in my opinion, you should start the player in a very small space, give them a singular objective alongside a big global one. Okay? a big huge single global one which is this game is about blank. So there's a lighthouse up there and you hear a scream and he says Jennifer, right? That's that's a classic I I use that in Twisted Tower. Classic. Give the player a destination. give them a goal so that they know why they should explore all this. Cuz I'll be honest with you right now I'm like what what

what is there to do? I don't know what this is about. I don't know who who I am or why I should care about where I am. Do I know this place? Do I not know this place? Does the does the main character know this place or not know this place? Is he lost? All of this is confusing to me. Now you might say, "Well, Thomas was in the beginning audio logs." Well, those audio logs were confusing. Um, and there was no subtitles and I was trying to fix my settings. That was great. Good jump scare. I love that. [cheering] What's going on? So, I'm trying to like help miners. I thought the sound was from this. Prison labor undercuts minors. Riots

erupted down. Oh, that. Okay, so this is like a a newspaper article. The art arts a little struggles a little bit. I think we need to make it look more like a newspaper article. Riots erupted downtown as lawmakers veto a bill to prevent prisoners from working coal mine to reduce their sentencing. Coal miners are disappointed with the decision as the prison honeypot will continue to operate and steal work from us, said one disgruntled citizen. Okay, but I don't know where that sound was coming from, you know. Okay, so far I'm not really sure what's going on and I feel a little bored. My brain brightness is completely cranked up by the way. Like it is full blast brightness and it's still pretty dark.

So nothing there was no real gameplay beat here. There was no nothing that was taught really. Nothing changed in terms of gameplay. I just read a note. Right? So, what you want to make sure you do is guide the player, especially at the beginning of the game. Guide the player slowly. And it doesn't mean you have to make them feel like it's linear, but guide them very slowly and carefully and progress them from story beat to story beat and gameplay mechanic to gameplay mechanic. be very gentle and hold their hand for the first five minutes, but make sure it's fun and exciting and interesting. So, there's a bunch of these really strange hills that I can just climb up. This is an odd one. Okay. So, I

there's like five places to go and I can't turn on the the flashlight. So, I'm not sure what to do or where to go or why I'm here. I have no idea. Does anybody have any idea what this game is about? Uh don't read the Steam description, although that is helpful. I understand. But like based on like the uh introductory sequence, does anybody have a better a good idea or like a better idea than me about what's going on? Okay, so there's just an invisible wall here which can be very frustrating to players. Um I I have experience with this during beta testing with my game where players they just feel cheated when you do this. This just feel like this looks absolutely the same as over here, but I could walk over here but I can't hear, right? So at least put a fence here. It's really, it just sucks the immersion out. Um, so nothing is available over here from what I can gather. Um, this guy is just flowing. You can walk away. Okay. I'm I'm stuck here. Nothing to do

here. I don't know what that is. Whoa. Yeah. So, this this this is just really unfinished. Um, whether it's a demo, whether it's early access, or whether it's a 1.0 0 launch on Steam. You need to treat all three of those like they're launches. You need to treat them with that level of care and polish. Um there is no such thing as just being able to launch something on Steam. You have to make sure it's basically perfect. The difference between a demo and 1.0 is a demo is just shorter and it doesn't have all the levels and all the features, but it's still just as polished. It should be, right? Okay, let's go in here. Okay, you could definitely disable the collider there. That's totally fine to do. Feel free to disable the collider when it opens. Now, the one reason you might not want to disable the collider is if the game is like there's combat and there's like enemies who shoot at you from over there and you want to hide behind the door. Um, but you can

obviously change the layer mask as well so that it goes through the player but bullets don't go through it.
Honey, I'm home. some here.
I love the voice acting. It's great. Good sound. I like that.
I'm telling you, I've seen somebody up here. Jimmy,
shut up. You ain't seen nothing. Let's get back. Mama don't like to wait. So, the problem with
didn't sound too friendly at all.
Um, the problem with the sound effects is that they're a lot of them are 2D and so you can't tell where they're coming from. You don't know whether they're in my head, they're coming from outside, they're coming from a radio. Everything just sounds everpresent in my brain and it's very disorienting. We need to position that audio source

perhaps outside and then have a reverb zone so that it e plays an echoey reverbby sound like there's footsteps coming from outside. I have no idea where that sound came from. It sounded like it came from my own brain to be honest because there was no reverb on it. Okay, so we've got a house that's functionless. Okay. Anything to do? I'm pressing E. Okay. All aboard. The state recently approved a new work program for prisoners in the Appalachian territory. Most of the boys are saying they would do anything to cut their sentences. and with a railroad rehabilitation pro. Okay. Yeah, feel free to get rid of the spec

specular on that. You don't need it. Uh most of the boys are saying they would do anything to cut their sentences. And with the railroad rehabilitation program full, I program full. I figured there was no this was a no-brainer. Not sure. I'm I'm not following much of what's going on, but I'm enjoying the game feel. I think the the the the character controller, the vibe, the mood is all a lot of fun. I think the developers done a really good job actually. But in terms of like what era I'm in, what's the setting, what's the story, what's the point, where am I going, what's the conflict, what's the mystery, where the gameplay mechanics, those things are kind of lost on me if I'm being honest. Um, okay. I think we're ready to move on to the next game. We've been playing for how long? Almost 20 25 minutes. Think about the the thing about a demo or even just a game, a 1.0 launch. I should be fully

invested within five minutes or the game is going to really struggle. That's the general rule. And I understand that that sucks and a lot of you don't like to hear that. And maybe it is unfair, right? Maybe that's just why do we have to let all these impatient Steam players critique our games? Don't they know they need to play for an hour before they're interested before? Like we want to do a slow burn. You can do a slow burn, but let's be generous in the first five minutes. Let's be generous with the jump scares, the interest, the vibe, the mood, the mystery, the motivation, the character, the setting. Give me all of these bits and pieces of information so that I can lock in and be interested. Right now, I have no idea what's going on. I love this chicken, but other than that, I have no idea. No idea. All right. Okay. You guys ready to move on to the next game? You ready? All right.

Let's do it. So, yeah. Yeah. I'm I was kind of lost, honestly. I didn't know really what was going on at all, but we're going to move on to the next game. And by the way, just remember if you guys want to join full-time gamedev, which is my massive gamedev course, which teaches you everything I've learned in the last decade of making three commercial releases with three different publishers and going full-time with just demos. Um, click the link below, check it out. And I have students who went full-time. There's reviews on the the website, so check it out below. It's 50% off um for the summer sale. It doesn't last forever. It's a it's a short sale, and it's one of my biggest sales of the year. So check it out below and you're going to learn everything I've learned in making games and pitching games and and securing funding. Um whether it's Kickstarter or publishers, whether it's hitting the Steamfront page, whether it's doing deals, um reaching out to the press, marketing your game, getting wish lists, or actually just building a great a great game. That's all in the course. It's massive. And you're also going to get my 2D art program, my 3D art

program, which is brand new. And then also my YouTube program. These are all completely free, but just for this sale event. This is a big one. This is almost as big as Black Friday. Okay, so go ahead and check that out below. Let's move on to the next game, guys. Thanks for hanging out. I love you all. Wow, we have 250 people watching. That's great. Makes me so happy. I feel better about myself. Let's go ahead and play God's Gate. Now, here's the thing. Some of you, you might submit your games on on Twitter, and you're like, "Man, Thomas never picks my game. Why doesn't Thomas play my game? Does he think it's bad?" Well, I don't actually pick games that I think look good. I picked games that look like something that we could all discuss and we could learn from, right? God's Gate, if I'm being honest, was one of those games where I saw it and I said, "You know what? This looks like it's a it had it needs some work." And so, we're going to we're going to play this live and uh offer some some constructive criticism to to help this game out. Man, that logo makes me just feel like it's Blizzard,

you know? I love it so much. Um, so let's go ahead and hit play here and take a look. It does. I mean, that's the that's the trouble. I don't want to say it looks like AI art. I could say it looks like AI art. Okay, that's all I'm going to say. I'm going to say that the some of these PGs, some of this UI, the cover art, the logo, it kind of looks like AI, but I can't say it is. I hate when people just go and just basically pillage on on the internet and just or or what's the word? They um they draw and quarter anybody who they think used AI. And uh all of my games, including my latest games, don't use any generative AI. They don't do use AI music, AI art, 3D or 2D or UI, none of it. Um,

that said, I can't come in here and just say this is AI. I could say it feels like it, but I'm not going to say it is. So, this feels like it. Especially considering [sighs and gasps] the text here is really, really ugly and it's behind this. In my head, I go, "Okay, the developer couldn't even put together a a demo splash screen. What makes me think they designed this by hand? You know, but maybe I'm wrong. That's a great logo, but it's low res. All right, let's hit start game. Okay, character definitely feels out of place. I love that music. [laughter]

Oh, that feels good. Look at the way I run. Hey, that feels good. Good. Uh, good sound. I'm out of ammo. Yeah. So, the character is completely different than the artwork in the game. He's like low poly. I love how he moves. It's not great, but I I think it's funny. Okay. So, yeah, the character we need to put smoothing on because everything else has shade smoothing, but the character doesn't have shade smoothing. Yeah, it's this the UI, the art, everything kind of feels incoherent or in inongruent. Look at the way they walk. That's hilarious. Whoa. So, whenever I shoot, I don't actually shoot where my cursor is. You could see it. Look at that. What in the world?

That was odd. Yeah, it's always to like the left or the right of my cursor, which is definitely problematic. It's going to be frustrating for players. Needs to be perfectly precise. So, there's no pause menu. Yeah, that's really frustrating. Look. Yeah, it's really hard to shoot him. Honestly, it's just completely off center. Look at that. So, we got some math issues there related to to shoot direction. Yeah, I love the music. It's great.

Bare minimum, I think this the UI might be an asset. Um, which is fine. It's okay if things are assets. It just the game feels very asset. It feels like a lot of different assets were placed into a quick uh project and then it doesn't feel congruent. So, oh, I'm in like a I see. I'm in like an Egyptian tomb. I love the music. That's great. That reload animation's so funny. So, yeah. I mean, I'm not particularly challenged right now,

so let's just keep playing. That music makes me uh feel happy. So yeah, it's like not really challenging. I like the gunplay. The gun sound is good. The music just stopped. Okay, so what are some things that I would do? The first thing I would do is figure out what's going on with the reflection probe. Um, it's reflecting a blue skybox, I believe. And it makes this look like the ground is covered in like oil, and that's just not right. We don't want the ground to look like it's covered in oil because, you know, oil has that like pinkish bluish like reflection. We don't want that. So, we we need to fix the skybox or the reflection probe or both. Uh, the ground looks like it's just wet. I would I would remove this the shine. uh a lot of Z fighting and that that's a that's

because the ground is a bunch of quads. We don't need a bunch of quads for the ground unless it's an asset and in that case you would you know lay out a bunch of quads for the ground. Instead, what you'd want to do is just a nice clean quad or you would do a probuilder mesh for the entire room. Um, and then you'd be able to tile correctly. Uh, the UV. Um, the animation for the character feels it's the skipping is very odd. So, I would I would head on over to Miximo and just get some decent animations. The skipping is just very interesting. Like, it's just very odd. Um, and all of the enemies kind of do that. Um, I would also put shade smoothing on the character. Um, the music is great. Just make sure we loop it properly. Make sure we fix the um the shooting [snorts] position. You can see here that it never goes to where my crosshair is, which is very frustrating. Okay, it did there. Maybe it's because

I'm moving. No, that's just Let's see. Something's odd about it. I can't put a finger on it. It just doesn't feel right. Um like this here. Let's see if we can get it to work. That's just weird. Look at that. it just never seems to go exactly where the crosshair is. Um, so yeah, you might want to put make make the crosshair at an actual Y position above the ground so that it's perfectly lined up for where the shooting is occurring. Um, the UI looks like something out of a Starcraft game, but this is not Starcraft. You need to make it look old and like it's a like old um hieroglyphics and stone, right? Um, do that. that will probably make things feel a lot more um cohesive. And also the the um the layout of the level's very bland. It's basically just a bunch of quads on the floor. Um reload animation. We need a reload sound. Um and probably a better

animation. Looks like he's taking a a clip out of his ear. Um so we need a a reload sound, right? uh so that I know when it's done. I need to know when it's done so that I can keep firing because there's been multiple times when I try to start firing and I can't. I'm like, why? It's because there's no sound. So, I can't. It's not like basically telegraphing me what's going on. I don't know when the relay is done. The smoke is it doesn't match the other assets. It looks like something out of Wind Waker, but everything else is very like a higher fidelity. Uh, death sound would be great for all of the enemies. Also, a looping sound for how many enemies are following. So, I want to hear a crowd following me with footsteps. Goh, but we don't have any of that right now.

Also, when you have UI above the the enemy heads and when you have this many enemies, um you I just don't think you need that high of a fidelity UI. Just give me give me a simple bar. Um and then, you know, get you could I guess you can include the character name, but I wouldn't. That's just so that's just so much text. But yeah, I haven't gotten hurt once, I don't think. So definitely the game is just way too easy, which makes it not fun. You know, there's I I'm not worried or scared or anything. But overall, I think that this game does have potential. I think the fact that the game is running at what looks like it's running at 150 frames per second with all these enemies is a good thing. You know, that's that's great. Okay. Well, I don't I don't know. I don't know what the game's about. It's not my favorite. Um I think the game has plenty of work to do. And this comes back to what we were talking about earlier, guys. A demo, treat your demo as a 1.0 launch.

[clears throat] Treat it as a 1.0 launch. And the reason why is because your demo is going to be this. I call it a magic wand. A demo is like a magic wand. It gives you a ton of wish lists. Um, it gets people to play the game via let's play and then on YouTube and Twitch and then more wish lists come in. It also validates your idea. What you don't want is you don't want to release a demo that's halfbaked and then people say it sucks whether it's on the community or if you leave the reviews open. People say it sucks. You read the reviews and you get discouraged, right? And you think, man, I made a really crappy game. When in reality, you just halfbaked the demo. You didn't treat the demo with the same kind of respect that a 1.0 launch should have. So, treat your demo like it's a 1.0 launch. treat your early access game like it's a 1.0 launch because let's be honest, Steam players are going to do that. They're going to treat it like it's a

1.0 launch because, well, Steam players are just, [laughter] including all of us, kind of unforgiving these days. There's so many games. My library is chocked full of Steam games. I don't have time to deal with a halfbaked demo or a halfbaked early access game. But Thomas, early access is for when you just started your game. Thomas, early access, it's okay for your game to suck. It's not true. Your game needs to be pretty freaking awesome if you want it to be successful in early access. Bare minimum, it just needs to be really, really fun. If there's bugs, it's fine as long as the bugs don't ruin the main experience. So, you just want you want a high level of fidelity or high level of polish, not fidelity, polish for pretty much anything you release on Steam. anything. It's not It's not We're not in Kansas anymore, right? What do I mean by that? I mean, it's not 2014 or 2015 anymore. I

think it was 20,000 games released in 2025. We got to compete, guys. And if you release a halfbaked game, it's going to get swept down the river with all the other debris. And we'll see what happens with this one. We'll see what happens with this one. It might get swept down the river with all the other debris as well. All right, you guys ready for the next game? What did you What are you saying? Okay, let's answer some questions, guys. Do you have questions for me? What questions do you have? Does anybody have any questions for Mr. Uncle Thomas? I want it to be a demo then release done. What is that game considered 3D or 2.5D? That's 3D. I would say that's 3D. 2.5D is kind of like I always see it as like a sidescroller. Um, yeah. What other questions do we have here about any of the feedback I

had for that game or any ideas you guys had? What? Let's Let's see what you got in the comments. Well, I mean, True Play, I I I'm not saying that that was I don't know if that was slop. It's hard to know if that was slop because it was just halfbaked. So, just because something's half halfbaked doesn't mean it's slop necessarily. And also, slop can be a good kind of game. Like, there's plenty of games that are friend slop that are actually good. Um, let's see here. Twisted Tower before GTA 6. Yes. So, basically, you just release a demo and then work more then release fully after. Yeah, absolutely. You [snorts] focus all of your effort and energy on a demo. And the reason why is because the demo, if it's great, if you do it right, the demo is basically your game. And then you just expand on it. The demo is that vertical slice. It's the hey,

here's the um here's the loop, here's the mechanics, here's the gimmick, and this is the game. This is what I have to offer you. And if players love it and they play the demo, then you know all you got to do is just scale on that, right? What is the main thing that makes a game interesting? Oh, I I couldn't tell you. There's a million things. Is there a way to fix the shiny from the textures in Unity? Yeah, get rid just crank that smoothness down to zero. How important do you think the controller support is for a demo? I mean everything that you do just say what would I do for 1.0. That's how I treat demos. What would you do for 1.0? Would you have controller support for 1.0? Then you should put it in your demo. The only thing that a 1.0

doesn't have compared to a demo in my opinion that it shouldn't have is it shouldn't be, you know, the full game. That's it. but it should have pretty much the same level of polish that 1.0 has. Make sense? Okay, let's jump on to the last game, ladies and gentlemen. And just remember to click that link below if you want to join full-time gamedev. This is one of my biggest sales. This sale and then like Black Friday are usually my big ones, right? Black Friday is not till November. So, if you want to join full-time gamedev, which is my massive course, which teaches you everything I've learned about making these two commercial releases and getting published and going full-time to make these games, but also my third commercial release, which is called Twisted Tower, how I got published and financed or or funded for that game as well. It wasn't financed, it was funded. Click the link below, check it out, see if it's something you're interested in. Whether it's Kickstarter publishers, hitting the Steamfront page, getting press coverage, making a game in 2D or

3D when GDAU, Unity, or Unreal, click the link below to check it out. It's 50% off for the next 14 days. And I'll also give you a shout out in tomorrow's live stream. Okay. [gasps] Oh, this game is called Invido Veritas. Y'all ready? Let's go. Invito. I'm a little anxious about this game if I'm being honest because it looks very it looks a little asset, but we're gonna we're gonna we're going to see if if it's okay. And it's okay to use assets. It's just when a game is looks very asset. It's just an indication that it's it's not um well, we'll just see, right? We'll see. We'll see. I love that blood. That's cool.

Oh, this music's flying. Listen. Oh, I love that. Nice sound. Nice music. Oh, good. It's got clicky sounds. Okay. I'd make those squares. This is a little odd. Or like maybe boxed in. Like it's hard to see. Okay. Instead of a click sound there. I think it would be better if it was like a paper sound or like a typewriter sounding or that paper sound right there. The cab was a little wobbly.

So, he's stressed out. He's tired. He's smoking. He's got a girlfriend. Cop. What? He goes to a abandoned place and he's running backwards and then he goes into a hut. What? Okay, so in the comments, y'all let me know what just happened. Does anyone know what what was that setup for? Because that was 20 seconds of our time, maybe 40 seconds of our time. Okay.

What was that for? Typically, here's here's the thing. Typically, when you guys when you when you when you h when you when you cannibalize a player's time like that, you better give them a lot of good stuff to motivate them. You need to say, "My girlfriend was pregnant and I was just she was just about to give birth and we had this beautiful house that we were going to buy on 20 acres of land and then suddenly she went missing because of a case with the green leaf killer in the mountains of Wisconsin. I got to find her. something like that. Now, okay, now I have a motivation, but I don't know what just happened. So, that was 20 30 seconds of my time. None of it it felt

like none of it was relevant. Now, does anyone know Does anyone know what happened? His girlfriend is lost and he's looking for her, but it was unclear. So, I'm a bit confused. He burned the Okay. Uh, astral travel. Yeah, maybe. But Thomas, but Thomas, you'll figure it out later. No, that's not what I'm saying. I'm not saying, "Hey, Tom," I'm not Thomas is not saying, "Give the player everything up front." Thomas is saying, "Give me a motivation. Tell me where I am, who I am, what I am." To a degree, something. You don't have to give me every little detail, but it give me something to cling to to justify what I'm about to do, which is walk slowly through the woods. Watch every Resident Evil intro cut scene or or intro whatever, and they'll give

you something to cling to, some sort of little tiny story to or a mystery or a motive, and let you know, hey, this is your destination. And this is our goal. Everything has motion blur. This feels good. So the the the reverb sounds like I'm in a bathroom.
So I would I would fix that. Make it sound like I'm outside. It's okay. Sorry guys, give me a sec. Give me just a sec, guys. My publisher's calling.

Okay, let's keep going. What's this say? Missing poster. Yeah. For who? For what? Why is this matter? You know, we'll keep we'll keep going. But point being, if you're going to give me a cut scene like that, sorry to harp on the cut scene so much, but if you're going to give me a cut scene like that, um, give me something something to cling to. Nice. I like that.
God damn it, you [ __ ] cruel.
Whoa. Whoa, bro. Whoa. Okay, so in order to make that work because now I now the player just seems like a complete dork with that, you need to actually scare the player. Okay. So, if it was [panting] and it was a jump scare and you go, [gasps]

[sighs] "Oh, you damn scarecrow." That would work. But that right there just was like, "Dude, chill. You're being a drama queen." Okay. So, you know, letting the player have a ton of open space like this is is it it is kind of problematic. Now, you're probably thinking, well, the village in um
how long have these bodies been here?
What bodies? Oh, yeah. Give me a look trigger there. So, I have to look down and maybe maybe uh put a key on him or like a coin and I go Uh, let me walk through the body. I would remove the collider. Um, but yeah, what I was saying was, um, if you're going to put me in a big open space like this with like five branching paths, um,

that's fine. Resident Evil, the new one did that in partic the the the the remake Resident Evil 4. It it it puts you into a pretty challenging combat scenario immediately, but it's obvious that it's a maze that you have to get through and it's your first combat encounter. Right now, it's like, okay, well, I'm I'm going to get lost here for what? Like, what's what's the goal? So, I would guide the player a little bit more. I wouldn't give this much open space right away. Okay, make that a little smoother getting up here. Okay, so one of the reasons why why guiding the player is so important at the beginning of a game is because you're trying to set up or scale the story, especially this game.

The problem is is that I just found a dead body next to a well and I didn't get a jump scare sound. It was just like his body's here. This one I got a jump scare sound. And my assumption is is that the developer was thinking well this is the first one you're going to go to. Well, don't assume that when the and I'm not saying that may I'm thinking the developer maybe assumed that. They thought the player's going to go in here because of that light. Well, but there's tons of light over here. So, I would guide the player with with level design. So, what I would do is I would um force the player to go here first to get something to get past here. It's okay to lock them into a tight space at the beginning as long as there's some interesting story stuff going on. That make sense? So, the hands are a little odd to me, right? It's a little odd. So, I think I think

we just need to maybe get rid of them. And there's no legs. I I just don't see the value in the hands. So, I feel lost. Oh, I already went up there. Let's keep going. Oh no, there's a lot I can do. Whoa. Post-processing explosion. So, art's great, but the the world doesn't really fit the controller. Okay, this is this is a big thing that I try and teach a lot um especially with my

private little cohort that I te uh I work with and consult with. I I teach about gridbased devel design level design and I learned this from my own team member Filipe when we worked on Twisted Tower. It's better to graybox your scene to an exact grid and then set dress on top of that. And stuff like this is why this is just really like irritating when you have just all these pieces sort of sticking out and your head's getting caught on stuff, right? It's just not fun. And so it's better to build a grid, understand your grid, snap to the grid, and then either build your custom assets to that grid, or uh scale all of your assets that you've downloaded to that grid. And that it

that takes time, and it's a very frustrating process. It's slow, but you want all of your assets to fit within the confines of a grid. Here's another example. This is very frustrating. It completely removes me from the game. It's like what? And that's because the level design is being done kind of haphazard um as opposed to to a nice clean grid. Now, that doesn't mean it has to feel like a grid, right? You'd put the the you'd have a nice grid here and then you'd use those rocks, but the rocks aren't really necessarily a mesh collider. It's really the grid that you're you're you're working with. So, a lot of this feels great, though. Seriously, a lot of this feels great. Looks amazing, but some of the world just doesn't feel

um intentional. the the the level design, but let's keep playing. So, yeah, there was a lot of places to go there just now that served no purpose, right? In the introductory section, let's say the first five minutes of your game, you want to make the player feel like there's a lot to explore, but in reality, there's not. There's just a few things they have to do. If I was the level designer or the project lead, what I would have done with this section, this is important stuff. It really is. I mean, this is stuff that I had to deal with emotionally and spiritually and physically. When I submitted my game to my publisher for their first play test, there there was a oftentimes they'd say, "Well, that the intro took me an hour or like 40

minutes." And I'm like, "What? You just got to go to the sign and crouch under the sign." And they're like, "Well, no. I spent the first 30 minutes playing that first intro sequence looking for something." As a player, you're thinking, "Okay, I got to find something because the player or the developer has given me all this space." Look at this. This isn't the time to do this kind of thing. And I almost totally missed this.
How is it possible? No one has ever investigated this place before. Or maybe these are the very ones who did.
Yeah. So, I don't I I think that that you just want to be careful. You want to guide the player through all of this. Now, later on in the game, it's okay to put the player into a location where they then have to sprawl out and solve a big puzzle or a maze.

But I think right now you want to keep it tight, secure, and guide the player. Hold their hand. I love these leaves. Art art wise, this game looks amazing. The light's great. It's not too dark, but I I you know, all this stuff that I just explored was not particularly interesting or necessary. So, you just got to be thinking like what would the player what what what are what is the average player going to do? Well, 30% might go down the left path and find nothing. Uh 30% might go straight forward and miss the two paths. Another 30% might go on the right side and ex and and and and see the bones and then not see the left side, which is fine, I guess, but you're getting you're creating an unpredictable experience. So, some players are going to be like, "It was amazing." And then other players are like, "There was nothing. Every time I'd go round a corner, there was nothing there." And that's because they're going down certain paths, but not the other paths.

So, if you're going to create branching paths or maze-like struct maze- like level design, you got to fill in those gaps. Otherwise, it's going to create an incon inconsistent results for players. Saving. This is cool. Look at that. I love the art, guys. This is really cool. Okay. Okay. We need a key. So far, I I think that aside from the level design,

I wouldn't That was just I'm going to say thank God in real life I'm not going to die from a fall like that because I would be dead. I'd be dead when I was about nine years old. I fell off of a slide. I tried to slide down a tube slide, the ones that are enclosed. I tried to slide down the top of it and I fell really bad. It hurt. I would have died. ambience art like the the developer the artist of this game knew what they were doing. This is incredible. I think the level what I was saying earlier was the level design is a little odd. um the way in which objects are

presented or uh paths are presented. Yeah, we need a collider there. So, let's see if we can find a key. Okay, so running sounds keep playing I think when I'm in the air. So, typically what you want to do is you want to show the lock before the key. So, this is this is fine, I guess. Just keep in mind if the key is over there, just keep in mind that if the key is over here, it's a problem with design because you should always see the lock before the key.
A doll and a grave. Unusual.
Tube slides are no joke. Uh, if the developer is watching, great

tone, great voice acting. I love the camera and the controller. It's really good. Seriously. So, there's just some design issues, some level design issues that these are, if I'm being completely honest with you, these are the exact issues that I've I've made on my games. And they were painful ma mistakes because I had to redo the levels. Me and Filipe did. Um, granted they're not be they're not even perfect now. I mean, who am I kidding? But, um, we we learned a lot. In particular, intro sequences don't need to be complicated. You should have just let me walk down that path and get to this door, you know, cuz I didn't really learn much from that previous segment where there's a bunch of sheds and stuff. So, I got a doll. I doubt this is the key, of course, but

who knows? Maybe it is.
Yeah, the the reverb is odd of the jumping. It's it pulls me out of the world. It should be like this. [panting] You should hear like a delay maybe echoing through the trees. something like that. So, yeah, I've been playing this for about 15 minutes and I feel like there hasn't been a jump scare. I'm not super interested in what's going on because I haven't been given a motive. Um, so these are these are these are not these are not art questions. These are not music questions. These are not story questions necessarily. They're setup questions. Setting up the scene, setting up the the level

or setting up the game. And what I mean by setting it up is the the first 15 minutes is crucial. It really is.
Does anyone have any idea where I go? I got a doll. Hey JP, how you doing man? JP is a really awesome guy. How you doing bud? Have you gone through here? Anybody know where I take this teddy bear? Okay. Well, you know, that's all I've got time for. Um, and I apologize to the

developer if I didn't figure that out quick enough. There was an Allen skull. A what? An alien skull. Where?
Yeah. One of the one of the big issues here is that if you're going to make if you're going to make the player get lost and explore, that's fine, I guess, but I need to I need to be motivated.
One of the this is a great example. Um, when I go on a hike, I like to hike, not really, but like when I do like to hike, there's mountains near me. When I go hiking, I know there's going to be what at the end? What's at the What is at the end of a hike? Does anyone know? What's at the end of a hike? It might sound like a dumb question, but but it's this is a good exercise. What's at the end of a hike? A glowing head. I'm kidding.

You effing bird. You piece of a view. That's right. So, a great hike is always one that you know there's a really good view, there's a good destination, there's you get to the top, you get to a waterfall, you get to a cave. Well, you don't start the hike thinking, what's at the end. You start the hike thinking, I cannot wait. I'm gonna I'm gonna hike seven miles to get to that destination. I want to see it so bad. And then when you get the destination, it's so exciting. The same is true with games. When you say, "Hey, there is a cult inside of that castle." And that cult is going to skin your cat. And you can hear the cat screaming in the distance. Now I'm motivated to get

there. And I'll keep playing through, you know, getting lost, getting confused to get my skinned cat. Right. What's over here? Okay. So, we just need we need to create clear boundaries. Okay. Does anyone know what to do? the glowing head in the cave. Okay, let's go take a look in the cave.
Yeah, no, graphically it does. It feels like Alan Wake for sure. I think atmospherically, graphically it's it's solid. Oh, there's a glowing head right there. Wait, I can't get over there because the

game wasn't built on a grid. This kind of stuff is really frustrating. Look, got to be careful. All right, I got a skull. I would I would uh say that's maybe Thomas's fault because he's been talking a lot. Although an outline would have helped if I if I may be so bold. I would outline it. I would have it [sighs] an outline showing. I think it the game shouldn't always tell you exactly what to do obviously, but it should give you better hints, I think, at the beginning. The beginning is important to to hint

the player. Okay, so I've collected two items, I think. Have I? A baby doll and a skull. And none of them were the key. And this is the first key in the game, right? So, it's important to keep that in mind, which is like we don't really want to complicate things too much at the first in the first five minutes of the game, you know? Okay, I've gone pretty much everywhere. I think I should. I just keep going back and forth because I don't know what else to look for. Okay. Well, let's go ahead and rate the games, guys. Um, I think this game has a lot of potential. I think that that first sequence is just really I think it's

hurting the project. I really do. And I'm not I I I say this with all love and it comes from my own personal experience of just knowing how devastating the first five minutes can be to a game. If that was like halfway through the game and I kind of understood the mechanics and how the game flows, it's okay. But but that's the first five minutes of this game of the demo. And we need to give the player I mean frankly, you just need to reward the player with sugary treats basically for the first five minutes. Just key door key door. Bing bing bing. Get it? Cool. Jump scare. Jump scare. Uh story beat story beat story beat. Um bridge falls. Uh, record player starts playing on its own. Light flickers out. Trap door opens. The world's reacting to the player for the first five minutes. And we're teaching the player what the loop is. And then boom. After five minutes, I'm like, "Wow, this game is full.

It's full of life." When in reality, it's like, "No, we just put a lot of effort on the front end." Which is totally fine. That's what games do. All right. You guys ready to vote? Are we ready, ladies and gentlemen, to vote? Let's go ahead and set up our vote. Let me do that really quick. And while we do this, while we do this, I just want to say a huge huge thank you to Jan Rita, George, and Jake D. This is the final sort of thank you I'll I'll give for the uh these folks. Thank you for joining full-time gamedev, which is my massive gamedev course, which course course which teaches pretty much everything I've learned in the last decade of making indie games. Um, that includes, you know, securing publisher deals. I've secured three different publisher deals. Sorry, I'm trying to go to the live stream here to to set up this poll, guys. Um, okay, let's do this really quick here. Appalachia in God's Gate. Okay, let's do it.

Start a poll. Sorry, one sec here. And I'll get back to my ad read. Which game was your favorite in God's Gate? Appalachia. And then what was the other one? Invinovers. Invinovers. We're going to vote here, guys. Um, before we hit the vote, what's your guys's prediction? Which game is going to win? Which game do you guys think is going to is going to going to win? Go ahead and let me know in the chat. All right, the poll is up. Okay, and what I was saying was if you want to join my massive course, Full-Time GameDev, it is currently the summer sale and it's 50% off. Um, you're going to learn everything I've learned in the last decade of making indie games. Like I said, guys, um if you wonder, well,

who's this YouTuber guy, he is Thomas Brush, that's me. And these are my two commercial releases released on pretty much every platform. And what's cool about these and then also my third game, which is called Twisted Tower, which is about to release. Announcement is coming soon. Um what's cool about those games is that I secured funding for those games with just a demo. And I did it without my influence, okay? I didn't do it with with a big YouTube channel or anything like that. um Kickstarter campaigns, working with publishers, but also just surviving on game sales, right? Um or platform deals like Apple. And so I teach how to do that in this course. And if you think, well, that's kind of silly. I don't trust this guy. I get it. I wouldn't trust me either. Um but you can at least read the reviews on my website of students who were able to take the course, learn from it, and apply it, and they went full-time. which is really really cool. You're also going to get my 2D and 3D art programs completely free

and then also my YouTube course completely free. My 3D course is brand spanking new. We just updated it in the last two months. When I say we, that's Felipe who's the 3D artist. He was the 3D artist for Twisted Tower. He's since moved on to other projects. Um, but he he helped with the course and he he carries the brunt of the course if I'm being honest and he's a genius and and you learn so much from him. So that's free. Um, and uh, you're also going to learn how to make games in GDAU, Unity, and Unreal. Uh, 2D or 3D, take your pick. So, click the link below. There's only 100 seats available. These are going to sell out. Also, 14 days left. And I'll give you a shout out in tomorrow's live stream. Okay, let's go ahead. Thomas, shut up. Shut up with your course. By the way, if you if you uh enrolled in the course, let me know what you think about it in the chat. [snorts] Okay. Um, you guys want to open up that poll? Let's do it. Okay. So, the winner is I'm going to predict it. The Veraritoss game.

Let's take a look. The winner is officially overwhelmingly in Veto Veritas with 53% Appalachia 26% and in God's Gate 23%. This is the thing. Invinovers with the proper level design and and triggered sequences, it could be amazing. So, here I'm going to give Invito Veraritoss what I would do because I love making these kind of games. I love intro sequences. I love scary intro sequences. Here's what I would do. Okay, that cut scene, it's going to be 20 to 30 seconds long and he's going to get a letter from this church and it's signed by this mysterious figure called uh Senor Red and it's it says that your your

girlfriend has been killed, okay, or something and you need to go find her. Then you get in the car and you end up in this mysterious village. The man said, the protagonist says out loud, he says, "Where am I? It's not showing up on the map." Oh, that's great. Now I know that the player, the main character, doesn't know where he is. That's a vital uh um story moment. Let us know what the player knows. These are important things. It's crucial. Let me or or you say, "I haven't been here since I was a kid." Well, now we know that he was here when he was a kid. Give me some kind of understanding. What does the player understand? What does the main character understand? I would make it so that that first sequence I arrive at looking at the church and if and I go and I open up the church and go in the church or

there's a lock and then I go back and then there's a key. Boom. Done. Rewarded. Player feels good. They got a little dopamine hit. They get a little story beat. Maybe a tree falls over and on the tree is a sign that says do not enter, right? Jump scare. Uh the crow sequence flies off really fast. Needs to be faster. The way it was is the player says, "F you bird." If we're g if we're gonna scream at the bird, make it go quickly and really scare the main character. Uh, and then also some other beats. Some other beats could be a a drawbridge goes right. Uh, the sound of a dog starts starts barking and the player says, "What was that?" You just trigger stuff. You're triggering stuff as the player makes their way down a straight line. That's all we need to do for that intro sequence. We don't need to explore five locations. We need to get the player.

You You need to help the player feel rewarded quickly. All right. Anybody else? Anybody have any thoughts? Was Thomas too mean today? I hope I wasn't too mean. I love you guys. This was a lot of fun. And be sure to check out that link.