hello everybody im just wondering do any of you do game dev. i have messed around making small games with tools off steam and itch.io and im wondering do you make games to.
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I used to, under the No Time To Play label, but pretty much burned out after almost 14 years. Still got the old site with dozens of games and tools and hundreds of articles to show for it.
Iām a hobbyist baby game dev who uploads my works to my itch.io! Iāve done the writing, art and concept work for two visual novels (one of them is currently in development, and Iām very excited for when itāll be complete!), and the art for a tycoon management game.
i used to do game jams for a bit
I do, and Iām still learning about it after wanting to make games pretty much since I was little. You can check out my games on my itch.io page here: https://thefrugalgamer.itch.io/
I also have several still in the making. Hopefully Iāll be able to finish them all up someday.
I usually use HTML and Javascript, but Iāve also played around GB Studio (gameboy games), Godot and Twine. There are so many good tools out there today for people who want to make games and havenāt had any experience that I think itās the perfect time to get started for most. Iād also like to one day make some Bitsy games, and maybe some of the hacks based on those.
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I have a laughable number of unfinished game dev projects, having tried so many different game engines over the years and always getting distracted.
I have the grand total of one game on my itch.io profile (made using Bitsyā¤ļø), and an embarrassing number of game jams joined without submission that I canāt removeš
But I did make a few of games during my games design degree, initially with Macromedia Director (
) and the others with Unity.
More recently Iāve picked up Godot again and Iām taking part in the Weak Sauce game jam again this month. Whatās nice about that jam is itās 7 days but you can use them whenever you want throughout the month, and the host is super relaxed about submissions.
Iām trying to do Game Dev for a living. I released Operation: Pinkeye in 2022 and Iām working on a followup named Operation: Followthrough, for which I have publishers for PC and Atari Jaguar!
I want to create games for every system that was around during my childhood, and Iām creating what would be my interpretation of games from the 90s and 2000s in a Scotland that was independent back then.
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Yeah! I love doing game jams. It helps me to have a deadline so my ADHD ass can finally get in gear. Iāve finished a few that are on my itch.io
Then I have that one game that I wanna make that I canāt ever seem to get outta my head. So hopefully Iām not just stuck eternally planning and never working on it.
I married a game developer and have worked on a few projects with my husband. In 2009/2010 we published two games for the iPhone (Sheepstacker and Word Monkey) that are unfortunately no longer available. Heās a programmer, so he would do that part and I would do whatever else was left that I coud do; ui graphics, texture graphics, sound, music, etc.
My husband shifted to non-game iOS development when we started having kids, but does work at a game company again. He doesnāt work on the games, though. He still works on game projects on the side sometimes. I sometimes help out with them.
I understand there are interesting things happening with the open source game engine Godot.
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I just discovered microStudio. Maybe itāll be easier for my squidgy manatee brain to learn than Pico-8.
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Yep! I am very much a hobbyist. Dabbles in Godot but prefer Pico 8 as the community is great and it is far easier to spin up small games.
Usually end up competing in Game Jams, most of my games are the moment are Christmas themed as I find I have the most time to get one done for the Advent calendar game jam. My latest one was released last Tuesday: āMari Lwydās Pantri Panicā is a Tetris like clone where you arranged Christmas treats into lines, based on the Welsh folklore Christmas ghost Mari Lwyd - who is presented as a horses skull.
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iām right now doing a game design masters and also working at an indie studio (of which I haveā¦ opinions regarding our game), so I barley have time to work on personal games right now 
honestly the projects Iām most proud of are the board games Iāve been making for tabletop simulator. right now Iām working with a friend on something thatās still incredibly WIP in terms of visuals, but our friends are starting matches without us asking them to and playtesters are saying it feels like itās production-grade quality, so iām very proud of it
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That blog postā¦.ooooooooooof! Iām sorry youāre having to go through that, and it sounds like a nightmare. After so much time spent on the custom engine, itās probably a sunk cost fallacy and I imagine theyād be very resistant to switching to an existing engine. In my experience, the only thing that fixes that issue is a change in leadership, when the incoming person has no emotional attachment to previous choices and can make more rational decisions.
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Not yet but I did take a course in Unreal Engine a few years ago, and it was awesome. Iād love to start up again using Pico 8 or GB Studio to learn how to make really small games for fun. I even changed my domain so that I can focus on making things again, in web dev and game dev. Letās hope I create more in 2026!
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Itās nice to see people engage in game development.
@ShannonKay , may I ask why they arenāt available anymore? Judging by the name, Sheepstacker sounds like a very nice game to me 
@frugalgamer , impressive portfolio IMHO. Really like Ghostly Games, it fetches the original GB charm very well.
I worked with Macromedia Flash back in the days and created two bare-bone games with some cheap commercial game engine that I bought years ago for cheap. Unfortunately I never brought a game to completion (yet!)
Only released some mods years ago but wouldnāt go that far to call that game development.
At the moment Iām āworkingā on a side project of mine by using JavaScript and HTML5 only to realize a browser game that is in my mind for quite some time but because I have so many different projects going on, I donāt expect to be able to finish this one anytime soon as well.
So I would call myself a hobbyist game developer at best
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Thank you! Iām glad you like that one, because I kind of think of it as my weakest game, lol. Thatās mostly because of time constraints, though, and Iāll be going back and adding to it in the future.
This looks exciting. A less-limited Pico-8? I really hope thereās a built-in collision function.
I have done bits and pieces but never really finished a project. One day I want to do an allotment simulator where you dig and grow veg and do weeding, but Iāve never got the idea fully thought through.
The last thing I worked on was an idle/clicker game where you whittled wood to sell, I should revisit it and do the balancing on the unlocks so itās actually a functioning game at some point!
The godot web export was over 100mb though so Iād have to come up with a different workflow for getting it onto my website tooā¦
That game is so cool! I just had fun playing it a bit and will probably return to it for a while.
@frugalgamer I think Iāve said this before somewhere, but I love new GB games so your itch.io page is so cool to me!
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