Making a visual novel centered around contemporary dance without animation felt wrong, but as a micro-indie crew, we had neither the tech nor the budget for big rigs.

So we did the only thing that made sense: we reached out to regional dance schools, brought cameras into their rehearsal rooms, and filmed real choreographers. From there, our artist traced and drew every gesture stroke by stroke, roughly 15 individual hand-drawn frames for every second on screen to capture genuine physical weight and momentum.

Then yeah, After the Wane have no animation but only rotoscoping!!

Here’s a side-by-side of the raw studio footage and the final watercolor animation in-engine. What do you think of how the movement holds up?

Recently celebrated selling 100K+ copies of our game, over it's first month in Early Access.

Could not be more grateful for all the support we've gotten on this project.

It's been an incredibly long, strange journey getting to our first commercially successful game. 2 friends and I started making short punk games as Team Lazerbeam in December of 2014. Our games tended to defy genre, and were very short, alternative games with hand crafted art. Not the kind of thing you could really put on Steam and expect people to pay for, but we were stoked to self-publish them through itch. After 6 years we eventually strung together a longer experience (30 whole minutes of playtime!) and finally made our Steam debut, but that game bombed pretty badly. (That is to say, it sold very poorly, I still saw it as a creative success.)

I was always so stoked for any people that picked up on what we were putting out there. We had some decent numbers of downloads on our free titles. I was super proud of what we were making, and so grateful every time I saw one of our games resonating with someone.

Shroom and Gloom is our first proper, commercially released title. First time working within a more defined genre. First time releasing something that you could get lost in for hours. First release with a publisher. Basically, loads of firsts. Now we can add to that list, first Team Lazerbeam game to sell 100K copies. The fact that we hit that milestone in our first month on Steam is still mind blowing to me.

For anyone reading this that passionate about making things, I really hope this might give you some encouragement to keep creating. It might not happen for you overnight, but if you keep at it you'll be surprised where your art takes you. Or if you just reading this as an indie game fan, please know how impactful your support can be. It means so much to devs that people like you are out there, supporting unconventional games that are lovingly made by small teams.

I'm guess that out of the 100 894 copies that sold in the first month, at least a few of them could have been people that discovered the game through my last post on r/indiegames. If you're one of them, thanks for being getting behind this thing in these first days of Early Access.

Now the exciting part is what comes next!

I used to genuinely enjoy this place, seeing new games and such. I really don't want to leave, but this sub is just a source of annoyance at this point. There's just so much AI generated crap, and having it shoved in my face everytime I open Reddit is really irritating

IDK man, I want to be part of a community of developers, but there's just none left here

So many ai slop games are being posted here daily with no disclosure. A lot aren’t even just assisted with ai but completely ai generated. It’s getting out of hand. “Developers” stop saying “I made this game…” when you did almost nothing. I think of a saying often, “if you didn’t care enough to make it yourself, why should I care enough to use it?”

What's interesting about remaking a 2D game in 3D is that it doesn't necessarily mean changing how the game feels.

With 3D models, artists can adjust lighting, camera angles and animations without having to redraw every frame from scratch. But the tricky part is keeping the original art style and movement intact. If you get that wrong, a remake can look technically better while somehow feeling worse.

Diablo II: Resurrected is a good example of taking a different approach: the original gameplay logic stayed intact while the visuals were rebuilt. And then there's Guilty Gear Xrd, which used 3D models and animation techniques to make characters look surprisingly close to hand-drawn anime.

It makes me wonder where the line is between improving old visuals and losing what made them special in the first place.

Which 2D game would you actually want to see rebuilt in 3D, and which one should be left alone?

Hi everyone! I made a game based on What We Do in the Shadows for Halloween.
You can play it free here: https://edward-la-barbera.itch.io/laszlovania
Character Art by Lara K.
Choir Arrangement by Tiffany Palmer

Hey everyone!

We’re NextFrame, a small indie studio from Brazil, and we’ve just started working on a new game called Hell n’ Slash. It’s still very early, but we wanted to share it now instead of hiding it until it’s “perfect”.

It’s a brutal dark fantasy hack’n’slash roguelike. You carve your way through 100 cursed chambers with a colossal sword, a crossbow strapped to your arm and an iron hook. Along the way you seal pacts with wax and blood, and you try to survive a very bored god who narrates every single one of your deaths. And trust us, he’ll have a lot to talk about.

Descend. Die. Descend again.

Here’s our first trailer:
https://youtu.be/CTyzfbotW4g

We’d really love to hear what you think of the project so far:

• Does the dark fantasy vibe come across in the trailer?
• Sword, crossbow and hook: does that combo sound fun to play?
• Does the bored narrator god sound fun to you, or would it get annoying?
• Anything that made you go “hmm, not sure about that”?

Every comment helps a small team like ours a lot, the good ones and the brutal ones. Thanks for watching!

Now, I think that that's a LITTLE too high praise, but I appreciated it nonetheless!!

Afterward, we had a long, long fun chat about the game and their thoughts on it. The demo *JUST* came out, and they're already asking me to play more!

Posting the demo was a huge moment for me for sure... Moments like this make all the work I put into it worth it, though!!

If you'd like to try it yourself, the free Gauntleteer Demo is now available on Steam!

Steadfast started as a solo project of mine a year ago and can't believe we've already hit 1,000 steam wishlists in the first two weeks of getting the steam page online! Super thankful for all the support and here's a teaser of the storm gameplay.

Official website: https://steadfast.game/
Wishlist on Steam: https://store.steampowered.com/app/5235740/Steadfast/

Hi! This is DriftyLands, a first-person co-op base builder on floating voxel islands, solo or with up to 3 friends.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/5195430/

Hey everyone!

I'm a solo indie developer from Malaysia, and my game Too Many Animals! is finally out on Steam!

Imagine Librarian: Tidy Up the Arcane Library!, but instead of books, you're sorting thousands of cute animals! You can even throw them around!

🎁 Steam Key Giveaway!

I have some extra Steam keys to share!

Comment your favorite animal in real life, and I'll randomly pick some lucky commenters to receive a free key!

Steam: https://store.steampowered.com/app/5324570/Too_Many_Animals/

AI Disclosure: AI was used only to assist with localization. No generative AI was used to create the game's artwork, models, or other game assets.

Thanks for your support!

Dry Jerky is a survival RPG set in Oasis, a desert city with a rat problem, a shady snack industry, and a cast of characters you probably shouldn't trust. Find work, make questionable decisions, and try not to starve before the landlord shows up.

Demo. https://store.steampowered.com/app/4915010/Dry_Jerky/

Illustrations are self made. Claude helped with coding.

Feedback requested for website and games. Please post your comments in the original thread in r/Websites since I’m not OP.

Hi r/IndieGaming

We are a small indie team and we just hit a massive milestone: We are showcasing the first live playable build of Legends of Hearts at Gamescom Asia (Thailand) this week (Indie Area, Kiosk 10)! 🎉

Legends of Hearts is a heartwarming 2.5D co-op adventure (think It Takes Two). No violence, no gambling, just pure cooperative fun for friends and families.

If you are in Bangkok, come say hi and play it! If you aren't, you can still play it from home. We just opened a pre-alpha playtest on Epic Games.

Want to play right now?

Simply wishlist our game on Epic Store or Steam and request the keys (you will need 2 keys to play with a friend) in the comments below or in our discord channel.

Thank you for checking it out! We can't wait to see what you think of the co-op gameplay.