u/Levardos

Steam Next Fest is coming up, so I've decided to add something completely unnecessary to the game.

Once you beat the demo, you'll unlock a secret level. Except there's no boss, no objective, and no way to finish it. It's just a weird, liminal space where you can wander around and slowly lose your fucking mind.

So far, I've added four ancient TVs. Three are playing trailers for my previous game because apparently I'm my own biggest fan. The fourth is counting down to Dark Roll 2's full release, like some sort of low-budget doomsday clock.

More creepy out-of-place shit and some fun mechanics are on their way, we'll see how much I manage to complete, I have one week before the Fest.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/4417060/Dark_Roll_2/

I'm making a game called Dark Roll 2, it's a marble platformer inspired by soulslike games. Made this sludge as part of the level and it kinda feels satisfying to just... roll around in it.

Grandpa Gohan left his fight with young Trunks in high spirits. The boy’s strength had been astonishing for someone so young, and seeing firsthand how powerful the next generation had become only made Gohan more curious about the strange world his grandson now lived in. His next opponent, however, was something else entirely. The moment Jiren stepped forward, Gohan could tell that this was no ordinary martial artist. The difference between them was enormous, but rather than frighten him, it brought an amused smile to his face. He had been given only one day among the living, after all. He might as well see just how far beyond him the strongest fighters of Goku’s era had gone.

Defeating Mr. Satan had given Jiren little satisfaction. The outcome had been decided before the fight had truly begun. Grandpa Gohan appeared similarly outmatched, yet Jiren immediately regarded him differently. The old man carried himself like a genuine martial artist - calm, experienced, and completely aware of the power standing before him. Jiren had learned that strength was not the only measure of a warrior, and Grandpa Gohan’s willingness to face an overwhelmingly stronger opponent without fear earned a degree of respect from him. Even so, Jiren had no intention of holding back simply out of sympathy. If the old master wished to test himself against Jiren, then Jiren would answer him seriously.

TOURNAMENT HUB

Tien had little interest in fame or prize money. For him, the tournament was another chance to measure the results of years spent training far from the spotlight - and perhaps show his students that a true martial artist never stops pushing forward. The moment Toppo stepped into the arena, Tien could feel the enormous difference in power between them. But rather than discourage him, it sharpened his focus. He had faced monsters, gods, and impossible odds before. This would simply be another mountain to climb.

As leader of the Pride Troopers, Toppo entered the tournament carrying the pride of Universe 11 and his unshakable devotion to justice. At first glance, Tien hardly seemed like the sort of opponent who could threaten a warrior of his caliber, but Toppo quickly recognized something familiar in the three-eyed martial artist: discipline, courage, and absolute conviction. There was no evil for Toppo to condemn here. Only a proud warrior standing his ground. And if Tien wished to test his martial spirit against Universe 11's champion of justice, Toppo would answer him with everything he had.

TOURNAMENT HUB

Hey guys. I know some of you are probably sick of seeing this pillow by now, but I wanted to do a little postmortem.

Around two weeks ago, I've reached 1k wishlists, and suddenly things began to... stall. Posting stuff on socials didn't do much, I was getting few wishlists, but also wishlist deletions - it came to the point where for a week, wishlists were stalling at around the same number. This has been greatly demotivating for me...

Then, one day, I sat down, forcing myself to make a new, relatively short, easy to design level I've had in my mind for a while. Then realized I need safe spot for the player to land on from height, I quickly set up an object, changed layer, programmed that it won't cause fall damage, changed physics material to disable bounce... and since I had a spare moment, I thought... I'll try to make it look a bit more natural, because why the hell not?

So I spent 1-2h playing around with mesh deformation. It wasn't all that breathtaking by then, I posted it online in few places as I usually do, and people seemed to really like it.

I felt like I'm onto something, I couldn't help myself to improve it a tad bit more, just slight tuning at this point, really, posted the new iteration in few places and... People have los their mind over it.

Reddit, TikTok, Instagram, X, BlueSky, Youtube Shorts - the video accumulated somewhere between 500k - 1mil views. My new account on X that had around 10 followers at the time, gained 37k on first video, 90k on second.

This has given me a bigger wishlist surge than releasing the demo. Somewhat over 100 but it's still lot for my game.

After 8 years of making games, this has made me begin to rethink game design as a whole.

As for my game? I know it's not a hook that will make people pay for it and play. It's a curiosity. But one I can surely build upon. Slime? Newtonian fluids? Snow? Mud? Trampolines? Flesh? There's so many possibilities to incorporate the mesh deformation in more meaningful way! One problem is, I have like +1h of gameplay done. Do I just add these new features later down? Rebuild levels from the start? Demo can feature levels from all over the game so it's not an issue, and I am also planning to make an additional "tech demo" level where players can play around with some mechanics without an actual goal to complete it. I have a lot to think about.

It surely has given my game some new direction. I'm not on some pedestal to spread wisdom, but the one advice I can give everyone after making games for 8 years is:

Pay attention to details in your game, keep showing all of the features you're working on. I know posting on socials is a grind, but you never truly know what people will find fascinating about your game - feedback can help you shape your game better.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/4417060/Dark_Roll_2/

So the story is, for my game Dark Roll 2, I needed a soft spot for the player to land on... Setting an object to not cause fall damage and not bounce off it was easy, but I had a spare moment and decided to play around with mesh deformation...

When I shown it on socials, people went crazy.

Sharing this with the world brought me more wishlists, than back when I released the demo... and the game has tons of features I've been trying to show past half year!

Now I can't help myself but keep improving it to make it even better, already juggling ideas in my head how to incorporate this mechanic in my game to show it off more often - but I'm more than open to ideas! So feel free to share!

Few days ago I've shown-off a mesh deforming script, and since you guys seemed to really like it, instead of continuing to work on meaningful stuff like a sane person, I spent another 1-2 hour perfecting it... Added some bulging on the outside radius to mimic the realism better.

I know the deformation is a bit jumpy at times, and it would look better on a model with more vertices, but I don't want to hurt the performance. Current pillow has 1k vertices / 2k triangles.

For a silly little feature that doesn't have much to do with gameplay, I'm very pleased with how it turned out to look.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/4417060/Dark_Roll_2/

I'm making a soulslike-inspired platformer, Dark Roll 2.

I needed a safe, soft spot to land on from height, so I ended up making a script that deforms a mesh like a pillow. The mesh keeps a copy of its original vertices, then each frame I compare those against a SphereCollider pressing into it. I do a first pass to detect actual contact and measure the deepest penetration, then a second pass moves affected vertices away from the sphere, with the deformation fading out over a configurable distance.

For the falloff I used a quintic smootherstep (6t⁵ - 15t⁴ + 10t³) rather than regular SmoothStep, which gives zero velocity and acceleration at both ends and helps avoid that obvious ridge around the dent. I also handle squash and recovery at separate speeds, so impacts can deform the mesh quickly while it slowly relaxes back to its original shape afterwards.

Invited by Goku, and with Whis finding a way for three Saiyans from Universe 6 to participate, Kale entered the tournament with something to prove - to herself more than anyone else. She has come a long way from fearing the tremendous power sleeping inside her, and is slowly learning to control it rather than be controlled by it. Facing Cabba makes her uneasy, he is a friend and fellow Saiyan, not an enemy. Still, if she truly wants to master her strength, she cannot afford to hold back.

Cabba could never pass up a chance to test how far he has come, especially with the possibility of showing Vegeta, the man he proudly considers his master, the results of his training. But his first opponent is someone whose power he knows all too well. Cabba respects Kale and would rather have faced her much later in the tournament, yet neither Saiyan intends to surrender their opportunity for the other's sake. Friendship will have to wait until the battle is over.

TOURNAMENT HUB

Hey guys! I'm making a soulslike-inspired marble platformer. It'll have boss fights, and Steam leaderboards with ghost-racing (racing against ghost replays of other players).
Demo is already available!

https://store.steampowered.com/app/4417060/Dark_Roll_2/

I've always wanted to do something like this, so here goes: I'm simulating a semi-lore-accurate Budokai Tenkaichi that could plausibly take place sometime after Dragon Ball Super: Super Hero.

Every character in the bracket has at least some reason they could show up and compete. A few are admittedly... let's call them creative interpretations of plausibility, but nobody's here completely at random.

The plan is to upload ONE FIGHT PER DAY, CPU vs CPU, linking each one back to this thread. I'll also keep this post updated with links to every fight as the tournament progresses, so this will basically serve as the tournament hub.

You'll have to take my word for it, but the MATCH-UPS WERE COMPLETLY RANDOMIZED.

Round 1:
Android 18 VS Yamcha
Kale VS Cabba
Yajirobe VS Vegeta
Buu VS Frieza
Uub VS Gohan
Android 17 VS Chiaotzu
Grandpa Gohan VS Trunks
Mr. Satan VS Jiren
Supreme Kai VS Goten
Caulifla VS Cheelai
Dyspo VS Piccolo
Tien VS Toppo
Jaco VS Master Roshi
Pikkon VS Hit
Gamma #1 VS Broly
Goku VS Krillin

I'm working on a soulslike inspired marble platformer called Dark Roll 2, and thought I'll celebrate reaching 1k wishlists with this unhinged 3D render! What do you think?

My soulslike-inspired marble platformer Dark Roll 2 just reached 1000 wishlists!

Against all reason, common sense, and probably Miyazaki’s wishes, one thousand people have now voluntarily expressed interest in my ball game.

Jokes aside, I genuinely wanted to thank everyone here. Somehow, this deranged corner of the internet has been the most welcoming place I’ve posted my game. I mean that sincerely.

And I’m pretty sure you degenerates are responsible for a good chunk of that 1k, because every time I post here I see a suspicious little spike in wishlists shortly afterward... Especially after I've added feet.

I'll keep on working hard to make sure not to disappoint You.

So... Thank You. Seriously.

I’ll keep working my ass off to make this worthy of your wishlists.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/4417060/Dark_Roll_2/

Today I woke up to 1000 wishlists! All it took was one post from an incredibly famous indie game influencer 5 months of blood, sweat and tears, also known as the "marketing grind":

• posting on all the socials one can think of
• sending +400 e-mails to content creators
• telling people about my game in in-game lobbies (yes, seriously)
• releasing 3 games prior to the one I'm working on (they had +200.000 players total)
• pestering every possible friend to playtest and wishlist my game

So I just wanted to say... stay strong fellas! While I'm always happy for all fellow indie developers, I know first hand how discouraging it can feel to read all the posts about "getting XXXX wishlists overnight from getting extremly lucky and having someone famous share my game", when you work your butt off on a game and barely anyone notices you.

Making the game is a lot, LOT easier than trying to market it. At least for me.

I'm planning to release in february, there's still october next fest - but I've learned to tamper my expectations. Seriously, I'm hoping to have 2000 wishlits for release day, but we'll see how it goes.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/4417060/Dark_Roll_2/

I regret nothing.

Dark Roll 2 is a soulslike-inspired marble platformer that I'm making! Demo is already out!
https://store.steampowered.com/app/4417060/Dark_Roll_2/

Part 1 - link; Part 2 - link; Part 3 - link; Part 4 - link; Part 5 - link; Part 6 - link; Part 7 - link; Part 8 - link; Part 9 - link; Part 10 - link; Part 11 - link; Part 12 - link; Part 13 - link; Part 14 - link; Part 15 - link; Part 16 - link; Part 17 - link; Part 18 - link; Part 19 - link

Whenever I'd show my game off on r/shittydarksouls people would comment about feet lacking in my game so... I decided to indulge them. This level is still work in progress.

You can see more about the game (and check out the demo!) here:
https://store.steampowered.com/app/4417060/Dark_Roll_2/

Still a work in progress, but the feet level is coming along nicely.

I’ve now added multiracial feet, because apparently artistic diversity has finally reached its natural conclusion.

If this video hits 2.5k upvotes, I’ll add another, more feminine foot model to the roster. Maybe painted nails. I'm open to ideas.

The ball’s in your court.

Dark roll 2 is a platformer inspired by soulslike genre (Demo is out!):
https://store.steampowered.com/app/4417060/Dark_Roll_2/

Please consider wishlisting if you want to show support for a poor ol' solo dev. 🥹