u/PartTimeMonkey

Can be played with here:

https://dirtnap.parttimemonkey.com/sandbox

Lemme know if you simulation people know how to make it better or more interesting to play with!

Game Title:
Dirtnap - Battle Royale

Playable Link:
https://dirtnap.parttimemonkey.com/battleroyale

Platform:
Browser

Description:
Similar to Liero, Worms (realtime), Soldat and Noita, but the game mode is Battle Royale with a constantly rising lava that'll eventually get everyone.

Round-based games - who gets 10 points first wins, then it restarts.

The game always has 4 players and empty slots are filled with bots. When a real player joins, the lowest-scoring bot gets replaced.

If you share the link to a bud and they join, they automatically join your game (as long as the room is not full, in which case they would open a new room)

Free to Play:
Yes

Involvement:
I'm one of the 3 developers behind Dirtnap

Game Title: Dirtnap

Playable link: https://dirtnapgame.com/duel

Platform: Web

Description: 1v1 duels with a friend

Free to Play Status: Free to play

Involvement: 1 of the 3 devs

It's been a looong time since I did pixel art the last time, so looking for feedback.

I drew the characters in low res but when it was time to scale them up for this capsule resolution, the pixels got wonky because I couldn't scale them up in steps of 100%. Any idea on how to battle that?

These characters combine hand-drawn pixel art, bone-animations, code-based dynamic squishing and a code-generated black outline around the silhouette.

Things are much easier to understand now even though there's still a lot of going on on the screen at once.

The game was originally inspired by Liero, Soldat and Molez, now with a bit of Noita-vibe too.

Would be nice to hear what you think!

The game is Dirtnap:
https://store.steampowered.com/app/4956300/Dirtnap/

We went from a retro look ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t3EVJtMjT0k ) to a more modern look, with much more dynamic characters.

The game was originally inspired by Liero, Soldat and Molez, now with a bit of Noita-vibe too.

Would be nice to hear what you think!

The game is Dirtnap:
https://store.steampowered.com/app/4956300/Dirtnap/

Earlier we posted about our upcoming "realtime Worms" game called Dirtnap:
https://store.steampowered.com/app/4956300/Dirtnap/

We received tons of feedback for the game. In general the comments were great, but there was quite a bit of people saying how the visuals look unpolished and noisy - totally fair.

So we listened, and revised the general look from the retro-ish to a more modern, Steam-suitable style.

Would be great to hear what you think of the new and improved look!

I'm trying to decide whether a game like this would have any future on Steam. What do you think?

This is one of those posts, yep!

We published our store page on the 24th July 2026, i.e. 9 days ago:
https://store.steampowered.com/app/4956300/Dirtnap/

There were no miracles, just good old boots-to-the-ground DIY "marketing". I'm gonna go through each of the successful things we've done so far.

I've seen many times people do posts like this and I've always had my disbelief on it; what do devs actually do when they succeed, what is the "secret", how could I do it too, and so on. This is the first time I have something that has proven traction (more on it later), and that makes it possible to succeed further.

I've always had a grudge against the "just make a good enough game and it'll sell itself" ideology, but I think I understand it better with experience. What it actually means is that "if you have a good enough game, your marketing will make a difference", but it does NOT mean that there would be no need for marketing. I believe our game would still have close to zero WLs if we didn't do any of the below.

---

We've sent about 200-300 emails to press, including Chinese, Japanese and Korean outlets. Altogether we're had perhaps 10-15 worthwhile articles come out, but it's hard to track wishlists from them - although I think they didn't do much in comparison to the actual successful social media posts, apart from the IGN/GameTrailers video, which I believe brought in perhaps 200-400 WLs.

We have also sent a ton of emails to influencers/streamers with Steam keys, but no luck yet. Although I imagine those things take time, even if they get excited about the game.

For each successful social media post, there were perhaps 2-3 failed ones. Here's a list of the successful ones.

X (Twitter):

IndieGameJoe format, 18K views:
https://x.com/parttimemonkey/status/2081000687429652913

Custom fluid simulation, 170K views:
https://x.com/parttimemonkey/status/2083227548276646379

Reddit:

r/gamedevscreens, 700 upvotes, 60K views:
https://www.reddit.com/r/gamedevscreens/comments/1v54i9s/were_making_a_realtime_worms_with_destructible/

r/IndieDev, 300 upvotes, 22K views:
https://www.reddit.com/r/IndieDev/comments/1v5ajzc/were_making_a_realtime_worms_with_destructible/

r/IndieGaming, 350 upvotes, 33K views:
https://www.reddit.com/r/IndieGaming/comments/1v67tuv/were_making_dirtnap_a_realtime_worms_with/

r/godot, 500 upvotes, 25K views:
https://www.reddit.com/r/godot/comments/1vbqz58/destructible_terrain_and_fluid_simulation_in_godot/

r/oddlysatisfying, 12K upvotes, 2.1M views (however I don't think this one brought many WLs since it doesn't have the game name or link embedded)
https://www.reddit.com/r/oddlysatisfying/comments/1vbup03/pixel_fluid_simulation/

r/worms, 260 upvotes, 15K views:
https://www.reddit.com/r/worms/comments/1v7wqvx/realtime_worms_has_lived_in_my_head_since_i_was_a/

With these posts and my previous experience, I believe the thresholds to get any meaningful WLs (more than ~25) for each platform are something like this:

Reddit: 200+ upvotes
X: 10K+ views
TikTok: 10K+ views (300 is standard, 1K is the first ceiling)
YT Shorts: 10K+ views (haven't gotten it with this project yet)
Instagram: Don't know, no success yet
Bsky: Don't know, no success yet

... but you do need to have your game name/link in it, otherwise it's kinda pointless. Although I hope mega-successful posts like the r/oddlysatisfying one could bring some other kind of attention later down the road, but hard to say.

---

How I plan to develop and evaluate my games in the future:

1. Use short enough time to make a video that demonstrates the game well enough
2. Post it on multiple subreddits, X, YT, TikTok
   3a. Real traction? -> Go forth!
   3b. No traction? -> To the bin!

I know it sounds a bit non-indie to think like that, but I do this as a living so there must be some logic to the madness in order to some day make an actual sustainable income from this.

---

Personally my main takeaway from this (small) success we've had so far is that it IS possible, and there is NO magic to it - no hidden hashtags or boosted posts or pre-existing contacts or follower counts.

It's deeply frustrating to believe your game is good enough, yet lack the traction needed to validate that belief. It's also mega-frustrating to not have traction after posting tens or hundreds of times, but that's when the alarm bells should be ringing.

We're making Dirtnap, a realtime Worms in the footsteps of the great Liero, Soldat, and Molez. To make our game stand out, we also wanted to add fluid simulation in to the mix, even though this is a multiplayer game and it can prove to be difficult...

We're 3 Finnish indie devs collaborating to make it happen. Early Access will follow soon (next month!)

We just got our Steam up about a week ago, too:
https://store.steampowered.com/app/4956300/Dirtnap/

Inspired by many similar games such as Liero, Soldat, Molez and, of course, Worms.

We're 3 Finnish indie devs collaborating to make it happen. Early Access will follow soon (next month!)

... and we just got the Steam page up!
https://store.steampowered.com/app/4956300/Dirtnap/

Inspired by many similar games such as Liero, Soldat, Molez and, of course, Worms.

We're 3 Finnish indie devs collaborating to make it happen. Early Access will follow soon (next month!)

... and we just got the Steam page up!
https://store.steampowered.com/app/4956300/Dirtnap/

WARENA is a fast-paced RTS card-battler where tactical decisiveness meets explosive arena combat.

Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SImJpQxPuzA
Steam: https://store.steampowered.com/app/4331100/Warena

Developed by myself, heavily inspired by Clash Royale, Minion Masters, with a hint of RTS like Age of Empires, and a pinch of Hearthstone.

The game differs from the previous mainly by...
- You create your deck at the beginning of a match
- You choose a Hero skill at the beginnig of a match
- You get various Runes (perks, cards) during each match
- Mid-match events alter the round (lightning storms, mana boosts, fire rain, random cards)

... so no match plays out the same!

Making content is one of the nightmares of game dev for me, so I begin to procrastinate whenever it needs to be done... But finally I've pushed through the tedious bits and now the fun part can start which is fine-tuning, balancing, tweaking and all that. 🥳