u/TraVinh-

I’m making a retro survival horror game and I’m currently in the process of making the UI for it. I just finished the inventory screen as my first ever serious attempt at UI, now with this screen as my second.

I like old school, physical looking pre-rendered menus so that’s what I’m trying to do here (I also just suck at 2d design so this was really my only option if I want it to actually look good lol). Since you use cassette tapes to save at tape recorders I figured I’d carry that through the menu.

Widgets were such a nightmare to get started with but once I figured out the basics I was really surprised how easy they actually are to work with. So far this menu has been just over 3 days from initial concept until now which I’m super happy with!

I’ve never done flipbook animations before and what I did here is store each frame in an array then use recursive functions to cycle through as-needed. I know there’s better ways of doing it, I just don’t know what they are lol.

I couldn’t decide whether the tapes should go on the left or right, general consensus was right looked better but left still had it’s charm. I decided to do both, left for the load screen, right for the save screen.

What do we think about it so far? Still needs sound and lots of polish but I’m not exactly experienced with UI so I’d love to hear people’s thoughts so I can keep it in mind as I go.

I’m working on a retro inspired survival horror game with a kind of psx / ps2 inspired visual style (ps2 resolution with a psx vibe). I have no drawing skills whatsoever so for texturing I just sculpt high poly creatures, then take some renders and use projection to give that retro, fake lighting and shadowing look.

I’ve never really done low poly art before so it’s been a learning curve for sure but with this one I think I’m finally getting the hang of it. Og sculpt has about 2M polys, final high res mesh is about 180k with a full set of 4K textures.

Final in-game mesh has just over 1400 polygons (800 are just the teeth, I could have optimized them more but honestly got lazy) with a single 512x512 texture. Uv’s are awfully optimized (again, got lazy) so the actual textel density is closer to a well-optimized 512x256 texture.

There are some topology issues for sure that I’m worried are going to bite me in the ass when it’s time to animate but I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it!

Given this is my fourth ever attempt at this kind of thing I’m pretty happy with how it turned out, was able to capture most of the detail in the low poly version and it’s the first time I feel like I really accomplished that but what do we think? I’m sure there’s plenty of ways I can improve for future reference, this is far from the last one I’m going to need to make so I’d love to hear people’s thoughts on it!

(Also, going for a kind of Silent Hill meets Dead Space sort of vibe, mixed a bit of Metroid Prime in this one too for good measure lol. Am I hitting that vibe or nah?)

I’m working on a survival horror game based on classic Resident Evil. I’ve made small personal projects for fun since I was a kid but this is my first time making a game for a public release. Since I was just making games for fun I never bothered with UI (not even a title / pause screen) so this has been a learning experience.

I’ve been running a shitty, barely functional placeholder menu for a while now but it’s time for something new. I have no skill in 2d design / art but I’m passable at 3d so I figured I’ll do the retro pre-rendered sort of thing. I love older games with cool, detailed menus, it has so much more personality than modern, minimalist UI so I wanted to do something visually interesting.

I wanted something like PSX era RE but grittier. Despite being a RE-like, Fallout was a surprisingly big inspiration for this game originally and I wanted to carry that vibe into the menus. I made this with the mindset of RE1-3 with the style of Fallout1/2 meets REmake.

I rendered everything in bits with seperate lighting and shadow passes so I can animate it all. I’ve never worked with widgets before so this was, (and I cannot stress this enough) an enormous pain in the ass. From animations not working how I expect, to layering issues, sprites not loading in, even just scaling everything so the pixel size is consistent, absolutely nothing worked without a fight. It’s been one hell of a learning experience for sure, but I’m really proud of what I’ve pulled off so far.

Obviously I’m no ui designer, I’m really happy with how it’s turning out so far but I’m curious to hear people’s thoughts.

I’ve been getting a lot of positive feedback so far but there’s already been plenty of things people caught that I completely missed, so I’d love to hear what you think and if there’s any way I can improve!

(Also, does everyone edge a fucking stroke trying to understand how to do the most basic things with widgets when they’re starting out, or is that just me?)

I’m making a survival horror game inspired by oldschool Resident Evil. It’s my first public project and the first time I’ve ever done UI at all. I’ve been running some shitty placeholder for a while now but I wanted something interesting. I love old games with cool menus, it just gives them so much personality so I definitely wanted to do something like that.

I suck at 2d design/art but I’m ok at 3d so I figured I’d go for the pre-rendered cg look. I wanted something that feels like psx era RE but grittier, ended up deciding on a REmake meets classic Fallout sort of vibe.

I threw it together and rendered it out in seperate bits with seperate channels for shadows and lighting effects. It’s not finished yet, health readout and the item text are still not functional obviously, but I think in general this is going to be the final look and feel of the games ui.

Overall I’m really happy with how it turned out but I don’t exactly know what I’m doing so I’d love to hear people’s thoughts!

I’m starting another round of playtesting for my classic Resident Evil inspired survival horror game and I’ve been working on dialing in the feel for combat. Even though combat is mechanically disincentivized it’s important it feels punchy and satisfying when players do engage with it, and since this is my first serious project it’s been a learning experience for sure.

I’ve just hit another round of playtesting so I want to get things feeling their best. I’ve recently added render targets for procedural blood splatter on enemies to visually reflect damage taken and have been cleaning up the dismemberment system and vfx. Animations are all placeholder so there’s still a lot of jank in that regard (I suck at animation) but overall I think the combat is finally getting to where I need it to be.

I’ve never used render targets for this kind of thing before, was an enormous pain to figure out but I’m happy with the final result! To keep things performance light the render targets are kept super low res (64x64 per enemy) and some filtering is done in the material to give it that “splattery” look.

What are your thoughts? Anything I’m missing that could make it feel better / more engaging?

Also, I’m currently looking for playtesters! If there are any old school survival horror fans out there you can sign up through the game’s Steam page!

I’m also looking for a handful more people to record their playthrough while thinking out loud into a mic so I can get in the moment thoughts and feedback, If anyone happens to be interested feel free to reach out to me here or on discord (The Revanchist | Discord)

I’m working on a survival horror game inspired by old school Resident Evil. This started off with realistic graphics back in 2017 but I wasn’t feeling it. Came back more recently with the idea of doing the retro thing with it. Took a lot of screwing around but eventually I settled on a look I’m really happy with!

It’s a shame unreal gets such a reputation for only being able to make generic looking realismslop, really undersells how easy it is to get creative with presentation!

Not to mention most of the environment textures and a lot of props are actually megascans & free assets. I feel like I’ve been doing a good job retro-fying them & making them fit in. A lot of people seem to underestimate how effective customizing assets can be.

I’m going for a kind of bleak, spooky vibe. Something a bit abstract and vague with a bit of uncanny realism at the same time for a kinda dreamlike feel.

What do you think about the art style here, did I pull it off? People tend to either love it or hate it, I’m always interested in hearing their thoughts either way as I dial it in!

I’m working on a classic RE inspired survival horror game using UE5.5. I’m using fully dynamic lighting (and mostly rect lights at that) as well as a lot of volumetric fog and effects. Despite the low resolution visuals I was pretty nervous about performance on low end systems since I’m using some pretty expensive rendering features.

The lighting is noticeably lower quality without hardware ray tracing and is going to need a few tweaks, but so far the game has been running fine on anything from GTX1050’s to integrated graphics (pictured above) which I’m very happy with, I think most people are going to be fine with slightly different lighting if it means stable performance on low end systems!

Turns out Unreal 5 can be performant after all!

One question I have though, does anyone know if there’s a way to detect at runtime whether a system has hardware rt or not?

(And in case anyone’s interested in seeing more, The Revanchist on Steam)

Since I’m awful at art and can’t hand draw a good retro style texture, for the enemies as well as the weapons I make a realistic, hd model which I’m passable at. Then I take some renders and use texture projection to apply them as a texture to the low-poly model.

Any opinions on this workflow from people who know a bit more than me about low-poly modeling/texturing? Any better ways to do it?

(And in case anyone wants to check out more of it The Revanchist on Steam )

For the last little while I’ve been working on a classic Resident Evil inspired survival horror game. I started just over a year ago when I had to take a step back from my career to deal with crippling cptsd and spiraling mental health. I used to make games as a kid (just small personal projects in gamemaker for fun) and I had an idea kicking around for something I wanted to make. Figured I’d get back into gamedev just to have something to do with my time, not really expecting it to go anywhere.

I have never made a proper game before, so it was a slow start as I learned the basics and experimented to figure out this game’s identity. By 6 months in I had a small but dedicated community and about 400 wishlists.

But then it started catching on a bit. Since the beginning of 2026 things have been growing faster and faster, I’m about to hit 9000 wishlists without even having a demo on the horizon yet. I’ve had over a hundred people reach out to offer their help on the game from other passionate indies to experienced AAA devs, and about a dozen reputable publishers looking to set up calls. Even got an article feature with a very positive review.

It’s amazing, I feel like I’m living most first time solo-dev’s dream, but it almost feels like a nightmare. I’m a complete nervous wreck, even 2-3 texts from friends or family on the same day is totally overwhelming for me. Any kind of direct one on one interaction is absolutely panic inducing. I’ve had so many people reach out with these big heartfelt messages that have been waiting for literal months to hear back and the anxiety from it is crushing.

I feel like a jackass leaving so many people on read and at this point I’m almost a bit ashamed to respond at all, like, I left them in my inbox for 6 months just to reply with some basic “thanks for reaching out, I’ll definitely let you know if I’m looking for help with that” or something because I’m too stressed to know what to say, it would probably almost feel insulting.

I really believe in this project, and would genuinely love for it to become something bigger than an unemployment time sink hobby project. Getting the game published and bringing on some team members to cover blind spots in my skill set would be a dream come true but I’m struggling just to allow myself to let it happen. I worked my ass of on this game so far, I’ve got a golden opportunity to actually do something with it, and I can’t stand the thought of just throwing that away because I’m anxious.

Anyone have any insight or advice for this?

(And in case anyone’s interested; The Revanchist on Steam and The article featuring it)