u/Trashy_io

Whats up everyone,

I wanted to share my project here first and am looking for feedback. Heavily inspired by 2000's - 2010's games. Would categorize it as an Active Incremental level builder / physics toy box.

Would love any feedback and feel free to ask me anything! Also wondering if anyone can guess the 2010's game that inspired me to make this project :)

Playtest: LINK

Will keep it up until Friday to then take down and tweak it based off of any feedback and get a demo build in the works! Will do my best to update the play-test version as well as feedback is coming in.

AI disclosure: Used for coding and slight asset help (mainly help with coloring as I am Red and Green Color blind which effects a large amount of the color wheel only allowing me to see roughly 15% to 20% of the distinct color shades and unique hues.)

Primarily only used to speed up development time via coding efforts, only referencing my own code or open sourced libraries. Also would like to note all SFX and music are all made by small artist properly credited.

A little back story I am playing around with what to do as my first big animated project and was bouncing around some ideas mainly trying to make sure Im not recreating to heavily from inspirations or other unknown material already out there. And was getting into a bit of lore and I'll just say damn. Was not expecting ChatGPT to be able to write something so dark lol

A bit of content: A western where the town is ran by cult that practices cannibalism on the "forgotten".

Any one else who has been working with in the horror genre have anything interesting like this unexpectedly pop up that caught you off guard?

Edit: Also would anyone even be interested in a psychological horror like in a western setting? Or is this a bit to much of a passion project idea?

I already bought about $2,000 and I am down $3,000?

Ive put a lot of time into messing around with cut scenes and animation recently and decided to put most of my effort into tying it all together. And I am pretty happy with the result, any feedback? A bit of mixed media so id say the cut scene is 90% vibe coded and 10% live action lol.

Also if you interested in the workflow here it is.

I made my own asset pipeline then repurposed it into a mini animation studio and then with what I had learned from almost fully building those out started putting together an engine (for 2d) and have used all that knowledge and transferred it over to 3D basically building what I needed from scratch which is definitely not productive but has taught me a ton about the fundamentals and inner workings of game development and just programming in general. Might switch to unreal or unity or just keep building until I have passed them entirely lol.

1 for the left 2 for the top right 3 for bottom right.

Lmk what you think give the creepiest close up vibes.

If interested in my work flow it is just gemini + a custom three.js asset builder. I use for 2D as well, would love feedback on the character design!

Things that are not "AI" SFX everything else was done through prompting, I am about to start working on a pilot for a horror animation series aiming for 7-15 minutes depending on what I can come up with. Using this method.

I am thinking of calling it The Watcher's Archive.
Or Archive of The Watcher.

The concept is that a silent figure called The Watcher views retro-futuristic VHS tapes from broken realities. Each tape is its own short horror story with a different monster/anomaly , setting, and meaning.
Like a children’s show where attention turns performance into something predatory, or a maintenance room where the system keeps grinding even when someone is trapped inside.

The main rule is watching gives the horror power. The characters inside the tapes don’t know they’re being watched, but the more The Watcher focuses, rewinds, or extends the tape, the more real and dangerous the monsters become.

I’m aiming for something between analog horror, animated anthology, creature horror, and Black Mirror-style social commentary, with each tape acting like a disturbing little fable.

With a mix of gore, action, subliminal, crude comedy, environmental, each tape leaning toward one of those areas, the only thing I can think if to relate it is like Tales from the Crypt but if a bit more mystery and serious toned like Black Mirror

Each tape will feature different color patterns and slightly different art styles possibly widening the range of art styles as long as they feel from the same universe. This is not one of them but gives off a great idea of the concept, would love to hear anyones thoughts!

I've been messing around with Three.js and javascript for a bit and managed to put this together, Some of the vfx and cuts + all of the sfx are from cap-cut but the core visual are all done with just tree.js and vanilla js. I have also been working on back end rendering optimizations for my hardware limitations currently (as I do game dev as well) and a studio like system + api for quicker development of scenes. With a Inverse kinematics system for quick editing of animation as well.

So that way its as simple when putting together a scene, something like :

actor.perform([
Action.look(table),
Action.windup("rightHand", 0.35),
Action.hit("rightHand", table, 0.8),
Action.recover("fast")
]);

and and store them as an array and have them play in order requiring no key framing. And smooth game like experience.

I am releasing this on my YT channel in about two weeks any final edits anyone recommends I make?

I’m working on a new project called BounceWorks: Plinko Reactor, and the core idea is basically, what if a plinko board was not just the game, but a power plant powering a the little factory + casino next door?

The player builds and upgrades balls, pegs, board parts, and automate systems. Each bounce generates charge/money, and over time you go from manually dropping basic balls onto cheap wooden pegs to building a full reactor-style plinko machine with better materials, conveyor belts, auto-droppers, peg reloaders, and stronger board sections.

I want the fun to come from watching the machine slowly become more ridiculous while still being simple and satisfying. With the factory side being all UI and some live moving parts reacting to upgrades in the background so it plays a bit like cookie clickers but if you were running a shady power plant lol.

I’m still early in the design stage, so I’m mostly looking for feedback on the concept before I lock too much in. Does the “plinko factory reactor” angle sound like something that fits incremental games, or does it need a stronger hook/progression idea to keep it interesting past the first 20–30 minutes?

I am looking to self publish my first game on steam as a solo dev and I think this could be the one..? Honestly has been pretty hard to walk away from when play testing, just trying to get some feedback, thank you!

AI Disclaimer: AI tool use for code and asset development and editing, non AI generated.

I've poured a lot of hours working on art and animation side of things and this is probably the best response i've gotten yet. I think as an AI game dev this is the goal when posting about your project imo. I stopped trying to rush through everything and stopped with the "good enough" mentality and quit settling.

I wish I could say there was a short cut but there isn't really, definitely using AI as a learning tool helps but still have to put in the reps and study time.

My Flash era little gnome animation got a few upvotes thank you <3. But my end goal is to find the perfect mix of the era and modernize it with a bit of my own touch/spin.

Idea was Flash ear feel and charting design with just slightly thinner outline with a splash of plushcore style texturing. And a modern light and rendering system. I think it's turning out really well and all SFX are coming from CapCut and edited and layered to get a more unique sound, I'm working on a thin budget but think it's starting to come together!

Would love to hear what I could try messing with to get a even more nostalgic while adding to it not just pure nostalgia.

Video will be uploaded on my youtube tomorrow with a shorts edit version as well: TrashyDoTio Dev

Will have more one other set of versions in the comments in a bit