itch.io

I can’t seem to access the link you’ve posted. I’m getting the following error:

This game is currently unavailable due to restrictions from the developer or copyright holder.

Would it be better to link the Itch.io page instead?

Playing a game in a browser requires less effort from users, so you are likely to have more people trying out the browser game.

As opposed to downloading a game, which requires downloading the files, extracting them, and find out where the executable is. Not to mention there’s more chances of something goes wrong, like the game not running properly on someone’s system.

I don’t think there’s anything you can do about this, it’s just how it works. The easier a game is to access the more people will give it a go.

Is this for a profile picture, or a screenshot for a project?

It’s possible sometimes when you export a gif image that it automatically removes transparency, is it a good idea to check if you can view the exported .gif file with an image viewer to confirm it still has transparency?

I don’t think any of your projects are in quarantine. If that was the case, you should get a relevant warning when you visit their pages.

Is this about your game “Vore Operator” ? From what I can see that project doesn’t have any downloadable files, which is probably why it’s not indexed. Apart from that, I can’t notice any other issues with your projects.

I assume from the original post that OP has a game that’s crashing when run and they wanted to see what the error is (if any). Running a game through the terminal is a great way to get some error/output in the terminal that might explain the crash.

That’s at least my assumption, there isn’t enough details in the post so it’s hard to say.

To run a game through a linux terminal, you’d have to follow a few steps.

First go to the game’s directory with this:

cd <game_directory>

Then you need to find the executable file, sometimes it’s a file ending in “.sh”, sometimes it’s a file without an extension. Once you find that file you can then do:

./filename.sh

Replacing “filename.sh” with the executable file. It’s hard to give any more information, as those files can be very different from project to project.

Developers can put a default price on “Name your own price”. If you are unsure of what to pay, you can select that amount.

This method can allow a project to be reached by a big number of people, but also get some funding from those who can afford it.

Making 3D games requires a deeper understanding of 3D math, at least to do it right, which can be a barrier for a lot of people.

On 2D games, it’s possible to figure out for yourself what’s happening on the screen and do custom solution to problems. When you start involving 4x4 matrices, different spaces, and shaders, it immediately becomes overwhelming, at least to someone who is not familiar with those concepts.

Hey there,

I don’t think that would be an issue. It wouldn’t surprise me if there are already plenty of accounts that are meant to represent a team of people, instead of individuals.

Cheers

Just having your game published on Itch.io is enough. The admins look at games published here and they post on other social media about games they find that they think could use more attention to it.

There’s no specific official criteria, and that’s by design, so that users focus on making their games better, rather than trying to game the system.

Hey there,

Will releasing two games at the same time lower the visibility of one or both of them?

I don’t think so. If they are your first games on this account, they might both go for admin review, so it might take a bit longer for things to appear in the search engine and such areas, but that’s about it.

Will In-game ads (promotions for my other games) cause issues?

I remember admins mentioning in the past that, putting ads in games is discouraged, but not against the rules. If you have to add ads, they should not provide a poor user experience.

Although from what I understand, you just mention one of your other games. I guess technically that’s an ad, but I’m pretty confident that shouldn’t cause any issues. I feel like it’s pretty normal to have a section in your game for who you are and what other projects you’ve made.

Cheers

Is this about your latest game The Evil Road ?

If so, at the time of this post, it was published 14 hours ago. Please give it some more time before your project is indexed.

Do those pictures appear in your video before you uploaded it on YouTube?

If the answer is no, then what you are seeing is most likely YouTube’s recommended videos and such, which are based on your profile, so every user will see something different. To me knowledge there’s no way of removing those.

However when I link them to my Itch.io pages, there is more stuff added. I do not even know where these files come from.

Could you elaborate on this? Are you referring to Youtube showing recommended videos and such after a video ends?

Hey there,

My initial thought is, usually a randomised system hints on replayability. If you expect most of your users to only play your game once, but just want to randomise it for uniqueness, it might add more complexity than it’s worth.

At the start of each new game, the world would generally retain the same pool of ingredients

If you do that, you really need to balance it right. Will one player be able to randomly mix a very strong potion early on, while another player will have to wait until the end of the game?

Worth keeping in mind that, making a game balanced takes a lot of time and effort. Making said game random, makes it even harder of a task.

The idea is to challenge the player in a captivating way.

I think I see what you are going for. Trying to create an experience that the user can enjoy, and that they can’t predict too much what’s going to happen, or they can’t use a guide, as a lot of the core mechanics are randomised. This is a neat idea, but it does add to the complexity of an otherwise already complex game.

This discovery process will involve experimentation with various ingredient combinations

I like this idea, however from personal experience, if a game expects me to mix ingredients, but only a small combination of ingredients work, that discourages me from experimenting. I can’t tell if that’s an opinion a lot of other people have or that might just be me.

Does this concept resonate with you as an engaging and enjoyable game mechanic, or does it strike you as potentially frustrating?

To be completely honest, I’m just not sure you’ve added enough information to answer this. I can picture a game using the concept that is fun to play, but I can also picture a game using this but being boring. I’m not entirely sure if this is a very innovating idea, I feel like I’ve played games that have experimented with similar gimmicks, although no specific title comes to mind.

Having said all that, if you go ahead with this idea, a randomised game gives a unique experience not only to each user, but also on the same user playing the game multiple times. Making the game in such a way that it needs to be replayed multiple times to reach the end might show more of that content to users.

Sorry for the wall of text. Needless to say these are all my personal opinions, so feel free follow only the ones you like :)

Glad to hear it’s working out for you :)

It’s indeed a learning curve, but using butler has a lot of advantages, and the best thing is you only have to set it up once.

I figured out having spaces is a no-no

Spaces are what’s used to differentiate between arguments in the command line. If you want to pass a filename with spaces as one argument you can surround it by double quotes, but it’s always better to not have spaces in filenames.

If they deny me, it’s odd, they’d miss out on revenue.

Just wanted to mention on this from another comment, I don’t know the criteria of how a project is chosen, but the size limit is there for a reason. If you have a track record of successful games in the past, that would be a good sign that the extra size for the project has good chances of being worth it.

That’s my speculation at least, support will give you more accurate details when they answer.

Hey there,

The Butler thing is over my head, and I basically just need to upload a few zip files.

I’d advice to give butler a go, you basically just need to run one command to login, and one command for each file you want to upload. Plus that increases the size limit to twice the size.

I’ll take any time frame you have experienced!

Support prioritises messages based on urgency. For increasing the size limit, they’d need to look at the situation and let you know if approved, which is not guaranteed. This might take some time. Also the weekend is coming, which makes things a bit slower.

I follow a simple rule, if they approach me, that’s a red flag.

My suggestion is to give a few keys using the Steam curator service, not to people that approach you first. Spammers will send those e-mails to every new game released on Steam, if half of the developers give them a key, they suddenly earn lots of money.

I’ve gotten such e-mails for every single paid game I’ve released on Steam, very often by the same people. It’s unfortunate that people take advantage of devs like that, but it’s a lesson learnt :)

At least that’s my view and experience, up to you how you deal with it.

Beta/Restricted: This is where I’d release new versions of my game first and have it restricted to a beta set of invited players only. The beta players can test the game version to find issues and provide feedback. It would be free.

My understanding is that the rule is mostly to avoid people flooding the search with copies of the same project. Your case seems to be that one project will be public, and one will be private.

I don’t think that will be an issue.

Long term Linux user here. Supporting only Linux is interesting, but it all depends on what your goals are.

If you want to earn enough money to sustain yourself developing games, you might have to support as many platforms as possible, at least the popular ones.

If you are just making games for fun, then do as you like, support any platform :)

Hey there,

It is quite frustrating that it takes so long for the assets to only appear in the search. Can someone tell me the exact time it takes for this or an approximate

From what I can tell, your new project is your first paid project. That means it will go through an extra review to make sure everything looks as it should. I’d give it at least a few more business days. Look at other similar posts for more info.

That might be frustrating, but it’s there as an extra measure against malicious projects.

And the second, how can I delete an account that I no longer have any kind of access to and I am the owner and the models….

You’d have to contact support for that. The usual issue with deleting accounts is that buyers lose access to the project they paid money for, so that’s not something that a developer can do by themselves at the moment.

Hope that helps

I haven’t been featured on the frontpage, but in case it helps, my understanding on being selected is:

• Make a good game. Something people want to play, that has a good amount of polish (for indie standards).
• Make a good project page. Just by looking at it, people should feel excited, get a good idea of what your game is about, and want to play it.
• Admins look through projects, and put on the front page what they think looks good. You can try tagging Itch.io on some social media, to help with the visibility of your project, but you can only do so much.

No matter what you do, there’s no guarantee way to put your project in the front page. That’s by design, so it becomes very difficult for someone to “game the system” and make it impossible for small indies to be featured.

Usually a project is being put back on review if the system detects that it needs to be reviewed again.

This is intentionally vague, so people cannot “game the system” and attempt to upload malicious content without triggering the review to happen. It’s hard to tell what you can do to not trigger it.

I’m a developer that have published games on a few platforms other than Itch.

Itch.io has made it very easy to make a project and just publish it. It’s indie friendly, so there’s not many rules quality-wise, as long as your project does not act maliciously.

It’s one of the most indie-friendly platforms I’ve used, which comes with it’s own ups and downs.

Hey there,

I noticed in the edit game screen, the URL is something like:

itch.io/game/edit/<number>

Could it be that “<number>” is the game_id you are looking for ? I haven’t tested it myself, but worth a try.

There’s nothing wrong with linking dynamically and providing a copy of a library in your game. Windows does a similar with when .dll files are bundled.

However if you are using open-source libraries, make sure you follow their license. Some libraries require you to copy-paste their license in your project, so your users know that one library is not yours and is licensed under different terms than the rest of your project.

This is one of the reasons projects take that long to index in the search engine.

Itch.io is focusing on allowing indie devs to publish their content as easy as possible. This has its drawbacks, but it’s one of the reasons new accounts with new projects go through a review to check on this activity.

What you are describing is not unique to Itch.io, users can for example post pictures on social media that break the rules there. The picture will appear instantly, but soon after it will be taken down.

The alternative is to have stricter controls on who can make accounts and publish content, maybe even ask users to pay to publish, which honestly I think will make Itch.io lose part of its charm as an indie friendly platform. Of course every person has their own opinion :)

It’s possible to use the CI/CD system of websites like Github, to generate your builds online.

On Github, this is free for open-source projects, and relatively low cost for closed source projects. It’s a method that can be used to potentially distribute your C++ game.

This is an interesting idea.

By using butler, it’s possible to update you project, and within the Itch app users have the option to play any version of your project they want.

I believe that’s not how it works on the web though, it would be a very welcome change indeed!

They look great to me!

It seems your project is still getting a handful of eyes on a daily basis. It would make any indie feel appreciate it :D

Hey there,

Users of the Itch app playing your game might show up as a download. This is because the Itch app downloads browser games in the background, to make the experience smoother.

Hope that makes sense :)

As mentioned above I’m around, but sometimes life gets busy so I might be a bit hit or miss :)

If there’s something that needs getting looked at by an admin or moderator, feel free to report it and there’s a good chance it will be seen by someone to deal with it.

Yes, we would encourage you to submit your pitch for the game design challenge.

Sounds excellent, I appreciate it :)

At that time it might be helpful to share more details about your language, compiler, and engine with us so that we could become familiar with them.

The language is called “avdl” and its compiler is open-sourced here: avdl on Github. There are details on how to install it locally on the README file of that page. There are some builds available for some Linux Distros, but those might be a bit out of date currently.

I made an open source game that uses this language, called “Rue” which can be found here: Rue on Github. To compile it, navigate to the game’s root directory from the command line and execute the compiler by typing the following command (assuming “avdl” is installed):

avdl

This should build and output a build ready to use locally in avdl_build.

This game has automated builds using Github Actions, that are created using “avdl” behind the scenes. The most recent build action can be found here: Rue v1.0.1 builds on Github.

The Github actions show the steps to generate a build, I’ll most likely have a similar set up prepared for any new project, so anyone should be able to make amends on the project and have Github re-generate the builds, without having to install “avdl” locally.

This is of course only relevant after the pitch stage. Feel free to reach out if any more information is needed. Looking forward to exploring this challenge :)

However we would need to have access to the necessary components to replicate that custom engine in order to fully test the game

I make my games using a programming language I’ve designed, combined with a compiler and a custom game engine I developed. Currently it’s possible to compile automated builds for Linux, Windows and Android using Github Actions, so someone with programming experience should be able to compile and modify such games from source.

The game devs are welcome to do the additional work if they’d prefer or we do it ourselves.

I understand my case is a bit niche and it might be difficult for a 3rd person to make changes on my projects, given it’s a unique programming language.

Having said that, this seems like an interesting challenge. If such projects are allowed, do let me know. If not, no worries, it’s perfectly understandable :)

Hey there,

I was reading information about this and noticed the following:

Ideally you will use Unity to develop your game. Due to its large user base it is easier for us to get support if needed and the majority of the games we have published in the past were developed using Unity. Also, it is generally easier for us to export Unity games to a variety of platforms. Importantly, Unity supports exporting to HTML5. Browser-based games are often more accessible because they can be played, for example, in public libraries and at schools. We strive to publish games that are accessible.

Does that basically mean that people will give you the source code of the project, and it’s up to you to compile it and share it to other platforms?

On that note, do you have any policy for games made with a custom engine?

Hey there,

When I visit the game page, the downloads are accessible even though there’s a future release date set.

To my knowledge, the release date is just metadata and is not meant to impact if the project is available or not. This means, as you mentioned, setting it to a future date will still allow users to access a project’s files.

You can go to the uploaded files of your project and tick the following box:

[ ] Hide this file and prevent it from being downloaded

This should allow you to keep pushing updates for those files with butler, and those files will not be available to users until you untick that box.

I’d like the same functionality that I assume paid games have for a future launch date.

I’m not sure paid games have that feature. The only thing I can see from my projects is the ability to accept pre-orders, which is not a feature for free games, as there is no point “pre-ordering” a game without a price.

On that note, I do agree it would be nice to have the feature for automated planned updates, so you wouldn’t need to do anything yourself. Until such a feature is implemented, I hope my solution above will work for you :)

This is actually a very clever find!

I can verify that I could reproduce this issue with the URL you’ve posted above.

That’s not guaranteed. I’d guess that most developers do not monitor the community forums at all.

Posting on the project’s page will help your issue be seen by other people that have used the same project, or even better, by the developer themselves.