itch.io

The Offhand slot for torches is a really nice quality of life touch, since constantly swapping between the pickaxe and a torch is one of the more tedious parts of games like this. Gating Aetherite behind the boss is a good way to give the fight a reason to exist beyond its own loot drop.

One thing I'd be curious about is how the boss gets summoned, because a hint somewhere in The Overgrowth about what you need usually saves players from having to look it up. With water still being a bit buggy, it might also help to mention the known issues in the patch notes, so people report new problems instead of the same ones. Rain, wind and the improved lighting should do a lot for the mood, both on the surface and underground.

Good luck getting 0.8a out, it sounds like a big step for the game.

I haven't played it yet, so for now I can only answer the page question. The opening of the description does a lot of work, "You wake with your fist closed around nothing" sets the mood better than any feature list would. One small thing I noticed: your post says the game is complete, but the status on the page is set to In development, and some players skip anything marked that way, so it's worth switching it to Released if it's done. The bullet list under "The practical part" also looks a bit bare, since items like Turn-based combat and Cave travel have no line after them, so one short sentence each would help. Having the 3 to 4 hour length and the content warnings right on the page is a good call too.

The cracks spreading across the screen after your worst failures is a really cool idea for a text RPG, congrats on finishing your first game.

Unfortunately this might be a harder case for itch.io support than it looks. Section 9 of the terms says support can process a refund when the content can't run, something prevents access to it, or it doesn't accurately represent what was advertised, and changing your mind after a few weeks isn't on that list. The deal for Ye-xin to build you a game was also made on Discord, so support probably can't treat it as part of the bundle purchase itself. That doesn't mean they'll say no, but when you follow up, it's worth keeping it focused on the purchase and putting your proof in one message.

If you're still thinking about a chargeback, check with your bank or PayPal first, since they each have their own time limits for disputes and two months may already be close to them. Waiting two months with no answer at all is rough, I hope they at least give you a clear yes or no soon.

From itch.io's own terms, this sounds like the kind of case they do refund. The Refunds section says support can process a refund when a product "does not accurately represent what was advertised", so a ticket was the right move. Their quality guidelines also say creators must tag generative AI use, and that it's strictly enforced on game asset pages. So if those assets are AI-generated and not marked that way, it's worth using the Report link at the bottom of each asset page too, which goes to moderation separately from your ticket.

Some sellers on older payment setups handle refunds themselves, so messaging the creator directly can't hurt while you wait. Keep your receipt and the example images together so you can add them to the ticket in one go if support asks. Twelve days of silence is frustrating, especially when you paid for something you can't use.

That sounds like itch.io's spam filter rather than anything you did wrong. Posts from newer accounts often get held with an "Awaiting moderator approval" message, and they stay hidden until someone approves them. If it's a comment on a game's page, the developer of that game can usually approve it, so it may still show up later. If it keeps happening everywhere, contacting support at /support and asking them to review your account is the usual fix. This thread showing up is a good sign, since it means you can post here in the main community. Welcome to itch, it gets less confusing after the first week.

Does it happen only in the itch app, or do you get the same blank page in a normal web browser too? That's the first thing I'd check, because it tells you whether the problem is the app or something on the itch.io side for your account. If the browser works, you can browse and download from there for now while the app gets sorted out.

If it's blank in the browser too, try a private window with all extensions turned off, since ad blockers and script blockers can stop pages from loading. Clearing the cache and cookies for itch.io is worth a try after that. If you post which device, OS and browser you're on, and whether it's every game page or only some, people here can narrow it down a lot faster. Two months with no reply from support is rough, I hope this gets you somewhere.

Game jams are probably the fastest way to get the direction you're missing. They give you a theme and a deadline, so you have to take one small idea all the way from concept to something playable in a weekend or a week, and you see the whole process in miniature. There are always a few running here: /jams

A lot of jams also let you enter as a team, which is an easy way to pair up with an artist or a musician and see how they work. For art as a code person, simple placeholder shapes go further than you'd think, and Kenney's asset packs (kenney.nl) are all CC0, so you can use them even in a commercial game while you figure out a style. Since you like Slay the Spire and Balatro, a tiny deckbuilder with ten cards and one enemy would be a nice next project, because it's mostly systems and needs very little art. Ten years of engineering will help more than you'd expect once a project gets bigger.

Sadly yes, popular sites get copied a lot, so the safest habit is to bookmark itch.io and open games from there instead of from search results. You said you almost got caught, but if you did run anything from that site, it's worth checking that it didn't leave something behind. On Windows, open Windows Security, go to Virus & threat protection, then Manage settings, and under Exclusions click Add or remove exclusions. Remove anything there that you didn't add yourself.

After that, run a Microsoft Defender Offline scan from Scan options, since it restarts the PC and scans before Windows fully loads. If you typed any passwords while that program was on your PC, changing them from another device is a good idea too. Glad you noticed before it got worse.

The friendship angle is what makes this stand out to me, since most Backrooms games are about being alone and lost. If the player genuinely likes her before anything turns, the moment she doesn't want you to leave will hit harder than any monster could. I'd spend real time on the good part first, small things like her showing you hidden rooms or waiting for you when you come back, so the change feels like losing something.

It could also be interesting if the Backrooms itself shifts as she changes, like exits getting harder to find, so the player isn't sure whether it's her or the place. Leaving it a little unclear whether she's dangerous or just lonely would give you a lot to play with. Liminary-Dev is right that there are tons of Backrooms games, but a story about an attachment you can't get away from is a different hook than another chase through yellow hallways. It's a creepy and kind of sad premise, I'd play it.

For PS1-style horror packs, the screenshots do most of the selling, so I'd want to see the models in an actual dark scene with fog and low-res textures, not just on a grey background. After that it's mostly what's included and whether it drops into an engine without extra work: texture sizes, poly counts, textures set up for point filtering, and ready-made materials or a demo scene for Unity or Godot. A clear license matters too, especially whether commercial use is allowed and whether credit is required.

Consistency is a big one, because people mix packs, so a pack that matches the same creator's other packs is easier to commit to. If I were buying, price would come after all of that, since most packs cost far less than the time they save, though a bundle discount is always nice. Good luck with the business plan, PS1 horror is a fun niche to dig into.

As far as I know there isn't a toggle like that for a normal public page right now. Free downloads on itch don't need an account and don't create ownership, so anyone with the link can grab the files. The closest thing today is download keys: when you generate them, you can require the key to be claimed before the files can be downloaded, and claiming means logging in or making an account (/updates/download-keys-can-now-be-claimed).

That works for a small group like testers or supporters, but it's a lot of manual work for a mod with lots of downloads, so an optional "registered users only" setting does sound useful. Nice to see someone this fond of the site.

I get why that's frustrating, darker games are hard to find when they're buried under that much explicit stuff. Right now creators just mark a page as adult content or not, and you either have adult content enabled in your account settings or you don't, so there's no separate step for mature but not sexual. Before turning it on, it's worth browsing tags with it off, because a lot of dark games aren't flagged as adult at all.

With the filter off I still see about 20,000 results under Dark (/games/tag-dark) and over 22,000 under Psychological Horror (/games/tag-psychological-horror), and Gore (/games/tag-gore) has a few thousand if you want something rougher. A separate mature tier does sound like a good idea though, hopefully the staff see this one.

You won't make a fool of yourself either way, attachments are optional. Attaching a file to a devlog just marks it as the file that post is about, so readers can see which build the patch notes go with. It doesn't create a download link, which is why your buyer couldn't click it. An itch admin explained it in an older thread: they keep downloads on the project's download page on purpose, so different versions don't end up floating around on different posts (/t/182672/cant-get-devlog-attachments-to-work).

So for a patch notes post, attaching just the file that changed in that patch is a sensible habit, and for a general dev update you can leave it empty. If a buyer can't find the update, pointing them to their download page or purchase email like itchboy said is the real fix. Congrats on getting v1.1 out.

I can't see tickets since I'm just another user, but the CSS guide might help while you wait: /docs/creators/css-guide

At the bottom it lists what they want in a CSS request: what kinds of changes you'd like to make, confirmation that the built-in theme editor can't already do it, that your page will stay accessible, and that you won't alter itch.io's own UI. It also says they don't grant CSS access to empty accounts. If your first email was missing any of those points, replying on the same ticket with them might make it easier to approve. Six days of silence is frustrating, I hope they get back to you soon.

A real city can work well if it shows up in the maps themselves and not just the name. Players learn competitive maps by landmarks and callouts, so a spot people recognize as a real Rouen street or square gives them something to remember and talk about. The catch is that real streets aren't built for balanced sightlines, so I'd treat the city as inspiration and still lay out the lanes and chokepoints for gameplay first.

On the humor, I think it's charming as long as it stays in the presentation, like menus, voice lines, cosmetics and little map details. If a joke ever makes it harder to hear footsteps or spot an enemy, competitive players will turn on it fast. For playtesting, a small closed test with a handful of people who already play tactical shooters will probably tell you more than a big open one at this stage. Rouen is a fun pick too, it's not a city you see in games every day.

Moon Sweepers is a Windows download rather than a browser game, so a lot depends on your PC. First I'd lower the graphics settings or resolution in the game's options if it has them. If you're on a laptop, plug it in and make sure Windows runs the game on the dedicated GPU: under Settings > System > Display > Graphics you can add the game and set it to High performance.

It's also worth figuring out whether it's a low frame rate or network lag, since it's online co-op with lobbies of up to 16 players. If it only gets choppy in a busy lobby, try a smaller one and see if that changes anything. If none of that helps, the comments on the game's page are probably the best place to ask, since the dev would know what hardware it actually needs. Hope you get it running smoothly, that toothbrush deserves a decent frame rate.

itch.io can do this pretty well. On your project's edit page, under Visibility & access, set it to Restricted. Then only people you approve (with a password or download keys) can open the page and get the files, and you can switch it to Public later. The docs are here: /docs/creators/access-control
For horror especially, I'd ask a few testers to record themselves playing if they're OK with it, because a scare that doesn't land rarely shows up in written feedback. A small Discord helps once you have more than a handful of testers, but a short form with 3 or 4 specific questions usually gets you more useful answers than "any feedback?". Good luck with the first one.

It is a known kind of issue, but it's not random. Browsers block audio until the player clicks or presses a key, so anything that plays right at startup can get dropped. A "click to start" screen usually fixes that part. Also, since Godot 4.3, web exports play audio in "Sample" mode by default, and that mode doesn't support AudioEffects, reverb, or procedural audio. So if your sounds go through a bus with effects, that could be why some are silent. You can switch back with the Audio > General > Default Playback Type.web project setting, or set Playback Type to Stream on a single player, but Stream playback is laggier unless the export has thread support. The web export page covers all of this: https://docs.godotengine.org/en/stable/tutorials/export/exporting_for_web.html

Browser audio trips up a lot of people on their first web build, so you're in good company.