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Show HN: I revived a game I abandoned 5yo ago and released it for free today

store.steampowered.com

55 pointsjoemanaco26 comments

Please release on non-Steam platform (e.g. on itch.io). Some people actively oppose Steam DRM and won't create an account on principle.

If you want to protest the existence of Steam DRM by not ever using Steam that's certainly your prerogative, but it is worth noting that the DRM offered by Steam is entirely optional for the developers. Many games on Steam contain no DRM whatsoever and Steam is essentially just another way to download them.

I think it should be DRM free (at least I haven't opted in anywhere for it on the Steam Backend). I might consider to upload it to itch.io as well when I find some time.

I also thought about if I should offer it as Download on my website, but I don't know if anyone on PC nowadays still would install games via an unknown website :-)

> I don't know if anyone on PC nowadays still would install games via an unknown website

I do it all the time, assessing trustworthiness in a heuristic fashion. Game looks legit, website clearly belongs to who it says it belongs to, etc.

What really does itch.io or Steam offer in the way of protection if a developer wants to be malicious anyway?

P.S: This game and its sequel are really good, and as far as I'm aware this is the only distribution point: https://silverspaceship.com/promesst/

Oh, it's from Sean Barrett. Never heard of the game but I'm using his stb libraries :-)

> What really does itch.io or Steam offer in the way of protection if a developer wants to be malicious anyway?

more eyes; if a game contained some kind of malware, there will likely be reports made on the game discussion page (hosted on steam), and game will likely be taken down with enough complaints

i've seen this happen before when some random game added a cryptominer in a silent update

Unlike steam, itch.io runs games in a process sandbox. I remember they had some interesting technical details, but I’m on mobile and can’t find them.

> What really does itch.io or Steam offer in the way of protection if a developer wants to be malicious anyway?

It's even worse than that actually. Steam seems to have no problem with apps or games that require elevated/admin/root permissions to run, while at the same time a lack of code signing on those executables, even if the permissions on the file/folder allow modification by any user on the operating system. Some games carry recommendations by the developers, support, or the communities themselves to open up those permissions or run the game as an administrator, to "fix the problem". If you dare raise a concern, you'll be heckled and mocked.

The carelessness around security is pervasive in the gaming community and Steam isn't helping the situation, likely because it would be bad for revenue.

Related : AFAIK Steam is still not marking Denuvo as 3rd party DRM ?

https://www.gog.com/forum/general/how_to_run_steam_games_off...

Wow, never expected to see "Gaben Newell is a big-tech consumer-control suit" from anyone around here. For what it's worth I'm a huge fan of Steam, if you want to avoid it for personal reasons just go download a copy off the devs blog (linked here: https://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?topic=73043.0)

Neat!

I'm porting a game I wrote 20 years ago (source comments date to 2002) for an early handheld. It probably didn't age as well as yours.

Cool, which game is it?

Lexicon

You drag wooden tile letters around a grid. When words are formed the tiles burn, the ones above fall down. Try to clear the grid.

This reminds me of sonic the hedge hog and Nintendo games. Very eerie 90s feeling. Back then I used to think it was so awesome and now I get the feeling how much of my life I just waisted by trying to get good at a game that was not worth judging myself by.

This game looks great and lines up well with my own day dreams about creating a pixel art platformer someday. I'd be interested in knowing more about the game engine. Thanks for sharing !

Thank you.

It's based on a private fork of this (discontinued) language: https://github.com/blitz-research/monkey

Looks great! Will download at home.

May I ask why you decided to release it for free, instead of a low price (i.e., $5 or $10)?

My idea was to release it for free and cross-promote my other game in it I'm currently working on. But don't know if it works out, because it's quite niche.

Why did you abandon a (I'm assuming) nearly complete game?

When I had it nearly finished I asked an artist if he could do a mock up. I liked it so much that I thought "Cool, I'll let him remake all the graphics quickly and release it then".

Then when I replaced the graphics I continously added new features as well and a popular video game musician (Chris Hülsbeck) joined the project. Now with so much talent working for the project I felt like the gamedesign wasn't a good match for it anymore, so I basically started over (I thought about this for a month or two, then finally throw away all source code and restarted without realizing that I have basically threw a nearly finished game away). This sounds pretty dumb in retrospective, but back then I just didn't saw it.

> This sounds pretty dumb in retrospective, but back then I just didn't saw it.

I've said approximately this sentence so, so many times in the past year.

That’s an impressive level of self awareness. I wasn’t able to see the flaws in my game until after I’d released it. I’m not sure if it was because I didn’t want to see them or if I was just too far down in the trenches or what.

Avoiding Disney-MCU Lawsuit? xD

Scratch-that -- just saw the successor demo: Tiny Thor. Game looks great. I haven't had the urge to play platformers since the 80s but this one does make me look twice!

How did that feel?

TBH: Pretty good :) I know it's not the best game ever, but it feels nice anyway...

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