Steam's Update gives more indie devs MORE OPPORTUNITY! Steam Daily Deals are insanely valuable! Some games make literally tens of thousands of dollars in a single 24 hour period, but previously getting a Steam Daily Deal was only available to a handful of games through manual curation. But Steam ran a personalization experiment that showed over 10 TIMES as many games per day in its Discounts & Events section (mostly Daily Deals), and this change will be going live in the future! That could create more opportunities for indie games to get noticed, BUT it does NOT mean your game automatically gets 10X more views or sales. In order for the algorithm to find the RIGHT audience for your game, you need to make sure your Tags and Store page are set up correctly. So here are three things you can work on right now to benefit from this update: - Use accurate tags that describe the game you actually made. (check More Like This on your game to see if it is recommending similar games) - Make your store page show exactly why your target audience would enjoy it. (don't try to convert a Visual Novel player to play your hardcore survival game) - Plan your discounts in Steamworks to potentially get on the discounts section. More opportunities to be seen can help, BUT your game still needs to give a specific audience a reason to care. A generic clone does not become appealing just because more people see it. More details on the video in my YouTube titled: "Sell 25,000 copies in 24 HOURS? Steam's Update EXPLAINED!" This change is rolling out on Steam in early 2027. But it's yet another Steam change that looks to be a very positive for indie devs!

One TRICK to Debug Multiple Objects!

Do you use transform.Find() in your code? Stop! I highly advise against it for one simple reason: Find uses strings and strings are horrible identifiers. Strings are extremely brittle, it is very easy to make mistakes. If you have the string "Player" and "PIayer" they look similar but are completely different, as is "BOne" vs "B0ne" or "Elite" vs "Eli7e" or simply "Player" vs "Player ", invisible spaces have driven me insane many times in the past. All of those are completely different but hard to tell at a glance. And those are also perfectly valid strings in terms of code compilation, so you won't get any errors until you run the game and everything breaks. Because of that I highly recommend you avoid using strings as identifiers whenever possible, which thankfully in Unity you can avoid them with only a handful of exceptions (like Animator parameters) So instead of using transform.Find(); just use a [SerializeField] and drag the reference in the editor. This one simple change will help you avoid so many headaches. - Code Monkey

To Learn Anything, First Learn Self-Discipline

Should you create a HORROR game?

Do you know what is the current HOT genre on Steam for indie devs? How much a Daily Deal is worth? How maybe the co-op ONLY games era is coming? Or why this game made $350,000 in 24 HOURS? These are all things I covered in my Game Dev Report Newsletter! The latest Game Dev Insights straight to your inbox every Sunday. Being an indie dev is hard, but if you stay up to date with what is going on in the industry things become much easier. Check out my newsletter HERE! cmonkey.co/gamedevreport

Is it possible to make a full-time living from indie games today? Absolutely! BUT only IF you have the right mix of experience, solid marketing skills, and keep your costs realistic. Back in 2013–2020 when all I was doing was making games (before I ever started my YouTube channel), my Steam games alone brought in over $1M, which definitely allowed me to make a living. Part of the secret for my survivability was just my cost of living. Here in Portugal my goal was $2000 per month which allowed me to have a pretty nice life. With that a one year game just needs to make $24k to make a profit, whereas if I were living in San Francisco and needed $10k per month just to survive then that same game would need $120k to make a profit, that's a LOT more difficult. The other secret is simply experience. My first Steam game was actually my 40th game! I made Flash Games for 5 years until I gathered enough experience and skill to be able to make a living from it. It did not happen overnight. And of course making games as a hobby just for fun is always a valid goal. It's up to you to decide if you're making this as a job or as a hobby. I wish you the best of luck in your game dev journey! - Code Monkey

Every Game is 90% the SAME!

Got a comment on my FizzBuzz video saying my "simple" solution wouldn't cut it in interviews since it isn't modular. This is a great example of one of the biggest dev traps, premature optimization! The code that I wrote perfectly fulfilled all my requirements, it was not meant to be modular and it did not need to be modular. Remember how you have limited time and energy, do not waste those precious resources on solving imaginary problems that don't exist. If your task is to write some code that solves A, then write some code that solves A, not some complex overengineered code that solves A, B and C! And of course, if in the future those needs changes, then just refactor! Remember how code is not set in stone, you can modify it later on if you need to. - Code Monkey

How to Make a $50,000 Game!