Game Dev Digest — Issue #275 - Art Direction, Marketing, and more
Issue #275 - Art Direction, Marketing, and more This article was originally published on GameDevDigest.com Art, tools and more in this issue. Enjoy! The director of Tactical Breach Wizards is right: animate words, not letters! - Animated words and sound design can engage players in a different way than voice acting. gamedeveloper.com Art Direction - Mastering Foundations - This tutorial is mainly for 3D artists who want to learn the basics of art direction by using my Alien corridor example as a guide or blueprint for their projects. I've shared my process, tips, and tricks to help improve your work. In a professional production there are many more layers to consider, like an intense 2d concept art phase or different other approvals & review stages. Keep in mind that this is just one method among many and that I’m also learning new things about art direction. Malte Resenberger-Loosmann "Valve knows it, I know it, and you need to know it": Steam expert tells indie devs to "give away" demos, because actually playing a game beats all other marketing - It's not until you get your demo that you get your visibility. So get that demo playable." gamesradar.com How to Create An Official Developer Steam Page? And Why You Should! - Ever clicked on a “Publisher” link on Steam and then saw their professional looking Steam page with all their games? Too bad Developers can’t have such a page, right? Well, they can! And this article will tell you how! piratepr.com Videos How the WereCleaner team created a carnage cleaning system - We're bringing the WereCleaner team to a stream to teach you how to create a pressure washer-esq cleaning … Unity Awesome FREE Game Development Tools - The world of free game development tools is absolutely jammed pack with awesome programs and today we take a look at some of the very best free game development applications available. Gamefromscratch STOP Using Singletons! Try THIS Instead – Service Locator in Unity - Tired of messy Singletons and rigid dependencies in your Unity projects? Say hello to the Service Locator Pattern – a flexible way to manage global access without the chaos! Binary Impact Unity Graphics: Max Performance? - I sit down with Mark Schoennagel (Technical Manager) from Unity and ask him his favorite new graphics performance tools for Unity 6. Warped Imagination C# Reflection in Unity: A Complete Guide for Game Developers - In this comprehensive Unity tutorial, I dive deep into C# Reflection - a powerful but often misunderstood feature that can transform how you build games. Learn exactly what reflection is, when to use it in your Unity projects, and how to implement it with optimized, clean code. Code With K Every Pixel Art Game Has This Problem... - How I fixed Pixel Snapping / Jitter in my game using a subpixel camera to achieve smooth pixel perfect movement. Barry's Development Hell Influencer Marketing for Indie Games – Knowledge Share w/ Clara Sia (Devolver, Indie Consultant) - How do you effectively work with content creators to market your game? What makes for successful influencer partnerships? How do you find the right creators, and what should you consider before reaching out? IMPRESS // Ashley Gwinnell Boost Your Unity Game Speed With Powerful GPU Instancing And Batching - GPU Instancing and Static Batching are key techniques for optimizing performance in Unity, and this video explains how they compare. It covers how GPU Instancing efficiently handles dynamic objects with shared materials, while Static Batching combines non-moving objects to reduce draw calls. git-amend How to Gamify your Career Growth with Unity's Larry Hryb and Jessica Lindl - Unity host Jackson sits down with very special guests Larry Hryb and author of the Career Game Loop, Jessica Lindl to discuss how your experience as a gamer can help your career! Unity Frame-by-Frame Effects for Games - Beginner Tutorial - Let's see how to create Frame-by-Frame VFX for Games, with OpenToonz, and how to use it in Unity! Create awesome flipbooks with this techniques and bring new looks to your games or portfolio! Gabriel Aguiar Prod. Assets Legendary Game Dev Environments Bundle - Game developers—it’s time to build new and unique worlds with this bundle of 5000+ legendary game assets from Leartes Studios! This high-quality collection features environments, models, animations, and more for use in Unreal Engine and Unity. Recreate the post-WW2 Era with the 1950s NYC Environment Megapack. Build a mighty castle setting with the Fantasy Castle Environment. Or curate your own magical garden lands with the Stylized Paradise Gardens. Get the assets you need to help bring your game to life, and help support Care.org with your purchase! Humble Bundle Affiliate The Best of Synty Game Dev Assets #4 Bundle - Turbo charge your game dev skills. Game developers, build amazing worlds with this bundle of Synty polygon assets and more! Bring your pro

Issue #275 - Art Direction, Marketing, and more
This article was originally published on GameDevDigest.com
Art, tools and more in this issue. Enjoy!
The director of Tactical Breach Wizards is right: animate words, not letters! - Animated words and sound design can engage players in a different way than voice acting.
gamedeveloper.com
Art Direction - Mastering Foundations - This tutorial is mainly for 3D artists who want to learn the basics of art direction by using my Alien corridor example as a guide or blueprint for their projects. I've shared my process, tips, and tricks to help improve your work. In a professional production there are many more layers to consider, like an intense 2d concept art phase or different other approvals & review stages. Keep in mind that this is just one method among many and that I’m also learning new things about art direction.
Malte Resenberger-Loosmann
"Valve knows it, I know it, and you need to know it": Steam expert tells indie devs to "give away" demos, because actually playing a game beats all other marketing - It's not until you get your demo that you get your visibility. So get that demo playable."
gamesradar.com
How to Create An Official Developer Steam Page? And Why You Should! - Ever clicked on a “Publisher” link on Steam and then saw their professional looking Steam page with all their games? Too bad Developers can’t have such a page, right? Well, they can! And this article will tell you how!
piratepr.com
Videos
How the WereCleaner team created a carnage cleaning system - We're bringing the WereCleaner team to a stream to teach you how to create a pressure washer-esq cleaning …
Unity
Awesome FREE Game Development Tools - The world of free game development tools is absolutely jammed pack with awesome programs and today we take a look at some of the very best free game development applications available.
Gamefromscratch
STOP Using Singletons! Try THIS Instead – Service Locator in Unity - Tired of messy Singletons and rigid dependencies in your Unity projects? Say hello to the Service Locator Pattern – a flexible way to manage global access without the chaos!
Binary Impact
Unity Graphics: Max Performance? - I sit down with Mark Schoennagel (Technical Manager) from Unity and ask him his favorite new graphics performance tools for Unity 6.
Warped Imagination
C# Reflection in Unity: A Complete Guide for Game Developers - In this comprehensive Unity tutorial, I dive deep into C# Reflection - a powerful but often misunderstood feature that can transform how you build games. Learn exactly what reflection is, when to use it in your Unity projects, and how to implement it with optimized, clean code.
Code With K
Every Pixel Art Game Has This Problem... - How I fixed Pixel Snapping / Jitter in my game using a subpixel camera to achieve smooth pixel perfect movement.
Barry's Development Hell
Influencer Marketing for Indie Games – Knowledge Share w/ Clara Sia (Devolver, Indie Consultant) - How do you effectively work with content creators to market your game? What makes for successful influencer partnerships? How do you find the right creators, and what should you consider before reaching out?
IMPRESS // Ashley Gwinnell
Boost Your Unity Game Speed With Powerful GPU Instancing And Batching - GPU Instancing and Static Batching are key techniques for optimizing performance in Unity, and this video explains how they compare. It covers how GPU Instancing efficiently handles dynamic objects with shared materials, while Static Batching combines non-moving objects to reduce draw calls.
git-amend
How to Gamify your Career Growth with Unity's Larry Hryb and Jessica Lindl - Unity host Jackson sits down with very special guests Larry Hryb and author of the Career Game Loop, Jessica Lindl to discuss how your experience as a gamer can help your career!
Unity
Frame-by-Frame Effects for Games - Beginner Tutorial - Let's see how to create Frame-by-Frame VFX for Games, with OpenToonz, and how to use it in Unity! Create awesome flipbooks with this techniques and bring new looks to your games or portfolio!
Gabriel Aguiar Prod.
Assets
Legendary Game Dev Environments Bundle - Game developers—it’s time to build new and unique worlds with this bundle of 5000+ legendary game assets from Leartes Studios!
This high-quality collection features environments, models, animations, and more for use in Unreal Engine and Unity. Recreate the post-WW2 Era with the 1950s NYC Environment Megapack. Build a mighty castle setting with the Fantasy Castle Environment. Or curate your own magical garden lands with the Stylized Paradise Gardens.
Get the assets you need to help bring your game to life, and help support Care.org with your purchase!
Humble Bundle Affiliate
The Best of Synty Game Dev Assets #4 Bundle - Turbo charge your game dev skills.
Game developers, build amazing worlds with this bundle of Synty polygon assets and more! Bring your projects to life quicker and make your dream game a reality while supporting a great cause. Synty assets are fully customisable and easy to use, making them accessible for game developers of all levels. Compatible with Unity and Unreal game engines—this high-quality collection features environments, characters, meshes, models, animations, and more for use. These Synty game dev assets are sure to inspire beginners and seasoned developers alike!
Humble Bundle Affiliate
PixiEditor - PixiEditor is a universal 2D platform that aims to provide you with tools and features for all your 2D needs. Create beautiful sprites for your games, animations, edit images, create logos. All packed in an eye-friendly dark theme.
PixiEditor Open Source
TextTween - TextTween is a lightweight Unity library designed to animate TextMesh Pro (TMP) texts with high performance. It leverages Unity's Job System and Burst Compiler to deliver smooth and efficient character-level animations.
AlicanHasirci Open Source
Sprite-Swap-Morph - UI Image Sprite Swap Morph effect for Unity
V0odo0 Open Source
LayeredGlow - Layer-based Glow for Unity
nobnak Open Source
DamnScript - DamnScript is a high-performance scripting language inspired by Ren'Py and Bash. It is designed for writing game behavior logic with deep integration into C# and Unity.
Rietmon Open Source
Shop up to 50% off Gabro Media - Publisher Sale - Gabro Media, established in 2016, is a one man studio dedicated to publishing high-quality 3D art game assets. Each asset is driven by passion, crafted with care and creativity, ensuring developers have the tools they need to bring their visions to life. PLUS get Log Cabin for FREE with code GABROMEDIA2025
Unity Affiliate
ecsrx - A reactive take on the ECS pattern for .net game developers
EcsRx Open Source
Spax-Dialogue-Thing - Unity Dialogue system using Ink, Mix and Jam's Animal Crossing Animated Text, and Dotween
JoshHux Open Source
SerializeReferenceDropdown - (Unity) Editor dropdown for SerializeReference Attribute with Copy/Paste. RefTo (Reference to SerializeReference)
AlexeyTaranov Open Source
QuestMediaProjection - A Unity plugin for capturing Meta Quest screens, reading barcodes (including QR codes), and saving screenshots using the MediaProjection API.
t-34400 Open Source
UnityIsometric2D - Isometric 2D System for Unity Engine (Job System Supported)
MyNameIsDabin Open Source
ultimatexr-unity - UltimateXR is a free, open source framework that facilitates the creation of VR applications.
VRMADA Open Source
Become a 3D Artist - Mega Tutorial Bundle - Creativity unlocked with a digital paintbrush. Unlock new beauty of creating vast digital worlds—Artists, it's time to become a 3D artist with this outstanding bundle of tutorials from FastTrackTutorials! Our high-quality collection features 30+ tutorials focusing on environments, characters, models, textures, and more for use in Unreal Engine, Unity, Blender, Zbrush and many more. Get the education you need to bring your art to life, and help support the World Wildlife Fund with your purchase!
Humble Bundle Affiliate
Head First Programming And Patterns - Book Bundle - Try the Head First approach to programming Dive in Head First—learn the skills and knowledge you need to succeed in modern programming and patterns with this bundle of courses from O’Reilly. Inside this in-depth library, you’ll get expert insights from courses like Head First JavaScript Programming, Head First C#, Head First Software Architecture, and more. Develop the skills you need to test the waters of this fruitful career field today. Deepen your understanding whether you’re a novice or a seasoned professional, and help support Code for America with your purchase!
Humble Bundle Affiliate
Spotlight
Empire in Decay - Start a rebellion and fight turn-based tactical combats in this roguelike deckbuilder. Upgrade your units and cards wisely. You will need it to progress through the districts of Daandria, the city where the tyrant king awaits you. Save this Empire in Decay.
[You can wishlist it on Steam]
Siesta Games
My game, Call Of Dookie. Demo available on Steam
You can subscribe to the free weekly newsletter on GameDevDigest.com
This post includes affiliate links; I may receive compensation if you purchase products or services from the different links provided in this article.