A curated weekly blog for game developers featuring standout news, free tools, useful resources, indie discoveries, and limited-time deals worth checking out.
In this week’s post
- Key stories from creators including Chris Zukowski, Code Monkey, and Harry Phokou
- Great Steam Tools to make the most of steam and make capsules faster!
- New free games this week, top affiliate deals, and interesting games I found this week
- Ultimate Indie Programme Launches 31 May 2026
- Godot Launches a new Asset store
Welcome
I hope you are all doing well!
Here in the UK, we’ve have had a heatwave, so we are all complaining about how hot it is (as we do). However, it’s been a lovely change and a chance to get some sun, and jump in the sea for a swim, I’ve also been having a lot of fun playing Subnautica 2 on my Steam Deck and spent this week in a great new Discord server.
Each post will round up game development news, newly discovered tools, free games, interesting creators to follow, standout indie projects, asset packs, and useful resources.
I hope you find something useful here each week. If anything stands out to you — or if there’s something you’d like to see included in future posts — let me know in the comments.
Weekly news roundup
This week’s roundup highlights useful Wishlist tools, Steam tags, Xbox news & new Godot asset store.
New Godot Asset store
Godot has now created a new platform to publish and download assets; due to the rapid growth of the community, they have decided to make a new platform that accommodates developer’s needs.
Asset store also has new features:
- User reviews and ratings
- Analytics for publishers
- Multiple download versions per asset
- A changelog page for asset
- The ability to tag asset, including creating custom tags
Chris Zukowski - New Wishlist calculator
This week Chris has shared a new tool he has created the Wishlist calculator
Upload your Wishlist CSV from Steamworks, add notes to specific date ranges, and see exactly how many Wishlist’s you’ve earned and when.
https://howtomarketagame.com/wishlists/
How to download your Wishlist CSV from Steamworks
- Steamworks › Financial Data
- Click the name of your game
- In the top menu bar click “Wishlists”
- Click “All History”in the time range
- Scroll down and click the name of your game
- Find the section “Wishlist Action Summary, all history”and click “view as csv” — a small file should download
- Open the file and confirm it has a long daily list with a header row that reads:
DateLocal,Game,Adds,Deletes,PurchasesAndActivations,Gifts
Do you think this is a useful tool, have you used it yet let me know in the comments!
Code Monkey
This week Hugo talks about new Steam tags, S&BOX Finances, Xbox player voice & more.
Steam Tags: Valve added 17 new tags, removed 28, and renamed or merged several others.
Hugo explains the importance of steam tags and how they explain, what currently hot in steam and why Steam tags are important.
S&Box: If you have not seen this new Game Engine, it’s meant to be a successor to Garry’s Mod, however the initial launch has not hit the mark for some people but it’s “very new” and I’m looking forward to seeing how it develops, that’s being said financially it’s done very well!
Xbox Player Voice:
Xbox just launched a new player voice portal where players can vote on what they want Xbox to do next.
Currently fans want exclusive games, more backward compatibility, and free online multiplayer.
With the recent price reduction, AI removal and classic Xbox start up logo, this is a great next step in connecting with players.
You can read the full blog here
New Harry Phokou podcast
This week Harry speaks to Jakub Remiar. PhD psychologist, 10+ year free-to-play game designer, and co-host of the most-listened-to mobile gaming professional podcast, two & a half gamers.
Here's what to expect from this Gaming Playbook:
- Why every mobile trend flows East to West and never the other way
- How Chinese studios are taking over 4X, Merge, and beyond
- What Whiteout Survival's 300-person creative team reveals about scale
- The fake ad-to-funnel model and why it actually works
- Why your game economy is probably leaking money right now
- What "monetization is game design" actually means in practice
- How to benchmark your KPIs when no one publishes the real numbers
- Why switching companies is the fastest path in game design
- The trade secrets that even ChatGPT can't learn (and why)
- When to consult, when to hire, and when to just go to ChinaJoy
This video gives you massive insight into what's going on in the mobile gaming market at the moment, with some crazy player acquisition strategies from some huge games!
New Tools Worth Trying
This week I’ve focused on Steam Tools including analytics, tag tools, and asset creator.
- Steamworks Extras is an Open-source extension that shows additional information about your games on Steamworks report pages.
Including:
- Enhanced sales chart
- Enhanced Wishlist’s chart
- New traffic chart
- More summary information
- Wishlist’s conversion chart
- Enhanced sales table
- Refunds page overhaul
- https://steamdb.info/ - Steam DB is a Database of everything on Steam, it’s a free, independent database covering the entire Steam catalogue
- Steam Tag Helper - Is made by BiteMeGames, simply add the URLs from 3 games that are similar to yours to get the best tag recommendations for your game
- SteamTrender - A free tool for analysing the popularity, estimated revenue, ownership, and other metrics of Steam tags.
- Steam asset creator - Free tool to create Steam store graphical assets for your game in seconds! This is a game changer
Free games this week
Free Steam Game
Drift 86 is a simplistic racing game, looks like a silly game to play with friends.
Currently free on Steam until 03/06/26
Free games on the Epic Games Store
Calico is a casual community sim game where you are given an important task: rebuild the town’s cat café and fill it with cuddly creatures.
Currently free on Epic until 04/06/26
LONESTAR is a strategic Roguelike spaceship deckbuilder, find treasures, customize spaceships, unlock talents, defeat the felons and be a legend!
Free on Epic until 04/06/26
Free assets this week
Fab Store
Claim these 3 assets packs:
Limited-Time Free (Until June 2 at 9:59 AM ET)
Publisher of the week Unity
This week’s publisher is POLYBOX featuring various gold chests, coin bags, coin jars, crown jewels, gold chains, gold coins, gold ingots, precious gems & a royal sword.
Add Polyquest Treasures to your cart, then enter the coupon code POLYBOX2026 at checkout to get it for free
(Ends 04 June 2026)
Affiliate deals
This section includes selected partner offers I think are genuinely useful for game developers. Some links are affiliate links, which means I may earn a small commission at no extra cost to you
Featured deal: Ultimate Indie Program
This is an amazing opportunity to learn with the amazing team at Gamedev.tv
In this 7 week of live training, you'll go from idea to launch-ready.
Validate your concept, build and prototype your game, get direct feedback on your Steam page and marketing, and actually finish the thing - all with a great group of devs alongside you and a truly awesome instructor leading the way.
Get Live coaching calls with Stefan Persson (Imphenzia)
Do you feel like you have all these amazing ideas and need help planning your success this one is for you!
Hurry it ends in Just under 2 days and is currently a huge 50% off!
GameDev.tv Game Jam Bundle
If you’re preparing for a jam or building up your dev toolkit, this bundle stands out: more than $1,100 worth of game development assets and courses for just $30. Grab it here before it ends on 6 June 2026.
The bundle includes a broad mix of creator-made assets covering characters, environments, audio, tools, and more. It also lines up nicely with the current GameDev.tv jam (Submissions end in 3 days), making it a practical option if you want a ready-made boost of resources.
A nice extra: 10% of every purchase goes to the GameDev.tv Indie Dev Fund, which helps support indie developers building and finishing their games.
Interesting games I found this week
Box Room allows you to design, define and decorate a room - a sanctuary - for your Steam library, and then revel in the organisation of your game collection.
Coming soon to early access.
Psych Rift is a supernatural action-adventure game where armed with only a telekinetic glove and your wits, you must survive reality-bending nightmare worlds and their monsters to escape a research lab consumed by a dark entity from another dimension
Release date unconfirmed.
Channels and sites to follow
Indie game Joe
Joe is painter and decorator turned award-winning video game marketing consultant, working with top performing games like Don’t scream, Paranormal Tales, Hypercharge: Unboxed
He is incredibly talented at creating engaging marking strategies that give developers huge Steam wishlist spikes.
I’ve been spending time in the Discord this week and I can say it’s an incredible place filled with really talented people who are banding together to provide support for one another.
If you are an indie game developer, gamer or Artist this is a great place to be, currently over 5.5K members it’s growing fast.
Want to know more click the links below and join the discord!
X page: https://x.com/IndieGameJoe
Discord: discord.gg/indiegamejoe
Website: indiegamejoe.com
Follow and support
Thanks for taking the time to read this week’s post. If you found it useful — or there’s something you’d like me to include next time — let me know in the comments below.
You can find me on Facebook, X, Bluesky and Discord — and if you’d like to support what I’m building, you can also support me on Ko-fi.
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