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 new updates
- New tools to try out
- Free games this week
- Free assets this week
- Unity Summer sale has started!
- Cool new games I’ve found this week
- Godot 2D & 3D courses
- New Indie all-in-on platform designed for Developers and supporters
Welcome
I hope you are all doing well this week
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.
This week I’ve been learning about the new Steam page updates, researching the new Xbox Godot support and playing some cool new betas.
I’ve been playing some Engine fall and Mortal shell 2 this week.
Enginefall feels like something different from the extraction shooter genre, giving you a Snowpiercer vide navigating through hug trains with multiple floors getting loot and trying to survive against the other players, a game worth checking out.
Mortal shell 2 is something I really didn’t expect, I’ve not played the first one, but this new beta is amazing, the combat is very slick and has one of the best fast travel animations I’ve ever seen in a game, very souls-like game but different go check it out!
Watch is below:
Weekly news roundup
A Refreshed Steam Store Home Page, Godot reaches 4.7 candidate stage, Xbox announces a new sample to help get Godot games on Xbox store
Steam Store homepage Update
Steam has just dropped a huge update to the steam store and done some substantial changes to visibility and more.
New updates include:
- More details in featured and recommended
- New Wishlist and DLC section
- New Personalised calendar
- Updated discovery Queue
- Popular and upcoming moved further down the page and now showing more popular games
- New High resolution Game art
Visibility changed
One of the biggest updates people have noticed is that developers aimed to get at least 7000 Wishlist’s for a chance to get onto the popular and upcoming page for a few days to hopefully get some visibility, however its look like this has changed for Indie Devs as this section has been changed and moved down the page.
Steam has created a new section called Your personal calendar, Steam is now looking at players gameplay and Wishlist’s and comparing it to other players to populate new games that you may like based on playtime in games. It then creates a personal release calendar of new games being released and ones you have missed.
What does this mean for you?
Well this could be a really good thing for Indie Devs, meaning that their games could show up on the calendar and stay there rather than appearing for a few days on popular and upcoming like it used to be.
Steam is always looking to get the right games in front of the players who want to buy them, and it does this best based on playtime and TAGS, and if you missed it there was an update to tags just recently where they added 17 new tags and removed 28 old ones.
Tags More important
So I believe it’s more important now than ever to get your tags correct on your game, if your looking for some help you should check out 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.
Indie GameDev Joe has written as great article on the new Steam update, check it out here
Godot 4.7 reaches Candidate stage & Xbox support
I’m really happy to see that Godot is constantly being updated with great new features, especially as its an opensource engine.
This new update is reaching its final testing stage.
This new update will include HDR output support, the Godot Asset Store, drawable textures, and more, Read the full article here
New Xbox Godot Sample
Xbox is looking to support getting more projects from Godot onto their platform.
They have released a new sample to help developers get their game on the XBOX PC store.
It’s a bit more complicated to get games onto Xbox consoles, I’ve made a short video to explain about the new updates and how to get your game onto Consoles
If you want to read the full article, click here
New Harry Phokou podcast
Harry speaks to Ben Kvalo, founder of Midwest Games, Ben has worked across publishing, marketing, and tech at 2K and Blizzard, with credits spanning NBA 2K, Borderlands, BioShock, Civilization, and Mafia. Over 100 titles published across games and film.
Here's what's inside this podcast:
- Why only 1.7% of Steam games ever get a publisher
- What the "modular publishing economy" actually means in practice
- Why your Early Access launch IS your launch (most devs get this wrong)
- The wishlist conversion stat no one talks about (40% in the last month)
- How to time your release to sit longer on New and Trending
- The 40+ publishing disciplines you're probably missing
- Why recency beats experience when choosing a publishing partner
- How Midwest Games operates at 30% of industry cost
- Why the current market chaos is actually an opportunity
- How shadow publishing can cut publishing ops costs by 50%+
New Tools Worth Trying
Game UI Database: Browse 1,797 Games, 73,126 Screens and 2,548 Videos.
Created by Edd Coats
https://noclip.website/ - Navigate round games using a free camera to learn more about game/level design, it’s a really cool tool, works best on PC rather than mobile
Created by Colbydude
https://game-icons.net/ -Game Icons - 4180 free icons for your games under CC BY 3.0
Simply select the icon you like, and customised the background, gradient, colour and shape all in the website.
Created by Lorc, Delapouite & contributors
Free games this week
Congrats, you're hired! Serve customers and maintain the restaurant alone on the overnight. But be careful; things fall apart if you mess up! After work, head home and keep your eyes open for a way to escape the Barnyard Buds and their fast-food fever-dream
Free until 15 June 2026
Adrenaline-fueled combat racing in the brutal Warhammer 40,000 universe! Drive ferocious vehicles equipped with powerful weapons and abilities into a full-throttle battle to the death. Speed Freeks is a fresh, Ork-y take on vehicle combat that you’ve never seen before. WAAAGH!
Free until 18 June 2026
The Ouroboros King combines the strategic depth of chess with the build variety and replayability of roguelikes. Assemble a formidable army, discover powerful relics, and buy surprising gadgets to defeat the Coven.
Free until 18 June 2026
Free assets this week
Free on the Fab store until 16/06/26:
Note: Unity publisher of the week is now paused until the summer sale ends details below
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
Unity Summer Sale is here!
Get 50% off 400+ top assets plus daily Flash Deals up to 90% off. Fresh themes and new drops every week.
This week’s theme is Power tools check it out here
This theme ends 17/06/26
Complete Godot 3D: Code Your Own 3D Games in Godot 4
What you will learn:
- Create 3 games from scratch
- Learn how to code using Godot’s custom GDScript
- Learn how to craft immersive levels and interactive environments
- Master game mechanics using Godot’s Nodes, scenes and signals
- Animate your game using tweens, animations players and shaders
- Create dynamic character controllers and clever AI enemies
Click here to learn more
Complete Godot 4 2D: Code Your Own 2D Games in Godot 4
What you will learn:
- Create 3 games from scratch:
- How to animate characters and objects for dynamic gameplay
- Use the tile map to design intricate levels
- Learn how to code with Godot’s GDScript
- Create UI’s, managing scores, and using particles
- Learn Key Concepts like Nodes, Scenes, Scripts and Signals
- Understand the fundamentals of statements, loops, functions, and coroutines
Click here to learn more
Interesting games I found this week
Experience the next generation of rhythm-racing. Upload any music to generate deadly tracks using our self-developed engine trained on thousands of hand-crafted levels. Featuring intense multiplayer racing, a powerful level editor, and full Steam Workshop support for endless custom content.
Release date TBA check it out here
Sky Dust is a cyberpunk action-adventure Metroidvania set in a São Paulo poisoned by lunar fallout and digital decay. Play as a hired blade taking dangerous contracts to survive. Master fast, skill-driven combat, and explore a fractured megacity across neon streets and a corrupted Cyberverse!
Release date TBA check it out here
Operate a titanic war machine from the perspective of its last surviving crew member in a desperate battle against the otherworldly Kaiju. Balance power levels, craft specialised ammunition, and feed your ever-hungry reactor, yet the greatest horror may already be sealed within your metal coffin.
Release date TBA check it out here
Channels and sites to follow
I found this interesting new site specifically made for supporting Indie Game Devs
It’s an all-in-on platform designed for Developers and supporters.
You can:
- Find new teams to work on projects together
- Create and find new people to join your team
- Showcase your portfolio and let people know your available for work
- Post your current projects for supporters to follow and to fund!
- You can link a stripe account to accept donations but just be aware of stripes £20 Chargeback fee!
Go check it out here
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, TikTok 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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