🎮 Play the Night Stones Demo Now 🌙👉 store.steampowered.com/app/2300340/Night_Stones

if there are five coins, put five coin sprites. It looks more rewarding

It's truly refreshing to see a dev who wholeheartedly is passionate about the game AND listening to feedback, even when it's not always positive. I love the vibrant graphics and exploration offered by Night Stones, which is why I backed it on Kickstarter. Looking forward to playing future iterations, and yes, I dig that responsive music. 😁 p.s. Wait, I'm "sarcastic?" I didn't think anyone would notice. 😈

I get that you are trying to make this a business, but careful when taking player's feedback! Don't compromise your ideas too much to appease questionable requests. You know that saying 'the customer is always right, on matters of taste'? what it means here is if the player tells you he is bored, that is the an unquestionable truth. They are bored. When they try explaining why they are bored and come up with something like "I would not be bored if I could hit enemies on the head with a stick" that is not necessarily true.

From my perspective, your game lacks a unique selling point. I mean it looks cute and is obviously made with a lot of passion and heart, but as a player I am not interested in what you put into it, I want to know what I get from it. Is there a unique gameplay mechanic? Will the story make me cry even 10 years after I played it? Will I find things in the world I have never seen anywhere else? Not sure if you are just not communicating this well enough. Maybe you could narrow it down to one or two major points (your should play this game because...) and base your marketing on that. BTW I know I sound like a business consultant moron And please don't forget: even if you think your are not successful as a game developer - you are successful as a KZfaqr and a community builder. I love watching your devlogs and I know for sure I am by far not the only one.

There's a flip side to being 150th, and that's while you 100% want Nightstones to be commercially successful, the definition of 'success' is way different for you than even a studio of a dozen people. In the 60's Rover/LandRover were just a minor player in the UK car market, and some journo asked the CEO if he was worried about having only 3% of the market. "Not really, because it's exactly the 3% I want." I don't know what the conversion rate will be for the 13k wishlists, and obviously making that number bigger is always good, but I'd guess that a lot of those 'reseravtions' are from people who are watching the dev logs. They're actively interested and they like what they see. I'm not saying you should rush to make Nightstones2 in 2025, but if you deliver this game to match their expectation, you'll then have a big pool of happy customers who like what you've shown you're good at.

I also have a day job and 3 kids, still, 13000 wishlists seems like a huge number to me, I just don't see how that's a failure. and this is your first game, right? Seeing how fast your developing I'm sure it will keep getting better in the future. good luck

lol "1-foot-tall baby" really caught me off guard. Thanks for sharing your experience at NextFest. Progress looks excellent and it's great to see you iteratively refining the game based on feedback and playtesting. I'm excited for this one!

My immediate reaction is that I have already played better games that look like this. I would strongly suggest advertising the features that make it stand out, ones that are easy to show. Being brutally honest, I'm just not surprised it isnt grabbing people.

One thing i think would be a good addition , is when an npc interaction is needed to progress i thnk it should have some kind of visual indication like An exclamation mark on top of its head for example

I think the game looks beautiful. But I also think it looks repetitive. I would love to see new biomes introduced and new points of interest. Each building might be a different layout but overall felt the same because the color pallet and textures stay the same. I love the changes so far and proud of you for accepting constructive criticism! I wish you the best of luck on your journey, and I hope that soon you can make game development a full-time career!!!

The addition of the fang weeds is a good one. It adds a little excitement that comes with having an "enemy" present, but they are more like puzzles/obstacles that don't go far enough to betray your original no-combat vision for the project.

I have been following for a bit now, and just finished playing the demo. One thing I noticed that I'm not sure has been pointed out yet - I was able to carry a box from the little house over to the locked gate and set the box next to the wall. I then jumped on top of the box and over the wall without getting the key which then allowed me to jump cut straight to the next areas. You might want to implement something to not allow you to leave the house area with the boxes. Maybe a pop up from them asking you not to walk off with their things? I'm very excited for this game to release! You're doing awesome with it. :)

Love this devlog in particular. Showing how you tackled the problems in yiur game is always so nice to watch and learn from. Game is looking better and better each video 👍

Thank you for sharing your experience with us. It's crazy how similar is your experience to ours even down to the numbers in terms of wishlists. But man, when you said that you added combat and Night Stones wasn't about that previously, it hit very close to home because with our own game we went the same path. 😮

I’ve been watching night stones since dev log 2, seeing this man’s determination during these logs are so motivating to me. I’m so proud to see this game come so far ❤

You are clearly talented and have your head in the right spot to improve without changing the game's identity. Your going to succeed here, but just need to keep trying. Seeing as how I'm a stranger whose managed to watch your video in it's entirety, I would say your about to see the growth you need. Good luck!❤

I love the particle effects. I think it really brings a much needed feel to the game! I love the amount of polish you are doing, and it’s coming out GREAT so far! Keep on keepin on my man! We all share the same dream

This was one of the most honest and relatable game dev videos I've seen in a while. Thanks! I feel encouraged! I am working on a game and also have a full-time job and family so very little time to work on it.

i gotta say, the stylized visuals are AMAZING! I'll be playing it for sure. Also love the dynamic music. Details like that breathe life into any game experience

This is a great video. I love to see when people put out something they’re proud of but don’t get discouraged when it doesn’t perform as well as they had hoped. You’re listening to feedback and implementing it to create something even better. This is the right way to go about it. Well done!! Love your work!

Found out about your channel today, love the wholesome vibe you’ve got in your videos and that you’re eager to create a dream game for your audience! 😊

Okay this was one of my faves I played during NextFest and I’m so glad to see your transparency about the experience and what you’re doing to make the game better! I can’t wait to it all come together and I’m definitely going to check out the new demo this weekend! Keep up the amazing work

Just for the fact that the game has a demo this video gets a thumbs up. lol I wish every game had a demo.

If you want to restrict people getting out of bounds, please don't add invisible barriers, do something cool like add a wind that blows them back into the map, I always love it when little things like that are added.

This is awesome! I will have to retry the demo again. Im VERY happy to see you fix some issues I didnt like as well as seeing you progress and mature more for the game if that makes any sense. ☺❤

Didn't know you were at NextFest or that you had a kickstarter. Dedicated YT videos about these events prior to their being over would be good, you have 36K followers, some of them would be happy to participate. Congrats on your progress so far and good luck going forward.

Looking forward to showing my audience the game. I think it is excellent. I love the attention to detail and the adventure vibes!

Haha too be fair I’m also a 1 foot tall baby! But you make a great point, I’ll have to fix this in the next Night Stones Redraw. And the game is looking great! I’m glad all that feedback you’re getting is making an even better game. The more I’m in this game dev / digital product space, the more I realize it all boils down to customer service haha. How well you can listen to and implement feedback is everything.

Thank you so much for the update! I couldn't wait to play Night Stones and then played the demo (which I loved every second of) but was one of the peeps who felt motion sick with the camera movement. Definitely resolved! I was so happy to play the demo again and enjoyed it even more. I'll be playing the demo and exploring for a long time still :) Thank you for making this game. It's everything a game should be :)

this is what makes a great dev and you tend to see a lot more in indie devs, you actually are willing to accept that if you are making a game and there will be problems and even if you think a part of the game is perfect that doesnt mean it is, youve done a great job here showing off your ability to listen to constructive criticism and change a game for the better of potential buyers

This kind of video/updates are awesome , please keep them coming ❤ , love your hard work

Here's an idea: Give the Player the ability to unlock different "Skins" for the Player Character. Lots of people love the ability to customize their character, especially if the skins make them look like other characters or monsters. Zombies for example. Or any kind of cute anthro creature. That could help attract animal lover crowd to the game.

I really like your solution to the treasure chest and coin thing. Makes exploring the world for optional rewards feel good while also making the chests feel better. Double improvement!

this game looks absolutely amazing i had looked at some videos a while ago and i thought the game looked sick i have come back to your page and theres alot of new stuff i hadn't seen in my opinion this game is so good and i think it could become really big

Pretty sure your game will be successful at launch, this was just a little bump you needed to polish things up to perfection. Great work, can't wait to play the full version!

welp been here since day 1 and still in love with the devlog and the game. its been an amazing journey comming from just starting to all of this, dyam bro amazing

I really liked the demo and will check out the updated one. The game is taking great shape with all the feedback you are implementing!

this is a cool devlog, will be interested in seeing this game progress

A quote from the video: "I'm not trying to make MY dream game, I'm trying to make YOURS". That's your #1 problem man. If you make something YOU love to play, others will love it too.

I’m so glad I recommended you look into dynamic music! It makes the game so much better

OMG thank you for being on MAC! I'm downloading the demo to play now. I've added to my wishlist and followed your game.

Your game looks amazing! Im definitely going to add it to my wishlist. Wish you the best of lucks!

This game looks fun-love me some top-down Zelda-and also gives me A Short Hike vibes. It particularly reminded me of A Short Hike when you talked about your game's camera, which seems to work similarly. Just putting it out there that investigating A Short Hike's systems could be fruitful!

Played the demo, and loved it! I can't wait to see where you go with this - wishlisted!

dude your game looks absolutely BEAUTIFUL! idk how that can ever be a failure

I have been following your channel for a while. I love the relaxing vibe of your videos and all the behind the scenes information you give on game development. I just played the demo (and wishlisted) and thought it was so charming and fun. I don't have a gaming computer, so I had to play on the lowest graphics settings, and it was still beautiful. Also, I thought the music was lovely and noticed how it changes when moving or idle. However, I did end up turning the music volume down to 2 because I found it too loud and distracting (I thought it was perfect at volume 2). I was thankful to have these performance and preference options. I love the world, characters, and story so far. The subtle mystery and magic kept me interested in exploring and talking to everyone. Like the characters hinting at future abilities and items, or finding a puzzle that I couldn't solve yet. I appreciate the large font size for dialogue and contrast to the background speech bubble, but I do think it would be nice to have some options for font size and background opacity. And I agree with another comment saying that a volume option for the typing sound would be nice, as well. Overall, I enjoyed the easy going pace of the game. I like how it gently nudges you in the right direction, but overall you are free to explore and go wherver you can reach. I spent some time just exploring, admiring the scenery and ambiance, and looking for the hidden coins. I was dissappointed when the demo was over (but I thought the dialogue was cute). I will definitely be exploring a bit more with the glider and looking forward to the full release. :)

Regardless of the opinions of the game during Next Fest, I'll definitely be ordering the game on day one. I appreciate all your hard effort and dedication to this project. Thank you for giving us a first hand look a the process.

Props on listening to feedback and continuing to iterate on your game! I think the polish and added depth from the new mechanics will go a long way!

Hello! I’d like to share some critique that may explain why you might not be getting as much of a following as other KZfaqr game devs are getting (even though your videos are 10/10). The main reason I’m not interested in wish-listing is because it doesn’t look like I’ll experience anything new that I haven’t already experienced in all the other open world fantasy-like games. In a fast-pace industry, I’d consider asking yourself “Why would someone play my game over any other open world game? What makes my game unique and eye-catching?” Just my two-sense, wonder if others feel the same way. I think a major improvement for me would be to make the main character less soulless looking.

Best of luck. It seems like the game is really improving!

I love this game! 😍 The demo was so cute and fun. These are the kinda games i fall in love with. Thank you so much for making this game. 🥰

Awesome work! The light trails for the electricity is so beautiful.

I’m playing your game first thing tomorrow morning. I’m a dad with 2 kids as well and you’ve inspired me immensely! Thank you! Also, I’m in school for 3D animation right now and one of my required classes is learning how to use game engines. Unity is one of them. This looks amazing! Can’t wait to try it!

I'll be checking out the demo! Been following this for a while. I'm hoping to develop a larger game project, and your videos have been extremely interesting to me.

if i had a better PC i'd totally be streaming this demo ahaha. I also LOVE the mechanic of the switch having a physical beam you dont want to cross. there's so many good puzzle oppertunities there and i dont think ive ever seen something like this in a game before! awesome stuff!

Love these devlogs!

Yay my favorite devlog series is back!

A developer taking feedback and attempting to improve on it?! A rare site in today's gaming world. BEST OF LUCK TO YA!

Downloaded the demo and really enjoyed it. Can’t wait to try the updated demo!

Maybe you didn't get the wishlists you wanted, but your game looks charming and cosy. Be proud of that. Some of us would kill for that many wishlists :) GG and just subbed to you!

Hey, I just wanted to say that I think it is amazing that you are making a game and putting it out there :), I wish I had that kind of talent to do so. I played the demo awhile back and enjoyed it, I liked the fact that it's vibrant and it kind of gave me a Zelda vibe. I look forward to playing it in the future :).

Subbed as a father of 2 with *limited* coding experience I can identify a lot with your journey! Looking forward to following it and watching it unfold.

Your game look magnificent. I'm fond of cosy and colourful games. I hope your game will do well and that you will succeed ! I'm downloading your demo to have a look at it!

Love all the sneak peaks at the end there :D

Game development is hard. But now we learn something harder just arrived: People's interest

Your a great game dev! Keep up the great work !

I like this guys attitude. Success is sure to follow for you!

Honestly, just seeing the footage here on youtube it did nothing for me. The world looks small and empty. Its not clear if this is an adventure game with very little enemies and enemie types or if its a stardew valley clone. If the only content you have is coins, a stick, 2 enemy types, no clue what you expect from it. There are so many games out there like this.

Game looks great, wishing you the best Ryan!

I really enjoy this devlog series because your presentation is endearing, and it's easy to listen to and nice to look at. But being honest about the game itself I would never play it. It's very paint-by-numbers in its mechanics and world design, which makes fantastic demonstration material but doesn't actually do much to excite me. The character and environment art are well polished, but they don't provoke any thoughts beyond "yep, that's a generic fantasy setting". I think you might get more interest from potential buyers and supporters if you hinted at more intrigue. It's not enough to have done a good job making a game. You have to really focus in on what sets it apart.

great job implementing feedback man :)! Loved the devlog

Im not sure if this game has a character creator but thats one thing that i LOVE in a game. If i can spend 30+ mins making something special, i will care so much more about that character.

1:43 I feel you. I also have a full time job and a daughter, and I have just started developing my first indie game. Currently I don’t have even the hope for this to become my new profession, even though I would love it. For me now it’s just something more than a hobby and whatever more comes from it will just be a plus!

This looks really great!

Thanks for sharing your experience. One quick fix feedback I have is for the stick weapon. It isn’t visible in the dungeon, making the texture a warmer brown should hopefully be an easy fix.

You took this like a champ mad respect for you

If i had to summarize your game it would be : "go somewhere - > Press A -> go somewhere else" The main problem of the game is lacking a "why". There are tons of puzzles,gliding,platforming etc. but this is just the world, the playground. What is needed arent more puzzles, enemies, QoL updates or rewards. What is needed is a reason so the player WANTS to endure your playground, to reach their own goal that satisfies them. Players want learn, not only mechanics but about the world, characters, their role in this world. They want to be needed. The demo so far gives none of that feeling. I can see this game be a succes in a more farm sim environment, but that would require way more characters and story development aswell as a town and house to build up. But as a classic platformer, it cannot compete with any of the other platformers out there, and there is no easy improvement that can be done on the game to catapult it to the front. Either steal from the succesful platformers the best mechanics or create a bestselling, gutwrenching story to attach it to. Or... just create the game that you would like to play. Usually that leads to way more success than listening to trends or feedback.

As someone looking to get into Indie dev gaming for the love of it (I work in Software) this video is so amazing. The work you've put into this is excellent and if I was able to create a game like this I would be genuinely impressed with myself. Did you think about maybe adding more elements that sprout up or drop down from inside the cave? This could add a level of puzzle complexity. Anyways rooting for you and hope you make it!

Do have to say that the art style is adorable and I am here for it

Interesting! Keep up the fantastic work.

I think that this game has stunning visuals and together with the music it has really relaxing vibe. :) What would catch my attention more though, would be going a little bit deeper with the story, giving enemies some persona and agenda maybe. So when I would be going through the cave, I wouldn't just want to pass it and defeat all my enemies, I would want to catch someone running away with a key/map to my kidnapped love. Or when I would search for treasures, I would want to find the only thing, thing surrounded by legends spoken about by all the mice, only thing that can defeat the villain that drove out kind citizens from the neighboring village. And so on. Maybe there is something like that and it only wasn't spoken about that much in this video. Just saying that something concrete and needed in the plot would be big motivation for me personally to search the treasure for :) Meanwhile, kudos again to what you've accomplished while having full-time job and kids. It's a great work which I believe will be successful regardless of what I say here :D Fingers crossed!

just finished the demo - i loved it!

Passion, Passion, Passion... you're an inspiration!! :)

Mate, an honest opinion here that I think would greatly improve the marketability of your game: change your playable character. The best selling games on your genre usually go for a more appealing character, some use animals, others use more distinctive designs, etc. Whatever you wanna do, but right now your main character is not something that one could describe with a few words. You wanna have a character that people can go "oh, I loved that game of the yellow squirrel", "that game where you are a dude with red suit and can run super fast" or "that game where you shoot ink and can turn into a squid". Currently your game lacks that one liner that people can remember. Best of luck!

Subbed. I really enjoy your devlog content. Also, your game looks incredible!

I just caught up on the last 7 months of dev logs. So sad I missed the kickstarter but this game keeps looking more and more amazing with every passing update! I've had it wishlisted for a while but I'm so excited for the full release and am gonna go play the demo now! Update: Just played the demo and it was so much fun! Love the relaxing atmosphere and the way puzzles and exploration are implemented and integrated together is just some great game design. Teasing the player with giving them a new item or ability if they come back after exploring to find some other item feels so good. Can't wait for the full release!

That running animation is perfect

Great job as always Ryan!

I realy hope the game will do well

This game looks super fun, it also looks like type of game my wife and kid would play it too. I'm not big fan of demos tho so gonna wait for the release. Nevertheless, Keep it up, good work! I wish you all the best in your journey.

I LOVE WHEN DEVS DO THIS STUFF!

The algorithm seems to have picked you up! Keep at it!

I can tell you right away that your new _coin pickup_ animation will confuse a lot of people, because it makes it seem like the coin ends up on the floor, not with your character. You'll have a ton of people doubling back every time they pick one up and get frustrated because they didn't need to.

> Treasure chests giving 2 coins was unfulfilling, so I made them special Clip: You found 5 coins! God dammit... Jokes aside, the improvements for the demo look really good, happy you were able to see the issues from the players' perspective and not force "your" way into the game without consideration

There was a really good GDC talk from the publisher Humble who did some excellent analysis on what types of gamers buy what types of indie games. Your lacklustre attention at NextFest confirms many of their findings with the main one being that indie gamers are typically people who prefer titles with varied systems to learn and non-linear gameplay. So what you have here is the opposite of what appeals to your target audience and the GDC talk also showed that console gamers typically don't bother with indie titles because they think they're of lower quality than AAA or AA games. Part of that is down to them (ignorantly) associating visual fidelity and realism with a good game. Just because this is a cosy game doesn't mean is has to be limited in features. That feedback you had from testers about the 1-button and how they wanted a different item to defeating enemies is symptomatic of them unconsciously needing variety. Even simple controls mean those synapses aren't firing as much as the player needs. What gamers called "depth" and "mastery" is just a buzzword for the need to learn something. And it doesn't need to be complicated either, you just need to keep introducing features that keep those synapses stimulated.

So I just finished playing the demo and thought I would leave a bit of feedback. Most of it is pretty minor, but it would be nice if you could address them. They are in order of which I encountered them: Graphics/Framerate: So the game actually doesn't run that well on high for me. I know my PC isn't exactly the newest, but it runs much worse than more graphically demanding titles from a few years ago. On medium there are no framerate issues, but there is quite a bit of flicker. Most of it seems to be down to a change in anti-aliasing method, so I'm guessing that's the culprit for the framerate dips. Writing: This is extremely minor, but the first line "That's enough barking, dog" sounds a bit weird. It seems a little too harsh almost and the sentence structure seems more appropriate for Kreia from KOTOR 2 than a child. I know this is really small in terms of critiques, but I think the first line of dialogue is easily the most important. Controls: Could you please change it to carrying the boxes being a toggle instead of having the hold the button down? I really hate having to hold down buttons to interact and there is also an argument to be made in terms of accessibility. Same goes for the glider, maybe just having it be press A again after the jump or something like that. Visuals/The stick: I think changing the scythe to a sharpened stick is a bit weird and also s not exactly an intuitive solution for cutting down large plants. I would maybe change it to a hoe or a sickle (but keep the same animation). I overall really enjoyed the game. While it is quite different from my usual media diet, it still managed to keep my interest and I'll likely check it out on release.

Of the top of my head I would say it's never bad to add npc reactions to players action. Example: - During the hit stop when an enemy is dispatched, the other nearby npc (enemy or neutral) could have a small ! over their head. Enemies could enter an aggressive or fleeing state in response. - If the player is required/expected to walk by someplace they did something, like cutting a tree, an npc. Anything that reveal more character to npc or acknowledge the impact of the user action on the world. Two things I like to keep in mind for having variety in gameplay - DKART Challenges (Dexterity, Knowledge, Adaptation, Reflex, Timing) "I think therefore I am" - Principles of animations translate well into gameplay, like charging a shot and letting go in mega man could be viewed as an application of the Anticipation principle. Having loved "A Short Hike" I'll definitely check it out if you have plan to port on switch or PS4.

hey man, this video inspired me to do new things and learn from mistakes, thanks a lot man 😃🤙

TBH I can't wait to play this and make videos about it. Keep up.