I want to post something here that isn’t just a link drop.
I’m a solo dev. Hobbyist, evenings and weekends. I’ve got four things up on my page now,
and the only reason any of them exist in public is that itch.io doesn’t do gatekeeping.
No pitch deck. No approval email. No “we’ll get back to you in six weeks.” You make
something, you upload a zip, and it’s live. When you’re doing this alone, that’s not a
small thing. That’s the whole thing.
The other part I actually appreciate is pay-what-you-want. My games are free. But PWYW
means if someone plays one and feels like tossing a couple of dollars at it, they can.
I don’t have to build a shop, or stuff ads into a platformer about a frog. It’s a decent
middle ground for a hobby project that isn’t a business and doesn’t want to become one.
So, what I put up most recently. Muscle Frog: Forest Quest. You’re a frog. You eat fruit,
you get bigger, you jump on platforms, you dodge spikes and fire, and eventually you fight
a pig who calls himself a king. Seven levels, about fifteen minutes. Free, runs in the
browser, works on phones with touch controls.
It’s short on purpose. No shop, no stamina bar, no daily login, no cutscene to skip. I kept
thinking about all the things games do to hold your attention and then I just didn’t build
any of them. You press right, you jump. That’s the whole game. And honestly, playing my own
thing was more fun than a lot of what I’ve played this year, which was a surprise.
There’s also a mahjong game and an RPG on the same page, if a frog isn’t your genre.
Different games, same one person.
If you try the frog one and something annoys you, tell me. I read everything and I do
actually fix things.
And a real question for everyone else posting here: what’s the thing itch does that other
platforms don’t, that you’d miss most if it went away? For me it’s the no-approval-process
part, but I’m curious what it is for everyone else.
