Game Dev

You can make $28 MILLION without polish, except not really

Here is a very interesting post from a dev who is flabbergasted that the game Supermarket Simulator is such a huge hit (over $28 million) despite being so unpolished.

The dev wrote a list of all the tiny things the game does badly. Things like models clipping through walls, missing sounds, items flying, bad animations, etc. The dev is questioning how can a game with so many flaws find so much success.

However the top comment makes an extremely important point. While the game is unpolished in certain areas, it is absolutely polished where it matters.

The core actions that the player takes are super satisfying, stocking shelves feels great, opening boxes and putting things in storage feels great to do. Opening the supermarket and turning on the lights feels great, and the getting the items through checkout looks and sounds great.

The game did not find success due to lack of polish, rather it had polish where it mattered which made the players have a great experience in general, despite still having some jankyness to it.

It is in Early Access so the developers made the very good choice of polishing the core gameplay first, and I'm guessing they will polish the rest of the experience throughout development.

Speaking of polish I highly recommend you check out FEEL, Text Animator and my own Mouse Cursor System PRO.

Affiliate

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All of these are Affiliate Links meaning if you buy something through the links you get some awesome assets and I get a nice commission.

Thanks and I hope you put those assets to good use!

Game Dev

Cheat sheet of Optimization techniques

Optimization is always a super tricky subject because every game is unique so every game will require different techniques to improve upon.

But here is a great general cheat sheet on many things you can do to help you improve performance. And beyond that all the comments are giving extra optimization tips and clarifying some things in the main image (the one on variables isn't correct, local variables (value types) do not generate garbage).

Some bonus tips:

• Avoid generating garbage in the first place;

• Merge VFX into single meshes;

• Use Billboards instead of the last LOD;

• Use Baked Lighting;

• Multiple Canvases to avoid constant repainting;

• Use Occlusion Culling, I have a lecture on my Ultimate Unity Overview course;

And my best general performance tip of all: Remember how you don't have to run logic on every single Update. For example your FindTarget(); likely does not need to run 60 times a second, just 5 times per second will likely be more than enough.

Tech

Windows Tiny Cloud Machine

It's funny how back in the day we had giant Mainframes and simple Terminals that connected to them. Then we switched to personal computers where the hardware was all on device, and now we're going more and more back to that terminal approach.

Microsoft has just unveiled Windows 365 Link. It's a tiny box for $349 coming out in April 2025 that you can connect to a monitor and other peripherals and it connects you to a cloud-based Windows PC. It has a bunch of USB ports, HDMI, DisplayPort, Headphone Jack, Ethernet as well as Bluetooth and Wi-Fi.

You just need an internet connection and you can log in to your Windows 365 machine. This is a special Windows version that only exists in the cloud, can only install specific applications (like Office) and is mainly geared towards businesses with no personal version.

Fun

Satisfying Destruction!

Here is a game with some excellent satisfying destruction, it looks like what my brain imagined 30 years ago when I was playing GTA 1.

There's just something about that isometric view and all those particles that looks so satisfying. I first saw this game in the recent Unity Awards livestream and it definitely caught my eye right away, it looks gorgeous and the destruction is the cherry on top.

If you want to build this kind of destruction then one excellent asset that can help you is Rayfire, I used it in a demo and it feels so satisfying! Or for something more basic look at my simple tutorial.