19 DAYS AGO • 3 MIN READ

🎮 Game Development Diary - March 09, 2026

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Morgan Page's Game Developer Diary

Join 3000+ other subscribers who, every week, stay informed on all the latest goings on in gaming, game development and so much more.

Morgan's Game Development Diary

🎮 Game Development Diary - Weekly Roundup

Your Weekly Dose of Gaming & Dev News

Latest Video from AI Craft

Instant Game Creation: AI Studio Builds a Platformer Fast!

Instant Game Creation: AI Studio Builds a Platformer Fast!

📊 SteamCharts This Week

Top 5 Most Played Games

Trending Games (24-Hour Growth)

🎪 Game Jams This Week

Active Jams

📰 Gaming News

Five new Steam games you probably missed (March 9, 2026) Sorting through every new game on Steam so you don't have to.

The best CRPG docuseries on YouTube just covered Ultima 8 with a 3-hour retrospective The wacky adventures of Lord British continue.

Hytale lead says they're pushing for modding in part because they 'hire from the community': 'We're building a scrappy, agile team full of people who actually make things' "It makes the game bigger than the studio. It helps us discover talent."

One coder's 'winter madness project' was making the Dreamcast-era cityscapes of Crazy Taxi explorable in our browsers Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah!

Slay the Spire 2 dev says its Marathon joke turned out 'a bit meaner than expected' in hindsight: 'To be fair I didn't think we'd actually pass Marathon in concurrent users' "It wasn't supposed to be shade, we were being sarcastic 😭."

Become a sentient AI in one of the most laser-focused strategy games I've ever played, Heart of the Machine Heart of the Machine 1.0 is out now, blending pieces from the likes of Civilization, Cities Skylines, and XCOM into a unique strategy game.

Marvel Rivals launches new "anti-throwing" tech with compensation for victims The new Marvel Rivals anti-throwing measures are being implemented to counter deliberate sabotage, and lost ranked points will be returned.

The Overwatch devs think you're banning the wrong heroes Blizzard reveals the current Overwatch ban rates and win percentages for its five new heroes, and Mizuki is slipping under the radar.

Slay the Spire 2 dev Mega Crit is "totally blown away" by its half-million player peak, but it's another indie triumph The massive Slay the Spire 2 Steam peak has Mega Crit founder Casey Yano feeling bad about a Marathon joke, but it’s a true second coming.

Why the Valheim devs casually spun up a new studio while working on 1.0 Why did these Valheim devs casually spin up a new studio while working on 1.0? “Because it’s fun.”

🎯 Indie Game Releases

Based on SteamCharts trending data, here are the indie games experiencing massive growth:

  • Path of Exile - Currently experiencing a massive 80.0% improvement in ranking (136 positions up)
  • Cities: Skylines - Currently experiencing a massive 63.7% improvement in ranking (102 positions up)
  • Climber Animals: Together - Currently experiencing a massive 43.2% improvement in ranking (32 positions up)

🛠️ New Tools & Resources

Humans in the Loop - Humans in the Loop is a place for people who love to use AI to ship faster, a free community to join and share insights and best practices on Claude C
524 upvotes

⭐ GitHub Trending

godotengine/godot - 107,535 stars (C++) Godot Engine – Multi-platform 2D and 3D game engine

ocornut/imgui - 71,797 stars (C++) Dear ImGui: Bloat-free Graphical User interface for C++ with minimal dependencies

bevyengine/bevy - 44,947 stars (Rust) A refreshingly simple data-driven game engine built in Rust

phaserjs/phaser - 39,146 stars (JavaScript) Phaser is a fun, free and fast 2D game framework for making HTML5 games for desktop and mobile web browsers, supporting Canvas and WebGL rendering.

LizardByte/Sunshine - 35,072 stars (C++) Self-hosted game stream host for Moonlight.

🐍 Reddit Highlights

Need Feedback for the scanning mechanic in my Detective Immersive Sim
462 upvotes | 49 comments r/Unity3D

Alright... last time I got roasted for the screen shake. How’s it looking now?
451 upvotes | 54 comments r/Unity3D

I released my solo developed game on Steam and it suddenly hit 10 MILLION impressions. I'm still shaking!
375 upvotes | 91 comments r/IndieGaming

I had my students create dioramas in Unity and combined them into one continuous showcase!
269 upvotes | 13 comments r/Unity3D

Fast floating voxel detection for my Unity game! Voxtopolis
267 upvotes | 20 comments r/Unity3D

🎉 Wrapping Up

That's your weekly roundup, devs! We've got trending games breaking records and tons of game jams ready for you to jump into. Whether you're building your next masterpiece or just staying in the loop, there's never been a better time to be part of the indie dev community. Got a project you're working on? Hit us up and let us know what you're building. We'd love to feature your work in next week's newsletter. Keep creating, keep innovating, and we'll catch you next Monday! 🚀 Happy developing!

— Morgan

Morgan Page's Game Developer Diary

Join 3000+ other subscribers who, every week, stay informed on all the latest goings on in gaming, game development and so much more.