Jan will talk about his composing work for Kingdom Come: Deliverance I & II. How the dramaturgical decisions for a soundtrack in a vast, open-world RPG game are made, what are the musical elements which deliver the information to the player, how the storytelling in cutscenes is supported by the use of leitmotifs in music… and also how to put an entire medieval town of Kuttenberg into a musical score.

Find out how to stand out among other 100.000 games on Steam: from finding your USP and setting the right price to choosing the most effective communication channels.

All games contain scripted logic, yet not every developer has an affinity for code. A visual programming framework can unlock a world of productivity for a wide range of developers, if the user experience is smooth enough. It can be used by multiple engine systems and doesn't have to come at the cost of performance.
In this session, Bryan Keiren, Principal Game Tech Programmer at Guerrilla, will tell you about how a visual programming framework for audio scripting became a blueprint for visual programming in other subsystems of Guerrilla's DECIMA engine such as animation, game logic, and shaders. The audience will be guided through which features helped to achieve fast creation and iteration times, how it enables content creators to independently debug their content, how the framework has scaled to multiple engine systems, and how it supports developers of all disciplines to code without writing code.

Making a great game is only half the battle—getting it seen is the rest. In this practical, no-fluff panel, professionals from across the industry share their insight on how to effectively market and communicate your game in a crowded landscape. From managing your community and pitching to press, to showcasing at events and navigating award circuits, get real-world advice on what works, what doesn’t, and how to make your game stand out.

Great games move us emotionally, but creating these feelings isn't magic – it's psychology. Learn how understanding human emotions can transform you into a better game designer. We'll look at practical techniques for crafting powerful emotional experiences and explore why certain gaming moments stay with players forever.

This talk explores how Wwise simplifies the creation of immersive audio in games. We'll demonstrate how its dedicated toolset empowers developers to create realistic or out of this world dynamic immersive experiences, including spatially informed audio rendering for accurate 3D positioning, detailed acoustic simulations with early reflections and late reverb, and sound propagation using features like Rooms, Portals, and Reverb Zones. Discover how Wwise streamlines the authoring process, offers powerful profiling and visualization tools, and seamlessly integrates with popular game engines, ultimately enabling richer, more believable virtual environments.

As the free-to-play (F2P) market evolves, traditional monetization strategies like in-app purchases and ads are no longer enough to stand out. This session dives into unique and innovative monetization approaches that push the boundaries of what’s possible in F2P games. From ads integrated into the game world to Web3 technologies like NFTs and blockchain, brand partnerships, audio ads, and more, we’ll explore creative pathways to unlock new revenue streams. Drawing from my extensive experience in F2P game production, I’ll share practical insights, real-world examples, and my personal opinions on these strategies' effectiveness.

Improve your game's performance, reactiveness and energy efficiency with a few quick steps! This session includes useful tips and tricks for profiling and boosting graphics rendering performance on mobile GPUs using Unity. We will learn how to identify common bottlenecks on mobile platforms, and discover quick ways to maximize performance while minimizing battery consumption, using the new optimizations and tools available in Unity 6.

Two great artists, one interesting theme, limitless opportunities to learn! Come take a look at and support Dilara Ozden and Mergen Erdenebayar, as they showcase their graphics skill and come up with interesting ways to tackle an art assignment on the spot.
The Art Battle will be moderated by Gabriela Pešková.

While content volume and code complexity are increasing in games, fewer and fewer game developers need to be technical wizards. Tools like Unity and Unreal Engine have made development more accessible than ever, which in some ways has diluted the overall quality of content, fooling devs into thinking it’s easy.
This means technical issues sometimes go unaddressed — not least when it comes to porting.
Porting isn’t plug-and-play. Putting a game on a new platform can be a long, complicated process, and required a deep understanding of not just different platform requirements but the technical parts of game development itself (for example, how to optimize memory). If different platform requirements haven’t been considered from the very start of development, devs have to scramble to resolve countless issues later, which causes delays, or worse, means games are shipped in poor quality, which frustrates and alienates players. Sometimes even the biggest gaming companies make these mistakes.
As a leading external development company, we at Room 8 Group work with the biggest devs and publishers daily. We excel in porting and optimization, and one of our leading experts is Yoan Aleksiev, our Associate Tech Art Engineering Director. In this talk, he’ll explain — in simple, clear terms — the best ways for devs to make porting easier in 2025. He would explore:
The use of AI in texture and mesh scaling for the purposes of remastering or optimization
How to effectively utilize hardware resources and optimize content pipelines to ensure seamless porting
How best to manage online-play features in the context of porting
How to make porting easier for games made using custom/proprietary engines
Understanding/considering certification requirements in advance And more.

I run the most successful studio in Czechia that you have never heard about for 18 years. In that time over 100 teams here failed, while Allodium is still here and kicking now more than ever. Let me teach you a few things that will turn most of what you hear on any gaming conference upside down and dispel a lot of positive motivational BS. And maybe save you from ruining your life.

Have you ever wondered what the process of balancing weapons looks like? People usually think that balancing weapons is all about tweaking the numbers in Excel or Google sheets, but at the end of this presentation you will see that there is more to it than just typing numbers in a spreadsheet editor. In this beginner friendly talk, we'll discuss how a vision for a weapon translates into actual weapon stats, all backed with real examples from the Vigor weapon overhaul.

Gamedev is full of beautiful success stories that can often overshadow the grim reality. But sometimes it is good to take a few steps back and see how easy it is to fail. I've been a hobby developer for 22 years, working on all kinds of projects. Not only have I never released a single game commercially, I've actually canceled more than 14 projects in those years. But in every failure there is an important lesson.

This talk will give the audience the foundations to build an effective communications plan, giving insights on which platforms and tools to use and how to harness the power of press, creators and community.

Writing is easy, right? It’s just words! Come listen to stories of woe and hardship – and some hard-learned lessons earned in the process – from several veteran writers of the game industry. We’ve all screwed up, and know we are going to screw up again, so we’re going to try to examine how to recognize these disasters, how to recover and course correct the situation, and what we’ve learned in the process.

Cities are everywhere in games; from Bloodborne's Yharnam to Disco Elysium's Revachol and from Cyberpunk 2077's Night City to Dishonored's Dunwall, cities are rich, fertile, and memorable gameplay and storytelling stages. They are complex worlds to be explored and savored. They are game levels to be filled with challenges, stories, and characters. They are places to be traversed and played in.

This talk will present its audience with the 11 fundamental questions designers need to answer in order to create believable, immersive, and actually unique urban worlds for their games. Every question will be answered through the lenses of game design, world building, narrative and level design, and will be supported by both real world and video game examples. Additionally, the talk will also cover the basics of designing cities for video games and explain what game urbanism is all about.

These are the 11 questions I will be tackling:
-Where is the city?
-When is the city?
-Why was this city founded?
-How Big is the city?
-Where do people Live and Work?
-How do people and things move around?
-What is the city's Structure?
-What's the Architecture like?
-Can you describe the Society and the city's Theme?
-What Stories does this city tell?
-What Game is this place for?

Decades of research in Planning Agents for autonomous control in Earth’s orbit and Space started to be leveraged in industries on Earth, from healthcare and manufacturing up to automated gameplaying. In this talk, we show how Planning Agents can exponentially reduce efforts in maintaining test scripts, reduce the total time of game testing by an order of magnitude, continually evaluate the cognitive complexity of gameplay, and how automated domain synthesis and large language models minimize the efforts needed for integrating Planning Agents into games at any stage of development.

Onboarding and first-time user experience is the "make it or break it" moment. If onboarding fails, the new player is immediately lost. With rising costs for acquisition, you can't afford to slack the early gameplay moments. Now you need more than ever to deliver the experience that will make your new players come back.
In this talk, we will talk about "all things onboarding". How to improve the early minutes of your gameplay with takeaways that will help you build a solid foundation for understanding this topic.

In this talk, Tomas will talk about his approach for how to make online multiplayer games using C++. Instead of a game engine like Unreal or Unity he chooses a basic networking library ASIO and shows that game networking does not have to be hard. Through the talk he will develop a simple 2D roleplaying game with an online multiplayer. The talk is primarily aimed at intermediate C++ programmers but everyone who wants to start learning about game networking is welcome.

In this talk, we'll go behind the scenes of crafting levels for Indiana Jones and the Great Circle. I’ll walk through what goes into building a level worthy of Indy’s legacy, from high-level design goals to the unique restrictions that come with creating levels for such an iconic character in an adventure rooted in history and cinematic pacing. We’ll explore how we translated those goals into immersive gameplay, tackled technical and narrative challenges, and kept the player experience at the centre of every decision. And of course, it wouldn’t be a talk about Indy without puzzles! We’ll dive into how we approached designing puzzles that feel clever, authentic, and satisfyingly solvable, all while keeping the whip-cracking excitement alive. So join me as I share my fieldwork, and if you’re lucky, you might find an artifact of knowledge or two!

Do vivid visions of wasted time and ineffective production process haunt your dreams?
Does wondering how to adapt and utilize the visual tool of value stream mapping in Video Game production keep you up at night?
Fret not, there might be a solution in sight!
In the first part of this talk, we will discuss “by the book” implementation of Value Stream mapping to provide context. The second part will be dedicated to the real deal, discussing tried and tested applications and its highlights and pitfalls.
The goal of this talk is to add yet another tool into your hefty production tool kit to help you hammer away at various struggles of the video game production process.

In this talk, Metacore's Game Designer Heikki Joas explores how content captures the attention of players in various forms, and how the different methods of distributing and managing that content have evolved in recent years within the F2P mobile game industry.

Considering accessibility of your game may seem like a huge and at times overwhelming task – but it doesn’t have to be. If you want everyone – including disabled gamers – to enjoy your game this talk will provide you with a starting point. I will go over a few simple and straightforward implementations of accessibility by design and accessibility through options or settings. The talk will teach you to identify some of the most common barriers and offer some potential solutions, including best practice examples from existing games. Finally, you will receive some advice on how to begin planning for accessibility implementation throughout the development process, regardless of studio size or complexity of the project at hand.

During the development of KCD1 and KCD2, we encountered many unexpected issues related to updating or adding content in game patches or DLCs. I will showcase some of these issues, that are not unique to KCD but apply to many open-world RPGs.

In Arma's vast, open world, the path from player to creator is more than just a journey—it's a transformation that reshapes our very approach to game development and community building. This session is set to illuminate the crucial role of user-generated content (UGC) in pushing the boundaries of Arma, underlining its invaluable impact on fostering a robust community, the marvels of modularity, and ensuring the game's persistent charm.
The speakers navigate the intricate process of how UGC morphs ordinary players into architects of their own adventures. You'll get an insider look at how we craft Arma's expansive sandbox tool set and tackle the unique challenges that emerge when players tinker and toy, modding the game into uncharted territories. The goal? So that you can learn from our playbook of trials, and construct your own Lego empire for your players.

[This workshop is focused on the Czech and EU legal system and will be conducted in the Czech language, unfortunately filled with twisted legalese.]
Smyslem tohoto workshopu je seznámení se s aktuálními problémy v rámci gamedev, včetně návodu, jak se těmto problémům vyhnout.

The talk will cover how we went about building a multitude of rigs for Hades 2, talking a bit about the pipeline and structure, as well as covering some more interesting setups used in the rigs.

The talk explores the journey of transforming a video game concept into a successful product, from idea inception and refining the vision to prototyping and overcoming development challenges such as missed deadlines, shifting goals, and complex bugs. Despite initial poor reviews, 15 regular updates over 27 months ultimately turned Crime Boss: Rockay City into a well-reviewed success.

- A lecture on creating a combat system for our upcoming game Kromlech.
- Insight into the challenges of how complex it is to build a completely new combat system from scratch and how many issues one must solve and overcome when trying to innovate and create something new.
- Dead ends, technologies, processes, and skills learned along the way.

Most game music today is created using commercially available sample libraries, presets from virtual synthesizers, or even hardware synths. The primary reason for this is the accessibility of these tools and their ability to meet tight deadlines and budgets. These tools also enable composers to present their musical ideas to decision-makers without incurring the costs of actual recordings, which is great for the business. However, this trend has led us to a point where much of the music sounds the same and lacks originality.
But what if we could create our own virtual instruments, samples, and presets, designed specifically for our new game? The good news is, we can—and the perfect time to do this is at the beginning of game production. While the rest of the team focuses on level design, asset creation, or story writing, composers often find themselves with relatively little to do beyond creating early demos. This downtime is an ideal opportunity to experiment and develop a unique instrument palette for the game.
The aim of this talk is to share techniques with composers, sound designers, and anyone interested in the game music production process for creating new, original sounds that no one else has. The presentation will emphasize musical sound design, starting with recordings of musical instruments and non-musical found objects to build a custom library of sound sources. It will then cover various audio processing techniques to transform these samples into intriguing textures and single sounds, which can ultimately form the basis of custom virtual instruments.
The technical discussion will be complemented by examples of scores I composed for various games using original sounds specifically designed for those projects. The goal of this talk is not only to remind everyone that there’s so much more beyond presets but also to inspire—especially younger creators—to find their own voice and unique sound. And finally prove that it all adds a creative and artistic value to the games we create.

How do you write the story of a game that could be replayed forever? How do you build a game narrative that can hold multiple playthroughs and updates? How do you plan your stories and characters ahead?
These questions have been on my mind since I started working on roguelike games such as ASTRAL ASCENT and WINDBLOWN. A story is about change, about movement. But some games cannot afford changing too much.
In this talk, we will explore how to set up your world, your characters and the your story to support a "forever game". We will discuss about how lore is important, but also a very dangerous zone where a lot of writers and designers end up wasting time and energy. We will also explore the risks of using Hades as your benchmark and why narration is often not the best way to reward your players.
All this will come from personal experience as well as knowledge shared by the writing community. We want this talk to be quite accessible to everyone interesting by storytelling. The idea is to leave this talk with ideas, solutions, and a list of red flags you want to avoid as much as possible.

Petr will talk about the animation team's work on Gray Zone Warfare. He will cover what it takes to lead animation on a game that puts realism front and center, how the team approached key challenges, and where compromises had to be made. The talk will include practical examples from production, highlighting decisions that shaped the final player experience.

Join a panel discussion with Ivan Buchta, Konstantinos Dimopoulos, Prokop Jirsa, Marek Rabas and Will Shen to find out about the highlights and pitfalls of designing large game worlds.

Game trailers are vital for attracting both players and investors. They capture a game's essence, generate excitement, and drive interest. As the first impression, trailers set expectations and influence decisions.
In this discussion, we will explore how effectively trailers boost marketing, enhance game visibility, and appeal to gamers and investors alike. Using examples and case studies, we will highlight key elements of successful trailers and share best practices for creating engaging, impactful content.

Based on experience from game developers and years of work with teams, hear how patterns and cycles can transcend companies and positions. Let’s take a deeper look at what people consider normal in game dev and how this can affect your mental health and the mental health of your colleagues. Learn what you can do early on to identify and navigate possible stressful situations and environments, as well as clowning around.
First, let’s take a look at how change takes time and effort - especially within teams. Then, we dive into the cycles and patterns that can cause stress, burn out, false urgencies, collective pressure, and the overall normalization of these instances. Not to worry, you can learn how to approach these situations! Ultimately, change comes when you pause and take a breather - this is where you can help make a better future for you and everyone around you.

Please note that this talk will be held in Czech.

Základní informace o fungování nově vzniklého fondu a jeho podpora v herním průmyslu.

We're going to talk about our journey in the VR industry. Starting with building games for our location-based VR arenas, transitioning into home VR development with our latest title, Aim Assault.
We'll cover lessons learned in gameplay design, development workflows, and Quest-specific optimization.

Let's support and reward the best of our Indie teams in categories of Best Game, Best Art, and Best Gameplay. And yes, you can vote too!