Feeling overwhelmed - Game almost ready for Alpha

So I’ve been working on my game in UE5 for a little over a year now, and I would like to release an Alpha Play Test this summer at some point.

The problem is, I have no clue what I’m doing in terms of preparing the game for export, download, hosting, servers, etc.

Somehow I need to get this game from playing in UE5 pressing the green play button, to showing up in the steam store for download so people can load it up and play it.

All of these unknown challenges have me feeling extremely anxious to the point where I’ve been pretty much paralyzed and haven’t been able to continue my work.

Is there anyone out there who can help to put my mind at ease here? Any advice? Any experts with words of wisdom? I’m all ears, this is my S.O.S.

Thanks for reading, cheers! :beers:

Take a little break from development, say a day or two, write down those steps required and then learn them one by one.
Just like when you were new to Unreal, it must have felt overwhelming and impossible to achieve anything.
Now you have come this far and you will eventually overcome the upcoming challenges. If you can learn and use something as complex as Unreal, you will be able to learn and use what is ahead of you.

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its not as difficult as you think. just get started and it will be done before you know it.

you’ll have a blast seeing people in the wild play your game

edit:

(adding link to a helpful tutorial walks you through the steam process. If its your first time, I think its worth the $15 because steams UX is pretty janky)

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Hi Vegan Lightning,

Package your project. (Platforms Dropdown → Windows → Package Project)

Packaging periodically throughout development would have been a good idea. If you get any errors packaging, read the error text + google the error message.

Optionally: Send the packaged project to a friend for them to test.

For digital distribution, just take a look at all these new releases who have figured it out! (Incase you don’t know, there’s a 100$ fee to list a product on Steam or EGS) There’s more than one youtube video about listing/uploading projects.

Good luck!

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