He Made Games For Twenty Years... And Finally Went Viral (w/ Jake Birkett) — Ep 69

Imagine making indie games for 20 years, and sometimes it feels like you're just barely making enough money to, well, make the next game. Year after year, game after game, not a single game is going viral. Is this really the career for you? Well, I had a chat with a game developer, and his name was Jake Birkett. His thing is making small indie solitaire games. He's been doing this for decades. The problem is none of them have really popped off. But, according to Jake in our last podcast episode together, he felt like his latest project, it's called Forbidden Solitaire, he felt like it was different. And he was excited to, well, one day launch that game and let me know how it did. So, it did launch recently, and I reached out to him to see if his suspicion about this game was true, that this game was different. Did this indie game finally explode for Jake? And if it did, how did he do [music] it? What was the secret sauce for this game in particular? And how can

you replicate that kind [music] of success for your own indie title? This was a solid conversation. You're going to learn a ton. I challenge you to listen and sit through the entire thing because, man, this is just free indie game wisdom. And by the way, if you want to make 2D games like Jake, or maybe even 3D games like I'm doing, and potentially turn them into an actual full-time gig, I have a course called Full-Time Game Dev, and it's 50% off for the summer sale. I've gone full-time with just a demo on three separate occasions. And by the way, look here, these are some students who went full-time with the help of what I teach. In this course, you're going to learn just that, how [music] to land publishing deals with just a demo, how to get funded on Kickstarter with just a demo, make a 2D or a 3D game in Unity, Godot, or Unreal. You're going to learn how to market your game, get press coverage like I have, hit the Steam front page, and so much more. Everything that I teach in this course is stuff I've done, so So learning from an actual indie game developer, not somebody who's just wanting to make games. I'll also

throw in my 2D and 3D art courses completely free. And as a bonus, I'll also throw in a private 1-hour mastermind meeting with me and a handful of other developers where I'm going to answer any questions you have in a private setting. This summer sale ends soon and I don't do many of these during the year, so be sure to click below to enroll [music] and join 4,500 other students. Last time we talked, we had a sort of theme going throughout the podcast, which was basically you make smaller games, they don't pop off, they don't really go viral, they support your family. And I guess you were cool with that in the podcast in a way. And now you've just released this game Forbidden Solitaire. And I don't want to spoil too much, but it's doing well. And so my question for you is, how do you feel about what you said in the previous podcast just about, you know, making solid small games and not really looking for a viral hit. And now you have

I would I would consider it a viral hit, wouldn't you? It's only been a month and it has like over a thousand overwhelmingly positive reviews.
Yeah, it's only been just [clears throat] coming up on 3 weeks actually. Yeah, so
Yeah. Yeah.
Um how do [clears throat] I feel about it? Well, I think that the long sustainable career led to this point. I I wish it would have happened earlier.
[snorts]
10, 15 [laughter] years earlier. But like um I think it was a factor in getting to this point, which we can dig into um why it why I was an overnight success 20 years in the making, sort of thing.
Exactly.
Um but you know, I feel good about it. I mean, I still would stick to my advice to people to build a sustainable business and so on instead of swinging and missing, unless you can afford to swing and miss. This is a different conversation, right? But if you've got a family and you need to support them and you want a long-term career, then you've got to place your bets a bit more carefully.
Well, let's talk about this this this

journey to getting to this point. You can briefly mention if you want just making solitaire games and and briefly go over that, but also I'd love to hear about the process of the in the journey of building Forbidden Solitaire briefly for the audience just so they can briefly catch up on it. I know we talked about it in the previous podcast, but let's let's briefly go over that if you want.
Yeah, [snorts] so just in case people sort of didn't see the other one, you know, I've been making games since I was a kid and professionally as a indie developer for 21 years now. And I've made a lot of solitaire games actually starting in Well, the first one I made was in 1995 on my Amiga. But, let's let's forget that one for now. Then one in 2007 and then one in 2014-15. I've made a whole bunch of them which led up to this point. And what actually happened was we released a game called Shadow Hand Solitaire, which wasn't even a full game. It was like a

casual reimagining of a previous game. And that game came out in Let me see, November 2024. And Nick lives from Night Signal Entertainment, they're the people that made Home Safety Hotline. He played it and really liked it. And he'd heard of me because of my 2016 GDC talk, I think, and we followed each other on socials, right? So, and this is again all part of the kind of being around for a long time and people knowing kind of who I was within the dev space at least. I wish more customers knew who I was, but that's a different thing. So, he he played our game and said, "Actually, this is really cool. I reckon we could contact them and maybe see if we can collaborate on something." And I only found out last week uh talking to him, he was going to pitch us on a home safety hotline solitaire.
Oh.
Right? Um but he had in his mind this idea that oh, maybe it's a bit strange

to kind of pitch RIP'ing and kind of get this guy to make it if he's been established and been around for years. And um I I said to him, "Actually, you know, we might have said yes." But luckily for us, um luckily for us, he kind of percolated on that a bit more and then came to us with the Forbidden Solitaire pitch, which we accepted. And normally, we Okay, when you've been around for a while, I'm sure you get this. You get lots of people make you offers, all kind of different offers, right? Um including partnering with them. And sometimes they only come to the table with an idea. And and it's like, "You need to bring something more to the table." And what Nick and I signal brought to the table was, "Hey, we already have this established horror game, that's successful. We have an audience. Uh we're going to do the art, uh writing, music, some of the audio, hiring the actors and voice actors, and you do the code, the design, all of that." So, they brought that to the

table, which removed the financial stress from us of having to pay out for all that stuff cuz it's expensive, right? So, they brought that to the table and the cool idea, and we thought about it, and then we said, "Yes." So, and then we made Forbidden Solitaire. And 15 months later, it came out. Um and it's done pretty well, so.
I'm I'm looking at your portfolio of rock-solid solitaire games that have 200 reviews, right? Which 200 reviews is is like that's great, you know, for a lot of game developers, but if you want to Yeah, if you want to make, you know, millions of bucks, and and and have a game that That's not it. And and then finally and then finally, Forbidden Solitaire comes out, and it's finally done, I think the numbers that you deserve. And I want to figure really quick out like what was what was the launch strategy? We could talk about the secret sauce as to why this game did well. I want to talk about what the secret sauce was. Cuz I have a suspicion about a few

things of why it popped off. But what was your just launch strategy? And this the The reason I ask you about this and kind of the answer that I'm looking for is something that anybody in the audience can uh use when launching their game. So was there any just like baseline simple launch strategies that anybody can use that you used for Forbidden Solitaire?
Yeah, sure. I mean, I wouldn't necessarily call them simple, um but cuz they were took a lot of work, right?
I I guess what I mean by simple is um universal. That's what I mean. Universal that anybody can use. Yeah.
Gotcha. Gotcha. So the [clears throat] first one was to come up with a good idea. That's part [snorts] of the launch strategy, right? [laughter]
That's right.
And anyone can come up with a good idea, it's true. Um then you need to execute on it, right? So that was number one. The second thing was we tested it early. So we got this early trailer out after working together for for one month, um

which was a sort of smoke and mirrors trailer with a bit of game footage, some real-life footage, and so on. And that allowed us to test the concept in public, not just from friends and family saying, "This sounds great." Right?
Yeah.
And that video did pop off and went a bit viral and people talked about it and so on. And that gave us immediate feedback that yes, this is an idea worth going all in on. We canceled another game uh to do this and we decided to spend a bit longer on it than we we would initially said. Um though it still took longer than than That's game dev. Um so that was the kind of second phase, which anyone can do is test the concept early. And you hear that a lot these days, just to make sure that you're not going to spend 2 years on a dead duck, right?
Yeah.
So, that was that one. Then, we continually market it the entire time, right? So, my wife does the marketing for our games. She also helps with writing and game design and so on. So, she kept doing

marketing, including entering us into events. So, there were all kinds of different events, some horror themed, some not. And those events, well, we've entered into them before, but often got refused. But they a lot of them said yes to this game. There was There was some kind of secret sauce to this game that they They kept saying yes when previously we got noes. But you've still got to try that.
Yeah.
And some events are better than others. And those all gained wish lists, right? We kept marketing the whole time. Then, we also put out a private demo. This might not be applicable as universal. We put a private demo out to streamers in Halloween last year. And that was to people who had streamed Home Safety Hotline before, who were like keen on trying another game by Night Signal Entertainment, right? So, that's not as available to people unless they've already got a fan base.
Why was it private?
We weren't ready to go public yet. Like the demo needed more work. Like it had no shop. It had no It had stuff missing,

right? And we wanted to put the best thing out. And this was a real early kind of like give it to some streamers for Halloween. It's the best we could do, right?
And the goal was wish lists.
It was wish list, yeah. And visibility, you know, getting people's consciousness, right?
Were you worried that you were going to You were kind of jumping the gun a little bit? Like that's my first My first thought process, which is you're going to take away from potential players for a actual demo launch.
Yeah.
And you did You did do a demo launch, right?
We did and we'll we'll get to that. So, yeah, I mean there's there were several worries associated with that such as it not being good enough um or it crashing or some other kind of early demo type problems. But, we felt it was pretty solid and and it was and and they liked it. And yeah, some people watched it, but it I mean the demo still did great. We can't really AB test you know, did it impact the demo? Did it cannibalize that at all? But, I think it was worth it because there were some

really quite large streamers, okay? You know, we're talking 1 million plus subs some of them and stuff. So, it was it was definitely worth doing. And then we kept working on it, kept marketing and so on. I think Oh, the other thing we did everybody can do this if you hit big numbers, you need to do social proof. So, some kind of like, "Hey, we got 10,000 wish lists. We got 20,000 wish lists." You know, and you see a lot a lot of people doing that on X now, but um that's good. You know, social proof is good. Then we put the actual demo out in January 2025, public demo, and that went really well. People loved it. We had 20,000 plus downloads. We got a good number of wish lists from that and people streaming it um as well.
public reviews for the demo?
No, we switched we didn't have those. Yeah, I mean I know some people do that. Um we just had the demo on the game page. How did you find that? Was that worth doing?
it's I mean
[laughter]
I didn't know it was a thing until it

started happening.
Like that.
Okay.
So, I I was like, "Crap, all of a sudden I have 80%." And which was scary because I was like, "Hold my my demo is going to just it's going to get mixed or mostly positive reviews." Which to me I don't I didn't want. I was like, "A demo A demo is going to get that." Which I felt like it was bad. And then all of a sudden it ticked up to 90% overnight. But, I didn't even realize it. I didn't even realize that that public demos public reviews on a demo was a thing. So, I just launched it without even thinking about it. And so, I feel like it was really really helpful and I actually use Grok now um to scrub the reviews cuz I don't like reading reviews cuz they make me sick.
[clears throat]
Yeah, yeah. Oh, yeah, I know. Every one makes you nervous. You can You know, you need like one bad review. You need like 10 good ones to like clean clean up.
find I find that the the demo reviews are really really helpful

when you use AI to scrub through and put together a basically a brief explaining here's here's the overall sentiment for the demo. Here's the good. Here's the bad. That is so good for me because I don't have to read the reviews, but I can get sort of a curated paragraph or maybe like a a brief explaining how the game how the demo did so that I can make those changes for the 1.0. So, that's something that's really helpful for people right now listening is uh the demo is obviously a great marketing tool, but it's an incredible testing tool because these are basically buyers. I mean, potential buyers. Um and they're going to give you honest feedback about about the game um and whether they recommend it or not.
Yeah, they might possibly be a bit kinder because they know it's a demo and it's not the final thing, maybe. I mean, I've got another tip about not reading reviews. I heard this from Jeff Vogel years ago. Spiderweb Software and he said he gets his Yeah, he's a kind of uh

uh an inspiration, really, making games um without wishing to insult him at his age and you know, and had this huge back catalog and everything. Um but, he gets his wife um to read the reviews and report back to him and I think even the forum posts. And I recently asked my wife Helen to um read all the negative reviews on Steam and just report back to me if there were any recurring issues or bugs that were actionable. Okay? So, you know, cuz it is harsh reading them and you know, I could do it, but I wanted to have a nice day.
Well, it's not that it just hurts for an hour. It will hurt me for years. Like I I will have and it's not I'm not it's nobody's fault. It's just psychology. When you have a negative review or a negative comment on YouTube, um for me, it stays right here for like 3 years. I mean, I've got some comments that I've read that are still there for 6 years. And they're stupid comments, but they just live there. So, it's like I I I want to clear out my brain and have it

be positive, you know, especially during game dev. Um you got to be positive in game dev. And so, yeah, I I I get Grock to read all my reviews for me and tell me kind of how it's going.
Fair enough.
Yeah.
Yeah, man. I just said Jeff asked his wife and I my wife kindly did that. So, yeah, I 100% agree the demo was good for getting feedback. In fact, okay, when we did the private demo, I watched the streamers play it and I was able to refine the tutorial on some of the early stages of the game through through watching their streams and seeing what they tripped up on. So, when the public demo came out, that was already smoother and that came out a month before Next Fest. So, we were able to again watch more streams, listen to feedback and refine it. And that meant when the real demo came out, sorry, well, when Next Fest kicked in, the demo was already there, but eyeballs were on it and we got even more wish lists and it was a stronger, more solid demo. So, I think I updated the demo a couple of times before Next Fest.
Would you say Jake,

sorry, one quick question. Would you say that if a demo doesn't do well, the game is not worth finishing?
There could be several reasons why it doesn't do well. And if the reason is just you cannot get the eyeballs on it because it's extremely difficult to do that as an indie dev if you haven't got a following or marketing or advertising or anything, that may be the reason why it's not doing well. But if you do have all of those eyeballs and everything else and it's not doing well, then you you've got to have a big rethink, I I would say.
Absolutely.
Absolutely.
Especially if you're going to spend years longer on on that game. Luckily for us, most people put the demo out fairly How how soon before launch is your demo did your demo come
It was two I think it was two weeks prior to to Next Fest. I think demo launch.
Yeah. Which Next Fest did you do?
Uh February I think it was February 2025.
Yes. Okay, yeah. Okay. So, um if you put the demo out a long time before launch, I guess you've got time to pivot and change and move around and

do stuff. But if it's just before, you might not have much time to do anything about that. So,
That's right. That's right. Yeah, I I I I think the demo I've just been really I'm obsessed with demos lately because I just don't see a world where somehow you can course correct a bad demo. Like I I launched a game called Brave I I a demo for a game called Brave Boy. I launched it last year and just nobody played it. And so I was just like I put like $30,000 into it and I was like see you later. And I just sort of let it go because
[clears throat]
I in my head I'm just like if people don't show up for this and a and a 15-minute demo doesn't entice them, despite the fact that I put everything I could into the 5 minutes of fun, like I did everything to make that first 5 minutes as polished and as as good as possible for that demo. And it just didn't Nobody played it. And

so I was just like, you know what? Okay. We need to just kill this thing.
Yeah, it's a sign. Not a good sign, but I think that was wise to to hold that and move on because if they You're right, if they don't show up for the demo, they're not going to plonk down the 10, 15, 20 bucks for the the main thing, right?
Right, exactly. Okay, so back to your story, you know, that demo was super valuable for you in terms of marketing and did you get a lot of wish list from it?
Yeah, we did. I think maybe I think we had something like 39,000 wish list before the public demo and by the time we launched we had 72,000, right? So, what's that? That's like 30K from the public demo, Next Fest, and ongoing marketing, right? So, that was always ongoing and there were little spikes along the way from different events we were in, stuff like that. So, and the demo really helped us refine it, but it gave us confidence. Um it gave me confidence because I had several anxieties before shipping

this game, okay? I'm getting distracted here, but I'll tell you what they are and you may
to hear it.
You may associate with these. So, one of the anxieties is, are people going to like the game? It's very simple. Are people going to like the game? Not just from a commercial perspective because a game that reviews well is going to hopefully sell better, but I want people to like the game I made, right? You know, I think it's good. I don't want the horrible reviews and so on. And a demo really helped with that because people were able to say early on, "This is a really great demo. I hope you can stick the landing in the main game." You know, um
Yeah.
So, and really releasing this game and it you know, it's got overwhelmingly positive in It got it in a week or or less or less time than that. And you know, we made Regency Solitaire in 2015 and it took 10 years to get overwhelmingly positive.
Over 500 reviews is the goal, right?
Yeah, over 500 reviews, over 95%.
95%.
And that took 10 years, whereas um

Forbearance Solitaire got it in a week and now we're over 1,000 reviews, right? So, do people like it? Yes, anxiety removed. Um so second one was, is it going to be buggy? Is there going to be a huge amount of support? Am I going to be rushed off my feet? Am I going to wish I hired a foreign moderator? This kind of thing, right? But actually, we built it on a solid engine and we tested it a lot. We did some beta testing. We did some paid beta testing. Um and it was solid and it There were some support issues. Nothing major. The most embarrassing one was Giant Bomb played it and it crashed on their stream. And it was And it was due to them having so much stuff on their machine, I think it just the The memory model for this game is old school and it didn't like it. So, but I sent them a new build saying that was embarrassing. Here's a new build with an improved memory model and they did play it again. They did a quick look for it and they talked about it on the podcast and
it Did the RAM max out for some reason?
It's because it's a 32-bit app and it's actually got a very limited amount of

memory and there must have just been too many tools on their streaming PC or
Yeah.
something. And And it was doing a particularly memory-intensive operation running one of my old FMVs. Uh so, but I tweaked the way that worked and it worked after that. So,
I Is your Is your [clears throat] personality one where you think about the future and you you like when you were about to launch this game, were you laying in bed imagining mixed reviews? You know, or like
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, big time. I mean, that's one of one of my anxieties, right? I mean, a lot of our games have got good reviews, but part Partly that's because we have a niche audience and I figured when you hit a wider audience, you're going to get kind of potentially worse reviews. I think we joked about this last time. If you target the FPS market, right? And you're going to get a certain type of audience, right? So, and you know, so it's important how you message it. My third anxiety was financial. Was like, is this going to sell well enough that

we can carry on making games or am I going to have to be scrabbling around looking for funding and whatever straight after launch. And yeah, it has sold well enough to remove that anxiety, which honestly is a big one for me and my family. So, yeah.
Yeah, dude. Okay, so let's talk about launch. Um, there's some great strategies some great strategies for um, pre-market [clears throat] or marketing the game prior to launch. How did launch go? Tell me about that day.
Okay. Um, well, actually we got the there was a lot of we were Let's start again. We were very busy before launch. And there were periods of self-imposed crunch. I I only on myself, um, just to get it ready for the beta testing and we didn't have as long a period as I'd have liked. Um, and uh, we had a panic at one point because Vampire Survivors was coming out this No, uh, Vampire Crawlers, you know, the new one um, by Poncle, the same week as us and we pushed our launch date back by a week because we thought, "Look, it's a dungeon crawler. It's got health and

mana and cards, blah blah blah." Oh, wow. So, we pushed it back a week. And it meant that we actually finished the game kind of a few days earlier and I had a few days idle sitting around going uh, and that's actually was not in a way not good because
[laughter]
I got to imagine all the worst case scenarios or how it was going to go and everything. So, launch day, you know, yeah, obviously I've done this This is This is my 17th game and I still had butterflies and nerves and the whole show. I don't I don't think that goes away. Um, I And then, yeah, when it came out, um, I obviously checked the sales as soon as I could. I gave it like an hour. Let's check because a lot of people say you can't tell straight away and it's like you I've got metrics that show me like first hour, second hour, third hour for my previous games, first day, second day, whatever. And I can see a a pattern emerging pretty quickly. So, I wanted to know. Now, I'd love to be You had this guy on your podcast recently, um the guy I don't know his name, I'm

afraid, who cried when he looked at his sales stats.
Yeah. Yeah, Cakes.
Yeah, and I would In my mind, I thought, "Am I going to be that guy?"
[laughter]
You know, like And and I wouldn't mind being that guy. That would be awesome, right?
Yeah.
And I looked at the numbers, and the numbers were good, but but I didn't cry. Um maybe if there was a
Were they great?
Um they were better than we expected. Like I had I had several different levels, like low, medium, and super high, right?
Yeah.
I think if it we'd gone super high, maybe I'd have cried. But it was just like above the medium in a good way, where I was like, "Yeah, I'm good with this."
Yeah.
Yeah, and I checked it hourly, kind of like, "Okay." And then it went higher above my medium, and I thought, "This is This is awesome." And I went to bed very positive because it was clearly doing well, but not like, "Okay, so a lot of people like, how does it feel now you've made a hit game?" And I'm like, "Well, define hit."
Yeah. Yeah.
Because because we're not None of us are running

out going to buy a Ferrari or a mansion, right? So, it's not that kind of level of hit, but it's like a very solid release that's going to that we can build upon, and we can talk about that for years to come, actually, and something we we should should work with. Um but not a sort of like, "Oh my god, I'm crying" hit, maybe, right? Um But then actually I had a big wobble, okay? And um which was I was watching the trajectory of the sales, okay? And I don't know which way the graph's going to be on your screen, maybe this way. Um maybe I need to go that way.
[laughter]
And um and it went down really quite a lot on day two, and I thought, "Uh-oh, if this carries on at this slope, it's going to be bad news. We're going to come in under my medium estimate, and it's going to crash and burn."
That's It's discouraging.
And it's cuz I've had other games follow that trajectory, right? And I've been there before and I've had the kind of PTSD of launching a game, having a great day one, and then having it tank, right?

So, it did go down a lot, and I thought, "Uh-oh." And I really didn't feel good. But, then it kind of leveled out like a plane over the sea or something, right? And then it it had a thick tail for like the rest of week one and week two, and that is and that's rescued it, if you see what I mean.
Yeah.
It's brought it in brought it up to there.
Why why did that happen?
I think it was um okay, the overwhelmingly positive review came stuff came in quickly. It was talked about a lot on social media on X and Blue Sky, and also people were streaming it. I wouldn't say any big streamers, and we got some press, but not not all the press, you know, we got Guardian five stars, and we got uh Polygon and a few places, right? But, the few a few missing, we didn't get PC Gamer, right? And people were playing it and talking about it, and yeah, and I think what my worry was was I could see the wish list were converting. You can see in the back end how many of your wish list were converting, and they

were. We can talk about that in a bit. But, I was worried that they were a large percentage of the sales, more than 50% like 70-80%, and that meant we weren't getting many organic sales. And part of that was because like we pushed it back a week, but we launched on a day where we got on popular upcoming 6 hours before launch, even though we had 72,000 wish lists. That's all. We didn't get on there a day or two before, we only got on there 6 hours before launch.
I need to write this down for myself. So, this is bad?
It's bad because like you would really want to be on popular upcoming up a day or two out, right?
A day or two out, okay. Okay.
Well, ideally, but we got on there 6 hours before launch, and that's because there were five or six games launching with more followers and thus I assume wish list than us. On the same day. One of them was a Might and Magic game and there were some other big bigger name indie games. So, like in terms of the algorithm, the

Steam algorithm, it's going to show off those games more than our game. And and and you you know, you're like, well, maybe we could have picked a better day. We'd already delayed it a week. We needed it to come out for our sanity, for our finances. And there's never really a great day. There's always some cool new indie game coming out that everybody's talking about, right? And you just have to launch in the end. So,
Yeah. Anyway, it was a it was a weird time and it and I and I was left with that hyper feeling where I'd been working, working, working, then afterwards dealing with the marketing and the support and then I'm much more relaxed now, but it's been 2 weeks.
Okay, so do Can you give us the um You don't have to, but can you give us the sales numbers? Like the like the the amount of copies sold? You don't have to.
I I probably can't. Well, we might do some more social proof at some number at some point. But what we got like 1,200 reviews or something like that? If you do the common maths, it will give you

some kind of ballpark.
Yeah.
It's just cuz I haven't I haven't asked Night Signal Entertainment about sharing.
Okay.
The numbers exactly.
let me know after the price
It is tens of thousands. I'll give I'll I'll say that much.
That's good. That's good. So, okay, there's a couple big questions I've got. These These are for my own selfish reasons, for my own game. What is What is the secret sauce for this game? Why was cuz all your games are solid solitaire games? They have a little bit of a solitaire They have a little twist, right? What's the secret sauce with this one? Why did this one do so well?
Okay, um basically, it's a good platform fit. This very boring, but like my previous games sold better off Steam than on Steam because they were casual, and Steam does have a kind of audience. I know that there are many silos, and niche games can do well, and you see breakouts in surprising breakouts in different genres. But, um

you know, clearly the horror theme, the '90s aesthetic, and all of that, it is a better suited to the Steam platform than any of our previous themes. So, that that's just the theming and the visuals, right? It was clearly a better fit. And that's down to Night Signal Entertainment who came to us with the pitch, and who made the '90s style visuals, who came up with the idea and the Then you add on this meta layer of the sort of like creepy haunted video game as well. And the fact it's silly, you know, Forbidden Solitaire, it's it's a it's a joke. It's not a deeply serious horror game. So, all of that stuff just made it a really good fit for the platform, I think. And um
Yeah.
I I I wonder why why is it that that aesthetic, the '90s neon old-school aesthetic is more fitting for Steam
Mhm.
than your other aesthetics. Your other aesthetics are just like um
[clears throat]
what was it? It's just like illustrative

illus- like 2D illustrations.
Painterly, they used to call it or whatever, you know, nice-looking high-resolution graphics, everything's good. Um but they were, you know, romantic storylines or whatever. So, um I think it's because this sort of crunchy look, as some people describe it, can can be popular, and and Nick did a really good job of that.
Yeah.
What's weird about it is the '90s nostalgia actually works on many different age groups, even though you might think it doesn't.
Yeah. Yeah.
So, people my age were 20 in 1995, right? And I was buying these games on CD-ROM because I had a job and I was playing them on magazine discs, demos, and getting them and playing them, right? People Nick's age who we worked with, Nick and David, they were kids and they they saw these things, these weird video games, but they never were really allowed to play them, right? Or they have clear memories of them. So, for them, it's like you know, a weird kind of mystical video

game past. And then my son and other people, you know, they they weren't alive then at all, but they said it's how they imagined games played back then and and feel. So, actually, it can still hit a wide age group despite the sort of year-specific sort of theming. So, I think that was one of the big things, market fit. Another reason I think it did well was I mentioned this earlier, but you know, 20 years we have built a fan base up. It isn't a fan base that's made us rich, but we're very grateful for them and they follow us from game to game and they came along for the ride for Forbidden Solitaire. And even like dev friends and people on socials who like the look of our games, but weren't really into the theme, they were more into this theme, right? So, they came along for the ride. And then all of Night Signal Entertainment's fans who liked Time Safety Hotline, you know, that sold a good amount as well. Um it's got over 2,000 reviews, you can do the math on that one. Um they came along. So, the fans showed up

for both studios and I think that was a strong factor. And it also is a reason why our wish lists were good quality, like um they were genuine fans rather than just randos, if I can use that term, you know, like
Yeah.
And and the game itself is very clear what it is and it's clear on the Steam page. It's this horror solitaire game with a meta story and this look and if you think you like that, you probably will. And if you don't, you're just not going to touch it. So, for us, it gave us confidence. I never had confidence till launch day, but it everything everybody said gave me confidence that they were good quality wish lists.
Okay. Here's my strategy for my next game.
Okay.
And it's related to what you're saying about like what made this game work. Because what I see is what what I see with why this game worked is you've got a a genre that like solitaire, like card games. You even got like

how by the way real quick question, how strictly does it follow solitaire rules?
Okay, so there's many different solitaire rule sets. And it's so it's not like Microsoft solitaire from Windows. It's a different type called Tripeaks or Golf Solitaire, which lends itself to the faster game play more.
Okay.
So, and it's easy to learn and it's kind of more fun.
Do you do you tweak it a little bit? Like are there rules separate rules that you introduce that are not
tweak it. Like the fact that we've got all of these weird combat mechanics in there and then jokers you add to it and yeah, we add loads of stuff to it.
So, the reason I ask is because and this is kind of a long-winded soapbox moment for me, so forgive me, but like I was listening to to Thomas Maller and he's all about taking a genre and pushing it forward, right? So, basically that means follow genre rules but like tweak them and change them.
Yeah.
And and you could change them or you can move them forward and make them better. Um and it sounds like what you did with

Forbidden Solitaire is you took you took a genre and you expanded upon it. So, that's step one. And then step two was you added appeal to it, visual appeal. With with a theme that is pretty much like rock solid. Like you pretty much knew. I remember in the last podcast you were like I'm I'm feeling really good about this theme.
Yeah.
So, what I want to do with my next game is everything I've learned from you and also other people who come on the podcast is take a genre and clone it. Just uh do do everything that the genre is supposed to do and fully understand that genre and then expand on it, tweak it, twist it and then have a really high strong visual appeal that is pretty much proven on social media. Meaning when you post it on social media, people they just like it.
Right.
And you you get those views. Is that a good strategy for me and also for my audience for for making games?
I think it is. I think it will work

in many cases and I do hope that it works for you. I mean, it should do. It's that kind of like something familiar but with a twist. And as you said, you have to understand it by playing games in those genres. I've seen sometimes people on social media say some of the best designers are people who've never played a video game and I have trouble with that because I think
Yeah, I do, too.
I'm not sure about that. I think maybe they'll come up with some radical top-level design, but I think to actually make a genre, you have to have played that genre a lot. We made so many solitaire This was our seventh solitaire game and I'm probably one of the world number one people at understanding this genre and how to tweak it and make it be what it is. So, yeah, I think you you want to understand the genre well and the visual look has to be appealing to the market you're aiming for, right? Absolutely. There's still no guarantees um and that's why you want other things like fans, you know? And that's why you want marketing.
That's right.
and not everybody has fans, but you can build those up over time. But the

marketing you can do and again, it's tough, but you've got to do We did everything. Newsletters, socials, news posts, you know, TikTok, Instagram events Next Fest demo. I It's a huge list. YouTube, everything. We did everything we could.
Okay, so I want to figure out one one other thing that I need advice on and that I think my audience needs advice on is cuz you gave a lot of great advice about marketing. Overwhelmingly positive is in my head it is a destination that I'll never arrive at. It's just impossible for me to to even imagine. I hope so too, but it's like that is a very difficult thing to achieve.
Mhm.
How how do we make as developers, how do we make an overwhelmingly positive game? What is it specifically that you feel like you did right?
Well, get good, you know. Um basically going back to Dark Souls speak. Um [snorts] that's one of them. I

think there's two things. I can blow my own trumpet a bit first, but then I'll tell you something else. So, I did get good at making solitaire games. And I think when people play this game um it works on several levels. The solitaire is really solid and we keep adding cool new stuff to it all the way through to the end of the game and it just builds and builds and gets more strategic and interesting. And it you know, and it's better than our previous games. Each one was an iteration, a learning experience to get to this point. And that it's very much one more go type thing. And people stay up all night playing this game. They keep telling us, "I I don't normally do this, but I stayed up all night playing your game, right?" So, that's refinement of an idea. We even simplified it over our previous games. We stripped out things that didn't work so well and we changed some things up and we made it more compelling. So, that's one level. The other level is um there's the in-game dungeon story, the sort of crunchy stuff which is just compelling cuz it keeps changing. You want to see what's next. You want to find out what happens in

that 1995 DOS game story. And then there's uh Night Signal Entertainment's meta story sitting on top which is kind of about a game development studio and the haunted game and everything else. And that's compelling because it's a mystery and it it you know, brings you through the game towards the end. And some people said, "Oh, maybe the game play doesn't work for me, but I love the story." Or some people said, "I love the game play, can I turn the story off?" Right? You're going to get You're going to get those. And you can't be too artistic, you know, about it like, "Oh, yeah." Um but for people where where all of those things work, it's really a big thing for them. And that's why we're getting so many positive reviews. So, I think, you know, that's why we we all knew what we were doing. Like, Night Signals has been around 10 plus years making games. They know their genre and they know how to do it well and and brilliantly. And but the the less trumpety blowing aspect is I think that the game itself signaled very clearly what it was on the

box, so that when people download it, they're getting what they expect. They're getting Fora Solitaire, and we deliver on all of those things well. And then they're like, great, positive review. They're not buying it if they're into It doesn't say rogue light on it anywhere. So, then we we haven't attracted those people and they're not critiquing it like they would. It's not a sports game. It's not an FPS. It's It is what it is. And so, that filters the audience, which helps get you a better review score. Now, you might be I would I would perhaps wish this for you, Thomas, more reviews than us, but perhaps a lower score because you reach a bigger, broader audience, and that audience may be more critical of your genre, but you'll have made more sales. And you can cry into your money.
[laughter]
Well, let me ask you, if you could pick one, would you pick 20,000 reviews on Steam at mixed
Okay.
or [laughter] what you're currently at,

you know?
You know, that is tough because 10, 15 years ago, I would have picked the best review score, right? But I'm at this stage in my life um I've been doing this long enough the money is quite good and useful and I'm thinking about not you know retirement funding and everything else and what's next for my wife and I and take taking it easy perhaps if that's even possible. So
[laughter]
it's a really tough one. I mean it wouldn't have been great for the other team and so on, but um who they're earlier in their career, right? And they probably they've you know enjoying the overwhelmingly positive. I might have taken the money. I mean I know that's really cynical and maybe a lot of indies are like oh um but I really do care about the reviews and the the fans and I love the fact I made a great game, but I've had 97% positive games before more than one, right? Three I've got three of them on Steam, right? It's just they haven't

sold and I could have done with the money any of any of those times, right? So
Well, let's talk really quickly about what what kind of negativity negative reviews have entered into Forbidden Solitaire Steam page. I had Grock I'm not going to I'm not going to I'm not going to read any negative reviews to you, okay?
Okay, sure.
But this is helpful for the audience because what I'm trying to get at in this next question is how do you weigh negative reviews and know when to fix something and when not to fix something.
Mhm.
So for example and by the way this is this is 4% of the reviews. I think you're at 96 right now. So these these are tiny. But Grock is saying that one of the negative sentiments is that the gameplay gets repetitive and runs out of steam. Now my question to you is when you hear that what do you think about that and is that something that you need to solve for your next game? And do you even believe it to be true?
I believe it's true for some people.

[snorts] [clears throat]
That don't understand the game?
Um yeah or that just expected more stuff to be thrown at them, right? Some people may find it overwhelming, the pace that we've thrown new stuff at them, right? So, we we have to strike a balance between those two groups, and you're going to alienate people both ends at the end of the day, right? So, um my worry was, are we going to keep it interesting enough? Now, our previous games have got well over 100 levels. This game's got 60. We deliberately paired it down so we could focus on introducing new stuff at a really good pace. We did that on purpose so it didn't wear thin. Um so, yeah, I don't take that one to heart at all, and I'm not actually planning on making any changes as a result of that, because I think we did a good job.
Okay. And it see this is so important to me because I'm in beta testing right now with my game, and I have to figure out what what feedback is accurate.
Mhm.
You know? What feedback is actually going to

result in the game performing poorly, you know? And I think about overwhelmingly positive and what you said about um how you got there. I I posted on Twitter. Here's a good question. I posted on Twitter. I said, "What are the main What What is the main reason bad reviews happen on Steam?"
Okay.
One of them was it's boring. The second one was um you've mis- mismatched expectations, meaning you bought something that wasn't true.
Mhm.
And then the third one was bugs.
Yeah.
What would you say is the biggest one?
Um for our game, I know that bugs isn't a problem. We've got a very low refund rate, and people aren't complaining about bugs in the negative reviews, and I knew that cuz we had a solid engine. So, that's your your basic kind of thing that I think most developers ought to try and fix anyway before they launch, because you are offering a product to a consumer, and it needs to be of a certain standard. I'm a bit

I'm just like that, right? There's saying it's boring, well, if you get the right sort of Okay, if it isn't you need to try and make it not boring.
[laughter]
Exactly.
a whole massive conversation about game design and about the minute-to-minute gameplay and when you introduce new stuff and the matter and all of that stuff. It's a whole big discussion. But assuming it isn't boring, then you need to hit the right find the right audience that that will also find it not boring, right? Cuz some people will I I can play any sports game and I'm afraid I'd probably find it boring. And it's And it it's not necessarily boring. So,
Yeah.
But yeah, I think actually that's that is definitely a factor, right? But um and that you can see if that's a problem in your demo. Your demo should tell you if it's boring as well. Cuz in theory Yeah, yeah, your median play time. So, our demo median play time was 30 minutes long, which might not sound great, but the demo is 30 minutes long. So, everybody
[clears throat]
Yeah. [snorts]
beat it, right? And they we left them wanting more. They were all like, "I

want more." And that's a really good thing. And the main game, by the way, the median play time is 5 hours. And remember this is a linear story-based game. It's not an infinitely playable game. And guess how long it takes to beat? 5 hours. Right? So, people are beating this game and then multiple people are playing it multiple times and now we've added new game plus, so it's like
That's amazing, dude. Way to go. Yeah, okay. So, I'm looking at my data here for my demo.
Yeah.
I remember it being 45 minutes of play time for the demo.
Okay.
And the demo itself is like 45 minutes.
That's good. That's a good thing.
like that's good, right? Like okay.
That seems good. You should be able to see a spike. You'll have the first You'll always get a spike and I never can figure out which way around to show this. At the beginning because people open it up and close it for whatever reason, but you need in a second bump, which is the length of your demo.
Okay.
You need to see that visibly, I think, on your median play time.
Wait, what am I looking for?
In medium play time, uh you've got this link you can click which shows the

shows a graph
Mhm.
in the Steam back end, and it should show you an initial bump where players open the game, and then you want to see a hump sort of where the length of the game is if you've got a fixed length demo.
Got it. Got it.
what I mean? And then it's going to tail off, and then you'll have a giant spike on 20 hours plus for the the people who you know, play it over and over and over. And people were playing our demo multiple times, which again is a good sign, right? And saying stuff like day one purchase. When people say stuff like that, do you enough of them, you start to believe them.
[laughter]
Exactly. Exactly.
So, you find that graph?
So, we're looking at the demo median play time is 38 minutes. Yeah. Average time play is 50. Does this look good to you?
If it's a 45-minute demo, yes.
Yeah, it is. Yeah.
Yeah. I think if it was hours if it was an open-ended game, maybe not. So, yeah. Okay. I think that is good. Um

So, what was that bump What was that hump you were looking for?
Okay, if you scroll down again to the graph, um you normally get a bump right on 1 to 10 minutes or whatever, just a big spike there often because people don't play it for long for whatever reason.
Yeah.
Then you might get a dip, and then you'll get a bump at the length of the game, which you've got, a 40-to-50-minute
Ah, yes. Yes. Yes. Good.
And and then it tails off. So, that to me says people did play the demo to the end, enjoyed it, and some of them, look, played it 200 minutes plus or left their PCs on, one of the two.
[laughter]
Yeah, these guys over here.
Yeah, they either mega fans or they got distracted, right?
Yeah, exactly.
But, you know, that's a good sign, and and you can see games where that does not happen, okay? I've seen charts where just goes down from the first notch, you know?
Got you.
want
10 minutes. And our one had a bump there as well, quite a big bump on the 30-minute zone, right? And it was really obvious. Okay, people are finishing it.

So, that's a good sign. So, well done.
Yeah, that's interesting. Okay, that's that's really fun. Thanks for that. Um what's next because you talked about I I I think you found your IP, right? That you can scale. Build upon.
That true?
Yeah. Yeah, in theory, yes. Yeah.
Okay, so can you talk about that? Like why why why should you do that as a as a you're a businessman.
Yeah.
As a businessman, why should you do that? Why should you scale on this IP as opposed to make a new IP?
Sure. Well, I've seen before I've seen Indies come out with hit games in the past, then maybe roll around in the money and spend 10 years making sequel and then come out with it when nobody knows what the game was anymore cares and the market's changed. And we don't want to do that. I think it absolutely makes sense to build upon it with a update to keep the game alive to a certain extent. It's not the kind of open-ended roguelite game that you can keep adding stuff to in that way or simulation, but we can do certain things. Then DLC is

definitely something that's being discussed between us and Night Signal Entertainment, the other studio that's, you know, worked on the game with us. So, DLC is a possibility, one or two of those. Um and then you're pairing those potentially with daily deals on Steam, which if you sell enough, you can set up a daily deal. And then sequels. Yeah, a sequel. But if we were to do one, and you know, again, we've been discussing this possibility. We haven't all gone we hate you, we don't want to work with you again. It's been a good experience. Um
That's good.
And there's definitely that possibility going forwards. Um so, if we were to do one, the idea would be not to spend years doing that and to perhaps come out with something after we've done the DLC and given this a bit of work, and then maybe something in 2027, that's next year, right? Maybe something then. But not for years and years. We spent 15 months on the original game. We could reuse the engine. We could expand it in We had a large Okay, one of the things I didn't talk about was focus, but we had

a huge focus on making this game what it was. And people have said, "Oh, you could have done this, that, and the other." And we're like, "Yeah, they were all on our list, and we didn't do them because we needed to ship, and we wanted to keep it focused." But those ideas, they're still kicking around, and they can definitely make it into a potential sequel, right?
Okay. Can you explain this focus thing and and how you knew what to focus on? This is very important.
Yeah.
I I I'm obsessed with coming up with the big idea for a game and focusing on that big idea and not deviating from that idea. And do it religiously. Is that kind of what you're talking about?
Yeah, definitely. I mean, we we knew that we knew that there it was going to be a solitaire horror game, right? And so, with our solitaire, it had to be good, the horror had to be good. And we came up with this big design doc at the beginning with all these ideas in, but we paired it down to say, "Look, how can we achieve this in a certain amount of time?" And we also did one of those design pillar things where you say, "What are the key aspects of the game is going to have?" And any new idea has to

be measured against those and rejected if it doesn't fit those design pillars. But there were other ways we focused like we had discussions with publishers early on, and in the end we didn't go with a publisher because that publisher would have wanted localization into multiple languages, which we didn't do. And you might be like, "Well, that makes sense financially. Why wouldn't you do that?" We haven't done it.
[snorts]
Uh I'll tell you why in a minute.
I want to know cuz I'm in the middle of that right now.
Okay, so a publisher would want ports as well, right? To platform and so on and so console and so on. So, that would have had to happen alongside the main game. The point is doing localization and ports, I actually find them soul-destroyingly boring, and I would much prefer creatively working on the game and making a cool game. And we would have taken months or maybe half a year or more to ship the game, right? And we wanted to get this out fast, you know, not long after Balatro and stuff like this and while people still knew about the game and were hyped about the game. And I wanted a singular focus on making the best game I possibly could

and the team possibly could, right? And that was my job as producer was to throw away the ideas we didn't need and stay focused. And Nick was good like that as well. He was like, "This sounds like a stretch goal. Do we really need to do it?"
Yeah.
We just paired it down, paired it down. Because I wanted the game to be so good that people talked about it and said this was awesome because it delivered exactly what we said it would in the in the demo, right? And we did that. But that was to avoid distractions of all these other things. Um so, hopefully that helps you in terms of focus.
It does. I I'm I'm really struggling. I just sent off all the localization documents to three different localizers localizers
Mhm.
yesterday uh for my game. And that wasn't hard. You [clears throat] know, I got compiled all of the text for the game.
Sure.
[snorts]
I have a localization system already in place. Um so, all of the the text will get swapped out. The problem is it's kind [clears throat] of a surgical process of taking each language for like the menus

and for the options menus, even things like the credits, uh the loading screen. You have to surgically go in and put all of those into different fields in the inspectors on Unity.
Right.
And so, I'm sitting here going, "That's going to take me two weeks
two weeks full time minimum to do that. What and you've got me thinking, which is like, "What would happen in two weeks if I was able to focus on, let's say, enemy design?" Um because that's that's sort of low-hanging fruit. I know that the enemies need some work right now.
Okay.
And so, I'm like, "Do I focus on the low-hanging fruit or do I focus on increasing the market
Right.
with localization, you know?
Yeah, and one of the issues with localization, I guess we thought about everybody said China, China, you know, localize to Chinese both languages. And there's an issue kind of culturally as well. Like this game is appealing to kind of North Americans, I think, and Westerners in the in the particular type

of retro aesthetic we go for.
Sure, people who make Goosebumps books, basically.
Right. And we're saying it could appeal to the could appeal to people in Asia for sure, but it would need certain cultural changes and other stuff and that starts to become a bigger job and might need new artwork and other assets as well. Yeah. And it is a lot of work to do localization and we just knew it would add one or two months for us. And also we couldn't edit the text right at the end. We were editing the text right to the end, you know, and then you can you can punch in changes sure, maybe, but it's a bit awkward, so
Yeah.
Yeah, so we haven't done that and I know that you know, maybe it doesn't make as much financial sense, but we just wanted to to make it as good as we possibly could.
Yeah.
In the English version, which, you know, I'm not trying to be I you know, it makes sense and maybe we'll come back to it, but um
Well, you know, you you you mentioned the what we're talking about here is we're talking about um uh this is staying focused, right?
Yeah.
And you also mentioned at the beginning of this podcast so this is a nice bookend, but you mentioned at the

beginning of the podcast that you got to have a good idea.
Mhm.
And staying focused on a good idea is the the ultimate secret sauce for game development. Having a good idea and being able to having the discipline to focus on that good idea.
Yeah.
It is really hard to manufacture a good idea.
Mhm.
Um it almost seems like surprise, surprise, it almost seems like good ideas they're either born out of the ether and you're lucky and you grab them or they're born from discipline and working 20 years in an industry and you just slowly figure out what works and what doesn't. For Forbidden Solitaire for you, were you lucky and you found something out of the ether or do you feel like this was something that you learned through being a veteran indie game developer? How did you find this good idea?

Well, both. I do feel lucky because um the ether in this case was Nick from Night Signal Entertainment who sent us the pitch. The email arrived, I read it, I was like, "This is a good idea." How did I know it was a good idea? Because I've been doing this years, I've been following the markets, I've been talking to the indies, I've been reading all that stuff. So, the luck was getting the email, but why did I get that? I got that because I've been making games so long, he knew who I was, he played my games, thought they were good, thought we'd be good to team up with, knew that we'd ship the game, we'd be a reliable partner, it would be solid, we'd do good game design. All of that stuff led to the offer. The offer I view as luck, and then the deciding to go with it was experience saying, "Yes, this is a good idea." And then we tested it early on. So, it's a combination of everything.
Yeah.
But it was a good idea and I totally credit Nick with that idea and I'm very, very grateful that he brought us that and it's been the success it has been.
Cool. Dude, thank you so much for coming on,

man. This was so helpful.
Thanks for having me on.
a little bit selfish for me because I'm learning from you as I'm launching my own game. Um but yeah, congratulations. Links in the description for Forbidden Solitaire. Um let's let's bump up those numbers, not that you need it, but let's bump up those numbers. Um anything you want to leave the audience before we wrap up here?
I should have thought about that before, but no, just thanks for having you on. It was a blast to make this game. I will say to people, it feels good when you finally have a successful game. And if you waited 20 years like me, it feels really good.
That's great. Oh man. Well, congratulations, man. You deserve it. You've worked hard for it. Yeah. All right, take it easy.
Cheers.
Cheers.