He Quit His Job To Make A Game — Full Time Game Dev Podcast Ep. 001

Awesome. Okay. Yeah, we are we're recording. Okay. Hello guys. My name is Thomas Brush and I make indie games for a living. Most of you know that, but you might not know David. David also makes indie games for a living. And I was talking to David before we started the podcast. And I love how David is just sort of he's he's made it happen. He's made it work and he kind of took the plunge. So, David, tell me a little bit about yourself really quick, what you're working on, and then we'll jump into the conversation. Yeah. Hi. Um, again, I'm Dave Marorrow, and I'm working on a game called Little Nemo and the Guardians of Slumberland. And it's a it's a 2D handdrawn platformer Metroid Vania game. And, uh, yeah, I um I've been working on it for a couple of years. And I just now I'm trying to raise some funds. I've got a Kickstarter running right now and uh we're aiming to release the game in uh Q4 of next year.

Nice. Nice. It looks like you're looks like your Kickstarter campaign is doing really well. Um so I'm going to I'm going to really quickly give a breakdown of this podcast. Really what I want to cover is how you know you you were probably doing pretty good at your previous job. Uh things were probably going pretty good for you. Uh and do you mind telling where you were working? I was working at BuzzFeed. Okay. So, you're working at BuzzFeed. Things were going good for BuzzFeed for a while there and it sounds like life was good and then all of a sudden you took this really kind of risky plunge into gamedev. So, I want to talk about that and how my audience I mean not everybody can do this but how my audience can replicate what you're doing because it's so funny. The more people I talk to on this podcast, the more I realize people are making games full-time. They're they're funded full-time before they even finish their games. So, I want to talk about that. I'm going to run a quick intro really quick, David, and then we'll jump into that conversation. Great.

[Music] By the way, guys, feel free to download my free 2D game kit below. It's totally free. It's my treat to you. I used this exact 2D game kit to make a game for PewDiePie in 14 days. And then I got to play it in front of his subscribers, which was really awesome. Um, so download that, use it however you want. It's my treat to you. Yeah. Okay. Going to jump right over to your Kickstarter campaign. I think it's really good to show right now your Kickstarter campaign. Tell me a little bit about the Kickstarter campaign. Um, yeah, I've been working on it for a while. Um it's it's you know mostly me working on this but it represents a lot of feedback from a lot of people um a lot of friends strangers um various people like uh you know Chris um you

know there gave me feedback early on how to run this and um I just spent the most of like the better part of this year has been kind of like getting to this point so it's it's been a lot of work, you know, just like creating graphics, tweaking things, kind of making sure I'm telling the right story, putting together a trailer. Um, and these are all things that I had never had experience with. So, I'm also any anytime I'm doing something like video editing, that's me like learning how to do it for the first time baked in into it as as a cost. But um yeah, it's a it's um yeah, just just trying to kind of paint a picture uh of the game in, you know, animations and drawings and stuff as much as possible. And then, you know, a bit of text as well. This is I'm looking at this Kickstarter campaign right now, man. This is like one of the best campaigns I've ever seen. Oh, thank you. The animated gifts in the body content

are super premium. Um, how long did you say this took to make this campaign? I I've been working like most of this year has been like focused on the campaign. I mean that also represents like you know I go in and out of different things like um I also put put together a demo of the game to go out to content creators uh this year as well. But like much of like my time just like this year has been focused not even on the game so much as just getting that that page together and looking um as as good as I can make it. So for those of you who are watching the podcast right now, you might be wondering why my screen is in like the Kickstarter campaign for some reason, dude, is in Dutch. I have no idea why, but but we have that problem with Kickstarter where it goes into another language rant. It's like if you looked at a Dutch page before, it suddenly is like locked in. Have you Does it do that for you? Yeah, I've had that happen before. I don't get it. And it's always a different language. Um, so yeah, for clarity here though,

$47,123, correct? That sounds about right. Yeah. Okay. All right. That's incredible, dude. I mean, I'm really, really proud of you. So, how long has the campaign been going? Um, it's we're doing a short campaign, only three weeks. Um, and so it's actually going to be over in 7 days on on June 30th. Um, so we're just shy of it'll be two weeks tomorrow that it's been running. Uh, so, you know, this week has been kind of that lull that you you get with Kickstarters that, um, we launched um, we had a really big launch, which was great because we actually um were a part of the Day of the Devs event. Um we were the you know one more thing reveal and um Peter Burkeman who's doing the soundtrack he did a performance and um that was like a little you know kind of show that uh little performance video with some gameplay uh layered over top and so I think we got a lot of people coming in from that the followers

I had acrewed over the last um you know year or so of pushing the Twitter handle. Okay. So, a couple things to clarify here. And, you know, this podcast is all about basically, you know, helping my audience know how to do what you're doing because dude, you've officially made it. You know, like you're at a position now where people are like, well, how do I do how do I do what David did? You know, how how do I replicate that? So, my question is, were you full-time before this campaign? Yes. Yeah. I've I've actually been working full-time for a couple years on this project. H how I mean I'm sure you have rent stuff like that. So what's going on? Um it's a kind of a combination of yeah like reducing living expenses as much as possible, right? Um aka living in poverty, but also um uh it I worked as an engineer for about a decade, you know, wanting to do this and thinking maybe someday I'll, you know, be able to

afford to take the plunge. Um, so essentially it's just kind of like saved up enough to be able to like kind of invest in myself to to take this plunge. Okay. Can you give a You don't have to tell us how much money you have, but can you tell us give us a recommendation? Let's say let's say we're not living in New York City, right? But like just a normal affordable city in America. What kind of savings should people have before they like and and by the way, we're not recommending you take the plunge. I would never recommend anybody just quit their job to make games, but if they were going to do it, how much do they need to surv like? What what was that like? What did you decide on? Like how much did you need? It you know, it was just kind of like um it was a gut feeling like my my kind of feeling is like, oh, it's never going to be enough, you know, like it I I'll never have enough save to do it. And so it was more kind of about the time being right. like I realized like I really want to do this and I'm getting, you

know, I'm I'm a bit older. Uh so it's it's like I I kind of need to do this now. Um but I think like, you know, for for anybody else, I think what you would need to do is just um I'm really good personally at budgeting and keeping track of my spending. So, if you're able to, you know, if you're, say, working a job right now and you kind of have enough money to get by, consider tracking your expenses and see how much you're saving, how much you could stand to save. Yeah. And then kind of you you can start to put together a budget and understand what your annual expenses are. And then you'll be able to know like here's here's my runway if I left my job right now and made games. Here's how long I would have to make the game before I either had to sell it or seek more funding, uh, etc. Okay. So, three questions for you. Um, just got to spitball him really quick. How old are you? 41. 41. Okay. You You don't look 41, I guess.

You look about 28, which is congratulations. Uh, I know I look about 16, but um, so the second question though is um, what are you thinking? I I think my audience might want a specific number. Three months, four months of salary, like what do what's what's the kind of feeling that you had? I I mean, for me, I was like, I want a I want a year at least of of being able to do this. And I because I've been working on this. I I I think it would depend on what you're trying to do. I um I have this problem of like just kind of I I tried to reign in scope early on on what I was gonna do because I know I'm gonna overgineer everything and just kind of overdo it. Um so I've definitely spent way longer on this game so far than I meant to. And so I think you need to be prepared. I think that's the same story you're going to hear from a lot of other devs. You you constantly need to be like challenging yourself to to cut down your scope and reduce how long things are going to take. Yep. So figure how long you want the game to

take and then double or triple that for what you need for your savings. Okay, that that makes total sense. Now the third question is I want my audience to know the majority Oh man, this is hard to say. The majority of you, if everybody watching this video quit their job tomorrow, had enough in savings for a year, quit their job tomorrow, and made a game, the majority of you would not make much money on your games. Do you think that's true, David? Yeah. Yeah. It's It's Don't It's so sad, but I want to be honest with my audience, you know? Don't do it with the hope of making money. That's like I said like it wasn't about like oh I'm gonna you know I have this budget and here's how I'm going to make money doing gamedev. It's like look I've always wanted to do this. I've been working for the last 10 years. Um I think I could I I trust in my ability to try and make a game right and and make

enough to like scrape by. That's all I'm trying to do. So, it's like you need you need to have the interest to to be willing to kind of take like what in my case, I'm sure will be like an absurd uh salary cut, right? Like um you just you need to be you need to I don't know not care that much about money and just want to to do the the game, you know, the game dev thing. If if if you guys the audience I'm uh talking to the audience. If you guys want to know if your game is going to make good money, a Kickstarter campaign is a great way to know. Um so from what I can gather, my estimation, and this is I'm not a genie here, but my estimation is if you made 47, you'll probably end up at like 65 minimum. I mean, yeah, that's what we're shooting. 65 $65,000 gross on your Kickstarter campaign. That means you'll probably end up with minimum 300,000 lifetime gross

US sales on Steam. That's I'm just guessing based on my experience. So that's not bad. You know, it's like, hey, that's pretty good. You know, that's like six that's six figures a year on on well 70% of the 100 they're going to take 30%. Steam is right. But that's like minimum, right? So, it's like that's pretty good. I think that it's a great indicator of how your game is going to do. Um, is Kickstarter. The second indicator is a publisher. So, especially a publisher like TinyBuild. Like, let's say TinyBuild sent you a a contract for Little Nemo. Um, and they're like, "We're going to give you 200 grand." They obviously think that the game is going to make that minimum. Now, they're probably looking at I'm gonna make a guesstimate here. They want 2.5 times that at least um on the game. So, they're thinking I don't know what that number is, but like 600 grand or something. I don't know. Um

so, I'm just throwing random numbers out here just to give you guys an idea that a publisher is another great way to know if your game is going to make good money. Even if they just send you an email saying, "Hey, here's our here's our budget of of what we think you you we're willing to pay you." That's a great You don't even have to sign the agreement. You can just go, "Man, that's that means my game is they think my game is worth it." Right? And the the third, sorry, I'm rambling here, but the third the third way to know if your game is going to be successful is when you have a social media audience. um they're going to be able to tell you just through clicks and through comments and engagement of your social media posts, you're you're going to know if your game is marketable. And that's ult I mean a good game, it's great to have a good game, but it's also good to have a game that's marketable. Um so those are my sort of three ways to know if your game is going to be successful. So have you felt more confidence, David, now that uh

now that the Kickstarter campaign has done well? Yeah, it's I I mean I think the first um hint of confidence like you were saying social media I I I've had um a Twitter going since I started working on the game where I would just sort of like detail the stuff before I'd even announced like oh this is a little Nemo game. I would post videos from it and there was just no reaction, right? nobody cared about it and it was always like slightly kind of um uh difficult to to work through that. Like I kind of had to just kind of believe in it myself and I was like I think this will be good. And then once I started to once I got to a point where the game actually started to look like I had imagined it. Um I and I was able to start spending more time on Twitter and and pushing that out. started getting the kind of reaction that I think sort of made me more encouraged. And um so yeah, that was that was like a a big uh

boost of of encouragement. It's like, you know, other people would, you know, see the my Twitter and I'd be like, "Oh, I only have like, you know, a thousand followers. I don't know if that's enough." And, you know, people would tell me like, "You're actually getting really good engagement off these posts, though." You know, like I have X followers and don't see this good of an engagement. So, it's like that sort of stuff was like really helpful to sort of gauge um that there was some viability. Um and and especially like you know in terms of just how the game looks and appeals to people like at a glance I think is you know going to say a lot about how you do ultimately because that's such a big part of the the marketing in the end, right? It's like it has to has to capture someone's attention like at a glance. How cool would it be? Like maybe you're not about to understand what I'm about to say, but I I'm assuming Yoshi's Island is an inspiration. Oh yeah, for sure. How cool. More very much for the visuals more so than the gameplay even. Right. Right. How cool would it be if

like a genie came up to your house and he was like or your apartment. He was like he was like I can send you an email list of everybody who loves Yoshi's Island. Like can you imagine? You'd make a million bucks on the first day. Yeah. Yeah. And that's the thing. That's the thing about these kind of games is we're so lucky to be 40 years into the game dev industry or at least 30. I mean it's what when was 80 1980 was when it started I think. So we're like 40 years into this. So we have the ability to go I'm just going to make a game that looks like X because there's a built-in audience that was already built like it was already there. And so you get to access that audience. The trouble is you got to find it, right? Yeah. So, how has that been the audience building? Um, it's tough. I I kind of It's something I'm not good at. I'm trying to get better at. And so, most of my time marketing the game is spent just kind of like tweeting it out and trying to let

it get carried through organic traffic. Um, but I've definitely had people tell me tips like, "Oh, like you know, yeah, like go search like on on Twitter like search Yoshi's Island and go find those posts and like them, you know, just to kind of so people see what you're doing, you know, like um the the Little Nemo community like find them and and um yeah, it's uh it's it's very difficult like Yeah, like you said, if there were a genie, I would I I think that would be a huge uh boost. Yeah, just cuz it's that's that's most of what the um the marking battle is like like getting people to see it but also getting the right people to to see it and then for them to like you can make something that that people will recognize and you know like what I'm trying to do is let people recognize oh this looks like like what I imagined an NES game looked like or like this looks like the in the the art from the instruction manuals of an NES game like brought into the game. Like that's what I want people to see and to kind of get a hint of um you know

like Capcom platformers and Yoshi's Island and Super Mario and all of that. But like then from there you also have to get those people to see it which is yeah very very difficult. I I think it it involves just like like getting help also like like talking to other people that know how to know about these things and also just being involved in different communities yourself like like online communities and um I love how you said this is how I imagined these classic games to look. The reason that's funny to me is because me and my brother, we recently booted up Yoshi's Island on Super Nintendo and Donkey Kong and it's like these games are so bad. Like, they're great games obviously and they're really fun, but they're they're rough. I mean, the the funny thing about those games is we we got to make better games because people's attention span is so much lower because well, I mean, like Yoshi's Island to buy that game, I think it was like 60 bucks in the '9s. I'm not so

sure, but I think it was like pretty effects 2 chip in it, right? So, it was probably pretty expensive, right? And that's crazy. Like, game prices haven't really changed. I mean, they've actually they've gone way down. Like you're I'm assuming you're going to do 15 to $20 for this game. Yeah. Yeah. Probably $20 target. Yeah. And when when you spent 60 bucks on on a cartridge and that was like the only game you played, you better beat that game. I mean, especially my parents are like, "You better you better beat this game because I just spent 60 bucks, which is like the equivalent of like a hundred bucks now or something." So, so there was a lot those games they they got away with a lot of garbage. Um, obviously clearly they're in innovative and amazing uh technological feats, but the standard is much higher now and uh it's clear like with your game here, I'm looking at something that's much prettier than Yoshi's Island, honestly. Is it hands on? Thank you. Yeah, it's all I I draw it all. Um I've

got my iPad right here on my desk. Actually, you can just kind of see the corner of it. Um, I draw everything in an app called Procreate, which I highly recommend, by the way. It's $10 if you have an iPad with an Apple Pencil. Um, it's such a nice app and I do all the animation and everything in there. Yeah. Yeah. Pro. Pull that up really quick so my audience can see that. Yeah. Big big recommend for that software because, you know, I bought this, you know, again, getting into budgeting. I I got this iPad um with the Apple Pencil on on eBay used for I think like 250 bucks. Spend $10 on software. There's my art pipeline. Like that's that's how I do all the drawing and animation. I mean, I'll be honest, dude. That sounds time consuming, but it's it's paying off. I mean, your game looks incredible. It's worth it. It's not that it's not worth it. It's it's kind of a big risk. I'll be honest. It's a big risk. Yeah. Yeah, it really is because like like I said, I've been I've been working

on this for a while and there's um I you know, I'm shooting for end of next year because there's still like you know, I have the tech and everything like I have a game there, but there's just so much drawing and animating I need to do. Yeah. That that's what I'm going to be doing for the next year. Okay. So, we've got a like a you said you're really good at budgeting. Are you good at scheduling and how how's how's your skill with milestones and all that? Um, you know, I I feel like I'm pretty good at that, but it's actually something I try not to do too much of. Wow. Um, because um I the way I approach this is like the the whole like full-time game dev thing is like I need to ensure I don't get sick of this and that I don't like get sick of the project. Yeah. And so I try to always make sure I'm like enjoying it and I'm working on something fun. So I do a lot of I do a

lot of jumping around between things. And so I try to kind of like work on whatever I want to work on, right? Then yeah. Um that's not always achievable. Like this year has just been like going really hard on the Kickstarter campaign and marketing. Um but you know, most of the time I'd be like, you know what, I really want to work on like the save system for the game. So I'm just gonna go build that because that sounds really fun to do right now. And that's that's how I'm able to like keep it fun and fresh and like work on this for a few years like basically with my head down like with very little feedback. U which I think you know um talking to friends of mine who seem like mystified that I'm able to do that I I think maybe isn't isn't for everyone. And also like if I if I were trying to like be really good about scheduling like like you know treating this as if I were working back at my um you know working at as an engineer where you know we have all the the sprints and you know you have these cards you have to drag through the combon board. I do use like a conbon

board but I'm I'm not like what kind of board is that? Say that again. Uh oh sorry a conbon board. It's like it's kind of like where you take um stickies and move them through columns. like you have a sticky that's attached. You're like, "Okay, this is in to-do and now I'm working on it and now it's done." Like, okay, so let's let's type that in. I'm going to search it. I've never heard the word KN A. I believe it's like a Japanese word. Yeah. I wonder if my my audience is probably like Thomas is so stupid that he doesn't know. I think that comes out of like Toyota like um Okay. So, it's like Monday Monday. Monday.com is one like Jira, Atlassian, that sort of stuff. Also upclick ClickUp. Up click. Yeah. Yeah. Click up. Click up. Click up. Yeah, that's one. That's the one that uh I'm going to start using is ClickUp. Um so these are great. I mean, this is so important. And it some of you listening might this just glaze over. You're like, I'm not interested. But this going to like, okay, let's say you make $100,000 on a Kickstarter campaign. This will ensure using a

conbon board. It's going to ensure that you don't go over budget and then suddenly find yourself some maybe in debt or in debt to your Kickstarter backers or in debt to a publisher. And by debt, I just mean you have a game that's not completed, you have no money, how are you going to finish it, right? The when you have everything laid out like this, it's super duper important. So, I totally agree that that that uh this is this is a necessary it's kind of an evil like a necessary evil. It's not fun. Yeah. But it's important. Yeah. I also one other one that a lot of people might use if assuming you're using GitHub for um Yeah. Oh, yeah. for for your code. They have this built in uh called projects. I think you might have to have a paid account, but um it's it's kind of the same thing. It's like really it's it's great for if it's just like one or two people where it doesn't have a lot of details, but if you just need to write things on a post-it and drag it through columns, GitHub has that

as well. Is it source graph? No, it's not source graph. Let's see. No, it's part of the projects. Um I forget what it's boards. Project boards. That's it. Yeah. Okay. I'm looking at it right now. Yeah. So I I that's how um I've mostly done this sort of stuff. Oh, okay. I'm looking at it right now. It looks a lot like Trello. Yeah. Yeah. Trello is another one, right? I think it's a little little more bare bones, right? You're not going to get the features, but those those are designed for large teams. And if you're if you're just like making a game with you and maybe a friend, then something like this might be, you know, yeah, if you already have a paid account. Okay. So, let's let's really quick jump to to production. Okay. Um I want to know I know I understand your art method. Um but let's talk about software and code assets. I'll just sort of give you the floor. Yeah. Um, this is this is like the stuff I actually enjoy the most. I think uh people tend to get surprised because,

you know, it's like clearly I've spent a lot of time on the art of Little Nemo. Um, but the I I care a lot about like the quality of the the code as well, making it making everything like feel really good and like be snappy, precise, um, as bug-free as possible. Um and um and actually, you know, when when I made this um this demo for content creators, I had some some bugs in it that popped up right away. Um and uh because I hadn't really done user testing, so I was inadvertently making user tests out of the content creators. Um, but the nice thing was like I I was able to fix those right away because um I have kind of focused on building out a scale like like a a scalable solution um within Unity. So I use Unity um and I'm using kind of give like the the ground floor of everything like URP so they're universal rendering pipeline. Um I use shader graph to do the shaders and

I'm using Visual Studio Code. um which will come I think that comes bundled with it uh for all the you know writing of of scripts and code and stuff. Um and um I'm also using uh a one of one of the critical pieces of software I use is called rewired. Okay. Which um I'm a big fan of gamepad support and that is something it's it's something you just plug in. What's that? It's an asset from the asset store. Yes, this is an asset store. I think it's like 60 bucks and you get like just out of the box support for basically any controller you can imagine. I've got it pulled up here. Um 45 bucks. Cool. 70 763 fivestar reviews. Pretty awesome. Yeah, I I know Unity has recently overhauled their input system and I I haven't actually used that yet. um it seems like it's probably much more in the right direction, but this just the rewire does a lot of stuff um out of the box for you. I think that'll make it

really nice. Um so that's that's kind of like my uh programming context. Um and then yeah, I just um I've I've probably overengineered a lot of the game. Like a lot of the stuff I would do or a lot of the stuff I've done is exactly what I would tell like somebody else not to do, right? And I've done it because it's like I saying like this is how I keep it fun for myself is um like something that's like kind of silly and like you would you know if you're playing the demo for Little Nemo, you would have no idea this is the case, but like it's it's all like a custom physics solution that I've built. Uh and that was because my worst enemy seriously like I worked with, and by the way, it it's actually it's actually a compliment. Okay, so hold on. You're my worst enemy. I worked with someone just like you on Never Song, like identical to you. And he and I buted heads so much because

I'm like, why do we need a custom physics engine? Why? And he's like, well, so it it makes it scalable and like I can actually make more in the long run. And I'm just like, no, let's just download a character controller and call it a day. But he was right. He was right. It turned out that it was very very much worth it, especially financially for that game. Um, so it's it's hard for me. My brain is like, let's get it done. You know, I'm like all about getting things done. Uh, so I I I find it it's funny and it but it's a good thing. You know, you've got what is it? This is probably a terrible example, but like Captain Kirk, is that Kirk and Spock? They're totally different people. Oh, they're totally different people, but they're the dream team, right? Um, so that that's we would probably make a great game, you and I, but we would probably be pissed at each other the whole time. No, because I think I would agree with you because like really the right the right solution in my opinion was like do it the quick and actually what I and

this is true to in in some ways like I did start with the default Unity solutions and I grew into my own physics solution as I wanted to work on it, right? Like I said, like that was for me to keep it fun. And um but I think ultimately like like you were saying, it does that is one of those things like I I don't recommend it. I think it depends on like what level of polish you're going for in the game. And I think um and and how difficult it is to get there because you can you could probably get there with like the the default um you know imple like physics solutions that Unity offers. Um, but if you really want fine controls over every little detail and you want to be able to go in and make changes without like creating a lot of side effects, that's one of those things where you just kind of have to have a code stack that you've built yourself and you understand um for you to be able to make those changes and know like, okay, I can change this and it's not going to break everything else. Okay, so let me ask you this then. Which which shader graph is an example? Do you

feel like shader graph you really need to use? Like should should my audience be like a I guess I got to learn shader graph to make a 2D game? Is that one of those things where it's like maybe I could get away with not using it? Yeah, absolutely. You don't you don't need shader graph. I mean, honestly, you don't need any shaders. you you you can just like if you're just making a 2D game, just use like the the 2D lighting and use the default lit and unlit shaders that come for your that like come, you know, baked in with Unity and and um you can make something that looks amazing. if you want to start getting into like cool effects and stuff. Um like I have this um this material in Little Nemo that's called the Oblivion and I needed that to look I think is it the space? Yeah. Yeah. Kind of looks like outer space, but it's got like parallax layers. So some of some of the layers look as if they're like closer to the camera than than the material itself is. And so if you want to do anything like that, you you might want to get

comfortable with shader graph. And what I would say is like I, you know, it's not for everybody, but like I had a lot of fun learning that like I had zero shader experience, you know, like again I'm coming into all of this stuff fresh just like with my kind of like engineering uh foundational understanding, but um I knew nothing about shaders really. So um learning shader graph was was a lot of fun. I really enjoyed that. Okay, let's talk really quickly about um the the the thing that baffles me and is kind of giving me a panic attack right now is these animations. Um can you tell us a little bit about your animation process because it I'm I'm a tweeting guy. I'm like I need a bone I need bones. I want to manipulate my single sprite, my mesh. I don't want to do sprite animation and this is frame by frame sprite animation. So, can you tell me a little bit about this? How like how do you keep everything scaled properly

and uniform? It's um I don't have a good answer for this in that like the answer is like it's really hard, right? Like it's it's a lot of work. I don't recommend anyone does it. like um you know I think there's a reason that like these tweening and skeletal animation tools exist is because um they're they're really great um both in terms of like like it's easy to learn how to use them and um and build animations with them but also like if you need to go and say like oh actually that animation was wrong I need to go like tweak it you you know you just move the bone a little bit and then you you've fixed your animation that is a wildly different proposition if you've hand animated everything. Um, so you kind of I need to go in um I I it took a while to kind of like settle on everything. So for the longest time my game was like very kind of sketched in. Everything was just kind

of like thrown in. I would scale them however. Um, but ultimately I what I needed to do is kind of settle on a like pixels per unit target and I stick to that and I try to, you know, sometimes it's it's fine to fudge things a little bit, but generally I try to draw my assets targeting a specific, you know, pixels per unit, which allows me to make sure like line widths are consistent through different sprites and background elements and such. Um, and uh, yeah, I just I I use again like Procreate or you know, I'm sure there's if you have other animation software you're comfortable with, um, you you just kind of like sketch in the animation, then draw each frame, you know, one at a time. It's it's very time consuming. Um, but I, you know, the reason ultimately I did that is I, um, I just really enjoy it when other games do that and I was like, I love that. I want to do that. And I think the game that really really sold

me on this was the um the Dragon's Trap remake by Lizard Cube, which Say that one more time. Dragon's Trap. I haven't heard of this. Yeah, the Dragon's Trap. It's a it's a remake. Um it's it's Wonderboy 3, I think. Um remade. Uh it's like on the Nintendo Switch um and and other consoles, but uh the company Lizard Cube got produced that. Okay. I've got it pulled up here. Yeah, it's just like gorgeous hand animations at like, you know, between 15 and 30 frames per second. And um yeah, I was like, I want to, you know, I don't I'm not going to be as good at animating as as Ben F who's the artist there. But um you know, he's a professional. I'm just kind of like, you know, I I have a degree in painting, but I don't you know, I'm not a professional artist. No, your your game looks very similar. So you you've done a very good job. Thank you. That's that's like um every once in a while someone will bring that up and it's like the biggest compliment for if

they if they see that in their you know we're you and I and most game developers we're really good at tearing ourselves down and underelling ourselves. You know, I even now I'm surprised when I get an email from a publisher and they're like, "Hey, we might want to buy your game and it's like I'm so surpris I thought my game was crap." And they're like, "Of course it's not crap." Uh yeah, it's it's really easy to underell yourself and that's a problem because like if you ever got approached by a publisher, dude, you need to make sure you're getting top dollar because your game looks great. Thank you. Yeah. Yeah. That's I it's it's important to like know, you know, how valuable you are because like I I haven't had a lot of conversations with publishers, but I I know, you know, if I choose to to go that route of of uh getting a publisher versus like doing it all independently, it's like, yeah, I'll I'll need to go in kind of like understanding the value of the game and make sure I'm not, you know, getting,

you know, that that I'm getting like the best deal that I can. Yeah, I totally agree. Well, I you know, I think uh I I'm I'm intrigued. I think you've done a great job here. I think that that pretty much wraps up the podcast. Is there anything else you wanted to share? I mean, I'm really quick before you share anything, I just want to tell my audience, go support Little Nemo on Kickstarter. Uh the link is below. And uh I believe by the time we post this podcast, man, I'm thinking, well, let's let's figure out, okay, how many days do you have left right now? We're at eight days. You have eight days left. So, what I'll do Yeah. This will probably go live on like the last second to last day of the campaign. Is that okay? Yeah. Yeah. Okay. U people can see it before it's over. That's amazing. No. Uh so, yeah, I I got a little podcast schedule, so I I got to make sure I have room for other podcasts. But yeah, uh guys, support uh Little Nemo on Kickstarter. Is there anything else you wanted to share with the audience?

David. Um, you know, I I think again I'll kind of like just kind of say like I I think the route I've taken is kind of a strange one and like I would I would do a lot of things differently to to continue to reign in scope. I think in setting out to make this game, I was thinking like I'm going to spend a year to make a game and now I've been working on it for a few years. Um, so just keep that in mind like you're it's even even though people were drilling into my head this is going to take longer and be you know more difficult than you realize I still you know even while trying to cut scope still had this problem. So like um you know I based this on public domain to to reduce scope in terms of trying to need to come up with new IP. I uh you know tried to work in an established genre so I didn't need to spend too much finding too much time finding the fun um and still it's just

um you know I managed to make it take a really long time. So just um you know I think be really critical of your plan and and just know it's going to take a lot longer and be a bit more difficult. So prepare for that. Yeah, I think that's I think that's definitely a good idea. It's a lot like construction. Um, it's kind of a random tangent here, but me and my wife were looking at building a house and the builder was like, "You're going to need a $70,000 slush fund, meaning it might cost $70,000 more than what we budget." And that's especially true now just because of the economy and and supply and demand issues. So, or supply issues. So point being, the same is true with your game. You you kind of need a slush fund. You need to go, "Yeah, I can get it done in a year, but maybe give me six extra months. Give it to yourself just at this sort of margin of error

because it all adds up slowly." Yeah. Yeah. My original plan was to just get this game out completely self-funded, not even do a Kickstarter. And it still, you know, took long enough that I was like, okay, I should I need to start looking at some funding. And um I mean, part of that was also bringing other people on board to help and being able to pay them. Yeah. But um you know, it was also just like I'm taking too long with this and I need some, you know, I need those funds to like kind of help get this across the finish line. So cool. Yeah, have your have your slush fund ready or at least if you don't have a have a plan to to, you know, generate the funds you need. Yeah. All right, buddy. This is amazing. You're doing a great job. It looks beautiful. One of the best Kickstarter campaigns I've ever seen other than my campaigns. It's great. Um, I'm kidding. I was actually looking at it. I was like, man, he he's just destroying destroying my campaigns. It's really good. So anyway, I'll let you go, man. I'm going to run an outro here. Uh, and

then I'll see you on Discord after this call. Okay. Great. All right. See you in a second. Right. Get over here. Good job. [Music] Hey, thanks for watching. By the way, if you haven't downloaded that free 2D game kit below, click below. It's my treat to you. I used this game kit to make a game for PewDiePie in 14 days. And I actually got to play it with him in front of his audience, which is really cool. This game kit is totally free. It's my treat to you and you can use it however you want. You can make a commercial game and make a million bucks off this game kit. I don't care. Or you can just use it for a hobby project. It's my treat to you. And by the way, if you haven't clicked like, that would mean a ton to me. Hit subscribe. And also, this is important. Hit that notification bell. Here's why. If you get notified of when I'm live, you can watch me make my next game. and let me know in the chat what you think about the game or any ideas you have and you might just show up. Your chat might just show up in the next video that I

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