How He Sold 1,000,000+ Copies Of His Game (Thomas Vandenberg) — Full Time Game Dev Podcast Ep. 030

in today's podcast I chat with the brilliant Thomas vanderberg also known as noo games Thomas is the creator of the Kingdom series Cloud Gardens Pizza possum and his upcoming game Garbage country all of these games sold well over a million copies in total which honestly this is a Monumental feat for game devs especially a Game Dev who makes small tight very focused games uh in this podcast we discuss his eight years of developing a single IP um and then he spent three years building another game that he eventually scrapped entirely um we talk about his approach to Game Dev which by the way is in some ways the complete opposite of his peers Jonas Ty roller um we also talk about his advice for indie game developers like you in 2025 and finally we do this really fun Community Q&A at the end where we just answer your questions so let's jump in this one is really really fast fascinating I I wrote down I feel

like I'm doing Game Dev wrong and the the reason I and that's because I was looking at your work and I was looking at Jonas's and Paul's and I'm thinking you guys you have this Rich portfolio of games that are hyper they're like hyperfocused and they're like I don't know if small is the right word they're really really focused um so before I get into like what games these are would you agree with me that that your games have this tight small Focus so it's interesting that you say that because you know you just mentioned like oh you feel like you're doing it wrong because like you're doing it different and and and you're kind of like grouping me together with Grizzly games but I feel like that like I feel like I'm doing it wrong and I look at Grizzly games um when I made pizza posum with freedoman that was the the third person in Grizzly games who left to do independent stuff now uh we did pizza posum kind of like in that Spirit the the grizzly game Spirit where you keep the development time really small and you kind of like focus and and last through but me personally I tend to

just go deep and take way too long and I'm happy that the games that I've made kind of give you the impression that there was Focus because for me it really feels like you know a very long and and um uh winding process you know yeah for sure I mean well I mean let's let's talk about your history here so you started with Kingdom right I mean yeah okay so you started with Kingdom the kingdom series is very very successful yeah it's clearly clearly successful because you ended up making a bunch of sequels to it and DLCs right um and then you were then you made a game called Cloud Gardens which is phenomenal really good reviews um you made pizza pawsum as well and that was with a partner and now you're working on a game called garbage country um correct yeah and is it true that um and and these have provided a full-time income for you for the last what decade is that is that what it is prettyy pretty much since I started

working on Kingdom with a publisher and they started you know paying us the development funding that was the moment I had like you know an income from games oh man we need to talk about Publishers I'm okay I've so many questions about Publishers between Kingdom so uh I sold the kingdom ip2 raw Fury after working on Kingdom for eight years or something and then they they the recent sequels that's that's all they're doing because I really wanted to do something else and between the last Kingdom game and Cloud Gardens is actually quite a big gap where I tried a lot of stuff I tried building a an MMO game that was kind of obviously you're going to build an MMO you're like why not um exactly that that was like I got so deep in the trenches that I was like Oh no I got it I got to I got to stop this and then there was this plant simulation in the MMO game and that plant simulation code became Cloud Gardens because I wanted to salvage something I wanted to be like I want one thing of these three years to count for something I know and I was

like okay I'm just going to wrap up the plant simulator and sell it as a game and that game became Cloud Gardens took me another two years to actually build that game from going to I'm just going to wrap it up and putting on Steam it's another two years that's why I'm saying like I'm not a person who is like very very focused or I am focused I just kind of I I just feel like the need to make something and then if it takes longer it takes takes longer it's you know is it true okay so I noticed this about your portfolio you got the kingdom series which is like it seems much bigger and more complex and as we go down through your career and through your portfolio we end up at garbage country which I think you're working on that right now right yeah yeah and it looks so simplistic and small and really focused as was Cloud Gardens Cloud Gardens the description even on Steam um is it's something like it's a chill game about it's a chill game about platic something

like that I love that did did this Focus this sort of slowly getting more and more and more focused and more and more tight and small did this come from a place of strategy I it's really it's really interesting these questions and you got me like thinking at this moment because cuz in my head it's the opposite like in my head kingdom was really focused because I was young I didn't have you know I could program well but like I didn't have a lot of game building experience so I kind of necessarily made something smaller and now with garbage country I feel like I'm quite good at the craft of making games almost too good where If I Can Dream It Up I will be able to build it so it kind of doesn't limit me so I'll just be building a lot of stuff and and then looking back at Kingdom I was like I was forced to make that game quite simple you can walk left and right and you can throw coins on the ground and that's it and garbage country I mean we just had to do a little bit of a pivot where you know you were you were also able to get out of the car and walk around and talk to other characters and it's like oh oh boy this is just too much

and I kind of didn't have those problems with Kingdom as much so it's funny that you say this like it seems more focused yeah and I guess I'm happy you say that because I wanted to seem focused but from the inside maybe it's the opposite yeah well you know maybe it is though like maybe it is more focused and you you haven't fully realized that about yourself like it's kind of like um it's kind of like for me I'll see a photo of myself from when I was 25 and I look at it now and I'm like whoa I was so young you know but a and if my younger self saw my older self in the mirror it'd be like dude you got old you know and I wonder if it's this this inability to see how much we've grown because I look at games like okay so I look at games like Kingdom Kingdom looks incredible but when I see that game I see something that's full and dense of a lot of stuff like a lot of a lot of art assets and and a lot of a lot of time spent on the art assets and the music mus and the

classic mechanics of a sidescrolling game right and then I see a game like um Cloud Gardens or Garbage country and it's like it's it it's it appears to be a a very simple delicate mechanic and everything is built around that one mechanic yeah I think that's definitely true yeah I mean obviously kingdoms also had a decade now to grow you know and one of the reasons um that I didn't want to work on it anymore was that felt it had reached its natural state of like elegant Simplicity with new L and I felt like adding things would just feel forc but for players it's fun like somebody should add those things but that somebody is not me so that's kind of where I said to Raw Fury you know go ahead you can do this and they made it more complex and that's now why 10 years later I guess it does seem like very rich and and you know there's just a lot of it yeah okay let's talk about Publishers really quick cuz Okay yeah you're mentioning raw Fury

and like I said at the beginning of this podcast you're allowed to say whatever you want and if there's something in this podcast you're like man I did I shouldn't have said anything so the next five minutes of the podcast is just blank I know well the question is the question is this it's like I've worked with Publishers through my career okay I've signed I've signed four publisher deals yeah um so I'm on my fourth publisher deal my first publisher deal that I signed I got screwed over big time which is like that's what the first publisher deal is for is to get screwed over um ended up buying the IP back that actually so I actually sold the IP for like pennies and I didn't realize I had sold the IP oh crazy yeah yeah that was when I was like 18 and I'm 34 now by the way how old are you Thomas uh 36 Okay cool so we come from the same sort of yeah beautiful beautiful 99s era making

making I'm sure you touched flash a little bit here and there absolutely yeah a lot so I yeah so I sold my first Flash game to a publisher and they were like we're going to make this amazing it's going to be on the iPad have you heard about the iPad com it was like that kind of stuff it's like it's very similar background that I have actually because I built the first Kingdom game as a flash game and then I got into Game Dev because Marco approached me that I built the first Kingdom with like hey should we turn this into an iPad game I like yeah let's try and then from an iPad game we kind of pivoted to like you know what we should just do steam pc Unity like yeah there's no there's no worse platform I would rather play my games than the iPad um you know it's just not it's not for me so my question about Publishers is this there's some conversations going around on like YouTube and conversations about Publishers are dead Publishers are trash Publishers should not be involved in G

Indie Games it they just make it worse and I've definitely seen that to be true in some ways but I'm also sitting here going I would not have never song like my game Never song or pinstripe completed without Publishers I I needed it desperately yeah same so so what are your thoughts on Publishers and what's your sort of advice for Publishers right now or for for Indies who are thinking about signing with Publishers I think for me it has it has worked like like you said like kingdom kingdom Newlands would not have existed without a publisher like having somebody to like give you some some Milestones some deadlines and be like hey should we actually release this game and you're like no it's not done and they're like you know what but we maybe we just release it and you're like okay sure and then you do it like that's really really good that's help if it had been just me in my room and a computer I could have like noodled for 5 years you know that's just exactly and having somebody you have some accountability they're paying your salary basically you know you're like okay I can work towards a product

um that's very helpful also when ra Fury just started kingdom was their first game so we got their full attention which I think was very good like they they really tried hard and you also often have this effect in the industry of like if there's some kind of like new upstart publisher then you automatically get like more you know they're like oh who's these new guys oh they must be making cool games like that effect and and Kingdom really really benefited from that so it was definitely good they can also get into the way of like you being in between you and the players you know Cloud Gardens I did without a publisher and it was really really nice to just have this direct feed to the players and it's just me and if they want something they can come to me and that was a nice feeling but then I hated having to make trailers and stuff you had you had Kingdom money right so like you have you have money from Kingdom and so it's like okay I don't need money from a publisher I can just sort of do my own thing right yeah yeah so do you feel like it's a little bit strange for I I I don't know I I feel like it's

strange for developers to tell other developers not to sign with Publishers cuz I'm sitting here going yeah but how are they going to make their game like yeah especially with people who are married and they've got kids if a publisher can drisk it like they will fund development of your game and you will have an income for that whole time to build the game that is something that is kind of worth something you know also just like the Peace of Mind knowing that whether the game does good or it fails you will have had an income when I was doing the first Kingdom that was such a nice feeling I was like wow I'm ripping these guys off like this game won't do but I'm getting paid but I know that was in retrospect really not true yeah but just the feeling of like I don't have to worry about this is nice so if you can sign with a publisher and they're willing to pay it and you get good terms I think you should you should do it because it's hard and the risk is also like a mental toll on your on your daily life working part-time on a game for me it was working like with my first commercial game I was married and I was working a desk job that I really didn't

like and I and I was making that game in the morning I worked on it like 5 or 6 in the morning before I got into rush hour traffic sat traffic went to work then through through work I worked through lunch on my game on my laptop and then in the evenings I would work now it wasn't this way every day full disclosure but it was close to that and when I dude when I got my first email from a publisher was actually armor games and and I'm sure you uploaded your games to Armor Games yeah um they they were starting a publishing branch and I won't give the exact numbers because I can't but like let's just say they said hey we'll give you 80k in my head dude I was like I am stealing their money I feel like a thief who am I and it turns out felt the same yeah it turns out that it wasn't actually in this case with this publisher nobody screwed anybody over because Dan mcney who's the CEO he's like the just so such a good heart

that man is like he has such a good heart um and which is not normal for Publishers uh and some Publishers some Publishers to go in a little tangent here some Publishers know exactly how to make you feel like you're amazing and they'll they'll they'll buy you like five course dinner and take you out and give you drinks and then behind the scenes they're just they're ready to just screw you so that's my situ that's what it was with armor games I felt like I was screwing them over because I was about to get a huge huge uh pile of cash and I'm like there's no way this game is worth that and I think what you said is brilliant it's like what so many people listening right now and so many game developers listening right now they think so lowly of their project now the truth is is that some projects are trash and they're not going to make money that's the hard thing right like how do you know how do they know and and you

know especially if it's your first project maybe maybe this kind of security is worth something like if you can get it like take it like it's and then you know what you're worth and for the second one you can think you know is that what I want yeah you can Wonder like are you good at like you're I think you seem like somebody who's good at like marketing like you know like getting your getting yourself out there getting the game out there if you're good at that that already reduces what you're getting out of a publisher by a lot I think I'm somebody I don't like it I like to make the game and do only and I kind of enjoy leaving everything else to some to someone else to a publisher yeah I mean dude Thomas it sounds like a dream if I'm being honest like I I a lot of people wonder like why do you do YouTube and why do you do podcasts and blah blah blah blah blah and I'm sitting here going I'm drisking like all day for me is drisk drisk drisk drisk drisk meaning yes I got a paycheck from a publisher and then I'm like yeah but I don't want to launch my game and have no money and then hope the game makes money and makes and recoup back so what I do

then is I also do YouTube and I'm like let's let's bring in some more income as a safety net so that when the game launches I have a safety net you know so I'm always drisking and drisking and drisking and I think there's something I don't know Courageous about uh developers who they just go you know what I'm going to sign with a publisher I'm going to make the best game I possibly can I know that um my buddy uh Jay Armstrong he he he actually worked with armor games and he made a game called Cult of the Lamb he he made that game with devolver and they dude they just went all in their whole life was just this game and they were like if it if it makes our money back we win if it doesn't make the money back we lose right it's kind of romantic it's kind of like this this idea of like all in yeah yeah and it sounds like you kind of do that right you just this is your thing like you don't you don't have a backup plan it's just let's just make games that's true I think especially with Cloud Gardens I was uh kind of feeling like this game could flop and I can handle that financially and I just want

to have something out there and it didn't flop but if it had not recouped I would have been I would have been okay with the current game with garbage country for some reason the budget is growing a bit larger and I'm not completely in that mindset of like this can flop and I'll be fine like it's a bit scarier like I'm kind of reaching the point where I do often have in the back of my mind like no people have to buy this like they have to buy this because reasons um so I'm a bit worried about losing that kind of like Carefree just build exactly what you make attitude on the other hand I don't think I could do anything else like you know and I kind of getting back at this like Grizzly games um Throne fall that was Paul and yonas but they have this idea like you have to do a lot of market research and your game has to fit and that is something will always be hard for me like I'm just building the game that I want to make and it's really hard for me to go out there and ask people hey is this right because then it would feel wrong to me so okay is that a principal thing or or is that just how you're wired one of my friends he only

makes the games he wants to make and he doesn't think about the commercial viability does it work sometimes if I ever talk about if I ever talk about viability with him it's almost like I'm saying I'm a pimp like I feel I feel so gross and like the way he looks at me I'm like am I like am I a bad person for for thinking about the commercial viability of this game yeah uh what about you do you do you see something ethic wrong or morally wrong with thinking about the viability of it or is it just not how you work it's definitely there's nothing wrong with it and that's why I thought it was so interesting when you said at the beginning of this chat like oh I feel like I'm doing it wrong because that's exactly what I feel when I'm not thinking about commercial viability you know I'm like this is wrong I'm doing it wrong right and um but I think for me that's just kind of it also helps that when I work I'm not trying to make something obtuse or like extremely weird you know like the games I make are quite accessible I really want them to be accessible I want them to work for a lot

of people and I want them to be intuitive so in a way I am aiming for something that works for a lot of people it's just that I don't really go out and ask and be like hey do do you like this because I have a very strong Compass of like I feel like I should be making this but it's also leading me astray and that's why it takes a long time to build these games would you be sincere question here would you be would you be this free-spirited if there was no money or there was like a two Monon two month M question yeah I ask myself so often if if Kingdom had not worked out the way it did would I be doing things this way because also in with Kingdom I did exactly that I just built what I thought it had to be and I listen to a lot of people but I also didn't always follow what they said I should do and I built it and it worked so what that has taught me is like okay follow your intuition and it works but that could be coincidence like I have literally three commercial games released that's not a lot one of them even followed a

different kind of development process so honestly I would say there's two games Cloud Gardens and Kingdom where I applied this so honestly I'm still really really scared that that it's wrong this whole thing of like follow your intuition and it will work like how do I know I'm basing that on two samples that's nothing do you ever feel like you're you just got lucky and you you just landed in this and you're not actually any good I think I don't have that feeling because I know that if you were not good you wouldn't get lucky either you know it's like you need both you need to be good and get lucky so like I know that I have some skills at the craft of making a game but I don't know how much luck I had on top of that in terms of what I built you know I don't think it's it's not pure luck in any case you know you you have to make something that is like a good a good product like something beautiful that connects with people and then then you can have bad luck I guess well that's always the question like how much bad luck is there either or like how many truly good games are snowed under like this is the the the the always question that you discuss with

people where it's like you know visibility I don't know is there such a thing as really really bad luck for a really really good game you know right right I mean what about garbage country is do you feel confident that you're going to be able to land stick The Landing with this game it's scary like I I'm I don't know I don't because I don't really think consciously it wasn't like oh I'm going to make a car game because like people like car games now and and you know there's it's also a tower defense game so it's kind of weird and people have why am I also doing Tower Defense but also driving a car and it's like yeah there's reasons that I really enjoy but things feel like kind of like stubbornness so if it fails I I I could fully say yeah I was stubborn and I was stupid so that's kind of nice I have an out at least when it doesn't Doo good sure wait what do you mean you're stubborn what about this game what do you mean because I kind of know that it's weird that it's two games like if you if you do any like game design class or something it's it's this thing of like pick one thing and focus on that like make the game about that one thing so why is this game also Tower Defense

like I know there's a little voice in my head going like you maybe don't need it but then I I thought up some reasons why I think I do need it and I kind of enjoy it so I'm doing it but you know that stubbornness well let's let's talk about this okay so I don't know what the the correct term is if there's a correct term but it's it's like genre genre breeding it's like taking two genres and and putting them together uh like Hollow KN it's like Dark Soul and Metroid Vania like mixed right and the question is is that a good is that a good I I feel like it might be a good approach for 2025 which is like look we we can't we we got to stand out and all these just thousands and thousands of games that are going to come out next year it's like why not why not take two seemingly opposed genres and smash them together to create something unique and something that's fresh so if you look at the game is kind of like structured like a Metroid Vania

yeah and the idea was that instead of combat like platformer combat you have Tower Defense encounters combat so I kind of it's like a mirror of metroidvania so the goal wasn't really to smash two things together it was just like oh yeah in a metroidvania you move around the world and you also fight some things and how do you fight things from a car okay maybe Tower Defense but if you blend things they got to blend like they can't just be like twoo completely separate things that are just existing next to each other so something that I'm really excited by is theide of contrast in every aspect of a game's USP so like yeah so like for for example like contrast in art if I put if I put a a a minister and I put him in a a hellish environment that is contrast you've got this spiritual leader in hell right and you've got contrast which that's um that's my game pinstripe and it's also that uh what's that what's that movie with with

Kor Reeves um where he goes to hell but that that's the there's visual contrast there right and then you can also have um mechanical contrast which is like two two genres that are seemingly opposed and smashing them together like your Tower Defense car game it's like those are two seemingly opposed strongly opposed genres and you put them together and then there's also story there's also story um contrast which is like a minister in hell is also a story uh contrast um but something like bugs in a medieval environment like Hollow night there's there's there's just contrast with that story yeah I think it's so good to keep those things in mind like consciously of like oh yeah contrasts make it interesting and then apply them also that's good game design which I sometimes do not apply I'm just like oh it'd be fun if the car is a little bit bouncy and what could you do you could like drive over things and I don't

really go like top down so there's not a systematic approach for you when it comes to games no Kingdom I just animated this little horse then I was like well he probably needs somebody to ride the horse so I animated this little guy on top of the horse like he probably needs a world to ride around in so I animated this little you know like River with the trees and stuff and then it's like what what what could you be doing here I don't know maybe maybe some monsters come out at night it really just grew from yeah the the like bottom up or like middle out so to say yes that is so fascinating Thomas because when I when I was doing my research I was like oh this guy knows Jonas tie roller so I thought in my head I was like y'all are probably very similar in your approach to Game Dev and yeah it sounds like you're not it sounds like because like Jonas what he in his podcast I don't know if you listen to it it was like a couple weeks ago his podcast he's like very scientific with his approach of game de right and he's like you you start at the top which is like 20 10 to 20 prototypes and you just test and test

and test and test until you find out what's fun cuz there's no way to know what's fun until you test it and I'm like I know exactly what's fun and I won't test it with anybody and then just release it that intuition has proven to be correct right twice but twice and by twice I don't mean like twice a lot I mean like only twice well I mean but you've only had two games right you've had you've had you've had small like tiny kind of like pizza posum the the interesting thing was we really followed this philosophy of like you know you you do 20 prototypes you have two weeks you decide on the best prototype and then you bang out a game in like six months we really did that structure so I'm kind of always excluding a little bit from like me because there and it was good like it was very productive freedom and I were like a dream team on a on a productivity scale things went so smoothly like no we also didn't have time to do detours which is really nice like anything that would seem like this

is going to be a rabbit hole was like immediately no no rabbit holes just make this game and that was nice it was pleasant there wasn't any kind of big mid- production anxiety of like are we taking the right direction because you know in less than six months you'll be at the Finish Line to just build this game yeah and it's nice but it's a different process than what I usually do so I'm kind of like excluding that from when I say okay I just follow my intuition and build whatever I want but Pizza posum is your least successful game um depends a bit by which measure like absolute Revenue maybe yes but if you do like Revenue over time invested maybe not actually like the fact that we really took six months to build this game and it did break even and you know it's it is a a commercially successful game yeah so it's interesting because you're saying that pizza Pome you did you did a more scientific approach to that game yeah yeah yet your okay okay so this is this is do you pref do you

prefer to work alone and follow your gut and not have to work with anybody else who pushes where the grass is always greener whatever I'm doing it's insane when I was working with somebody on Kingdom I was like I need to work alone then I did Cloud Gardens it was also pandemic so the aloneness was kind of like Amplified a little bit but then I was like what am I doing I'm sitting here by myself in a room building this game what the you know then I was working on pizza together which was like really really productive and but even then I felt like okay but I cannot just freely do creatively anything I want you know like I said no rabbit holes and I kind of like rabbit holes so there again I felt like oh it would be nice to be alone and now I'm alone it's like Bo you you you you shoulder so much weight of like making all these decisions by yourself and not seeing how they turn out until like a year down the road you know and by the way I say when I work alone I don't work completely alone because I have a team of collaborators working on this game but in kind of like a creative sense I am just taking responsibility of like this is what the game should be and right right well

they're not necessarily equals with you they're not Partners they're are that I assume they're like something like contract workers that just help you on yeah on each field I feel like we are uh equals you know like on the art field we're equals and on the on the level design field we're equals but maybe as a whole I'm still you're still the Project Lead right and and the decisions end up bug stops with you right yeah um okay well let's I want to shift gears here and I want to talk about your advice for Indies in 2025 um I asked this with every single guest especially in towards the end of this year the first question before we even get into advice about 2025 was 2024 a difficult year for Indies what are your thoughts I think it sounds like yes there are also more Indies of course so it's like was it easy for the same amount of people and just difficult for more people on the side of that H I think uh but we've also

seen some really good I think I mean it's kind of this like it's always getting a little bit worse right like the way we build games is just like it's possible for Indies and it was like it was probably better 10 years ago and it was maybe even better like 15 years ago but it's not impossible today but I do feel like it probably gets more difficult and there are more big players that just yeah we just got really really good at monetizing things in a way and like you know sucking everything into fortnite basically and yeah that that will make it more difficult and we are only going to get better at that and like next year they will find way like for Indies as there is always this kind of like the money gravitates towards a couple big piles and the small piles are kind of like losing out you know in every aspect of society yeah yeah okay so there's this wealth disparity as as it pertains to AAA and then Indies so your your theory is that the money's being sucked from Indies towards the triaa world yeah the question is is

there more money in total like you know is there is there more money to make up for that effect I think there is my my gut is I was I was talking to Ed McMillan last week and he's like he was emphatic there's plenty of money plenty of money uh it's just that Publishers in particular and investors are just like they froze they froze over the summer uh yeah and it it affected my studio where like oh wait a second do you hear that great time that's great are you in the city by the way you're you said you're in yeah I'm in the city I live in an apartment it's really really hard to you know no it's it's so cool I love it um it gives makes it this podcast more realistic and raw definitely raw yeah but like the the the okay so as it pertains to 202 yeah but I mean Edward McMillan is like like is it not a big player like you know like he is there is money but is it as easy to to make a small amount of money to build an

indie game of course the tools have also got gotten better so it's like easier to build an indie game like if you that makes it harder though because everybody's doing it makes it harder for the rest but makes it less of an investment for you like you know you don't have to program your game in C and struggle but then again the bar has also been raised it's also like easier to build better games so everybody builds better games like whereas 10 years ago we'd be impressed by I don't know what like today the bar is really quite high for any games in terms of like user interaction and how smooth everything has to be into Graphics Etc so if you were to give some advice to to somebody right now listening who is he wants to do what you're doing and by the way your life seems pretty dreamy I'm gonna I'm not going to lie like you I I I'm I'm following you on social media and you have such like this it just seems like you're just in this Flow State the way you make games and and it seems so chill and sometimes when I'm in trenches I don't feel like that cuz I'm like oh everything's difficult and what am I doing so you know I will take this to heart I will think you know what

actually it's pretty dreamy I can just it is dreamy it sit down every day think of what am I going to do today and then just do something creative It's Kind yeah but you were saying advice yeah so somebody's listening right now they're they're thinking man Thomas and they might think that about me but they don't know that I have three screaming kids every evening jumping on my head and then during the day I'm making YouTube videos making games doing calls with Publishers so I'm I am on my side of this screen here I am like up to my neck in just busyness and Stress and Anxiety there's not I I want I want 2025 to be much simpler like so there's one like in general advice is always hard but there is one thing that I am fairly convinced of that I feel like confident saying like Okay like simple like keeping that in mind if you if you build a game by yourself if you have the skills at all even remotely to build a game by yourself doing that is so cheap in a

way that makes the risk so low that I think sticking with that is often smart you know if you see somebody building something and the question is like should I take it bigger should I accept money from a publisher and hire five people then you you have to think like is there a way where I could just build this thing by myself and release that and I think then usually that I that would be my advice to take that Avenue because then your risk is low you're making something extremely personal there's no saying that that the risk reward ratio goes up as you accept more money from a publisher or as you hire people or as you invest more time in it you know like if you make something great and honest and beautiful in two months whatever that does you know divided by the time you invest in it the ratio could still be good and I think that would kind of be my advice like keep it simple and and small I mean that's also kind of a cliche because everybody says that like keep it small I don't know I mean this is what's funny is like for me I've been making games for half my life and keep it small is

not something I ever told myself and it it I don't know where like I never heard that and I never told myself that and so I'm on my third commercial game and this thing is ballooned like opening levels takes like four minutes in unity uh it's just and it I think it's going to be a good game but like I've been kind of living in hell for the last two years I was going if you can handle the ballooning sure well that brings me to Early Access I want to talk about Early Access cuz you you launched um Cloud Gardens in Early Access correct yeah is that is that is that kind of similar to what you're saying which is like it helps you know how much you need to invest in the game when you get a response from people early I think it's also um I quite like Early Access and one of the reasons is that this thing about me not reaching out like early on to people for like testing Etc um when I launch then often maybe

the game is not quite where I want it to be so it's kind of nice that it's early access because then you you kind of have like a second second attempt at a launch you know MH the first Kingdom game feels a little bit like we did early access to we launched Kingdom people liked it but it was raw and then we said okay we make Kingdom Newlands which is like a version 1.5 like to me it feels exactly like the process of Early Access you you go back in you build all the features you wanted to build the first time you polish it you get rid of bugs it was kind of like a relaunch type thing which I think worked really well and I would kind of always um try to do that even though some Publishers say like Early Access is not necessarily good commercially because of marketing beats visibility I don't really know so it's something like a Early Access is a way to determine if your game is worth your time like would you would you have invested the time invest in Cloud Gardens if it didn't do well on Early

Access it actually broke even quite late like it wasn't doing so well in the beginning so there I would again I just stuck with it early access is more of a chance to see what the game really is because when you're building it you're watching it through your own eyes you're You're Building what you want to build and then when you launch it in Early Access suddenly it clicks and You See It Through The Eyes of players and you go oh God this is maybe not good and then you have a chance to fix that you put a label in it where you told the players this might not be good and you have a chance to go in and fix it that's how I see it okay so are you going to do garbage country Early Access I think so I I I enjoyed it I enjoyed having this disclaimer of like hey I'm launching this game but it's early because I didn't you know reach out earlier I don't do like before that a lot of play testing which I think for garbage country I will do but previously it was just pretty raw when it launched the first time it's really nice to have this label that says take take go easy on me

you know go easy on me I've heard that that label actually makes it worse well that's I guess the yeah that's why Publishers maybe say it doesn't work can you elaborate yeah so so Jonas and also Jonas Ty roller uh creator of Throne fall and also um oh man why did I forget his name the creator of lens Island he I his name is slipping uh and I interviewed him a month ago but um uh Julian Julian ball uh he uh he said uh yeah like when you do Early Access people are actually meaner um for some reason and actually was I was I was talking to one of my Publishers and they were like yeah for some reason the reviews that come in they don't go easy on you because the type of people this is what I heard the type of people who play Early Access games and are willing to spin the chamber and buy an early access game they're like cowboys guess so they play those games and they

they're they come in and they want to be critical because they feel like they're yeah like a hall monitor or something looking for the bad G I guess so they they go in and they know this is a game that has um faults this is a game that has something where I can say something and then they will do it that is interesting I had not thought of it that way and I've also not experienced it that way H okay but it could be that because Cloud Gardens is a chill game about plants maybe people went easy a little bit well I think it's Thomas I think it's just because the games are good I mean I think it's I think it's that simple you made good games that's that's why I say it's dreamy dude it's like there dude there's so many like there's so many people right now listening who and let me know in the comments if you're listening right now and you just You Feel Complete like you feel imprisoned that that that feeling of like working for a boss and just grinding away making stuff you hate because you have to to make money yeah

it is it's like hell on Earth I mean and and and for me I don't know whether that's because my personality um maybe it's different than other people's cuz and I talked to Ed about this and it's Ed McMillan I was like there's some people who just they're okay with working a job they hate you know they they don't mind it it's it's if you know if your job is your job and you you put that that in the job box and then you have a life outside of that it can also be be good cuz you might not have this kind of like you know as a Game Dev you can have this this really big picture anxiety right because you put your whole life is this one thing and that thing has to work out yeah and that can be scary like I won't say that I'm I'm I'm really happy I'm doing this and I also feel quite lucky that I can do this I would never say like oh if only I didn't have these fears or or so and so and it's easy to deal with the fears cuz you think no but I'm independent and everything I do is for me MH and that kind of helps you you

know yeah yeah when you do get those anxieties yeah yeah and that that's so true is like uh there for me it's one it's one bad thing trading for the other bad thing it's like out of the frying pan into the fire so for me it was like I worked a desk job that I hated I didn't like being told what to do I didn't like creating stuff that was boring yeah and uninspired and then but I didn't have anxiety about like where's the next paycheck coming from or like what am I going to do if this flops this is all on me there's really no safety net uh and I got to I got to pay for all my own insurance and blah blah blah blah blah even though I think Germany has free insurance but like in the states it's like you got to figure out what you're going to do there's no there's not as much safety nets as like maybe other countries which is a whole other discussion but like you've got this tense feeling as an indie game developer of like if this thing flops I don't know what I'm going to do you know and so you you've got this tense

for me it's like I was up at like 3:00 a.m last night just like Wide Awake like thinking about what do I do about this what do I do about that what do I do about this yeah and that's something I think that people can dream like they can dream and go man I really want I really want Thomas's dreamy life but perhaps they don't know that on the on the other side speaking of grass as greener on the other side there is that tension of and that pressure of I've got to perform here cuz if I don't this isn't going to work you know what I mean before you were saying this thing of like you were getting up before work at like 5:00 a.m. and getting in two hours and I really recognized that feeling of if you're doing something that you maybe don't enjoy that much yeah it kind of creates this like creative pressure outside of that where as soon as you get home it's like let's create something you know and and you can also funnel that energy quite well like my first games like the flesh games they were all built when I

had to study for exams it was all like studying hating it and then it's like oh my God I'm so glad I get to do something creative now yeah and there is something to say for that like you said like if you if you really hate your job and it makes you unhappy then no but if you have a job where you can say this is my job this is what I do for money and on the side you make games and you're happy doing that it is also I think a good way to live because you don't have this big picture anxiety and Games built like that can be successful I think you're right I think you're right man well let's hop into uh let's hop into um a few uh Community questions people have some questions for you yeah um so we have a four or five here um oh no yeah we have yeah four or five here so Mikey says um what game could you never stop playing as a kid the game that I often that I remember myself playing the most is uh Z or Z you know the RTS oh yeah you know I guess we are from the same

time yeah I just remember spending hours on that game I don't know why I guess the little pixel art guys the fact that it's kind of like a strategy game I really enjoyed that it was just doing stuff without touching it you know like the you set up the factories and they building units and you're kind of just like watching it go down and I still find that fascinating it's why I'm building a tower defense game sure sure yeah cool cool okay J trash says have you ever scrapped a major feature or mechanic if so how did you go about the decision process and dealing with a large amount of lost time and I think you touched on this in our conversation but yeah it's I this is something where you know like I said I only made two games but the feeling of like kill your babies is something I'm very used to by now and I'm also almost at a point where I feel like I'm happy when it happens like every project has this one thing where you go like oh this is it this this is the babies that you're killing this is the thing where the first year

you were kind of struggling with it but you thought it was necessary and now you've reached a point in a dead end and and you you you go through some stuff and you're like oh we got to cut it and you cut it and and it makes so much sense and now it's comforting it's like oh nice we've reached the point where we're doing this so because they asked for an example I think cloud Gardens was going to have multiplayer or not really multiplayer like async like you could pop into each other's like it was kind of like you could pop into what the other people built and kind of see that in a big world and up to a month before release I thought I could pull this off actually I was like oh yeah I'll build it in the last month whatever no oh no and then I got realistic oh man dude multiplayer is a whole other whole other Paradigm like you kind of have to build multiplayer from the ground up I think it's like if it's going to be in your game you got to build build from the ground up yeah yeah yeah and most recently garbage country I cut out the characters like walking around on foot um I guess I was kind of going after like a sable or Caravan sandwich Vibe

where you have a vehicle but you're also like running around a little bit but then I realized the game is not about that like it it is about the car you should be in the car um so I cut that out and it was a lot of work like there was a lot of platforming mechanics other characters to talk to uh looting containers and stuff and that all goes straight in the bin or I don't know maybe for a next project you know and I think that really is truly what separates like AA from Indie it's like Indie Indie it's like these tiny little just focused gimmicks I I don't know a better way to put it it's gimmick is a bad word but I think it should be it's like it's a little gimmick it's like this is a game where you drive around as a car we're not going to change anything we're not going to add anything else otherwise you're going to you're just going to divers you're just G to you're GNA you're going to water down all the mechanics yeah it really made sense to me when we did a couple play tests and one of the issues we were having is that people would walk away from the car like they would drive up to a a landmark go explore on foot and then walk away so

far from the car that they would kind of be lost or like they would have they would have to drive somewhere and then it's like oh how can we prevent people from getting so far away from the car like how do we make them how do we tell them where the car is and then I came up with weird stuff like no you're only allowed within a certain radius around the car and then it kind of made sense like why can you get out of the car like just kill the mechanic yeah yeah yeah well that makes complete sense and I I I am so encouraged to hear that cuz I I think I felt fine I felt a lot of guilt and and and the problem when you're working with a team is that when you kill something like that you're killing somebody's time you know that they spent on it and their passion you're just like see you later uh that wasn't worth my that wasn't worth it for the project see you later you know yeah I mean it also depends where your bar is I guess for me I know that I've thrown away a lot of work and by now it almost seems like okay that's just where the bar is you're going to throw away a couple months of work sure and that's normal I don't know if other teams

succeed in not doing that if they are I would love to know if people are like no we don't throw anything we just like straight line to released product but I doubt it so you got to be okay you're not better than anybody else like you're not going to be better by not throwing away anything that makesense dude it makes you wonder like what the cost of like well any game but in particular triaa like I wonder what the cost of AAA games would be if they just knew everything and they could just step byep and that's why you've got all these Call of Duties it's like they just they probably don't have to scrap much cuz they know how it works and they know what those they really know how it works yeah yeah but I watched this Half-Life documentary the other day and it was really comforting to see that on half life 2o they had exactly this they built so much stuff you see like early uh recordings of it and you're like wow they also threw away a lot and that's like a big professional team so it's like you know yep it's nice yep I think for for Twisted Tower which is the current game I'm working on dude I am not kidding I think we we made 10

levels and each level has two different separate paths so you can go down One path or the other path yeah and it sounds like there's like Half-Life drones outside your window um like the I can't can't remember what they're called but they're the enemies that fly around um yeah uh man yeah that's right man hacks that's right um but but we so we had all these we had 10 levels each with their own path and I kid you not we we remade every level three times so that's a total of 60 paths that we made yeah and I don't know how else we were supposed to do it no you know yeah so you just Discover it you just Discover it and even with level design like you make it once and it's wrong and then you redo it and it's still wrong and it's okay that's why I mean let let me ask you this what do you think about gdds game design

documents um I've never I've never done one because I don't know I I told you a little bit about how I work I just start on one and then I work my way through and um I'm doing a little bit of one now because garbage country has like a structure like it's like a metroidvania so it's like you go to this place and then you go to the other place and you have to write this down otherwise everyone on the team is confused so but it's a minimal way it's not I don't go in beforehand and try to write everything down though I do really see the Merit of it because every time I do try to write things down I'm like hey this helps you think this helps you formalize things it's like there's a reason yeah yeah yeah for me like a gdd is if it's not living and breathing and changing I don't even want to participate in making one because and I I I think I got in a disagreement with Jonas Ty roller about this and he'll probably message me after he listens to this that that's not what he meant but I I recall him saying in the podcast that gdds should once you do but he did mention that he doesn't really use gdds but he was

saying like once it's once you lock in the gdd it needs to stay and and maybe he didn't mean that but all in all I've just found that it's going to change drastically through development as you discover the game it's dude it's it's so cool to think about like for example garbage country it's almost like garbage country already exists cuz in a way it does like in the future it exists as some I don't know if it's finished I don't know if it's made you $10 million I don't know but it's buried somewhere in the future and what you're doing right now is you're digging it up you're discovering it and finding it like it's an archaeological dig you know what I mean yeah you can wonder if like if you set yourself with a gdd to build certain things like you still have to be um receptive to them not being fun right you're still like if you're developing those features there comes a point where you have to say you know what I'm building this but it doesn't feel good and and how how much of it do you build before you decide that and and how much do you say no it's on the gdd so I'm

building it and sometimes it is worth fully building it to see if it's fun and sometimes you have to like just pull the plug on it early I I don't know it's hard you said you worked on a game for three years and and then you pulled the plug um that was the that was also called garbage country I just lifted the name but it was an it was like kind of like so the thing what my initial thought was like you know in Minecraft everybody goes in and doesn't know anything and they built their first little house and it's like a crap house but it's there and I thought it's such a shame that you can't see other people's first houses like what if in a very rudimentary way everybody lives in the same world and you all come in there and you build something but it stays and then when you see it the world becomes this product of like all the first houses that people buildt and then the other stuff I just wanted to make this like persistent thing where people could build stuff of course in a very basic way I wasn't trying to build like anything as elaborate as Minecraft but I

just wanted to be like one world where you could build something and other people could see what you build but even that was like way above mine I know right it sounds super simple but it also man I can't even imagine where to begin with that you know that's a good idea that's a really good idea yeah I feel like if I were you I'd say Thomas cut this from the podcast because some studio is gonna steal that idea I think it's a great idea uh it's this there's only one world there's only it like I I think that the the gimmick and the hook could be we will not it's almost kind of like it's almost yeah it's like it's almost like uh perade death in a way in the sense that it's like if the world looks disgusting that's the world and you the community has to fix it if you've made it look like trash and you've built all these disgusting structures and 5-year-olds have come onto the server and made it look terrible it's up to the the adults in the room to come in and clean it up I think that's inter do you remember like what was it called Draw ball like this website where or like

Reddit did this thing once where you could everybody had like three pixels of ink and there was like this big canvas and you could draw you know you're three pixels on it and the result is just like everybody's like whatever everybody made to get like that feeling but in a world where you can walk around like everybody's just building something and the the result is like this canvas of weirdness dude if you see this game come out in a year or two you you have grounds to sue them like I was on Thomas brush's podcast and I I came up with that idea that's a great idea I see why you tried to do it and I also understand why it didn't work because that's that is a big project yeah hm so how'd it feel scrapping that that was tough that was the first time where I really because before I was so convinced that I could do it and I was so like on a straight path to at least it felt like it to me and then when I stopped I was kind of like but what do I do instead like apparently just doing whatever my intuition tells

me is not good enough yeah luckily I had the pl simulation to like uh you know pull me through and be like okay at least I launched something sure sure well that that brings me to to Mike's question Mike he's asking about like how do you know when a game is complete when it's ready to release cuz like you're you you you said yourself you're a noodler you know you'll just go and go and go and go so what's that point where you go okay it's ready so I don't think you really reach that point where you say now it's ready let's launch but you reach a point where you can maybe imagine being ready in the future and you won't be but you kind of reach this point where you say well if we pick a date in like for me it's like 3/4 of a year from now that's far enough that I feel like oh that's a long time I don't have to think about it but it's close enough that you can be like okay I can vaguely see that that will be a launch date and you just pick that date when that date comes you won't feel ready but that's always going to be you know and then you crunch a month and you release it anyway okay so we've got one

final question here Thomas and then we'll wrap up okay so this is from Evil when starting out game development do you recommend to First figure out what you want the your first game to be write it out and find out what tools you need to make it possible so I guess what they're saying is do is it best to get it all sort of the groundwork laid and written out kind of like what we were talking about with gdd yeah yeah I would say no definitely no for me yeah yeah what what is one way that is a path to success I think for many people is find something that has that spark just experiment learn some new skills make something that you find fun and then if you make something that has a little spark where you're like hey I animated this weird little guy and he's running around in a world just go with that you know like always keep this kind of like so you're saying keep the fascination keep the the discovery as part of dude I totally agree with you like I I I feel like I've gone through the process of trying to make a game systematically and it just doesn't work

for me it's it has to be a discovery process it has to be fun it h it has to be like I'm having fun while I'm making it otherwise the game won't be fun you know what I mean exactly and if you give yourself a to-do list from the beginning of stuff that you have to build then you're going to be demotivated really quickly whereas if you have something that feels like you're playing with it as you're building the game like a fun character or a fun mechanic just roll with that like that'll that'll get your creativity going and I think that's that's a recipe for Success not a guarantee but at least it's a it's a possible path you know sure sure I think that's a great way to look at it you're you're playing with it so that if you're not playing with your game yeah while you're making it yeah people won't play with it when it's done yeah I think that's a really good note to end on what do you think yeah definitely I also feel yeah well cool man okay Thomas the link is in the description for what do you want in

the description it's up to you um yeah I don't [Music] know it's not very confident drilling either it's not like okay let's go it's like you know a confident drilling um a link to Cloud a link to garbage country would be great you know that's the game I'm working on that's what what I'm trying to get out there I guess that's you know that's it awesome man all right links in the description Thomas this was really really fascinating I appreciate the time man yeah thank you so much you've given me a lot of food for thought as well to be honest sure awesome cool man take it easy