How He Sold 1,000,000 Copies Of His Games (Friedemann Allmenröder) — Full Time Game Dev Podcast 038

I had an amazing chat with the brilliant Indie Game Dev freedoman Alman rer at least that's how an American says his name I'm I'm trying I promise uh he was once part of grizzly games which by the way included Jonas Tye roller and grizzly games was responsible for the highly successful Islanders game he also made pizza posum and also summerhouse beautiful beautiful games highly rated in this conversation we talk about what it's like being a full-time indie game developer and how you can quite possibly do it too we discuss how to make games solo and avoid burning out what makes a game actually valuable and fun so that you make real money we talk about the best ways to power through your self-doubt and your anxiety as a IND Game Dev and so much more we started out the conversation discussing why exactly freedoman and his Game Dev Partners including Jonas Tye roller at Grizzly games were able to make such tight and small games that were incredibly profitable While most Indies including me and maybe you always end up making

bloated unfinishable games let's jump into the conversation I I think when I started wanting to make games I had the same megalomaniac aspirations as everyone else I wanted to make like an MMO and I wanted to have tons of characters in it and stuff so I think everyone probably starts from the same place at least in my experience um but you're totally right our approach is super focused on like everything has to really be there it there has to be a reason for it we try to trim everything away that doesn't necessarily have to be part of the project and I think it's in part due to this game design program that we all started studying in together because they really really like drill That Into You the idea that making these huge projects as your first games is not a good approach to success like the first game that we made there was a super super constrained project where it's a 2d game you only allowed to make

I think it was four screens worth of content so whatever kind of game you make it can only fill four screens and then a bunch of other constraints that really really all are designed to keep you from making a over ambitious game and that is such an amazing way to start someone off on game design I wish everyone who started learning to make games had someone who kept them from making this first over ambitious project because basically the idea at University that our profs um I think tried to achieve was we want to give you within six months the whole experience of making a project coming up with something then also turning it into an actual playable game and then wrapping it up so you have this whole you know the whole Loop of games you know it because you you finished games you know how hard those last 10% when you think you you should be done with the game but then it's like oh my God we need a menu we need to have settings in the game you need to be able to change the resolution there's like shipping game is so much

harder than you think at first and so I think this approach of when you make your first game forcing yourself to make something super super super tiny but going through the actual whole process and pain of getting it in shippable state I think that was incredibly valuable and once you've done that I think everyone who's done it once gets forced into some sort of minimal at least for us it was okay right it's going to be minimalism or nothing cuz we're not going to finish anything that is not super minimal have you ever experienced the the opposite have you ever participated in a project where the bloat was Nightmare inducing and it lasted for years and I don't think so actually dozens of mechanics that were scrapped levels that were just I've been quite lucky there I think cuz that's the norm yeah that's from like everyone I talked to that seems to be the norm and if i' had been left to my own

devices like the stuff that I the game ideas that I had when I came to University you know because everyone obviously starting game design programs has a bunch of ideas of games that they would like to make and those would have been such incredible over scope they would have been exactly like that like yeah so many mechanics way too big way too ambitious yeah yeah it's um I I'll speak from my perspective it's that's how I do things that's how I've done things for the last 10 years it is I me would you say your games escalated into some sort of over scope and then you somehow rain it in and for always always and um it's um it's how I've always done things since I can remember um yeah like little stuff like how I how I cleaned the kitchen when I was a teenager when my mom wanted me to clean the kitchen it's like it was just chaotic and I would do one thing over here and then one think over here and

then want to think over here and then do that no I don't want to do that let's do that it's this kind of like an add kind of approach to making games yeah the the weird thing for me and I I by the way long story short or like just to give you the point of this I'm I'm telling you that I'm wrong and that you and Jonas and Thomas are right or at least you think so though because I think Thomas for example I don't know if Thomas agrees with this minimalist mindset he I I actually you're right you're right in the podcast I did with him he did say he did say that his approach is more similar to mine yeah um which is and I actually i' I'm also questioning this whole Grizzly games thing at the moment like it's quite an interesting journey and it's also so like before coming on this interview obviously you think about like what is what are my current stances on game development and I'm like my honest stance at the moment is that I'm slightly confused as to how you make good games I think I've got think I've got a good progress going but like if you asked me for advice so I'm really interested about this

conversation myself I'm interested to see where we're going to land and I want to find out in this conversation with you where I stand on this exactly but it's I don't think I fully support this everything should be as small and minimal and prototype as possible anymore at least not as much as I would have done three years ago um I want to say I want to give you sort of my maybe my pitch as to why chaotic game development there there's pros and there's pros to chaotic game development and I would say I'm a chaotic game developer I'm a guess and check game developer and I think Thomas uh mentioned that as well and he's the creator of the Kingdom series for for people who are listening um the reason why I I tend to like I will advise this is what's so funny I will advise people on minimalistic development I will say you should probably do it this way like a normal

business but I think if I'm being completely honest I think secretly once I turn off the camera and I I close YouTube I'm going I'm not GNA do that I'm gonna do a I'm gonna do a chaotic messy Picasso style development process and here's why it's because I've tried the systematic game design document super minimal here's the here's the gimmick here's the loop here here's the hook and here's the focus I've tried that and then the product that comes out it feels a little cold it gray kind of B I think that's the danger I think that's the danger of this I um of this like very methodic approach and by the way like just to get that on the record game design documents no one even if you're being very methodical and don't do game design documents I maybe in large teams it makes sense I don't know how many people do you have on your current project uh zero last

year I had five and then we we basically wrapped it up and we also had some budget cuts from our publisher and we'll talk about Publishers in this podcast as well but we had we had budget cuts because 2024 was the worst year ever for everybody and then so I had to basically wrap the project up with my team but we had a gdd right yeah and we had a gdd because we were told we should have a gdd so I think it was either the publisher it was some publisher we were pitching to um and they were like hey can you send us your gdd so we made a gdd and we made it look super good and we we did everything we could to make it like grounded in reality and not just abstract and fake because I think a lot of gdds are just like just abstraction nobody really knows so we tried our best but the thing that's so funny is that thing is so irrelevant now I do not look at that at all right um because everything changed hey we're going to continue the conversation in just a sec but I wanted to shout out today's sponsor blueberry AI if you've ever worked on a project with a ton of ass assets and you know how messy things can

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big danger like there there's so much upkeep in them that really I guess from a certain project size if there if your team size becomes more than a specific I don't know maybe from 10 people or onward it starts making sense that someone has to keep up a gdd just so everyone knows what they're doing but I feel like below that and probably most people who are watching these videos I reckon won't be working with that team size at least I've never and I've never missed the gdd I don't think for my project size it makes sense but but anyways what I wanted to actually um get back to is I what I've started thinking about more and more recently is there's this quote by a concept artist that I've always really admired um Tom skols who everyone should look up he's an incredible artist very cool very textural like yeah just an incredible quality very very unique super atmospheric I love his I'm obsessed with his work um and I I hope that I'm attributing this correctly to him I

remember him at some point somewhere saying this don't know if this yeah take this with a grain of salt I think he said that I think he said at some point that it's easier to create chaos and then bring structure to chaos that still has variety then to bring variety and interest to something clinical that doesn't have enough going on and I think about that this is probably like a throwaway comment by him that made on a forum 20 years ago and is not even aware of but I think about this like once a week at the moment because I find it such an interesting observation on how interest and variety and stuff happens so that is such a good quote that's so yeah it's an interesting way to think about this isn't it well it makes me feel Vindicated a little bit because I I I'm like why am I why do I have to make a mess before I can clean it up yeah like that's that's how I've like you can ask my my team that I worked with last

year I I apologized so many times to my artist Felipe because dude we scrapped I I've mentioned this before in the podcast but we scrapped every single level twice yeah and I always apologized I said I'm sorry that we have to create stuff and burn it down to know what we're creating mhm you know but that was that's just how my brain works and it's very it's a a very expensive way to make games is a very expensive process and I think there is like a there's a limit to it isn't there you have to that's the difficult thing about giving advice in my opinion is that everyone would like there to be a simple thing that you can say like a simple method where you can be like if you do ABC you're going to make better games and yeah the longer I'm making games the more I'm feeling like it's always some sort of balance that you have to strike you have to allow for some chaos but then you have to re it in at some point I tried to make a solo project before I made summer house for two years almost most and it was complete chaos I was

just constantly restarting the project like questioning my premise questioning the game that I was doing like completely scrapping everything doing a new prototype and it was complete it didn't work and yeah that was definitely too far in One Direction but then on the other hand you also have to be careful not to become too rigid in your ways of Designing things and like not allowing for any sort of variety anymore or for surprises or for happy accidents so yeah I think it's for me at the moment it feels like a constant iteration of allowing for a bit more chaos seeing what that does then raining it in a little bit more and yeah just a back and forth it's got to be a balance I think that's that's the only way to describe it because everyone's personality is so different you know um I I I have never thrived

I have never thrived with a clean simple schedule where everything is like this is what I do for this month and then I wrap it up in three months I wrap it up in four months I just don't thrive in that environment where everything's scheduled and and lock locked up um in fact I I I actually start to panic yeah um like last year I was I had some deadlines with my publisher 3D realms and I just I was trying to hit every deadline like it was like a it became like a monthly thing where I was like okay I'll do these things and these story elements and this and this and this based on the gdd that I provided you right and it turned into this really just like Ultra clinical um build of the game and when I played it I was like this just feels so because you're not reacting to things I think that is the problem you don't leave any space in there that's like I

do quite a lot of like too lists and I try to be somewhat structured in my Approach but it never goes further than the next week because I feel like planning further than one week ahead won't allow me I will probably in that week find out something where I realize okay do you know what the game actually needs this now and I want to be able to react to those findings and not have forced myself to okay I need to work on this thing for three weeks now because I made a schedule a month ago yeah um yeah so it's kind of it's kind of like you're you're you're discovering the the project as you go yeah definitely you're figuring it out whereas when I look at when I look at the way Jonas made Islanders I'm not Islanders um uh Throne fall fall it seemed like and I know you didn't work on that game but like it seemed like the way that he made that it's like they knew what it was from the beginning yeah I think like I obviously didn't work on drone fall with them I saw them go

through development and played some builds like along the way and saw some prototypes but I think they also have that sort of a give and take from at least what I could see and definitely what we were doing with Islanders is you have quite a strong idea of what it's going to be like you can see the rough outline of it quite well from the beginning and I've come to believe that it's quite important to be able to see some sort of rough outline before you set off on a production like now when I'm making a prototype I try to get it to a place where okay I can roughly tell you what the game Loop's going to be I can tell you how like the player's going to get some long-term motivation out of it but then when you get into the actual production and you start making the game there should be a lot of space for realizing oh do you know what maybe we can remove this element completely maybe we can merge these two elements maybe we can yeah would you say that's great would you say that it's important to at least get confirmation that your core gimmick

or your core Loop is solid yeah okay I think that put really well like I feel like you should see you should see the shape of a finished thing in your head and then that shape can change and you can maybe find something better but I feel like I the way I make games I can't start working on something and not know how the whole game would work so I usually start off with a complete idea for a game but then I allow a lot of space for that to change and I feel like that's I feel like Jonas and Paul probably agree with that that you then go off on these little prototyping sessions while you're doing production where you you have an idea for a feature and you think okay do you know what maybe we should make a quick prototype for this feature and then if it works you implement it if it doesn't you scrap yeah so it sounds like your your sort of thought process here is something like um it's it's good to know what you're

making at least in its abstract form and it's kind of like taking a blurry photograph or or pointing the it's like pointing the camera at okay this is what I want to shoot and it's all blurry and the next six months is focusing it perfectly and and framing it just a little bit but it's all about that it's like a f it's like focus focus is really the best way I can describe it um it's focus and it's rearranging elements I feel like like maybe in the metaphor you haven't taken the photo yet you can still move stuff around in the frame but you have from the first composition from pointing the camera at the image you know what you want to show you know that hey do you know what the idea that I want to communicate is the following you have a premise but then you realized you know what I can actually communicate these two things together if I just combine them into one thing and yeah I feel like that's a lot of my design process is like a subtractive approach where I try to realize that

maybe I can fuse two elements and thereby make the game simpler or maybe I can remove something and thereby put an emphasis on another element um for example in summerhouse the last game that I made there was this whole I had this whole very very elaborate system for how you could place different um blocks in the game at different depths and it was very difficult to control there was a bunch of stuff that was super unintuitive about it and then at some point I just realized you know what maybe I can just build like an automatic system that figures out where blocks go right and I implemented that was able to completely remove the manual depth selection and it made everything way way simpler H and then 3 months later I realized you know what maybe I should still have the manual depth selection as like an optional thing in the game so I put it back in

and so yeah it's like a I feel like it's quite a searching Meandering process a lot of times I like that word subtractive I think that's I in a way it sort of reminds me of you know making a movie you know where where Peter Jackson he he makes a 4H hour Fellowship of the Ring film and then he has to start cutting you know you got to cut away the bloat from the from the project um and that that to me that to me is I think one of the reasons why so many people don't they just don't they don't make games they don't finish them and they don't make money from games it's not because they're bad at it it's not that that they're not talented enough or there's they're not getting funding or something I think it's as simple as to to to to reach the finish line is a hum

it's almost a humiliating process yeah I don't I don't know how you felt with your launches but I launched my the demo for Twisted Tower uh four days ago on Steam um preparing it for next Fest mhm and it is the most naked feeling yeah um to to put this to put this thing out there that you've spent three years on that you've you've I I almost feel like if the game was like a a living entity it has been abused by me like it is i' I've it's it's I have treated it so poorly and you've probably choed some limbs off left and right you've starved it for a week because you had to do some other stuff you had to do marketing that's I know exactly you just abused this project it's humiliating because you're you feel like a bad parent to the project um like I I have

three kids and I always feel guilty I always feel like I'm not doing enough for them and I feel that way about my projects it's like I am such a an idiot for like cutting this level and making that level and and getting rid of that soundtrack or that song from the soundtrack and just constantly changing stuff so once you have finally put the project out there in front of the world and you launch like for me it was the demo for Twisted Tower you feel like so I feel feel I feel gross or like guilty it's this weird feeling of guilt or shame right that the final result took this long um and Inter it's almost this feeling of like inadequacy or or a sense that I I I I this is what it is it's this feeling of I faked my way or I tricked myself into getting this thing polished and my head I'm like this

should for most people this would take them a year but for me it took me three years and it and it was only because I I powered through um I had so much what was the word I have so much pride and so much arrogance that I powered through all of the failure forced yourself to finish it yeah and so it's it's interesting do you know what I would I would massively disagree though with the fact that um I don't get this shame feeling to me that's the work to me the trimming away to me the like finding the most elegant simple version and polishing that to a releasable state that's the actual work like you start with something bloated and you start with something that has too many features and removing those features and making it simpler and like forcing yourself to like you say chop the limbs off your that is the actual work of making games to me like that's really difficult

and doing that in a way where instead of making the experience poorer and making it into something less enjoyable actually adding value by subtracting things that's really difficult to do and I feel like a lot of time that's I'm really happy when I get to chop something these days like just this morning I removed something that I worked for a long time on from my current game Prototype and I'm really buzzing about it because it makes the whole thing simpler and I feel like if you see Simplicity and maybe Simplicity Simplicity always has like a negative connotation to it if you call it Elegance instead then I feel like it becomes a value in itself and I really like that idea about game making that chopping these things away and merging I know I've said merge a million times but this is like one of my favorite design principles is trying to merge two elements that were doing the same thing in your project to just become one simpler thing I think that's

really valuable work actually can you give me an example of what that like an example of how you've merged something in the in the city Builder that we made with Grizzly games in traditional city builders you have all of these different resources you have wood and stone and whatever like you have like a complicated system of resources that you all need to be able to afford your buildings and in Islanders we had the idea what happens if we merge all of these resources into one unified thing where you basically just have points right you work towards a high score and by scoring enough points you unlock new buildings and that's it so you basically merge the idea of wood and stone and gold and all of these things into one common thing that's just points and I feel like that made Islanders a city Builder that works for a target audience that is not the same audience as maybe Sim cities or the N series or something more complicated by just you

know taking a larger system with a lot of elements this whole resource system and merging it into this one very simple element I love that that's actually really really thought-provoking um and it almost seems like that's kind of what I've been doing the tower it's it's just it's not necessarily cutting stuff it's it's letting it absorb into other things yeah exactly um and it makes it cheaper it makes it to make the the the concept of merging things and shrinking scope and bringing it down to this minimalistic shape yeah that is foreign to a lot of indie game developers and people who play video games because they don't in their head they're like yeah but I'm competing with AAA and it's like no you're not and you're not selling a $60 game you're selling a $15 game so you need to reshape the way reshape your expectations about what this that is interesting to me that's an interesting point I want to challenge you on that because I think there's

something people can the can they be wrong about that if someone feels like this was too simple or the way this texture works or like we get loads of I get loads of negative comments on stuff that I've released how do you approach that do you because I've always thought okay if they do find that a problem it is a problem to them I guess I guess the the the question is not necessarily is it a problem the question is is it worth it is it worth going there trying to fix it that is the question where's the focus of your yeah no you're right because look I could I could say I could say about Islanders I could say the game doesn't even have textures yeah yeah it's like well but that's the point you know the point is that it doesn't it's a simple game it's it's it's a it's supposed to be unobtrusive right yeah my last game

summerhouse like I reckon the most common criticism with it is because it's more like a it's more like a modular um building thing like townscaper it looks beautiful by the way thank you the most common criticism with this I think is that it doesn't have like a game Loop there's no game mechanic to it there's nothing there's not a goal to achieve which on one hand I think is the point of the game I wanted to make something that doesn't really have a goal that you try to reach that's crazy but then the fact that people pointed that out and said hey I wish this had a goal made me think you know what maybe this is maybe they do have a point there maybe I do want to make something next I don't know I don't know I mean it's like I I who somebody told me this I think it may have been Ken LaVine uh he he was saying it's not that you ignore feedback it's that you you realize that the Fe the a problem presented by a player it can be a

problem but their solution is not necessarily correct yeah right so if somebody says oh it doesn't have a game Loop make a game Loop yeah you might say well that's not the solution for this game but is there anything else I can do to make you feel more satisfied yeah where where you're you're a little bit hungry you know yeah yeah um and I don't know what that would be I think it's hilarious that you decided to make a game that doesn't have a loop seems a little now now I'm making something that has a massive game Loop because I feel like I wanted to I I want to acknowledge that feeling and I do actually agree in a way with people that it is nice if something gives you a goal to achieve and yeah yeah I'm trying to react to What maybe this actually goes with what Ken LaVine was saying like you try to react to the sentiment the like people have they see that something is off with with it and they're trying to yeah articulate that maybe they don't provide

the correct solution but they always offer a correct sentiment I think that's a good way of looking at it I think you could definitely look at feedback from like a just a a statistical um frame so basically say look is is everybody complaining about the textures not being unwrapped properly in Twisted Tower if the answer is no it's like one guy then I'm going to say well it's not really worth my time um so I think overall you can look at number one this is kind of the way I've been approaching things number one does it seem like the majority of players are experience experiencing a problem MH and then you say okay I'll I'll look at the solutions that they're offering because a lot of times comments will say it needs this it needs that you know yeah but I think it's more important to just try and figure out the solution that works best with your system yeah and with your game um

because you probably know better than the players what the correct solution is based on your system right yeah I agree okay that's probably a really good way of looking at it I think the idea of they're correct about the sentiment but probably wrong about the solution is a very good way of looking at it and it definitely sounds it sounds cocky to say as a game a game developer and say well my solution's the best yeah but you you you you you understand well it's your game you're going to have to implement the solution so your solution better be the best Dude tell me about this art style for summerhouse I'm going to throw it on screen for the edit here this is unbelievably beautiful thank you so much I appreciate that I I was thinking yesterday how I'm making a game that is inspired by Bioshock it's like it's everyone who sees it it's like yes this is clearly a Bioshock inspired game and I was thinking yesterday I was like man I wish I was like I I wish I was like a lot of

other game developers who just can just almost instantiate a style from nowhere it just like a big bang is that what summerhouse is did this is this style inspired by anything or did you just come up with this no this is like very very inspired by a lot of things for me often style is also like a synthetic process where you start off with some thing that touches you in some way in this case there's a Japanese artist called I think Kento Ida is the name I hope I'm not getting this wrong let me just Google this real quick um they are making these really really gorgeous very minimalist but super colorful compositions and when you see them you're immediately going to realize that okay right that's where summer house comes from because it has these striking blue skies it has these very vibrant White yellow like in the landscape there's a

lot of saturated yellows going on some Reds like very primary colors um yeah so if if people knew who Kento Ido was they would all say that when they're playing your game oh this looks like Kento yeah I think they'd be like this is a pixelated version of Kento yes well it's cool started it all started with this love for his illustrations and then I started I initially started making some low Poley shapes of that sort of mimic this style yeah and then I'm a huge fan of a short hike which just an incredible game and I just as an experiment at some point thought what happens if I combine the kenoa minimalism with this like really unifying element of pixelation which really masks the you know like the way assets are stuck together is masked really well by if you just put a pixelation filter on the final so I was

like okay maybe that will help me with a bunch of the weird intersections between objects that I get from this minimalist low poly style so I put that on top and then I think the two of them basically almost are that style if you run ktoa through a pixelation filter you're basically at summer house oh my my 2dr is almost it's almost like graphic design yeah um you know where everything is sove shapes around you balance exact it's like it's like why a lot of my art if you look at it for my 2D games it looks like it's uh it's like everything's a circle like everything's made out of circles um but dude I I just oh man I'm just so fascinated by what you've done here um with summerhouse what what's the uh is there a you know every every game well they say this every game should have uh wish fulfillment um you should be fulfilling a dream or a wish when you play the game is this a a dream of yours yeah

absolutely I feel like that's a dream of a lot of people is probably to be able to have a cozy little house that doesn't look too pretentious you know I wanted to I wanted to make houses that look like lived in look like an old house in the French Countryside with like a little bit of graffiti on the Garden Wall and stuff like that yeah I would love to live in a house like that and I think this wish fulfillment thing that you're talking about that's super important for games in general like having a strong fantasy right having a strong wish fulfillment element in it is such an important way to create appeal for games so with summer house that was definitely the driving idea was okay I want to I want people to be able to create these little romantic vignettes for themselves that they dream they could live in what do you think this this wish fulfillment concept has always it's always it's kind of like what we talking about earlier with uh minimalistic game design versus more

explorative guess and check game design yeah where it's a debate there's there's several debates that don't have a have never really been resolved one of them is about fun uh so should a game be fun the big fun debate yeah big fun debate but the one that I want to get into right now is this idea of wish fulfillment because I find it I find it fascinating because like David wayy is a friend of mine he made game called uh we Harvest Shadows I don't know if you've seen it um but we Harvest Shadows it's it is incredible it's a great game and the wish fulfillment there gives me chills up and down my spine which is get the hell out go live on some acreage and be alone right I'm getting chills thinking about it right now that right there that in my opinion is the foundation to that game it's why it's so successful it's people are like I want to go work some and then be scared at night that sounds

like a lot of fun that's interesting about wish fulfillment isn't it you have this weird you want to be scared at night you for some reason part of your fantasy is oh I wanted to be spooky I wanted to be a little bit dangerous I wanted to be an adventure that I am a farmer in the country site now isn't that funny it there is that's and that's by the way that's what I was getting at which is I want to get your your thoughts on this what is the wish fulfillment in a back rooms game good question what do you think it is I don't know I think it's Nostalgia um it is definitely there is a wish fulfillment element to just being in a very coherent strong aesthetic right I feel like the back rooms are just a very aesthetically coherent experience there's something about it that just makes sense like the weird static the old like 60s 70s vibe there is something about it

that just clicks and makes sense but then yeah I don't know if this wish fulfillment works as well with horror does it I I I think about it like uh when when I see a back rooms game I feel like I'm I feel like I'm 10 and I can't quite figure out why I feel like I'm 10 and I would love people in the comments to to let me know their thoughts because back rooms in my opinion back rooms it it relies on Lial space so like Lial space is the theory that holds back rooms together and Lial space at its core it looks like someone was just there but they're not there anymore so like a good example of this is if I walked into a house and there's a tea kettle and it's uh steaming but nobody's in the house and all you hear is a ticking clock mhm what is that why does that give you chills it's Intrigue isn't it it's it's

like okay have you ever seen um have you ever seen the uh the langers no what that the langers it's a it's a it's a TV show by Stephen King or it's a book by Stephen King and then they turned it into a TV show and it's about the the a plane that gets um stuck or paused in time so time moves forward but the plane is stuck in a in a set time and so they when they land the plane the world is frozen and empty so it's it's as if the plane went back in time and that time exists but it's emptied out so it's like you're it's like you're previously um so everyone else has moved on and they live in like a they're stuck in this empty place right right that is Lial space at its core and I'm bringing this all the way back to um wish fulfillment which is what about being in a Timeless space is wish

fulfillment but I think at that point Intrigue comes in doesn't it and like mystery and this this weird we all like I loved these kids books that they have where it's like unresolved Mysteries left in the world like 50 he have 50 unresolved Mysteries and then they pretend that the yeti is an unresolved puzzle that we haven't gotten to the CR of I love those so much as a child because they make you feel like there is something out there in the world that hasn't been fully explored yet there is like you might still get your letter from Hogwarts you know I feel like there's something to that and I think a lot of horror and spooky stuff gives me that feeling where there is something out there beyond the edges of like explainability and Science and it just creates this space of possibility mhm you know I think that's what intrigues me about it you know as a so I'm a religious guy okay and so but I can I can admit like people say well

it's easy to believe in God or like believe in the devil because it makes you comfortable it comforts you it makes you feel like well there's more to this story than just the boring dayto day you know yeah that's a nice thought isn't it and if it's comforting if that gives you comfort that's great isn't it and I'm not saying so for me personally I'm not saying that that's why I do it but I can admit I can admit yeah it is comforting and so when it comes to horror games it's almost like religion where it's like yeah you you want to feel like it's almost better it's almost better to believe that there's there's an evil entity out to get you yeah like a demon or a ghost or a cult that wants to rip your limbs off because it makes you feel like your life has some kind of purpose or meaning yeah there's something boring exactly there's something beyond the everyday and it also imp if there's an evil cult maybe there's also great magic maybe there's

cool Fantastical Wizards and stuff but I'm not a horror it would be interesting to make a horror game and to like really get into all of these yeah to all of these head spaces and try to figure out where it actually comes from the Intrigue I don't know I don't know I mean what do you think about the fun debate do you think that games need to be fun no I think so quick no no I think the whole I'm very very very open as to what a game can be I feel like if the Creator it's sort of like the art debate what is art I feel like if the Creator says it's art it's art and if someone says this is a game that I've made and it has like the rough outlines of a game then I'm fine with it being a game it doesn't need to be fun um will I enjoy a game that's not fun is a different question like I do like my games quite fun I'm I struggle with games that make me feel like I have to work through them

but that doesn't mean they're not games that doesn't mean games have to be fun um I would like to be bold enough to make something that like casts the idea of fun aside a bit more maybe in the future but fun is definitely great for selling games so I think I think that's why that's where a lot of the debate comes from isn't it it just makes for great economics if your game is fun yeah yeah that's that's probably a better way to ask the question which is like is fun important for a commercially viable game yeah yes it's probably probably is a good element yeah there are ways to make a lot of money with games that are not super fun but I think it definitely helps to have fun engaging Cooper doesn't it yeah well that that shifts me to to the next thing I want to talk about which is why do you think that so many people aspire to make games but they never do good question I think it's hard isn't

it it's just actually like when I speak to friends about making games or if someone learns that I'm a game developer the thing they say the most often is I wouldn't even know where to start how to make a game what like how do you even make games so I feel like for a lot of people it's just still the technical hurdle of getting into game development is super high the tools have become more and more democratized over the last couple years but it is still just incredible difficult to do it and I get it I feel like if you don't if you have a day job if you've maybe had an education in something else making the taking the leap and like actually trying to make a game yourself that is super difficult so I reckon it's that yeah it's the technical difficulty of it you know it's funny I'm about to compare what you and I do to to rocket science or um brain surgery but like imagine asking a brain surgeon to make a game you know it's uh

obviously you have to be trained and you have to figure it out but yeah it's a it's a tall order it's a tall order to make a fully a fully finished game with all the and I'm especially learning this right now where because again we released the Twisted Tower demo and like settings are so important on the pause menu like every little thing needs to be adjusted it's that kind of stuff where it's like it just Stacks and stacks and Stacks and stacks of the to-do list of all the stuff you have to do to get a game done and so I'm being a little bit tongue and- cheek when I say I wonder what would happen if you asked a a brain surgeon to figure out how to make a game um but there's some truth to that which is yes it's technically challenging but what do you think about the emotional side of it like do you think everybody's cut out to is everybody cut out to be able to power through self-doubt and actually like finish a project confidently probably not I feel like there's a certain type of character that thrives

under this stuff I feel like there's a lot of different ways you can get to the Finish Line with game development um but probably no there are probably people who I sometimes feel like I'm borderline too anxious to be a good developer because you have to be quite confident in something for a long long time and you just have to without any concrete proof that this is going to work out keep working in the same direction and I do struggle with that if I work on something for that's why the first games that I've made were all very short production Cycles it's because at some point I just stop enjoying myself and I feel like wow this is are people actually going to enjoy this is this not like all complete nonsense will anyone actually ever buy this so um it probably helps if you're someone who's really confident if you're not a very anxious person it helps to be disciplined it helps to be organized but then on the other hand there's probably a very good ADHD way to make a game where someone

who's completely all over the place figures out their specific way of arriving at the finish line and making great games so yeah you know I I think that's a really good good point about when it comes to being anxious but I'm I'm a very deal with that your Productions are way longer than the ones that I've had bro I'm I'm I'm the most anxious person you ever meet right i' how do you do it keep making a game for more than a year without completely losing yourself in the anxiety that you're assuming I don't um and I I I was um I was talking to my wife on the day that we launched so imagine this you know we worked on we've worked on Twisted tower for three years MH um the game has cost more than half a million dollars MH um wow with investment money my money that you know everyone combined it is scary and you're putting in you're

putting all this time and all this money into and for three years into this game which is basically a Nostalgia game it's basically like a 2000 shooter set in a carnival Castle you know like a Disney World type castle and so it's like this really strange gamble to make and I'm I'm looking back in hindsight the whole Pro the project and I'm like why did I do this like what was this what why did I just decide I'm gonna go all in with this idea like there was there was no there was no uh signal to me that said Hey Thomas this game's going to make a ton of money one this is the one I didn't do the Jonas Ty roll approach where you test 10 prototypes and then you you get confirmation on one I didn't get any of that I just went for it and by the way I'm not bragging I'm not like saying well I'm such a hero I'm saying no that's like stupid it's like you're playing Texas holdom and you're going all in with like an ace in too it's risky I don't know if it's do you think it's stupid maybe it's just risky

but it's a I think it's a legitimate approach no it well so my whole point is this it to answer your question about is it stupid I have for three years I've had just like crazy heightened levels of anxiety um constantly feeling like a fraud uh constantly feeling like I'm just making crap up as I go mhm um but there's another side of me that's like insane levels of confidence where I'm like nobody knows I know I I've got this figured out and it's like two different personalities that are like married and fighting and for some reason they can coexist I know that feeling actually there like you can have very strong day-to-day anxiety and think oh my God this is all not going to work but at the same time have this underlying confidence that for some reason you should keep going with it which can be quite destructive I've found that to be a dangerous force in my

life have you you don't think they they compliment one another it depends if I feel like if you balance them out well enough they can really compliment each other but I've really gone through a prolonged phase of trying to make my first solo project um before summer house where I kept going and I kept pushing in different directions and it just wasn't working out and I think what I needed at that point I then at the end of it went into therapy and just figured out a bunch of stuff that didn't have anything to do with games and I think that was back then probably it shifted into a destructive force where something told me to keep going but it wasn't a constructive discipline it was just this fear of oh no I I can't let go I have this self-image that I'm a genius game developer and I'm going to emerg from this Victorious holding a glorious solo project in my hands and I just wasn't I

wasn't on a path anymore where that was some sort of valid outcome and I had to completely reset I had to completely shift my Approach I then went on to make pizza POS with Thomas which was a great experience and then started working on summer house which became a successful solo project but I had to really really figure out some other stuff before I could succeed in game development hm think that's I think that's important to keep an eye out for that something that I've learned is that to make good work to do art if you want to call it art what we're making or to be a creative it like the base level that it requires is you have to be healthy you have to have a solid mental health you have to take care of your life outside of the work and then the work can come on top of that that's where I'm at at the moment I'm trying very very hard and I'm putting a lot of effort into maintaining a healthy life

as a basis for then on top of that I can be a bit obsessed with game development and I can maybe sometimes work a bit long but it always has to be on the basis of a very very healthy General life so you I totally agree so you were working on this solo project before pizza posum and it sounds like the primary motiv and you abandoned the project by the way yeah okay and it was more in hindsight it's more like 200 projects to be honest it was 200ish prototypes that I all worked on for like one of them for a day then there was something that I thought was promising and I worked on it for like a week then I cast that aside then I worked on something for two days then a new thing a new thing it was quite manic actually in iide well but summerhouse right so summer house was that a solo project yeah okay you you you finally did launch your solo project and sort of proved to yourself that you could do it right yeah um so

you said you went to therapy and you were trying to figure out how these personal problems were getting they were you were saying they're getting tangled up inside of your develop your projects yeah okay I don't I don't know if they got tangled up in the projects they just kept me from being focused and from being successful at game development they kept me from being good enough at making decisions that I didn't constantly cast my current game idea recite and thought Oh my God there's the this other thing that's the final one that's the one that I I need to switch directions once more then I'm there's people listening right now I would say I would argue 70% 80% of the people listening right now really identify with this feeling of there's something wrong with my personality that is stopping me from succeeding in this dream career um can you go into specifics about what what would what what was that stuff that you had to work through you don't have

to yeah I don't I don't mind speaking candidly about it I just wonder how much of it I just wasn't well I wonder how much the specifics I basically was depressed at the end of it and I just had things going on I wasn't eating properly you know just the stuff that happens when you're not well and you stop taking care of yourself and you're not exercising you're not eating properly you're not taking care of your interpersonal relationships it was just like it wasn't super bad by the way I wasn't like a wreck and a shell of a person I just had um there was still a somewhat nice life going on outside of work but it just kept me I wasn't in a place where I had the confidence and the mental Clarity to make good decisions at work interesting yeah I think I think most people I like this is something come again sorry I was just going to say I I feel like most people listening right now they they

they probably feel that way right now um I I think it's very very very normal for human beings uh especially game developers to to not take care of themselves and let the project they they assume that that the project is primary and that the body is secondary yeah uh but I've definitely found that when the body the other way around it does it does when the body is secondary everything falls apart um but it's so hard to actually do that I've heard that a million times I've listened to so many interviews where people were saying exactly what we are saying now and for some reason it just needed my project to fall apart for me to actually learn and internalize that yeah how how do you take care of yourself now I just try and exercise very regularly I try to eat properly I try and keep my work hours contained in like a 9 to 5ish

shape yeah me too it's really hard I struggle with it you probably know that like at the end of the day when you're like really stuck into a problem and I'm not allowed to keep going cuz I got kids downstairs and a wife so I don't know if you're married wow that makes it so much more relevant whole 530 if I go past 5:30 and I I'll put my wife on blast here but I respect her for this she's she's like hard stop 530 it's good that's probably the best thing someone could do for you like even I probably think even if you didn't have kids hiring someone so your wife doesn't have to do it who comes in at 5:30 and takes your computer away would probably just be a productive thing to do oh it's wonderful but the the problem is you can't take the computer away um for me especially with YouTube and like like the demo launch all that stuff is uh it's at my fingertips like I can I can do it all from here with disc and even if you didn't have your phone the things you need to actually disengage from it up here you also need to just stop thinking about it that's the really

difficult one I find yeah for me what really helps it's super simple but it is exercise like after I come back from a run or like going for a swim or something I do feel less focused on the work but I do struggle with it it's a difficult challenge to especially if you're working on a complex large scale problem yeah at some point just arbitrarily switching from the most intense stream of focus where you're trying to solve this thing to okay I'm just going to completely not think about this anymore and I'm going to prepare a meal and I'm going to go to sleep and I'm going to like hang out with my friends and my partner and it's difficult it's so difficult it's like stopping a train a Runway you meditate yeah do I meditate yeah I pray so like yeah so I mean it's very similar except I believe the creator of the universe but yeah it's similar it's similar similar Vibe like yeah you try and focus I talk to

the person who I talk to the creator of the universe I talked to the Ultimate Game Dev uh while youle and focused you feeble meditate now for me I but I think that really helps me because meditation I think um is a lot about noticing what your brain does MHM um I don't know if prayer I'm I'm not a religious person I don't know if prayer works the same way but meditation for me at least is a lot about just becoming aware of what your brain is thinking about so that training that is quite good at catching yourself and being like Oh do you know what I'm thinking about work again yeah while I should be not thinking about work and so that really helps me at getting better at switching off you know I think that if uh if if a non-religious person wanted to experience prayer mhm now I believe there's there's more sort of magic behind like I actually believe I'm

talking to somebody right but if if a non-religious person wanted to get that similar experience it's something like um meditating on the scale of the universe would probably be a way to do it yeah because what you're doing is you're just and I was I talked to Ken LaVine about this actually uh he actually doesn't I think he mentioned some something like in the podcast that he doesn't like thinking of relative scale like cuz I I always think my problems are this big compared to God yeah you know go if God is infinitely big and infin infinitely loving then this problem is infinitely small and it's like it like vanishes right becomes a null reference exception does that help you does that make it more comtable yeah oh of course every every night when I'm going to bed and I put my three kids screaming kids to bed my wife and I we clean the house we're good okay we watch a little bit of Game of Thrones and then I just fall asleep and what I do is I just I just lay there and think how small and

meaningless right my project is if there's anything I stress about the most it's my games yeah and what I do is I just go okay if there's this if there's a creator of the universe or a mind or like like for a more agnostic approach which is if there's something out there that made all of this yeah that thing is so freaking big and so infinitely huge mhm that my problem that's going to end up in the dirt by the way cuz we all do that problem is it's nothing right yeah I could see how that would be a really comforting thought oh sure but and I think that's why we like horror movies or why I like horror movies it's this feeling of like yeah there we go wow my problems are so small compared to this person who's getting chased by a chainsaw you know um but when I was talking to Ken LaVine about this he was like yeah but your your small problems aren't small to you so ites doesn't matter they're they're still big to you MH

um and I don't know how you get around that it's like um that's the danger of it isn't it that you're like trying to relativize your feelings which if it comforts you when it works and it's effective then it's great but it can also lead I feel like it can lead to you like trying to push them away trying to convince yourself that they're small problems but they're not they will on the dayto day for me I have experienced that it's just difficult to push it away long term because my livelihood does depend on it right I want to keep paying rent I want to part of my identity is based as much as I would like it not to be part of my identity is based in being a game developer who releases games and I know that it's going to hurt if I can't finish a project or if the project releases and people don't like it so yeah I don't know where I land on that but I can see I can see both how it would be really comforting to compare

the scope of your problems to something infinitely large but I don't think it would work for me it it doesn't it also doesn't work like let's for example and by the way when I when I bring all this up I'm not saying this is the right mentality I'm just saying it's a trick oh yeah like it's kind of like a hat trick it's like you can you can relativize things and and it feels pretty good most of the time but like if your if your kid dies you could you could potentially relativize it if you really wanted to try yeah but it's not true like if if my kid dies and I relativize it it's fooling myself because in my in my world my kid is more is bigger and more valuable than the sun yeah you know I believe that to be true feeling for you right yeah that's right so for me for me the relativizing of prayer is it's it's more of a trick it's like a a Band-Aid so that's that's why I think

that that I I actually I love meditation the concept of meditation CU you're literally just trying to stop the train and you're trying to teach your brain like you can actually control your thoughts you can disengage yeah exactly you can disengage so I love that but I also love a prayer in its truest form which is you if you genuinely believe that the creator of the world knows what's up and that they don't hate you mhm and that they actually think about you mhm there that is the ultimate Comfort yeah like okay my my kid died and this is so hard I don't even know how people would actually do this cuz my life's pretty good MH but for people to go cuz like I know people like this who who they have faith in their kid has died what they do is they they say I don't know I don't know why this if this God loves me why he

would let that happen mhm like they can't figure it out there's no answer but for some reason they still trust that it's true and they go yes this happened to me yes I lost this thing that's infinitely valuable to me MH but I'm going to choose to believe that the master Puppeteer has my best interest in mind and that this isn't the finish line that there's so much more after something like this so that that to me is like the the difference between prayer and meditation prayer is saying this bad thing for some reason won't be in the context of Eternity mhm whereas this with with meditation it's just how do I get my brain to stop yeah um so that's that's my whole tangent about that it's funny because it's funny that we're talking about this because I talked about it the same thing with Ken

LaVine it's like why does this keep coming up yeah so I think it's game development yeah game development is one of those things where you've got to figure out how to get your brain in the in the right order yeah you know you've you've got to get your brain straight right yeah I think that's one of the most difficult and most important qualities at the same time for succeeding at game development is you have to you have to order things you have to be able to resist this incredibly large urge and temptation to just let things slowly get out of control and like creep out of scope become bigger and bigger and just expand until you can't finish them well you mentioned something earlier you it's related to that you said you you don't want it to become you don't like that it's part of your identity but it is MHM can you explain that like why why do why do you not want it to be part of your identity I wish my I think it's fine that it's part of my identity I just I the way I

think psychology probably works is that we all defend our identity quite strongly in front of ourselves I feel like we build this sense of identity around who we are and then in order for our selfworth to remain intact we try and confirm that identity to ourselves so for me I for example part of my identity is this idea that I'm a successful or at least somewhat successful game developer I can make my living making games and I wish that my sense of selfworth and belonging and being correct in life wasn't so tied to this I just know that if I end up not being able to make a living from game development any longer I would really struggle with that it would I would get over it I would have to I would find another way to be happy hopefully but I know that it would just be very very challenging and so when things happen that make me feel on like

a smaller level like oo I'm struggling with this I've had two weeks where I didn't make real project uh real progress with a project for example it starts affecting my my sense of well-being and my sense of selfworth and I just wish that wasn't so tied to each other do you know what I mean of course I do um it's scary when you have when you have an antidote to happiness and you own it so like here's an example my kids so like my kids are they they they are the reason why I'm happy MH if something were to happen to those kids gone instant instantly happiness is gone mhm I'm I am void mhm for a long time years void that is so terrifying my dad used

to compare having kids and it's related to making games but he he he used to compare having kids to putting your heart on a Chopping Block M and you're just like I hope that nothing cuts my that nobody comes up and cuts my heart in half yeah because you're exposing yourself so much aren't you yeah with games it's the same thing I mean what what's going to happen to the game industry with AI what's going to happen to the game industry with the constant flood of indie games coming in are you are you going to have your identity in two years three years you know who knows so that's why that's why I wish it wasn't tied together so much this like sense of selfworth and the self identity to making games and I'm trying to get better at separating the to hey what what do you think is going to happen with the industry I have no idea I think I think what's probably going to the thing that I'm thinking about the most at the moment is that

we're probably going to slowly start heading in some sort of Spotify adjacent Direction where the market just becomes more and more saturated because it becomes easier and faster to make games and AI is probably going to play some role in that where it just accelerates the speed at which games are created even more yeah so there are probably going to be tons and tons of games out there even more than there are right now and you can already see if you see these like games release curves of like how many games release every year on Steam they go steeply upwards so I reckon this continuous oversaturation of the market is probably at some point going to lead to there being some form of subscription model that takes hold like we already see with like um The Game Pass and other subscriptions that are becoming more and more popular yeah so I reckon it's probably a matter of time before that also takes hold on the PC

market and then it becomes I guess you can see it in these other Industries you can see it with the music industry very well where it's just so saturated that the question becomes not can you make a great song but can you make millions of people care about your great song because there are probably 10,000 great songs written every week but we just never hear them because the people maybe don't have a label or the marketing campaign doesn't reach us so yeah that's I feel like that's probably a dynamic that we're heading for hey that's uh that's kind of Bleak dude yeah it is I don't I I think there are good things to to maybe come from that but I think that's something to prepare for and to I think you're doing exactly the right thing by focusing on marketing being good at putting your work out there yeah you know those kinds of skills I think are going to become more and more important I I one thing I've been

focused on like a hawk is what we're doing right now which is you thank you very much you're helping me build my audience yeah um and that building audience that's right great deal isn't it it's it's that's why podcast I I think people don't realize just the reason why podcasts have exploded is because they're incredibly valuable to every to the consumer to the guest and to the host yeah podcasts are insane because it's a conversation it's super cheap you have a conversation you cut it up into pieces you sponsor the pieces so you get sponsorship money you can also sell your own products get wish lists all this stuff and then the GU lot of potential winners there isn't there oh there's a ton and then the guest gets to sell their book or sell their game or whatever you know so audience building I think for me it's it's what I'm sort of hedging my bets on which is let's pretend that we get uh steamify and it's Spotify on Bas but it's steam

let's say that happens God forbid um at least if you have an audience you can you can direct traffic to that platform yeah and use that audience as Tinder um a lot of people have said well you know let's say I get 10,000 followers on Twitter or Instagram or YouTube A lot of people are thinking that's not enough to make like what am I what what if I get a 1% or a half a percent conversion rate for the game that's barely any money and I'm like yeah yeah but that's not the point the point is to use them to explode or create a fire within another algorithm in another ecosystem yeah exactly right creating like an initial impulse that will then push you high enough in the next algorithm yeah yeah I do want to sort of push back against your idea that that PC or steam might be Subscription Service don't you think that steam would have done this already if they thought it was

valuable I wonder I think they know maybe you're right about that because they could obviously they have such a humongous market share they could obviously do a subscription service I hope that we're not going to see this for ages My Hope Is that this is not going to happen I love with all of the problems that it has but I love the current shape of the steam ecosystem me too it's allowed me to be an independent game developer I really value being able to sell my games in a way like that to customers where we all seem to have an understanding you know not like the mobile market where people expect to get at least half of your game for free or maybe the whole thing for free but with advertisements on Steam you still have this amazing ecosystem where we get to pretty much directly I mean steam takes a cut obviously but we get to almost directly sell to customers and they expect that they're going to have to pay money for it and then they a complete game without any like advertisements in it or something like that and I hope

that's going to last forever I'm just suspicious that it maybe won't well I think it's something there's like What's the phrase don't fix what isn't broken I think steam has been operating that way steam reminds me of like a microwave it's like I don't think or toaster a toaster hasn't really changed since like the 40s uh I don't think um steam is kind of like a toaster yeah like it's just always been this way it's just always like yeah and the back end is awful I don't know what your thoughts on Steamworks are but it's just the ugliest it's so tricky it doesn't have to be tricky you know no but it is maybe this is my anxiety but I think I get a little bit suspicious maybe of things that have run like like this for 20 to 30 years and I just keep thinking more and more how

long is this going to are we actually going to be selling games on Steam like this in 30 years or is there just at some point someone's going to sneak up maybe it's not going to be steam maybe someone else maybe it's going to integrate into another game maybe don't know fortnite becomes a subscription service in some way and then everything is integrated into who knows where it's going to come from but I don't know um I I see steem Steam I see Steam as in in a way kind of like a middleman so like maybe I'm wrong here but I'm just sort of thinking out loud so the traffic often times the traffic can start with a streamer right and then the traffic comes through the streamer and then it hits Steam and then the steam algorithm engages with that traffic and then it pushes it out at and then so steam that the steam algorithm is reacting essentially to streamers for example so you get a huge impulse of traffic the algorithm sees it and then

gives you more traffic yeah um my theory is and that's by the way that's not the only way it works it also can work where you just release your game on Steam and you don't get any traffic and this and it's just slowly the algorithm picks it up right yeah I'm not sure if maybe that's happened for you where you didn't really rely on streaming yeah we often just didn't have much traffic that we directed to steam and it just worked on the platform I guess the reason I bring all this up is could it be that YouTube Tik Tok Instagram Twitter uh they sell games on their platform yeah Netflix is already doing it right yeah which makes no sense to me I have no idea how they're doing why they're doing that have you i' I keep see them popping up in my little Netflix when I'm scrolling that there's games now and I haven't really like looked into it but they're good games are they great stuff on there yeah yeah well how do you play them though are they are they like DVD G

done yet but I feel like it must tie in somehow with your Netflix subscription on your phone and maybe you then get sent from your Netflix app into the game store or something H don't actually know how it works but it's great games great titles on there yeah yeah well okay so let's let's sort of wrap up here with I wanted to ask you what are I I I like to try and ask this whenever where I'm wrapping up a conversation what are some mistakes that you'd like the audience to avoid for people who want to dream of making who who dream of making games full-time and making money from it you know yeah what are some mistakes that you you'd ask them to avoid I think one of the biggest ones touches on what I've been saying earlier about my fail solo project attempts I think this urge to abandon your project can get so huge at least in my my experience that's something I've really struggled with is you in the depth of it and you will at some point

invariably hit that point where you feel like it's not a good concept it's not a good idea it won't be very fun and it's just so much work ahead of you still and it's so easy to then make the mistake where you think ah I maybe if I just had another game idea that's a bit easier to make I won't have any of these problems and so I think persevering beyond that point and just pushing on and realizing that you will with the other game also arrive at that point at some point where it just feels like you won't be able to finish it I think that's one of the biggest things that you need to learn as a game developer is persevering when it's really really difficult I was just GNA I wanted to confirm what you said yeah um for so it's not just you saying this like uh I actually have a bodily response to that feeling yeah of of the number one the game sucks number two I've got a ton of stuff to do yeah therefore I need to quit this thing it's

it's I'm in way too deep yeah the my my physical response is like a cold sweat or I'll get flushed and then a cold sweat it's this feeling of me too the one way you have to change your clothes afterwards cuz so weird it's it's that it's a it's a sweaty Palms feeling of you're looking it uh the best I could describe it is like if you've ever swam in the ocean and you've looked down and all you see is just Bleak blue that's the feeling of what am I doing out here why am I making this stupid game there's too much to do I'm out I'm out and you need to push on you just need to push beyond that feeling you need to try as hard as possible to make it into a good game and then put it out there it's so much better to release you quit you quit one of them right I quit one you did yeah was that was that necessary or do you wish you would have powered through that one to be honest the one like I said it was like 200 attempts so the last attempt that I quit was like 3 weeks in

or something yeah so I quit something I feel like it's fine to quit a project three weeks in when you realize okay this is probably not a good idea there's nothing here that will develop into a full game it's not a good idea to quit 200 three-week project in a row that's at some point you have to catch yourself and be like okay right I think I'm fooling myself here I gotcha I gotta okay what were you going to say I interrupted you sorry um I think the scope thing that's the classic don't get carried away by scope don't um yeah let cool little ideas for mechanics distract you too much from the fact that you will have to ship the game at some point you're going to have to put so many things in there that you maybe don't think about at the beginning like like we talked about the infamous setting menu earlier like all of these things that takes so much time in the end if you want to add localization to your game if you want to maybe add controller support if you there is so much stuff coming that you don't initially think of so make sure you plan some time in for

that how do you know when something's outside of your scope how do you know when something's outside of your scope that is a interesting question I reckon you have to somehow extrapolate like you will just have to at some point extrapolate in a way how long is this going to take how long are all the other things going to take and does it fit in you'll have to make some sort of timeline and put down estimates for okay right I'm going to take two weeks to make the character controller I'm going to make take four weeks to do the character animations I'm going to take two weeks to do the settings menu and at the end you arrive at a point that's beyond the latest date where you can either ship because you still have budget or it's just a date where you will lose your mind if you don't ship the game you if you arrive at anything beyond that date you're out of scope you need to cut

stuff it's a it's a it's a I think it's a very important question asked because you you you can't know what's out of scope if you don't know what's in scope yeah and you have to have a scope in order you've got to have a scope you've got to know what the thing is yeah and and it helps for me to know what the price of the thing is if I know it's going to be 15 bucks I'm like okay yeah it's it's like the price of a McDonald's meal uh so it it doesn't have to be you know your greatest creation it doesn't have to have everything in it yeah even though people will complain and they will want it they will say that the texture doesn't rep properly that's right right it will say that Som house should have had a game mechanic but yeah it is what it is and I think that's really important to just see the value in putting it out at some point in the best possible shape that you could get it in and for me that's maybe another thing for people to avoid is working without deadlines I used to think that if you

don't have a deadline that's great and it means infinite freedom and it means that you can make something that's going to like have all the features that you want in there but it does actually really really help to have a deadline like you said you need to have a scope and if you don't know by when you're going to be finished with the game you can't Test new ideas against that you can't test will this fit in so I think it's really important to at least at some point maybe once you have a final prototype that you feel confident about or when you start production or whenever as early as possible I would say commit to a deadline and then every now and then sit down lay out everything that you have to do from now till the release of the game and if it doesn't all fit cut that's so important to actually cut the things instead of it's so easy to then go ahead and be like how you know what maybe I can actually do the settings menu in one week instead of two and maybe I can just spend less time on all of these things and then you just

squeeze them and you just discard your initial time estimates and you make it work somehow that's usually not a good idea for me I've well big what do they call that the Pomodoro method have you heard of this no the Pomodoro the Pomodoro method is the pomodora technique was developed blah blah blah blah blah he uses a kitchen timer in the shape of a tomato and that's why they call it a Pomodoro is a tomato in Italian so it's it's a kitchen timer in the shape of of a tomato and he would break work into 25 minute chunks and what he found was is that when you gave yourself this time limit mhm you made it work you you fit the amount of work you thought you couldn't it just you just your body functions differently I guess yeah so I think it's similar to what you're saying which is like give yourself a deadline and you'll be surprised that you could probably hit it right and it keeps you I feel like it keeps you on track this 25 minute thing probably on like a mini level keeps you

from Meandering around the actual solution it just makes you super focused on right what what is the minimum possible solution to this and then you get to that one and then you can have another 25 minute interval after that where you maybe expand a little bit and you add some more detail to whatever you were doing you know like for a drawing for example if you need to make a visual asset and it needs to be a crop for your farm game then maybe the first 25 minute just makes you create the minimal possible thing that will read to the player as a pumpkin and then you've solved it and then if you don't have any more time you can just move on and if you have more time you can take a breather reset your little Pomodoro Timer and then spend 25 minutes adding polish and detail for another 25 minutes and then see am I going to spend another 25 minutes on more or is that actually fine did I accomplish what I did but yeah I think that's a great example of deadlines being important the question becomes what elements do I crunch on and what elements require breathing

room and creative creative space and dedication to slowly and patiently pursuing it and this is what I've found to be true lately with my games it's so valuable to have people come over like be in your physical presence yeah and play your game yeah watch and you go oh there's some stuff here that doesn't matter to this person but I thought it did yeah and then there's other stuff that does matter so like people were so frustrated by the fact that pressing escape doesn't get out of the pause menu so in my game you you could press escape and it goes to pause yeah but in order to get out of it in order to get out of it you have to click continue yeah and I haven't fixed this yet by the way I still need to fix it and it's actually a much bigger problem yeah what you never think that that will cost you any headache and it does here you

are to to explain why if people are curious is because the way our input system is set up if you press Escape it'll it'll open it up but if if you if you have it so that escape closes it it gets stuck in an infinite Loop so because it's pressed so it tries to close it immediately so you need a timer and a co- routine and all this stuff or you need to reset up the input or whatever and uh the input manager it's just a it's because of the back end of the of the game that makes this so problematic yeah um so it turns into like and it tries to open and close it but I bring all that up because that's actually something that's of high value yeah when in my mind I would have said no that's not high value I need to worry about other stuff and then you see 20 people furiously hitting the Escape kit trying to loose the PA menu and you're like do you know what this is Priority One possibly right fixing the Escape but no 100% I just had

Paul um Grizzly games Paul over a week ago to test my current prototype and it was the most instructive productive hour that I've spent working over the past three months or something because it gave me so much insight and so much like prioritization into what has to happen next it was yeah 100% cosign what you're saying about get people into the room playing the game I love that that well freedomin this has been really really insightful I've learned some from you man um is there anything you wanted to leave in the link in the description um yeah maybe the link for summer house my last solo project is still on sale um we're currently part of a bundle that's probably going to be over by the time people see this video yeah yeah it's a cozy little game it doesn't have a game mechanic you can't win or lose the the the the mechanic is that there's no mechanic yes exactly um I love that okay yeah guys wish list summerhouse below and again I told you this it's just breathtakingly beautiful

what you've made don't forget to check out blueberry AI if you want to optimize your asset management workflow you can sign up for free and get an extended 28-day trial by simply clicking the link in the description cheers