How He Sold 500,000+ Copies Of His Games (Oliver Joyce) — Full Time Game Dev Podcast Ep. 036

I had an incredible conversation with Oliver Joyce he's the creator of the sword and sandals game series and also he's making a game called layer of the leviathon which looks gorgeous we discussed how he built an indie game studio in his spare time and eventually went full-time how he releases profitable games in honestly a fast timely manner we discuss what makes an indie game profitable and strategies to mitigate risk and frankly a risky industry this conversation is going to change your entire thinking of making a career from your indie games we start this conversation off by discussing how Oliver actually bought back an old game that he made while working for a small game studio in his 20s and how he turned that into a full-time Studio Years Later by the way if you want to make Indie Games full-time from your bedroom I can show you how to turn a small Indie demo into a full-time paycheck it's going to help you a ton so it's a free webinar below it's totally free it's going to help you a ton I want to see you succeed so check it out and about 2016 I was

able to um get in contact with a guy from New York who was um like an investor who had just had being a fan of sword and sandals and he bought the rights to the series from the old company and um just you know and he he does a bunch of other things but he just seems he just happened to you know enjoy that and I got in touch with him and said hey do you want to team up and uh we'll you know do a deal and I'll you know redo some of the old games we'll make some new ones he said this is a great idea and so we since then um this a company called Eames uh I've just been doing sequels spin-offs and remakes and I think there's like nine or nine or 10 of them on Steam I've lost count now so wow you know um and that has started off one you know one game working so I was working for an educational company again with John St SCP and that's how kind of we work that's L Relic yeah lost Relic and um doing kids educational software stuff which is you know it's it's easy

and it's kind of cute and it's kind of fun to do and I was doing that in JavaScript you know in HTML 5 so you ended up going to do the You Know The Enemy software like you know you flash and you end up doing HTML 5 but at night I would work on the games and i' do my swords and sandals clones and so on and eventually put one up on Steam and did well enough to make enough money to replace one day a week then two days and finally it was sort of like my wife had said my my girlfriend at the time this before we got married I think she said um uh you know you can probably take a chance now and you know let's like go you know do this fulltime and take a bit of a hit income wise um and go from there and I did that and then within a year I was able to fully replace the income from um from my old job so uh and that's that's it's taken me took me about five games on Steam to be able to do that and the reality is not all five of those games did well I think two of

them did well but that was enough you know what I mean you've got like I think you have is it three or four games on Steam um uh no I've got I've got I wanted to ask you about that because I've got two games on Steam I'm about to release my third commercial release yeah with T I am so scared about releasing a game that isn't good because I you know I have a reputation to with up uphold you know cuz I'm doing these podcasts and I'm teaching and I'm I'm selling courses and I'm just like man I really hope that it does well but there's part of me that's like every game developer they release some games that aren't so good and some games that are good it's isn't it just like it's what it's any game developer's career is going to be littered with some good ones and some bad ones my question to you is I'm I'm looking at your portfolio on Steam and well but s I know sword and sandals

is pretty good right you've got some very positive scores there and then some games that are not so good and I wanted to ask you about that um I feel like it's normal and I think it's just part of being a game developer how do you feel about that it's a great question you can almost say any creative goes through this so like my favorite uh director is rley Scott who's done some great movies and so not so great movies the longer you're in an industry the more chances are you're going to do something great and something not so great and it there is your your pride definitely takes a hit when you release something that especially if you have early success uh and your first game or two does pretty well and you know you get you know uh very positive or overwhelmingly positive or whatever it is on Steam then you feel like oh everything has to now live up to that and um like we talked about really earlier on in this chat um it's okay to fail because sometimes the next thing fails and you care about it

and people care about it for a while but then they'll move on as long as it's almost becomes like a footnote in your story as long as if if if you don't have too many of them if you if the negative ones start outweighing the positive ones maybe you get a reputation and I know like this is probably something you thought about a bit where you know you make uh you're you're making bread and butter as you're making games and you're selling them but you're also you know you're you're now a mentor to a lot of people and you're giving advice and so on and you feel like if I do something that doesn't do well you know there's that imposter syndrome and like people are going to think you know why should they listen to me but they should because it's not only you know what you succeeded in you got to learn from what I did wrong and you know and then fail in different ways next time you know MH that's good advice I I I that's going to help me a lot cuz every time I whenever I'm leading up to a launch of a game and it's it's every four years

which is hilarious it needs to be faster I want to talk about that with you cuz you do it in 12 months uh at least it seems like if I can yeah um but every every time I'm leading up to the launch I just completely crumble uh it's exhausting it's so and it's and I'm I'm whenever I'm talking to my wife I'm like she's like we're talking about money or something and she's like well your game's coming out and so we're going to make some good money from that and I'm like no we're not like it's going to we're going to we're going to lose money and she she's like she's like Thomas you do this every time you release a game you think it's going to make no money and I tell you that it's going to make and she'll like predict it she'll x amount of dollars and she's right and she's right and I'm wrong it's cuz I just can't see in my head I'm like you're too close to it right I think so I think so and then you get people to play it like demo testers and or or or test beta testers and some people say bad things and some people say good

things and so you have you're just completely spun around you know have you ever felt that way with your launches all the time and I I've had some disastrous launches because either getting not enough feedback getting too much feedback or I literally launched a game the day before the Christmas sale you know because I hadn't even bothered to do research yeah and this was a game that like the probably the worst the worst performing game I ever did was a game called Spartacus and it was a platform game that I did in unity um and it's like it's the most it's a pixel art platformer so you know it's going to do well right it's be exactly you and everyone else you know yeah exactly but I did I don't know this was a game that I done for my publisher that who wanted to uh wanted to wanted to spy a game about the character spiderus wanted to call it a sword and sandal game and it was really starting to test our friendship a little and we settled on this platform game that like

I did not want to make it but I didn't really want to make it either and it was my first big unity game and I made it and I had some flaws in the in the like the character every now and again literally falls through the floor and that's a you know you don't want that in a platform game right I've had that before I had that with pinstripe and it was terrifying I could figure it out yeah did you end up solving it I mean I never solved this I ended up redoing the character controller because the unity the unity default character controller was it was like it what how do I explain it it's like if imag imagine if you chose a bank and every like throughout a year randomly once the bank account would go to zero and you had to start over that's in my head that's what the character how bad this situation was with the character controller and so what I did is I said okay if if every 3 hours the player falls through the ground uh that's that's rage inducing for players so they're going to downvote

it uh or or leave bad reviews which is going to kill the game's reputation so I said I have to redo the entire character controller system and so I downloaded one from the asset store and I had to reintegrate it into the entire game and I remember it was like 3:00 a.m. when when I was doing this and I think my wife was pregnant at the time and and I was running out of money from my publisher and I was just terrified you know but I got it to work I got it to work so but did you fix yours in Spartacus well you know what I did uh I knew this and you know what I decided to do uh let's put more levels in the game the worst I did did not solve it added more levels and added this special mode where you can go back and play it and like in in like a you know um an undead version of the levels and it was all this stuff that no one actually reached because they kept falling through the floor that's so funny so the game did poorly and it deserved to do poorly because bro but I'm looking at it right now it looks gorgeous it looks pretty yeah and oh man that's a shame

and and like and the weird thing is and you know this with you know uh if it's with pinstrip where every three hours it crashed I would only play it for an hour and because when you with often you with your own games you're so busy you don't play them properly you play little sections you test it and this is why testing and you know why testing is so important I didn't test this with people it deserved it deserved I think it got like 20 or 25 reviews and they're like either mixed or mostly negative it deserves that and um but in some ways I'm kind of proud of it cuz I only ever play it for an hour and I didn't actually see the you falling through the floor so that was definitely my biggest biggest failure Gorgon Shield which is my most recent game is uh my other like it's done like 75 I've had I mean I've had a bunch of games that have had pretty low reviews and some that have had decent reviews the only reason I'm saying this one was a failure is because like I knew about three or four months in that it probably wasn't going to work just from a like perceptually it was

sort of like this is more of a game Jam game that I'm trying to extend into something bigger and the public reception to it was curious but not you know give me more of that and I kind of thought well I'll just finish it off right and that that's one of the big mistakes you can make is when you're kind of your heart is kind of like a little bit you're not in on the project anymore but you think I'll just finish it off it took me a whole year and that's a year of Revenue that I won't get back and it's just been lucky enough that the other sword and sandal has been able to cover it cuz that has not made any money at all you know it's so funny what you're discussing because there's a difference between a good game and a profitable game because sure is right I'm looking at I'm looking at it right now it's got very it's got 75 user reviews that are very positive that's good play like it yeah it's a good game but it's like but no one's buying it yeah no one's buying it I'll be completely honest dude I think I'm doing that right now with Twisted Tower I

think it's a game that people are going to be like that's cool it's for a specific kind of people a specific audience but is it gonna go Gang Busters is it gonna make a ton of money I don't know do you think that it it's because you're you're sort of out of your comfort zone cuz I know you and your games are you're very artistic story driven you know you're very passionate about telling you know atmospheric um heartfelt stor that are you know shorter experiences sometimes and the you sort of you know it's good to get out of your comfort zone but when you are sometimes that's when you have the most doubt in a project and that's when you kind of think uh you know have have I sort of bitten off more than I can Che or is this just like is this a game that was just at the time I thought I wanted to build it now I'm not so sure and I definitely go through that well I think that um I think it's definitely I think I bit off more than I could chew for sure

um there's this weird I don't know if this is a new trend or a a new revelation for me but I don't care about gameplay length anymore I did care about it for Twisted Tower and it's because certain people were telling me to care about it you need to have this many hours of game playay you need this much gam playay and this many hours and it needs to have these kind of mechanics and it needs to and I'm like I kind of just wish I ignore Ed all that mhm because what's so funny is that we're going from a $20 game and we're probably going to sell it at 15 and the whole goal with the the length of the game was Thomas we want to sell this for 20 justify the price justify the price and now it's like well we're actually going to do 15 and I'm like well crap you know I wish I would have made this game hyper story focused hyper atmospheric and the Gunplay is a garnish it's not the core integration

and so I'm just sitting here going like I wish I would have focused way more on story for this game now the truth is is that when the demo drops I think players are going to realize oh yeah this is a story game because i' dude I've put so much effort into retrofitting a story into this game we spent so much time and effort making this game gameplay focused ah so the story came later and the story came later and now I'm going in by myself solo the team has finished up the game G play and it truly is I think a 4 to 5 Hour game but I'm going in Solo and working with voice actors to get this story retrofitted Into the game it's a horrible approach it's not it's not good but I will tell you I think the game is actually good now like I think that going in it's it's the story is what is needed I think as long as this story is good for this game it's going to work um

I'm not sure how do we get on to that why are we talk talking about you know failures how do you deal with a failure or a game that doesn't particularly you know sell that well or you know you can have like Gorgon Shield has been like you say a few people played it and it's a good game but not a profitable game you may find in know worst case scenario that you and I think you're a good game developer and game designer you're you know world renown now you will make a good game you can't guarantee it'll be a profitable game but in the years to come if you can weather this storm and you're still here in a year or two the the the pain from that will lessen and less and it'll just become almost sort of like this sort of like you know Hidden Gem of of a product sometimes you can be way too close to it in the moment and think that it and it really does matter at the time but I remember going back and and looking at games that had failed years back and being way less critical of them in my own mind on you know at the time that I really cared that that didn't well but now I'm like yeah that was kind of was a fun experience or like H too

bad it didn't do well but on to the next because you have to you know the old cliche fail fast and fail early fail fast and just move move on when you can and it's hard when you like you're now making a year three or year four of the game it's very hard when you're four years into it right because you're so committed yeah you you we've spent a lot of money I've spent a lot of money my publisher has spent a lot of money um I really do I feel like I you ever you ever played a first person shooter where the the camera view is too close to stuff M so like uh I was playing some some developers Indie developers game iic kind of yeah yeah and I was like I was playing it live and I was like guys why is the camera so close to everything that's how I feel making my games right now I feel like I'm like this close yeah to the game and I wish I could zoom out and so what I did over the over the holidays is um I just took a break from

making Twisted Tower and like I've zoomed out and I'm like now I realize what the game is it's a story game it's a story game it's not it's a horrifying grow uh horrify not gross horrifying disturbing Story game it's not it's not really a shooter right um and it has all your hmar marks and I think as long as the game has all the things that Thomas brush does well then at least the the audience that knows you and knows kind of games you make they're going to be you know maybe some people will be expecting like uh you know a doom style shooter but others were going to go well this is a Thomas brush game we want a good story we want we want good atmosphere and so if you can deliver on that yeah and if the game play can at least you know hold its own to a point then you know you may be pleasantly surprised with what comes out of it well I appreciate that that's that that means a lot to me and it's encouraging to me what about you you know what's what what's your Hallmark with your games what what have you found is just just it always drives Revenue um

you know weirdly weirdly enough it's it's all the things that uh were in some ways against the grain of what people do and so very early on um with sword and sandals the first one it was um I I I didn't have any budget cuz working with this company they said here's a CIO keyboard you create the soundtrack and I can play a bit of piano and so but not that well so I I did a little soundtrack on the keyboard I sang the swords and sandals and that kind of thing did you put yes and I did all the voices and so on and and put all together and um so cheap and nasty as my hmark but that that part of it is it sort of like being a little irreverent and the games are a little rough around the edges but I find as long as you can put in a a compelling enough game Loop that um you often look back at some of these these games that do really well and it's just they have this game Loop that doesn't waste your time and I think the best of my games uh I mean I made sword and Sanders

because I really like role playing games but I got sick of having to walk everywhere just to go to the blacksmiths or whatever and so I literally just put the blacksmith on the main screen click on it bam you're there you want to fight you click on it fight so it was basically a game for people that were time poor and and I think you see a lot of the games now that do really well uh for people like me and you who are you know where have families and so on you you want to play a game but you don't have 50 hours to play Assassin's Creed or that kind of thing you want to get in there and and get stuck in I think the games of mine that have done the best have just had the compelling game Loop that even though it's a bit rough around the edges and you could have spent more time in the UI or it's kind of buggy in some parts if it's kind of funny and it's has this game Loop that doesn't waste your time uh and has it's not not quite a Skinner box but it does have like this sort of like incremental rewards and everything I think that can do well and I know you don't really um you're not super into role playing games right and that and it's it's a gen not super familiar with but RPGs are just

it's all basically watch the numbers go up right and at the heart of that what um I'm curious why do you feel like sword and sandals has a compelling Loop so much so that you've made like 10 of these things how many have you made by the way so many yeah so we've got uh the sword sandal there six six ones in the series there's uh four spin-offs and four of the original ones have been remade so I've made about 14 of them plus two or three mobile versions so yeah many many versions of the same game Loop but um why why is that game Loop being successful I think it's versus Gorgon Shield you know like what makes it compelling yeah this is a good question because I I think it is let me have a think what does make it and sometimes you go into something and not knowing what's going to make comp you realize why did I do that I didn't

even know what was going to work other than I wanted to make a game about this and that's where you can go really wrong but I think at least with swords and sandals it was just like it doesn't waste your time it's just you know you're doing the same thing and you think of like you play a game like people will play Street Fighter forever even though that never really changes it's just you know your techniques can someone get better sord and sandals is literally like six buttons and you're just doing various combinations of them to get slightly different armor and then to to find a character that has a slightly different name and then the numbers go up and the numbers go up but I think it's sort of it it just it it plays into people's inherent love of incrementally getting slightly better at something and then you put some silly music and some you know crazy sounds over the top of it and um it's it's like a kids game that you know has been really popular with you know my kids play it even though I'm kind of like oh this you know people getting their arms chopped off and so on in the last the last swords and SS I did was um it's called sword and sounds Immortals and

it's the one that's my second most popular game but the most profitable in recent years and um it's literally it's it's it's it's the sort of First new sword and sandal game you know in a nonf Flash version of sword and sandal my kids did voices in that game and they like and people like what are there kids in this game like w you know they're fine they're not playing it but I think but that game that game did pretty well because um it sort of without really thinking about it it's sort cater to the twitch and the YouTube uh crowd of people who want to play it I know if if you know um there a guy called uh Charlie White who's better known as like critical um Mo critical he's he he's he was a fan of sorden sandals and I got in touch with him and said uh he'd done a video on randomly done a video on it had some million views or something um wow and I I got in touch with him and said hey um do you want to be a character in the game and he's like yeah man cool and so I got him to record a bunch of

Screams and yells made him a character in the game and then he um I Didn't Do It just I mean part of you thinks well it would be cool if he would you know stream a video of it sure but part of me I thought well this is kind of cool to bring in this you know um people that love the game early um bring them in as a little reward for them and so on and I I've just slowly built up this weird fan base all along you know people from Brazil and turkey and Poland um who just seem to appreciate the sort of the quirkiness of the games without them being because they're quite far removed from your games in terms of the Polish and the story is very I every roleplaying game developer thinks that they're talking but we're all not you we're terrible usually so the story is a bit of an afterthought okay so you've got this sort of this approach to making indie games which it might be correct me if I'm wrong it might be different than my Approach and also John's Approach at lost Relic which is like get it done is

that your approach it it's exactly my Approach you elaborate on that 80% is is is good enough that's that's why why is that because I I kind of I have that similar sort of feeling of you as like I'm probably going to fail here and I go well if I'm going to fail I'm going to move on quickly and I also I I do get sick of ideas quite quickly and I'm like uh I need to go into the next thing and so I kind of I'll do it enough to a point where it's sort of like I feel like the game is telling the story and it's it's it's good enough but sometimes that can be to I mean probably more than sometimes it can be to the detriment of the game but I just feel like is if this game doesn't do that well at least I've only lost a year um the newest game I'm working on is actually a different story where I'm actually planning on spending it's probably the next three or four years working on it that's I'm taking a very different approach it's called Lair of the Leviathan and this is the first game I've ever

done working with another developer wow and it's a guy who is guy yeah and this is he's doing all the pixel art he's a fantastic pixel artist and designer and we're building this old school wow imagine B's gate if B's gate was made I mean it was made in the 90s but in the early 90s with pixel art and so on so we're trying to do our own spin on the old this old series of role playing games called the gold box games but to make a role playing game it takes it takes to a decent one it really does take you three or four years and I I saw him he'd done a post on Reddit about I'm making this game by myself and I said man I'd love to work with you so I actually just got in touch with him and said I've been meanning to do my own one of that and so we' teamed up about six months ago but we both know that this is a there's no ways of doing this in any less than four years so I'm kind of terrified about that as well because I've never committed to a game that long as well uh I'm confident in in the product and in the idea and even in even in the audience of a we've got about

20,000 wish lists now without doing a lot of marketing so I know that there is an audience there but it's definitely quite different to my Approach of get it done quick uh and you know if I fail in this one then it's a pretty big Financial hit because you know three or four years where you didn't work on something else sure sure well okay so how do we how do we mitigate the risk here uh let's brain let's brainstorm what can we do to make sure that that you don't not make money on this thing well I have a I have a contingency plan and I'm I was going to ask you about this as well I'm also in the background building another sword and sandals spin-off using the same engine that I've used for immortals and a lot of um one of my Game Dev Heroes is uh Richard Garett who did Ultima H you know I'm a lot older than you but ultim big role playing game in the 9s and so on you might know but he um always use the same game engine twice

uh before sort of moving on to the next thing and it just would because they spend a lot of time developing the game engine and so what I'm doing is taking the Immortals engine and just uh using some different art I'm going to do another sword and sandals game so I figure look if a game is going to take four years it's probably okay to spend Nine Months of the Year doing that game and maybe two or three months sort of um doing another project that you feel as a lot smaller and a lot safer and it at least can bring in a bit of money to mitigate any loss and that's why I wanted to ask you um Brave boy uh what What's your uh involvement with that because I saw it's part of Atmos games and everything sure well first off I just want to I I'll answer your question but first off I just want to say I think what you're saying is brilliant um basically it's 8020 kind of it's an 8020 rule kind of thing it's like yes exact 20% of the time brings in most of your revenue for the year 80% of the time is this big old fat risk which

is his layer of Leviathan leviathon going to make money I know so so I think that um I wanted to say Brave boy is not that um actually what we're doing right now is that ah yes of course the the podcast and I think it's totally fine to to share I'm not going to say numbers but like yeah to share to share my my Revenue streams and how they're that they work so like basically Twisted tower all of the initial investment we've used up so like the initial investment from our publisher we've gone and used all that for my team and so now I'm in a position where I'm like I can bring in revenue from my other games and my other games do bring in Revenue but the contingency plan and I think every game developer needs this they need they need to have something some tool some Revenue driver that they can access when they need it

and so right now the podcast I'm I'm starting to take sponsorships sponsorships and also my courses and revenue from ads and revenue from my games I have all these different revenue streams that protect risky Investments like new big massive games and hoping those IPS are profitable this is exactly the approach yeah and I don't see anything I used to feel guilty about it it's like Thomas why can't you just make enough money on one game and it's like how about how about I don't want I don't want to think that way anymore now that I have kids you know I've got kids I've got a mortgage in my head I'm like I'm going to pretty much do everything I can in the game sphere to make enough money to protect against risky Investments CU I want to make risky Investments you know I want to make weird games I want to make games like Twisted tower that are strange and tell really interesting stories that aren't particularly commercially VI able not NE we'll see we'll see if it is um so in my head I'm

like I'm going to build a podcast that's so profitable that I can make weird games and hopefully they pay off and maybe they won't you know what I mean um this this is exactly the approach and I think what what you're doing is something I would advise every young Game Dev to do is that don't go into your first game going I'm going to spend the next four years on this quit my job like you always see the Reddit post I quit my job to do this and it's like yeah well yeah you shouldn't have but you did anyway so you're stuck now but diversify whether that diversification is starting up a YouTube channel or selling Game Dev assets or or you know doing you know small commercial projects for other people the 8020 rule is what allows you the luxury and I think you and I are both in fantastic positions where you can afford um to take the risk because you have the diversification from you've already got you know three or four other games that are you know well reviewed and bringing in money and in my case I have three or four of

the 10 well reviewed bring in money and that it's it's this beautiful luxury of being able to wake up every day going okay I can afford today and I can afford tomorrow and you know the kids can be fed and everything because I'm not taking this crazy chance on like I'm not going to get paid four years you know you can only do it if you already have the revenue team so just like you know to to someone up in a nutshell walk before you can run if you're game developer the way I was raised I don't know about you but the way I was raised is you're always on thin ice and I'm I'm not saying it's a good mentality but that's my mentality my mentality has always been if something fails what do I do after that right and so even though we signed with 3D Realms and even though we have publisher money um in my head I'm like I need to be extra certain and extra sure that my family's taken care of if one game fails right and so that's why I do what I do on YouTube it's in

terms of the financial reason like there's reasons of building community and I want to help people and I love what I do with the podcast but I like to have backup plans for pretty much everything so that's why a PB if you have to and if if one thing falls down and I had and I I've had lots of conversations with John from lot Relic about this where his channel is almost at 100,000 but he really struggles with every time he's doing a video he feels like he's taking away from making the game and he's also juggling a full-time job with that so he kind of feels like ah this game is now stretching out to seven eight years and like oh what am I doing but saying well what you're doing is you are building up that diversification where if the game fails you've still got this pretty cool YouTube channel that is now starting to grow and allow you that second chance next time if you ever want to do it again after eight years you know exactly exactly so it's I think it's a balancing act of some of my friends dude they they went all in they went all in with one IP

like CT of the lamb um and it paid off hands me sure it paid off and you know props to to Jay and his team for taking a risk and and taking that gamble it's not how I do things it's just not you know the way I do things is is I slowly build games over time and they they always turn a profit we'll see if Twisted Tower turns a profit um I sign deals with Publishers because Publishers drisk you know I for me personally I I I'm not willing to spend 500 Grand you know on an IP I would rather someone else do it yeah um yeah I agree with that building an audience building a channel building a podcast these are all things that help me drisk but when it comes to Brave boy to answer your question that was a long way of answering your question when it comes to Brave boy what I wanted to do is exactly what I've been giving advice to uh I won't say who but like various

Consulting clients um for lack of a better word they'll say hey I'm thinking about investing $2 million in a game and I'm like why don't you build a demo first or why don't you build a a a trailer first and see if you get a reaction reception yeah if you do then you know you need to put $2 million dollars into it so that's what Brave boy was Brave boy was okay let's put something out there to see if it's worth my time and the sad sad truth is it doesn't look like it is um you may have dodged a huge bullet there by by spending a little time you've saved yourself a lot of time in h like later yes so what we're going to do what I'm going to do is the trailer dropped I dropped that like a year ago it has like 25,000 views and I'm like not that good is this is this a portend of things to come kind of mm and so I think I'm just going to launch it the demo on a nextfest yeah and if it does well it's like well okay and by it

does well what I mean is does it Garner wishless you know yes so what about you with layer of leviathon do you feel like your wish are times yeah yeah sorry what was the question again sorry the question is ler leviathon uh has it proven itself in the in the vertical slice to to does it justify three more years yeah this is the question and we are hoping to have a demo out uh by the end of this year the the all we know so far is that it it has gotten it's almost 20,000 wish lists and there are some uh RPG websites and so on that seem interested in it and we've had we've had some publisher interest which we're basically holding off on now because uh I've had you know I've worked with a few different Publishers in the past with very very very limited degrees of success and I really kind of feel like the game is if it's starting to get momentum and so on it May well be that we can kind of do this without that the me the measure of

success for this game will be of course the demo and the next Fest so on uh the problem is with a game like this you got to spend a lot of time to build the tools and like I've said this in in the past um it's a it's a silly little saying but when you're building an indie game you've almost like you're building your own lottery ticket you know what I mean you're going to build it to take a chance that it's going to do well but I know I know I'm 6 months into making the engine and I can f and so this trailer that on on the steam page David uh from nostalgic Realms who I'm working with with the two man team he's put all this that's basically all smoking mirrors there's no game there that all looks like a game but I'm rebuilding all that in a proper game engine and so on wow um the cool thing about this and I don't know this could be like a if you interview me in four years time was what was the big mistake with that game I'm making a full-on RPG Maker so like because Dave was not really a programmer I decided to build tools that we can

both edit the game with but it's turning into this fullon hey why don't make it so anyone could build the game with this and so it's actually it sounds like pretty crazy but it's actually been really um helpful to me to be able to build this little engine and then be able to turn out content later I I spoke with a guy called Anders lison who uh has built a very successful uh game called scald uh published by raw Fury came out last year and it's one of the one it's you it's got a couple of thousand reviews which for for a a sort of a 90s style Ultima role playing game is you know pretty fantastic and you know raw Fury did a really good job um you know promoting that and everything but I chatting to him a few times he said the main he took five years with it and he said the main thing he would stress was like if you're building a game over three or four years or more just make sure you have a good tool set to work with and you know internal tools and by by that I mean like for an a role

playing game you want to have a really good map editor or item Creator or dialog Creator and so on because if you if you're just doing the same tasks again and again and again working on this really robust tool early on we'll save your time later so that's what I'm doing right now is the first six months is literally just building tools and then I'm hoping that there's an actually compelling game around that which we don't know yet we're hoping there is but that's so interesting uh you know what's what you could is let's say I'm really fascinated by by figuring out what viable actually means so I've been I've been interested in it let's let's say let's say lir of thei leviathan's demo sucks and it doesn't do well let's say it let's just pretend that happens to you um does it mean that everything carrying the game like the tools sucks or does it mean that the the

garnish sucks the the hook the storage the mood the feeling the aesthetic maybe that's what sucks not the tools this is right to say if you did the same thing again with a different theme it couldn't do well and tools are important what you're creating yeah and a lot of game developers will you know build a game and build the engine behind and everything and then doesn't do well they kind of go ah you know everything about it was bad but you can salvage stuff from that you could re who's to say you couldn't reskin a platform game with a much more quirky theme and all of a sudden does well like you know that was the game that came out last year was a pizza Tower or something like that yeah um outrageously quirky platformer type game that game without the quirky theme um has none of that success and I think for many like for this lay of the vi and you're exactly right this game could do

poorly but I've then got a full RPG Maker tool that I've spent a few years making you could easily resing that with uh what's popular at the moment it might not be horror it might be now like I don't know uh western or something so you do a western role play game no one seen a western role playing game in a little while it's like cool you know like Cowboys not like Western JP but yeah um I think that's really smart dude I honestly I think they I think you're on to something because well to wrap this up that's what you did with sword and sandals exactly you built you reskinned a single IP the sad part is someone else owned it you never you never fully had it for your yourself I'd have a very different background if I ear the IP I'd be like this is my S Malibu mansion you know I Sydney but like you know whatever it is yeah but we all make new we make mistakes we learn from I I for all that mistake of not owning the IP I'm still really great that the the guy in New York gave me a

chance and allowed me to rebuild from the rubble of this whole not being able to make games again and so on so you know I think that's the any advice I could give to um new game devs and this is again pretty cliche but like don't be afraid to fail as long as you're making new mistakes every time you know because you everywhere chance Reigns you know in the swirling Waters there are weights of fish that's like that's a a quote from an old Roman Phil pher but it's so true because you know you just don't know when you're going to succeed and as long as you keep trying keep trying new ideas don't worry about the negative reviews they're going to come but just focus on what you're going to do next that's really good you know I was given advice um from a coach I had last year and he he kept saying Hey Thomas do what's working for you in 2025 and stop doing what's not working for you and I think that's I think it's

great advice but the the the thing is you have to know what working means right I mean is it like if if I if I go to the gym and for 40 minutes I suck at bench press and I'm just really bad at it does that mean the next time I go to the gym I'm going to focus on what works and that is everything except bench press is that is that the mentality you should have and and I think what a lot of game developers struggle with is they don't know how to measure what's working or not it's really cuz like of course you should go bench press of course you should keep trying and keep trying and keep trying what's wor what the moment where you know you shouldn't bench press is is it giving you big chest muscles or not if it's not not then sure then stop it so the same is true with with um making games you have to figure out how to measure what like what is a good

result and what is a useless result and I think a good result is is this game getting wish lists yes I you know that that that's one great thing about steam is they'll tell you along the way and you can you can hide from this you can delude yourself all along the way that like all I need is this next festival or something else and the wish in come they will come because your game is doing well it doesn't just all of a sudden like go like this Spike like that it's very rare that that happens steam is giving a little Clues along the way that like we think this is going to do well or not so I think as long as you can be true to yourself then you either onto something or you can just don't fall into the sun cost vacy like I did with gorgon shield and just everybody falls into it you know yeah everybody falls into it and and I I will say about wish lists it I agree with you 90% which is you're never going to get the pop um

unless you haven't said anything and then finally you do a big release right yeah uh and youve been putting it out there all the time and you're not getting anything then that that's it that's it that's the good signal um so focus on what's working and if you're not getting wish lless it probably means that the game kind of sucks and you need to just drop it um and that's okay yeah I mean it can't hopefully it's okay otherwise you know go back and do your old job you know right is there any other pieces of advice you wanted to leave the audience with yeah I mean there there are so many things that have been said by so many great game devs that you can pick and choose uh what advice works for you and um I've made so many you know failures and successes that I sometimes don't even know that I prob listen to my own advice but what I would finally say is that you know to sum it all up um there was a Game Dev on your podcast of the wer who made a Nast car game and like out of left field Brian yeah and he a great podcast and he

did you he did fantastic with that so what I say is like find what's passionate what you love to do and and if you can find a niche don't worry so much about the genre of the game if the niche is something that of you know the story or the plot or the hobby if you can combine that you may well be on to something you know what I mean like NASCAR was crying out for a game like that who knew right but he was into NASCAR so if if you're into fishing but you're also like um Shooters and you know you do a game where you're shooting fish out what you know that that that worked for um our Ramy isma and so on so they that kind of like shooting fishing it but like just don't be afraid to don't Focus so much on the genre of game focus on like the the story behind it and and if you're passionate about the story behind it and the the setting so on that will come into the game but if you're making a horror game because people say make a horror game and it's

popular it's just people are going to know you know what I mean so that would be my advice is yeah follow your follow your passions you know it's um it's like a I don't know how high school was for you in in Australia uh you're right don't get me wrong I was still very dorky and nerdy and Ste and everything but I think I was able to kind of use humor and you know I I I think like in another not even advice but just like fake it till you make it if you're not confident pretend you are and it's like simple advice it's just like tricking yourself into going you know what pretend that I'm the host of the show you know what I mean oh yeah you know and the reason why I brought up the reason why I brought that up about high school is because in high school in America you're you're sort of taught that if if if you can't quite fit into a group it's because well it's a problem and you need to fix that issue or you if you don't understand a subject matter in

school it's you have an intellectual problem but what I've what I've found in gamedev and in the indie game industry is that if you're not fitting in that's like a really good sign that you need to potentially uh um water that seed and and nurture that weirdness so like that strange thing yeah because everybody's yeah yeah that's right so so the thing that makes you and I I think I mentioned this with Greg a podcast I'm about to upload with this guy named Greg he made a game called Wander song yes I mentioned the same thing at the end of the podcast with him which is um what makes you stinky what makes you gross and odd and gr like in like how you felt in middle school and high school yeah that's actually what makes your game stand out right now yeah you want to be different even if it's different bad or different good just be you know be different enough because now we're in an

era where you know you look at unreal out of the box you can make the most beautiful looking game it's harder and harder to stand out um therefore you know don't be afraid to be stinky something do unreal but do terrible textures you know just whatever it is you exactly exactly like what was the game the pizza game um yeah Pizza Tower I think it's co Pizza Tower is a shining example of that by the way I'm looking at this there's like how many reviews hundreds of thousands of reviews this game I I can only dream of success like that but you never know you never know what's around the corner like you know just by the game that you had in the back of your head but you thought well no one's going to play that because this but maybe that's why you need to make it exactly okay man this was a great podcast dude thank you so much for hanging out Oliver I had a blast yeah you're you're welcome toas very best of luck with Twisted tow I'll be uh I'll be cheering for you from here hey Link in the description what do you want what what do we to call the action for it uh if if we can pronounce it Leia ofan is

on Steam and you can wish list that uh you know at all good stores all right well and good luck with that manes appreciate it by the way if you're like me and you always dreamt of making an indie game as a full-time job I have a free webinar below that goes into exactly how to make six figures with just a demo