How He Sold Over 960,000 Copies Of His Games w/ @JonasTyroller — Full Time Game Dev Podcast Ep. 027

all right Mr Jonas Tye roller how have you been since Throne fall released oh I've been amazing thank you much for inviting me I'm super excited to be here and I hope I'm not not the next EP episode right after Jonathan Blow cuz it would significantly increase my performance anxiety well I will tell you dude do you know who you're coming after is uh actually Mark Brown so uh game that's even oh that's that's that's that's not making things better I've had like that's awesome dude I've had well you're I've had a-listers this last week and you're you're officially part of that crew you're you're an a-lister or Game Dev you would have been before Throne fall but I think Throne fall really sort of it solidified your Genius um and I that's what I want to talk about this whole episode I want to talk about the the whole approach to throne fall development because I

I watched you and we all watched you as you created these Dev logs about how exactly you were creating Throne fall and there was a a very Proto there was a prototypical strategy behind the whole process including just creating a ton of games your first devlog you did I'm talking too much but I'm I'm trying to introduce you here and give everybody some context to what this episode's going to be I'm fascinated by you because you you your first devlog for throne fall was a bunch of games games you did like how many games like 20 games um or prototypes you scrapped all of them which is funny to me you scrapped all of them and then you just went with your gut so it with with Throne Falls so it almost felt like the prototyping phase wasn't useful we'll talk about that and then and then you did Early Access which is kind of a prototyping process as well because you're interjecting and and putting stuff into the game that is the audience and what they kind of want maybe we'll talk about that

and then finally you launched your game while so you kind of got two launches and so we'll talk about that there's and and now the game is doing incredible how many reviews do you have now on Steam uh 15 15,000 or something that's a lot still currently overwhelmingly positive again so yeah we we're very happy with the result unbelievable so just for context as well we're a two-man team or two and a half team uh two and a half person team if you count our community manager um so very very tiny team and uh yeah for our personal standards like Throne fall did incredibly well and yeah happy to dive into that process with you yeah let's do it okay so this everything I want to talk about is is sort of shrouded in the shadow of 2024 being a bad year for game developers and I'm sure people listening are kind of frustrated with me because that seems

like that's all I talk about but the reason I talk about 2024 being a rough year is because I want 2025 to be a good year for game developers and so my big strategy with all these podcasts including with Jonathan Blow and Mark Brown um and also Chris zakowski he's he's one that's coming before you as well I'm trying to figure out what the f do we do as indie game developers for 2025 what is the strategy and you seem to have nailed that strategy as it pertains to like prototyping and your process so my first question for you is do you feel like your the way you approach Throne fall is a good approach for 2025 for game developers 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 I was just like you for years I thought I had to make a game in its entirety before getting a paycheck but there's actually three ways to make six figures before even finishing your game I've

done this multiple times so check it out below if you do want to go full-time Indie and thanks for watching mhm I think there is um design is a very Universal principle and you can once you understand how design works you can just apply the design worklow to whatever you want like sometimes people ask me Jonas why why are you so good at everything why can you make music why why can you make graphics why can you do everything I'm like cu the design process it's it's exactly the same same everywhere right so the way design works is first of all you define some design goals so you have to get a very very good understanding of what you want to achieve um for a video game that could for example be I want to achieve Commercial Success on Steam I want to work on something that I enjoy and so on and so forth but when you design something else if you design a piece of music then you have entirely different goals right then you then you're like this piece of music has to fit into this specific level it doesn't have to or

it's not supposed to clash with any of the sound effects I have in the in the level so first of all you kind of Define the goals and constraints mhm and then you start a search process and I've talked about this in in one of my videos but I'll explain it really quick the search process is essentially you you you're making the assumption that you cannot guess the the best solution to this optimization puzzle that you've been given right the goals and constraints are essentially a unique optimization puzzle and now you have to find the solution the best solution to this optimization puzzle and the way you do that is you Branch out in a couple of different directions and just experiment and try different things and over time as you gather experience you know as you go through these optimization processes more and more often obviously you gather some experience and you get better at making targeted experiments and in general like like the the quality of your experiments

improves because you're you're better at at guessing a rough Direction but you you can't have the illusion that no matter how good you are you can't have the illusion that you're just going to guess the best possible solution first try that just doesn't happen so if you want to arrive at a very good solution you have to experiment you have to try things the problem with that is that it's a very slow process mhm so um eventually um you you have to start experimenting so much because it's going to slow you down but a very good time to experiment is in the beginning because you're kind of narrowing in on the direction you're trying out all of these things and then once you have the direction that is when you go into transition into speed mode and you stop experimenting so much and you basically accelerate and try to make some progress and you still have to experiment a little bit like you shouldn't never entirely stop that cuz there there's there are a bunch of risks of you know overshooting or um ending up in a space where you don't want to be but essentially that's the rough idea and then

process that design process applies to anything you you can like once you understand this design process you'll instantly become very very good at at almost anything that that has remotely to do with design which is uh very fun uh so you you mentioned at the beginning of at the beginning of of um that brilliant um paragraph there you you mentioned that people wonder how does Jonas know how to do art and music and so your point Point here is that anything as it pertain to pertains to games is the way you've approached it is that process right there yes it's always it's always the same process design is always the same process just applied to different disciplines um so for prototyping games you just do the exact same thing right you you define the design goals for your game in our case um or I would say there are some very typical go go s that

almost all indie game developers share which which are being commercially successful and I know you and I we we kind of share an opinion on that that you know aiming for commercial success is is not something that that you have to look down on whether that's morally questionable what it means is you know even if you remove the monetary incentive you'd still be making the exact same games cuz what what I also want is I want a lot of people to enjoy my game MH and that just that just goes hand in hand with making something that's commercially successful Y and then also I want to work on something that I personally enjoy and I think as mentioned a lot of game developers just share these goals and that's how I start into this uh search process and these the these design processes they always have different scales if you make like a threeyear commercial indie game project then you scale everything according accordingly so this beginning phase

where you try out a bunch of different wild ideas and see what sticks that that also gets scaled up proportionally so for throne fall we did like two or three months of prototyping and what you said is that we scrapped all of the prototypes um that's not entirely true we we tried out a lot of different ideas and in this specific case it took us a long time to find something that sticks so we followed a misguided path for a bit with a with a card game idea then we realized okay no that's not quite it so we went back to prototyping and narrowed down our search a little bit we were like okay we found a pretty cool fantasy here we want to make uh uh City build like a medieval strategy game but simplify it a bit so we made a bunch of different prototypes about that there was one that was a little more like PL PL Plants versus zombies where all of the enemies are coming from one

side so there were were a couple of different ideas and we were slowly narrowing down our search space there and eventually Paul just had had a prototype that uh vied really well with us so we locked that in and from there the search process doesn't end it just Narrows down so from there the next question would be which art style do we go for so we start prototyping a bunch of different art styles then there are a bunch of gameplay questions that need to need to be figured out so we start making a gameplay prototyp type that very specifically captures what we're trying to go for and then you just narrow down the search further and further until you have a very good idea of what you want to make and then you go for it okay and go ahead sorry go ahead sorry we have a little bit of a lag here so it sounds like I'm interrupting you I promise I'm no no no no worries yeah we're on on different sides of the world well let's see if I can fix that so we've got um I'm CH I could change my region here uh that's I I don't think that changes much I've seen it work I'm going

to try it here we're going to see if it does all right okay check 1212 how we want to check check how are you are you good yes oh see I fixed it I told I switched to Russia and it it's so much better now so okay oh okay awesome okay keep going sorry sorry Jonas I um I think I was pretty much done with that point um okay so the big question I have and when you started saying all this stuff about the search hinges on taste on the ability to know what's good on the ability to know that when you have found something whether it's a game idea or you've written a song or you've you've you found an art style you like it hinges on taste the ability to identify something as valuable right is that true yes um the way I describe it in in my video is I describe as a measurement

right you make an experiment you Branch out and then you need to make a measurement to see uh how good that experiment actually was and I I would say with a bit of experience your your own taste your own estimate becomes a very accurate measurement that's one of the advantages that experience brings but um it's there there are different ways to measure how how good good an experiment is and if you want an accurate measurement then there are more accurate measuring devices than just your personal taste for example one very obvious one would be play testing bringing in external play testers and having them watching them seeing what they think so whenever you make very important gameplay decisions for example before you really lock in your final game idea before like spending three years of development I would make sure to make some of these more accurate measurements with uh with other play testers so that you get some some better

data okay on that in particular can I I want to point out one mistake that I see a lot of people make in in this specific phase is because a lot of people hear this advice of oh you should prototype your games right and what they do is they make one prototype oh they yeah they show it they show it to their friends and their friends are like H that's a pretty good game and then they make the game and that's completely pointless because you don't have any data points to compare it to right you don't know how your friends would have reacted to this how would have friends have reacted to this um sometimes I hear even stories from bigger double A or AAA companies that do this they they're like okay we're building this prototype and now we're sending it to this play testing company and I'm like okay which other games did you send to them and they're like and that in my in my personal opinion that's pointless that's completely pointless CU what is the reference point right like both personal

taste as well as feedback from others there's no objective measurement there's only relative measurement so you need reference points to to compare these measurements otherwise there's not really any point in making them so the the point of prototyping for for everyone listening right now cuz like I I went to some seminar when I was like 24 I'm I'm 30 how old am I I'm 34 right now so like 10 years ago I went to some seminar or something and it was all about prototyping and I I saw it as this sort of side thing like yeah yeah yeah you can do it if you want if you're like a baby or you you're you're immature or you can't come up with good ideas then you prototype right but but if you're a really good game developer just go for it and follow your gut so I think some people listening right now who are new to Game Dev they might not see the value in prototyping what's the end result of prototyping

like what is the whole point of doing it the point of prototyping is that it is easier to choose the best game idea than it is to guess the best game idea oh that's great I love that that is the entire Point basically also of this entire search process and so on that I talk about you know think of it you know think of it like this you're entering an a prompt into an AI model and it spits out 10 different images if you just pick the first one it's going to be worse than if you have 10 and you pick the best one just that in this case you are you are the AI model and you're splitting out the ideas and if you generate 10 ideas and pick the best one it's going to be way better than if you just pick the first idea that comes to your mind it's just going to be better yeah like we overestimate our abilities a little bit yep or or I would I would say even if you are experienced if you are very experienced and skilled

if you make 20 if you like if you come up with 20 ideas and choose the best one it's still going to be better than um the first one you had it it's just it's just just obvious it's so interesting it's like it's like Democratic game development I mean and it's not particularly profound even though I think what you're saying is it's new to me and it's profound to me it's this is like standard business practices you only invest money into into something that's already making you money or you invest something you invest money into something that has a high probability of making you money right you don't you don't launch 100 McDonald's across the country without first knowing that McDonald's makes you money and I think the same is true with prototyping it's like you you don't invest money and time and effort for years into a game unless it's proven itself to be probable that it will make you money and be successful mhm mhm and it's it's the

same with smaller scale design processes as well for example let's say you're painting an image then most people before they paint the image they do a drawing and why do they do the drawing they want to prove that their composition works right and if you scale up that process to something that instead of taking a couple of hours takes a couple of years then it makes sense to scale up this part of the process as well where you spend a couple of months just dedicated to essentially making the sketch and making sure your composition is right before you paint this giant image that's going to take you like three years to finish it it just makes strategic sense as you mentioned yep well I the way I've always described it in as it pertains to game art and by the way I totally agree with you that this what do you call it this search process this search process is applicable to everything in your life but for me it's it's it's very

applicable to 2D game art um I I I call it uh um start in the abstract and then solidify later so for me when it comes to 2D art I start with a very generic gradient color palette and I'm sure what's what's uh is it Paul your your team member's name yes I think Paul probably does the same thing it seems like he's a he's a color theorist at his core he's really good with color and that's the that's true for me as well you start with an abstract color palette and then you tighten up the screws as you go on so you sort of have these layers of proof that what you're doing is working it's kind of like building a house you start with the foundation first then you frame it and then you can make it pretty later but you need to get the framing done first so I totally agree with you when when it comes to making games you need to start in the abstract prove the abstract and then tighten the screws later one final metaphor is Ikea Furniture it tells you

do not tighten the screws until you've built the whole thing right and so it's very similar to making a game for throne fall and we'll we'll move into Early Access here would you call would you consider Early Access the the part the part of development where the screws aren't tightened or or should all the all the screws that are in the project be tightened before you even go early access does that make sense that was a lot of questions that on I'm not entirely sure what to respond to but let's just I want you to respond to every single one from memory the the the Maj the major question the major question here is the major question here is Early Access the way I perceive Early Access and you did early access the way I perceive it is you're launching something incomplete and the screws are not tightened so it's kind of wobbly there's there's flaws in it is that true or is small tight and

perfect all right here here's the way I think about Early Access is um Early Access is essentially your your main launch right we've talked about this a little bit on on Discord I know there are different opinions about this there are some developers that say if you do Early Access you essentially get two launches there other developers who say you only get one launch I personally uh despite knowing there are different opinions on this I lend more on the side of things uh of saying you only get one launch so the first time you launch your game even if it's early access look at that like that's your main launch if your Early Access launch is not going to go well then like the second launch is not going to go well either like um I think Chris sukowski told me this that like this is even very statistically provable that the first launch is a big one the second one if you're lucky is is another little blip or or maybe half if you're lucky half of what the initial release

was and this is especially interesting for throne fall because Throne fall launched with very very small amount of content we had like three levels when we launched into early into Early Access and it was very very successful even at this very tiny scale and then we spent one and a half years adding tons and tons and tons and tons of content and then we went out of Early Access and even though there was way way way more content now um um the second release didn't do as well as the first one so that's that's the thing so the way we looked at Early Access was more like uh a scaling device we were like not sure how much time and resources to invest into Throne fall yet so we we took it like as a you know very accurate measurement just throwing it out there and steam seeing how it does and then depending on how well it does either just stop right there like if it if thrf Fall Would flopped right after Early

Access launch we would have just been okay I guess this game is done now and uh because it did so well we spent more time on it that that was like it it launched in a very polished State as well like we treated it like a main release just with a scaled down version of our game and then based on that we we made a decision on how to scale from there okay okay so your point is the main launch of an early access game it's solid it's tight but it's small so you can't launch a loose project and by loose I mean it's there's no balance um it's buggy um it's not very clear uh that for example like that the tutorials aren't clear the teaching isn't clear all of that stuff has to be very very tight but it can be small right that's exactly right I think you can La you I think can get away with a

small game in Early Access I do not think you can get away with a bad game like if you have tons of bucks and problems and you're just like I guess let's let's cash in now and see how it goes that that's a bad idea that's a very bad idea cuz then what's going to happen is you're going to get a bunch of negative reviews and then your game's just dead in the water nobody's going to buy it anymore so you need to launch with something that is very very good but it can be small and and then you can just scale it up from there I think that's that's the way I would go about Early Access okay and there's if I wear to do it again exact okay well that's another question and and we'll get into that if you're going to do it again for 2025 but but really quickly here what what kind of games are good for Early Access um first of all games that you can imagine working on for a long time cuz

one one more way to look at Early Access is like as a communication tool essentially if your game is in Early Access it communicates to the player we're still actively working on this so and it communicates that very efficiently so that is that is a great way to to use Early Access if that is something you want to communicate and then of course it only really works with replayable games cuz if you have a game that you play once and then you're kind of done with it it's probably not the best fit for Early Access cuz uh the likelihood that people come back to it is not not that high okay um is do you consider Early Access prototyping is it no no it's not so you've you've chosen a prototype and do you well the reason I asked that is because it's like how how much do you listen to your audience at as they play the game and as

you as you scale it up and make it bigger after it's already launched on Early Access is it is it something like a scientific process where you're taking feedback and and bringing in new elements and then deleting those elements because they didn't necessarily work I think my main take away from the early excess period of Throne fall is that we should have listened to players more for example they always were like we want an endless mode we want an endless mode and we've always been like nah doesn't really fit into our game doesn't really fit our design philosophy we're not sure how to make it work and now recently I prototyped on endless mode and I I absolutely loved it so I'm like why why didn't we do that earlier um uh and there there are many cases like that for example one friend of mine kept telling me add a mini map you should really add a mini map and we're like H we don't think it's that important and then once it was and we immediately agreed and were like how

could we live without that basically and there there are a lot of instances like that where where in hindsight you're like ah we should have listened to the community a bit earlier okay but then there are also a lot of other instances where the community is asking for things that just don't fit into our schedule or that don't have a very good Roi like for example uh tiny tiny bu fixes or I mean obvious we fix the the vers ones but if there's like oh this Arrow followed me for a second too long and it destroyed a building over there then we then then obviously we look at how often does that actually happen and is it worth fixing that you know cuz we have you you should you you should have a look at our mirobot actually if you want I Cana show you real quick yeah uh oh I have to lock in I'm not sure why Miro always always throws me out yeah I'll send you a screenshot if I remember yeah sure and I'll put it in the edit uh yeah well you know it is

full of task there there are millions millions millions of tasks on our moboard so there there has to be some selection some Arbitrage for what you do and what you don't do that's that's just normal yeah but for for a lot of things I wish we would have listened more to the community community and I would definitely say the community has very very actively shaped how Throne fall looks like during access okay like their their feedback was very valuable cuz we we got a lot of live feedback for which kind of levels they like which kind of levels they don't like and which bosses they like what was too easy what was too difficult you could make a lot of adjustments there before launching out of Early Access and as mentioned launching out of Early Access is is not like this crazy crazy second release it's it's more like it communicates to the players that okay the game is done cuz there are a couple of players that

don't like purchasing Early Access games they're like I want to purchase this when it's done so that's just basically the way to reach those kind of players that who like holding out for that moment right well there's a big question that I've had and I I struggle this goes back to sort of um how we as game developers how we search and find what's working in our game whether it's the art the music the development I'm sorry the mechanics and so I've I've sort of got five little circles here and they include family and friends they include a YouTube audience this is just my my little circles X my Twitter following um Instagram my Instagram following but then there's also Steam and that's your steam audience and that that really only can get built with Early Access so this is stuff that these are these are these are samples we can listen to to help us determine how to

grow our game and how to scale it um so my question for you is who do you listen to who should we listen to the most in in those circles because I think your circles are similar right you've got a social following you've got your YouTube following and you also have your audience of players who are playing Throne fall who are the people to listen to and who should we not listen to as we scale our game M that's a very interesting question I have never never really thought about it that deeply but just I think from my gut feeling I would say the first people I really really listen to our other game developers especially game developers who have successfully released games before mhm because um players don't always know what they want right as I've mentioned before we we should have listened to them maybe a little bit more but in general I think if you design a game by just listening to players it's probably not going to turn out so well you like you have to

you need your own Vision kind of you you need to be very careful about your search process and design decisions and I think other game developers especially the ones who who've made it before have a very good understanding of how that process works how players react to certain things so that that is very valuable and then the second on on place two would just be the players the people who are actually interested in your game and actually playing the game as men in in many cases you should listen to them more than you probably do yeah and the the the the tricky thing about listening to players is always that you need to read between the lines a little bit especially so essentially what I would say is listen to the problems players have but don't listen to their Solutions the solutions they suggest oh I love that that's brilliant so if they say oh you should you should really add uh a new enemy in this level I'm

like What's the underlying problem maybe the underlying problem is that this level is not interesting enough and then I can be like okay what can I do to most efficiently make this level more interesting and most of the time the answer is not what um what the player came up with as a solution yeah I mean this is this is highly relevant for prototyping because as you know and you are one of the people one of the game developers I listened to when I was doing beta testing for Twisted Tower um one of the big problems that I had over the summer was this crazy insecurity that boiled up inside of me even though this is my third game I feel like I know how to make solid games but this crazy insecurity boiled up in me because I had a slew of testers from game developers all the way to just random people on Twitter who played the game and I'm getting all these different kinds of feedback some of them are good you had great feedback but you had some constructive criticis as well some

people who are giving the game a five out of 10 because they just it's just not their cup of tea and so what happens is and this is especially true with prototyping and launching demos and Early Access games is you get all this feedback and you feel horrible because so much of it is really kind of insulting and they don't get it they don't understand it and so you're stuck in this search process and you're saying who who do I listen to like is this actually good or not I mean the ultimate the ultimate way to determine whether your game is good is money like if you're getting money that's the ultimate transfer of value right but when it comes to like for example posting on Twitter I I I'll post for some reason I went through this whole process last year of constantly posting stuff on Twitter and I assumed that if people liked a tweet or it got traction it meant that that screenshot was good

and that was the for example art style I needed to move forward with would you advise people to avoid doing that as they prototype their games um getting too much feedback is very dangerous in a in an early phase because in a in the early development phase you are trying to to form a vision for for what you are creating and you first of all you need to be very very certain about your design goals if if you're not certain about your design goals then you're lacking a very important filter to to filter feedback by like if you if you if you get feedback and it doesn't match your design goals then at the very least you can be like okay that doesn't match what I want to do and you can filter it out but if if you're lacking your the the easiest way to get this oriented is to not not know what you want to achieve yeah and and then ideally want to build another safety layer above that which is

like narrowing down a little bit like the vision of your game coming up with a two- sentence pitch MH like Throne fall is a minimalist game about building and Defending Your Kingdom and once you have that once you have this cor Vision defined then it also gets much much much much easier to filter through feedback because you can be like this person wants to control units with their mouse that does not fit into our Core Design Vision so we're just not going to do it no no matter how many people ask for it you're not going to do it um and if if you don't have like these filters these basic filters uh you get disoriented very very easily and another thing just touching on something else you mentioned is the pain of receiving feedback I think I have something that helps with that like a way to look at it which is no pain no gain that's right right um becoming better as a game developer and

becoming better at other skills it also requires you to get better at taking punches and the way I look at it is you know these punches you're receiving that's where a lot of other people quit they're just like okay I don't want to take this anymore I'm going to do something else so if you can withstand that and if you're like okay bring the punches and then continue going anyways that is what actually build success over the in the long in the long term so whenever I take these punches I'm I'm kind of a little bit like yeah all right bring it on if I if I make it through then 10 other people didn't and and I'm ahead right yeah so that's kind of the way to look at that I feel like absolutely dude especially when receiving feedback for your games a lot of a lot of developers like to get very apologetic and be like look this section of the game isn't done yet I don't want feedback for this section of the game or or they like no my game is not ready to

receive feedback yet I I basically need to polish up everything so that I don't have to hear uh some feedback from you that I already know about you know yeah and that's just like who cares man just just show your game just close your mouth don't say anything and just take the punches just take them enjoy them you will enjoy them like okay you know that you know that this section of the game isn't finished just let them say yeah well I think I think the reason that's look kind of Unfinished like who cares who cares seriously man I think I think the reason why game developers struggle so much with with taking feedback is because well I'll just speak for me I have a physical response that lasts for months after play testing so if somebody play tests my game I will literally be in pain like I will have stomach pain for a

month or two and so over the summer when you were testing and everyone else was testing one of the sort of first iterations of the beta test because we did multiple iterations I was just the worst father I was the worst husband and I was like physically sick for months and it's so hard so like any time anytime I think game developers think they're going to have a they're going to plan on doing a play test they I think think they procrastinate it you know especially during the early production because I'm when I first start a game I'm passionate about it I'm excited I have this gut feeling that it's going to be amazing and so I will avoid play testing because I don't want all of that confidence to crumble right how do you avoid that feeling that confidence collapsing or should you avoid it at all is it good to have your confidence collapse maybe it means you're isn't good mhm I'll say again what I said

before I think I'm i' I've been following your channel for a very long time and I think you're making some very very big jumps in your development at the moment and I think maybe part of that is that you got back some of that humility some of that Curiosity to to ask around um see how other developers do it and I think it's definitely very important to maintain some of that and that's that's you know that's something the the punches help with so honestly um just expose yourself to those punches and it helps keep you on the ground a little bit and yeah yeah I think it I think it definitely helps what was the question well the question is the question is there there's a difficulty because when when people when when game developers do play testing they they they become insecure and they and they they lose motivation for their game so on one hand hand you've got developers who they'll take your advice and they'll say okay I'm

going to take the punches what if those punches are so severe that they imply that the game should be quit how do you know when to quit because the punches are so bad and you need to start a new prototype or you need to keep going how do you know okay so you're touching on a on a very difficult conundrum here which is I I sort of describe it as the conundrum between shiny object syndrome and zost fallacy which are kind of two different fallacies you can can fall into on the one side of the spectrum you have sunk cost fallacy which is um you know I've spent one year on this I have to finish it no matter what you know I've spent already spent so much time on it and while it while it would be the far better decision to just quit and start from scratch so that's sort of developing a blindness for the fact that you should really start start over and then on the other side of the spectrum you have the shiny object

syndrome which is the exact opposite where you're like constantly quitting your projects and yes are like ah no this project is not the right one no this project is not the right one and you constantly start new things and you also don't get anywhere and both of these are equally dangerous and I think the best way to to avoid both of them is to have a very structured design process where at the very beginning you already try out multiple ideas and if at the very beginning you already try out multiple ideas you you kind of avoid the the sun cost fallacy trap a little bit because you already the likelihood that you're going to end up on a good idea like on a good concept is way higher and you're also avoiding shiny object syndrome a little bit because you got more more of that stuff out of your system already right you're already oh I've already tried all of these other ideas and this was the best one I'm going to stick with it so I think a structured design process that's really my my main answer to that question yeah

how it relates how it relates to feedback you're receiving obviously if if you're running your play tests too late then the punches become very very painful and potentially devastating and maybe that's also one of the things you ran into that you just uh play tested too late right the majority of the game was sort of already in a fairly finished State and if you start Play testing at this point and you figure out that there are some major floss then obviously it hurts a lot I I exactly I I can imagine that well you know it it makes me go back to what you were saying about game developers being the number one sort of resource as to whether your game is good or not um at the end of the day I and I I think I totally agree with you at the end of the day if you're going to build your let's say your house on a foundation um I think the only the strongest Foundation to build your house on is is game developers like you have

your core sort of almost like a it's almost like um what do you call them uh like a a team of advisers that are helping you run your business you know um I think that game because like for example some games might just do poorly in the beta test I know David wayy uh the creator of um we Harvest Shadows he told me in in his podcast that he got a ton of negative feedback in his Alpha Testing of the game like people just didn't get it had he listened to that and quit the game that would have been a real shame because that game is awesome so what he what he did was he took that feedback and he's like okay I'll take it but he really truly relied on the feedback of Industry leaders um including Jeff Keeley who featured his game Gamescom um point being point being I

totally agree with you that one one way to mitigate quitting the wrong game or knowing when to quit a game is exactly I I totally agree with you about um um proving it first with prototyping um and getting it out of your system but number two leaning on solid proven game developers um so that all the feedback that comes in during Alpha Testing um doesn't distract you and make you quit a project that really you shouldn't and that's why for me during beta testing there was a little um well actually no I would reach out to game developers like you and just say hey do we put more money into this project or do we just go ahead and wrap it up that was one of the one of the best ways to get feedback for me was to ask people who've made money as game developers ask them hey would you invest more money and more time into this project you know

what I mean you know what I mean yeah I I think you need still need some some like filters to sort it through cuz obviously you can if you ask a lot of game developers you'll still get contradicting information you know some will say you should make your game cartoony style others will say keep it as this there's still I don't know there there has to be this this Vision layer this filter that you just filter everything through this I don't think there's any way around that yeah like like sometimes I I try to give advice to to teams who are trying to make games and after the conversation I just feel like I confused them more than I than I helped them because they they're just overwhelmed with all of the feedback they're getting from from different people and you know the last person told them something different now I'm telling them something different again and at that point I'm just like if you're confused by the feedback you're getting the number one thing you got to do is uh EST establish those filters you're you're going to end up

confused otherwise I'm so glad you brought that up cuz I wrote down and circled like five times a big question I have for you you said establish Your Design goals establish your filters can you give me some examples of that mhm I think um so there I think there are multiple layers to these filters like the the first filter is as me mentioned your your overarching goals of what you want to achieve making a successful commercial release working on something you enjoy so for example if somebody suggests something that you don't enjoy working on then you can use that filter you've established to got it got it filter it out and then you then you build additional filters on top of that right then the next filter you build is um the core vision for your game like your two sentence pitch for throne fall that would be minimalist strategy game about building and Defending Your Kingdom if anything comes along that doesn't fit that filter we can just ignore it and if something if

feedback comes along that fits that filter then we can be like oh you're right we should do that as we should have done with some of the feedback that we got from the community yeah but ignore it anyway and so I think maybe a good way to think about it is that in the early phase of your development process you are trying to build this stack of filters step by step right you you start very wide and open prototype a lot of different ideas and then sort of as you get an idea of what you want to make and um you know it it can be confusing in the beginning that's that's just part of the process there there are a lot of ideas out there it's you you're going to have tons and tons of options it's just important that you start narrowing it down so basically you're narrowing your constraints further and further and it's important to do this slowly because if you do it too quickly and you're just like okay my constraints are this yeah then the the likelihood is high that you didn't design your constraints correctly right your design

your constraints need to be designed just as carefully as the rest of every everything else you design so I think it's important to just slowly narrow your constraints and then you can use start using that as a as a filter for feedback man that's so tough it's like what you're saying is so the framework makes sense it's practical but I found that at things like a gdd uh things like creating those filters or establishing that two sentence pitch they're definitely easier said than done primarily because game do you agree that game developers discover their game while they make it yes um is it it do does that make this this does that make the gdd irrelevant does that make the prototyping process

irrelevant um I think the purpose of game design documents is mostly to communicate within big teams I think game design documents are actually not that useful in small teams mhm I think as teams get bigger and bigger you you just for practical reasons need the game design document to make sure that everybody's on the same page that you have everything in writing so that if somebody's like Oh I thought our constraints were here then you can point to the design document and say like no our constraints are over there so that is that is a problem you have when multiple people work on something but I think in in solo project and in in tiny teams kind of not as important um maybe you know maybe if it helps you keep your constraints in mind then I think it could make sense to write it down put it in writing that I can see that helping especially for example for for these filters that

you've strongly decided on and are like we're not going to throw that overboard I think it makes sense to to to write them down for example for throne fall it really really helped our prototyping process once we had this two sentence pitch we put it on our miror board and from there on you know it got a lot easier because we we had clearly defined constraints that the fact that they're written down means they they are set into stone they they cannot be changed I think the danger with just writing a game design document from the hip is that that you're locking in too many design decisions uh too early so I think I would I would go about it more gradually and kind of you know try to do this instead of just if you if if writing a design game design document is the first thing you do for your game you know I I would be a little bit concerned that if anything that should be a

gradual process like a document that that you build over time or something yeah yeah it's a it's it's a living breathing document it's not like scripture it's like no it's going to change in morph and it and especially with bigger teams you you've got to have team members who are like assigned to the gdd and they're constantly updating it and changing it and having change logs yeah yeah I I would be maybe I would be a bit more sacred about it and be like what's written down is written down and I I I would I I think it's important I would would be important to not make it part of the culture that the game design document can constantly be changed I think it would be better to be be like very careful about what you put in your design document but then once it once it's written down it's it's not as easy to get it out of there again because otherwise you you'll end up in in one of those Loops where you constantly end up changing things and not really going anywhere well you know it's it's whe the question is whether the gdd is the uh it it directs what

your game is versus it's a resource for the team um yeah and that's the that's the struggle I find is like sometimes it's a resource and sometimes it's this sort of Constitution that keeps your game uh within a certain frame um cuz I found that our team we would use it as a resource a lot like it's like what's gun's purpose you know um what's this gun's visual style what's this level's theme and that stuff changed and so we had to tweak it and change it so that the team could use it as a resource um but I totally agree with you that there are there I will I will just say there are definitely aspects of the gdd that are foundational that need to stay locked in for example the two- sentence pitch if the two sentence pitch is part of your gdd which I think it should be I think it should be right at the top of the gdd you got the name of the game and

the two- sentence pitch but I have a question for you about the two- sentence pitch which is why does that matter because it's a a filter for everything that comes after it is it and go ahead and there's there's one more reason that's very important because it is a way for you to communicate what your game is to the player efficiently a lot of developers I see they just make a game and then once it's done they figure out oh hold on how how do I explain my game to players and and they realize that it can't be it can't be explained in a two sentence bip it's a it's a platformer Metroid Vania with puzzle elements that also has Rog like and Skil tree and you know there's a story and then like it's it's too much so having a two- sentence pitch early on makes makes sure guarantees you that there is is an easy way to describe your game because not every game can be described easily but if you want to

succeed commercially it is highly recommended you make a game that can be described easily yes because if you if you can't even explain your game there are a lot of things you're going to struggle with you're also going to struggle with finding Publishers with getting funding from Kickstarter like if you can't even easily explain what you're making how how can you expect anybody to to follow along you know everybody's attention spans are so so it's not easily explainable that's a huge disadvantage so better better lock that in early why is efficiency important though like that I'm trying to dig down into 2025 because we'll get there but you said two set pitches are important because it efficiently efficiently communicates the idea of the game to an audience why is why is efficiency important and I'll preface this with some some games from the 90s and the 2000s early 2000s they weren't efficient in how they communicated things right they they were well they

were inventive so like for example if I had to pitch Metroid in the 1990s uh to let's say an investor I'm not so sure that that game is a two- sentence pitch um Star Wars if I'm going to pitch Star Wars the intellectual like the IP of Star Wars the films if I'm George Lucas and I'm going to pitch that I'm not so sure that it's simple in its pitch so my question to you is why is it first you agree with that premise that some things that are successful aren't simple but secondly why does efficiency matter right now for game developers I think efficiency in explaining your game matters a lot because expectation management is kind of the name of the game on Steam like expectation management is extremely extreme extremely important on Steam for one simple reason you do want the people

who enjoy your game to download it but you do not want the people who don't enjoy it to download it so you have to communicate very very quickly and efficiently who your game is for what your game is and if you fail to do so then the wrong people are going to download your game they're not going to enjoy it and they're going to leave a thumbs down and that hurt that hurts your game uh massively so what you want to do is uh you you want to have a very precise two- sentence pitch and you know that not only helps the customer understand your game better it also helps yourself to understand your game better cuz if the explanation for what your game is is like three paragraphs or something then it's not as easy to keep in mind during development you know you're bombarded with lots of different feedback and you're trying to run it through your three paragraph filter and you know your your three paragraph filter is just leaky and stuff's coming out and it's not not really as tight as you want it

to be you want you want a nice elegent filter that works properly you don't want want a three paragraph filter that doesn't really Define what you want to do properly and has a yeah things don't get more precise when you add more words and the other thing is that that it doesn't mean that you can't innovate that is not at all what I wanted to say you can describe Innovative things within two sentences and if if you can't then you need to you need to find a way to and you need to do it early in the process cuz um later in the process if you figure out that you can't do it it's going to be too late gotcha so the two sentence pitch is both a developmental advantage and a marketing Advantage so it serves two things at once um yeah for sure I love what you said things don't get more precise with more words that is so good and and like you can expand that into everything um into

development things don't get uh more more precise with more mechanics with more code you know uh with more art styles more fonts more colors it they doesn't get better it gets worse it degrades the more you try to I it's almost like putting lipstick on a pick you know but for me when it comes to why efficiency is so important with this two sentence pitch I think do you think it also has to do with Supply so the more games we have the more competition we have therefore the less time we have to make a pitch to the audience so you got to I think that's a very wellknown fact right that attention spans are very short and the way most people browse steam is they look at your store page for 4 seconds and then they click on the next game so right you don't have you really don't have time it it needs to be super obvious what your game is yeah and that brings me into the final sort of question I

have for you today for today's podcast which is 2025 um all of this like dude my notepad is just chocked full of stuff like I love writing everything you've you've said is so good today and this is all applicable to 2025 which is what let's say let's say you have a son and he's 15 years old his name his name is Jonas Jr and he's like Dad I want to do what you did I want to start my own game Studio what what do what do you tell him in 2025 what's the strategy first of all I would teach him the design process how to design things I would try to teach them how to take feedback correctly um to to teach them how how to take the punches properly and not be discouraged by them and yeah then then would then would just recommend pretty much what I'm doing I think this model you you know

it's kind of you're right it's a difficult industry it's this very red ocean there are a lot of games out there nobody's saying it's easy right it's very very difficult very competitive space and essentially the way to succeed is to just end up on the top of the food chain that's sort of I guess the way to do it at the moment and the way to do that is like this is something I think I should give my uh game School some credit for because that's something they they stressed a lot um is the process the process designs your end result right the process is what what leads to the end result so you cannot you cannot only apply your design principles to the end product you can also apply design principles to your process mhm and you constantly need to look at your processes and how you processes how you

go about things how how you design things the better your processes the better your final result is going to be so especially in an industry that is constantly changing it is I think it's more important than ever to to constantly re-evaluate how you make games and and your processes and to adjust them if necessary yeah man I think I think people listening it's hard for them I mean it's hard for me to hear that too because well first off it's like well I don't want to make a successful game I just want to make games as a hobby yeah I think that that's fine the problem with that is that the problem with that is that it's un it's eventually it's I'll speak for me it's eventually it's unsatisfying because even the funnest game idea gets boring and you eventually burn out and so a good motivator is well okay I am done enjoying this game as a developer now it's the audience's turn

to enjoy this game AKA transfer of value you give me money you enjoy the game and so there's another layer of enjoyment which is I'm building a business I'm an entrepreneur I'm now making money streamers are playing my game The Press is covering my game so that's why I think it's important to try and pursue success financially as a game developer because it's another layer of Joy once you get rid of the the dev velopment Joy because it it goes away for everybody um you can move on to the next layer which is how do we sell this thing you know I think it's okay to have very very different design goals for example I think I have a couple of friends who just do not care about money at all they're just like they they're like these creative minds they have a very specific vision for something very specific they want to make and they're perfectly aware of the fact that there's not a big a for that at all and they're just like I want to make that and you know fair enough more power to them it's

it as mentioned it all comes down to your design goals yeah like this this very bottom fundamental layer that you build everything on if you're aware of your design goals and your design goals do not include monetary gain then that's perfectly fine you know it it that that shapes everything you build on top because if you don't care about money at all then it opens up a lot of other doors that otherwise you wouldn't have access to it closer some others maybe it's just a different process and that's why it's important to be aware of your design goals but one thing I do AG agree with that you said is that I think a lot of developers that do not care about the money side of things they at at the very least most of them care about getting their games played you know watching people play their game watching people enjoy their game and that is a very similar goal in the end yeah it is well I this is a totally random question for you and it's mainly for selfish reasons

I just wanted to get your thoughts on this yeah sure should is early and often a good marketing strategy anymore meaning sharing screenshots of your game sharing concepts of your game getting wish list early creating a steam page early building your brand identity early or is it changing H wish lists do matter there's no way around that wish lists obviously matter the way you market and sell a game on Steam is for the most successful games steam will give you 90% of your traffic if not more probably for our games was probably probably more like 99 95% of all of the traffic you get is directly from Steam so the only thing you're trying to do with with other promotion that you do elsewhere is really just to Kickstart the steam

algorithm and the thing is I think these algorithms are getting better and better I don't think there's a way to trick these algorithms into thinking you have a good game when you don't like these these algorithms they have access to so much data they know exactly how long people play your game they know exactly how long people spend on your store Page they know how many of those people wish list your game they they just have they essentially have very very hard evidence for for how interested people are in your game obviously they they don't always know like the artistic value or or how maybe if your game hasn't launched it they don't know how fun your game is but they they have very very hard data on how your game performs compared to other games and you know the the best way to trick the algorithm into giving you more visibilities to just make a better game that more people are interested yep there like I don't think there are really any cheats or Hecks here just

just make a better game that that I used to say just make a great game now I also talked to Chris Zukowski and now my perspective has shifted a little bit to just make a great game and make the right game cuz unfortunately not all jores seem to be created equal um there are some differences yeah a good game is a right game is that what you're saying I mean no that's not exactly what I'm saying but you could frame it that way like if if I say just make great games if if I say that then it means a lot of things right for me a great game means a game that is also marketable fun appealing replayable it making a great game entails a lot of qualities yeah but one in particular that I kind of glossed over I think a bit too much is you also need to make the right game the right game just means uh a game that people

are actually interested in for example the like the main example from Chris owski there is just usually that Platformers don't tend to do very well on Steam they're just y a they're too many of them and B players on Steam are actually not not that interested in them so even if you make a really great Banger platform it's just not going to do as well as if you had made a different game so the the way to to please the steam algorithm is to make a great game but also to make the right game that people on Steam actually want to play and you can be a little bit like oh that's chasing Trends or um but I want to make something different and if if that's the case if that's part of uh Your Design goals fair enough y but like if you're optimizing for uh Revenue then unfortunately it's something you have to think about like not not all genres do equally well on Steam okay okay would you would you agree Jonas that a good process leads to a good

game it should it should yeah it definitely increases your chances so in a way it's like don't try and don't try and magically make a good game appear out of nowhere instead it's like no here's the process of finding a good game in your brain you find it and as a team right like you did with um with Paul it's just this let's play in the sandbox of process let's create our filters and our parameters and we will dig up and almost like an archaeological dig we're going to find the good game but it's within a process and with parameters in that process I think you're totally right I think the reason why a lot of developers struggle with this is because it's very difficult and unenjoyable to scrap your work but unfortun if you want to perform a proper search process then you need to you just need to be willing to scrap a

lot of your work and I feel like for a lot of developers it feels like they're wasting their time right if you make 20 different prototypes and only end up using one of them then if use a little bit like the other 19 were like a waste of time in a way yeah yeah um yeah but it it's it's still the correct way to go about it of course so you need to find find processes that work H you need to design design your processes intentionally so that they work to in your advantage yeah and then once you have good processes then yeah just just trust the process and a good process will usually lead to a good outcome for example for for one of my games will you snail I I'll just admit that I didn't follow my my own advice at all I just I came up with a random game idea and I spent four years working on it that was completely stupid like it was completely either a lucky accident that it ended up working out or also partially maybe due to my YouTube

channel I have no clue but I I did not follow good processes for Willam correct correct I mean I didn't either for all three of my games including Twisted Tower which we're not even done with yet um it's like well we're basically done I just have to wrap up some bugs but it's like every single game that I've done in my last 15 years of making games was building a rocket without ever Without Really Ever launching a rocket and you just create the whole thing based on Instinct and all of my games have flown and they've made me money and they've made me a full-time salary but I kind of want to I'm I'm kind of ready to have a rocket that goes into the atmosphere and just once it hits the atmosphere it just floats and I'm Throne fall is doing that for you right it's like you you made it out of the atmosphere and you're now just no gravity and you're just flying right is that true with Throne

fall I mean it it'll eventually stop making money but yeah I mean I'm not sure if if it's fair for me to judge that myself but I I would say it sounds pretty fair yeah yeah okay now the the final question I have for you as we wrap up here there is no better question to ask someone who's who has succeeded in game development there's no better question to ask in my opinion then what are you going to do next because that helps us all go wait okay where is Jonas's head here Jonas is clearly a smart guy let's follow Jonas what's he gonna do yeah so I have the I I actually have a problem that maybe could be described with survivorship bias you know for some reason I managed to make three relatively successful games in a row so obviously my perspective is just keep doing the same thing just keep doing

what works yeah and me meanwhile I see all of these people who are like oh it's getting so difficult and so on and yeah it it makes me doubt some of my perspectives and I'm I'm certainly listening very carefully to to what's going on in the industry what other developers are saying I'm I'm the most important thing I think for me is just I'm I don't want to stop learning I I want to keep learning and I want to talk to more people I want to learn new tools try new engines like at the moment I'm I'm starting up a very I think a very big learning phase again because I'm like okay I've I've made enough games uh for a while let's take a little break but I'm like okay what what do what do I do with my time and I think the most the best thing I can do at the moment will be to just learn some learn some new things some new SKS so that hopefully once I uh start diving into

the next game project I'll I'll be ready for it sure I'm not sure if you have that but it's definitely like this I don't know how to describe it but this impostor syndrome it never truly goes away you're always like no no matter how many games you released you're always like will will the next one go well or you know it's it's never never a guarantee I I definitely feel that dude I definitely feel that I I feel I mean I haven't made a game as successful as Throne fall fall um the the way that I've always made money um from my games is to to to do to work with investors and Publishers and help you know Kickstarter and crowdfunding and all that to help sort of propel the game while I'm making it and so I just my Approach is just different than let's say your approach so not only do I feel survivorship bias but I also feel like my Lane is totally different than your lane um and so I and sometimes I just

feel very lonely in that lane and that lane being I always secure funding before I even I never self-publish granted I'll probably do that for the next game but I I I'm I'm in the same position as you right now which is we're wrapping up Twisted Tower my team has finished the game and so the team is moving on to other projects and so what am I left with I'm left with a dream of making 2025 the year where I quietly listen to the industry and learn just like you're saying um I may start a game completely solo but I'm probably going to do it privately for a while um but people are probably wondering why all the podcasts I've been posting are constantly talking about what's the plan for 2025 yeah and the reason why is cuz I think everybody including Anan blow who I just had a podcast with I'm just we're just like what's what is in 2025 like

what does the game industry look like um because I feel like it's this Phoenix coming out of the ashes and we don't really know what it's going to look like and so for me I I do I do want to spend a lot of time just learning privately and I I'll do devlogs about it but I think for me yeah like 2025 is going to be a year taking a break after we finish Twisted Tower and just learning um because I my my I'm nervous that I'm going to get old and not keep up with this CRA the crazy changes of the industry you know what I mean it's just changing so fast so that's the plan for me yeah yeah that that sounds very reasonable just just keep learning yeah uh try your best to stay humble um yeah

and I'm very much looking forward to making my next game I'll probably make another game with Paul and currently I'm thinking multiplayer might be an interesting thing to sort of explore and to maybe challenge myself with sure but it's still still very early times I'm I'm not entirely sure oh man I'm enjoying a little bit of a break from from bigger projects yeah I I would do that I would def defitely do that yeah multiplayer scary multiplayer scary so I I would love I'm sure you'll do amazing I'm going to I'm going to watch you from afar with baited breath because multiplayer is tough because you have to build that community and that Community has to show up uh and play the game so we'll see man I'm excited for you yeah yeah the pressure is constantly on yep yeah all righty um yeah thank thanks so much for inviting me on the podcast was very very enjoyable I hope I was able to deliver a couple of useful nuggets to all of you watching there thanks very much for watching all the way to the end yeah I think you did but okay link is in

the link is in the description for for throne fall fall um and also your YouTube channel um yeah dude thanks man that was great thank you thank you thank you cheers cheers all right guys if you thought this was really helpful just remember if you want to learn how to make games fulltime in 2025 if you want to be an indie game developer from your bedroom I can teach you what what I've done I've been doing this for 10 years I've secured deals with armor games Serenity Forge 3D Realms I've done two Kickstarter campaigns which basically raised $100,000 each I know how to get funded with just a demo and I'm going to teach you how to do it for Black Friday you're going to get 50% off full-time Game Dev and you're also going to get 2D art Pro and 3D art Pro which are my 2D and 3D art programs they're going to be completely free I rarely do a sale like this this lasts for a short time and there's only 50 seats available so please check it out below if you dream of making Indie Games full-time in 2025 I have 4,000 students worldwide I think

you're going to love it take a look below these seats will sell out all right cheers I love you thanks for hanging out bye cheers happy Christmas Harry