How This Game Dev Got 100 Million Views In 1 Day — Full Time Game Dev Podcast Ep. 005

uh long story short you made choo choo Charles and it just completely blew up um so that's my intro for you but I wanted you to go ahead and just give everybody an idea of who you are and what you've done what you're working on what you've worked on yeah I mean that's that pretty much I mean sums it up so I've been making games for I I just hit the 10year mark recently um started when I was 12 I've been making games for uh for PC for mobile um mostly PC lately I did published a bunch of random stuff that nobody's heard of and then recently did Choo Chu Charles which went pretty viral just all across the internet uh with gameplay videos and the trailers and um I did a Dev vog series for it on my YouTube channel which also did pretty well and gained a lot of attention for the game um released it last December so about a year ago now and did very well um it met and slightly

exceeded expectations uh my own expectations and yeah it it did well it did well so now I'm kind of at this point just working on Console porting um working on a new game and uh that's about it well I have a question for you so before we started this call I was thinking me and my wife are watching Lord of the Rings I don't have you seen Lord of the Rings I have okay I wasn't I know how old are you by the way I'm 22 yeah so you're 22 so I wasn't sure considering I don't think it was out when you were like I think it came out before you were born Maybe I'm Wrong um but anyway we were watching it and you know you watch Gandalf the gy and then he dies and then spoiler alert he comes back as Gand off the white and I kind of feel like you've entered that Gavin the white phase of game development which is you did something that no one else no one else

I I would say probably nobody in this listening to this podcast knows where you're at because you you were that successful with your game do you feel do you feel like you've kind of s like do you feel like you've entered a realm that no one can really understand is it a is it a lonely place to be it's it's a it's an interesting question it's an inter interesting question um yeah you know it's that's it's a weird one right cuz it's like I feel like if I say yes which I would uh it does sound a little cocky yeah but yeah well it's not cocky it's um it's just no one no one can understand what it's like to to do as well as you did with with launching this game it was just a real in terms of just the quality of the game like it's not even about the success of the game just the quality like so many game developers they just they struggle to reach that level of quality and have you found it difficult

to have have you found it difficult to communicate with other game developers or just friends in your life um about kind of what it's like to be in in your shoes now is that is that yeah so I mean yeah basically there's only there's like two people in my life two friends that are also game developers and a couple of them are uh also pretty successful they're in a similar kind of situation a toate it and you it's EAS to talk with them about that kind of stuff just like because you know there's so many things that you you don't expect and that you don't really take into account uh when you're just making games and then all of a sudden when you've got something that people have actually played it it is a bit different um as far as like people like in my personal life I just don't talk about it much yeah I'm just like I'm chilling you know

I think that's wise dude because I mean it's just like I I don't know like um you could piss people off really quick if all you talk about is how I mean how successful you've been how how yeah or like oh my job is so hard but like to hear that much isn't it true though isn't it true Gavin though that your job is difficult um like it's it's difficult in a different kind of way uhhuh you know is that it's like I'm not hauling brick well you know there's a lot of people you know that they're hauling bricks they're doing physically difficult strenuous things they are very tired at the end of the day yeah you know that's a difficult kind of job the stuff that I'm doing you know I mean I'm sitting in front of a computer for you know however many hours a day yeah and analyzing markets for months on end and doing all kinds of different research and programming and stuff and it's like a lot a lot of people they look at

that and they're like well you're just sitting at a computer all day you're making video games that's just that's a fun job what are you talking about that's not hard yeah um it's I don't know it it's just one of those things it's very difficult to explain to people that haven't done it and since I mean a lot of the people watching this probably are game developers they kind of they they get what yeah what we're talking about just through like the production side of things just where stuff is sure it's always more difficult than it looks you know we we all make it look easy well I know you do and I think that um we'll talk all about why why when I watch when I watch your devlogs or when I just observe you from a distance it seems so easy how you make games like you're so you're so fast and you're a solo developer yet you basically made a double A looking game so we'll talk all about that production side one final question about this though is there an emotional side to game development cuz you mentioned

production side is difficult just the the sitting at a desk and and building a house of cards and the constant stress of the game breaking and deadlines and all that right juggling 10 different skills at once creating this this this world so that's all difficult but do you feel a pressure do you feel a pressure to make something like choo choo Charles again to make a game that has virality and do you feel that kind of pressure absolutely yeah I mean so it's like there's definitely an emotional as side to game development just just to start off it's you know when you're working cuz I think the main thing at least for me is when you you make a plan you make a schedule you think you know what your game is and you work on it for 5 months and then all of a sudden you realize what you thought your game was is awful and now you need to change it and then you got you have to spend like a week completely reframing your mindset and all of your plans and goals and

schedule that you laid out years ahead M and completely refactor that and that's that's just something that you have to do like every few months and just trying to you know meeting expectations pressure from you know with Chuchu Charles it was kind of a unique scenario cuz people wanted it um ahead of launch so there was a bit of you know pressure from players and stuff yeah and I mean now that that game is out and I'm working on a new project it's um definitely one of these things where it's like you know I don't want to be a one hit wonder like I want to make more successful games that are as big or bigger than choo choo Charles and um you know trying to I don't know it's that's been one of those things that I've been trying to figure out just recently even you know like where trying to figure out like where I need to like be getting my motivation from because like a lot of me is still really focused on Charles and the the

success that I had with that and it's almost difficult to let go of that and just get onto a a new project that I can fully commit to just cuz it's it's like such a big risk working on something completely different and new so yeah there's there's always some weird sort of emotional stuff going on with game devel in terms of the motivation for your next game um and yeah dude if you don't want to talk about this we can cut it but like in terms of the motivation is do you find yourself thinking whatever I create I want it to be as good as Choo Cho Charles as opposed to the initial reasons why you made games which is I just want to make a game that I like do you find yourself in a different situation than you used to be in a little bit I mean I've always been focused on you know trying to make games that lots of of people enjoy him and

that lots of people want to play him um you know and I mean that was a focus on on Choo Chu Charles right and you know that hasn't changed but I think there probably is a little more pressure on just the side of like I need to top Charles and it's it's like it is it is kind of one of these things where like the longer I make games the more it moves away from from hobby into job and um you know obviously like that's fully self opposed I could just make games that like I would you know that I would want to play all day I could do that but it's just I don't know I've just kind of decided that yeah um going the route of like you know just making stuff cuz I don't know I I enjoy when people like what I'm making you know yeah um when people are all hyped for it people are all on board they're playing it that's probably the most rewarding thing mhm for for I mean

so yeah and that's I think that's oddly it it's um I think that's a perspective that most game developers don't have um because what you just said is essentially you said the pure version of I want to make a game that people want to buy you know like I mean pretty much yeah but at the end of the day to make a game that people want to buy is means that or to G to make a game that's marketable a AKA that means you're making a game that people want and there is a there is a part of you and I think this is a a good thing there's a part of you that wants to make something for people as opposed to for yourself and I think a lot of game developers they get so stuck in the mindset of creating something for themselves the problem with that is that yourself and your desires change throughout the two-year development process so you can never please yourself so you're always adding crap that you shouldn't be adding you know what I mean true yeah yeah 100% it's like it's kind of one of these things where when you're making games

for other people it's almost like you never fully have that like Goldilocks period where you're just completely infatuated with what you're creating but you never get to the point of like purely despising it so it's like it's like a little bit more of a of an even experience uh throughout development emotionally I guess yeah um yeah it it is a different a different way of approaching things I suppose I think it's a it's a it's a I think in a weird way it's a Pur way to make games the older I get the more I'm like if I make this game if I if the initial impetus of this game is to be profitable I'll be in a better head space because I'll treat it more like it's a business more like it's a product and it won't consume me it won't become my my baby it won't become my obsession but rather it's just a project as if I was a business owner right same sort of thing um well let's talk about the initial because you've grown so much

since when you started so let's go all the way back to the beginning of production this is going to be more of a I would love it to be a more technical conversation about the tools you used and how you made this game cuz I look at it and I'm like I was pretty frustrated to be completely honest with you when I first saw it cuz I was thinking how did he do this I mean I think you started it when you were 19 right um uh yeah yeah that was like when I first kind of came up with the concept so yeah take me back to the beginning and just tell me the story of making this thing yeah so let's see here so first thing um I guess I'll just quickly go over the tools that I use just for for reference for everybody um so I use Unreal Engine 4 for CH Charles um I'm now on Onre Engine 5 which is it's basically the same thing for anybody wondering um I use [ __ ] for all of my 2D art and then I use blender for any custom 3D stuff that I what's your 2D art by the way just just for clarity

yeah yeah so uh 2D art that's going to be anything like marketing materials poster art stuff like that or um texture art okay so what I did with a lot of choo Cho Charles in order to um kind of set apart the style um because I think that you know just having an just a unique art style is it's good for your branding and it's good for you know A Game's recognizability so what I do is when I download assets which is something that I do lot in order to speed up development I'll take the textures throw them into [ __ ] I've got like a um one of those like digital sketch pads and I'll draw over the textures just real quick just kind of a nice scribbly style um the scribbly style kind of helps uh feed into the horror aspect so it's it's a little rougher around the edges and makes it a little bit quicker to to actually execute mhm so scribble over those um bring bring him back into the editor and boom then then you got a a

retextured asset but um in any case so that's like kind of what the the 2D side of stuff looks like so from a production standpoint I think one of the main things was the pre-production on chuchi Charles was very fast it was very very fast uh rushed even um at the time I was in a situation where I kind of needed a game idea quick and I needed um to announce a game quick cuz I just I mean I didn't have any income um and my best bet for income at the time was making another game so um I spent probably about two weeks concepting the game trying to think of um unique characters that I could throw in there uh some fun gameplay with like an easy easy enough to make gameplay Loop and so after 2 weeks I had a pretty solid idea of like kind of

the kind of the foundation of the game like I didn't know I didn't have a full list of all the missions that I wanted for example I didn't have a full list of all the different guns that I wanted but I knew that I should have a handful of different guns that you could get from missions I knew that I should have a couple of required missions MH and I knew that there should be a spider train did you know tracks sorry to interrupt you did you know if um were you using a kit or a template and then you could find yourself to that unreal template and for those of you listening but what I mean by template is like unreal offers a firsters shoor template they offer a third person template did you did you confine yourself when you were creating this this idea did you confine yourself to a template um sort of I mean I used the what did I use well actually technically so what I used was a a first person template that wasn't made

by unreal it was sort of an asset it was meant to be like a a high Mobility character controller that had like vaulting and um crouching and all a whole bunch of stuff kind of like a doom style character um not not exactly it was just like a it was more like um like a parkour character oh okay gotcha but um as development went on I just ended up stripping out most of that stuff down to point where it was basically just the default Unreal Engine character controller cool uh just for like a first person kind of game so um most of the systems were kind of built from the ground up it's just that a lot of the systems are pretty simple um so things like the inventory interaction system stuff like that so you mentioned the spider so you mentioned and you you ended ended your sentence earlier you said and I wanted a spider train now I hope you don't gloss over that because that's why this game is wild I mean I

don't want to I I don't want to discredit your ability to create a great game that looks beautiful but the spider train is why correct me if I'm wrong but that's why the game was wildly successful um that's why it was viral yeah which yeah for sure which was needed right I mean you you do you need that virality that's crucial okay absolutely if you don't have that then you get no marketing so and that's a problem I mean did did you just you don't have to tell me where you came up with the idea maybe you found it on Creepy Pasta on Reddit I don't know or did you just wake up one night and like spider train like can you can you give us a background of how that idea came about cuz that to me is like you just you just stumbled upon a gold mine and it's just a simple idea but that idea exploded your career right so for me um I was trying to think of ways because I was seeing kind of this trend and it's become a a very popular Trend in in horror um these

days to the point where a lot of people are actually pretty sick of it but at the time this trend didn't really exist it wasn't a widespread thing that people knew about so I had noticed that games like Five Nights at Freddy's or um bendy and the ink machine were taking characters that were kind of nostalgic and then they would put them in a horror context so with Five Nights at Freddy's you're taking these pizzer animatronics it's a nostalgic location you know these sort of like creepy you know animatronics that you'd see in like Chuck-E-Cheese right they've got those in there as well and so I was trying to think of things that most people would have been familiar with as kids that I could um turn into a spooky character right and so I was realizing you know there's really not that many horror games based on um kids TV shows and so for me my favorite TV show when I was growing up was Thomas the Tank

Engine so what I did was I was like well well I'll just take Thomas take Thomas make him spooky make him scary make him evil and um as I was trying to figure out a good character design for that how I could you know really pull that off um the there's this animator on YouTube and Tik Tok called uh Tom coin and he did these really cool animations that went viral I don't know five six seven years back where it was the Tank Engine with like spider legs and this big snake head and stuff I was like you know I could take the spider leg aspect from that yeah pair it up with you know this kind of a creepy clown demon looking face yep and I could have a pretty cool design so that's where the design for it came from um was just taking something that people would be kind of familiar with yeah and um than just going crazy with it so yeah I think that's brilliant I think that is that is brilliant and I think that I mean I'm

doing that with Twisted Tower um with like all the all the different creepy characters you meet in this uh theme park we're taking like we're giving this sort of creepy Disney Vibe and of course of course you you're definitely an inspiration um and we'll probably see a ton of games that come out that have that I guess You' call it corrupt TV show or corrupt children's characters um in the game so it's nothing uh new at this point but you're right you you were on the cusp of it um cool so you had that idea um so what was next yeah so at that point so that was really what I kind of based the game around so when I knew that okay spooky trains were going to be involved I figured well it'd be fun to drive around on a train so I was like okay well I have to have a train that you can drive around in and then in order to make that more engaging and feel like a more personal experience I was like okay well I'll throw in some upgrades throw in some custom weapons Maybe you can uh color your train got to mention coloring the

train was probably one of the best features that I added to the game really that's I I swear this is obviously a little bit of an exaggeration but like probably half of the sales that the game got were just people that wanted to color the terrain what can you exp can you oh go ahead sorry I don't want to interrupt you I don't want interrupt you go ahead so I I'll get back to to your thought in a second but um I was looking at my YouTube analytics trying to figure out what my most viewed YouTube video was of all time and at first I was like oh hey here's the trailer which had like 5 million views and I was like well I guess that's it and then I remembered I've got a bunch of shorts on YouTube which is sort of like uh the Tik Tok competitor yeah um on but on YouTube and so I realized my most viewed video on all of YouTube is a 20 second video where I show people all the different colors that they can put on their train um paint colors so you can recolor it to

be blue or green or black or white or whatever that video is 5.5 million views and it's just me showing the different colors of the train so a lot of people really liked that one but um in any case so your question was um my question was I want you to can you break down I don't want to derail you here with your with your story about the the the creation of the game this is so important to me because we we've been about doing customization for Twisted Tower like being able to customize the color scheme of your character so that the guns you carry are specific color um why why do you feel like that's why the game was more profitable is it does it have to do with streamers do you know what I'm asking um I don't know if it's streamers specifically um but I think a big part of it is just it feels personal yeah you know like if

if you can make it feel a little bit more personal to the players and and you give them some of that um you know no matter what it might be like if it's you know recoloring your you know your guns skins for your guns and and stuff like that I mean that's that's how a lot of games make most of their revenue you know is by having gun skins Stu like that but you didn't do you didn't do inapp purchases or anything like that no no no it's it's all free so the way that I have it set up is that the different colors are just Collectibles so if you find the different colors then you can add them to your train cool um yeah so the reason I the reason I bring this up as as it correlates to streamers is because the game is I don't think this is a a surprise to you or me but like the game is fairly short right it's a solo game and and you made a game that's pretty short I think it's like 2 three hours um four maybe yeah three four hours for like an average play through yeah so it's it's a short game and you can it's not super variable like you can

choose which which path you want to go down but it's not like you can change the story right um yeah yeah starts in the same place ends in the same place so it's not linear but if you look at point A to point to the end it's it's not that variable point being if a streamer is playing this game and it's got a million views because it's got that Viral aspect to it that is not necessarily enough to make a successful game you've got to add that extra ingredient which is the viewers watch the video or the stream and they say I want to play that but I want to do it my way and if you're G and this is just a suspicion so correct me if I'm wrong the goal is okay if I don't have a game that's super variable where it's procedurally generated or the player has a ton of creative control let me at least give them one tiny creative element that has high value so in this

case yeah being able to create a pink train that has high value despite the fact that it is meaningless on the gameplay side but it's hilarious right yeah and so that's what that's why I think that's why I mentioned streamers because I'm like people want to they see a stream and then they want to do their version of that stream you know what I mean yeah yeah okay I I would definitely agree with that okay yeah that's that's great dude that is such good Insight because those of you listening I think that it's it's definitely important to think what can I what can I add that's high value that takes very little time and so being able to color the train I mean how long did that take you to create that mechanic oh probably a solid half a day two I was expecting you to say half a month oh great yeah half a day man dude that's a that is that's incredible um okay Okay cool so uh let's get back to

your story yeah so let's see so where were we at we're talking design pre-production um yeah so just kind of figuring out what all the game mechanics like all the foundational mechanics should be MH so figured out that I should have you know trains upgrades guns and a bunch of different side missions in an open world and that you'd be chased down by a spider train so pretty much I decided okay these are the confines that I'm going to work within and I'm going to stick to this because I think this is really solid and all the you know figuring out how the individual missions are going to work figuring out specifically how the AI is going to function figuring out exactly how the game is going to end things like that I'll figure out as I go over time throughout development rather than trying to spend 3 months in pre-production just you know kind of wasting time walking around figuring out how this stuff is going to going to work so what I did was I quickly in the first

month of development my goal was to create a trailer and screenshots and a description of the game that I could use to launch a steam page and the game trailer and kind of gauge interest to start gaining wish list so I could start um taking part in online events and stuff like that so I launched the trailer at the end of or no beginning first day of October in 2021 or two or something I don't know and so that blew up got a lot of traction and then from that point it was just production time it just time to really focus in on building out all of the systems do you mind if I ask a question about this um sure did you have a you say you you're when you said earlier I figured that I needed weapons I needed a train I needed to be able to color my train was this all just written down or was it a prototype yeah yeah so this is just written down um you a g in

the first couple weeks it was just yes yeah absolutely you need a gdd everyone watching you need a gdd if you're working on any project larger than a game Jam game you need a game design document you know organize your thoughts organize your ideas um keep track of what you're doing and make notes it's important did you so did you have the loop the game Loop written down is exactly how it worked yeah pretty much okay um game Loop looked like you know drive train to new location do a mission get an upgrade drive to a new location you know that kind of stuff okay um one more question and then we can move on to the production side if you're cool with that sure um well two questions how long did the gdd take you two weeks for the initial like kind of foundation of it right I started production after about two weeks so day Zero is no idea at all or day Zero is actually I have all the ideas in my head and then I'm going to write it out for two weeks I think Day Zero was I want to

make a game about a spider train so once I once that idea came up that's kind of when I considered the start of pre-production when I started kind of trying to flesh out like what I could create around this concept so the way it works for me is there's like 20 different ideas ping ponging around in my head at all times for new game ideas and the skill of capturing or figuring out which idea is going to be the the best idea that's skill is few and far between most game developers have 30 ideas in their head and they tend to pick the one that for some reason it doesn't scare them as much um it seems doable um or they understand it but they don't pick the game idea that's actually going to be successful or profitable what was the what was the process like of deciding that or or understanding that this idea would work did you know it would work was it like obvious to you spider train this is going to blow

up um I'm gonna say I didn't know it would blow up um but I felt like it hit a lot of the right marks um it obviously it did way better than I was anticipating kind of when I was first thinking through the concept I was like you know this seems like a game that could make like I was like this could make a couple hundred grand like it's seems possible like it seems like it could be a you know one of these kind of midlevel successful profitable sort of games um and you know it did much better but um I I think for the most part it was kind of just an intuition at that point cuz like I didn't I wasn't expecting it to be quite this big at all you know but I was like okay it seems like an interesting concept this seems like a funny thing that people would talk about a bit and that people would you know maybe share with their friends and um it just it was that and a lot

more which I didn't quite anticipate so it was just this Instinct I guess I think it's just comes from making games for as as long as I have and having published a lot of games that's the other thing is how many had you published I think at that point like eight or something like that there you go um so I had a lot of data points you know I kind of knew all the things that didn't work at that point and that's something that just comes with time you know a lot of time and a lot of releases so is it fair for me to say that it's not Instinct it's just a muscle that you practiced and exercised I mean I I guess yeah it's it's a developed Instinct yeah have you ever had a game that was viral prior to this one not really um so the game that I made just before um before Chuchu Charles well the the commercial game that I'd made right before JJ Charles was my beautiful paper smile yeah and it's sort of like a a

2.5d point-and-click horror game mhm and it got around 20 million views on YouTube across like all the gameplay videos yeah didn't go particularly viral um it it's like it did well like by indie game standards it it did well above you know average but it still wasn't really profitable I had a publisher involved um and it just it took a really long time to make I spent like four years on that game so factoring everything in it didn't really pan out how I wanted it to but yeah so it wasn't exactly viral but it got a little bit of attention so it kind of got me on the right path so did you feel like any of these previous games you had made um and just for people who are curious for me I've made three commercial releases and then like five small games that weren't commercial and so I'm in a similar boat as Gavin I just haven't had the the massive viral

success that you've had but point being point being do you feel like it's true that game developers they need to embrace their failed projects and they they they've got to just treat it as Battle Scars yeah okay yeah 100% you know I I think a lot of people when they first get into development they want to make their first game a hit game they want to make they want to go all in on their first one because they're like I'm going to give this game the best chance that I can I'm going to put all my savings into it or I'm going to get a publisher involved I'm going to get investors and I'm going to do all this stuff to try and give this game the best chance it it possibly can um and then it fails because that's just what it does you know um you know working on your first games it should be mostly just about releasing the game you know it should just be about putting something out and putting yourself through the experience because there's always a lot of things involved in the

process that you would have no idea about your first time around you know and like putting any amount of money behind a project that you don't know anything about is a pretty risky bet you know it's like if you've been doing it for 10 years and you published a bunch of games then you're kind of at the point where you know if you've kind of developed some of these um intuition some of these muscles where you can kind of start to see how certain things could align and and work out at that point you could start putting some money behind projects that you're really confident in but early on you know it's just about getting games out trying out different things getting new data points um yeah and starting to kind of hone in those skills it's it's it's a long if you're getting into game development it's a long process yeah you're you're playing a it's a marathon you know it's not about making one hit and then retiring yeah it doesn't bare minimum I I agree with you man I think bare minimum you need to at least

release one crappy game just to know what it feels like you know to cuz a lot of people they can't handle the critique or the criticism or the the trolling of comments let's say on hio or if they do a devlog on YouTube about the game you got to accept that people are going to be nasty and once you can get over that and you can get over the idea that you're not you're not the best game developer that you have a long road ahead of you once you can accept that then you can just start having fun then it's just fun you don't have to be scared mhm you know and so I've seen this trend among a lot of game developers that I talk to which is the successful ones they they've just released so many games they've released so many games and they've figured out they've figured out what their Forte is and if you don't mind one final thing before we discuss production what do you feel like your Forte is that you've

discovered over these eight games what's your what's your the talent that you feel like you were gifted with yeah I think that's it is it is a tough one honestly I think kind of by default it would be just kind of art and Aesthetics um I think that's what I've been good at from the youngest age and I'm you know obviously I'm not the best at it I'm not a 10 out of 10 Pro or anything like that but that's probably where my skills lie most naturally um so and that's what I leaned into a lot with with my earlier games is it it is it a aesthetic with your eye or with your hand and what I mean by that is do you have an art skill with your hands that you can create stuff from scratch or is it that you have a really good eye meaning you're you're you're a good you're resourceful with assets I think both yeah okay so you're

a good illustrator I have the yeah yeah I would definitely say so cool cool yeah I I was going to say that's probably what I would I was thinking what what if I was to give Gavin one Forte it would definitely be aesthetic and atmosphere and just something that's pretty like I think the reason why the game was wildly successful is because with using Unreal using assets you you figured out how to create something that catches people's attention um that that Choo Cho Charles face is it's like every single one of your thumbnails on YouTube and rightfully so it should it should be because it's so clicky you just want to see more so let's talk about that production side about creating this this terrifying train what were the tools you used how did you create this stuff I know you mentioned unreal and and um uh y [ __ ] and stuff like that but let's talk about the production side of this you had your gdd spent two weeks on your gdd what was

the production like yeah so the production so it started out with just kind of putting together this sort of um I would call it like a visual prototype um you know just enough gameplay just enough features to create that initial uh announcement trailer so the process there was really I was just trying to do stuff as quick as possible you know um really basic programming and stuff like that so uh I started out by just trying to figure out the train system so I hopped into Unreal Engine um I started working with splines and started creating kind of just a train track system what's a spline that would allow me a spline great question Thomas a spline is when you take two or more points in space so in your game space m and you basically create a

curve uh like an interpolated curve between those two points so you can create a smooth waving curving line and then what you can do is you can attach um objects or meshes things like train tracks in this case you attach the train tracks to that spline so that it curves and waves all around whatever area so the mesh is not modular it's not modular pieces that are snapping to a grid rather it's no no is it is it is it just straight pieces that are like 20 units long or is it literally building the mesh procedurally based on the spline it's sort of a mix of both so I've got a a static track mesh that I've that I've got and then in Unreal Engine you can just snap that mesh to the spline and then that just kind of Curves it and then it'll just Loop that mesh all the way along the spline and you get

this nice curving mesh that goes all the way how did that feel when you made that dude you put together oh great it was awesome I mean that was one of just the train track system alone was one of the most um you know complicated things I've had to program just Chui Charles in general was just a massive step up in the complexity of the stuff that I had to program all the gameplay stuff cuz previously I'd just done like really simple like walking simulator type stuff these really linear story based games where I was really leaning into the story and atmosphere um so the programming was stuff that I didn't really understand much yeah so getting to put together stuff like this was was pretty cool okay so let's give our audience here let's give them an idea of what they're capable of okay so let's try and be as honest as we can do you feel like anybody could create this blind syst system or are you uniquely suited as a solo developer are you smart

with math are you smart with coding did you use blueprints did you use C++ um are you uniquely suited to create this system because I look at this game and I go I wish I could say everybody could create something like this but I think Gavin's special I think he's he's a wizard um what do you think I I wouldn't say special I think just that um I don't know oddly dedicated and willing to be beat up by a computer I I guess that'd be a decent summary that's good I like that I mean I I think pretty much anybody if they really put their mind to it they could create a similar system like for the track itself the tracks you know looping into each other and a train that follows that yeah um blueprints or C that complicated blueprints 100% did all this with visual scripting by the way yes the the entire game I've never used C++ in

my life and I I want to make a note on this real quick because this is a misconception that I see way too much in the game industry and I've been thinking about it lately and I'm like D I need to get the word out about this cuz this is ridiculous so here's the deal with Unreal Engine a lot of people have this misconception that you can only do a handful of things in Blueprint they think oh well yeah you can do some basic prototyping in Blueprint but for anything complicated you have to use C++ and there's a lot of information online that would seemingly reinforce this so if you're a beginner using Unreal you'll be looking up okay how do I make a train spline system or something like that or how do I Snap A spline to another spline or whatever you're looking for it could be any number of thousands of different problems or systems that you're trying to build you'll go onto Reddit you'll go onto the unreal forums and you'll always see always see people in the comments

saying well that's impossible to do in Blueprint but here's how you do it in C++ and they'll show you how to do it in C++ but they'll tell you that it's impossible to do in Blueprint I have read the phrase imp that's impossible to do in blueprints I I've read that thousands of times and it has never been true yeah never true there's always either um maybe there's a function that does the same thing but it goes by a different name in Blueprint as opposed to C++ maybe rather than being something that you do in Blueprint there's a different kind of asset that you use to do that function yeah um maybe there's a free plug-in that you can download to get that functionality in Blueprint um there's always like unless you're making a AAA game or or an advanced doublea game you can use blueprint for everything y like just I just I want to put that out there I think it's it's a

it's a frustration that I think a lot of game developers who actually make games full-time that we all share um the frustration being there's there's Gatekeepers or there's like cult-like Behavior about about how to make games the proper engine to I mean obviously Unity is really screwed up based on their pricing but in terms of the engine itself I love unity I think it's great but there's pros and cons to all engines and and the purpose you're going to use it for point being though I'm I'm really into weight training as well the same thing is true in the weight training Community there's always a right way to do stuff and there's always a wrong way and um there's always somebody saying you can't do X Y and Z but I've always said the people you should really be listening to are the people who have done it and not only done it but they do it full-time and they're profitable doing it those are the people you should listen to everyone else on the forums and on Reddit and on social media who are just complaining or

talking about how to do something but they've never actually released anything my theory is it's best to just take their what they're saying with a grain of salt do you know what I mean yeah yeah no absolutely it's one of those things that like you just yeah you just got to get used to over time yeah just kind of getting better at I mean honestly it's like until you've done the thing yourself it's difficult to ident ify uh you know who doesn't know what they're talking about so yeah it's always just one of these things where yeah well here's the thing like you said here's the funny thing you can make a game wrong and it be profitable exactly exactly I mean if anybody was to crack open um my game pinstripe or Never song or even twist a tower which is our first 3D game you're going to see a mess like there's so much about our games that's just made wrong and when I live stream you know 25% of the comments and it doesn't make me mad

but 25% of the comments are like here's how you should do it Thomas and I'm like yeah I don't really care you know we we're making progress here so we're good um so I just want to encourage everybody listening that there's a million ways to do something um so don't let the internet Community tell you that you're stupid or you're not smart rather just make progress that's all you need to do make progress yep 100% okay so you made this track system um you really impressed with yourself and you did it with blueprints and you didn't even use C++ okay keep going yeah so at that point you know it was a matter of putting the train together so um since I had to have a trailer for this I needed some of the graphics to you know to look final so um I took some time a couple days to put together um this you know a decent enough train model uh the player train model um Drew up some textures for it in [ __ ] um I just did fully from scratch

textures for that one since I didn't since it wasn't based on an asset um so I just had to do those ones from scratch so you didn't use like substance to paint the train or anything you just no no I mean I'm the same way examp something that I did wrong exactly I don't know why but I would rather I would rather open up a Photoshop a UV map in Photoshop and paint inside of that like as if I was like coloring on uh Christmas wrapping paper you know what I mean and then you fold it up over the box that's how I prefer to do things which is totally wrong but yeah yeah I mean the like just for an example here with how to do things the wrong way so for the train mod for most of the basically any custom model that I did in in chuju Charles there's always like six different materials that are applied to it um I just use the blender smart UV unwrap yeah and like I don't even export the the UV map I make the texture first I put it into blender and then I adjust

the UV map within blender dude to fit the it's it's messy it's messy but it works at the end of the day I release the game so it's it's oh man but Gavin I'm sure that encourages so many people listening right now that they're like I I hope so to be blunt with you that is the most ridiculous way I've heard of of painting a model and uh but the way my team does it uh I have a 3D artist that his name is Felipe he's really great um the way he does it is he does it the the right way you know um and I put that in quotes because there's there's a million right ways to do things but he'll just he'll he'll actually export the blend model and then bring it into substance and then paint it that way but it doesn't matter cuz like when I look at choo choo Charles I look at a game that has a very unique flavor it just looks like it's handcrafted despite the fact that you used AET sets and I'm curious by the way why did you choose to do a custom model

for for the train when you could have probably just downloaded something from turbos squid um I think partially I had a specific kind of some specific look and design needs um for that train specifically you know like I knew that I needed um like a walkable um perch on the back of the train where the guns would be mounted right so that that was a very specific thing that I needed I needed a small interior that you could walk around I needed a little dashboard with three levers on it to you know to control it um and I had a specific kind of look that was similar to you know like the trains in Thomas the Tank Engine and stuff like that so that was one of those things that I just felt would be best to do custom so that it would really fit the The Branding that I was going for and the design need needs so that was that was the main thing there but you were willing to use assets for other

stuff um yeah yeah for other stuff in terms of the the emotional side of this a lot of developers they get they get cocky or they get too attached to their game and so they they they're like man this train looks amazing well then I need to model everything and it needs to be my fingerprints all over this game did you have that temptation to do that no not at all so you're just lazy no exactly I am I'm lazy I'm a fake developer and uh everybody should review bomb me yeah that's right no so okay so what assets do you mind if I ask what what assets or or which which things in your game were assets sure that you flipped so let's see here so it'd probably be easier to start with the things that aren't assets honestly so all of the wooden buildings are uh modular pieces that I put

together oh um that that I or that I created so I created kind of a modular wooden building pack for myself nice and I use that for all the wooden structures um the trains I made the trains myself I made the guns myself and I think that that's it I think that's it I think everything else is based on an asset so um the cave systems the any of the ruins the all the characters everybody probably knows are made in fuse y um and that's what we're using as well so yeah y well okay so I should I should clarify that it is great we started using fuse based on your I wouldn't call it advice I just asked you what did you use and you use fuse fuse but I've also o hired a contract worker to do custom costumes so for example we

have like a creepy a creepy like Donald Duck costume and stuff like that so he's he's creating that right now um but in terms of using fuse we're using it for like the NPCs and stuff and it's great if you if you know how to open up a a Photoshop texture and edit it I think that you can make these things look not like they're made in fuse um like you did I I believe you did that right with your characters you would like you made them look kind yeah okay yeah originally I took all of the um yeah I took all the NPC textures and I retextured them to be kind of the same sketchy style as everything else in the game but everybody hated it like when I was doing beta testing one of the most common reports I'd get is like yeah for some reason there's this weird glitch on all the NPCs where their skin just looks all like like a Sketchbook or something I'm like that's that everything looks like that though what are you talking about side note this is exactly why it's important to at least have an audience available to you it doesn't mean you have to be a YouTuber but I I did the

same thing man where I posted an animated or a video on Twitter and it was a video of of gameplay in Twisted Tower and I thought it was the coolest thing ever I was so excited to share it with everybody and it did really well it got a lot of views but every like I would say 30 40% of the comments were like please remove the Tilt when you move it's making me nauseous these things you just miss these are things that could kill your game and give it a a mostly positive or even a negative review on steam if you didn't ask your audience or even just do an alpha test let's say you don't have an audience you just want to do an alpha test it's crucial because sometimes sometimes it's literally just one little Pebble in your beautiful soil for your garden to grow and that one little Pebble you miss because for some reason you're just missing it and it's up to your audience to help you find it so I'm glad they found that for you cuz you kind of thought it was cool right I did I did I thought hey it kind of makes them look less like fuse models makes them fit into the game style more but

people just they weren't into it so um so I ended up reverting it back to just the default Fus textures but um yeah so as far as the other asset stuff yeah I mean the island itself the island model um that was an asset I had to edit it quite a bit cut certain areas off add certain areas in and obviously all the buildings and structures and path and everything um had to be custom but you know especially just for like the making the initial trailer just having just a base asset that I could kind of um put everything around was useful just for speeding up that initial development and getting that visual prototype done terrain tool in unreal did you use that yes yes I just used that for all of the terrain terrain related stuff and like trees and foliage and all that just download from the what's what's the unreal asset store called um quickel uh the unreal Marketplace I think oh okay what's quickel is that uh quixel is

another sort of marketplace it's a library I would that they have kind all of their kind of yeah yeah so it's you just go in there and they've got uh photo scans on there so I didn't use any of those um but um yeah the the marketplace came in handy for sure okay now I know that your game it seemingly relies heavily on post processing to make it look as beautiful as it does um is this correct no no it's not actually I think are the volumetrics not postprocessing well in unreal they're not postprocessing in unreal the volumetrics that's a specific kind of um uh it's an actor type I guess mhm I got you so it's it's classified a little bit differently I I would say the the volumetric fog that is that is pretty cool though oh yeah it does add a lot to the to the atmosphere okay the game would look very different without it what what are some aspects of your game

what what what are some things that make the game eye-catching that you implemented I'd love to know cuz you're an artist you spider train for one sure spider train 100% great models custo some of them custom great use of assets and flipping assets what are some things though like for example lighting color volumetrics particle effects what are some things that you are you really fine-tuned to make this thing eye-catching I mean as far as the environment goes I think the only thing would be probably largely the the lighting and perhaps the color scheme okay trying to think here cuz I never really did much in the way of just like posting like environment shots like anytime that you're seeing the environment there's a train in the foreground you know so like train is always the eye-catching piece and the

environment is more of a supporting sort of uh it's a background it's a backdrop so you're speaking from a marketing perspective right now as opposed to gameplay which is great that's what I want to know um so to make this thing pop on social media you didn't just rely on the environments because every game can have a great environment I mean everybody has a a forest there there's a lot of games with forests it's it's pretty common at this Point yeah um so I I think the main thing is just having like above average light levels so everything is easy to see you know it's not all dark and yeah it's it's an important one it's an important one um a lot of games you just straight up you just can't see anything what's the point of sharing a screenshot if you can't see how do you make a spooky game that's light what's the what's the trick yeah so that's the thing so that's another one of these just kind of misconceptions about horror is that horror isn't necessarily created through dark it can be it but ultimately horror

is about um it's about threat and threat levels and uh unknown threats okay so you can have a threat in broad daylight if somebody runs up to you in broad daylight with a knife threatening to stab you you'll probably be scared despite the fact that it's not dark out yeah you know it's like and you can do the same thing in a video game you can have a broad daylight video game that's very scary without Darkness just because there are other ways to build uh tension and and fear so Chu Charles does that just through you know being chased um Chase scenes up tension a lot and um things like that so okay okay yeah so you you decided early on or did did you did you find out that dark shots weren't helping the marketing or did you did you decide early on that you wanted to make

this a brighter game um yes that that was that was an early decision okay okay um can we Okay so we've got our tools right we've got like um we've got our tools that are basically um Unreal Engine using blueprint we've got blender um we've got um using fuse right um let's move on to unless I'm missing something here can we move on to sound cuz the sound is great in the game for sure um Can can you break down what you Ed for sound including where you're sourcing some sounds if you did Source them yes yeah so most pretty much all the sounds used in the game are based off of sounds I got on freesound.org um and then the music I have in the game is is all mostly it's mostly custom music um

from a musician I hire uh Tom Bellingham he's he's awesome he's really good um so for the sound effects what I'll do is I'll have a sound in mind like let's say I've got um a drawbridge that falls down in a mission and it and it hits some wood planks and I want to have a a loud echoing sound as as that drops down so what I'll do is I'll uh do a screen recording of that action in game first thing I do is you know I create the the scenario I record it and then I put that into a video editor so I I'll use either Premiere or um sometimes I'll use wondershare for my audio editing and so then what I'll do is I'll go on to free sound and I'll look around for you know maybe a wood hit sound effect or um you know maybe as the draw bridge is coming downwards uh I'll have like a creaking wood like and then you know so I'll grab like a a creaky door sound effect or something

like that and then I'll just kind of splice them all together uh you know do whatever pitch adjustments Reverb adjustments things like did you mention the tool you're using for that yes so I use usually just wondershare or wondershare I got you okay I wasn't sure what wondershare was okay so that's yeah it's a film editing software ah okay yeah so so what I do is I'll I'll take the recording of the game play and I'll edit the audio right underneath that so I can see a live preview of how cuz sometimes you can create a sound that sounds good but then when you match it up with the with the visuals it's just off it just sounds really off that's what I found soting what I do in order to um to fix that problem is I just edit the audio right next to the visuals so that I can feel it all in unison okay and that is like that's my biggest trick when it when it comes to audio editing okay um so that's how I go about the sound effects go

ahead and then yeah and and then for the music I don't know to be honest I just take what sounds good I I don't I don't have any better explanation than that yeah so yeah you hire out this guy uh to do your to your to do your music okay so quick breakdown and then we'll move into I want to break down the tools just so everybody knows what used um and how this game was created um and then we'll move on to the sort of wrap this up I want everybody to kind of get an idea of how launch went what it was like um sure so to break down the tools and then I'll also give Alternatives um because I'll mention you know Twisted Tower it has a similar look it's not as beautiful as your game but it has a similar look I don't know about that I like it quite a bit I appreciate it man uh it's got a similar flavor except we do a lot of Interiors and um the the reason I say that is because I want to show everybody that you can get a similar look with completely different

tools cuz Gavin's using Unreal Engine blueprint or blueprints whatever is it plural or not um yeah same thing and then uh wondershare for the sound freesound.org for sound um sourcing um and blender and then also [ __ ] it's funny because only one of these tools I would say two of these tools we're using everything else is completely different we we do use free sound but we primarily actually use artless doio now which is PA a paid service and it's actually kind of expensive if you really want to license them legally like they say on artless doio they say oh you can use these for whatever you want and then you look in the license and it's like actually you you can't for games so you have to actually end up you end up paying thousands of dollars to license out the sounds that you've decided to use so to break it down for me we use Unity um we use C uh it's just all the coat is from scratch we do use blender blender I

would say blender is top tier even though it's open source and I I say this as a caveat for those of you who are like no I'd rather I'd rather use a professional grade tool no blender even though it's open source and free it's incredible um we use substance instead of [ __ ] to to paint our textures and I say we me and my 3D artist uh Felipe he does he actually does the majority of the the C models whereas I flip the models uh flip other models um and then the oh we use Photoshop instead of instead of um [ __ ] so hopefully everybody can see that there's a variety of different tools yet they can end up creating something that's similar um in flavor and in tone and quality um the debate of the the Everlasting debate of Unreal Engine and unity there are merits to one being better than the other um but I'll just say to people maybe you disagree with me here but I think the majority of Us game developers shouldn't

get too lost in the weeds and should just pick something and move forward um assuming unity's pricing model is going to stay the way it is which that's a big if but we'll see um cool does that break down the tools you think uh pretty much yeah I mean I didn't really I mean I've used audacity a little bit here and there for some audio editing uh for some small things which is free which is free yep but that's about it cool that's about it cool yeah okay let's move on to launch um we don't have to talk about specific numbers but I just love to hear how launch went for you what was what was preparing launch like uh were you nervous were you scared um and how did it go yeah so I was definitely nervous I think the biggest thing that I was worried about leading up to launch was just the player reception um it's like it had gotten enough attention prior to

launch I I launched with 550,000 wish lists so crap it's like I knew that people were going to buy it um I just was really worried as to whether or not they would like it and if they would be pleased with their purchase so that was the biggest thing that I was um nervous about going into it yeah um ultimately I think the launch was about as as chill as it could have been um pretty much I I am a big fan of like tools down like a month before launch I want to be like have a solid build that's completely done the build that I'm going to publish and sit on it for one month now that doesn't mean I'm just sitting around for a month that means that last month there is spent just strictly doing tons of marketing stuff making trailers making videos writing up press releases getting uh lists of influencers to send keys to it's still it's a busy time leading up to launch just getting all of the um

just that hype machine rolling yeah um and being able to do that without having to worry about the game at all um and just knowing that it's in a solid state uh you know just polish wise and everything that's very important to me so as soon as I was done with you know getting all of the marketing stuff done and I got all my posts scheduled out out and everything was ready keys were out U I sent keys out I think two weeks before launch so YouTubers had plenty of time to fit it into their schedule and and um and cover it on their channels so the the number of people that covered it just on day one was phenomenal it was it was outstanding um and I think a big part of that was just because I gave them plenty of time you know so um yeah meading up to Launch really quick to give people some clarity those of you who are thinking okay how many do I send um first off can we get what should what

should developers aim for with wish lists and you don't have to answer because a lot of a lot of times it's difficult to answer this question how many wish lists should should developers aim for when they launch their title and I'll give you a specific metric to aim for if they want to go full-time so let's say $50,000 let's say they want to make $50,000 from a launch how how many list do you think they should aim for um yeah so this is a question where I have a a bit of a unconventional answer to it most people will be like oh you want to get 10,000 wish list and then you'll be on the front page or something like that um honestly I think the the whole like wish list count metric is way overhyped in game development it's way overhyped um and here's here's why though here's why though um obviously a game that has 500,000 wish lists is going to do better than a game that has 10,000 wish lists like there are General indicators but I

think a lot of people when they hear like oh I need 10,000 wish lists what they'll do is they will they focus on like the number itself rather than how efficiently they're getting to the number if it takes you 10 years to hit 10,000 wish lists you've got a problem your game's not going to do well you are going to fail but if you get 10,000 wish list in 3 months gotta you could have a million doll launch huh or maybe not that much but it's it's really about the velocity of the wish list it's about how easy it is for you to get them um that's going to indicate like your conversion rates because if you if it takes you a lot of work to get to 10,000 or 20,000 or whatever your target is if you have to go to Every Festival if you've got to do five trailers if you've got to get a publisher and make M Dev logs and get millions of views just to get to that number you might not have a great

converting game could it be could it be that how do I ask this could it be that that it's not necessarily that your game isn't let's say it takes a year to get 5,000 wish list or 10,000 wish list could it be that you're just a terrible marketer and your game is actually good like you just don't have trailer or you don't have a good good like good videos or gifts or screenshots I mean it could be yeah it could be um usually if a game is good it'll be pretty easy to Market like if a game is marketable it's easy to Market it that's kind of the whole point of it um but if you're using like Windows Movie Maker default transitions in your trailer you know that could be a problem that could be a problem so it's like if you're if you're marketing at a competent level and you're still not getting attention or it's very difficult to get

that attention then you've got a problem and that 10,000 count or whatever count doesn't matter much the gdd correct me if I'm wrong here the gdd is the foundation to everything because the gdd contains your hook it contains the thing that's going to make the game marketable so in your instance you've got this gdd and you've got this great idea of a of a of a train a spider train that right there is why your marketing material was just naturally was successful without much effort is that correct yes okay yeah so a bad idea can't you can't put lipstick on a pig that's kind of exactly exactly you've got to have a good idea and so the idea generation is core to every everything is that correct yes yeah yeah absolutely yeah good good okay um so so

launch uh you you one more question one more question in terms of how many people because I'm just I'm not thinking about for me I'm really thinking about for my audience because I know what I think I would how many I would send how many emails do you or how many keys do you send out to streamers so again this is one where I don't have a specific so I think I had a list of I think like 300 on launch three or 400 um and then I sent out a lot more just by request on uh just like on Twitter and by email so and that list was mostly built up throughout development you know if I'd see somebody on and I guess this is might not be a a common scenario for people but if you see YouTubers on Twitter that like maybe they like one of your posts about your or they retweet something or they mention your game in a video or anything like that um then I would add them to

this list and be like okay this is a this is a warm contact you know this is not somebody that I'd just be randomly cold calling they've heard of the game they maybe have some interest in it so I'll be sure to send them a key when the game comes out so um about 300 people uh that I found made it onto the list ahead of time and then probably another 1 or2 200 um people got keys just that would just DM me on a Twitter or something so you know I think for most people I would just aim to send keys out to as many relevant channels as you can when I say relevant I don't mean like oh just Target the big channels I mean like targets uh channels that cover similar games yep you know so like one tactic that um that I think is really good is find a game that did pretty well on YouTube that's similar to your game that's in a similar genre stuff like that just look it up on YouTube and find

all the YouTubers that played that game and you know you can add them to your list and that that would be a good way to find people that might be interested in you know covering your game as well and you know they'll also play it in a passionate way which will it's great marketing material that it's like if you you want to get favorable coverage from somebody who's really enjoying the game so hopefully that you know translates to clicks and and purchases so yeah you don't you don't want to you don't just because just because PewDiePie gets a ton of views or Markiplier gets a ton of views does it mean you want Markiplier to play your game um you know not necessarily granted Markiplier he he he would probably pretty pretty great for anybody but it's just good to keep in mind and also I I like to think of it as like climbing a ladder um if you if you're only trying to get the top tier YouTube ERS prettyy much all of them are going to probably say no especially if if you're making sort of a decent game but it's not the most viral um they're

really looking for a game correct me if I'm wrong here but they're really looking for a game that's going to get them views too right they want views and so they're going to pick a game that comes across well in a video and has that fun factor that shock factor that Viral Factor so if you're not getting all these bigger YouTubers then start small and hopefully they you'll climb that ladder and because a lot of small YouTubers they know each other right so they're going to start sharing content and they'll see oh this video that this person who had 30,000 subscribers it's got 100,000 views so I'm going to play that game too and so it just slowly starts stacking and hopefully you can climb that ladder um whereas in your case I think you got what what were some of the top tier YouTubers that played your game pretty much immediately um yeah I mean there there were quite a few Mark applier Corey kenin um I think Jack up to guy played it fairly soon I don't think he was a day like like in the first weekend yeah um yeah fgtb I mean pretty much I mean

most of them right most of them a lot of a lot of the large channels and you know it's it's one of those things man it's like um I want my audience to to feel encouraged here um you don't necessarily have to have this massive viral game for for someone like Jack to play your game there are other ways to to figure out how to get Jack to play cuz I I was able to get Jack back to play pinstripe and never song both of my games but it was a different way it wasn't that I just said here's a viral here's a viral game go play it I actually reached out to him personally and asked him to be part of the game so sometimes you can get YouTubers to participate in the creation of the game which then makes them want to play the game right if they if they have a playable character and an NPC in the game they'll be more likely to play it um so sometimes you got to be creative to to to stand out and get YouTubers to play your games um but other times like you said other times it's as simple as just a great idea on the gdd and that's why they wanted to play it because of a spider

trade you know yeah and and by the way just a note on what you just mentioned there um back uh I don't know sometime a few years back uh you made a video where you talked about that specifically where if you you know ask YouTubers to participate in your game you know they might be more on board to to try it out when it launches and I took that tip and applied it to my beautiful paper smile and that's how I got some of the larger YouTuber coverage for for that game um so I worked with 8bit Ryan and I did a a handdrawn portrait of him in like this really creepy style yeah um and I put that as like just a picture in the game that players could find and look at yeah um and he saw that I emailed him and he was like yo that that looks great go ahead let's let's put it in the game um so I did that and then he played um the first chapter of it mhm um a little later on when it launched um and then I did that with a couple other um folks as well ggle um Mr kravin some other

channels kind of in that uh sort of horror space so it's that's a tactic that works it is man I know I kind of hate saying tactic right because it sounds like you're like like taking advantage of people but it's just it's things like if you make people a part of it like it's it's a cool thing you know no it's not only it's not only that you're it's not that you're you're just you're just um what's the word it's not that you're shooing them it's that you're saying hey you can use the title I'm in this game which is going to get clicks so they're they're thinking oh I'm in this game I could put it as a thumbnail and I could say I'm in this game and that's going to get me clicks therefore I will play this game um it's ideally you know it's it's a mutually beneficial kind of thing 100% And that's okay that's that's what marketing is I mean in a lot of ways it's about partnering with people and giving them a reason to partner back with you um so there's a variety of ways to get

streamers to play your games um so that's cool that that worked and and one final note here is um it sounds like you took the initiative to go ahead and do it and put them in your game before you even ask their permission is that correct yes so so what I would do is I would draw the image of them and then when I first contacted them I'd say hey I've got this idea this is what it would look like in game and then all that they need to do is just say yes or no I don't need to it it's like you know you want to remove as many um steps as possible so if I reached out to them I was like hey I've got this game can I make a picture of you then they're like well I don't know how this is going to look I don't know what this person is like to work with are they going to just start spamming me constantly if you just do it all I mean and it is a little bit more work ahead of time and it can be a little bit of a risk you know if they don't respond you might be putting time into um something that's not going to necessarily net you anything in the long term but ultimately I think it's the

best option because then all they have to do is say yeah looks good feel free to put it in you know and it makes it really simple for them yeah and they've got hopefully they've got the steam key as well and the Embargo of like I Okay cool so I'm in this game I can play this game I got the steam key I can play it on May 1st and so they they either put it on their upload calendar or they send it to their their secretary or or their pa or whoever you know or their schedule or their producer and then they're ready to go it all they didn't even have to respond to your email and then you can just you know cross your fingers and hope they play you know um yep cool okay so so yeah let's wrap this up here so how did the launch go how did you feel yeah so the launch ultimately it went well I I say so the player reception was way better than I was expecting I was expecting maybe like an 80% % user review score on Steam that's kind of what I was hoping for I was like if any less than 80 I'm going to feel kind of kind of bad like I kind of

didn't meet the expectations um it ended up day one kind of settling in at 92% whoa and it's stayed consistent at that consistently for the past year Gavin why did the Press do what they did I don't yeah am correct the Press reception was very poor what was that it's almost like not sure I don't like the the gaming press the pr the gaming industry I don't like the Press when it comes to the gaming industry because it seems like they they want to be negative when everyone's expecting something the opposite so it's like click it's clickbait so it's like yeah Chuchu Charles has 500,000 wish lists it's it's this huge success story everybody's so excited about it Gavin's launched his game and the Press is like yeah let's let's crap all over this so we can get clicks that's how it felt it I mean and it could be I I really don't know at the end of the day I I think the biggest thing that's odd

to me still is just that press covered it press doesn't usually cover games like this it's not really a common thing like what what do you mean by games like this well it it's it's a meme game it's a goofy game it's a game that's just made to be fun overthe toop weird solo devel veled it's it's not really it's not like a double a title or something I see and they treated it like it was right yeah that was I mean it was a lot of uh like in the IGN one you know they were complaining that it was it felt lowbudget it's like bro I started making this I was completely broke I had no money of like what did you want me to do just like go grab a loan for a million dollars like you can't just do that that's not how it works so a lot of the you know some of the criticisms did feel very just very misplaced you know it didn't seem like a game that they should be covering in the first place so I'm

not really sure what what that was about but ultimately I knew that it didn't really matter much you know the player reception was good and that was what really matter to me I wasn't expecting a good critic reception I was kind of expecting it to be on the lower end um anyways so uh yeah it's got like a almost like a a lot of horror movies this it's like I I didn't go into a horror movie to experience some epic drama I went in to to have fun and that was all it was for and so this is why horror movies always get terrible reviews because you've got a critical analysis and it's like the audience is not looking for that they just want to have fun and I think that that's what your game really had it had the fun factor and that's what you leaned into as opposed to making it some Art House experience or some cinematic experience right right it's it's definitely not a game that's made for critics some games are made for critics

and they're made to get a good review from critics and that's like that's a route that you can go um but it's just not yeah it just wasn't the target for for this one um but uh yeah so the the reception ended up being better than I expected um you know from like a a review user review side of things um the game got I think like 100 million views across social media on launch day MH which was incredible I it was 50 million I know 50 million on Tik Tok and then I don't know the exact figure on on YouTube but it was quite a few um I hate you man I'm sorry just so I'm so jealous no I'm kidding I think that's it's just amazing what you've done that's so cool are you willing to disclose copies sold not not not numbers but just not uh well yeah cuz copies that's that's pretty much the same thing um it had it peaked

at over 4,000 just over 4,000 concurrent players that's public info um you see that on steamdb um and it was actually it was the number four I think number four top selling game globally on launch day so I I don't know what games it was behind or above but yeah it yeah so it it was it was good it was good for sure um trying to think of other launch Day stuff I mean for the most part when launch day came around I was able to just sit back and relax you know I was able to just kind of sit back watch everything kind of unfold um you know I spent a lot of time in the leading months just working on fixing bugs so I knew I wasn't really going to have a buggy launch and there was nothing major that came up uh post launch that I had to you know rush to fix you know um I tested it with hundreds of people on different machines

different specs so you know it it was very smooth it went very smoothly and I was able to just kind of sit back watch it and um yeah so we got let's see here we got three minutes here I'll I'll end with this here um did you did you take a break did you did you find did you find it difficult to want to do another game did you just want to essentially retire um I wouldn't say I wanted to retire I couldn't if I wanted to um it hasn't done that well um but yes for man I I was definitely enjoying the break that I took I so for the probably first couple weeks after launch I pretty much didn't do anything with the game or much of anything at all I basically just watched gameplay videos um made plushies got more sleep

stuff like that and um you know I think it was probably about a month later that I started kind of casually just like more starting to learn about how to deal with the success of it learning a bit more about um just finances taxes investing just all this kind of stuff figuring out business structures like what's the best business structure long term and like you know how can I do it it was a lot of um just restructuring and reformatting just within just my life in general and um I mean I I was enjoying it I didn't miss game development if if I'm being completely honest like I was pretty burnt out um by the time I finished that game and about 6 months later this kind of this past July is when I first started being like you know I kind of want to work on a

game again I kind of want to start getting into a into a new project so I you going to build a team or are you going to keep nope stay solo yeah no team stay in Solo for for this next project I'm still not opposed to working with a team someday but um I still I'm still not quite confident enough in my ability to like put a lot of money behind a project CU a lot of people don't realize hiring people's expensive I mean you you would know this it's it's costy it's cost you to get just five people involved for a couple years on a project you know so um yeah stay in Solo for now it's just more peace of mind for me personally less risk less to worry about my team will tell you you know it's it's because they they can just observe me as a team leader it's it's stressful because not only are you not only are you paying people's bills you know or you're providing well they're doing the work but you're you got to make sure that you've got cash to pay

for it you know and you've got a you're paying for their families and their livelihoods so you got to respect that so there's pressure it's a lot of responsibility uhhuh but you also there's an emotional side to Leading a team which is you can't just change things all the time because people are going to get exhausted um you can't just have a random idea and try it it's like no you got to respect the work that your team has put in on your other ideas and and you've got to you've got to be a lot less reactive um and be much more um you got to build a culture of respecting each other's talents and and the work they've put in and so that's difficult because my my um my instinct is to be reactive and impulsive uh with with what I create and that can be a wonderful way to be an artist because you can create some really cool interesting stuff but when you've got a team you can't do that

you've got to be a lot more respectful of people okay well it's like it seems like a completely different skill set uh 100% 100% it's it's uh well I'll I'll be honest with you man I spend the majority of my time inside of clickup which is it's like monday.com or Trello I spend the majority of my time inside of clickup or Discord and I opened up Unity yesterday for the first time in a long time and I live streamed and I just almost felt like crying because I just love it so much I love developing and so I told my team yesterday I said all right guys we're gonna I'm GNA be I'm going to be participating I said I said guys I miss participating in this can I join can I come back into the fold um so that's what I'm going to be doing from the for the foreseeable future which is just getting back into Unity I I really missed it um so yeah nice that'll be cool oh yeah okay man

well uh anything you wanted to leave people with about your next game uh where they can find you or anything like that uh yeah well my next game is completely secret and I can't say anything about it so uh but if you want to see some stuff about it uh when I do start talking about it and announce it um you can follow me on YouTube at two star Twitter at twar games uh that's about it yeah links in the description guys subcribe Thomas sure sure thank you thanks Gavin yeah subscribe to to two star games um you'll learn a ton guys about not only game development but also Gavin's just a brilliant brilliant YouTuber and marketer um you'll notice that that My Views are about a tenth or 100th maybe even a thousandth of his views and that's because he's just got he's got the it Factor so be sure to check check out Gavin below Gavin thanks for your time man this was great it was a great conversation thank you for having me on you bet dude take it easy

cheers hey guys just a quick Interruption here if that's okay I quickly wanted to just remind you about your free gift uh that's below it's a thank you for listening to this podcast it includes my free 3D course which is going to teach you how to quickly make your first 3D game but also a 2d game kit I used this exact game kit to make a game for PewDiePie in just 14 days the bonus on top is my free course on how to secure six figures in funding before you even finish your game click the link at the bio or the description just be sure you keep this running so open in a new tab if you can and download those free gifts there's no gimmicks here I just want to see you succeed