How To Make A Viral Indie Game — Full Time Game Dev Podcast Ep. 011

okay guys thanks for thanks for being willing to chat um I'm really really excited to get to know you guys and and learn more about how you went full-time um and how you you made your game outbound freaking explode I mean I think you told me you get you have 100,000 wish list now for your game outbound right yeah I mean we had 100,000 after a month we now have uh almost 200,000 good great that's freaking incredible you know that when you launch that game you guys are going to make a lot of money right uh yeah I mean our expectations were like I mean we try to keep it down yeah I know I know the feeling it's it's it's hard to not get like super excited because because I've had friends game developers who um they have 100,000 wish lists and it just doesn't convert you know um but the difference I think is is wish list that you get over twoyear period and then wish list you get quickly cuz what you guys have right now

is what you would call like with a sales term it would be like warm leads they're very very warm wish lists meaning they're much more likely to convert because I think you got them recently you know yeah yeah but that's also uh you also got to take into account the the timeline of your development of course right I mean what do these wish list do over time I mean they're they're certainly hot and good right now and and they are like when we talk about it we certainly feel they are currently valuable um they're more valuable than um what did you say again during uh like steamfest wish list um like if you launch a prologue for instance like these I mean we did like we we we learned a couple of lessons with above snakes um because we got a lot of wish list from these sources and they didn't convert as well to be honest oh yeah well let's talk about um let's talk about above snakes um so just sort of the I I would love to we got to introduce you guys actually um to and Mark int yeah introduce yourselves um tell us about like the

games you've made and sort of your journey to where you have gotten right now which is frankly you I would call 100,000 wish lists a huge success and you haven't even launched your game so what is the story and who are you guys from the beginning all the way to now sure uh I'm going to start I'm uh I'm Toby um because yeah my journey kind of starts earlier um I began I mean I I began developing like small games like couple years ago where I like published them on hiio like even as a kid or as a teenager I like I created like mods for like Warcraft 3 for instance or I tinkered around with Mario game level editors and that kind of stuff but my game Journey game developer Journey really began um with buff snakes that was a title that I started as a solo developer uh in uh 2021 called uh it was called different it was called Lonesome at first yeah but I mean the the Prototype before was called Lonesome and then in 21 I signed with a publisher

called civo and together we decided to rename it to BU snakes um and yeah so I launched for that game together with um the marketing efforts of cativo I launched a Kickstarter campaign in early 2022 and that is when uh you backed the game actually yeah and you found me I found the game uh first online and I thought it had great potential and uh and looked just really cool just dropping these little land tiles in and being able to explore them and and so I started following the kickstarter and then the kickstarter came out and um you know I had already sent a message at one point to Toby but he was very busy so I ignored him actually and uh so then Kickstarter actually um you know backed it and then that had a had a prompt that you could message um message the team and so I was like all right let me uh let me message him and see if I can get in contact cuz

uh yeah I I really needed a hobby and the hobby was uh I thought okay why don't I just go and do um game development like like maybe I can help somebody make a game and you know back to Toby yeah so we we yeah we we continued uh developing the game together like for Market was a hobby for me the kickstarter was the time to quit my my day job um I was a web developer and um so I quit that job I mean it was for me like a pretty like kind of risky decision because I mean it was well-paying job obviously I mean software development um and also very stable income honestly so and the kickstarter was funded with about uh 60,000 a little less I think 55 or something thousand um Euros or like US Dollars basically the same yeah um yeah but there was still a Runway to to create the game and um yeah so Mark offered his help and we continued as a team and the game above snakes

ultimately came out a little over one year later I think one and a half years later or something after the kickstarter so there was last year last year May 23 May yeah May 23 the game came out and uh yeah I mean it did pretty well it it was not not like a phenomenal success but it was still like a very big success especially on the scale of Indie Games was a pretty big success for us and for such a small team um yeah it was was pretty good well let's let's let's try and Define um it did pretty well that's what you said let's try and Define that without giving the exact numbers because I I can imagine you probably don't want to do that is that correct yeah that is correct yeah and most people don't um and I don't I don't for a lot of my games too so it's totally fine but let's try and Define that is it would you would I be correct in saying that it supported your salary for a couple years is that yeah good enough yeah um but but it's not like going to

you know turn you into a you know a cigar smoking yacht owner exactly exactly it's not like you would release valheim or something like that so it was like for an indie game was good yeah right and we'll talk about that we'll talk about sort of how outbound May perform as well I want to talk all about outbound because just to give a quick summary for people listening outbound looks incredible and I think the reason why outbound is getting so many wish lists is because of three things um the first thing is the mechanical hook being well I get to D I get to soup up my van and live off the grid that's a really really cool hook uh for the mechanics of the game the second reason I think it's blowing up is because of the visual hook it kind of looks like firewatch um and it's just firewatch has a very unique look and I think you guys have just killed it with that look the story Hook is again it's very similar to the mechanical hook which is I'm going to go Off the Grid I mean that's that's a

really cool narrative to experience and so I think you guys have just killed it without outbound because of you've just really focused on a very strong and precise hook now my question to you is was that the intention with outbound did you think very precisely about those hooks or or did you just say oh that sounds fun let's do it no that was that was definitely the intention um we had a lot of lessons learned from above snakes and we um and and then we started doing prototypes of these little games these little ideas and eventually you know this was all basically bathed in just market research and really looking at okay what do people want what exists out there right now and eventually you know finding a niche that you're very excited

about yourself but also that people still want that that's a product that's not out there and you know eventually we came to this idea and we were like wow this is this is a fantasy of our own owning one of those vans and just going out there but we're you know making games so why don't we make a game about that and then that just sort of like took off and people loved it so much and uh you know being able to turn that idea into a vis visual hook um and then very early on creating that trailer that just did did very well for us yeah and how many views did the trailer get uh yeah IGN posted on their Channel and it got like over 400,000 views up to date so yeah that amazing guys that is so good I love that okay so sort of to conclude there um being in intentional see here's

the here's the problem there's a lot of purist game developers out there and it's totally fine to be a purist um it's totally fine to be you know motivated purely by your joy of making games which I think is great and I'm motivated by that and I'm sure you guys are as well however my question is do you feel like it's profitable and and just a good thing overall for game developers to think about and to focus on if an idea is marketable yeah I mean yeah I mean that's kind of where we came from after above snakes um like we had a little kind of like um I don't know like a diagram where we had like a couple of points where we said okay this is important to us because the the the the joy of creating games is also the joy of seeing people enjoying the game right I mean if we would like create something and it ends up on Steam with like mostly negative reviews or something or nobody even plays it

um I mean then that's not really something we would enjoy um so yeah we were very intentional about uh we have a couple of like points that we think that people really want to see in a steam game nowadays and so we try to check these boxes and also combine it with a fantasy that was really strong I mean not just for us but also what we thought is strong for for people and I think even more importantly we found this niche of where we have like there are a lot of open World Craft games right now right I mean it's just a trend uh currently um but we found a niche in these games where normally you have a home base somewhere like in let's take valheim for instance you you create like like a cabin somewhere in the wood and that's your home base you bring your your your stuff to that base and build and whatever and in in outbound the big difference is you can take this base with you and you can travel with that base so you're not bound to one location yeah yeah and and the funny thing that we just realized like over the last

couple of weeks when we did our first play test um is we are still out Mound is still suffering from that idea that so many players have is that they need to return to their base they need to walk out and they need to return to the base and they forget to drive which was such an interesting find that players just forget it how do you fix that well we're in the process of uh trying trying different is there way to incentivize it and make it part of the loop yeah yeah what're trying nudges here and there bigger goals uh trying to deplete uh certain things in the area giving that's a good idea yeah I mean we're trying to all kinds of different things right now yeah yeah you hear we're in the middle of play testing at the the first play test for the demo yeah how's that feel yeah great right I mean first time seeing the game being played um I would I would def find it as so fun and

stressful yeah it is so stressful it's like it's kind of like I I don't know this might be a little bit too extreme but it's like being butt naked and having somebody like critique you I mean that's that's how it feels for me when when I when we're in we're we're having um internal play testing right now for Twisted Tower um and actually one of my good friends the creator of cultic um his name is is Jason he's also playing Twisted Tower as well and it's tough you know because like not only do you have a thousand items you you still haven't even finished for the game then you've got play testers going hey this is a priority this is a priority this is a priority and so they're they're creating more stuff for you and it makes it that what they're saying feels way more of a priority than all the other stuff you originally thought was a priority because it's actual players who are playing the game and how order how

do how do you order like if one person says something is that enough to make a change in a game how do you how do you do that for me for me I weigh this is going to sound terrible I try not to show favoritism uh in my life like if somebody's successful I try not to show them favoritism um because I used to do that and I think that's just a terrible way to be um a lot of a lot of like social media influencers and like business people like motivational influencers they they say um they say surround yourself with people more than more successful than you um the problem with that is you basically are just a leech um and with game development I think it's really really good to surround yourself with all kinds of different people so for one you you surround yourself with um players just people who play games right but then you surround yourself with people who are developers who are very very successful and so for me I found that during

internal play testing so like the very very very beginning of play testing where it's not public at all it's probably best to get the top tier game developers friends in your circle who have created a game in your Niche that's super duper successful so for me I think Jason the creator of cultic he has overwhelmingly positive reviews on Steam so in my mind I'm like I'm gonna listen to that guy for now for now yeah and that helps you prioritize the real big glaring issues because it's one thing for a for a beta testing audience to pinpoint bugs it's another thing though for someone who's testing your game to say hey there's like 20 things that are wrong with this game but I can tell you the one thing that's going to get you mixed reviews on Steam and here it is bang this is the thing and so for you guys maybe during testing you would find somebody who's super duper successful and who's created a base defense game um I guess that's the genre right something like that open world you find someone in

that genre yeah yeah I think it's an open world exploration or crafting game yeah yeah you find the guy you find the guy or gal who made a game that's wildly successful not necessarily in its financials but just successful in its reviews that it got a good response because that person understands and the reason I'm rambling here is because I'm going through this right now where we're we're we're wrapping up the development of Twisted Tower and I'm like okay I've got four things that are wrong with this game what do I what do I prioritize for my team and my budget yeah and I I've just decided I'm going to I'm going to listen to the people who have done this who have who have created a first-person shooter in this genre and did it right because for firstperson Shooters in particular and and we could talk about open world but with first- person shooters in particular there are a few things that will drive an audience crazy and force them to get a refund or do a mix reviews you know so I I'm trying to

say okay there's 20 things wrong but I really can only focus on a few things that are going to help me avoid creating a disaster and I'm curious if you guys have found that there's just a couple things that you have to get right for outbound for it to be a successful game not in the marketing but in the actual launch have you found that one thing I I think what I would answer is um that there's a big Variety in things that you can that you're allowed to do and hopefully successfully allowed to do in a game because what we're seeing and you know we haven't we've we've had a couple of uh other game devs play but we've also had just you know uh random uh or or people from our community play and uh we always ask them like hey what kind of a player are you or what kind of a games have you played normally do you play Survival craft games do you know

some people really pick up on the visual language that we give them of all right chop a tree pick up pick up a a rock and and go build with that but our game outbound is really so or we try to make it so wide in in the things that you can do you know we really see these explorers they immediately want to go out and and see what the world is we see these Builders we see these Min maxers of okay how can I automate so much of it that I you know make my life easy and there's just cozy Gamers that just want to build the van and I think you know if we do that thing correct that we have that variety that's one to what's going to make players happy but you know what's what's your take yeah probably the reason that's tough is because it's it sounds expensive it's like I have to make a game to I have to get make a game that pleases it's like five children it's like you have five kids and you're

the parent and one kid hates peanut butter jelly the other one loves peanut butter and jelly the other one wants a turkey sandwich and then the other one uh is vegan you know so it's like what you have to make it for everybody and that's that's the thing about these sandbox games or not sandbox games but like um uh cames yeah maybe even sandbo that makes it tough right because you've got to you've got to balance the game for all kinds of different players with different strategies yeah of course and and still I mean I mean we we're having these discussions like non-stop where we try to like keep the scope as small as possible while creating something that is as enjoyable as possible so we need to cut Corners here and there and we need to say okay for instance we decided against like a like a huge Quest system with like NPCs with side quest and that kind of stuff we we decid Okay this not for this game because that would blow up the scope just like bigly but instead that's a big decision yeah that's a big decision but when we focusing on on like

basically yeah the the the van and what you can do on and inside the van and that is something that we want to really like shine in this game yeah but in the meanwhile uh just to add on to that um you can't just deliver an empty world right the the world has to be meaningful there has to be meaningful interactions in the world so without having NPCs or without having uh a major quest line all right how do you feel that right right and and we have a lot of discussions about that as well of um you know leaving environmental clues or leaving pieces and bits of story of okay there might not be people right here but there is still a little bit of a tent and a a campfire and so players actually Wonder like hey what happened and then then so still you make the world um meaningful but it is yeah it is a challenge to keep that scope down and to you know try and shine and what the game what we feel the

game really um makes it good yeah I mean imagine for instance firat like firewatch you don't really feel lonely right I mean if we like exclude Thea from everything still the the world doesn't feel like abandoned or something you find like campgrounds um I don't know bonfires tents all that kind of stuff you find it in the world so it doesn't feel like you're the only person on the planet but yeah but there's still no like real like interactions with NPCs or something and I'm actually very happy that you said it looks like firewatch because that is that is what what we what we wrote in our gamesan document was like visuals let's make like firewatch but it's an open world game so I'm very happy that you picked that up there's more yeah you know I I think there's something to be said about firewatch not feeling lonely because I think there's a loneliness to it though yeah there's it's it's I would call it it's similar

to like a back room's experience or Lial space um where something feels recently abandoned it's as if you're being watched um there is I get chills even right now thinking about firewatch because there in firewatch there is a sensation of being observed but you don't know who's observing and you don't know where they are and all you hear is the the subtle wind and you're talking to somebody on a walkie-talkie but it's it so it feels that it was lived in but it's not currently do you know what I mean yeah that's that's also what we're going for like it should feel like postapocalyptic where everybody's dead or something it should feel like recently there were people but they're not here right now you know yep y man okay so how how let's talk about this sort of figuring out genre and figuring out what the market wants okay how do you guys know what the market wants is it because you guys are you are

your Market that you love these kinds of games or is it that you've just done a lot of research into what these games need to provide and what players expect how did you figure that out uh yeah I would say it's pretty much the second I mean we we played like a couple of open world games um but we're not really that kind of a player like or overall I I think like speaking for myself I'm not really a gamer anymore like if I can squeeze like two or three hours of gaming every week that's like like maximum for me it's uh it definitely dimmed down over the last uh time but I used to be uh very much an open world player I used to be way more of a I guess you defined it as a a PlayStation uh the Triple A Kind ofp player and then you know went way more into Indies uh later but um yeah to come back to your question I think we we did a lot of research I mean so so much looking into steam looking into the into

the reviews looking into the numbers you know that you can get from Steam DB and it's really done yeah doing a lot of research and then trying out different things right I mean at one point we were like okay we we got this great idea but it wasn't the first idea that we had right after above snakes we're like damn let's go make outbound I mean that that it's also a process that's yeah sort of like yeah bathed in in market research I guess yeah and also we also reading like a lot of these meta analyzis like Chris owski game discover Co um Game Dev Reddit um all that kind of stuff so yeah I think we we we did our homework for sure before committing to to an idea okay okay so let's shift gears here I want to I want to hear about how you went fulltime without even finishing your game so this is really going to be a disc discussion

about um snakes um what I can't remember snakes don't worry snakes yeah no I Lonesome I can remember Lonesome oh no we should tell that sorry yeah um but uh I want to Let's shift gears and talk about how you went full-time um with with just a demo I mean and the thing is is I say stuff like this on my channel and you know I'll do YouTube videos about it or I'll teach it in my courses or whatever or how I did it and it sounds it sounds so fake it sounds like you can't do that you can't go full-time before you finish your game what are you talking about quit lying to me but my question to you is that's what you did right um and I think this is specifically for Toby Toby you went fulltime before you finished out uh outbound snakes no Snak upward Lonesome um so you went fulltime right um before you

finished it right yeah that's true so so tell me how you did that and and in crafting this answer if you could craft it so that you know if you were telling I don't know your son how to do it too how to do it because I want my audience to know how that it is possible okay yeah uh I can try um so yeah for me it was as I said I signed with a publisher cifo and they supported me mainly with like guidance um so they would tell me like what to do at one what point like you need to release like a demo you need to enroll to a festival that kind of stuff like the actual path how to get to the Finish Line with your game and we also discussed with the deal that they would support me in my Kickstarter campaign because I had that planned already the campaign before I even signed with them um and they would support me with their marketing power and also I think even more importantly with their knowledge what to do with the kickstarter campaign was it also the

Outreach of uh the streamers or yeah it was they also provided me with yeah helping with reaching out to streamers and that kind of stuff and yeah I mean Thomas you know that more than most people probably like a Kickstarter campaign is not running by itself right I mean it's a lot of work it's not like you definitely don't you definitely don't need a publisher um to do that CU both my campaigns raised about 100,000 each so I've got two of those and I did that without without a without an audience which is crazy I I look back and I say how did I wait how did I do that because I didn't have a YouTube channel I didn't really have a Twitter um and I didn't have a publisher and I so I point being I'm sure that having a publisher helped a ton because you've got to go figure out where to get those leads exactly um you know because what I did with pinstripe I I didn't know it at the time but this is like this is what Alex Heros teaches Alex Heros is a is a big big uh influencer that teaches about how to get

leads and he's just he's into sales and stuff I had no idea what the what the standard was to get leads I put that in quotes leads to your Kickstarter campaign and what I ended up doing is just reaching out to my close friends and family first and starting a conversation with them and getting to know them again because I had lost contact with a lot of them and then you say hey by the way I got a Kickstarter campaign and then you text them all you text them all the day you launched the campaign and I got $7,000 in the first hour wow so point being though point being is just because you don't have a publisher just because you don't have an audience doesn't mean you can't reach out to your friends and family and manipulate them into supporting you and I'm being I'm being slightly sarcastic however that frankly is what I did is I just became friends with all my friends that I lost contact with asked them what they thought about the campaign and then I said hey it's launching so I sent them a preview campaign and then I was like hey it's launching in 2 days um would

you be willing to to check it out now give me your feedback I'll apply your feedback so now they're invested in the project and then two days later text them all bang and that's when $7,000 came in smart point being yeah point being point being it's it's okay to launch a Kickstarter campaign with nothing but you had a publisher which is awesome because I'm sure they had a bunch of leads and they figured out how to get more leads for you yeah to the campaign yeah they had a big email list um that they Ed for that uh and also um they uh yeah helped or we we did like a like as a team effort we reached out like to a ton of conent creators because we we supported the kickstarter campaign with a demo of the game so we we crafted this little demo of maybe one or two hours of gameplay that you were able to to stream and then we reached out to to a bunch of content creators and the Creo reached out mainly like to the ones they already had like contact with like um like some some big indie game streamers on YouTube for instance or on Twitch uh

and I personally I reached out to a couple of German creators like I'm I'm German we by the way we're Bas in Netherlands but I'm German so I was able to contact them like in their native language and um tell them hey I'm also German Creator I'm creating this game um do you want to help me to to make this my job and um yeah I mean combined both of these efforts yeah I mean led to yeah a bunch of streamers streaming the game or creating vods about the game and that was a lot of Buzz and that was enough what I what I also think that helped but obviously that was from my perspective at that point like we said during the kickstarter I wasn't involved yet uh we only just got to talk and then um what it was for me it was that visual hook that visual Hook from above snakes that immediately is also the mechanical hook so you see these tiles drop down and you get to explore them and and that was for me personally where I was like wow this

is this is so awesome but that means that that also had a certain marketability right people are like hey what is this thing and I don't know how it got onto my feet but it did and I got excited about it and I think that was part of it right say that you would have a publisher say that you would have you did everything the way that you did it right now but you didn't have that visual hook or you didn't have that those little Snippets those little videos that demo I mean it would just be it it wouldn't have probably gotten like that right so it's just oh yeah sure I mean for for sure like the product is the first thing I mean this this the sales pitch about like sell me this pen I I think it's just bullsh I mean sorry but I mean if you don't have a pen that that can can do something that other pens can't do then you can't can't sell it um well you could do that in the 9s you know when

that I think that's when that phrase was coined um but nowadays it's like it's so you're competing with so many games yeah that can be very similar to yours so the way you stand out is with what I call the Trinity hook which is your visual your mechanical and your story hooks I mean there's other ways to hook an audience but those are my three now here's the funny thing about everything you said Toby is that you said well I went full-time because I did a Kickstarter campaign but the question is and I I love I love that you brought this up um Mark you brought this up um actually the way we got funded the way we found a publisher was we had materials to show them and so my question is uh how much of a prototype did you have because I think people listening right now are thinking o maybe I could do maybe I could do what Toby did like that's a dream come true so I'm going to submit my one minute demo and

it's like is one minute enough is it 10 minutes is it 20 minutes how polish does it need to be and is my hook strong so let's talk about that how did you formulate a prototype that was then able to be used to get a publisher yeah I mean I would say it it could be very short um but you need to have enough to get people to get the hook or the hooks or to get them into the gate Loop like it could be like one minute for for a game with very like I don't know very simple mechanics mm but this one minute is like the most polished demo you've ever created and it it it shows like very clearly what it is like that's way better than I don't know you create like a one one hour of content I mean no publisher ever will play one hour of your of your demo no nobody they might not even play your demo they're going to see a screenshot first yeah exactly or a trailer or or a video or you record gameplay and then you send them the gameplay of 10 minutes something yeah super important y yeah but that vertical

slice is important right yeah um it has to be it has to have enough of the game's core mechanics or interesting ideas in it uh and it doesn't have to be full-fledged you can you can show if if the main thing of your your uh game is is a dialogue system you know you're you're fine to only show like five sentences um but at least exactly I mean I think without bound seriously guys you probably could have in a day made a a mesh of a of a um a camper driving around with that sort of stylized Shader and then shown a screenshot of what it looks like you know a concept of it expanded and and decked out and that would have been probably enough to capture a Publisher's attention now I I

would seriously I think devolver would probably bite definitely I think devolver would definitely bite because this looks right up their alley but maybe I'm wrong um it just it's just such a good hook so point the whole point of this is that for those of you listening and you're thinking what do I need to get a publisher the answer is you need first and foremost you need an actual hook the question is how do you you know if something is an actual hook and my solution and then I'll I'll I'll pivot and ask you guys this my solution to figure outting figuring out if something is actually a hook and it's not just something you're interested in is to pose it to your audience and see what they say so if you have a Twitter or an Instagram or Tik Tok or whatever or YouTube see if they're interested see if they like it if if you have a Discord Community pitch it there and see what people say yeah exactly what about you how do you how did you guys know that this was a good hook the that exactly that answer repeated I mean we we we

definitely uh are a big fan of showing things early and testing that thereby testing things out I mean just being proud of your work is of course something and being um excited to show something that's that's great um but it also has that added benefit of okay you can see the stats these days of what it does you know you can see the stats of hey this tweet is really going great or okay this is nothing and you know we're definitely looking into those into those stats and and by by doing so actually Market testing the ideas that we had so if you had to sort of if you if you had to package this up as a framework that you could give to your your son who wants to go full-time Indie what exactly do does he need in his pitch deck to go full-time to get a publisher or to

get crowdfunded on Kickstarter what do you need yeah I'd say um yeah great idea that's where it starts so a really good idea first a good idea for uh for a game then you know start looking into uh first little prototypes and start you know possibly if you have the means fling those out in the world and and verify that it's that it's something and then you know go with I mean we're we're big fans of a demo even though we've heard also from some Publishers that there's like well a trailer or just a pitch deck might be fine like just the PDF with some shiny pictures um but we feel there's a lot of strength behind uh behind the good demo um it has to be a good demo though it has to be polished enough that you know cuz in a demo they can do whatever they want almost like you don't have control

like in a in a trailer you don't have control over what people see so I'd say and and that might even be enough and if you don't like create creating shiny pictures then focus on the demo right the Demo's good if you're not that great in creating shiny pictures and beautiful graphs with how much money you're going to make on this then you know go go with the demo and and do what yeah yeah yeah I I think it it would depend on the Creator in the game like if you're good with shiny pictures then go for that right if you're better with game play and game design then go with the demo and it can be all cubes and stuff but it's like really good gameplay then yeah well I think that um I think that it also depends on your sort of I don't know the right word but like how many times you've done it like if you're a veteran or not because for me could probably get away with doing shiny

pictures and a a a trailer and then a big description of what the game is and then just send that off to Publishers and it's not because Thomas is cool it's because Thomas has done it before and so we trust him so it really comes down to like trust I think is like can you can you actually follow through and make a game out of this cool idea because I've had conversations with Publishers where they hear an idea and they're like oh yeah that's that's we're sold that's great um yeah whereas sometimes though however like with with devolver I had a conversation with devolver they needed to see a lot and this is no slide against evolver if they're going to because they they tend to make big Investments so if they're going to make a big investment then they they they really need to see a lot they need to see pretty long demo it needs to be like the screws are super tight um they need to see the the all of the different plans for extending your Loop and making it more complex and they just needed to

see a lot whereas some Publishers don't I think it really comes out of budget too right like if you if you've got a a budget for a million dollars then the publisher is probably going to want to see a very polished 15 20 minute demo you know yeah yeah Pro and and it's also everything that you do you know if you're just starting out it all goes on your own dime right creating this polish trailer and everything which can sometimes be uh an issue and um but to come back to what you mentioned about um yeah your reputation I guess knowing that people can actually finish a game I do feel that if we look purely look at the numbers of how many Publishers uh came to Toby for above snakes and how many Publishers are now reaching out to us I mean it's it can't just only be that trailer right it must be also that they're looking up like hey have these guys actually done something before Oh

Hell here's above snakes and so I I'm sure like you know it keeps the ball rolling and that's why you can just send over a couple of shiny pictures and get a deal yep yep well let's shift gears here I want to talk about the the technical side of of um of outbound um you're using Unity correct correct y um why don't you just switch to gdau what's wrong with you yeah what's wrong with us what's wrong without using Unity yeah I mean we we were on the edge of switching actually um to be honest not to gdau but to Unreal um I mean our opinion right now about gdo is like it's a really cool tool and it's I mean it's really loved by Indie developers we probably going to get a bunch of Hate by by saying that but it's not really proven at this point like like for commercial games I I wouldn't go for good at the moment um especially not if

you want to ship on on consoles later on I want to have the options to ship on consoles and yeah so there are a couple of titles on Gau already but they're very small very simple um I think there's almost no 3D game on gdau that's out and like commercially kind of successful um I'm not sure I'm not sure let us know in the comments guys those of you those of you listening if there is however to your point about it being sort of I don't think it's ready for console and if it is ready for console just because something's ready for console doesn't mean that it's efficient and effective so like I've ported to console twice and I'm on my third time porting uh Twisted Tower to console and granted every single time I always partner with a porting studio um so it it's like we're we're sort of sharing the load makes sense it is so difficult it is so difficult to port

to console and that's with unity and unity has I would argue the best tools for porting to console and they have the best support and they have the best resources and documentation for for and also just they're connected to all of these um they're connected to Microsoft you know and they have contacts with Microsoft and they're working together to put these these these uh sdks and game kits together to to build out your game for console point being if it's that difficult and that much of a challenge for Unity I can't imagine that gdau is yeah is is is ready yet yeah exactly it will be and I and I I think people should be patient and i' I've had some people say well Thomas it's called having a backbone and I'm like now a backbone is not going to help me I what I need is two years and just to wait for gdau to to to get

ready to get all those resources available for porting the console I don't have two years I have a I have a contract with a publisher and I've got to get a game done yeah I mean that for us the exact same reasoning I mean we were you know we were definitely considering making a switch and then it was also just a you know a decision on okay this is going to take so much time to switch to a different engine um for us not for a game but for us to switch as person yeah say that after above snakes we wanted to switch to for outbound to Unreal or Gau I mean it would just be such a learning curve for us to do that that and we looked at it we we made estimations on how much is this going to take and we just couldn't afford it we just don't have that time right now to actually go and do that um and So eventually just let yeah let's let's stick with unity um yeah exactly

for that was one of the reasons and same with gdau I feel there are a lot of people that are really like advocates for for gdau and they're really defending it in the community and that kind of stuff and that's fine but there's a difference like between like being an indie developer in the evenings because it's your hobby and you're advocating for something or it's your job and it's your business that you're running and there are a lot of costs involved in switching to to Eng to another the engine so yeah I mean we we could talk definitely talk about the bell curve here because I know that there's going to be outliers who are good they are gdau developers and they are going to make their game for switch or Xbox and they they can raise their hand and say hey I'm doing it what are you talking about I'm a gdau developer and I'm making a fully-fledged commercial game so you're wrong and what I'm my point is yes that's awesome but I think most developers are they're they're already stressed out they're already trying to get their game done and they they're trying to find the motivation to finish their game and then

on top of that you have more stress of well this is this feature isn't supported and and this renderer isn't supported and actually you can't port to this console with this type of you know 3D art with this poly count with this kind of lighting and so you get all this stress because it's not yet supported in in the way that Unity is um so that's why I'm not I'm not an advocate for Unity or real gdau I'm just an advocate for getting your game done like I don't care what platform you use it's not a religion for me I don't care it's just it's just an engine however I will say that every engine is has its pros and cons right so at the end of the day unreal is not necessarily better than unity and gdau is better than Unity it really comes down to the developer and what they're making you know what I mean of course so 100% I think I think yeah I think for me like Unity serves our team the best um I've spent 10 years I've

spent 10 years harnessing my voice as a game developer and what I mean is like a writer a writer finds their voice so Stephen King he found his voice in his writing because he wrote and and he wrote and he wrote and he wrote and that basically cultivated his voice well a game engine is a huge aspect of your voice like it's like um it's second nature to me Unity the the way that I use Unity it's second nature I don't even think about it right yeah and that means that it's so much easier to put my voice into my games because I'm not worrying about the engine you know what I mean yeah the engine is your pen basically and you're comfortable with the pen and yeah of course and so to sort of wrap up my little Point here Unity is the best engine for me because my voice works best with the engine even though Unity probably has the worst reputation right now it has terrible

support it crashes all the time and I'm sure you guys agree yeah however it it it complement my voice yeah and so that's why I use it yeah exactly I mean you can still get like and like especially like graphically Unity has like a bad reputation where people like point out like the the Shadows that are forming like little stairs and that kind of stuff and I mean yeah the shading unreal just looks way better like no questions asked um but still we we get a lot of comments or questions like whether like outbound would be like an unreal game or a unity game so I think we did a decent job in like covering up the the ugly parts of of of unity and trying to make it shine as as best as possible yeah yep yeah we we got the question sometimes from Publishers we got the question sorry uh from from some Publishers here and there like well in what engine is this and we like to respond like what do you think well the the another question is

what do you want I I'm curious what do Publishers want do they like Unity oh we we didn't really ask like why why they asked no I'm not sure I'm not sure the question I've asked and they mo hands down most Publishers want Unity yeah because of the porting yeah supporting and also it's really really difficult Unity is like Unity runs terribly so like if you if you have like 20 real-time lights and you've got post-processing effects and You' got no occlusion calling and then you hit play Unity is going to run at like 30 frames per second yeah in the editor and at least for me right and I'm on like a souped up PC yeah the point is though is that Unity running like that is kind of a good thing because it forces you to optimize while you're making your game whereas I think with a a unreal there's so many clever there's so many clever tools with unreal um and

uh what is it called the the their Mega scans Library Mega scans and and then the the lighting as well oh the yeah Lumen Lumen or something like that Lum there's a ton of clever clever tools and so you're you're building this world inside of a souped up PC and then you show it to the publisher and the publisher is amazed it looks incredible and then you're like okay let's see how it runs on PlayStation and let's install it on Steam with 50 GB of uh of this storage yeah so Unity Unity it kind of it's like a it's like having a really really stingy father and he's like I know here's here's $100 and here's how you spend it and unity is similar to that it's like you have this many tools available to you and um you're at risk of crashing and the frame rate is going to be low because we don't know how to optimize lighting for some reason Unity can't handle realtime lighting yeah and that's in a weird way it's kind

of a good thing because it it allows your game to be actually portable by portable I mean it can be ported to console yeah so yeah and we're dealing with all of this on a daily basis and we are very uh cautious about our uh performance budget and yeah so yeah but yeah it makes you in a way a better developer I guess I mean you're forced to understand how things work and uh forced to being able to think about it think about it yeah yeah yeah our ideal is uh to to bring out outbound on um you know on everything on all the consoles um big big goals um and so yeah we're we're now it's a day-to-day thinking about okay how to do that and indeed the use of unity in that case is uh is useful yeah yeah you know in a way it kind of sounds like we're we're like defending a toxic girlfriend it is it is it's actually great she's terrible

but that's a good thing there're also good times right but remember a good time yeah um it well you know it's it's we didn't even touch on the fact that Unity tried to rip everybody off last year but yeah that was when we were on the edge of switching actually yeah yeah I was too I remember opening up unreal and my computer's fan started to spin fast than they've ever spun yeah and I it took I think 20 seconds to load and I was like okay this is cool I guess and so I kept using Unreal it was cool but the problem was the Paradigm Shift it's like it's like somebody going um you know stick shift you know how to drive a stick shift um but now we're actually going to teach you how to ride a unicycle drive a tank um it's like a totally different paradigm that's kind of how unreal is for me um it's totally different I don't know if you guys experienced that when you tried to

learn unreal oh yeah for sure I mean uh we we we started with the visual scripting stuff and I mean you know these graphs right that you did you connect oh yeah yeah blueprint yeah blueprint yeah it's called blueprint and I mean that was like total different I mean it's not a different concept but in a way it feels very different handling like basic stuff and we were Googling like the most basic four loops and I don't know what so yeah it's a big learning curve yeah it certainly is yeah and it's not wrong it's just different you know yeah of course so man okay guys I learned so much thanks for hanging out um did you want to leave the audience with anything before we wrap up here no I don't think so that uh well I guess I mean we talked about it a lot but um you know if you're going to make your own game or you have this great idea make sure that there's a couple of couple of things that you do well the visual hook the mechanical hook

hopefully those are the same thing or at least close um and test your stuff early just test it out with the with the public early and um and you know uh that's what we've been doing and so far it's been uh it's been going great so yeah thank you for you guys are killing it thank you thanks man thank you very much it's been very nice uh hanging out and talking about this yeah all right y'all take it easy hey everybody listening there's a link in the description for outbound click the click below and just as a thank you for all of the words of wisdom feel free to wish list the game all right guys thanks for chatting cool take it easy thanks for your time man thank you yeah cheers get over [Music] here hey thanks for watching by the way if you haven't downloaded that free 2D game kit below click below it's my treat to you I I used this game kit to make a game for PewDiePie in 14 days and

actually got to play it with him in front of his audience which is really cool this game kit is totally free it's my treat to you and you can use it however you want you can make a commercial game and make a million bucks off this game kit I don't care or you could just use it for a hobby project it's my treat to you and by the way if you haven't clicked like that would mean a ton to me hit subscribe and also this is important hit that notification Bell here's why if you get notified of when I'm live you can watch me make my next game and let me know in the chat what you think about the game or any ideas you have and you might just show up your chat might just show up in the next video that I upload all right I'll talk to you later bye I love you too