The BEST Advice For Starting Game Dev In 2025

I was lucky enough to ask the creator of the Kingdom series um about his number one piece of advice for people like you dreaming of making indie games and by the way he sold over a million copies in total of his indie games so I was all ears um basically what he said was Strangely I don't know relieving to me um I think this is going to help quell some fears for you as well um as you continue on your indie game Journey in 2025 so uh let's jump into the conversation like so there's one like in general advice is always hard but there is one thing that I am fairly convinced of that I feel like confident saying like Okay like simple like keeping that in mind if you if you build a game by yourself if you have the skills at all even remotely to build a game by yourself doing that is so cheap in a way that makes the risk so low that I think sticking with that is often smart you know if you see somebody building something and the question is like should I take it bigger should I accept money from a publisher and hire five

people then you you have to think like is there a way where I could just build this thing by myself and release that and I think then usually that I that would be my advice to take that Avenue because then your risk is low you're making something extremely personal there's no saying that that the risk reward ratio goes up as you accept more money from a publisher or as you hire people or as you invest more time in it you know like if you make something great and honest and beautiful in two months whatever that does you know divided by the time you invest in it the ratio could still be good and I think that would kind of be my advice like keep it simple and and small I mean that's also kind of a cliche because everybody says that like keep it small I don't know I mean this is what's funny is like for me I've been making games for half my life and keep it small is not something I ever told myself and it I don't know where like I never heard that and I never told myself that and so I'm on my third commercial game and this

thing is ballooned like opening levels takes like 4 minutes in unity uh it's just and it I think it's going to be a good game but like I've been kind of living in hell for the last two years I was going if you can handle the ballooning sure what what is one way that is a path to success I think for many people is find something that has that spark just experiment learn some new skills make something that you find fun and then if you make something that has a little spark where you're like hey I animated this weird little guy and he's running around in a world just go with that you know like always keep this kind of like so you're saying keep the fascination keep the the discovery as part of dude I totally agree with you like I I I feel like I've gone through the process of trying to make a game systematically and it just doesn't work for me it's it has to be a discovery process it has to be fun it h it has to

be like I'm having fun while I'm making it otherwise the game won't be fun you know what I mean exactly and if you give yourself a to-do list from the beginning of stuff that you have to build then you're going to be demotivated really quickly whereas if you have something that feels like you're playing with it as you're building the game like a fun character or a fun little mechanic just roll with that like that'll that'll get your creativity going and I think that's that's a recipe for Success not a guarantee but at least it's a it's a possible path you know sure sure I think that's a great way to look at it you're you're playing with it so that if you're not playing with your game yeah while you're making it yeah people won't play with it when it's done yeah I think that's a really good note to end on what do you think yeah definitely also feel yeah