This Young Solo Dev Built a Steam Hit in 4 Months

I just work when I get home from university. So maybe 4 to 3 hours every day. Today we reached 120,000 units. So it is crazy. This is a conversation with Zoro Arts, the indie game developer behind the game, Pedal Pedal Pedal. He spent about 4 months working on the game with only spending about 3 hours working on the game per day. So incredibly minimal time investment. And the game did incredibly well compared to the time investment.
Yeah, I made a demo in 2 weeks and then the full game in 4 months. Yes. And I posted the game play 3 hours after development on Twitter and it had like I think 70,000 views and 1,200 likes on the post which had only like playthrough graphics and a rough gameplay footage and it was like my first sign and this game can be viral. It's a very inspiring story. If you're looking to be inspired and if you're like I cannot make games, I will never make it then this is the episode for you. Look forward to being inspired and I hope you enjoy. I started in 2020 with my first like small game jam games. But um it was actually because I saw a video

of you and of Thomas Brush which made me to start game development and um it was it's a it's a co pandemic back then when I had school and I spent all the days at home because we had homeschooling and I searched for a new hobby and then I found a video of you about your snail back then and also a few videos from never song from Thomas Brush from his previous [music] games and I think these videos are the first videos where I wanted to make games myself and it was really I think really spontaneous. years. I started by making game jam games, smaller prototypes, just small games to learn Unity because I think back then I never wrote a single line of code before. So it was a really rough start for me because I only drew and I drew like in manga style. I drew like portraits. I made some 2D designs and also a few 3D models in Blender back then. Just a few like I tried to make a model of my room for example or of a car in low poly. But back then I never wrote a single line of code before and it was a rough start for me to start with game

development. And I think one year of prototypes later in 2020 I made my first real game Maky's Adventure and this one was we my first like real game without a week of development only. It was like I think two years of development from 2021 to 2023 was the release of the game and this was my first like real commercial game and yeah it was um I tried to be on social media. I tried to make Twitter post and collected a few thousand followers there. Then I also started with YouTube videos back then and it took a lot of time because I don't really have much time to edit them. So I tried to make it as good as possible but having like to make a game having university and then also making YouTube videos is really a lot a lot to do.
So you are done with school at that point and you are like studying at university. Yeah, when I made Monkeys Adventure, I was in university, but my first games I made in school in my like graduation year where I tour
and um I spend the days in the school with my laptop sitting in the back in the in the like back seat back back uh

of the class. Yeah. And then I basically just made games and try to get through graduation.
All right. And are you done with university now or are you still studying?
Uh it's a difficult topic, but I'm still studying. I think one year and I'm done. Yeah.
Cool. So you Yeah. You managed to break through very very early then. I think I think that's quite cool. Awesome. What would you say in hindsight about Mary's adventure? What what were the mistakes you made there? What were your main learnings from that project? Cuz I we can see here on Steam it didn't do amazingly well. It has positive reviews. So I think people liked it, right? But it um did not do super well.
Yeah, it was really a lot of learning because back then I started with pixels in my first game and it was a big learning thing because I started with a really rough understanding of pixel art. For example, my background had way less pixels than the foreground elements. So,

it looked really inconhive, you know, it looked really like um slammed together like an asset flip. But I made everything myself. But it's just because I didn't really knew that you can create all the assets all for the game in one file, you know, and then you have the same resolution on everything. But back then I made like my character had I think 60 by 60 pixels mucky and then my background had like uh I think 500 times 500 and it was way too high high resolute and it was really um yeah it was a lot of learning and I had to restart with the graphics after one year of development completely because the resolution was really not fitting. Okay, this was and like even if I look at the screenshots now, I can still see some uh v varying pixel sizes, right?
Yeah.
So, like not everything has exactly the correct pixel size. I also see a 3D screenshot in Mary's Adventure. Are there is there like a what what what's about the 3D in the 2D game there? Yeah,

the I think the 3D area is like the Hway that you see. And back then I wanted to make like uh dungeons like in Zeta, you know, where you have like a strict level. It's linear, you know, and it's not really um open world, but it feels like a dungeon in Zeta. So, you have like a starting area and then you have to get up to the finish and beat a boss fight. And in the dungeon, there's also a mini boss fight. There are puzzles like in the dungeon. There are like enemy rooms, there are items to find, abilities to find. So it feels like a Zelda game because you have a linear story and you have dungeons, boss fights, m like mini boss fights and stuff and you also have the progression from Horror Knight. So you learn your abilities on your journey. You have some things that you can explore like you have some hidden secrets to explore, you have areas to find, you have secrets to find. So it should feel like a Hollow Night Exader game, but um I wanted to make something special there because you travel between the 2D dungeons on a 3D hub world. So it it should be like a really special addition to the metabania

j you know so because most games are just one big word and I wanted to have like a big word but it should be connected in this 3D hub world area and you also have mini games on the hub world you have like secrets to find characters to meet so it's not only a visual hub world is more like a new area you know
okay I see I see cool yeah definitely sounds like you put a lot of effort into that game so it's a bit sad to see that it like didn't do amazingly well but like what's what's your theory for why it didn't sell so well? Did you not do any enough marketing or was the game just not right or what's what's your theory?
I think it's um mostly because of Jorah because I think this game could have done way better with better marketing of course because I had like I think 9 to 10,000 wish list on launch day which is not really good but also not bad. So it didn't it wasn't enough for I think popular upcoming back then. So I had no spots there. So I had no front page feature on launch day, but I also had like 10,000 people who get get an email

and I had I think 500 units sold on the first day, which is a really good thing I think for my first game.
Oh yeah, for sure.
But I think but then the sales like directly fell, you know.
Okay. Okay. [laughter]
I think um nowadays on sale it makes like 30 to 50 units sold daily, but without a sale it barely says 10 units a day. So it's like500 600 in a month, but not enough to live from. but like an a good income source over time, you know,
for a student project. I think that is still very solid. I think that's definitely something you can be more than happy with. Like how how much time did you invest into Mary's adventure? How much hours spent would you say or how many years did you work on that?
It's it's hard to tell but uh I know that I spent two years on it and after launch I spent one other year making like a level editor. I'm like really too I also made a level editor. It was pain. It was really a pain.
You made the same mistake. Why didn't you learn from my mistake? [laughter]
I think yeah,
I think your video came out later than I

had the level editor. So, I would maybe avoid level editor when I saw your video because I knew it was hard, but I wanted to make it because I think a level editor is really cool for a platformer game, you know, and with this shark mechanic, I think you can build a really cool level with that. But, um, I'm really amazed by the levels that people make. So, it's really cool for me to scroll through the level browser, you know, and just play other games. And it some people say it's like indie Mario Maker, but I don't think so. It's [laughter] it's like a high praise. But one cool thing is that like a university reached out to me from America, I think, and they said that they want to use a level editor to teach level design. So, right now, my game is part of their like lecture, you know. It's really amazing.
Awesome. Yeah. I mean the community for real snail I think also really appreciates the level editor how but I was imagining that this will lead to like a big bump in sales and people will be like oh my god we can make our own levels and it'll sell much better and it was like the the people who were already

there kind of liked it and that that was kind of it. Did you have the same experience or did sales numbers change at all after the level editor?
Um I made a different thing because I made level editor free to play on Steam. So it's like a new new application. I paid €100, like 90 I think 95 or something like that to offer my level editor for free so people can play it right now. It's a separate application on Steam because I just wanted to get people to make levels, you know, and of course people who own the game also gets le level editor in an update, but people who don't want to pay the game but just want to play with level editor can do that because it's free to play. So, you know, and I think it reached positive reviews right now. I think it has 11 reviews which are positive. It's really cool, but it's um I I I think I knew that it wouldn't do that well and it wouldn't be like a second lounge, but I think over the time maybe people come back and play levels and that's what I wanted to do, right?
And can you even like can you even play community levels for free with the level editor?
Yeah, you can do that. You can only play

level editor. Of course, you cannot play the full game, but you can play the level editor, the levels, you can make levels, share levels, and everything.
And could somebody, for example, recreate your entire in-game campaign? So, and then you can play it for free.
Um, there's every element from the game in the game in the level editor. So, you can make the whole dungeon in the level editor. Yeah, you can do that.
Okay. Interesting. But nobody has done that so far.
No. Someone made the path of pain from Horror Knife, which is really cool. And I also tried to recreate it because I think it's a I think it's the most fun challenge that I had in a video game. Like it's super difficult path, you know, from Horror Night, Puff of Pain. It is really fun to recreate it because I watched a lot of Hollow Knight videos, played a lot of Hollow Knight and tried to recreate every mechanic from Hollow Night into my game. I also into the level editor. I mean, I also added like the chainsaws from Hollow Night. I also added the the Celeste dash so you can also make Celeste level then and I tried to make like the universal platformer level editor, you know. So, you can make the less type levels where you have like this upward dash with directional dash.

You can use a hollow mechanics like the dash of course a pogo jump. you can use of course too. And all the mechanics of my favorite metavanias are in the level editor to use.
Okay. But does your main character have all of these movement abilities by default or can you like turn them on or off or how does that work?
Um, you can edit Maki, you can edit the character, you can edit his jump height, you can edit every value, you can edit the the maximum HP. So you can customize everything because there was like a game mode in Minecraft which is called get down and you have to you are like on I think a thousand meters height and you have to jump without getting fall damage you know and you have to get down and jump on blocks that are like beneath you and you have to get to the ground surface without dying on from fall damage and that's also something I wanted to make. So I also implemented fall damage. I made like new abilities in the game that are not not even in the full game. So the level editor is more like it has more content than the full game. It says
that is more content and you are

offering it for free and it sounds like a very extensive level editor. And now I also understand why that university wanted to use it as a as a game design teaching tool if if there are so many possibilities to modify the character and so on as well. That's interesting. Cool. Yeah, it's really um and also I watch a lot of Mario Maker videos because I think Mario Maker is like the level editor is amazing I think and there's like one fanmade Mario Maker editor which has like the Mario Maker content but multiplied by five. So you have like thousands of elements that are new in the game. You have so much cool content and I love this like um infinite level editor thing that the Mario Maker fans made and I really took this as inspiration. I try to make everything controller compatible because making a controller compatible level editor is like the pain. I made the level editor controllable with mouse and keyboard of course because it's easy to make with Unity's UI system, but then I had to make it all controller like it it is really controller input is really really

hard for like um say something like a level editor, you know.
Yeah. If if you have a lot of UI it becomes very annoying very quickly. I think I for William snail we cheated a little bit and we just made basically the kaza controllable with the game pad. But I think it's enough right if people can work with that is enough I think but I wanted to go all in and make everything and I think level editor alone the controller I support alone took me two months to implement and it was like the level editor itself took 8 to 10 months so almost a year
and I also made some more content because people made levels that are really cool and I thought why not just add like a ball that you can shoot around and now we can play football in the level editor too and a lot of cool things came into the level editor it's really fun.
Wow. And but you're not still actively working on the level editor or are you opening that project up every once in a while to
Yeah, from time to time a bit because I think it's a fun thing to work on.
Okay, nice. So So you made Mary's Adventure, then you made the level

editor, right? And
yes,
then you made pedal pedal pedal.
Before pedal pedal, I made a rog light called Rogue Jungle and that's like it was in development for one year. It had like a feature and you know the Gong best I think it's called Deutsche Indie showcase in in German and it was like a showcase made by the YouTuber Gong from Germany. I think he's like the biggest YouTuber right now in Germany or was the biggest one and he made for the viewers he made like an indie indie showcase where German indie games are showcased to his like follower base.
I had the honor like to announce my game in the showcase and a lot of people thought it was a really cool thing. So it had like a like a small hype around it. But then I got the idea for Pip Ped under the shower and thought I would just stop working on Rogue Jungle and just make pett pedal in a few months and then I work on Rog Jung again. You know, it's like my way to do games to make games. [laughter]
I think the reason why your story is so awesome is because it it's so relatable. Although like like you're just a dude from your bedroom and somehow you

managed to land your first hit with pedal pedal pedal. I think it's it's [laughter] really cool.
Try my best. You got the idea under your shower under the shower and you were like like you did you know right away that's a banger idea or it was like this typical
oh my god I or
yeah I I can tell a bit about that because back then I play a lot of chain together carry the glass is like co-op ra games which you can play with your friends and I thought something like that but with like a pedal boat would be really cool and this idea came to my mind by taking a shower because uh one year ago on vacation with my brother We had like a pedal boat and we made like a pedal trip. So we drove around tried to pedal a bit and having this like team team based mechanic in real life, you know this pedal. I think pedaling is really hard if you have not not like the best teammate for that
because you need to coordinate. You need to like talk to each other. You need to say pedal pedal. You have you need to like to have like a rhythm. You know if someone is out of the rhythm then you

are completely going to the wrong direction. That's like the difficult thing about like driving a pedal boat. And that's why why I thought why not making like a co-op game with like a pedal boat mechanic. And this idea as I said came to my mind under the shower. And then I run to my desktop and try to make this game on in Unity quickly. So I spent I think two or three hours to make like a really small prototype. It had just like Unity blocks around for the environment. It had like uh I think Unity spheres for like the bouncers where you had cannot collide with. And then you also have like I think a character I made I think a year ago for my other game Rock Jungle the player character before I like swapped it with a bird. And um then I like reused my water shadow of Maki's adventure because I just wanted to get the gameplay working. And I tried to reuse everything that I previously made and just make the gameplay working and like visually noticeable. You know that you see it's like a pedal game. You have to pedal and

the gameplay should be clear but the graphics are not really important back then. And I posted the game play about two three hours after development on Twitter. And it had like I think 70,000 views and 1,200 likes on the post which had only like playthrough graphics and a rough gameplay footage. And it was like my first s this game can be viral because also I made a Tik Tok video because I post a lot of on Tik Tok because it's a really good thing to evaluate
because you don't need hundred thousands of followers. you just need a post there and it can go viral because it's like um cool thing, you know, and Tik Tok doesn't require followers. So, I just post all my gameplay things on there and see how the people react on it, how their ideas um what ideas they have and um if they like it or not. And then I just make the game with this like a knowledge.
I mean, you know, cuz it's kind of uh normal to be excited for your game ideas when you have a new game ideas. There are a lot of game ideas that I think that you could also have under the shower that are probably bad game ideas

that you just get excited about in the moment. Like I think it's very normal to get excited about your game ideas when you have them, right?
Mhm.
But then you you made a quick prototype and people instantly re like gave you positive very positive feedback for that prototype both on Twitter and it went well on Tik Tok as well then.
Yeah. And then also some press people wrote about it on like um I think Daily Mail Gaming is like a big like I think British um like gaming site. They had like 500,000 TW Tik Tok followers and they also loved the game and posted about that. And this one because Maky's Adventure was never shared that much and that fast by like a news outlet, you know. And that way I thought this game had really big like uh really big um potential to be like a big game you know because it has so much good feedback in after two hours of development. I [laughter] thought what can I do in one month with that you know and I just then um like made a demo I think in two weeks and this demo like it had 100,000

downloads then and it was really big and it it went viral in Germany because like you know Pete's meet they played the game then also Paplat and Sarex and Shardin and all the big streamers from Germany who play like this co-op rage games and back then I just sent an Twitter DM to them or text them under my Twitter post and they directly said It looks like a really fun game. We want to play it. And that was my first science. This game can be really big because it's like a like this demo was made in two weeks. And I don't work full-time hours. I just work when I get home from university. So maybe four to three hours every day.
And um I can make something like that in two weeks. So I wanted to take a few months to make the full game then. And yeah, it was like a really it was really um quick and spontaneous. And then the publisher also reached out S Entertainment and the the CEO Stefan Matine reached out to me via LinkedIn I think and said do you need a publisher? We would love to work with you. And I was like um they can make the things that I don't like to make like localization getting like the different

translations for the game because we I right now the game is available in I think 15 languages. And this helped me really much to get into the like international area because when you want to go viral on Steam, I think you have to be localized because I think we had um someone sent me a screenshot. We were on the front page in the I think on the steam in Japan. So we went viral there and also in Korea and right now I think 60 to 70% of the units sold are from like Asian countries which is really amazing.
I think the German market only had like maybe 5%. So, localization, a new capsule arts, like um a better trailer, and the publisher did all that, which helped me to get more people on the game via the Steam algorithm.
That's wild. And a lot of that was just based on like a either very short twohour prototype or like a two month demo. Then like the publisher deal was based on the on that two month demo and the reception that got essentially, right?
They had no like in development version.

they only play the demo and they saw like the feedback from the streamers who liked it a lot.
And then also like a first big thing for me was when um I think um I sent a trailer to trailer to the trailer email from IGN and it got featured on the IGN main channel one day later which was crazy for me. So it was on the YouTube channel from IGN had like I think 23,000 views and people lost the idea and this one was the first post which got a lot of like wish list also. I think 3 to 2,000 wish list from an IGN trailer post only, which is like really big for me because Pip Pett had not that big wish list spikes. I think um I launched a game with 10 or 11,000 wish list after I think 4 hours or four months of development. So it was enough for popular upcoming and new and trending and like the top I think we also went to the top seller charts. But um I think it has the same wish list count as Maky's Adventure had on launch. But the difference was that Petty Petty had it in way less like development time, you know. So it had 10,000 after three month

four months of development and Maky's adventure had 10,000 after 2 years of development.
So I think my wish velocity was a important thing there.
I see.
Yeah.
A that's so wild. Did you you made the whole game in four months from you made the demo in two and then you made the full game in four? Yeah, I made a demo in two weeks and then the full game in four months. Yes.
Holy man. I mean, you know, when you look at the game, you can kind of see that it's like a relatively quickly made game, but I'm wondering was there any feedback, anyone who was like, um, like are there any Steam reviews that are like thumbs down, this doesn't look so great, for example?
I think graphic wise, not really. There was like two or three that said graphics look not that good but the game is super fun. So the reviews are positive but they criticize the graphics. But the important thing is that um I think some people from China had like a high

latency because I think there's a firewall in China and if you have because I use photo fusion if you want we can talk about that too and I think you need like a different photo fusion ID to support game like more gamers in the Chinese country and that was a really big thing because I didn't have that. So like I think 80% of the players from China had like a good latency like super good performance but I think 20% had like this like issue where I think the distance was too high and like the firewall was in their way that they had like I think one or two seconds of delay after every pedal
and this was something that killed my reviews a lot like the like on the networking part.
Got it. But like the the thing I'm wondering about is do people care if the graphics are crap? Apparently not right.
No really not. [laughter] Because if it's
you just have to look at it and most of the games look look trash if you want to say it like that. My game also looks trash but it looks like a sty like stylized trash you know.
I made everything myself. Of course I'm

not the best 3D modeler not the best 3D artist but I think a game like that has to look really like trash because people don't want to play like um co-op Rage game with Alen ring graphics you know. didn't want to play it more I think with like only up graphics shell together which looked like slammed together asset flips you know because the graphics are too realistic and it I think it's also like a lot of games are made with Unreal Engine and then you have photo scans photo realistic models in 3D you know and uh Unity you don't have that so it's like a big problem for me but I then just decided to make like a really stylized art style used an outline shader made like everything look more cartoony And I think like the high contrast from the lava to the water to the characters in the boat made like the game stand out on Steam. And that's I think standing out between other games is far more important than having like a super realistic graphics for for my personal um import um opinion. And I think that

this high contrast when you look at it, it looks like really eye-catchy for most people. And people look at the the scheme caps a lot. And also like Sam made a new cover art which looked really good in my opinion. It helped a lot with like catching eyes on the game but before I had a screenshot of the game as a capsule art and when we replace the caps art I saw um like in high really high difference in like the conversion rate and stuff.
Oh that's really cool. So you can see a difference difference there if you just re change the capsule. Wow. Nice. I mean, you see it in the I think views on the Steam page because people see the the button from the game on their page like in the discovery queue in like popular upcoming of course too. And of course the new cover looks way better like the new one that is like illustrated.
Before it was like a like a really a screenshot made in the game engine and with like aerial text ped on top of it with like a black outline. It was really like um it was really in the way, you know. But Assembly like hired an

illustrator to make a better capsuard, a better logo and like way like a better trailer because we also had like two streamers who played the game. And we took like um we said them maybe you can um put a bit more things into the into your like um voice lines, maybe you can talk a bit more about the game that we can record it for a trailer then. And having this voice over trailer help a lot with getting the co-op aspect out to the people, you know. M is so is the voice over trailer is it like is it an explainer trailer or is it um people talking to each other as if they were playing the game?
Um they are playing the game on stream. In the end you can also see their names because we also include like a credit in the in the end of the trailer with the two streamer names and um they played the game on their stream but we then took part of the stream and took it for the trailer. Semi made it. I didn't really made the trailer or anything about that. I just sent them the game and sent the two stream keys to the two streamers and they made the trailer then.
Okay, got it. And did they know that they were making the trailer or did they

just play it and in hindsight you took their footage?
They knew that. They knew that. But there was one area where they couldn't um where they couldn't really get further. You know, there was one area that was way too hard and we had to I had to decrease the difficulty a lot because on day one it was way too difficult the game. Of course, it should be a difficult co-op game, but not that difficult. And I think one week before release, there was German Dev Days in Frankfurt, and I had like a booth there because it's made by my publisher. And they put my game, I think, on the first row that people cannot really walk past that without seeing that game. And having this feedback where people played for I think 1 hour, I didn't made it to the first checkpoint, helped me a lot to like um balance the game. I also played the game with different friends of mine. I let people from my university play the game with my like
when I was behind them, you know, and um having this like we also had QA so we had people play it and we had like a QA report that I could use and fix all the

bugs and stuff. So on the launch day there were no bug. There were not a single bug. the game was really bug free and um maybe only like a few graphical glitches where like like Z fighting happened and two like 3D models like had the same um height and the like the polygons were fighting which polygons rendered first and stuff like that but nothing really game-breaking. The only bugs were like graphical things and things I think does not look does not look that good and I had to like replace the 3D models and yeah it was a really good lounge.
Mhm. Nice. Nice. Happy to hear that. Yeah, we we kind of got carried away from the graphics topic there. I just wanted to add that I I think you described it so well with saying that it's like stylized junk or how did you call it? Stylized.
Yeah.
Uh something like that. I think that describes it really well. And I think it's also a very self-confident type of jankiness, right? It's not

trying to hide the jankiness and it doesn't look accidental. It looks like looks like very on purpose like with with these flying walls and everything. Very QB and kind of prototypish. So I think people are more open to it if it looks like it it's been done on purpose.
Yeah, I think so too. and only I think on social media on Tik Tok I had like a few hate comments which said this game looks trash but um when the game went viral I used their comment to make a video with this comment and said hm this trash is sold really good thank you for the [laughter] comment and people really think that graphics are super important but for like for my personal for my studio for Zoroas for the games I make I only care for gameplay and fun I don't really care for graphics because I know I'm not the best 3D artist not the best 2D artist but I know that I can make fun mechanics like the pedal boat, the shark morphing, and monkeyy's adventure. And I built the game around those mechanics and try to make the game fun and the graphics should fit the fun, but shouldn't be of course shouldn't be underelling. The graphics shouldn't be

too bad, but it should fit to the game play and to the game itself.
Mhm. Yeah, that makes that makes perfect sense. Yeah. And also, I think it's very genre dependent what people care about. Like if you for example make a narratively driven immersive walking simulator or something something like this then probably people want good graphics there.
Yeah.
But I for a lot of shores graphics are probably overvalued. I think
my like personal favorite is like from Devolva the games because Devolva games look awesome but they are not with the best graphics but the graphic style is super unique and super like different from game to game you know. Um and I think Devoa has this like graphical approach where they um either have like the gameplay is really unique or the graphic looks really unique but the game play can be already done before you know and I think deolver is like deolver games look amazing but they also do not

care about realistic graphics they just want like a stylized experience and that's something I also want to make in my games.
Mhm. So you're looking for style more than anything really. Yeah. Yeah, makes sense. And also you you get that recognizability like as as you said, if you see a pedal pedal screenshot, you instantly recognize the game. There's like no way around it really. And you already knew how to do multiplayer, right? Cuz you cuz you've already made some multiplayer prototypes and like smaller games with Photon before.
Yeah. Um I made like a car racing game in I think 2021 before I made Monkeys Adventure. I it took I think two weeks to just learn fen pun back then because right now f because I had like an talk an interview with the fen developers I think a few days ago for their social medias and we talked a lot about fot and pun back then and fen fusion about difference and stuff and about how to make a game with foden and I think right back earlier I think when I made the car racing game fen fusion was not existent

I think back then only fen pun was like fen unity networking is what F and pun stands for. And I think back then only f pun existed and fton fusion fen pun was really different to fot and fusion and it was like a big thing to get from fot and pun for me to to use fton fusion too because the components work differently the whole like system is different a bit and
um I think um I don't even know how fton pun works right now because I forgot it because it was like really specific component components that you need to use and right now there's like fton network and components like this on. And I think because I don't really know how how how networking works and how like online multiplayer works, but I just use the Fen components like because I'm a developer who learns from seeing other people work with it, you know. So I used some example projects like in racing game made by Foden and I tried to rethink this project into my game and to pedal pedal and tried to rethink how

this like how I have to like make the components and stuff
because the difference is in a racing game everyone has their own car you know and you only have to sync your own car but in pedal you share the same object. you have like this one boat is that everyone needs to work with needs to like get the position rotation from and um you cannot just have like a rigid body network component slam it onto your pro into your object and then it works out of the box with pedip also right now built client side prediction into it which is also a really hard topic for me because
I am more like a graphical guy so I just make 2D art I try to make programming too and programming is really hard for me but I tried to learn it over the time over the years but learning online networking is like a whole new level because it is so deep and super hard to learn and I'm happy that Foden exists because you can make it work without knowing how it works under the scene [laughter] you know

it it mostly it's like you have to learn how the components work how how and where you have to place your components and uh stuff like that but you don't have to learn how like the networking part like how the server and stuff works,
right? And so you basically taught yourself how it works from looking at example projects, right? Okay.
Interesting. And how do you make like a like a shared object like that? Cuz usually the I think the way these networking libraries work is that certain objects are owned by and either by specific players or by a server, right? And then
do do you just send is one player the authoritative server player that decides the real position of the boat and the other just sends inputs something something like that right
it works like that right so you have like two players in the same boat and one player is a host and the other player is a client and the client sends an RPC so a remote procedure call uh when they have like an input like pedal

because with pedal pedal in online multiplayer you press space to pedal or like the A button on the controller and then in online multiplayer the um like Fton sends an RPC from the client to the host and says the client has padded now and then the host triggers the action on their side and then sends the pedal like with the visual things like the animation and the rigid body like at force and stuff and sends this RPC back to the client you know and that's how it basically works. So they are like one RPC for the input detection from the client to the host and then one RPC for from the host to the client for the action in the game.
Mhm. Got it. So that means that in pedal pedal one player basically has immediate response for their actions because there are those and the other one
has to wait for the signal to come back and for that player you implemented prediction. I am right now. But right now the game work without prediction because for most players I think for every big streamer or every like content

creator because there's a good connection a good internet it works perfectly. So you don't see any delay visually and they don't really talk about um it feels delayed and stuff because it doesn't look delayed. There's like maybe 100 milliseconds of delay maybe or 200 millconds.
Sure.
Because they have a good connection because they are streamers. But for for many players from China, as I said, it was like because the firewall was in their way and stuff and it was really um yeah, it didn't really work for them and they had like one or two seconds of delay which for them killed the experience. But right now I'm building client side prediction um 3 months after launch to make them the game better.
Yeah.
Yeah. So I think but even very small things can probably already help a lot. for example, that when you press the pedal button, you instantly see the animation locally.
And even if the movement takes a second to kick in or so, like even if you just see them the animation happening or so, I think even just small things like that can probably also make a big difference already.
Yeah, that's what I try to do. And right

now it's already working. The animation is happening directly, but the source of course needs to processing time from the client to the host and from the host to the client. But right now I try to like push the object locally from the client too but it has some location problems then because it's not synced and now I have to like send the like real position from the host to the client to correct it and that looks really laggy for people you know and it's really hard to make it work but I think I will get it done in one or two weeks.
Okay, you'll figure it out. Yeah,
I'm working on it every day.
Nice. So but you don't have to do this. You just want to make the game better essentially.
Yeah.
Cool. I I can sense that you're very uh passionate about your games and about gamedev in general. And it's cool to see that this approach works out, right? Also like for Mary's adventure, it's like not you're not working on it for for like a cash grab. You're working on it because you you like the game and you're like I don't care if this level

editor sells super well. I just think it's cool. I just want to make some games because I I love making games and it's something I want to do I think for the next 40 years of my life and I hope that I can also have the same mindset 10 years or 20 years later of course because I don't know how you feel with 30 because right now I'm 23 and maybe in 7 years I have a different like mindset a different like plans for my future but I hope that I have like enough money then that I can live without having struggles then because pedal did really well financially and it was like a big like um big sign of hope for me because right now I think like living from game development can work if you make games that people actually want and if you don't really make only games that you only want but make games that players want and like that go viral already and add your own twist onto it I think because you can make games that you want of course like a point and click adventure if you like it but you also have to look into the market if you want to live from your games of course you can make it have a job and then make games in your free time and then you can

make everything that you want but when you want to live because in the next years I really want to live from game development when I start when I finish my university and then I really have to find something that I can do for like 10 years 20 years and stuff that I can use financially you know
and right now I'm thinking more like I just make games that are fun to me and of course most games are fun to other people too because I'm a gamer myself and I know what people like because I study Steam every day I look into the popular upcoming I see on LinkedIn which developers post about their games and what they did for marketing because um I also saw a game like it's called Final Sentence. It's like a battle but you have a type. It's like type racer but in a battle with 100 players in it.
And I think seeing games like that on LinkedIn where people post about their like Tik Tok success and stuff really helps me to also plan my future games and h maybe I could also use Tik Tok for my game. Maybe I could also reach out to this YouTuber and um use this email to like contact IGN and stuff. And I think

you also have to learn about marketing, learn about how to make fun, how to make commercial games, how to make viral games, but it's all just happening with my from my heart. You know,
it's a it's a difficult line to walk, right, where on the one side you're like, I just want to make games that are fun. I just want to make games that I really like.
Yeah. But at the same side, you have to balance it with the economic aspects where for example, one thing you said earlier is for Mary's adventure, it was mostly the genre
which which I would agree with like platformers in particular are one of the most difficult genres. So, but you have tradeoffs like that, right? So, you still need to find a way to to work around these trade-offs and you got to learn the business side of things.
Yeah. So, so how are you how are you planning to walk that line?
Um, to be honest, just um look how things work out. I don't really want to spend too much time thinking about the money and stuff because I think it's the

best way to just make games and let everything happen at sales, but of course you can use things like Tik Tok and social medias to learn how other people market their games, for example. Because I think learning how to work in the industry better and not really care about the money but more about how you can improve your workflow, how you can improve your marketing way, how you can make fun games and stuff and what people like about it is way more important than only taking care about the money and stuff because in my opinion money will come if if you just put your heart into games because that's what happened to like almost every game developer you know Balato for example makes the games that he wanted to make for his friends and for himself. He doesn't really he didn't really care about the about the money and about like making a viral game. He just made the game that his heart told him to do and that he really wanted to make. And of course also Rampire Survivor, they all they all didn't really care about the money and stuff. They just wanted to make a fun game and it had success on it on its own. So I think it's important to not

hunt for the money but hunt for fun games,
right? But then you also have situations like like Maki's Adventure for example where I think it's very fair to say that you did very much follow your heart and you wanted to make a game that you find fun and yet it
didn't sell extremely well. So I
I wonder is there a correlation between the strategies or how do you think about it or is it like if you make projects that you're passionate about it will become successful eventually even maybe not not immediately or like what's the way you think about that? I think if you have like a fail like Mary's adventure was a big fail from the financial aspect because I spent two or three years after launch with the web editor which I spent one additional year. I also made a boss rush mode like I think I made a local multiplayer mode with steam remote play together like where I can play with friends online also and I spent a lot of time for a game that made I think a net revenue I got onto my like bank account it was like maybe 12,000

for like three years of development. The game was a big financial flop, of course, but the game to taught me how to make games, you know. It was like my first big game that that taught me how to like finish a game, how to keep motivated because before Adventure, I only made games in one or two weeks and maybe a month like for a bigger game. But Mary's Adventure was my first like big game that told also taught me that I don't want to make games over two over three years anymore. I just want to make smaller games, fun games, and I want to make more different games, you know, because I would rather make three games in three years than one game in three year and hope that this one game like recovers my financial problems over the time, you know, [laughter] and with Ped which told me that games can be made in a short amount of time and you can put effort and loss into the game, but you don't have to put like feature creep and stuff into the game development because I made a list of elements that want to be in the came um from the first day. So I made one big list in I think I think I made it in Word in Microsoft Word and

stuff and I just made one list with like 30 elements that should be in the full game and nothing more. And then I strictly keep working with the list. I didn't really edit more things before the game launch. I just had like 30 elements and like different biomes and stuff that I had planned out from the first day and having this like planned out development but shorter development instead of like a 3 years development and looking h maybe I get a whole new idea tomorrow. Maybe I get like a new like dungeon idea in one week. Um I just really want to make one game with like a list of elements that I want to have in there and don't really over scope, don't really feature creep and just make the game that I wanted to make in the first day.
Smart. So you knew from making Mary's Adventure that you would going to that you are going to be tempted to add more things and that's why you made a list early on.
It's my big problem. I I feature Que is like a big problem for me. But I just love to learn and uh play other games like when when I met Mak Adventure I played Hollow Knight. I played Zelda and

I had like um I had a lot of ideas every day for new dungeons, new characters, new items
because I also had like the idea to make a double jump item. I think I think 10 weeks before launch and then I made it into like a quest and I made the quest working last day before launch day because I had like a game-breaking bug in the quest and I don't really want to suffer from feature creep and have this like spontaneous idea that took I think 10 days from development just fixing a bug, you know, it's really not good.
Yeah, I see. that that's kind of what I'm saying cuz if you if [clears throat] you just follow your heart and you just make games that you want to make then I think feature creep is a is part of that right if you if you
so this is this is already you compromising for for like the for the business side of things maybe right
yeah try that and just maybe um listen to your heart but don't listen to feature creep and over scoping and stuff but I think it's important to make the

game that you had planned and not really getting like a lot of people influence you and like because of course it's good to listen to player feedback, but I don't think that I think you should make the game that you want to make and not take a lot of like too much care of like player feedback and having ideas from the community. Of course, it's important to edit, but it shouldn't be like the like the majority, you know, the development.
Mhm. Right. But you still want to maybe watch them play to see if
Yeah, of course.
They get stuck somewhere and so on. Yeah. Yeah, sure. Yeah, makes sense. You have a very raw and pure approach then still, right? I see.
I [snorts] tried it.
We we'll talk again in 10 years and we'll see how that changed if you if you slowly get more pragmatic over time or [laughter] you manage to maintain that. But what are your takeaways or ideas for the next projects then? So, you want to keep making small games?
Of course. Yeah, I want to only make small games. Maybe um after like three more successful small games like Ped

Pedal, I want to make like one bigger game because I had like a 3D Makis adventure secret land which is more like the Wind Waker game from Zeta which had like this big ocean world and the islands are connected to the game world so you don't have any screen transition. You can just enter an island and the island is in real world size you know and it should be like an open world adventure game because I also have planned the story everything is planned out. I just need to start development, but um I really want to work with it with a publisher in the early days already and have funding and stuff or maybe a Kickstarter because I think this game can be really big and really cool, but only with like the amount of money that I can make the game full-time because I don't want to make this game after getting home from my job or something like that, you know? I think it's too exhausting. M well ideally if you make three three more small successful games ideally you'd already be self-funded by then right that would be the best case scenario
I hope pedal is more like like an income

source for next years because right now the I think today we saw 2,000 units today only because we have a sale
it's like it's still doing great and the publisher also reached out and said because we have meetings one once in a while while we chat via discord every Okay. And um it's really amazing because the game has not really fell off right now. It is out for more than 3 months on Steam right now and the sales are going like spikes every day. So it's not really falling off. It's more like of course more people play the game in when it's evening in Germany because I think it's then morning in USA or something like that and I think it's a time where most units are sold. So because of German I think German units sold are like 5% of of oil overall and I think most units are sold in Asia and in USA I think oh no Asia, Russia and um Turkey I think is the three biggest unit sold. So I think the like the spikes are getting

through steam when they are awake, you know, and that's when when I see the spikes in the next morning
and I wake up and I think today we reach 120,000 units s which is crazy and um I really hope to get 200,000 units sold until the end of the year
because we have one big event in November where we have like a main main show spot and this one is pretty pretty huge. It's like big
like I think the biggest event on on Twitter, YouTube for game developers
and um we will have like an update there really cool and I think it's like more like a second launch. It it can be more like a second launch because the event had 150,000 concurrent viewers last year. It's it's pretty big
and you're announcing a pedal pedal update.
Yeah. Yeah, we are doing something big there. I can say that.
Okay. Interesting. Nice. Um, it sounds like you're quite happy with Assemble Entertainment for your publisher.
They are awesome. They take the things I don't like to do because when people reach out with um, can we have a call

about we have like a project, we have like this and that and I then just forward the email to [laughter] to the publisher because I just want to make my game. Of course, I I love to listen to other projects, other like cool like opportunities, but I first let a sample check that and if they think the thing is cool, then I also check it out, of course.
But you can you get so much like spam and trash and like my my inbox is full of trash and like we are Steam creator, we are review site and we would like 10 10 Steam keys and I'm like why 10 Steam keys? And
because we want to resell them. That's the truth. Let's be real here. Then I just forwards emails to a sand and they like sort out the trash from the good ones.
Yeah. Yeah. Um the like I I still get spam emails for will you snail every day. Like people still think they can extract free keys from me. I fell for it at the beginning, but now I know they're just like it's like 99% key resellers. very very rare that a

real creator requests a key because honestly the real creators if they want to play a game the the fastest thing for them is to just buy it.
Yeah. I think if I see like a Steam creator email then I just directly ignore it you know because I think this creator thing is not really worth it because of course some people have 10,000 people who follow it but then I see like they post like 10 creator reviews every day and I'm like maybe 10 people buy the game maybe. Maybe, you know, I think more like maybe one people, one person buys the game and I think it's not worth it then. So I just of course with like things like can you pet a dog is like a big creator page where people actually just want to see games. They have a dog that you can pet of course that if I send them a key for adventure back then, but most people are just like scammy sites that just want to have your game for like key seller page.
Yeah, that's that's how it is. and they often have like fake YouTube channels with like few botted videos and so on to convince you that you should give them a

key. Interesting interesting economics behind that. But cool cool to hear that um you're happy with your publisher cuz I think there are always a lot of stories going around of developers not being happy with their publisher. Also like especially behind closed doors like people like developers don't always talk about it openly but behind closed doors there are a lot of stories of devs not being so happy with their publishers. So it's cool to see to see some devs are happy with their relationship. I actually had one big wish because I think a few I think one week ago devolver followed me on Twitter and then I sent them an like a DM where I said hm I have a game a rog like maybe you will like it and then they send me send us a pitch and then I send the pitch to Nigel I think he's like the devolver like submission for pitch guy and he like I think reads through every pitch and discuss with the team and then they reached out to me via email but sadly like they said it looks like a really interesting game and we really likes the

concept but we think it doesn't fit to our portfolio but he said [clears throat] that he would like to know other games I make in the future I think it's not a win but not a lose maybe something in between but like having deva publish rock general in my big dream because it's like
even like even opening that communication line sounds like a win to me for sure like at that point where you're at in your career right now that sounds like a win to be honest
yeah because I saw Thomas video Thomas brush about like devolva because he had like brave boy you know this game stock game, right?
Sure.
And he also reached out to developer and they even had like I think a meeting at Gamescom and I I'm like, "Holy it would be really cool if they had like published Brave Boy, I think, because everything develop publishes it is like preoid, you know, because the game doesn't really have to be that good, but it's Devolver and people give it a chance then, you know, and maybe they will like it. So maybe when the game it saved is not enough to sell to the audience. I think the devolver like devolver sign on it is like a first sign

for people to check it out.
Mhm. Yeah. I think it can work out in some cases but I also think it's very hard to generalize. And I also think that if you if you can I think it's best to just go completely self-funded solo without a publisher. But it depends of course on what you can do and what you want to do. For example, if you're like, I really don't want anything to do with marketing at all and I want others to deal with all of those emails, then that's perfect, right? That's that's awesome that that you have somebody to take care of that for you then.
Yeah. Um, for Rock Jungle, it was more like um I need money because I want to have like professional music for that. And I reached out already to the Vamper Survivor composer to one of them because he enjoyed like playing the play test and he liked the concept of the game and having like a Vamper Survivor composer because the Vamper Survivor music is like one of my favorite video game soundtracks. I really love it
and having like something made from a composer from Vamper Survivor in my Rog like game because I think music is super

important. music and sound effects.
And I think having his like work in in Rogue Jungle could really help to get like this rogue like um Rog like thing, you know, because I think a rog like really is needs a lot of music, sound effects for every weapon and stuff because when I play Enter the Gungeon, for example, I love to listen to the music. The gameplay itself is awesome, but I also love to like shoot around because I think the SFX and Enter the Dungeon or in Vamper Survivor are awesome. And like the music when standing in standing in the middle in Vamper Survivor, just listening to the music is like a treat to my to my ears, you know? It's like awesome for me. And I because right now I only use from production trade free to use music under the license for them and it's like not really good enough to sell the game. And most people think the sound effects, the music are trash, but the game play feels really unique and cool, but the music is really annoying to them. So I think having and I play like 10 to 50,000 for 10 to 15,000 for music and sound effects, like for I think two or three

unique soundtracks and for a few sound effects made by a professional sound designer could really help to make the game stand out better.
Yes. That about the price range you pay for two to three tracks is like 10 to 15,000 something like that. Um I think so because I had like um a I had like a conversion like a conversation with him and he also reached said that um he also has not that like high of a price for his music because he loves to make music but of course it it is not really uh cheap because it's like a professional sound design music you know
and yeah but
yeah but like if it's like a professional who has done for music for for other games before then that I think sounds like a pretty fair price. Yeah. Could could probably be he could probably be asking for more.
Yeah, he could I I think it could could go easily for more because his portfolio is amazing.
Yeah. Interestingly, I have some data to back up your claim that music's very important cuz I um looked into the data

a bit recently and you know, you know how games have different texts on Steam and so you can kind of compare how well they are selling based on the text that they have.
Mhm. And finally, um, great soundtrack is one of the texts that is really like a positive indicator for for good sales. So, I'm not sure if it's causes correlation or causation. Not entirely sure. Could also be that better games have better soundtracks
or it could be that games with better soundtracks sell better. I'm not entirely sure which one it is, but there there's some correlation there for um that that alone is already quite interesting. Yeah.
Yeah. I think because um I'm like a gamer and I listen to music a lot. Like for example, when I work on my games, I listen to Pokemon Pearl music because I think the OS from Pokemon Pearl and Diamond are amazing. And I just love this chip tune, old school pixel art like music, if you know what I mean, and this old school vibe to it. And I don't really like this because I think like a game like like Pokemon is really

dependent on the on the music because if you walk around in the cities and every city has its own soundtrack and it's just really awesome to just stand around in the town like make for example also the Pokemon fight entrance music is also amazing like every trainer has different soundtrack and I really think it's amazing and this music side for Pokemon really helped to sell the whole game to me for myself. Mhm. And maybe because in the Pokemon times you like because the graphics were more limited, they had to infuse more personality with the music.
Yeah, it could also be. But I think the I'm like a big fan of all pixel art Pokemon. I'm a huge fan.
Yeah, I I strangely have a very had a very different childhood when it comes to games. Like all of those pixel art, Pokemon, all of the those things kind of got past me. I played weird things like Speedy Eggird. [laughter]
Yeah,
Bloopy. Bloopy. I'm not sure if you know that one, but like

not really. [laughter]
I just know Nintendo games, Wii games and stuff. I was because I had no PC when I was a kid. I had only a I think a Nintendo DS, Nintendo 3DS, a Nintendo DSi, and then a Wii, Wii U, and the Switch. Then
it was my uh like gaming setup. Yeah, obviously the the games you play um have a big impact on on what you like to make, right?
Yeah. I have an idea. I really want to make a monster taming game.
A monster taming game.
But but maybe
one of Is does that sound like a small game or is it like a big game?
A huge game because um like when you see Pokemon for example, you have to have different animations for every Pokemon when you want to have like a 100 or 200 different monsters, you know? And I really like I admire the Pokemon developers a lot because I think the art style looked really good earlier and I don't really want to know how many animators and artists they had back then because if I would have to imagine that only two or three people made all the Pokemon sprites. I think it is really

hard because
um there are so many Pokemons. They have different animations. They have different like um attack animations sometimes too. And I I think Pokemon is like one of the best games at like most biggest um effort in the development, you know, maybe not today but earlier.
No, I can't really speak about it cuz I I have to admit I haven't played Pokemon. [clears throat]
All right.
Not on my on the list of games that I've played. But would you say that in which ways is Pokemon an inspiration on your game? from the arty because I like I like pixel art a lot and like Pokemon Pearl was the first game where I actually saw this pixel art aesthetic back then
because of course most most games had like a pixity aesthetic but not pixel art. It was more like this PS1 aesthetic from Spider-Man back then, for example, or like this crunchy uh like um art style from Mario F, you know, and it was not pixel art, but it was like old schooly. And Pokemon Pearl was the first game which had like pure pixel art and really had me amazed in this art style. And Maky's Adventure, I think, was only

possible because I loved pixel art from Pokemon Pearl and I wanted to try it out myself. And that's also what influenced me to make Maki's Adventure a lot. And also for example and character storytelling and stuff because in Maki's Adventure I have like I think 30 to 40 characters and they all have a connection between each other. So there's not really like a filler character is only there to fill a gap. All characters are made to have like an interaction with each with each other, you know.
So they have connections on the island. So, for example, there's one one guy one big guy in the I think in the in the pub who's sleeping and snoring that loud that no one wants to build the pup again. And then then the barkeeper told Maki to bring a wake up potion to wake this like sleeping uh sleeping guy up and to save his business, you know. And then the snoring guy also wants to go to the kitchen to another NPC and tells you to bring him some food from the kitchen and he also makes fun of the of the of

the cook, you know, and like the characters make fun of each other because they are demons in the end. So they are like they seem to be nice but in the end they are demon characters, you know. So they have like a bit of an evil aspect in them too.
Mhm. So for example, there are two guards who like um have like to protect the pantry and then they like send you to to I think bring something from the pantry to the kitchen, some like food supply. And then they ask themselves, hm, what are our sons doing right now? And then two floors up the two sons are appearing and telling them our parents are on guard duty right now. They have to protect the pantry. And that way you see they all have a connection and they all like connected to each other and they have like a really really living there and not really just spawning there.
I I think that's just one of the things that signals that you care and that signals to the player that the that you care right cuz the the game feels feels more alive that way. Makes sense. Mhm.
Yeah. But I think it's only there

because I played Zeta because Zeta has this like connection between the NPCs. So that's what why Nintendo like influenced me a lot.
So you said already said earlier that you learn a lot from looking at what other people do, right? For for learning Photon. You said you learned from opening up projects and seeing how it's done. And also sounds like for all of the other things this like your style of learning is looking what other people do.
Yeah. I I think um because Foten has not really much of tutorials because Fen Fusion 2 is more of a newer I think more of a new solution for them from them and they are not really much tutorials or videos on YouTube. So I could not really learn from YouTube videos but I really just learned from their example projects.
Mhm. Right. But also when it comes to stuff like marketing and so on, it sounds like you have a similar approach there. Um, actually I learned a lot from David Whe I I love him like love his story a lot because I think Thomas, David and I share the same story because we just started really early like you two of course but we started early and

we just tried to survive and just try to build up a studio and
we learned everything from the internet you know because I also had no course of course um I had like I I think I bought David's course one year ago and I learned a lot from his course pool but back when I started at like no lecture university nothing except YouTube videos and I just tried to learn with Brey's videos and yeah it was really and back then also blackform and oh man nostalgic it's so awesome
that's really cool because uh you can you just talked about how all of these characters are connected and now you're yourself becoming one of those connected characters
yeah [laughter]
like I think I use your videos to motivate me because I think you um focuses more on like the development side and about keeping motivated what you done in the week and stuff. I think you don't really have like tutorials on game programming, right? Or have you done something?
I I I have I think three programming

tutorials on my channel.
Yeah. Yeah, but I think
but I think your your audience like myself like use your videos to motivate and see other people has to do it also, you know, and we all have to learn from each other and have to like keep motivated and
I I watched your videos a lot like about and like that's the way when I keep motivated and saw other people have the same problems than I have and I'm not alone here, you know.
Yeah. I have an interesting question for you then and that would be are you somewhat worried if you're going to be able to rep reproduce something like Pedal Pedal? Are you do you think you're going to be able to make another successful game again or like are you worried about that? Do are you relatively confident that you can do it again?
I don't really care about that to be honest. I don't really have like a worry or fear that I'm like a one time wonder and stuff. I wanted wonder because I know if I make a game and Assembly would love to work with me again and also like the the the new the people from the PR

agency from Assembly reached out and said um if I have a new project they want to work with them because I think if you have like the same setup because a sample had a lot of impact on the marketing way and on getting like the word out of the game out for the game and um I just need a game idea and they will take care of the rest you know and and now I have also context to power platin to YouTubers and stuff. And uh if I have a game now, I have like a bigger audience, you know, because I think on Tik Tok I made 5,000 followers more. Right now I am at 30 33,000 followers on Tik Tok. On Twitter I am I have like 1,000 followers gained and lot of press people and content creators and like um also people who write reviews and stuff and um just like um climbing one step up on the ladder from your um gamedev way gamedev journey, you know. So you meet more people, you are connected to more people. For for example, in one hour there's a giveaway made from the telecom because I right now I know people from Telecom too. And [laughter] um you

connect with more people every day. You you learn new things every day. And in the end my brain is evolving, my connections are evolving and improving. But the games are on the same level. You know, Piped could have been my first game too and it could have been failed. But it it was a success because I think um I learned how to get eyes on the game. I made v videos on Tik Tok because I learned from Maky's adventure how to use Tik Tok and the Tik Tok videos had millions of views. So it was a big marketing way for me and I also knew influencer and send keys to them. So right now I have a presses of more than a thousand emails for influencers for like press people
and um yeah it is I think um you have to improve yourself and the game we have a better release automatically.
Interesting. Yeah, I think I I I would partially agree there. The only caveat I would give is that um I'm not I'm not sure everything is marketable, right? Not not every game is marketable. So you can even if you get better at marketing and even if you build your build your

connections, even if you're set up perfectly for marketing, your game can still fail.
And there's one very prevalent example of that. Of course, I'm not going to name it, but maybe if you put one and one together, then you know which game I'm talking about.
Yeah,
I read game I think code monkeys like game report about that.
Mhm. Yeah. talking to you and so on. I'm confident in your future because you have two very important things and those two things are curiosity and you have a time and
I think uh yeah looking at where you're now and you're like you seem to be on a very good trajectory.
Thank you. I think
yeah but I just tried of course I try to not um like get away with that big of my money right now and just think my next year will make a lot of money too. I just want to keep my spirit from the first day, you know? I just want to make games that are fun. And I saw that Ped Pedal was a game where I didn't really care about money in the first days. I just had like a fun game idea and executed it. And I think if you don't care that much about money and monetization and stuff and just make fun

games, in the end, you will fail or not fail, but it's not up to you. It's up to luck and um fortune, I think.
Mhm. What do you think? In which ways do does luck play a role in success? What what's how do you think about luck?
A big one. a big one because I had like I think I saw a release I think a year ago where one developer was like buried by 10 AAA releases in the same day which I shadow dropped and then I think she made a video on Tik Tok and she had to cry about it because of course it's a sad day when you have like a launch day and then like AAA games shadow dropped 10 games and takes the whole Steam front page and you have no spot of course. Of course, I also would have cried then because it's like really sad for you. And um I think she earned a lot of popularity back then. Do you know her? She made like this um I think a point adventure about um potions and wizards and stuff. [sighs]
The story sounds vaguely familiar, but um no, I'm not.

She was even in the local news in the TV, you know, because the story was so heartwarming, you know, and of course she had like a lot of hate because the game didn't really um connected to a lot of people, but she found her niche. She she found her player base and that's something I really think is cool.
Mhm. So you told me she got really unlucky and then you also told me how she got a lot of press from that though and how it turned out okay eventually. Right. So
yeah, she got unlucky because 10 to a game shadow dropped on the same day as um her launch day, but she got lucky because she made like um post crying on Tik Tok and it went completely viral. I think it had 100 millions of views and people saw it a lot.
If you get particularly unlucky, then you can leverage it to
it's not the end. [laughter] Yeah, it's not the end. I think it's important to maybe try it out anyway and just hope for if you have luck in the unluck, you know,
right? So if you get unlucky, don't

accept it and see if you can find a way to turn it around. So
yeah. So, would you maybe say there's a lot of luck involved, but you're not um helplessly exposed to it?
Um, yeah. I personally don't think like a bad lounge day is directly the end because look at Among Us. The game was dead for one year. They I think I I watched a documentary about Among Us and the the guy documentary said that they wanted to turn down turn off servers because they couldn't afford it. But suddenly one streamer played it. One streamer played it, one big one, and the whole world played it because they were lucky on that day, you know. And I think this this sign is my personal sign to never give up even if your lounge day is a failure, you know.
Mhm.
And then of course there are people like Hugh Milward who were just so consistent and relentless that even after a failed launch, they just keep working on the same game for like 10 years. And of course, if you like stick with it for that long so persistently, you'll probably find a way to turn it around,

right? So
yeah, I mean, if you have fun making the game, then of course
just work on it. Anyway,
the luck discussion is always, I think, an interesting one because a lot of people who don't make it, look at the people who made it and are like, oh, they they got lucky, right?
Yeah.
And you see this in discussions on X and on Twitter a lot. If you if you if these kind of things are discussed then often times you read things like yes and you need to get super lucky right every time you share advice somebody's like and you need to get super lucky.
Yeah.
Um what do you think about that? Is is that the case or can you force the luck if you push hard enough? I think luck is also a big part of course because if you have a 100,000 wish list or more like maybe of course if you have like 100 to 1 million the lounge day will be a good day and it depends on the game play itself and if players like the game but if you have not like this safe area of wish list then luck is a big part

because you have to be lucky that no one decides to shutter drop the game there and that maybe not like a AAA game is coming out and taking the whole weekend with like play players playing like GTA because I think if you launch your game before GTA and then player want to check it out but then GTA launches people will forget about your game even though you had 100,000 wish list you know so I think it is important to pick a good launch day but also it's important to just pray and have luck
Mhm. But yeah, it's like a lottery, you know. So, you have like you can buy like 10 different lottery tickets, but you have to be lucky in the end. But you can also have like have like you can work on it a lot and you can make your chances as high as possible, but in the end it is luck.
Yeah, that makes sense. To be honest, I don't really know the answer to this uh either. Just also it's fun to speculate. I sometimes wonder if it's maybe more like, you know, how there are some games that are kind of luck based if you're a

beginner like for example poker. Yeah.
Like poker poker if noobs play poker it's very very luck based, right? But if professionals play poker then it's not luck based at all. I wonder if gamedev is a little bit like that where
it's luck based if you don't know what you're doing but if you as as you become a professional it's no longer really about the luck because you know if you you can like you can get unlucky once or twice but it's not really possible for you to get unlucky 20 times in a row because you just know what you're doing. It's important, I think, to just keep growing and getting like more popular with your like presence, you know, because I think um just look at the company or just look at like look at the Among Us developers. It's not really important what games they they drop. If they drop a game, it will be a success because they they have like the the big follower base. And I think the important thing to get over this luck based area is to build up a social media account, build up YouTube channel because I think also for example, you have a big chance to have a successful game just because

you have a big following on on YouTube because you can make a video and if people like the game then your video can go more viral than it does anyway. And then more people will see the video and the game and share it, you know. And I think having like um you can definitely get past the luck luck area if you have like a social media follower base. If you have a publisher who has like a big following, if you have a Kickstarter campaign, which is also luck a lot, but also a lot of work because you have to make a good page. You have to collect followers. But if you make games over years, then I think it's not really possible to not make a successful game in the end. Because you if you make it in the right way, you have at least 10,000 followers somewhere. Because of Maky's Adventure, I made 30,000 followers in two weeks with one post, which went super rival. And this follower base still supports me a lot. And if I now release, for example, the Rock Jungle play test. I had 5,000 people play the game only from Tik Tok.
And it's not about luck. It's about me making content and like getting the word

out about my game. But I'm not really luck um dependent anymore right now, I would say.
Mhm. At at least not as much as you used to,
of course.
Right. So I Yeah, I think we're we might be on to something there. Right. So it's it's more luck based in the beginning and you can sort of work your way through layers that make it less luck based.
Yeah, I think so.
Yeah. Yeah, I think so. So
perfect. [laughter]
Yeah. Very encouraging for the people listening who who are not there yet. Yeah. For it's there is some luck involved. I think it's fair to say that. Yeah.
Yeah. But you just have to get the work out and just have to work on your dream, work on your games. And of course your first games won't be super successful, but you have to because I think I think no one made his first game except Balato maybe. Uh but most games I think 99% of developers make their first games and it is a flop. But you have to ignore that and just make your next game and improve yourself. Learn from your mistakes.

Learn from your marketing mistakes. I should have post a bit more. I should have collected my wish list and stuff. and then take this like mistake and convert it to like a success in your next game and learn from it because game dev is not only making a game it's also learning from your mistakes and improving your marketing way your um I think also steam because steam is a big part of the whole game because the steam page can you see yeah there yet this like um RV peak game you know this like four players have to overcome a big mount on an RV car and they had like a steam page and no marketing back then, but their Steam page was I think that it was posted earlier and it had 70,000 wish list in I think two weeks only because they had like a good cover art and like the people loved the concept and they don't really have to put much work into marketing and they just had to put um like work into their identity of the game. It's like peak but in an RV car and you have to like work together to make this car to the top of the

mountain.
And they showed a lot of people how the game can go viral with absolutely I think zero marketing because of course the Steam page is marketing but they haven't really posted about the game before launch.
Yeah. And also I would say honestly you your your case study is a very good example for how you how it is very much possible to break through right even with not that much experience and if for example if people look at your game I think a lot of devs would say I could have made that if you look at your game it's not like
it's not like oh my god it's impossible to make something like this how could I ever make something like it it's like I could have made that and that's not meant like as an as an insult or so it's like meant as [laughter] meant as yeah but nobody else did you know it's like you you are the one who made it that's that's what it is now
you have to be the first of the idea of course um it was influenced by peak by other games which like came out in this time and um it also got copied a lot on

Roblox on like a few other indie games who made like this ped aspect in the game and this co-op pedal thing
but um I was like the first co-op pedal game on Steam so I was the first one there and the first on the market. So, I took like the spotlight and of course people will copy the thing, but I think that they won't have that much much of a success because people don't want to play the whole game again. They wait for more content from Ped P. I think but I think they don't want to play like a different indie game with the same aspect. I don't think so. Maybe, but I think I don't have to to be feared about getting copied and getting stolen.
No, you No, you got your share. You don't have to fear about that at all anymore. I think it's possible that's like uh somebody's gonna make a quoteunquote better version of what you made and it might even sell better, whatever, but it's like it's not not really going to take much away from your game. I feel like it's like whatever, right?
Yeah. Copycats are cool.
Yeah, why not?
If you're the first on the market and

other people copy you, that's like a a luxury problem to have. Is there anything else you would you think would be interesting to talk about? Um maybe a bit about lounge day because um when I launched ped pedal it was I think uh I didn't really was at home I was at the library because I had to study for university and a time I push push the lounge button in the in when I was in university in the library and um it was a really random day because everything happened out of the box you know I didn't really I made a Twitter post a Tik Tok post and stuff but it was not really because of Maky's Adventure I was the whole day was like focused on the launch day but for Ped it was more like things are happening and I just take them, you know.
And um it was um really much of listening to player feedback, improving the game a lot with like making the game more more like not more difficult, but more easier for people because it was way too hard as I said. And um the game was already better balanced on launch day, but I also had to make it way more

easier. And it was like the game was way too hard when I had like this game finished in Unity from my personal side. And like I had to spend I think a few weeks to make more patches and to make things work and things easier in multiplayer because single player is way way easier than multiplayer of course because you have you can control everything yourself but you also have to play multiplayer sometimes with friends and stuff and multiplayer to be as easy together as single player is I think. And yeah, I just want to say that um look at launch, look look how um your numbers go, how your reviews go and maybe fix the of course fix the problems I reported and listen to feedback how players react to anything and just make make it better and make the wishes from the players into the game. But after launch, I think is a better aspect, better better way because I think getting influenced that much during development is not that good. But having the player feedback when the game is out is way better than just adding everything in development. You know,

it was something I had a lot,
right? But you need to launch with a stable working version.
Of course. Yeah.
Probably probably get some input from players before otherwise
you might end up in a situation with with bad surprises where maybe players expected some something else. Yeah, makes sense.
Yeah, but but launch day was amazing because um I think when I opened Steamworks in the evening when I got home because back I I think wish lists are now um dynamic, you know, so you don't have to wait for the next day, you can just refresh the wish list page every single day, every single hour and see a new number and stuff. So I like spent the next days refreshing this tab a lot and looking at the numbers because I was really interested how this game will perform because it is a whole different thing as Maky's Adventure but it has the same numbers on launch day but we planned the launch for Friday because we then have the new trending tab for the whole weekend because there are no games releasing on the weekends. So, we decided to go for I think 5:00 p.m. No, we have 3:00 p.m. 3 p.m. on a

Friday afternoon.
And then, um I think
2 hours later or 3 hours later, I already sold half the copies that Maki sold in Lifetime, which is pretty amazing.
And the day ended with 5,000 sales because maybe I can just drop the numbers here because they are public already. But the first like big thing for me personally was that Pip Ped sold more units in the first week than David Ready. with the first three and David really was a big inspiration. It was so like unreal for me to sell more copies than David saw it, you know, because he was my teacher in some areas, you know.
Mhm.
And was really some some personal like big thing for me to sell my copies than him him [laughter] he saw it and it just a personal like accomplishment for me that I'm really proud of and really happy with. And then like I think in the first month it was 50,000 units sold and right now 120,000. And
I just want to see how it evolves until the end of the year.
Nice. And I'm also curious to see what

that um update's going to do, right? If you're about to drop another update. I'm curious if that's going to spike the sales or if it's like flat.
I really curious and really excited for that, too. But I just I can I can send you the details and when the when the showcase happens.
Sure. I' I'd be curious to learn more about that. That's like the the advantage I have over the average uh podcast listener here is I I get additional insights.
Sure. [laughter]
So you also right you didn't feel like multiplayer was not like how difficult would you say was the multiplayer aspect of pedal pedal to make?
It was the most difficult thing for the game because the map was built in one month. It didn't really took that much of time because I had everything planned out on paper and I just used my assets that I made previously for my adventure a lot and I just build it like Lego, you know. It just build like Lego pieces brick by brick like a wall then another wall then the water plane then the boys which are bouncing you off then the spikes on the areas of the water and

stuff on the on the corners and it's just like building a Lego piece building a map for this game. So, it's really hard, really easy for me to build a level, build a map there. And um the different part that is more difficult is the testing. The map is actually good and fun, you know, because testing alone is way more different than testing with a teammate because you have to test both things. You have to test it. It is not too easy if you play alone, but also not too hard if you play with a co-op friend. And that's like the most different thing after the multiplayer, I think. So, I think on the top three different things, uh, the number one is, of course, on a multiplayer because it's something that I'm not really into. I'm not deep into UDP, TCP, and all this like networking stuff. I just want to have it working and I try my best to get it done as soon and as fast as possible, but also as like optimized as good as possible.
Mhm. Uh and then also I think the testing stuff, the balancing is also important and really difficult for me.

But I think all the other stuff like the marketing was really easy because I just uh like tweeted a post on Twitter. I made a Tik Tok post and it got viral itself. It was really like a dreamy development,
right? So if you make the correct game, then marketing is on easy mode. That's what what everybody is saying. You can do the exact same marketing for different games, but like the different will just be like the outcome will be different depending on what game you're making. Yeah.
Yeah,
makes sense. And also the the multiplayer, even though it was difficult and it made play testing more difficult, it didn't hold you back, right? You still made the game in four months. Holy hell. Like
Yeah, I made it in four months. Yeah. From I think uh the first post was made on March 4th and then the release was in July.
So it was about four months. Yeah. So for your next games, are you aiming for like a similar cycle? Are you like four months per game or something like that?
Right now I want to finish Rock Journey first which is planned for Q1, Q2 and

2026. So it will be will be out in the next months and stuff. But I also search for publishers for for like funding and also for marketing because the game is almost done. But I need money for like hiring a composer and a sound designer because I think the last like missing part is like good sound effect and music and that's like the things that I want to focusing on for Rogue Jungle and then I just want to keep making smaller games like maybe maximum high a year of development for my next games
and Rogue Jungle. for Rock Jungle. Basically, you already also have some validation from people that makes you confident that people want this game.
I have a play test group of 10 people in my discord who get like builds regularly. So I have a discord where I share builds with them privately
and then also I have like public channels where people can play the play test because um the play test was really because also a few publishers reach out and they enjoy the play test a lot and the game is also taking part in like rogue journal and rog like events on steam and I have like a big player base

in the events and the play test was played I think 20,000 times already and the feedback is great so far but um I think the next demo for early next year for Nexus maybe in February and then the launch in July, June, somewhere like that.
Um, it looks it looks nice.
Thank you.
Like once again in a slightly crappy way, but in a well done crappy way.
Yeah, I try to make games more fun and the graphics should be like, as I said, should support the fun and not really just look amazing. Of course, people some people enjoy the graphics a lot, but I think the graphics are just there to make the game look
okayish good, but the game play is what makes the game unique because you have like weapon cars, you procedurally generate dungeon and the rooms are all generated by by scratch from scratch. So, they are like non-existent and I then make a shape for the room. I then like put the pillars on the area on the corners then connect it with walls build interior designs like walls or like

different buildings in the rooms and then it's all like with unity nef mesh. So I have like a ne mesh which is baked then the dynamically on the new ground shape and then the enemies are spawned on this nef. So that's like how I make the rooms and stuff and the like unique thing is that you can combine every weapon. So the game is more like a sandbox because you find weapon cards and you can just combine them together to build more more overpowered weapons. For example, if you put a like a bow and a ghost in this like merge fields and you have like a skeleton army because the sk like the ghost can revive weapons and brings them back to life, you know.
So a bow gets to a skeleton army which carries bows and stuff and a claw and a ghost will get to a werewolf. So it's like an running entity which supports you on your battle.
So you can combine any weapon with any other weapon.
Any weapon? Yeah, there over 200 weapons in the full game. I think they added about
Holy hell. How did you make all of those? But you did not have to handcraft

all of those combinations. There's like they they if you combine weapons, they share stats in some way or something like that.
It's all unique. Everything is a unique weapon. Like nothing is nothing is just swapping values. For example, there are weapons like elemental weapons where you have a bow and a fireball and it sends like a a fireball, a fire arrow for example, which makes enemies burn. But there are also weapons like most parts is for example the kaboomerang which is like a cannon and a boomerang. And then the boomerang has cannons on every side and shoots cannons into the direction when it's flying. So the weapon should feel like it should feel logical that if you combine a cannon and a bow, for example, it's like the arrows are cannons and they shoot cannonballs when the arrow flies around, you know, it it should not feel like it's too like just there to fill the gap, but it should feel like the main feature of the game. Yeah,
that that does sound quite cool. But the 200 weapons you said those th those is

just th those are not the 200 weapons you can all combine with each other. That's like the 200 is like all of the combinations and all of the stuff.
I think there are 14 base weapons and you can combine everything and there also a few legendary weapons that can be found like in into the gun where you have like an overpowered gun for example.
And can you also combine those overpowered guns then with other things?
They are base they are the base weapons that you cannot combine. But other than 14 base weapons, you can combine weapon A with every other weapon, you know.
Mhm. Mhm. Mhm. And can you carry multiple weapons or do you try? Okay.
You have I think um by base right now I said that you have five weapon slots and you can also unlock more weapon slots and you have also like a card bank slot where you can like temporarily for one round you can store one weapon card that you want to have like merge in the next round but you don't have a slot in your deck. So you can just temporarily put them on your card bank and have them there and you can have them in the next

upgrade area.
Yeah.
So you're trying to get the most overpowered weapon combinations.
Yeah.
And you try to build a stack of overpowered weapons.
Yeah. But it's really interesting how people play because the game was on at Gamescom, at Polaris, and at other big German events. And I see a lot of people play the game for the first time there and they they they just have their base weapons, the bow for example, and just max it out. So they don't really get more weapons. They just want to upgrade it. And I'm like, you can play it like that, but it's boring, you know? But he they are like, "The gameplay is super fun. I just want to keep playing." I'm like, "Okay, [laughter] I will shut up then."
Okay, interesting. But is it balanced in a way where it's beneficial to play with just one weapon or is it more beneficial to have multiple weapons?
You can play with both, but of course the multiple weapons and having like more than one weapon is better because one weapon will never be as good as two weapons, you know.
Okay.
Of course, one level six weapon is as

good as two level one weapons, of course, because the damage is high, way better. And for example, the bow has like um in the first level it has one arrow. In the next level, you can shoot three arrows and then five arrows and seven arrows. But um I think then having a level one with like a level one fireball is not that good of course,
but you it will be balanced out really quickly if you have like three to four weapons.
I see. Cuz obviously the balancing can sometimes get players to play the way in a way that doesn't even utilize the game's features.
Yeah. Like
people will
I just I'm happy when people have fun, you know?
Sure.
I I don't really care if they play the game how I made the game. I just want to have people to to make a fun game. And if they have fun with like only using one weapon, then maybe they have fun and I will just let them enjoy it and don't really want to annoy them as much.
This is something I need to get better at. This is something that also um bear like told me the deaf who's working on

like Mabellum the strategy game. He was also like he was basically like people sometimes forget what they're or developers forget what they were optimizing for, right? Which is fun.
Yeah. And he was also like, "Yeah, sure. If people don't like this unit, then we'll just nerf it so that people don't use it anymore." I was like, "What?" Yeah. [laughter]
Different approach. Yeah. Why not?
Yeah. Yeah. [clears throat] Sure. Why not? If it makes the game more fun, if he was like, "If less variety means for more fun, then sure. Let's do less variety."
Maybe. Maybe some people just want to because rogue likes are really special because in a rog like Yeah. people just want to have fun and just want to see effects pop up and see like hit markers here sound effects and if I play vamp I don't care about my weapons I just click the weapons that I think looks cool you know and in the end I have fun but maybe people because most times I don't really make any weapon fusions I just use six weapons and just walk around and collect items and I have fun with the game but

other people maybe have fun by fusing the weapons and stuff you know but it's important to just make the core gameplay play fun, you know, because people seem to have fun with this walking around in the dungeon, defeating boss enemies, defeating normal enemies, and um they don't, of course, like this fusion and this merge feature is like the core feature of the game. And if people recognize it, they love it, but you have to get them to recognize it first. So, I then build in like a where people see this merge feature and don't really oversee it then, you So, you're intentionally allowing for for different ways to play. You don't want to dictate how people play. Yeah. Yeah. Makes sense,
man. Yeah. I I was I was um somewhat worried about your next project, but like even just seeing this, it's like you got this, man. You got this. Like, I'm not sure if who knows if this is going to do well, right? Nobody Nobody knows. But like the the trajectory in general, it just looks just looks good.

Yeah.
Yeah. I actually have a meeting with a publisher in 1 hour. So maybe if if that one works, I'm really amazed because a really popular one and I think it could be a really cool thing to work with them and I'm really excited for like I think next to the deolver email. It was the first time I'm excited to talk to a publisher. Of course, Assembly was because I knew Assembly before Pedal. We were friends before that, so I knew they are cool.
But before that, most publishers are like it would be cool, but I don't really know them that much. But um they Matt Matt Mushroom, they are like from OTK, just like um content creator based publisher. And I think having because they have like um H clock, they have like um Rogike game did well on Steam. I know that they know how to market a rog like
and they also have influences everywhere. You know, they are connected and they have like this influencer power. I think that having them as a publisher could be really cool for this game. So, I'm really excited right now.
Okay. Fingers Yeah. cool. Fingers

crossed then. Thank you. [laughter]
We'll see how it turns out. All right. I think we'll uh just uh call it quits there. Well, very fun fun discussion.
I think so, too. Thank you.