TikTok and Shorts Are Insane for Indie Devs

The only thing that really worked for me were the shorts.
This guy has more subscribers than I do. I kind of have the impression that just shorts are OP and everyone should be doing them. This is a conversation with Johan Grunval, the creator of the fantastic indie game Bubble Battle. He creates short form content on YouTube and Tik Tok, resulting in millions of views and thousands of wish lists for his game. The advice online is very much against everything I say and everything I've experienced. I have my own physics engine from scratch and I have my own network solution. I worked too long on the game. I made my own capsule art. You know, I do everything wrong, but it kind of worked. You don't You don't have to be a super genius. His game Bubble Battle was his first commercial release. He spent 6 years on it. And contrary to what most people think, Johan thinks you should be more ambitious with your game ideas. You did one of those quit your day jobs things, didn't you? I did do that. Yeah. during during COVID when everyone else was getting canned, I was like, "This is a good time to head out myself and just work on on my game." And

I worked three years for a game engine casino company. So, I was on the game engine team. We they were making casino games, but obviously it's a bit of a nasty business and so I wanted to get out of there pretty fast. Um, and I took my chances when CO struck.
All right. So, had you had some savings and you were like, "This is this my chance. I'm locked inside anyway. Let let's go.
Yeah. Yeah. And and it's it's also kind of socially awkward to quit your job to be like, "Fuck you guys. I'm going to make a game, you know."
Yeah.
It's kind of awkward, but if everyone else is leaving, you can kind of like
Oh, just leave too without it being too embarrassing.
Okay, I see.
Yeah.
Yeah. Cuz a good opportunity presented itself.
Exactly. Exactly.
Oh, that's fantastic. I think the world is happy that it did cuz Bubble Battle turned out to be a fantastic game.
Oh, thank you very much.
How long did it take to make?
You want to know the date when I created the project?

If you know,
it's 2016. Okay. I don't know the exact date, but I know it the project was created in 2016 and then it's like then it's like sleeps right for a while and then I work on it a little bit and I start over and I'm working on my day job and then eventually I would say maybe it's like a six-year game in the end or something.
Okay. Wild. But that includes some rewrites and starting from scratch from what I've heard there.
Yes. and just learning how to make games in Unity and stuff, right?
And eventually like replacing all the Unity stuff with my own stuff in the engine and all this stuff. But yeah, basically,
so so it is a huge, it was a huge project and you know, I I know there's lots of people who are way more productive than me probably could do it a lot faster. A lot of people you talk to on the podcast probably but uh for me it took a long time but eventually you know if you keep working on it you you can finish your project. Right.
Right. So for for context what was your

experience level when you started the game project when you created that Unity file you you didn't have a lot of experience in Unity back then.
No I had I had made before boppel I worked on a tiny project a little bit and I gave that up and I was like let's do boppel instead. So it was like the second try basically in Unity. Before that I'd made like two or three games during university.
Yeah, that's that makes it even crazier that basically from going from only working on engines before to um your first game working out so well. I think that's that's quite fascinating.
Yeah. I think I I I just like being in the middle of of a project, you know? I don't like starting new ones. I don't like ending them. I like being in the middle of them and just working on it and making it better and and I'll just get stuck there forever. This might be the difference between me and many developers.
See, you don't need to worry at all about sounding like a marketing person. I think I think you're fine.
Yeah, that's good.
Yeah, that's that's true. Right. The

fewer games you make, the less marketing you have to do, right? If you make a bunch of games, you got to do your and you want to do your six months of Steam marketing or whatever to gather your wish list, you got to do more, right? So you think you can be more chill about your marketing if you have a longer project because you have more time. That is that's probably true. Yeah.
Yeah, I think so.
So if we go through your project uh chronologically a bit. So you started it like not six years ago because the game's already been out for a while, but in 2016 I think you said, right?
Yeah.
So the first couple of years you you tinker around a little bit and then what happens next? Like how far did the first iteration of the game go? Why did you restart? How did the project evolve?
Well, it the first thought was to make something which was which was based kind of kind of similar to Nita's wand system. You know how they have their
you can combine different uh little things and you make your special wand and it does like some crazy magic over there. I was thinking this was before Noita was out obviously but I had a

similar idea to that but I decided not to do it because I kind of realized or I couldn't think of enough interesting things to put in there. I felt like it would only in the end it would only become like a gun that just killed everything over here, right? No matter what you've made, these little things you combine, it would very And I I kind of see that a little bit in Noita that in the end you end up creating this massive gun that kills everything off screen and some guy shoots you off screen and like I feel like we want to focus on gameplay. We want the gameplay to be dynamic and uh so that was a little bit scrapped but and then I saw the uh square ball, right? And I was like, "Ah, okay. We'll just combine them by having three powers uh at once." instead. So I
I haven't played I haven't played Square Brawl. Can you try to pitch square Brawl in like a few sentences or something or
So square Brawl it's a the setup is basically like boppel that you pick your

three or two powers in the beginning and uh you're a square and you can like run up walls. You don't stick to the walls but you kind of roll up them so they still use the full screen despite it being like a sidescroller, right? like a lot of sides scrollers, you'll just be at the bottom of the screen and all this up here is not used, but because you can roll up walls, you can use the whole screen as your map. And uh and you kill each other, right? And maybe I don't remember if you had stocks or not in in there, but you know, and it's just swap to the next level, you know, kind of like stick fight or something.
Okay. Okay. Okay.
Yeah.
So, I see I see the similarities to boppel and you're like, "This is cool. I'm going to make something similar to this."
Yeah. Yeah, I I remember like really trying to play the game as if it were bpple
when I played it, but it didn't really want me to, right? I was like, "Okay, I'm gonna pick the sniper and the grenade and maybe they synergize somehow because I can be far away with sniper

and if they come close, I'll throw a grenade or something." But it's kind of weak, right? I was like, let's make that really, really strong. So, you've focus all the your efforts on that choice. You think starting with a different game is is a good starting point for making games. Would you do would would you do like that again? It's probably a good idea. Yeah. But I mean it's it's not like it was like a proven concept. The game is not very popular,
right? It's it's I think it's Landfall's like least popular game. You know, when I I I actually met them. They they they invited me up to meet them in in Stockholm and uh I talked to them. I said, "I was very inspired by by your games." And they kept guessing what game it was and they couldn't get it right. They was like, "Was it rounds?" "No." "Was it tabs?" "No." Like, "No, it wasn't square brawl." Like, "Yes, it was." So, they they were kind of surprised, too, apparently.
Yeah. Cuz what what most copycats do is they take something that's very successful and then they make make put like some twist on that and make like a copy of that. You

So, this is Yeah. kind of
You took a game that wasn't very popular and and remade it. That's
because you like I can I can do better. you you had the hunch that you can do better.
Yes. Yes. Or that there is something in here that can be found, you know, and then you just put throw years of your life at it until you figure out uh what it should be like.
What's your motivation behind making games or what was your motivation behind making bottle battle? I'll say right now my motivation is kind of like a problem for me because I'm kind of buffle battle is kind of ending and I need to like find the motivation to make the next thing and I'm having trouble to be honest
like because in the past it was like oh I'm going to dream I'm going to prove myself I'm going to do this thing I bet I could do a cool game you know
so in in a lot of way it was about proving to yourself and maybe to the world that that you can do this
that's definitely part of it but I'm also I'm just fascinated by games and by

game design and stuff. I I listen to that kind of talk and uh podcast and stuff all all the time and I think about it a lot. So I'm very interested in like what kind of games can be made and uh and and I I get frustrated at the games that are made. Like why is everything not like this? They're doing it wrong.
So I have very strong opinions about what games should be like, you know.
Yeah.
Okay. I see. All right. So what why what was the first rewrite then about? So the first of the the first iteration of the game was sort of something different and then you realized that it had to be something else or was it technological reasons or
well I had basically made started started making the game in Unity
and I realized that Unity was wasn't really going to going to cut it or I'm still in Unity but I kind of replaced everything
everything.
Yeah. So I I have my own physics engine from scratch and I have my own network solution. I have everything is written in fixed point. So I have my own fixed

point data type instead of so I don't use any floats. So I can't use any of the components except stuff that's used for visuals, right? Like you can use the sprite renderer and things like that. But I try to make everything deterministic for the because I use a lock step online solution. So I had to replace everything and remake it. So that that was one time I had to replace it. But before that there was also like uh you know the game was a lot faster and less interesting. You know when you hear people talk about games like this they often describe them as oh this is chaotic and responsive. Those are common words.
And bottleful battle is it it's responsive but it's it's it's very orderly and it's kind of slow if you actually think about what the game is. People will still tell me that the game's chaotic and fast, but it's it's actually kind of slow and very orderly until the players find some crazy combo that breaks the game and then it becomes chaotic. But it's kind of the players mess that they create and then the round

ends pretty fast. So most of the time you're in an orderly state where uh the players can make plans and combine things and they can kind of predict what's going to happen when they do that. And it was faster and messier before and then you realized it had to be slower,
right? So the first ability for example was you just became a gun and you aimed and you shot and it was a big explosion immediately
where you aimed
and bubble battle could not exist if that ability is there, right? Because it's just better than anything else you can possibly think of. There's no point in doing all this roundabout stuff if you can just aim a gun and shoot them, right?
Yeah. Okay. Interesting. Yeah. So um were you using Unity net code before your net code rewrite or which technique you originally built on?
There was no network before then. I was just using remote play together before then. Yeah.
Okay. And then you realized there is no network solution for this so I have to write my own or did you just
Yeah, something like that. I was like I don't know how to do this network thing

and I look at a bunch of stuff. There's like some paid options
that seemed expensive and I didn't know if it's going to want to work, but but I could imagine in my head exactly how a lock step deterministic thing could work.
Mhm.
And so I just went with that cuz it seemed doable.
Okay. I mean, you have a bit of an advantage there. Maybe because you've been in the engine writing business before, right? So maybe you have some at least some good intuitions about how to write systems like that.
Yeah, maybe. Maybe. It it was very very fun. I I feel like making these systems have been like the most fun part of the project. It's just like
like you spend a month just making the network code. You get so locked in.
Okay. Interesting. Yeah. Cuz I I would have never guessed that that was a big part of the development process was just writing the net code.
Well, you know, um yeah, let's talk about it then. I think I do know what you mean with lock step but for just to be sure and also for people listening can you explain what lock step is

exactly?
Sure. So the idea is instead of having instead of sending things to each other and saying I did this you did that you you send I clicked this button this this frame and then the next frame you say I clicked this button or I stopped clicking this button. So I'm like cranking out 60 FPS packets from all players to all other players constantly. So there's a lot of traffic actually in in baffle because of this approach.
But the the big advantage is that you can make your game really really complicated and it's not a problem because you're just sending inputs anyway. So it's not going to create any bugs cuz you made a really complicated game, right? Something like like if you imagine something like Overwatch
Mhm.
that has a very very complicated network code. that like I think bopple is probably more complicated than Overwatch in its gameplay and like things that can happen. So I would have to make something even more complicated than they made. You know, cost millions of dollars to uh make that system and make it good, right? So it just made sense to

do something simple that doesn't become more cumbersome when you add more systems and things that can happen in the game.
Right? So the idea with lock step as far as I understand it is that you do not uh network positions of individual objects and so on. You you only network user inputs and you reconstruct the entire game state from that.
Yeah. And I got I got a little off off topic there.
Yeah.
Yeah. Exactly. So, so the the idea you only send the the inputs to each other and then you have an a deterministic simulation that can run the the inputs and so you'll have the exact same thing going on in in the game. And this also means you can very easily make a replay system.
Mhm.
Uh for example, so you can just save all the inputs and you can replay exactly what happened during the during the match
which is very good for debugging by the way. Very very useful.
B have a replay system. Do replay.
Yes, it does. It's it's it's a bit hidden. The the thing is I mostly use it

when someone has a bug. They tell me, "Oh, hey, I have this bug." Okay, send me the replay, you know, and they send me the the replay. I can run it in in Unity and I can recreate the bug.
And because Yeah. Right. And because it's deterministic, you can reproduce it. Exactly. Basically. Yeah.
Yes. And I can just hold down F9 and run the game at 10x speed, you know.
Oh, that's awesome.
Yeah. So deterministic means um that when you provide the game with the same inputs you get the exact same result. And for everybody who didn't know this uh Unity is not deterministic by by default. So that is why you not only had to write the the net code but you basically also had to rewrite everything else.
Yes.
Yeah.
You know like like you don't know which order the awake functions are going to be called for example,
right? And you need to like create a unique ID for every object so you can sort them and so everything's in the right order and things like this.
So you created your own deterministic

game engine within Unity.
Yeah. And now I have to pay the stinking yearly fee even though I don't basically use anything.
Damn it. Port your C code to good or something.
Yeah. A little too late.
Yeah.
I think so. What what but what does it take to to write that kind of tech? Like how how long did it take you? How how much of the project is just engine code at this point? That's a good question. The the actual like base of it I did in a month like
just sat down were productive for a month but then you know you end up running suddenly you have a desync somewhere and you don't know where it's coming from. frick
and these bugs are very very difficult to find. And so that's obviously just
goes out of control every now and then. I don't have a measurement, but it's probably not good, right? I bet I would save a lot of time if I did not use

Unity for
You think so?
To be I think so. I think it really helped to get started and to make something in the beginning. You know, you could show your friends and get some feedback and have have fun right away. But at some point if you work on a game for a long long time the fact that it is so generic all the systems they're kind of over complicating things and the over complications really turn into difficult to find bugs.
Yeah.
Like if if I I can give you an example in in Unity when you delete an object it's not actually deleted. They pretend like it's deleted right. They mark it as destroyed and they set all the references to null. or they don't set the references to null, but they pretend like they're null. They like override the operators. Okay, and that sounds maybe that's okay. If their abstraction works, maybe that's fine. Well, then you have like an interface static type and then you try doing it. It won't use the overloaded equal sign. So suddenly you have a bug where you literally checked if null and then you have a null pointer

exception right after and it drives you crazy like what what's happening? So this stuff like that all over the place that's complicating things. I bet if I just had like a robust base like some freaking C stuff, it would just work and I wouldn't have had to worry about all these complications.
At least it would be easier to debug because you could
you would understand how the systems work and you would be able to fix
I think the the reason why it's kind of okay for most developers is probably because we're not going into such a low level, right? Most developers operate at a very high level like we we use all of the engine features and
don't really need to understand how they work. We just use them.
But obviously if you do more complicated things like writing your own engine in the engine then
it gets in the ways out.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I see that. In particular, what does it take to write your own physics engine?
It's not that hard. Especially not if it's doesn't have to be that fast or good. And Boppel isn't. It's it's a it's a little buggy. It's a little weird. And I probably made it more difficult than

it needed to be. Like I'll have I'll end up having fun solving the math equation for like intersecting two rounded rectangles myself instead of looking it up, you know. Uh so I'm making things more difficult than they need to be probably. Uh but I don't think it's that crazy, especially if you look up this math stuff. You can you can find a tutorial and follow it and kind of, you know, look look at box 2D's slides. it's probably a lot more difficult to do like a 3D thing or like a really performant 3D thing. And now we have 3.0 of box 2D which is really really fantastic. So
Mhm.
maybe you don't need to anymore.
I see. But I mean in bubble there seem to be some physics interactions that I think would even be quite difficult to make with Unity's built-in physics system. For example, the characters that move on the surface of your physics objects. I'm honestly I don't even know how I would do that with the default physics engine without it feeling completely clunky.
Do do you have like a specific extra implementation for that or is it

I do I do it is its own thing. Your intuition exactly correct. Uh there's there's a separate coordinate system for players when they're on a platform they have like a between zero and one position
on how far around the platform they are.
Okay. And then every frame I like transfer that transform that into world position. So
so that way if you grow the platform you'll stay in the same spot and if the platform rotates you're in the safe spot and we can make sure that no one starts vibrating and things like this which happened before. Yeah, I can imagine. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. I see. Ble battle you said yourself it feels very responsive. I think one problem that lock step games typically have is that you need to wait for everybody's input to arrive before you can reconstruct the game state, right?
Yeah. Yeah.
Is Is that the case? Does Boa Battle have some input delay or did you
Oh, yeah. I bet I bet some people watching it get mad when you say it's responsive because they play it online with some friend with bad ping and it's

not very responsive at all. But the thing is I I try to make the game itself as responsive as possible in the local mode. So when the input delay happens, it's a lot less, right? And I do some weird stuff in the network code and I'm not even sure if how well it works, but I I I tried to do something where there isn't even really like a round trip between the server cuz usually you would be like ask the server, hey, do do this and the server says, okay, back. That's a very common thing, right? And you wait for the okay.
But here we you really just send your inputs every con constantly and just constantly get things back. And I hope that the clocks of the computers are roughly synced uh
by the system and that someone isn't like a bit it's probably the true that someone is has like a little bit more lag than someone else. But if if everything goes right, we should be able to do it in just a single lag rather than a full lag times two which some games will have. I played it with friends and I found it surprising. It felt surprisingly responsive. Like I didn't notice any lag even though like

we were definitely like couple of people from from different countries.
Well, great. Interesting. True. Uh but but like you know I a big thing about making something feel responsive is to just have there be a big change in in the first frame, right? You hit jump in in bottle. I I don't just add like a velocity to the character when you hit jump. I like teleport the character up a little bit and I change the animation the the sprite, right? So like there's like a big change right away. Makes it feel more responsive even if it isn't.
Do you basically cheat? You basically cheat that locally that if you if I press the jump button the character instantly jumps up.
No before. No. Okay. It waits. It waits for the
There's no cheating. It does. Yeah. But
it feel doesn't feel as bad if if there's a big change rather than if there's like a small change. Doesn't feel
Got it. Got it. Got it. So basically, if your game feels responsive to begin with, then adding a bit of extra delay is not as bad.
Yeah, I think so.

I'm really a big fan of lock step for indie developers cuz it's it's it's kind of nice, right? Once you once you've once you've built the the core engine or the the base system,
then as you as you said, adding all of that complexity on top is is almost uh free once the engine works. All right, but let's get let's let's jump back to the to the to the development. So, you're developing the game, you're writing your own engine for it, then I I assume at some point, you're like, "How how do I tell people about this game, right?" Yeah. And I did, you know, find I I I found this Chris's how to market game uh thing, his Discord channel and website and stuff. So, I've been looking at a lot of that stuff and I have a friend who makes games, too, that I've been getting advice from. So, I tried a bunch of stuff that they suggest and the only thing that really worked for me were the shorts, video shorts. Like the Reddits and the asking YouTubers and stuff didn't really hit very hard for for bottle.

It is interesting cuz um yeah, I've been talking to a lot of different developers recently and I'm starting to realize that everybody's telling a bit of a different story for how what works and what doesn't. So, so maybe maybe um the truth is just it depends, right? depends on your game.
Maybe that's that's very interesting because I I I kind of have the impression that just shorts are OP and everyone should be doing that.
But maybe I'm wrong.
Um so just for everybody watching to know, right, this guy has more subscribers than I do. You're you're at like 500,000 subscribers with your YouTube channel.
Yeah, almost.
And but I don't really post, you know, it just happened really really fast. So,
so yeah, I'm probably going to annoy any YouTubers to just be like, I don't I don't even I didn't even try that hard. It just happened.
I I think it's very it's fair play. Yeah, cuz I was very confused. I checked out your YouTube channel and I had a look at the the normal upload page at

first and it was like you uploaded three videos with like a,000 views each or something. I'm not sure like did this did this guy few or what? Uh but then on the on the shorts page it it all made sense. Yeah.
Cuz you have a lot of a lot of your shorts have like 10 million views, 1 million views.
Yeah. So how how did you get into that entire shorts thing? So I think it was recommended by over in the how to market your game
YouTube page. They they and they like showed some Twitter threads. Uh there were some people from Landfall who were suggesting you do this and it's like okay I trust Landfall we'll we'll give it a shot right and so I just just tried making some stuff on over on Tik Tok first. I think Tik Tok is really really good for game devs. Maybe it's because my game is appealing to younger audience and that's why that works so well. But there's there's lots of things about it

that makes it really really useful compared to YouTube. Like if if you wanted to copy Boppel's approach, what you should do is make a really really long game. Work work on your dream game for a absurd amount of time and gather up little stories, little interesting things that happened, things that you did, some fun things that happened with your friend when you worked on your game, stuff related to to your game that's easy to understand. And you just gather those up over like years. And then you make a bunch of shorts every Friday. You know, every Friday you make make a short. I usually spend like a whole day making a short thinking.
A work day,
a work day, you know, it pro probably like a short work day to be honest. Like it's not
if if your thing is one minute long, it's not that much work, right? I I bet these 20 30 minute videos you make sometimes are ton of work.
But if you just make this short thing, you you you don't have to
work that hard. It's just if the story is good, that's where the value is. And if you can not annoy people too much with your voice or your mannerisms and

you can tell the story in a good way, people are into it. Right.
So what I've heard from what you just said there was you you don't make the entire short in a day. You basically have a collection of ideas and stories that you gather along the way.
So that when it comes to making the short, you already have a basically a list of ideas to fall back on.
Yeah. I mean I I think I kept them in my head. write them down, but
because they they were they were pretty interesting. So they stuck in they stuck in your head, right?
At least they were interesting to me. And so did you already collect these kinds of stories in your head before you started making uh shorts or was that something that once you started making these, you started looking for these kinds of stories?
That's a good question. I I there's I definitely had a bunch from working on it before,
but I probably got more attuned to it and looked for it more when I noticed that the shorts were doing well because cuz then then I was getting ideas like maybe I should implement something just to prank my friend or something and that would become a short and that would be

good. You know, you can get ideas that way too.
But but it was mostly just gathered up stuff that actually happened when I worked on my game. I think there there's a lot of interesting discussions to be had about how to tell a story though, right? Because I see a lot of developers on YouTube, they sort of um make some devlogs, explain their development story, and nobody really cares because all they're doing is they're listing work steps, right? Like, first I did this, then I did that, now I'm working on this, now I'm working on that.
Yeah. Um, but doesn't this happen very easily if you just make a game jam game? You don't have that many interesting things to say because you haven't spent that much time and like cool stuff hasn't happened. So, like what are you going to do? You got you got to get your marketing Thursday done, right?
Yeah.
Uh, you got you got to make something. So, that's the advantage of the being the stupid guy who doesn't follow the internet's advice and just work on your game for six years, right?

Mhm. actually have a bunch of things to say and that can kind of reward you in your storytelling.
That's true. So you first of all you need some things to say. That's step one and you can get there by making maybe making a longer project. But then even if you have something to say, if you have like a little story in your mind then
Mhm.
The question is still what do you do with this? So let's say you're sitting down on a Friday to to make another short. You you have a story in your mind. How do you approach it from there? Do you start with the script I assume? Yeah, I do. I do start with a script and and I think I think about like the the very the first few seconds are very important in a short. Viewers will decide if this is worth watching or not. So I I often start out by saying blah blah blah in my game so they know that it's a developer of a game who's talking and not just some random guy. I think that's important
and I try to hook them with a little by having a little intro to what I'm about to say like, "Oh, this happened and maybe this." So, so the most watched

video I say something like, "I almost deleted this ability from my game, but a friend of mine had the most brilliant idea to fix it." And and people get curious what what is this great idea your my friend had. So, you're mentioning that it's your game and you're creating some sort of intrigue that makes viewers want to keep watching.
Yeah. And within the first
and and and and I do so honestly. I don't I don't click bait it, right? Like I I I actually do think everything I say there is is is true. a lot of people are kind of they want to capture your your attention and you know if you if you have these Tik Tok kids who watched Tik Tok for thousands of hours so they're they're pretty keen on finding when you're being fake, right? I think the problem with shorts I I mean I'm not super big into consuming shorts content. But what I've noticed is that a lot of shorts have this twist and this intrigue in the beginning and then they don't deliver on it and that just super annoying.
And that is super annoying.
Yeah. Yeah,
that is not the feeling I got from your

shorts, right? I found them quite enjoyable and watching them to the end felt rewarding. So, I was like, I want to watch more.
Yeah, that's that's what I'm aiming for, right? Like, and so hopefully next time they see a video of mine, they'll be like, oh, this was interesting last time, right?
And then and you know, and getting repeat watchers is what who buys your game in the end, I guess, also.
Mhm.
So, yeah, I think that's important. And then I just I I have made some mistakes in some of my videos. For example, I made one where I was too technical and I assumed that people knew language that they don't know, right? Like I I was talking about units and buildings kind of like as if I assumed they had played Starcraft before.
And obviously the Tik Tok kids have not played Starcraft. They have no idea what I'm talking about.
Okay, that's interesting.
So like stuff like that is important to think about. Uh, you know, like don't be pretentious with with your words. Just say what what it is. Don't be too cringe.
Got it. Tik Tok I when I dabbled with

it, I I think it was a couple of years ago, it felt weirdly region locked, right? So all of your content is first being shown to people regionally, like in your area before it's expanded out globally.
Is it still like that? Cuz I I know you're not from an Englishspeaking country either. Do you just post Tik Toks from your phone and they sort of reach the entire world or how does that work?
Yeah, it definitely videos start out by just being regional for sure. Uh at least that's how it used to work. I don't really notice anymore cuz if you have enough subscribers, it just pushes it pushes it out pretty hard to your subscribers, right? But it definitely worked like that in the beginning. So maybe you'll be like a little bit sad to see your first video get 50 views or something because it's just Swedes
watching. But I think every video is good. It's probably just going to get to America anyway. I don't think you need to get a separate phone and
Okay. That Yeah, that was exactly what I was getting at. Yeah.
Yeah. I think I think you can just post

and they don't have to go that crazy to be shown to other countries. So, I don't think you have to worry about it that much because like a,000 views, 5,000 views, it's it's it's not it's not a big deal. Uh you're not going to get way more wish lists by going from a,000 to 5,000, right? It's like you you need to have a video that's good enough that it reaches America. Anyway, that's that's the impression I have at at least for this kind of thing. Maybe it's a Sweden thing though, right? Maybe Sweden is Americanized enough that the they have common interests with Americans and they like like similar things.
If you had to guess how which percentage of your wish list comes from shorts and Tik Toks that you made?
Probably all of it.
You think so?
Probably all of it. Press X to doubt.
What else worked? I mean, I I tried like Reddit. That didn't really work.
And I tried and like if if I look at like my my graph of wish lists.
Mhm.
I don't really see the YouTubers posting

on the graph, but I see my own videos. Like like I I saw Soda Pop and played my my game as a big big Twitch streamer and I I saw nothing on the wish list graph that day, but then I post like a like a Tik Tok and it's like a boom spike. So, so it's like I'm creating all the YouTube stuff. I am the bottle battle YouTube guy.
Yeah.
And I'm creating the spikes myself.
So, you you don't have to share any numbers if you don't want to, but like what would you say? How many wish lists would you get from from from a average Tik Tok video or something?
Don't remember. Can Can you see that in your stats somewhere?
You can probably look it up on Steam. Do you remember roughly how many wish lists you launched with?
What was it? I remember passing 7,000 being like, "Yes, that's what Chris told me to pass." And then it went a lot further.
Yeah. Okay.
I think it was probably 70,000, something like that. Is that right? I could I could I could be making that up. I'm not sure. I think that sounds like it's could be in the correct ballpark for sure. Something like that. Was do

you remember was there like a a ramp up um before launch where where you got significantly more wishless or was it like a slow continuous grind with making uh content yourself? For me, the first couple of Tik Toks were pretty flat. They didn't really do anything. And then I had this one that did really well all of a sudden. It got like 200,000 views.
Mhm. And that's when things started going really really well after that. And then I could just keep doing that. It it wasn't like a random it seems like it wasn't like a just a random chance event that that video did well because when I made something similar it would do similarly well. If I made something a little better it would do a little bit better
and if I made it worse do a little worse. So like it seemed predictable which is pretty interesting I think because uh obviously if you listen to someone like me speak about this you should be worried about survival bias right.
Yeah. But there's a slight argument against survivor bias here because I

feel like I could tell before I released the video roughly how many views I was going to get on Tik Tok. Not on not on YouTube. YouTube is a mystery to me, but on on Tik Tok, every video is is like kind of independent almost. And so you could kind of like see after a while like, okay, so this is roughly how much this going to get. And before I posted, I could predict it pretty reasonably well most of the time.
Yeah. Honestly, I feel like it's probably similar for YouTube just that the requirements for a video to do well are probably different.
I feel like if if you if you would ask many of the top YouTubers, they would tell you, "Yeah, I can know if a video is going to do well before I release it."
Maybe. Yeah,
I I have some of those insights, but sometimes I'm also completely off. Sometimes I think a video will do well. Yeah,
sometimes I'm off, but I have a rough pinch, I would say, if something's going to do well or not.
But but you know, uh I had it's an important part of the marketing strategy. Okay. So,

you do your Tik Tok stuff cuz when you do Tik Tok, you'll get feedback on what videos are good and what videos are not good.
Mhm.
And then you'll take all when your game releases. Just before it just before Bob released, I post started posting YouTube stuff.
Mhm. And I I'll be honest with you, when I first pop posted YouTube, I was I saw that the numbers weren't very good, and I was like, "Oh, maybe this isn't even worth doing." So, I almost did not post my YouTube videos and got these millions of views, but I was like, "I might as well do it now that the games now that the game's out." So, I basically started posting them pretty rapidly right after the game released. And um that's when they went crazy. So, I think I I I had like two videos out before and then I started posting like every day or something when the game released. There's something about the game releasing being this huge event which gives traffic to YouTube that makes YouTube really interested in showing my videos and there's some kind of crazy explosion that happened and that's why some of the videos have 20 million views. Now,

there's sort of a critical mass event when your game releases, right? I had a similar experience when I released uh Islanders where suddenly my channel exploded. I'm not entirely sure why that is. Maybe people looking up Islanders more on YouTube or maybe
credibility boost from making my first game or something. I'm I'm not entirely sure, but there seems to be something to it. So, you basically had all of these um videos saved up from Tik Tok and then you could just fire them out very rapidly on YouTube, right?
Yeah. right there during the biggest hype spikes and that created a bunch more interest in the game obviously.
I mean that's nice because the videos are already tested on a different platform so you already know if they're good videos or not. So
yep. And the bad videos I didn't post,
right? So now YouTube thinks my channel's really good.
Oh, I see. I see. because
it was you you basically did it on accident, but it sounds like you might

even do the exact same thing again for the next game on
maybe or or maybe things are different if you have a bunch of subscribers.
Although I don't know how alive my channel is anymore, right? Like if I post again, how will it wake up again? I I don't know. I'm not really posting very much. I think YouTube used to be very momentum based where this sort of stuff really mattered but I think they have sort of moved to more of a yes every video does kind of stand on its own a bit more approach as well.
So you could start a brand new channel and get a million views if the video is good enough. You could post a video to to a channel that's basically dead and get a million views. I think there's not really any barrier in in theory that's stopping you from doing that. H
I'm not entirely sure if it's maybe different for for shorts or whatever, but
yeah, who knows? But yeah, I mean I think in general these big spikes of doing many things at once is is a good

idea, right? It's like it's the Steam Next Fest and I'm posting this and I'm doing this and you get this
compounding effect.
Do you think that's something you can plan for? Can you basically prepare these spikes beforehand?
Yeah, probably. Yeah, I mean you could do the same thing as Boplin and maybe it'll work. I don't know if it's a good strategy, but worked out for me.
All right, let's advance in the the timeline a little bit. So, your marketing efforts are going pretty well at this point and you're approaching release. Where's your mind at? What you're working on?
I I think I was just stressed out like, oh [ __ ] the game's coming out soon. Freaking out. Were you confident in the game? Have you tested it a bunch with friends or were you still unsure if this even works?
I tested a bunch with friends but only with friends. I haven't done any like play testing like let's get a different group of people and see if they have fun. It's just now I invite friends to come play the game with me.
Mhm.
And that's it. And I don't know it just seemed like it would work. And then when you get all this attention on Tik Tok

you start go like maybe I can actually make some money. You know that that wasn't actually the plan from the beginning. The beginning plan was just I'll just make a game because I need to become better at making games if I want to get a job in the industry and stuff. It started to seem like it could like it could be something when you get attention.
One thing we shouldn't skip over is the the demo. I think you had a very interesting approach to that cuz when I when I first learned about your game, it was actually a bunch of my friends uh playing the demo in a Discord server and inviting me in.
I see. I see. Yeah. I mean, the the demo is still up. I haven't closed it. What was your thought process for for the demo in general? Cuz it it almost honestly it almost feels like a complete game.
Yeah, that's kind of the thing. I I wanted the demo to be really fun and but I also wanted it to be very very enticing to want to buy the full game, right?
Mhm.
So, you have all these like locks every time you pick your your abilities in the main menu. There's like all these locks on all these cool things and you can go and you can look at their names. It says like black hole and stuff

and so you you kind of want to buy the full game if you look around there. You get curious.
But uh but the base everything everything is in there. You can play online, you can use matchmaking, you you can have a good time just playing the demo. But I think as long as it's enticing to want to get the full game, I think it I think that's totally fine.
Yeah, I I think it worked out very well in your case.
Yeah, I bet some genres should not do this probably, right? they should be more careful what they put in their demo.
I think you've definitely uh you're definitely being a bit on the lean side perhaps maybe with where your con where your demo almost has a bit too much
uh you think so maybe
maybe I'm not saying that it has but I'm saying if it's a spectrum then you're more on that side than on the other side.
I'll I'll I'll remove some stuff and I'll bring you
No, I think it I think it was fantastic. So I I um cuz people appreciate that and if people um appreciate a game for being generous like with the the amount of

content it entails and enjoying it then that's when they bring in friends and so on. So maybe I would not even have learned about the game if it uh was more restrictive.
Yeah. I I bet it's hard to it it is very hard to get your friends to come play with you when exactly you get four people different people to play the same game. It's very hard. It's you're probably going to play League of Legends again instead.
That's usually what happens, right? So if you something is free, you can maybe it's easier to convince them to try it.
Did the demo result in any um in a rise in wish lists? Do you remember?
Yeah, I think that was very big.
I think that was very big. And that was another spike was like release the game with a Tik Tok and everything at once around and it was pretty close to NextFest I think.
Mhm.
I was people were recommending like this many weeks before NextFest like okay I'll do that. Did you get decent coverage on YouTube and Twitch from from the demo or not?
Not not that it showed up in the wish

lists
pretty much. So like I think I was probably a bit unlucky when it comes to YouTube I suspect.
Mhm.
Which is a little strange perhaps to say for someone who had so much good fortune but but since you you bring in the views yourself it's it's not a problem really.
Yeah. I want I wonder how how the watchability of your games like for for YouTube content cuz that's something I talked a lot about with the previous guests and Gavin of course
and for example Gavin was like high action games don't do very well with uh with watchability
because you they're very fun to play but you as a viewer you almost get a bit numb to like all of the the action and like there
that's that's probably true that's probably why it's not so big on YouTube the But then it's interesting that you can kind of be your own YouTuber then
as as a patch to the problem.
You just do it yourself.
Yeah. Yeah. That and and word of mouth I think from just making a great game, right?

I guess that's how I I found your game was definitely what what I would call word of mouth.
Okay, cool.
Yeah. And also the the Steam algorithm likes to recommend it now. I think even when a lot of the hype is has died down,
it's still like it's well rated so people see it when they've played similar games. By the way, it's very difficult to make games that stay wellrated uh even uh years after release. And I think you're still at overwhelmingly positive. So that definitely says something about the game. Maybe we should talk a bit about why it's uh so great actually or why people like it.
And I think it might not be obvious from just looking at it, right? I think a lot of people are pleasantly surprised by how much stuff is in the game because when they first look at it, they might think, "Oh, this is some flash game that someone made in a couple of months." But obviously, I've slaved away at this thing for years, uh, and put in lots of weird stuff that other games don't do. Like, there's lots of weird hidden stuff that took way too much work if you think

about it. But, but it's just fun to discover weird things that don't happen in other games, right? Like I can I can give you an example. There's there's an ability that you place out an extra life in the in in the level. So you place where you're going to respawn and you can bring two of these into the into the game. And so you place one here and one here and then you die and then you respawn. But since there's two extra lives, you respawn twice and you get two guys. Suddenly you have you you're controlling two players. So that was a bug that I made into a feature and that became a short
because it's kind of an interesting story.
Yeah. And it has huge effects on the game because you can't, you know, because suddenly when you program it, you have to think about, okay, there might be 16* four players jumping around with these things. And so now I got to do an algorithm so that this isn't too slow. And it's kind of a dumb thing to do, but it's it's kind of funny. So you just do it anyway. Uh that's kind of how BA was made. And obviously the entire underlying design philosophy of u making

a game that's highly synergistic I think is also very smart because you just get a lot more bang for your buck, right? You
make one mechanic, but it's not just one mechanic. It's one mechanic that interacts with all of the other mechanics.
Yeah. Although, you know, you often have to fix things, right? So there's still work to do to make it work with everything else, right? Usually in the presentation layer, right? you you want it to look good.
You know, there there's a lot of cheating, you know, like you have your black hole is actually a square with a shader on it that draws the black hole, but then you can't have another ability that changes the texture cuz then it's just a big square.
I I the way I imagine it is like you you code the black hole, right? And then it has some generic code like it sucks on all of the physics objects and it increases in size when it does.
Mhm. Then what you're saying is this causes a bunch of edge cases though that you have to treat separately.
I'm just wondering.
Okay. So, right. So, I can I can give

you some example with with the black hole for sure. So, there there's a there's something called the blink gun in bottle where you hit something, it
disappears for a little bit and then it comes back.
So, we're essentially disabling
the object. But there's an effect on that where I kind of wobble the object a little bit and I spawn some textures around it. Then it's like, okay, well, but but a black hole isn't actually like a, you know, I I can't use the mesh of the black hole because the black hole is just a quad. And uh I need to find how big it's actually supposed to be. And you know, you you want to turn your black hole completely blue, but the way I turn it blue won't work cuz it's black and I can't multiply that in. And like you run into all these problems and you have to write a whole new shader for the black hole
when it's combined with the blink.
Okay, got it. So, okay. I see. So, all of the synergies aren't free. You still have to
No, it's not free.
You have to treat all of the synergistic edge cases then as well.
You will have to. Yeah. And unless you

have a really good base, I guess, you know, if everything was made from triangles and everything was a sprite and everything had like a generic, but my the code isn't that good. And I think a big reason for that is that I started out with Unity and then tried to then replaced it all but kept the structure because I want didn't want to remix the game entirely from scratch. And so you know another reason I probably would have saved time by starting over. The game is just using Unity uh sorry not Unity Steam's networking solution or do you basically have the I think Steam has a how do you call it?
They got the relay.
Yeah, exactly. They have the relay servers. Are you using those? I do use those. Those are great. Love me the Steam relay servers. But you know, so that that's basically a way to send just send raw data, right? You send UDP messages and you solve everything else yourself with your including late packets and out of order packets and things like this,
right? So the big advantage is now that the game is out, you don't have any server builds.
Yes, that's very nice.

But you know, sometimes the game still breaks for some people, right? Like they update Proton to a new version and that means the game doesn't work on Steam Deck anymore. And
so suddenly I have to panic and like try to figure out what's going on.
And is that a ripple effect a little bit of you writing your own engine in the engine still?
No, I think that's just Unity.
I think that was just a Unity bug for example, right? Like I think if I had written my own code, I probably would have could have been able to avoid this a lot more.
Okay.
If you can just find like something small and robust as possible to build everything on, I suspect things would just work better.
Cool. So, you maybe posted a couple of uh fixes and updates post release and now you're slowly wrapping up or like
So, post release I I updated the game a whole bunch. I kept adding things for a long time and I kept making uh videos about the things I added.
But, you know, it's it's a little bit less rare because I had to work and make a whole ability before I could make a

video about it. And you know, I had some crazy ideas that I wanted to spend a lot of time on, which I could do. Uh, since the game did so well, there's no problem.
Now, did those updates, were they worth it? Did they result in um sales spikes or
Yeah, they they definitely did. And if I was financially sensible, I would just keep making updates to the game.
Really? But you think that would be worth it? Really? I
I think so. At least uh until you see that it would make sense to do it until you see start stop seeing the spikes.
Oh, fair enough. Mhm. Yeah. Yeah, that that makes sense. But then I guess um what you're saying is that at some point you're like enough. It's time to start something new or Yeah. And I'm I'm trying to start something new, right? That's kind what I am. I'm kind of like trying to get the ball rolling on the new thing. Maybe I'll come back and add some stuff if I have some great idea or something. I'll probably go in and fix some bugs and stuff, but uh yeah, that's roughly where I am from all of this. Do you have um some sort of theory for how

to make a successful game now or how how are you going to approach your next game project? Like when you when you sit back and think about it analytically, what what should I do from here? Or what do you even optimize for? Right? Do you do you optimize your next game to be financially viable again? Do you optimize your game to just be something interesting you're interested in again? I am I'm I'm tempted to make something that's really not financially viable because it's because I'm in that position and I could do that, you know, like
maybe if I made a fighting game or something,
you know, that's that's not a good idea probably. But but that but that would be fun uh to make. But who knows what is my my theory? I don't know. I don't know if what I did is like a pattern that works or if it was like some weird freak thing or if Tik Tok even will be around by the time
you should I should mark my next game, right?
Yeah. I mean, that's I'm I'm not sure if everybody thinks about making games the way I do. I'm just I personally I think

I'm a very theory crafty kind of person. I'm always like trying to refine my theories about how all of this works. But um
yeah, that makes sense.
But I realize that um there are people who have different approaches to the film. So I'm just wondering how how you think about it in general.
Yeah. I mean, I'll probably keep track of your channel to see your theory,
see if you think something else is a good idea in the future. But what was so nice about the bubble battle approach was that it wasn't that much work on the marketing side and it didn't feel too slimy either because I could just be kind of honest. And so it's it's a very much a too good to be true everything worked out situation. Uh you know it's kind of what everyone wants. They just want to work on their game their dream game and they don't want to worry too much about marketing and stuff. And I I didn't put that much effort into the marketing after all. Like it was every Friday for half a year or something. I would say that that is part of at least the theory I've been preaching recently

which is just make a great game
which I think you did
and if if it's a great game then people will find it
and word of mouth is powerful these days with uh people being connected via the internet and content creators and Discord communities and if if you make something that people like then people will probably find it unless you're very stupid about how There you go. But I mean to to be fair, you said a lot of your wish lists came from shorts and Tik Tok and so on. So I'm obviously
I mean where else would you get them from?
Yeah.
The the Reddit stuff didn't work and the YouTubers didn't didn't want to play it before they before it that stuff was out very much.
That's right.
So where where would you get them?
That's right. But what I'm I think what what I'm trying to say is um that counteracts my theory as well a little bit with saying just make a great game because I think in this case we have to be honest that maybe the game wouldn't have gotten the attention that it has

without without those charts.
Yeah, it probably would have done okay is kind of my thing. But there might be an extra zero
because of the marketing that's but but even without that extra zero I would have been pretty pretty happy with that. So yeah.
All right. So I what I hear is that you're a bit in a um self finding phase still for your next games.
I am you know like should I make another game like basically by myself? I mean I had someone on Pokemon of music but other than that it was like a solo project.
Maybe I should like work with someone else. I don't know. How do you do that? I have no I don't know. I should probably like try some stuff. Maybe do some game jams.
That sounds reasonable. Yeah. Just expand your horizon a bit. try try a bunch of different things and uh yeah
do do you do you have any advice on
I mean working in a team or not or stuff like that
there's this entire um explore versus exploit idea right
you you need to play the correct mixture

between explore and exploit so exploit is doing something that you know works
and explore is um trying out new things to find out what works and if you only exploit and you stick with something you know that works then you miss out on all of the things that might work even better and if you only explore then you find a bunch of things but you never take the time to exploit and actually take advantage of them so I think that's the tricky part you have to maybe in in FA phases like you're in right now you have to um do the correct amount of explore and then at some point you have to switch back to exploit mode again and just do what you know works right
right right And specifically about working with people, I I think the correct answer is once again it it depends if you if you like working with people or I don't know if you feel feel a bit lonely or something then I think it's a good idea.
And also I think you can make even

better more more successful games in a team if that's something you care about which I'm not sure you
but it I think it's the case. I think like three to five people is just two to five people is so is the sweet spot for where where you're going to make the the most awesome indie games at the lowest cost. Rule of thumb, they're always outliers and exceptions so hard.
Is is there a reason that you think about success so much? I mean, you you have your throne fall and stuff and they then they did very well, right?
Yeah, there's. And that is that I'm a theory crafty kind of person and the enjoyment for me is derived from the theory crafting in in a way and and the the way I measure my theory crafting skills is basically with the success of my games. Right.
Okay. I see. That's interesting. And so so so maybe I'm similar, but I'm I'm I'm more like I'm interested in the game design. Yeah.
The theory of the game design. and I

trust my own judgment on if the game is good or not at the end. So I don't need necessarily this
hard validation in terms of the the facts, right?
I mean it's I think it's kind of always okay to talk about success because success is a very subjective term anyway and can be defined in various ways by different people.
For example, if if you say success, then nobody says that it has to be financial success, right? It could also mean something entirely different for you.
Okay. Okay. So, so, so you you would include making a really good game that no one played as success.
I personally would not because I think if a game is really good then a lot of people would play it.
I Yeah, I mean that's probably true. Maybe it's really hard to get into or something, you know, like people don't get it. You'll be you'll be revered after you're dead and people find out the genius of your game. Do you think it's kind of annoying that developers talk about success so much or
No, it's not annoying. I think I think

it's good that people It's It's more that I'm curious because I'm I'm in this state now where I like, oh, I did this really successful thing.
Yeah.
And now I don't feel the the need to be successful again, not in a financial way. So, I'm kind of curious like cuz I I want to stake some fire in me uh to get going, you know?
Yeah. Yeah, I mean I'm in a I think I would say I'm in a similar boat where I don't have the financial necess necessity to make something successful at the moment,
but it's like the competitive side in me that's just like Right.
Right. Right. So I I want to have fun, but getting getting good is part of the fun for me. So for example, I also uh train Brazilian jiujitsu. I hope that's not too too much of a meme that all of the podcast has seems to do something like that. But but anyways, I'm kind of into martial arts. And the reason I'm doing martial arts is not because I want to be the best at doing martial arts. It's just just for fun, right? It's just a hobby. But getting good at the hobby

is part of the fun. So if I'm like I
I want to get good, but not because I want to be good. I want to get good because getting good is the fun part. And I feel like about the game game development is for me is kind of the same way. getting better at game development is the fun part. So that's I think that's why I'm chasing after success because that that is the fun part for me. It's like you I can see how people would look at that that and be like um which amount of success is going to be enough but if if chasing the success is the fun part then
what do you do? I it's like I don't know
that makes sense. So I maybe I I don't know. Maybe you need to figure out what what fuels you then. Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah.
I don't think there's anything wrong with just making a cool game that you want to play. Is is the fighting game idea something along those lines where you're like that sounds fun to make.
The fighting game.
Yeah, that sounds fun to make. Although

it sounds like making it be successful is not that fun, right? Because you would probably need to foster a community and set all that up and have tournaments and stuff. That sounds really really awful. But but actually making the game and playing the game would be really fun.
Do you have an idea for a fighting game that's sort of different to what's already out there?
Yeah, I mean I have my ideas on like ah these guys are doing it all wrong. It should be like this. I have I have have a lot of that stuff for for what it's worth. I think that's a very good starting point for for making games to be like identifying a problem in the games that are out there and trying to fix them. I think that's a generally a good a good starting point.
Absolutely.
Yeah. Cool. I hope I I didn't ramble too much about myself there in the end, but
No, no, no. I'm interested in hearing about it. So,
yeah.
Do you think that games are lacking something recently or or do you think there's just a plethora of fantastic games coming out constantly or do you think they're kind of lacking? Are you are you cynical as me?
Are you cynical about a lot of games in

general or are there specific games that you're being cynical about? I I think it's pretty general. I I just see all the stuff coming out and I don't like it. I'm like, why why are they doing it like this?
So, it's not Yeah, it's not good practice to call out specific games probably, but can you sort of put a bit of a finger on what exactly you you mean by they're doing it wrong?
It's tricky. Like I I I don't know. I feel like a lot of games aren't really games for example and then they and I don't and and then when someone makes something that really is a game it just becomes really good really popular really fast because people want to play a real game like I don't know I saw I was watching this YouTube video yesterday someone was talking about climbing games and how
climbing games are totally different now
now that we have peak and stuff and the old climbing games and they looked at these AAA games where you kind of like follow the just click the yellow paint along a path. And I just don't understand how anyone can enjoy that at

all. Like what's going on?
So you mean that the last generation of climbing games or then the or including the new generation of climbing games?
No, the the new ones are the are the ones that that I think are are great. Stuff like Peak, stuff like a difficult game about climbing. I thought I thought those those were fantastic. And it's just of course they are they're real games, you know.
Yeah, maybe that's a different similar feeling to what I have is I I have a feeling that indie game developers are really making the triplea industry starting to sweat because we're pumping out out so much awesome content that is I think maybe even slowly starting to compete with their market share a little bit.
Yeah. the the the one critique I'll have of the indie space is that I feel like we're very game jam driven and like is
here's a question for uh for you specifically here. I I I remember on Thomas Brush's podcast you talked about

how the return on a game is this super linear curve, right? There's like this exponential may maybe it's an S curve cuz it you saturate the market at some point. If you put in more effort, you get more value back. So why would you make these small game jam games if you're if we're exploring an exponential curve? That doesn't make any sense.
I think the problem is that the curve is different for every game, right? There there you basically trying to find the most optimal size for each game and the curve the curve looks different for each game. So, there are some games that just get exponentially better the bigger you make them, but there are also some games that tinker off relatively early and then don't really get uh better anymore. So, maybe maybe we didn't fully explain that in in the uh podcast.
I see I see I see what you're saying. So, maybe Vampire Survivors kind of like plateaus earlier in the effort cuz it's kind of a simple game at its core.

Exactly. It's like if you make something like Candy Crush and then for example having the difference of having 500 levels and 2,000 levels is is doesn't really move the needle that much anymore,
right? But but if you can keep making things that people care about, if you can keep adding stuff that people really do care about and that really makes the game better, shouldn't you just keep keep going forever? Yeah, I think
if you're maximizing your average um return,
I think the point of games is sort of for people to have uh a lot of different experiences that they can't have in real life.
So, I think there's value to extending games, but only to a point because at some point people will be like, but I want to have more experiences. I want to have other experiences. And at that point, um maybe it's better to to start a new game and provide a new experience. Yeah, for for sure. But but I mean, yeah, I guess we're saying the same thing. It's just when the curve starts to plateau, you should stop.

Yeah, I think so.
Yeah, I'm just worried that people are making games where they just kind of climb the the flat line
and then they just
stop. It's it's it's almost in the idea itself does not have a an upwards slope, you know? That's what you're saying cuz it's too small. It's like you put in more and more effort, you'll you'll you'll find that maximum derivative, get those big returns. So, I don't know. I'm I'm a little bit skeptic about the about the game jam stuff and maybe even the prototyping stuff that that you talk about a lot
because because you you you almost are limiting yourself to game ideas that are very easy to implement or fast to implement a little bit.
Right. So, so just so I get this right, you're saying when we are prototyping, we're climbing this very, very small section of the slope in the beginning, and this is this too early to say where it tinkers off or where it's going to go.
No, no, I don't necessarily think so. I

I'm I mean more like the point I'm making is I'm I'm I'm a little bit worried that these game jam ideas or that we have all of these really really high return games that people are not doing cuz they're they're trying to make them small. They're trying to make game jam games. Mhm.
And and when you make a game jam game, you kind of like get to the point of the game pretty fast and they say, "Okay, this seems seems fun." But there is this huge curve flying up into space right next to you if you if the game was a was a little different.
So you're maybe worried that people make games that are too small almost to exploit the full potential of their games.
Yeah. Not too small in that they don't have enough content, but like too small in their idea, you know, like it's not very ambitious, right? You want an ambitious game. Like it's like I I from the start said bop battle is going to have 30 abilities and it has 29 and but I I'm counting random as an extra ability cuz it makes a nice rectangle in the menu. So so I hit basically what I decided very early eventually and that was an ambitious number for this kind of

ability and this kind of game. And I don't know. I I I want to see more ambitious indie games
because when when I see these tiny little things that people make in a couple of months, I'm not really very interested in them usually unless they happen to come up with some really brilliant idea, right? Like like your vampire survivors, right? Where it really makes sense to not work on it for too long. I suppose what what I'm saying is there there's not a lot of games game ideas where the where the slope is very early. That's my suspicion.
Got it. Okay. Cuz obviously what we are trying to do with um prototyping and so on to maybe put that into that frame a little bit is we are trying to guesstimate the shape of the curve ahead of us. Right? So we're dipping our toes into the project a little bit and we're like
um is this a very flat slope? Does it basically lead nowhere? Is this a very steep slope that gets us a lot of returns on investments very fast?
Yeah. Um, and then we're trying to pick

a project that has a favorable curve.
I I doubt you would come up with the idea of making a mobile with your prototyping process,
for example. I mean, that's that's a little extreme, right? But but but that kind of thing is an absurd amount of work to get to a working state.
Yeah,
that's fun.
Yeah. I think what you can do in those cases if you want to do something like that is you set up the tech first because that is something you have to do anyway and then then you do your prototyping phase right so I would maybe in those cases I would delay the prototyping to where the text stack is working
but then you need a pretty generic tech stack I guess
that is account for
that is true so you would have to make some decisions beforehand for example you would have to say we are making a mobile like game where you control characters from a top- down perspective
and but the thing is if you have something like that it's not like you have a mobile you need to make a mobile right you you could uh still do

something entirely different yeah interesting so you think people should be more more ambitious with their projects I guess
I mean I mean the the advice online is very much against everything I say and everything I've experienced right it's like I worked too long on the game I made my own capsule art you I do everything wrong, but it kind of worked. And and uh one of the things people say is keep your game small, don't over creep, feature creep, right? And all all of this stuff, but like I don't know. I I want to play ambitious indie games. Just that's what I want to play.
So I I want more of them even if it's just for me uh to have something to play. But
I I get that. That makes sense. How do we get indie developers to say we're going to make a mobile? I think I think the problem is just that probably it's a lot of indie developers probably think it's too risky especially if you look at things like how well clicker games are doing how well incremental games are doing. I think the the urge was very or

the incentive was very high to just be like okay let's try making an incremental clicker like game or something
and not mega mobile
mo mobile might be like kind of an exaggeration right but but maybe you could be inspired by mobiles and make something a little smaller than a mobile but that's still pretty ambitious
you know maybe it's a 3v3 mobile with 15 heroes or something
is is that really impossible to do as an indie project I don't think it is No, it
is. It is pretty scary though.
Yeah. Yeah. I think that's the that's the thing. So maybe I don't know. Maybe it just needs some some people in our situation who have some um some financial buffer to take these kind of risks. May maybe that's our
Oh no. Is it on us to make this happen?
Maybe. I I guess the the people who can afford the risks should be the ones to take them.
Yeah. can't really blame small developers for for making safer things, I think.

Yeah. Yeah, it makes sense. But still, it's it's still frustrating, you know, to see the ne the hundth copy of Vampire Survivors coming out and it's like
Sure. But I think the it's like the market is very fair in this in a way, right? It's like the the market rewards what it wants to see. If players want to play these games, then developers will keep making them. And as soon as people are like, "Okay, we've had enough of this," then people will also stop making them. So, it's like filling demand in a way, right?
Yeah. I mean, that's probably true. But, but there's also like this what what could there be? And if these things existed, everyone would just stop playing all these other things immediately,
right? There are these waves that a lot of developers seem to ride on, right?
Yeah. One game starts a wave and then lots and lots of people try to ride the wave. And I think that's one frustration that I can definitely understand and also share a bit is that it's like really do we need like 200 games riding

this wave?
Um,
right.
Yeah.
Yeah. I mean, do do you think a lot of great games come out every year? Like many?
There are stepping here. Um, every every year there are a couple that I think are real bangers.
Yeah, I I agree.
For example, Blueprints recently I think was an absolute banger. But
Blueprints
actually that's I guess Blueprints is one of those games that would support your theory cuz it's a very ambitious game and I think it feels special because of that.
Actually, did did Blueprints have a very small team? It's it was one guy and then I think he got help from a lot of people. There was like one one guy directing the game and then getting help from from quite a couple of people to to make to finish it and make it work.
Yeah, but that's that's what I'm talking about. Let's get that ambition going.
Let's see.
Yeah, maybe. Yeah, you're right.
You know, and we can always I I can use the carrot that you'll have to you'll have to market less if you work on your

game for a long time. Remember that. Maybe a reasonable compromise would be to do something similar to what you did and then to check traction while you're working on the game, right? So, you're maybe putting out some content, see how people react, and then like if nobody's responding to it, then maybe you shouldn't make it a 10-year project, but
I mean, it's probably makes sense.
If you're getting good responses like you did, then yeah, then maybe make it bigger than you planned. I don't know.
Yeah,
basically do some VIP checks. Do you think you'll reuse your tech stack in the next game? Like for example, fighting game sounds like something where you could just reuse Yeah, I see that's that's the that's the kind of question that that like makes me not want to start cuz I'm like I have to decide. I don't know. Maybe maybe I'll write something in C and so I can be free from these weird bugs that show up or something.
I I don't know. Maybe that's just a fantasy. Um,
so it it would probably be a good idea

to reuse it.
I have one proposal uh that I want to pitch to you. If if you really enjoy writing the tech side of things, then one thing you could also think about is just uh writing the tech and selling it uh to developers cuz um I think especially something like deterministic lock step kind of stuff is something that's super highly attractive to indie developers cuz it's I would say comparatively easy to implement and there there is a solution out there. It's called uh Quantum from a company like called Photon and I think it's very good from what I've seen. But obviously pricey, right?
The disadvantages you have to run it over their servers. So you have uh ongoing costs, right?
And if if there was a solution that maybe you license once and then you can run it indefinitely over the Steam ecosystem, I think that would be very very attractive to a lot of developers. Maybe something to think about. But
yeah, I mean, yeah, they both very fun

to work on for sure. I think the reason they're so fun to work on is on is the same reason as you touched on earlier where it's like you don't know if how well you can do this. Can can you really pull this off and you try and like, oh, I think I can. And you start working like, yes, it's working. It's working. Right. Like that's that improving thing you you talked about, right? That's why it's fun.
I see. I see. So, you do have a competitive side, but you're competitive about different things. Maybe
maybe there's definitely this this side of your self-improvement and if you you're unsure if you can do something and then you manage to do it. I I I had one thing I wanted to say cuz I know I know there's a lot of game developers watching this.
I will say maybe this is just survivalist biased, but but I feel very differently about the someone's chances of succeeding after having succeeded myself. It doesn't feel like a miracle anymore. I And I remember when I was making the game, it felt like it would be a miracle if the thing did well, like

like there's no way. I think there is a way. I I I think we're over underestimating the potential. It's it's not like a lottery ticket. It's it's better than a lottery ticket, you know? It's it's more akin to like becoming a professional artist or something. There's probably a few zeros less of a crazy chance for things to work out. So I'm I I trying to be encouraging here uh to because I I I genuinely think so now I I think it's not impossible at all even though it feels so especially if you're on gamedev Reddit and everyone's really desparing. Yeah. I think what's also fun to see is that all of the like quoteunquote successful developers you talk with when you talk with them you you find out that they're just completely normal people
like you like like not to be I'm also talking about myself here so no offense right but it's like you talk to them they're sometimes they're they're a little bit nervous a little bit shy I don't know it's like normal normal people stuff it's like um
yeah you don't you don't have to be a

super genius. You you really don't, right?
Like and even if you're not that productive, you can eventually get done and
put something out there and it can do very well as long as you're not wasting your time on
So there there's like two components to it, right? There's you have to put in enough time and then you need to invest the time in a way that makes sense. So So maybe
yes,
what do you how do you think about that second one? But how do you invest your time in a way that increases your chances of success? Cuz spending time is something I think that's fairly obvious that everybody who's trying knows that they should do, but how to effectively spend your time, that's I think the tricky part, right?
Yeah. Yeah. And I mean, I often don't spend my time particularly effectively. Like like I said, I did all these stupid things like you can clone yourself in the game.
Mhm. anything in the game can grow and shrink. These stupid ideas that like if you work worked in a team and you had a

programmer and you told him that he would be really cross with you, right?
Yeah.
But if you're by yourself, you can Yeah, I can I can do that. That's fine. But I don't know. I think it's just like a matter of being excited about this. Like, oh, is this does this seem cool? If it's really seems cool and you're excited about, you can you can work on it and you'll feel motivated to work on it and it's probably not a waste of time if it made you feel that way. Sure. Yeah. It depends on your definition of success. If you eventually want to make a living off of it, then
yeah,
it probably does matter how you spend your time a bit. Yeah. Pro.
Yeah, probably. I mean, perhaps one of the biggest problems people fall into is that they're kind of fall into various kinds of delusions, right?
Right. The as long as you understand what the reality is, you you're probably okay, right? Because it's like, okay, I'm wasting time here, but it's not too bad,
right? If you understand that, it's not really really a problem. But if you're really wasting time on something that really doesn't matter, then it's a problem because you're deluding yourself into thinking something that's not true.

Yeah, I think you put that very nicely cuz I think whenever I see somebody where I'm like, I'm not sure if if that person's going to make it, which, you know, unfortunately happens sometimes. Then usually the reason why is because you're right because they're stuck in some kind of delusion and I can't talk them out of it like
without being really rude and make them not like you.
Sure. But even that doesn't help sometimes.
No, no, no. That never helps.
Right. So, how do you how do you make sure that you don't get stuck in any delusions by because I think this is something that can totally happen to anybody, right? a few.
Yeah, I guess you just set a high bar and don't don't imagine that someone's going to like your game if you don't like your game yourself.
I don't know. I I'm I'm I'm a big critical thinker kind of person. Like I I'm I'm very very skeptical of things.
So So maybe maybe that's why I'm better at staying out of delusions even though I can still go on these grand adventures

without
being completely lost. Maybe that's uh that's a strength. Yeah, at least there seems to be some common trait that you can see in game developers who who made it that they often times have a analytical approach. But it's not it's not always the case, right?
Mhm. But often often now that I think about it
I mean even even if you're not analytical if you have an intuition which is good and that you keep checking
that and you need to be obviously the the standard thing of you need to be careful not to surround yourself with yesmen if like all of your play testers are yesmen that's a big problem
right yeah I I never trust anyone's compliments ever my my compliment
I don't don't trust any of it
yeah and also I think developing Having good taste is something that's probably more important than ever, right? Cuz you do develop a lot of the game on your own.

Yeah.
Um
Yeah. See, that's if if you're someone who feels like you're wasting away playing too much video games and not getting anything done,
maybe there's even an upside to that, right? Where you're kind of becoming more like the the audience that will buy your game. Develop your tastes to fit them more,
right? So even that might not be a total waste of time.
True. But the people who are most likely to buy your game are the people who buy a lot of games. So if you want to really put yourself into their shoes, then you need to be someone who buys a lot of games.
I guess that's true. And I'm I guess I'm not one of those people. Although I am someone who would would buy my game. I think
I would buy my own game.
Got it.
Yeah. And that might be a good check. It's like, okay, I think this game is fun, but would you buy it? That's a much higher bar,
right? And could you convince your friends to come play with you? It's an even higher bar, right? True. And also I think being honest about the answer there is it's like a
is a good check.
Yeah. Yeah. There are some developers

where I think they would not buy their own game, but I'm not sure if they would be capable to realize that.
Yeah. Yeah. I bet that's tricky.
Yeah.
But maybe they're happier in their with that worldview. They're a happier person.
Yeah. Maybe. Maybe. Yeah. Who are we to judge? It's always dangerous. Yeah. Yeah. So you do you do feel like it's more achievable than you thought it was?
Yeah, much more so. I I've thought of it really like, oh, we're going to this is something that the genius super productive geniuses managed to do and normal people are kind of [ __ ] right? That's kind of what I thought. I don't think so at all anymore myself. It's like no, no.
Also, I think ideas are so important. Like you talk about like taste and ideas are so important. So like even if someone is like a super genius and they work really productively and stuff, their idea if their taste is kind of bad and their ideas kind of bad, they're screwed.
I think true. Yeah. So yeah, I think

ideas are surprisingly important in games. And a big reason for that is probably because we don't really no one's very good at game design, right? We're not very good at it. And so if if we were really good at game design, like taking something and we could just make it into something fun, maybe the idea wouldn't matter so much.
But if if we're not any good, we're really relying on our initial idea to be to be to be a good idea. Maybe.
Mhm. Maybe. I have a bit of a different theory why ideas might be so important. It's
okay.
Kind of going into a different direction. I think it's more that making something fun is actually surprisingly easy and like much much more so than
I think a lot of people think cuz if you start making games then you think like oh making something that's fun is the difficult part but I feel like the the longer I've been making games for the more I realized that no making it fun that is that is the easy part that is that is the part that you if you have a somewhat decent process that is the part that you're almost always going to get right eventually.

What's more difficult is making something that's um appealing and that excites people before they play it, right? So something that attracts people into the game and something people are excited about.
Then making something that's fun, you know, it can be as simple as uh colorful blocks falling falling from top and you have to click them. It's like
um it's not that difficult. I guess I guess I'm set I have my cynically high bar you know where it's like this isn't good enough
so it's not fun for me
right but don't you enjoy for example a good rhythm game or something
I do I do but not enough where I buy them but I did buy Guitar Hero when I was a kid and I had a lot of fun with Guitar Hero
but that's exactly what I'm saying right you're not buying these games because they don't entice you with their fantasy with their presentation
once you play them you would enjoy them but you're just not excited about buying them.
Yeah, that might make sense. You you you might bound to something
for sure.
Maybe. Maybe. I don't know. I'm I'm

refining my theories as I go.
Yeah.
Yeah. Cool. Awesome. You can you can make games. It's achievable.
Yeah.
We believe in you.
We We believe in you. As long as you don't get delusional, guys.
Johan, thank you very much for coming on the show. It was super fun. Thanks for talking to me.