Turn a Text-Only Game Into A Steam Hit

I like to consider it in my head. It's like I built the Eiffel Tower, but just out of little bricks of turd, you know, just like [ __ ] bricks. Within 2 hours, it was the number one post on Reddit, and I made £20,000 in like 2 hours.
This is a conversation with Hugh Milward, the creator of the entirely textbased game Warsim.
I didn't make any backups of it and the source code got wiped. I got really, really drunk and I missed all of my investor meetings.
Despite the complete lack of graphics, Warsim is strangely successful with a cult following.
Those spikes were making me more money than my job was. per year. So, I was like, "Oh, shit." Okay,
[ __ ] the job. Realistically, mate, it's um there's no one marketing tool or solution that I found is like the one. But what worked for me, especially back in the day when I was really, really hot on the marketing was a tapestry of everything. I invited you because I had a suspicion he would challenge my beliefs about how to make successful indie games, and he indeed helped expand my horizon, and I hope you'll do the same for yours. Why do you think it did so well? It's not not a game you would

expect to do so well. What's your theory behind it?
It's difficult. It's it's hard to say really, isn't it? Cuz it's like I could make guesses. I think obviously it didn't do really well when I first released it and I just kept updating it. I learned how marketing worked and I was obviously trying everything I could to get attention on it, but also the people that did come and play it and talked about it, I took their feedback and I was like, "Right, okay, that's a really good idea." I add it in the game and then I put their name next to the change and these people become super fans and then obviously they stay and it it just built really strong that way, you know, by listening to the community but also marketing drawing new people in. And then I noticed after a while it just snowballs, you know, like people just know the game now weirdly and it's just Yeah, it's just kind of a thing.
So I don't have to sell it anymore. It sells but like for years yeah it was obviously
a very [ __ ] strange game. Why would anyone play it? When it first came out, it was not that successful. Is that what you're saying?
Yeah, for sure. 2017, it was the original early access release and I

think I made like a $100 or $200 or something which I I thought, "Oh, this is amazing for for like the first year and a half. It wasn't very good. It was like I'd make maybe a couple of dollars a week and I thought that was that was cool." you know, I was working a full-time job. And then 2018, I was like, I'm going to take this seriously now. And I started trying to do more stuff and marketing things like that. And I would I noticed, you probably know the same with your games, right? Steam, you see a massive spike from sales. Like, you know, someone writes an article, boom, big spike. Someone um I don't know, does a big YouTube video on it, there's a big shoot spike. And you know, with a summer sale, right, or a winter sale, there's another big spike. And those spikes were making me more money than my job was per year. So I was like, "Oh [ __ ] okay,
[ __ ] the job. Let's get in on this." 2019 CO hit, we went all in and then yeah, it just got bigger and better. And every year then it started doubling and obviously I would learn more things and expand. But at this point, you know, we're talking a game that's been in development for 5 years, six years, seven years, and I was 10. So, you know,

there's a lot of stuff in this game that if someone tried to make something similar, it would take them a long ass time to make something that weird and that featureful, I guess.
Interesting. Yeah. I The main reason I wanted to invite you is because I kind of had a feeling that your perspective to gamedev is probably very different to all of the common advice and to all the most other game dev stories I hear. Cuz usually what happens when somebody releases a game and it doesn't do well is they just start a new game. What what you did is you for some reason you kept working on the game even though it sold like only a couple of copies. Like how how comes why did you do that?
I was never doing it for money in the first place. It was always fun. So it's like I didn't need to make money. I was just, you know, this is cool. Wow, someone one person cares. That's amazing. Anyway, you know, I was just making something for myself to play. And then after a while, you know, if I didn't really bother with it anymore, it didn't bother me. But then I'd get people messaging like, "Hey, I really want to see this in the game." I go, "Yeah, go on then. I'll add that." And it was it's more just for me really. And

then after a while, you know, the the fans, the community were there and they were really lovely people and I felt kind of indebted at that point like well I promised these people a full game. So it didn't come out of early access till 2022 I think which was like what 5 years of from releasing in early access to coming out because I just kept adding whatever I wanted rather than what I needed to add to get the game technically complete. But yeah, I don't know. Just had fun with it really. Most games if they were if someone spent more time on them would you know do the same you know like you can you can release a game that goes amazingly on day one and that's great and you can release a game that does terribly on day one and you can abandon it but if you carry that on and you listen to people you make it better and extend and try whatever you've already got a game right so you may as well make it better may as well make it cooler I mean
people are going to want to buy a game that's had more work paid into it makes sense to me but it's just obviously if you've got a team you've got wages to pay and stuff it's a different ball game isn't It's a different uh different world I guess for me. I was in my early 20s working a [ __ ] job doing whatever I

wanted really and it it didn't matter to me whether this game sold or not. So I had that fortune.
Do you want maybe want to go through the the development of the uh Warsome uh from start to finish. So I think your initial idea was was also just to to make this like a little fun project to learn C++ or something like that, right?
Yeah. So, I actually I couldn't program very well and I was learning learning a few tutorials and I started making like procedural generation systems and this was my favorite [ __ ] ever. I love procgen so much and I made um like a procgen weapon creator that made like two billion weapons or something and I was like this is awesome but it's useless. It's not in a game. No one cares about it. I really want it to be in a video game and I was thinking hm I wonder if I can get some other video games to take my tools and after a while I was like nah I've got to build the game myself. So, I started trying to work on some little stuff,
and I have ADHD. So, I think what happened was I I made this tutorial game,
which was just one enemy versus another

enemy, and they kill each other. And I was like, "Right, cool. What if I added a menu? Cool. Okay, an arena. Oh, okay. What about recruitment? What about this? Oh, a throne room, right? What about uh the ability to explore the world?" And I just kept adding and adding and adding and adding and it sort of got out of control. And then I put it online and, you know, it took off. But but yeah, it was never intended to be uh to be a game really. It was a tutorial. And actually, I abandoned Warim after it was the tutorial and started working on a different game project, which I would consider my first true game, which was called The Wastes,
uh which was made because I really wanted to play Fallout 4, but it wasn't really coming out yet. And I was like, "All right, I'll make myself a little Asky Wasteland game, and that'll scratch the itch on my uh my skin, you know." I worked on it for 6 months. U community built up. I have like quite a lot of fans. People send me money and I was like, "Oh my god, I've done it. Like I've made a game and I have a community." And I didn't make any backups of it and the source code got wiped. So 6 months in, it's gone. And I was very depressed. I was like, "Shit,
that's that's not Warim, that's the the

other game that you worked on."
Exactly. So that that gets lost and I was like, "What am I going to do now?" So I looked at my old projects and was like, "Screw it. I'll pick up this little Warsim project and, you know, maybe I can feel better by adding some little things to this." And it took months for Warim to build to the point where this game was um communitywise, but it it started growing. It started growing and then yeah, I guess we had some early fans. I had people send me money. I submitted the game to Steam and we had a little bump and then not much. And I think for a while when there wasn't any fan comments or any community stuff, I didn't really feel as inspired to work on the game, but we got a regular supply of people commenting and it made me think like, you know what, hell yeah. like this is where it's at.
And then yeah, I just locked in. And for the most part, I was working on it quite hard. I went traveling for a while and when I came back, people were searching in the obituaries in my town to see if I'd died. So I came back and was like, I released an update called Warsim's Not Dead. Said, "Hey, it's okay. We're still here." And uh and then locked in properly. And it that was when it

officially really felt like a job.
And then it started paying like a job. And yeah, just kept going. And I added so much weird stuff. Like if anybody's curious about it, I would advise them to scroll through the uh the change logs on uh Steam and you will take probably like half an hour to scroll through them all because every at one point every day I was updating with like a 30 feature update. It was insane. Maybe that was too addicted, but I was very addicted to the process of development to having a community, having fans.
So I would do, you know, as much stuff as I can, right? Let's create this. and all day I would just be programming, releasing, and obviously, you know, you you make games that aren't text based. So, you have to do a lot more work. Whereas, if I was adding something like I can add things in Warsome that are really simple
and and you know, the the coding is, you know, not simple, but there are things that can be done really simply that if it was a graphical game would take more work. So, I was able to add a lot of features quite easily and and make this quite complicated, but without having to do a lot of the complicated, you know, shaders and graphics and models and you

name it, all that stuff. So, I think that allowed me to work faster and I was just pumping updates out absolutely obsessed and yeah, it just kept going. And then 9 years in, I released a collector's edition.
So, it's probably looks pixelated to you through the webcam, but we got physical release and I was shipping them all over the world. I think that's how we started talking, wasn't I? is going to send one to you. And yeah, they just that I mean that's amazing. They've gone to most countries and yeah, I'm a game dev now. It's crazy professional.
I especially like that point of um in a in a textbased game, you can add content incredibly quickly. Like there there's this saying, I'm not sure where it's from, but it goes something like be cheap so you can be generous. And I think textbased games are like the ultimate form of this, right? like content is so cheap to make that you can be extremely generous with the amount of content that you give to players.
Yeah, that's a that's a really good quote actually. Damn.
Yeah, unfortunately I'm not I don't know

where it's from. Like uh some of my game dev friends brought it up one once and it kind of stuck with me but uh we we don't really know where it came from.
Yeah. Now the procgen stuff as well, you're right. It's um you know that that is another big driver and I think procgen systems are sometimes done really badly you know starfield where it's like really [ __ ] procgen you know where it's like oh it's procgen but it's really just noise that just places stuff around and it doesn't have any rhyme or reason behind it any structure and I think some there's about 40 50 procgen systems in Warsim and some of them are really shallow they're not the best you know they're they just make a little bit of content here and there like random books random [ __ ] newspapers or whatever whatever. But there are some that are really complex, you know, like for example the the random race generator, which I think has 94 million different races it can produce. Some of them aren't that special, but some of them are insane and very unique. And I see stuff every game. I'm like, I've never seen this before. I don't even know what this will do. And I remember one time, I think there are maybe 500

different effects that can apply to different things. and you end up with so many weird combinations of actual functional differences in the way that they play that I had um a kingdom of like I think they were like death eating goblins or something which goblins they have a larger population than most races and death eating means that the more they kill the stronger they become like quite dramatically and so because they had such a large population they were there was a lot more fighting which meant that they grew so fast and I didn't really notice this and then it got to late game and I went to fight them and when I looked the average goblin in this kingdom had the strength of a thousand men. And I was like, "Oh, I might not be able to defeat this. This might actually be too impossible to defeat." And I thought I created a monster. It took a lot of fighting. And I think I just managed to get there before the window closed, before they got so strong that they were unbeatable. And years later, a player took advantage of this and managed to make like basically an infinitely powerful champion out of a kingdom that he'd conquered who had this trait. and he

made them like really strong but but his servant
and was essentially just sending this oneman army to every other kingdom in the game and just wiping them out and he killed like a thousand kingdoms with it and just absolutely insane and I would I never thought about that. I never thought it was something you could even do but you know players find a way which is beautiful absolutely beautiful. I guess that's the advantage of building so many complex interlocking systems with procedural generation and so on is that there's a lot of emergent complexity also that you didn't even plan for. I definitely felt that when playing like I I only scratched the surface. It definitely felt like I was scratching the surface. I was kind of looking at all of my options and being like, "Oh, I can change the policies of my kingdom. I can hire all of these different staff. I can explore. I can do stuff with the arena. And then whenever I find something new, like another another bucket of options opens up. Like I go explore, I find another building like the mine and then all of a sudden I can either buy the mine or I can raid

the mine or whatever or or I can try to negotiate with that mine. It's like what the hell, man. like the like I was already blown away by my options just looking at the the basic menu screen and then then it just keeps going and it keeps presenting new and new more and new things.
There's a lot more than that as well.
There's always there's always another menu.
It is this bad, right? Even I sometimes when I've played it, I find stuff and I'm like, what is this? And I for a second I'm like, did it go sentient and code something that I missed? Like what is this? Oh, I added this eight years ago. Right. Okay, there we go. I've seen Yeah, I see I see weird stuff like that quite often or like a player will talk about something be like, "Hey, what about this screen?" I'm like, "What's what are you talking about and then I go in, oh yeah, [ __ ] I must have added this like 9 years ago or 7 years ago." It's a very strange one.
But going back to the development history, so the entire game grew essentially out of a smaller game. So, it almost sounded like you were saying the arena part of the game was first and

then you added the throne room later. What was what was first? What what was the game?
So, originally it was a simple like war simulator. So, it was it wasn't really arena. It was more like two two small armies. You could put in a number like 100 skeletons versus 100 goblins or something and it would simulate them fighting each other and like would display their deaths kind of like how Mountain Blade displays the deaths of the units and stuff like that. And you know that was kind of basic. So after that I started adding other stuff and I think the arena came not long afterwards and then I was like oh this is this is fun. Like this is there's some real juicy stuff that we can do here.
And then I added like laws and options and other kingdoms and started adding procgen and it was actually weird. Um it was probably like 3 4 years into development that I added um the throne room. It was not an intentional feature at all. I played a um an indie game called Sort the Court. Um, and now you've got um, Reigns as well, which is similar to the way it works, but this was before that. And I thought, you know

what, this is a really interesting concept actually. Um, so I started adding it.
And something that I've learned is obviously anything you add, there will always be fans and players who will go, "Hey, you should add this on top of it." You know, hey, you you've got a bar, you should add the ability to get so drunk you fall asleep. You know, you should add the ability to punch the bartender. They always want more stuff you can do every in every area. and my dumbass. I was like, "Yeah, that's a great idea." So, I kept doing it. And we got to the point where I added the throne room. I added maybe a hundred different throne room encounters. And people were saying, "Hey, there's there too many of them are repeating. It's too similar. We need more." So, I I added I think we must be up to like maybe 6 700 different encounters. And then some of those have their own varied randomization. So, I think ultimately there's probably maybe like 5,000 variants and it's still not enough. It still gets too sy for some people. We've had some players with like 4,000 hours, 5,000 hours, just crazy crazy amounts. But I think the thing that blows my mind is so when you start the game, you'll maybe have like 5, 10

people waiting to see you in your throne room.
And when you have a big kingdom, it could be 50, maybe 100 every year, right? Um, and I saw a player whose empire was so big, they had 15,000 visitors waiting to be seen.
And this crazy person saw them all. He he was like, "Yeah, why not?" So he spent like a day or two days in real life just waiting and listening to all of them. And you've got all sorts of stuff. Someone walks in and goes and walks off. You know, you got someone who walks in is like, "Can I play you a song?" "No, leave." Someone else walks in, "Ah, they they called me a fat cow. I can you give me some money, you know, and you know, someone coming in, my lord, I come from the kingdom of butt chuggings and I come bearing gifts, you know,
and this person sat through one, sorry, 15,000 or 1,500, something insane, just an unbelievable amount." And I told them, "Please, please don't do that again. That is a form of self harm. You can uh you can hire a staff member like a steward who will deal with them all for you, or you can, you know, only limit it to a certain amount of people

or just few a few, you know." But
yeah, there's some crazy people out there. So, I don't recommend that. I would consider it a form of torture to sit through 15,000 encounters, but hey,
you know, the kingdom doesn't rule itself. I respect it. Yeah, I think that's kind of the nice thing about these games is that they're kind of sandboxy and you can kind of play them the way you want to a bit. Like even when you start the game, you get a lot of options even for for like the procedural generation. You can choose the difficulty. You can choose um which factions you want to play with. You can choose your your name and how people refer to you, which is always very fun. I think I went with with something like your lordiness or or something silly like that. the these simple things that uh they always give you joy and then you know you get to that crowning ceremony and there are cute little details like they put your name on a scroll or something like it's kind of a a story generator in a way so so you're kind of yeah I mean story generator describes it pretty well right you you get to roleplay being a

king and you gener the game generates a story with you
absolutely yeah and you get to define it by how you act so obviously if you want just get drunk and gamble on gnome fights. Why not? You know, that's maybe that's what I would do if I was a king, right? I think it was it was built out of the annoyance of some of those games where you're the king of this big kingdom, but all you can do is
fight and upgrade. And it's like, well, that's not what kings do. Kings are [ __ ] half the time. You know, most getting drunk or, you know, starting stupid wars or failing diplomacy or, I don't know, maybe you spend all your money building a big tavern or something, you know. But I wanted to add as much a much of the indulgent things that a king would have or or a queen or an empress or an emperor or whomever you know would have and whatever functions they have. And obviously that just got a bit out of control.
Yeah. What I what I find really fascinating about Warsome is just also how how well it captures this feeling of being a king or a ruler because you feel like you have so many different options and so so many different ways to to to

rule your kingdom. Like either you can do everything yourself, you can be that guy who sees like a thousand people in your throne room and manages them all individually. You you can like you can study all of the different factions and try to learn their ins and out so that you can properly negotiate with them and do diplomacy with them. But then I I tried doing this and then I also just realized okay no this is too much work. It's it's like no I think diplomacy might not be for me like too complex. I don't care about this. Yeah, I I think there are just so many different styles to to play this, right?
A lot of that has come from uh from obviously community members suggesting different ways to play and I'm like, you know what, that is a really good idea. So,
it's fortunate, isn't it? Like that they they suggest these things and then later on I'll be like, "Wow, that was that's actually really a good idea." Like it is playing really well, you know? Or I'll see players play in a really horrible way and I'm like, "What are you doing? I would never play like that." But seeing how they play it, I'm like, "Yeah, that's a

wow. What the hell?" You know, like I saw a guy speedrun my game once. He beat it in two minutes. He um cuz there's like a demon faction that slowly builds up and takes over the world. Um you can disable it, but obviously, you know, it's possible. And the first thing he did was destroyed the bank in the kingdom. And I was like, "What? Why? What?" And he destroyed the bank, stole all their money, bought a map that shows you where the demon lands are, went straight there. And because it was super early in the game, they hadn't built that many demons yet. He killed them all, killed the big bad guy, and won the game in 2 minutes.
Oh,
and some players won't achieve that in like 50 hours, you know, 100 hours. But this guy did it in 2 minutes. And I was just there like, what is he doing? Why did you destroy the bank? Oh, right. Okay. And now I know, you know, now I now I know. So the entire game was kind of grown out of community feedback and just watching how the community plays the game and then basically supporting all of their various play styles.
Absolutely. Absolutely. For better or worse. I think it worked out for us in the end, but it was a lot of work.
Either I read the summary or you told me

yourself that like the initial draft for the game was all in one file of code. So the entire game in like one C++ file.
Well, the case it's not the initial draft. It still is. It still is.
It still is.
It's um I think we're 700,000 lines of code. You're a programmer, aren't you, as well? So, you're probably uh I can see the stress in your face.
Yes.
I don't do that anymore. But for that game, man, you know,
it's kind I guess what's so adorable about it is for people to know that you don't need to make games the right way. It doesn't really matter, right? If it works, it works.
Exactly. If it works, it works, right? Somehow it bloody works. I like to consider it in my head. It's like I built the Eiffel Tower but just out of little bricks of turd, you know, just like [ __ ] bricks. It's not built how it should be built, but somehow that is still the Eiffel Tower, you know? Like it's ridiculous amount of code. But hey,
is is all of the game's content hardcoded into the game? Like all of the

encounters and the dialogue is is that hardcoded into the code file or do you have separate files with uh with content?
So it's kind of hybrid. Um, so originally it was all hardcoded and then um I think when I was adding a lot of the procgen systems, a lot of the data for those was external and after a while I'd add like external dialogue systems and things like that. So like talking to some characters, their dialogues will be stored externally. I think there's probably like 50 maybe 100 external sets of data that are regularly used for like a procgen or a certain group of people's dialogues and stuff like that, but everything else all internal.
Mhm. Okay. Yeah. Crazy. What would you do differently if you would make another game like this? Let's say you make maybe not Warsome 2 because I think instead of making Warham 2, you'd probably just keep working on the existing one, but let's say you make make like a game similar game with a different theme. How would you go about it?
I think yeah, I'd probably um I'd probably learn to program a lot better first and uh make sure I was doing

things in a bit more of a smart way. And I think one of those things is building systems that can be modified quite easily so that you can obviously expand. Like now when I add new systems to Warsim, they're built usually quite intelligently. And obviously I can come in and add and expand those really easily. But back in the day, these systems were pretty badly done. And if I needed to make some changes, it would be really difficult. And so sometimes I'd be like, "Ah, there's no point. We'll just leave it as it is."
So that would be one of them. And I think just mapping out the scope properly would help. But yeah, I mean other than doing everything differently, I guess it would probably be very similar. Just yeah, try and make the uh the structure a lot better. Just make sure the systems are a lot more intelligently done. And I think there were a few design things that were kind of flawed at the start, but I didn't really realize them at the time. And as the development went on, I was like, no. And so I had to do massive overhauls to the game to make those things work. And those were excruciating. Like I think the combat update took me two months to properly work on just just to overhaul a system slightly. It was it was insane. It was two months, three months,

something like that. And then for example, one of the the I would I mean it's not necessarily a problem, but it's something that I would love to not have. And that's that in Warsim, you have five enemy kingdoms every time. And these are made up of any of the 94 million different races. And when you kill enough of them, you can spawn in a new set and discover a new bunch of lands. And one of the things that I wish I'd done back in the day is designed it to be dynamic. So it could be one kingdom, could be 50. But I didn't design it in that sense. And so I built hundreds of systems that were hardcoded to fit five kingdoms.
So obviously now if I wanted to go in and make it work with more than that, I would have to basically change probably 500 of the 700 lines of code or 700,000 lines of code. And that's just not possible.
So yeah, it's just it is what it is. It's fine. You know, it still works. It's still perfect. But I would love that to be more dynamic for example and unfortunately it's just not possible and like it's quite commonly requested by players too. So like there are a few things like that that I think if id thought about them smarter back then when I was doing the original design and

it wasn't just like ah it's whatever you know and I'd structured it more intelligently I might have thought to myself okay right let's make this dynamic but at the time you know I was I wasn't making a game even I was just [ __ ] around. So I guess those are the things I'd probably do differently. Um, and then finally, and this is a big one that's bitten me quite a lot. That's uh language translation. So, Warsim, as you can imagine, again, it's all internally stored mostly. And I have had hundreds, maybe thousands of people from every country you can imagine, you probably get the same, right? Who say, "Hey, brother, let's have a Turkish version. Can you make it in Italian? Hey, can we get it in uh in Deutsch? Can we get it in uh Portuguese, Brazilian?" You know, and I have to say every time, thank you so much. I appreciate the offer, but I'm a dumbass and I designed my game in a way that's not very receptive to that. So, unfortunately, it's English only. Um, and there are some players that still, for some reason, copy the page and put it into Google Translate and they play that way, which is insanity, but fair play, you know, whatever it takes.
But for my future games, I will never make this mistake again. I will make

sure it can be in every language cuz we live in a a very global world. I mean, obviously we're speaking in English, but it's not your native language, you know, and like I'm sure you like to play games in your language, too, you know, and you're not alone. You're the majority of the world don't want to play games in English, you know, that's just a fact. So, there's a lot of markets out there that can be touched on by mindfully making versions that can be translated. So, that is a big one. That is a massive one. And I think, you know, I'm making good money from Warsim, but I think I would be doing even better if the game was available in lots of different languages and different countries. It still sells in those countries but very very slim in comparison to how it probably would you know if it was in say Brazilian Portuguese or something.
In terms of workflow what what would you do differently? Would you for example say let's make only the core of the game and then once again just hand it to the community and see what they want or would you you sort of plan it out or what what would your workflow look like? Yeah, to be honest, um the way I did it was probably not the wisest, but it was

the most fun. Like, I would just wake up uh every day for most of these years and like, okay, there's a bug. I want to fix that, right? I need to get that fixed. But once that's done, right, okay, ooh, let's see if I can add a little hidden gnome village hidden in a tiny cave. And if you find it, they got gambling. They've got all these different weird games. Why not? So I would just spend like two days adding that and doing gnome voices using a pitch shifter like whatever stupid stuff and then that was so much fun and then the next day someone says hey why don't you add the ability to have pet monsters like that's a [ __ ] great idea. So then I spend two weeks making all this procgen monster stuff and like I said it wasn't the smartest way of developing because it meant that I had a lot of open loose ends but I had so much fun making stuff that I wanted to make and I think ultimately that made a better game. So, I honestly, if I was doing it again, I'd probably do it the same way. Just have fun with it. Just make stupid stuff, listen to the community. It really felt like, although I was the only programmer, it really felt like I had

500 co-programmers, co-designers that were, you know, in a big room talking to me at all times a day. I would have DMs, emails, messages, comments on 15 different forums, and I'd listen to all of them, like every single one of them.
And the thing is, as well, you probably realize this too, right? people's like suggestions are very rarely unique. If you've got 10 people, 10 people will have different ideas. If you've got a thousand people, you will hear the same ideas again and again and again because you know there's no original thought a lot of the time, right?
And so if you listen to one person, you're listening to 10, you listen to 50, 100, and new players will come and play the game later on and go, "Wow, they thought of this. That's crazy." You know, but it's like, you know, by considering those people. So it Yeah, just it just works. So, I'll probably do the same with future games to be honest and just make sure that I'm listening to my community and trying to be mindful of those things. And
I thought that most of the ideas they suggested would be stupid, but they weren't. Honestly, it's mostly coming from people that care about the game, right, and want to play it and enjoy it already. So, they know what they're talking about. It's

Yeah, it was like 99% of them were like really good ideas. And I'm like, damn, I'll make a list. And I've cleared 3,000 things from that list over the years, and there are still 2,500 things on that list.
Oh, wow.
And I don't even update it anymore. I've just given up. It's not going to happen. Like, it's not going to be done, but
yeah.
Okay. That's wild. Do you have a some sort of system to keep track of loose ends or what do you mean with loose ends exactly?
So, um, for example, like uh I'm trying to think now. I can't remember what they are anymore cuz I've closed most of them, I would say. Um, but like there were systems in Warsim originally where it was like halfbuilt, you know, like when it was in early access. So, I was like, "Okay,
there was like a certain tournament in the arena, but it the option didn't work." Or, um, you know, this ability for there's a guild somewhere, but the guild doesn't do anything. Or, you know, I'm trying to think of others. Just a lot of like unfinished areas in this massive thing. And I would spend too much time going, "Ooh, this is cool." And I'd work on this instead of going and finishing this area over here. And I refused to release it from early access while those unfinished areas were open.

which meant that we were in early access from 2017 until 2022. Even though prior to that point, the game would have been considered completed to me. But after that point, I was like, "Nah, it's whatever. We're still going to, you know, we're still going to keep working on it." So now there's no loose ends. There's no unfinished stuff as far as I'm aware. But yeah, at the time there was quite a lot of those. So I wanted to wrap those up. And so I think I would do a few here and there, but still spend a lot of time indulging and enjoying adding weird stuff. I heard you say we a couple of times now. So maybe it would be nice to ask, did you expand the team at some point? I think you started solo, right? And then did did you get help at some point or how did that play out
to be fair? Yeah, I say we. I guess that's the royal Wii. Maybe the community. It's always been me with Warsim. So I have like um I have like mods for my Discord and and like really good community members that I know I can rely on. And I have had people who have given me advice when I've had some issues with code and stuff, but yeah, it's it's a pure solo project. Always will be, always has been. I guess I'm

just using the the Royal Wii.
Okay, got it. And at least Chad GPT claimed you're working on a new game with um with some sort of studio now. So, is are you still making games or what what are your plans now?
Right. So, as you can imagine, you work 10 years on an Asky game solo, and you start thinking, "What's next?"
And I sure as hell could not make another Asky game. Uh,
sorry to any War fans out there. I love you, but I'm not doing that to myself anymore because I I don't hate myself.
So, 10 years, 10 years was enough on a project. I don't want to do another 10-year ASI game. So, like, I actually I don't really care about ASI or textbased games. I wasn't making one because I like that genre. It was because I didn't know how to make anything else. And I I I used no engine. Warson was written from scratch. So from like literally the first line to the last, it was all handwritten. And I yeah, I learned a lot. But that's not what I want to make. I want to make 3D games. I want to make

2D games. I want to make, you know, physical stuff that can be, you know, on consoles and things like that. So maybe about 2 years ago, maybe two and a half years ago, I started thinking seriously, okay, what are we going to do next? And I I've worked on Warsim the whole time. Even now, I still work on it. I released an update yesterday, but but yeah, about about two years ago, I began designing a new game um documenting it and making making the plans for it.
And then about a year and a half ago, I founded a company um and I I hired a part-time programmer to work with me using the profits from Warsim. And we began working on it and now we're about Yeah, we still I so many years away, but we're we're developing it. And I'm hoping now that I've got staff and people that are working on it, obviously the stakes are very different and now I need to make something that can come out at some point and obviously make sure that we've got enough money to keep everyone being paid and stuff like that, which is a very different and very scary thing for someone who's obviously just been sat in their bedroom
working on a game in their spare time. But yeah, no, I'm hopeful for it. A lot of lessons learned from Warsim. I would say it's it's a very different game. A

very different game, but it still contains a lot of procgen and I think a lot of the same energy of there being a lot of choice, a lot of weirdness. So, I'm very very excited to see where it goes, but also quite bloody nervous at the same time, to be honest.
Would you recommend making textbased games? But because when you described it, it sounded like you were essentially just following the fun and and doing what's fun for you and what you liked, but now in hindsight, you're saying, "No, I'm not doing that again." So, is it just like that you you've had enough of it, right?
Yeah, exactly. It it's still fun, don't get me wrong. Like I I don't dislike it and the time I had was fantastic, but after 10 years of making a game in a genre that's not really a genre I like. Like for me, RPGs are like my favorite, right? So I think I tried to put a lot of RPG elements in Warsim to sort of scratch that itch on my head. But
in reality, what I really want to make is an RPG game, like a procgen weird RPG game. So now I'm finally able to do that, I'm like, "Oh yes."
But those 10 years with Warsson were still amazing, you know, and
getting a new feature to work and seeing it and go, "Oh, yeah, that's awesome." or, you know, getting the physical

version or seeing a YouTuber play it, you know, or getting just the weirdest procgen stuff spat out of me. Like, I love it. And I I would I would definitely recommend working on textbased games if you like it and if it's something that you want to, you know, experiment with. And in fact, while I say that, I think there are 15 games at the moment um that are inspired by Warsim that are being built um like text based.
Um and some of them are really really cool and probably being made by people that are way smarter than me. So, I'm excited to see those come out. And it's very humbling as well that there's so many of these like Warsome inspired games going right now. So yeah, I definitely wouldn't disparrage anyone working on a textbased game at all. I think it's awesome. But just for me, I'm definitely retired from from that genre. That's all I'd say.
So do you think um in which way is um making textbased games like a like a smart idea from a business perspective? Have have you thought about that?
Yeah, I guess from a business perspective I don't know. I mean, it's something in my head tells me 2025 textbased games, you know, that doesn't

seem right. But, you know, Warsim is working fine in 2025 and selling. So, it's like it's hard to tell. If you made something really special, you know, there's no reason why it couldn't work. Obviously, you have to market it really well. And I think a lot of people have told me that Warson has proven to them that there is a market for textbased games in some capacity, right? It's just you've got to build one, I guess, and you've got to find your people. But if I were to guess, I would imagine it is not the most profitable genre. Now, obviously, like I wasn't doing it for profit. I wasn't thinking about things this strategically back then, but but yeah, I imagine it wouldn't be the most profitable genre. No. Um, you know, I know that there's some that are not very profitable like platformers. There's quite a lot of them, right? So, unless you're building something really special, you are going to be drowning in a sea of other platformers, you know? But, I don't know, certain types of games like open world games can be quite popular. You know, it really depends where you want to go. But I don't think it's maybe the smartest genre. But that being said, if you make something amazing and it catches people's attention, it can be any genre really, can't it? As long as it's good. So
Mhm.
Yeah.
I think um

but I guess I'd need to see the statistics.
I'm not sure if you know Chris Sukowski. He he's like this indie game marketing guy and I I think one of his theories for Steam is that these uh crafty buildy simulationy games just tend to do really well. And uh there there are a couple of them like Rim World for example or Dwarf Fortress and they it's kind of typical for them that they often times don't have the best graphics because they're so much more about deep simulations. Like they they just create deep simulations and they need an art style that allows them to make a lot of content fast so that they can have a really deep simulation. I would say yeah. So your your game kind of supports Chris theory that just crafty simulationy games just do well on Steam because they're sandboxy. They provide a lot of freedom. I'm not I'm not even sure why these kind of games work well on Steam, but yeah. Yeah. I mean maybe Chris has a point.
I mean

Yeah.
Yeah. You've got a lot of games that aren't very deep though. You know what I mean? So like when you find games where there's s such depth to what you can do in them and it's more a reflection of how you want to play rather than the game telling you you play this way. you you walk here, you press this, you know, instead it's like, what do I do? Oh, this is crazy. I think players really enjoy that. So, it makes total sense. I mean, simulation is fun, you know, those sort of things. I mean, and Dwarf Fortress and Rim World are some of the best games ever, I would say. You know, Dwarf Fortress is insane.
Insane.
And obviously, you know, it's not for everybody, but the the level and depth of simulation is is mindboggling. And obviously, yeah, it could only be done with a basic sprite pack or or an ASIR overlay. We'd need some really serious computing to be able to make something that has that level of simulation with like realistic graphics. But yeah, I think people love gameplay, don't they? That's the the long and short of it. You know, just as much as people like flashy games, people also love games that have gameplay that that's deep and interesting and stuff. So, it's good to see. It's encouraging.
So, but I guess one question that also

arises from that is how the hell do you market a game like this? Cuz it's not like you you post a screenshot and people are like, "Oh my god, this looks amazing, right?" That's not how it works.
No. Yeah. No. God, no. I couldn't even make gifts. There was all these gift places and I was like, "Shit, I can't make gifts cuz it's just frozen screens. [ __ ] What am I going to do?" Realistically, mate, it's um there's no one marketing tool or solution that I found is like the one. But what worked for me, especially back in the day when I was really really hot on the marketing, was a tapestry of everything. So, I would I at first I was like, "Right, I want to learn." So, I Googled all the different search terms I could think of for video game marketing and I made sure they weren't too far old because obviously it gets outdated and I read the first 10 pages of Google results. I watched every video. I read every article and I was making notes like, "Oh, no. I've already heard that idea. Oh, that's an interesting one." And then you have a list and you think, "You know what? I could do it this way."

And you think of your own weird ways of doing stuff. And then I made forums on or forum posts on I think 30 different websites and I was like right if I maintain these forum posts. Okay, that's good. Let's have a look at Reddit now. Okay, so let's use a crawler. And we found 110 subreddits that could be something I could post on. So let's read the rules. Let's understand how it works cuz every subreddit is different. And you post one place, you get banned in the next even if you're doing the same thing. So you have to understand their rules.
And then I would write, okay, let's regularly post in those subreddits. Let's try and get some popularity. make my own subreddit. We'll cross cross post, bring them over, start making some videos, and then we'll email YouTubers, right? So, obviously that can be hit and miss. I found that the smaller YouTubers way more receptive, way more likely to play. So, for a smaller game, getting in touch with little YouTubers, they're going to make videos because no one talks to them, right? So, they're going to be like, "Oh, hell yeah. Thank you." And they make a video and then you've got lots of content on YouTube that's appearing and you can share it and stuff like that. And then a bigger YouTuber maybe covers it or sees it and stuff like that going on podcast, you like

we're doing now. I mean, all of that costs nothing, you know. Um,
I'm trying to think, there was so many so many other ideas, but I ended up doing just thousands upon thousands of different actions and ideas. I wrote articles about the procgen and shared that article around and tried to speak to journalists. I mean, last year I emailed I think 500 journalists,
okay?
Um, you know what I mean? Like it's a lot of work,
okay?
But it works. It works. You know, you just got to put the work in. It is like a whole job in and of itself. And what I found, for example, one of the craziest things that ever happened for me as as like a marketing thing, like it wasn't even meant to be marketing. Um, I tried all these different things and none of them worked. Like, or one of them worked a little bit. And then my friend was like, "Hey, you should post on programming humor, the subreddit, about how terrible your code is." And I was like, "Yeah, okay." So, I was like, "Hey, Programming Humor, I see that you like large code bases." Because I saw a post with a code which was 50,000 lines of code and it was really upvoted. Everyone was like, "This is crazy." I was like, "You like big code? Check this

one out. 700,000 lines of code. Oh, and it's a video game on Steam." And everyone was like, "What? What the [ __ ] What game is this?" And within 2 hours, it was the number one post on Reddit. And I made £20,000 in like two hours. And then a a Reddit admin deleted it. But just those two hours alone was insane to me. It was the single biggest moment my game had ever had. And it was because I made a joke post at my friend's request on a programming humor subreddit. And you know, I I didn't think anything of it, but you know, it's little things like that. You never know. Just existing in public on the internet in a capacity with your game
can draw attention to it, you know. And it's, you know, that's it's that simple. It's about getting people to come to your store in any capacity. And that wasn't intentionally meant to be uh marketing, but anything can be, can it really? Anything that shows off what you're working on. And like we have the privilege of our game stores being a digital space which can fit a million customers in. You know, we're not limited to oh five people at a time. So your only job is just drawing in as many people to that link as possible and

making sure that when they arrive they are more likely to buy it than not, you know, by making it look good and showing off as much good stuff as possible and obviously having a good price. And um you know, it's it's a it's a hell of a craft. It's a hell of an art form. But but yeah, marketing is a big one and I think a lot of game devs just want to program, they just want to code. They don't want to deal with that and it's hard, you know, and you'll there's a thousand people waiting to go, "Hey, give me a percentage of your game. I'll do your marketing." And they just do some tweets, you know, but like if you know how to do it yourself or you you know, you can rely on someone who knows really what they're doing, you know, that that can be the reason your game survives. And I think if Warim had no marketing, we wouldn't be talking right now. You would have never heard of it and I would have probably sold 10 copies, you know. Got it. I'm always interested when when guests give other advice than what what I usually give. The advice I usually give is just just make great games and then there's like a very very short marketing checklist that you go through. You reach out to a couple of content creators. You make a demo. You participate in Steam NextFest and if

your game is good enough, then your game will will basically create enough momentum from those little sparks to carry itself. This is not what what you're saying. And this might be a little bit maybe because you made a different kind of game. So what you're saying is you have all of these little things and you you did all of these little things and some of them stick a little bit better, some of them stick a little bit worse, but you don't really know. So you just have to do a lot of different things.
Absolutely. I mean, I could see some things work. So like an article drew in like, oh, I made like a,000 pound from that, you know, or sold like 100 copies. Um, and you know, I'd do another thing. I wouldn't see very much. So, like you can sort of see some things, but yeah, mostly it would just be chaos of like let's try this, let's try that. And I still I've got hundreds of ideas I haven't done yet. You know, I want to make a documentary about Warim because there's so much weird stuff to talk about and you know, that could be cool, you know? So, it's like you never know. But I I do agree with your point. If you make an amazing game that's not super super niche, I would say yeah, like that

should carry itself, especially if you manage to get it in enough people's hands to get it started. But for me, I was making something really weird and it was tucked away there that nobody was looking. And so I just ran out and tried to get as much attention as possible over the years and it worked.
But obviously, as you know, there's no right or wrong way to do things really if you're, you know, working hard enough. I suppose it'll it'll always come in some capacity.
But I, uh, I don't disagree with you.
And now, um, word of mouth is carrying the game a little bit cuz you said like, um, the the word is spreading by itself a bit, sales are coming in, so it's a bit more on autopilot than it used to be, maybe. Absolutely. Yeah. So, it's it's become a thing now. Um I've even applied for a few world records, so we'll see if that comes in. But at the moment, the game just it carries itself. Um I don't know how much of this is algorithmic, how much of this is word of mouth, maybe a combination of both. Obviously, a decent amount of wish lists, but yeah, just it's it's doing okay. It's doing really good by itself, which I'm happy about. I'm I'm very confused about it, but I'm happy about it. And I'm sure if I put a lot more effort into the marketing, I could stoke it up again, but I won't complain.

Besides the the Reddit post, what were the the biggest marketing hits you landed or what what what did you see moved the needle the most?
Streamers. Big streamers playing the game was massive. Uh there was one he played it on like January the 1st, 2019 or something and it I looked and I'd made like £10,000 and I was just like, "What? What is going on? This is the best new year ever." And then uh you get some YouTubers playing it um and stuff like that and I could see the big jump and be like, "Whoa, what? That's crazy." So yeah, big YouTubers, big streamers. I wrote an article once that sort of I wouldn't say went viral, but it was like it got a decent amount of reads and that made a lot of good stuff. I think it was mentioned on a podcast once and that sort of got it some more views. And other than that, yeah, some occasional successful Reddit posts, but that programming humor one being the biggest. And then yeah, those were the predominantly biggest moments we ever had.
Um, among the tapestry of, you know, smaller ones. And then also um for the summer sale and winter sale and stuff, I did some marketing things for that that

uh one of the years that made it very very visible to people and I think that did really well for me. And then there's the thing I guess with the super fans. I assume you have a Discord community. And then of course because you're implementing so many community suggestions, I think it's also really cool and rewarding for those super fans and people who stick around to a to see so many frequent updates and b to probably also see some of their own ideas implemented into the game.
Absolutely.
I would assume that
a lot of them are in the game.
Oh,
a lot of those people are themselves are characters. So they do love that. Nice. Yeah, that sounds cool. And so what what's your vision for the next game then?
You want to know the game, right? Okay. So the next game, it's called Slumbbox. Uh the idea is that you're you've just turned 18. You're thrown in in the deep end in a big crusty horrible city. Get a job. Good luck. And uh so you're in this world and you have a little tiny apartment, little box. You know, you can go work in Slimeburger pumping burgers.

You can join a gang. You can run outside of the city. And outside of the city is a wasteland, like a post-apocalyptic almost wasteland. So, if you go out there, it's a perade death crazy fight of who knows what will happen. And there's still danger in the city, but you can probably avoid it if you're smart enough. But in the wasteland, you're probably doomed. And um we've got a lot of systems already. There's like uh readable comic books. So, we've got 90 of those at the moment. I've got um a lot of in-game music. So, I was planning on making like a GTA style radio station, and it's gotten really out of control. So now we've got got 244 songs at the moment currently that have been licensed to the game, mostly from uh the South Wales and and Welsh music scene. So there's a lot of really cool bands in my area, but it's a really small tucked away part of the world. So a lot of these really great bands, they don't go anywhere. No one hears about them.
And you know, we're not LA or London or something. So I've managed to get a lot of these bands to to give me their music. And I'm hoping that if this game [ __ ] pops off, the world will hear

all these incredible bands. Uh, but I've also applied a lot of procgen over their music. So, you can find um you can find the tapes in the shop, but you might also kill an NPC and you pull out a tape and you're like, "What is this? There's blood over it. It's it's super speed and it it's choppy." So, you listen to it, it's going and it's going and you're like, "Oh, this is [ __ ] horrible. [ __ ] this." And then you find you're like, "What was that tape, though?" And you go to the shop, you buy the real one, and it's a very different thing. Yeah, there's a there's a lot of ideas. I think very similar to Warsim, it's going to be feature creep bonanza, but I'm hoping to try and keep the feature creep under control because I've got a team and I need to deliver uh you know, something that I can release. But my intention is to take it post-release and continue working on it and making it just even better and even stronger. But yeah, it's going to be a big kind of uh kind of like if Stardw Valley and GTA had a baby and it did a bit of meth or something, you know, like a bit of a crack baby.
Got it.
This is going to be a very strange game. And this time it's going to be uh with
with some actual graphics. So is it is

it 2D or is it 3D?
So it's 2D like 2D 2.5 something like that. It's um sort of like
you're looking at it from sort of aboveish like above at an angle. And then yeah, there's artwork. There's um all sorts of different sprites and things like that that you can read the comics in the game like properly in these like full-blown readable comics. So yeah, proper graphics. No more ASI. As uh again, as much as I love ASI, no more ASI. Are you using a game engine this time around or are you going pure C++ again?
No, no, no pure anything anymore. No, I'm using um interesting enough actually. I'm using Game Maker Engine, which is not a usual choice,
but I'm actually enjoying it. I I never really thought about it, but I was making my decision at the same time as Unity did their [ __ ] rule pug sort of drama or whatever. And uh I thought, you know what, [ __ ] that. I'm not going to use Unity then. and I had to look at the options and I found a really good programmer who was working in GameMaker and thought screw it let's let's work together why not and I learned the limitations and figured you know what I think I can actually do this in Game Maker so we're um we're working we're

seeing and it's it's coming pretty well along to be honest I'm quite impressed with the engine all things considered but yeah it makes it a lot easier having an engine that's for sure
yeah I've also been working with Game Maker for a long time like also one of my games is also made in Game Maker William Snail is also game maker game
I didn't know that that's crazy I've heard of Will you snail as well I think I saw your years ago cuz you're see the thing is with you right your your marketing is that you're a YouTube personality right so you have you have had good success online and that as well brings you extra buffs to your games which is [ __ ] awesome very impressive cuz usually I find that you either are good at YouTube and bad at game development or you're bad at game development but good at YouTube so you see a lot of YouTubers who are giving advice right and they're like oh this is how you make great games and they get like 100,000 views on every video and then their games are [ __ ] but I you're you're one of the rare cases where it's not that. So, fair play to you, mate. Fair play to you.
Yeah, I I appreciate the warm words, but also I think I've realized that YouTube is not as big of a marketing tool as I

thought it was. Like, I'm not going to deny that it gives some nice buffs, it does.
Um,
but like at the at the level of success that Thronefall reached, for example, my
Yeah.
channel doesn't really move the needle at all anymore. But that that's that's not because um my channel isn't doing well. That's more so because Thronefall did so well that my own channel doesn't really put a dent in that.
Sounds like uh you're suffering from success there, my friends.
Yeah, it's it's a horrible horrible situation I'm encountering there.
You you poor poor man. You poor poor man. I've uh I've actually played Fro. It's a [ __ ] good game. That's why you're making that money. That's why I succeeded is cuz you made a good game, which lines up with your advice when you think about it.
So, are you already planning for the next game to be like another 10-year project or or is it going to be a shorter project?
See, when you say it, in my head, I'm like, "God, no. It can't be." But then when I think about what I'm actually planning, it realistically probably will

be a 10-year project, maybe more. I think this is the thing. I really love games. And there's something about like, you probably know this feeling, too, right? When you play a video game and you're like, "Damn, I really wish I could do this." But you can't. So, you just move on. But when it's your own game and you're like, "Damn, I really wish I could do this." Well, you can release that DLC. You can make that happen. You know, you can release that tomorrow as a free update. So, I think like in my head, I'm I'm going to try and build another game that I really love. And if that happens, I am most definitely going to expand that to death and make it even purer, even bigger, even better. And I do intend hopefully at that point if it succeeds to be able to have a bigger team and where we can hopefully split off and have the projects that build alongside it. I see.
But yeah, I would imagine I would imagine it's going to be another long a long haul for hopefully for the better.
Have you set yourself up for for like a game like this? Like did you intentionally dial down the graphics a bit for example so that you can make stuff faster or are you like now I'm

just it's just going to be better this time?
Yeah. I know. I just I It's just going to be better, I think. Yeah. I don't know. Well, it's like I'm just happy to have graphics. I'm happy to be experimenting with visual things. And um yeah, it's not obviously as fast to add content as it was for a textbased game, but it's actually not too bad to be honest. Game Maker is pretty good. So, like it's not difficult. Um and I think I'm just enjoying it. And obviously, one big thing I have now is other people working with me, which I never had before. So, this
this is insane. And this changes the game quite a lot for better or worse. Um, but one good thing is that I don't have to do every single thing ever, which is a superpower. You know, the ability to delegate and have, you know, we had a comic artist who's been working for us, you know, having a programmer build really cool systems while I'm adding little weird stuff. And yeah, I'm hoping to continue expanding and if we can get a bigger budget, maybe some early access, a Kickstarter, who knows, then in the future we can expand that team and go even faster and, you know, be working even bigger on on stronger stuff and and things like that. But but yeah, I'm definitely not scaling it down. I'm I'm maybe biting off more than

an indie studio should be able to chew, but we got to we got to try, mate. We got to try try and make something great.
But I mean, obviously having a team means that you have a bit of a burn rate now. So, if you're if you're lucky, maybe you can pay the existing team from from Warsome. I hope I hope that's the case cuz that means you have a long breath. And if if but if you're in a territory where you're starting to consume savings, that of course means that you are on a timer a little bit, right? And once you're on a timer, then the lower the timer gets, the the more it means that you need to cut things that you wanted to put in there before releasing it at the release.
Absolutely. Yeah. So that that is the big struggle of uh obviously running an indie studio, which is what I'm now trying to do instead of just being a solo developer. And um luckily Warsim has made a lot of savings, a lot of money over the year, but obviously what I've got now it's not infinite. So I'm trying to be smart with it um and use it as wisely as I can for now. I think we've to be fully open. I think we've

probably spent about 15 16,000 so far, which
isn't massive. All things considered, we're we're a year and a half into maybe fiveish years, I reckon, before it's like properly ready. But I am looking to scale up and increase my costs by obviously having more people who will be on the payroll. So that will definitely change things quite a lot um from it being like a part-time programmer and a part-time artist to being like, "Oh no, these people are like full-time."
And so what I'm hoping to do in the meantime is find um investment or to blow Warsim up even more, get more attention on Warsim, and then use those proceeds to help build the game even more. And then at some point Kickstarter, early access, and then from there, it's marketing. It's drawing more money in. It's it's doing what we can to then obviously make sure that the war chest can keep this development going as long as needs to be done. But you're absolutely right. It is it is something that needs to be taken seriously. And yeah, obviously if you run out of money, it becomes a a solo project again.
Okay. It's a bit an adventure you put uh put yourself in, but sounds quite fun

for sure.
How is your how's your life like in general? cuz I from like the emails you sent, I kind of get the feeling that game development is not the the sole central point of your life.
Yeah. No, I am I'm a chaotic person, man. So, uh I obviously I'm lucky that for the last six, seven years I have been solely able to live off of gamedev. So, I've been working really hard on that. But yeah, a couple of years ago, I've always been doing stuff, but a couple years ago I started a band uh with a friend of mine. So, we've been touring around and it's been it's been crazy. We've been doing all sorts of crazy [ __ ] with that, which has actually been really good for my new game because I now know a lot of bands who are willing to work with me obviously on this project, but uh every day is chaos, man. I wake up, you know, I deal with whatever I got going on. We've got a new gig. We got to go sort something out. That's fine. You know, working on stuff for the game, interviewing people, uh developing new systems, licensing new music, so on and so forth, looking for investors. I flew out to uh San Francisco for GDC with uh with my

government actually with a bunch of the biggest industry leaders in my uh
in my country and that was insane.
Oh, nice.
And uh it was very very chaotic. I got really really drunk and I missed all of my investor meetings and uh damn it.
I messaged them the next day. I was so sorry I missed the meeting. I was really drunk. Um
can we talk?
It was a great first and a lot of them were actually really good.
A lot of them like yeah why not?
But yeah, no it's it's chaos. I do what I want basically. So you know I love music. I love video games. Uh, so I do that. You know, I do a lot of that. And there's there's definitely more things that I want to do in the future. You know, I love traveling. I love things like that. I'd love to somehow fuse this together. So, this new game project is going to merge music and games for me because obviously I'm going to have a lot of music in the game. It's going to be it's going to be very punk. But I also love traveling. And I think one thing that would be really beautiful would be finding a way to include other cultures in the way I develop my game. So, you know, if I go to, I don't know, Portugal, you know, learn more about Portuguese culture and and some of their slang and some of their foods and things like that and maybe implement those things into the game, you know, and make it more of a worldly game.

Who knows? Obviously, this is a lot of work and and now you see how the feature creed builds so easily, but
I see.
But yeah, but
there's never a dull moment, that's for sure. Never a dull moment.
When did you start identifying yourself as a game developer? Cuz you stumbled into this a little bit, right? you were you were like
yeah no it's um I don't remember to be honest I think for a while I had that imposter syndrome thing so even though I was a game developer from the moment I released a game I didn't feel like it you know or from the moment I was developing a game I didn't really feel like a proper game dev I just felt like a hobbyist but I think yeah when it was released on Steam I started to feel really like okay now we're getting somewhere and then yeah I think probably 20 2018 2019 when it was becoming like a job you know I'm I'm a 100% a game developer at this point I'm a solo game developer who's solely able to survive on a game dev income. That's that's gamedev, baby.
So, yeah, from that point onwards, I think 100% I knew in my heart, I'm a game dev now. I've got my dream job. I just don't have my dream pay.

And then years later, we we got closer to it.
I see. I see. So, so you're maybe game developer first and musician second or how how would you put it? Yeah, I think it I mean game dev's the only way that I'm able to survive. So, you know, the musician stuff is more like moonlighting at the moment. Got it. Okay.
Where I mean calling me a musician is maybe a stretch cuz I have a band full of people who are very talented guitarist, basist, and drummer. And I just go up there shouting a bunch of stuff and diving into the crowd. you know, I don't really do much actual music, but um but yeah, no, I 100% I'm a I'm definitely both a game developer and a and a, you know, punk band frontman, but gamedev is is the the true project, the true, you know, thing that is the heart of what I do at the moment. And maybe it'll change, man. Who knows? But for now, that's definitely where it's at.
Got it. So, you you got to lean a bit into what works, I guess, right? So, if maybe the the punk band starts doing really really well, maybe then that mixes things up a bit.
Yeah, I see.
Who knows? But I mean, I've got too much

on my plate to move away from the game stuff at this point. So, got it. Got it.
I guess I'll just be there
in the back room doing some programming before we run out and, you know, start stage diving.
I I guess I wonder um from what you've learned, what would be your advice to other game developers, maybe to people who are starting out with making games or or maybe even people who have already been making games like what's what's the perspective or advice you would like to provide?
It's a tough one really. I guess the people who are starting out um depending on what you're doing I mean quite commonly it's programming right and I mean we are to be fair in the age of things like claude code and cursor and stuff where you have like AI code now and I think that can be a trap for some because you shouldn't fall into that just being the only way that you you code right uh but there are a lot more tools these days to rely on that can help you obviously starting out now you are playing the most difficult difficulty level of development and it gets easier and easier as you go along because you become smarter right you learn more so today if you are a new programmer and today is your first day making a line of code that is the

toughest it will ever be realistically right and 6 months later it'll be kind of tough but not as tough you know and you're only going to get better so if you can push through that you'll be fine and I think the big tough barrier is persistence and a lot of people you know you have half done projects you give up right that's very common it's not unusual and no one should feel bad for that and I felt that I nearly abandoned Warsome 100 times you know you've probably had the same with your projects you know but persisting and continuing until you release something. It's it's admirable and and that's the thing you should seek is being able to get to the point where you can just put something out there. That that is a big barrier. Um and obviously by the end of that you're going to be way more talented, way more educated on what you need to do. So that's one bit of advice I would give. Um another one would be not to make games you think other people would like, but instead make a game you would like. I mean, now the difficulty is you might like games with a very big scope and as a first game, it probably wouldn't be wise to make a MMO RPG with 7,000 features and all this other stuff, you know, maybe something more simple. So,

if there's a smaller scoped idea that you would like to make, that's always an advisable starting point. But it is possible to make something with a big scope. It's just you do open yourself up to strangling yourself with your own scope if you you don't know what you're doing in the early days. But I would say making a game that you enjoy, you're more likely to make something that other people will enjoy than if you're making something you think other people might like because that means that at least one person likes it, right? Whereas if you're making something you think someone else will like, at the moment zero people like it. And I think it's just less likely. And then obviously it's not super easy to build a community, but when one does start to grow, which you know, if you keep posting and talking about it, people will appear and people will talk about your stuff. I think, you know, listening to them and and and being present in that community as much as you can is obviously another massive thing that does help. Now, not everyone is very social. Not everyone wants to spend all their time talking to people online and that's very very fair. But yeah, even a little bit of acknowledgement for those people can go a long way. And that for me before I was making money, having

comments from fans and and messages and DMs, that was my fuel. That gave me so much passion to continue working for it because I was like, man, these people care. And obviously later on money comes in and that's also really good and you're like damn this is working out now. But even to this day like it's been 10 years and I get a review that's really positive and I'm smiling. I'm like man I I feel so humbled that I'm getting this right now. You know I try to reply to every review. Obviously for the bigger games this is you know this becomes impossible but as you probably know but
but yeah this you know there's a lot of different things you can do. I mean, as long as you're having fun with it, I think it's a lot harder to go wrong if you're enjoying your process and you're making things that you love. So, I think that's probably what I would advise that. And, you know, think about your project a lot more. You know, design it as intelligently as you can and look at other people's mistakes. Think about what you want it to be and what needs to be done to make it that. So, for example, you know, making it translatable into other languages, that's a huge thing I didn't think of. Then it bit me in the ass later on, you know. So, it's like stuff like that. Uh

yeah, I could probably talk for hours about it, but I think those are the main ones.
One thing I'm also very interested in is if you have any advice about procedural generation because that's something I'm also quite interested in and I think that's uh not not as simple as it sounds like it's I wonder do you have any learnings about procedural generation in general?
Yeah. So I mean the thing that I think makes better procedural generation systems like making procedurally generated content is not inherently really difficult. There are algorithms, there are things you can lean on that can do some of it. But I think one of the things I found makes the more crunchy tasty procgen is where you have this procgen but above it you have a layer of your own you know intelligent code that defines how the procgen works. So, you know, maybe for example, you're making, I don't know, um, procgen planets, right? So, you might have, uh, something that just generates different colors, and that's cool. Maybe different mountains and stuff. Okay, cool. That's great. But at some point, it's going to look kind of same.
So, you can add additional layers. Okay,

well, what's the environment like? Okay, cool. We changed that.
Who lives there? Okay, let's let's modify that, you know, and and stuff like that. And you can you can have certain procgen that only unlocks for certain things, but even so, maybe not all the time. So it's, you know, lots of different rule sets and changes and alternating code above the procgen. That means that it's not just raw data or raw chaos that comes out of procgen, but instead weird intelligent systems that pull out from the procgen or push it in a certain direction, you know, means you can end up with a lot more dynamic stuff. And I think that is when it is at its best. That's when it's juicy and tasty. So I think you know getting a procgen system working is fantastic but then you know the functionality behind how it then is implemented used and and and you know what sort of elements of that procgen you're leaning into is how you make a really good procgen system
and I've been guilty of making some really bad ones and also some really good ones. So I feel like that's the lesson I've learned from making, you know, 50 plus procgen systems is it's the ones with the rules, the ones with

the complicated rules above them that are not procgen, you know, but just deciding it, those ones are always coming up with really good stuff. Whereas the ones that are just like noise, there's chaos. It's like after a while, you just get used to it, you know? It's just like, oh yeah, here it is again, just more nonsense. So, so it's kind of like the naive approach for example for generating a world would be we have a bunch of tiles like we have a tile based world and then for every individual tile we decide if it's a tree if it's just grassland or or if it's water and then if you generate the world like that then then basically the it will be randomized but everything will just look like noise. Right.
Exactly. Exactly. It'll all look the same. Whereas you might have something that's like right okay define regions of the world that will only have this type of thing. Maybe define a region that has a cluster of trees. That's great. And now you add a layer above that. Well, what about if this planet is like a weird [ __ ] strange ghosty planet? Okay. Well, now the trees are all weird spiritual wavy trees, you know, and
you can add lots of different effects to that, you know, and stuff like that.

That the more variation then the more the more there is that the player
doesn't know is happening and they're like, "Whoa, what? I've never seen this before. What's this?" And if you can make a system that spits out more strange stuff like that, you know, it's it can, you know, build into something that is is very hard to feel familiar, which is the ultimate goal for procgen is not for something that feels too, oh, I've seen this before, but something that you're always like, wow, this is weird. And those are the best ones.
So, you kind of need some system that controls your generator, as you said, like a layer on top almost. That's like Yeah. But this this planet doesn't have any trees or or or something like that, right?
Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. And obviously the more complicated that is, the [ __ ] juicier it becomes in my opinion.
Got it. And then the other thing that I think we could could maybe also get some advice from you from is uh writing what what are your lessons from writing so much content for Warsome? Is there is there like specific type of content that

people tend to like more or or where where do you think the the writing in Warsome shines the most?
I think the humor, the weirdness, the silly bits are definitely where it shines the most. Um, so what I like to do is like it doesn't happen everywhere, but in a lot of places there are a lot of alternate texts, right? So you never know what characters are going to say or like you know how they're going to react to stuff. And so I'd add a few boring ones, but adding a few really weird ones with their own weird effects. Um, that's definitely stuff that's memorable for players, right? You know, they're going to remember the strange funny thing that made him go, "What the hell?" You know, like a a farmer that shows up in your throne room and says, "Hey, one of your soldiers farted on my crops. I want compensation for my smelly wheat." You know, like I have people laughing about that even now. I wrote that 10 years ago, you know, but the one who's like, "A farmer has come to complain that a soldier broke his fence." Like they don't really care about that. So, it's like a lot the the more personality, the more funny weird stuff, you know, stuff that's going to stick in someone's mind when they're reading thousands of bits of text in every game, you know, or, you

know, dialogues and whatever. It's the the stranger, funnier, more personable stuff definitely does well.
But, you know, you have to have it in equal measure. You can't just have everything being crazy and off the wall. You have to Well, depending on what game you're making, obviously.
So,
yeah, the problem is if everything's crazy, then nothing's crazy, right? Cuz then then it then it turns into almost almost that the noise that we talked about of like the
Yeah, that's a good good um good example of it actually. Yeah. But no, I agree. It's it's contrast, right? So having having by contrast some really interesting dialogues and then obviously you know some more mundane and expected stuff. You give people a little surprise here and there and I think you know those things do stick in mind.
Do you have any other things that you think would be interesting to talk about or pick my mind on or whatever?
God. Yeah. No, I don't know. I don't know. I mean, there's there's so many different weird interesting little bits of game development, but what what do you what do you think I should learn from you? Because I mean, you know, you're you're doing very well for yourself. You've uh you've made some good successes. What advice would you give me for my new studio, my new

project given your success with uh Thronefall, for example? Anything that any insights you've got that you think I might uh
I think it's difficult to say because our approaches are like very different from one another. I think but but like I think from the theory crafting I have done so far, I would say you should probably lean into the crafty buildy simulationy aspect as much as possible, right? And just basically keep doing what worked for you so far. So build lots of depth and procedural generation system and lots of wacky things for the for the community. And I think you you just need to be careful that you foster an environment where that is possible. So be careful not to go too overboard with the graphics, I guess, is what I'm saying. So that you can add stuff in a in a with reasonable effort. I think I think that would be very important if you want to keep doing what you're doing with with graphics. Yeah,

that's good advice, mate. I appreciate that.
Yeah. Other than that, I don't know. It seems like what you're doing is working, so keep doing what you're doing, man.
Hell yeah, man. You and me both, mate. You and me both. That's real recognized and real right there.
I want to give you an opportunity to shout uh shout out your band at least. Like we have heard about your
games. It's Warsome. And the other one what was what was the other game again?
The other game's called Slumbox.
Slumbbox. And is
so there's no public announcement yet actually. It's not technically released. I don't care. I don't care about people knowing about it. But
yeah, the band's called Dimp Parkio, which means uh no parking in Welsh.
Awesome. And uh we mostly just play in dingy holes randomly all around the UK and mostly it goes chaotically. It it usually doesn't end in a fight with the crowd, but it has. Okay. The show is a good time. I I have a bruised rib right now from a mosh bit from my uh a few gigs ago. So, it's always a great time.
All right. I'll put some link in the descriptions for whoever wants to put

check it out.
Hell yeah. I appreciate you, mate. Well, yeah. We'll have to stay in touch, mate. Genuinely, because uh it has been cool chatting to you and obviously, you know, we're both doing cool stuff in our own areas, man. I'm sure we're going to keep moving in those directions. Like, are you working on some new stuff now yourself? Yeah, I mean, Paul and I are also like a a twoman studio more or less, right? And we'll be making start developing a new game in in in like a month or two. We'll start the next project.
You excited for that?
Yes. Yes. Very much so.
Oh, yeah. I think al also we've we've learned a lot of new things and are excited to deploy our own new learnings from our projects and and pick some new challenges like we want to make a online multiplayer game next.
Wow. Yeah, that's that is a challenge. Well, hey, I mean, if you've managed to do what you've done already, I think you'll be fine. So, I'm excited to see what you cook and I'm sure the millions of people that play your future games will be very happy you made them.
Let's hope so. I I I also obviously wish you the best for your game and I hope to get some updates about how it's how it's going

occasionally.
Oh yeah, mate. Well, I'll I'll send you a free copy when the game releases in like five or 10 years. Don't worry.
Nice.
You'll be like, "What what the [ __ ] is this?" Oh,
all right. I'll just stop the recording here real quick. And that is indeed where the recording stopped. Uh I just want to point out the podcast is also on all major streaming platforms now. So, in case you're watching this on YouTube, you can also listen on Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon, pretty much all of the the major platforms where you want to listen to podcasts. I hope you enjoyed. See you in the next one.