Why I Spend 14 Hours A Day Making My Indie Game

Oh my goodness. I've been working for 12 to 14 hour days on my indie game Twisted Tower. Uh, it's right here, by the way. You can wishlist it below. It's like a Willy Wonka meets like Bioshock kind of thing. I'm I'm I'm nearing the end of development. I've delayed this game like five times. The delays, the crunch, [music] this is just a real thing. This is almost like a necessary evil for [music] especially indie game developers. And so if you're think if you're working on your indie game and you're thinking, I'm not going to have delays. I'm not going to have crunch. I'm not going to get burnt out. And if I do get burnt out or if any this happens, it means that I'm not doing this correctly and I need to quit my game. If that's the way you're thinking, I'm just going to be blunt with you because I love you. You're wrong. You're wrong. Crunch is real. Burnout's real. Delays are real. notoriously the final lap or like the final mile of your marathon with your indie game with your indie games production. It's notoriously like

like [gasps] the longest mile. Um the final 10% is almost like the final 50%. If you if you understand what I mean. Um so let's talk about it. Why is this going to happen for you? And how do we minimize the damage of crunch and the damage of delays? um because I want you to finish your games. Um look, here's the thing. The truth is is that one of the best ways I'll give you a quick tip here. One of the best ways to avoid delays and avoid crunch and honestly just finish your game is to actually be able to work on it full-time, which is a dream come true for me. The fact that I can on my third commercial release work on it full-time. The way that I've done this, the way that I do this is I make a polished demo. and make it perfect and then I pitch that to investors and publishers and also crowdfunding. So, I could show you how to do that. It's a a free webinar below. It's no gimmicks, no tricks. So, just click the link below. Totally free.

Just watch it. It's like an hour long, I think. Teaches you how I've done this three different times. Got a full-time paycheck and made my indie games full-time with just a demo. All right, so let's go ahead and jump into the reasons why games get delayed. And I'm not just making this up. Obviously, games get delayed. Whether it's AAA, Elden Ring, Tarnished Edition, or Grand Theft Auto recently delayed, King Makers, or Judas, all got delayed. Delays are normal. And also, I've heard this all the time in the industry, how how, you know, game devs are, you know, working till till 1:00 a.m. and they're crunching on projects. Why? And we we act like this is an injustice and and it is it is an injustice in the sense that it sucks and a lot of studios do abuse their teams. But also flip side of the other side of the coin, it's like that's that's gamedev. Not every not every day, but towards the

end of development, delays crunch, delays crunch, delays crunch. Working 14-hour days. That is how it goes. And we're going to talk about why this happens. Okay, you're probably wondering what why Helen Keller is listed here. Was she a gamedev? No. But in a way, let's move into why games get delayed. In a way, game devs are a lot like Helen Keller. Okay, [clears throat] Helen Keller, obviously, you know, blind and deaf. She relied on other people. She relied on other people to tell her about senses that she didn't have. Okay. Game developers, they require the senses or the sensibilities for a bunch of different skill sets. A bunch of different skill sets. So whether it's code, 3D art, 2D art, music, sound, psychology, scheduling, lighting, optimization, level design, game design, story, voice acting, marketing, video editing, all of this,

all of this is necessary for gamedev. And I'll prove it to you here. So this is a scene that I just created this week, um, where we get to transition from the lobby, center of the tower, and it takes us to this hotel, Twisted Suites, lodging, and diner. And I wanted to show you this scene because it shows you pretty much everything. All of the skill sets I mentioned are all present in this one tiny little scene here. Okay, let me explain. Um, first off, code, right? But even stuff like this tiny little journal here that I can pick up, right? It tells you about what the journal does. I press escape and now I can open the journal with Jay, right? stuff as quote unquote simple as that are monumental efforts. So this is the script here, right?

So that's a pickup, right? And by the way, this is the this is an extension of a bigger class called pickup, right? [clears throat] That's just the journal that I picked up, right? And all that is is just the ability to click on the pickup and press or press E on the pickup. That's not the overlay that comes on. That's a totally different script script and set of animations. So yeah, [snorts] code. We've got 3D art as well. The ability not only to [clears throat] source assets. So this is an asset that I sourced from Unity store. And actually the majority of the assets in Twisted Tower are not uh assets. They're or they're not bought from the Unity asset store. They're custom. But this one, this portion of the tower, this was custom, right? And by the way, you'll notice that a lot of this is just a mess. Um, that's kind of how I make games, and that's how most people make games. Look, he's not even standing on the tower. Um, but it looks like it when we're down here, [clears throat] it looks like he's standing up there,

but I don't care. The player's never going to get up there. We'll see, but I I don't think they will. But yeah, we've got the ability to source assets. just know how to find good assets, which ones work for your game, but also how to create your own assets, right? This is a simple uh castle tower that I created in Blender. Um, but also you need to also have the ability to understand 2D art. Okay, so not only are we making 3D art here, but we also need the ability, the skill set to edit edit 2D art, right? So, I could take these textures here, and I need to know how to open these up in, let's say, [ __ ] or Photoshop, and, you know, add some contrast, maybe tweak the colors, right? I need to know how to do all of this. Maybe add in some more broken pieces. Maybe I like this broken piece here. Copy that, paste it. So, this is a tweaking of an asset, right? But you also need to know how to create your own custom assets.

Music as well. The ability to write your own music like the track we hear playing on this level is called this song is called intro lobby stinger and this was a track that I wrote on in Logic Pro with some really cool VSTs. It is a virtual software virtual software something I can't remember. Sound design there. A little bit of laughing. [music] [music] [music] So yeah, you either need to know how to source that music and go find some people who can write that music or maybe even know how to write it yourself. It would be great if every game developer knew how to do all of this stuff, but we don't, right?

And so we may have one skill set or one sense like let's say the ability to smell like Helen Keller, but we need to rely on other people to teach us and to show us what we don't know. You don't know what you don't know. And this will cause crunch and this will cause delays. So there are three different parties or groups that will help you understand your sensibilities. Obviously, you can rely on yourself. Okay? So, you can learn how to write music. You can learn sound design. Just know that it's a it takes time and it will cause crunch because you don't know what you don't know. But you can rely on yourself. So, that's one party. The next party is your teammates relying on people who you hired to work on your game or contractors, part-time workers, or even just people who volunteered for your game's uh development. you can rely on them. Um, and then also rely on your

testers. And that's what this notebook is here. These are just comments and problems that testers have found in my own game. These are things that I would never have known. I would have never ever known that. For example, I would have never known that the player really wanted this scene. This wasn't here last week. this sequence of going from the elevator to the next world that I never knew we needed that but testers were asking for it. They were saying I don't really know I don't really know where I'm going or or where I am. Okay. So that's one of just one example of relying on testers telling you what you don't know. Right? So for example player psychology that's not my gifting. I don't have that sense. And so I rely on my brother who was one

of my beta testers to tell me, hey, that's what I need. I need that. Okay. So, here are some examples of how I've used myself, my teammates, and my testers in a game like Twisted Tower. Okay. I rely on myself for a few things. Um, and I don't really take advice from pretty much anybody. In fact, I can I can remember a phone call or I'm sorry, a meeting I had with my publisher, 3D Realms, where they were asking me questions about Twisted Tower story. And I will admit I probably got a little bit a little bit pretentious, but I said, "I don't want to talk about it right now. Don't don't ask me questions about the story." [laughter] And the reason I said that is because I I know myself very well and I know how I formulate stories. I know that I don't thrive with input when people talk about my stories. I have to figure it out on my own. I have

to figure out the story on my own and the story will be better for it. So because I know my own skill set, because I know I have the ability to smell really, really well, for example, maybe I have a really good nose. I don't let other people tell me how things should smell. That's kind of my little metaphor there. My little Helen Keller metaphor. I know myself. I know that I'm gifted in story. So, I rely on my gut. So, for example, this week I was like, you know what? I'm just going to drop $500 and I'm going to hire some voice acting for just some small additional lines um for the game story. I relied on my gut. Nobody really asked for this. Maybe my brother brought it up during a beta test, but I I relied in my gut to write this script to do the directing um and to hire these voice actors and actresses. So, this this is a document I sent to voice actors this week. Um and I I basically said, "Hey, we got new lines uh on October 24th. Here's

some direction um for the lines that I've requested. The the lines are below. I won't show you what those are. Um, but uh here's the here's how I do direction. By the way, if you're curious, this is just a simple MP3 that I recorded myself on this microphone and I just send it to the three voice actors and actresses. Just do whatever he says, Vince, please. Just stupid cringy voice acting. Me doing voice acting. Sending this to the voice actresses and actresses, giving them direction on what they're why we're doing this. the direction the the voice acting lines came through on voices.com. They came through a day later. I tell you what, the people who record these lines are are so talented are so talented. Elena Whis uh and and and she's so responsive. She gets these done in like a day. Um so, oh, I need to approve this. Sorry, Elena. Um but yeah, like this is the

line she sent me about a day later. Vince, please help me. Vince, please.
So, she'll record over and over and over again until please
until there's one I like. Help me.
That one was good, Elena. Yeah. So, I took that one. That's the one I used uh for these these various moments of additional voice acting. But yeah, back to my point. Look, I understand story, so I'm going to put I'm going to just follow my gut. I don't, however, have a really good sense of player psychology sometimes. [clears throat] One big problem that I had is that these windows weren't really present on the inside of the game. So, if I go to, let's say, floor one or floor zero, this is the lobby. If I go here, because of the feedback that I got from testers, because I want to be able to

rely on other people's sensibilities, not just my own, I trusted them and started work and spending the time and the money creating simple windows. So, this is the interior of the tower, right? And I added these earlier this week. simple stuff like this that takes six or seven hours to do. Um, I'm going it it it seemed like a risky decision because I don't have time for this, you know, but I decided, hey, I needed to do this. I need to just trust testers and in this case, my brother. So, let's see if it was worth it. Let's see if it pays off. So, I had to

I had to be willing to sacrifice time and delay the game. Maybe, maybe not. Or at bare minimum, let's say I don't want to delay it, which I don't. Instead, well, then I'm going to need to crunch. So, that's why I had 14-hour days. I had to create these little window boxes, these little vignettes. So, like the sky is this yellow color. I don't even know why. So, long story short, I created these little vignettes here. And by the way, you're probably wondering, why do I need this? Why not just change the skybox, Thomas? Well, the reason this is here is not to not to be a skybox. It's to block this [laughter] all this stuff down here. Uh, I need to be able to block it, right? So, there we have this cool like it's like a sprite basically that has a fade, a soft particle fade on it that sort of simulates uh fog. But yeah, I had to rely on my testers.

Okay, I had to rely on my testers [clears throat] and their sensibilities. Sensibilities that I just don't have. Okay. And then finally, if we're Helen Keller and we only have one sense, let's say smell, we need to rely on our teammates as well and their sensibilities. [clears throat] So, I hired Felipe to create this hedge maze scene. Okay, he's a really good designer. So, he put this cool ferris wheel here and he placed or created this giant hedge maze sequence. Okay. Very talented. Felipe is amazing. Um, I'm not going to rely on my own sensibilities for this. I'm going to rely on somebody who is gifted in level design and has been doing level design. I think he's been doing it for like four years now with me. So, that's his gifting. So, I'm going to rely on his gifting because I

just don't have that sense. So, I hope I'm not beating a dead horse here uh in trying to explain why game devs are a lot like Helen Keller. Okay, but what does that have to do with crunch and games getting delayed and why people work long hours? Well, it really does come down to you don't know what you don't know. Okay, so game devs, what they do and and especially indies, they kind of become a hermit and they they spend they get obsessed with their project and they they work really really hard on their project. They get excited by every little thing that they're learning and doing and they start to assume that they know what they don't know and then by the time beta testing happens they they realize there's so much they don't know. And so they've locked in all of these different things. They've locked in the music. They've hired 2D artists for their UI. They've hired sound designers. They've paid a lot of money to license

music or [snorts] license assets. [clears throat] They've locked in all this stuff for their game. And then during beta test beta testing, they realize that all of their sensibilities that they thought they had aren't there. that beta testers don't like the music that beta testers think the UI is um convoluted and confusing. So, the player has to the So, the developer has to go and change all this stuff that they locked in. Uh the the reason why why crunch happens, the reason why games get delayed is well, it's kind of like IKEA furniture. In the instructions with IKEA furniture, um it always tells you to not tighten the screws until you're done putting it all together. Don't tighten the screws. The reason you don't want to is because you need wiggle room. You need it loose so that you can insert certain piece. Sometimes I've done this before where you tighten all the screws. A a table leg no longer fits where it should because it's too tight around the table leg. So you have to go and loosen

all the screws just to get that stupid table leg [laughter] fit into its slot. The same is true with games. Okay, game devs, they tend to [sighs] they they think they know what their game is. They think they know what makes their game special. And this is well before they finish the game, maybe right at the beginning, they think they know what the game is. So, what do they do? They they buy assets. They they they hire they contract out 2D artists on, let's say, Fiverr or something. They write their own music, right? They spend all this time writing music. I've done this. You spend all this time writing music for your game or you spend all this time making beautiful UI for your game or they set dress before the the level design is even done. Meaning they actually like add the couches and the chairs and the paintings and let's say this mansion that they're creating. They don't even know if the level is fun and they're set dressing and adding in lighting and making it look perfect. This is a massive problem for indies.

The reason this is a problem is because by the time you get done with your game or you're in alpha testing or beta testing, players are complaining about things. For example, level design, things that require you to tear down all of this stuff. I've even had to I've because a level didn't work because a level design didn't work. Not only did I have to unset dress it ter like remove all the set dressing and lighting I even had to remove the music that I wrote. I deleted the music all that hard work because of a level design issue. Okay. So what I should have done and what game developers should do is they need to keep it very loose. Do not polish pretty much anything until you know that for example the level design works. So there is certain layers of tightening screws. There are certain screws you should tighten early. For example, level design. Lock in the level design. Lock

in, let's say, the mechanics of the game. Lock in the economy of the game, the health system, the jump height, the controller. You need to lock these in. Tighten those screws before you tighten other screws. Okay? So, this is why crunch happens because all these screws are tightened and then you have to loosen the whole freaking thing just to make a level design fix. It's just like IKEA furniture. You have to loosen the whole table just to insert a leg or a missing piece. So, here's some examples from Twisted Tower. Um, and this is why I've been working 14our days. I added a a map. This took forever. I added a map to this game. [snorts] So levels like this, I had to overlay this map onto this level. There it is. So it's this overlay, but if I'm looking directly

down, it looks at this giant sprite. This is really cool. Like this is really interesting. And in my head, I'm not a talented game designer. I'm more of a story, atmosphere, ambience, aesthetic kind of guy. But I tried my best to use my design instincts. And what I did is I just said I just committed to it. I tightened the screw. I said, "Let's go ahead and spend a week creating a mapping system." So, I made all these different maps for all these different levels. Right here's here's floor negative one. This is this is the uh mermaid palace. These are all done in Photoshop, by the way. I created all these maps, this massive Photoshop file with all these different maps. And I was so proud of this that I I I sent it to to Jason Smith. Uh he's the creator of Cultic and he's working on his own map system as well. And he immediately responded

after I had finished all of this. He immediately responded and said, and by the way, he's a really good designer. He said, "Wait, so does the level design really warrant a map in Twisted Tower?" And at first I was a little bit insulted. I'm like, "I did all this work." And all you have to say is, "You don't feel like my levels are that complicated. Complicated enough for a map." So I kind of ignored his message and I went into beta testing the game. I had people come and play the game. And immediately, guess what happened? When people got the map, they thought the game was more than it was. Suddenly, they started thinking, well, maybe this is a Metroid vania. Maybe this game is a Metroid Vania. And they would they would open up their map and go, okay, so like where do I go? So, the map actually made it more confusing. And so again, that's me realizing, man, I tightened the screws for a map system. I

I decided to just tighten those screws without even testing the game, without even relying on testers or friends, very smart advisers like Jason Smith to tell me, hey, you don't need that's not what we need. So before you commit to adding features, before you commit to adding features, you need to rely on other people to tell you if those features are necessary. Now you might be a really good designer and you just know you need you need a map. You instinctively know. People like me though, that's not my forte. So I need to rely on testers and advisers and team members to tell me, hey, is this necessary? Another example of tightening the screws. I've rec I've recorded voice acting three times over. I kid you not. Three totally different stories. So, these are all the lines that I've had redone for Mr. Twister. Look at this. And this

isn't me like abusing the the the voice actor's time. I'm paying for this. I haven't I don't use any of these lines. All of these lines are irrelevant. completely irrelevant because well I tightened that screw too early. Another example is just balancing enemies, right? There's a certain enemy that I'm just struggling with, right? Um let's see here. This enemy here [clears throat] I uh I spent I think maybe over $1,000 on just getting the the design right. I didn't test this enemy's mechanics out. He shoots a rocket launcher um or a cannon. I didn't test this enemy out mechanically. I just assumed, yeah, let's have a rocket launcher enemy. He's not that fun to fight. And I don't know why. I don't even know if it's necessary to have him anymore. I've thought about deleting him. Um but there

I go, you know, tightening the screws and paying for stuff and spending time creating something that I just don't need. Another one is this turret here. Spent all this time creating this really cool Jack in the Box um turret that opens up. And out of it comes, let's see if I can find the animation. Out of it comes this cannon. And this [clears throat] cannon will point at the player. Um let's change the pivot to local or the center. It'll point at the player and shoot at the player. These are no longer in the game. They're gone. I deleted them. So all this time, this is a custom model with all these really cool sort of clay. It almost looks like claymation. Really great design from Felipe. Real complicated design actually cuz it's it's easier said than done to make a turret look like a present. And in fact, I don't even know if I accomplished that. So I just deleted them from the game. Again, me committing to 3D art,

paying for 3D art, spending the time on 3D art, and I had to spend time on all these animations without even just saying, "Hey, are turrets fun mechanically? Let's just create a simple mechanic of shooting a turret. Is that fun? These are commitments. These are screws tightening when really they shouldn't." Why is this related to delays? Why is this related to delays? because you're tightening screws for stuff you think you understand as a developer. And then when it's about time to beta test your game, you realize that in order to make changes to your game, changes requested by beta testers, you have to tear down a ton of structures, loosen a ton of screws, and rebuild it. And this really is just experience, okay? It really comes down to experience. Number one, experience as

a game developer just in general. Knowing what you're good at, knowing what you're not good at, knowing why, when to rely on uh advisors and testers or when to trust your gut. This is stuff just that comes from experience of making games. Like I'm on my third commercial release. I still I this is why this game took four years. I still tightened way too many screws that I should not have tightened. I still relied on my gut way too much when I should have relied on other people's guts. So that's number one, just your experience as a developer. But also number two, your experience in this particular genre, in this particular game. If you're making a sequel, let's say you're making Silk Song or you're making HalfLife 3 or you're making Bioshock 2, it's probably going to be a little bit easier to make that game and perhaps you'll experience less crunch because

you kind of know the formula, right? I'm just kind of making assumptions here, but I think this is why making sequels and and reusing IPs is a profitable thing to do as a as a as a studio because you know what the formula is. But if you're making a new genre or you're mashing up genres or you have a new IP and you're trying to figure out what the story is and you're trying to figure out who are the characters and what are the mechanics and is this fun with this mechanic and is this mechanic fun with this mechanic, you're kind of unearthing it, right? It's like an archaeological dig and you're discovering what the game even is. I want you to get used to it. I want you to realize that crunch is normal. That there will come a time in your development when you are scrambling and sprinting and working till 2 a.m. That's just the way it is. So, if you're working till 2 a.m. or you're crunching or you're stressed or you haven't taken a shower in 3 days or you skipped lunch and dinner, I don't want you to look at that and go, "I'm doing something wrong." I want you to realize that's

just normal. That's just normal. That's how that's how game development works. We're not building a prefab house. Keep this in mind. We're not building a prefab house. We're building hopefully a unique experience where players are engaged because it's fresh, unique, and surprising to them. And here's the thing about creating something fresh, something unique, and surprising. In order for it to be fresh, unique, and surprising to players, it probably needs to be fresh, unique, and surprising to you as the developer. And you got to do the work on the back end to figure out what's surprising about this game. What works? What doesn't? So, ultimately, here's here's the final sort of proverb that I've come up with. The best thing you can do is avoid the temptation to lock features well before you should. Do not lock features. Do not tighten screws. Do not pay for assets if you

really don't need to. Even if you're like 99% sure that your game needs a map, don't illustrate the maps perfectly. Don't create this gorgeous UI and add sound and animation. Don't do it until you've tested just one map. Test one map with a with a tester or your teammates or ask an adviser like my buddy Jason Smith who created Cultic. I should have asked him and said, "Do you think do you think Twisted Tower needs a map before I spent a week creating a map system that's polished?" So, keep your screws loose, man. [gasps] Keep them keep them loose in your head, too, right? Don't get too uh dogmatic about the mechanics you're creating for your game. Don't buy music just yet. Don't write the music just yet. Don't perfectly light your scene just yet. Don't set dress just yet. And there's a caveat here. I'll tell you in just a sec. You need to gray box and you need

to test your prototype to test your prototype and make sure it works. Test it with players. Test it with players, not yourself. Players. Here's another cool proverb, a Thomas proverb. Don't work on level two until level one is proven. Let it prove Let it prove itself first before you start tightening screws and creating more content. Now, I wanted to [clears throat] talk about the little caveat here about set dressing and like perfectly lighting your scene. Honestly, all of this sometimes this is just this is why it's so hard to give advice about this stuff because I'm giving this advice and in the back back of my brain I'm going this isn't going to work. This won't work for for Thomas. The reason why a lot of this doesn't work. A lot of this advice doesn't work. Sometimes it does. The majority of the time I think it does, aka gray boxing is a good idea for the most part. I found sometimes I just have to do it.

And it it it's fun. It's what makes gamedev fun to put great music into a scene before it's even done to start set dressing to give an idea of is this level. Yeah, it might be fun mechanically, but is it fun visually? Sometimes you need that visual uh confidence before you can be confident in the design. So sometimes it's okay to put the cart before the horse, but I would say for the most part it's not. General rule of thumb there. Generally, it's a good idea to gray box before you set dress. Generally, it's a good idea to know that your level is fun before you commit to buying music, right? Generally, it's a good idea to know that your story is good before you hire voice actors for the final final final two, final three, final four, final five voice acting lines. So, ultimately, only

tighten the screws when people with senses that you don't have tell you to. It's totally fine to to to tighten screws and to to to lock in stuff and buy assets and buy music. It's okay to do that if you know that your gut is trustworthy. And this just comes from experience. But if you're not sure about your gut, if I Thomas, if I'm not sure that a maze or a map is a fun thing to use in a game like Twisted Tower, I should not have committed to that. I should have listened to other people first. Always, always, always remember the process of tightening all the screws just before a launch, it will result in a chain reaction of loosening, tightening, loosening, and tightening all other screws in the game. Every screw that you loosen to fix a problem causes a problem down here. This one causes a problem here. This one

causes a problem here. This is why crunch happens. It really does have to do with tightening and loosing loosening screws. It's this slow process of balancing and tightening and locking it in. That's why always games get delayed. That's why games have crunch. It's just what happens with games. My hope for you is that you can uh mitigate the crunch and the delays by avoiding the temptation to log features before you should. Hope that was helpful. And by the way, look, if you want to polish something, if there's anything that you should polish and make it perfect, it's a demo. And the reason why is a demo can secure four things for you. [music] Okay? Potential funding from publishers, potential funding from investors, wishlists, which is kind of almost like money that isn't realized yet. It's almost like owning stock. It's

It's kind of like that. Wish lists are kind of like [music] owning stock. And then number f uh number four, crowdfunding. A demo can get you uh one or all four of those things. And I want to show you how to do it in the link below. It's a free webinar, totally free. There's no gimmicks. It's not weird. There's not like some trick. It's just a 40-minute video that's going to I think it's 40 minutes. It's going to teach you how I've gone fulltime with just a demo. how I've raised six figures in funding for a game, just a little demo. So, it talks about pitching. It talks about um putting together a really nice demo and hopefully getting full-time funding so you can go full-time and start uh building out a full full-fledged product, full-fledged game um full-time. [music] So, click the link below, check it out, see if it's something for you. I love you guys. Take it easy. That was a lot of fun.