You're Overthinking Your Indie Game...

man that's that's so great like it's got me thinking here i'm looking at the game right now and if this game were just this is no no slight to you guys but if it was just the platforming and there was no camera moving around this beautiful environment like do we agree it probably wouldn't have sold well nope yeah exactly so what you've done here is what what i've been kind of recommending to my audience which is take something that's solid that already works aka a puzzle platformer and then add a gimmick to it and that could pretty much guarantee not guarantee but you have a much higher chance of being successful if you take something that's already successful and give it a gimmick what do you guys think about that yeah something i i think it really helps especially in the day and age of clips and sound bites um having a game that can explain itself in

a gif is very helpful yep um so there's there's that aspect of it but then something that judd and i had a high priority on was let the visuals bring the people in and let the gameplay hold them there yep um and so that's what we really tried to do because visuals can only take you so far um people get bored of just looking at good visuals you got to have something really engaging to keep them playing and being like oh i wonder what happens next so you really have to have a high prior priority on both i think it's 50 50 visuals and gameplay yeah could there was um it it is funny that that you bring that up um about you know our game just being just a simple puzzle platformer because that is something that throughout development we had a lot of comments from people um mostly on reddit because reddit's means people is the worst

yeah but uh we had a lot of comments saying like oh this is just um the this game is a stickman game i played on my web browser 10 years ago yeah yeah and it's like why why would i play this um and it really comes down to uh for us is the experience it's like yeah you you may have played something similar but we are offering you a different experience something that um something that that that makes you for lack of without sounding pretentious that makes you feel something in a way yeah it's a real experience and it's like would you rather watch star wars or read the screenplay yeah yeah i totally agree and the star wars screenplay i've been doing this thing where i read screenplays a lot i love horror movies um i don't know if you guys like horror movies but one of my favorites is um the witch by robert ecker oh i've been i really wanted one

and then also hereditary by ari astor and i've been reading those screenplays and it's no offense to either of those directors they also wrote their movies um but what i found was there's nothing here yeah well there's something but it's very little it's a lot less than than you would think after watching the movie what makes the movie so special is they've taken a core a core story element for example that works it just works it's always worked since the beginning of time or maybe since shakespeare right um or even prior to that these classic story arcs that just work they just connect to human beings for some weird reason they just connect and then the garnish the set dressing the lighting the mood the music is it's just fluff but it's what makes the thing but it's got that coarse that core engine right and so what i'm looking at here and this is true for all all video

games you can take something that just works and then dress it up with a with a with a gimmick um and that's what that's what i've been doing for all my games my games are always they're basically just legend of zelda mechanics fetch quests go get the key go get the ability move on to the next level but it's kind of linear it's not like metroidvania but it's more linear that's basically what i do for my games that's it even our third game we're working on this dog game and also father our other first person game we're working on same sort of mechanics um so don't complicate things you know right yeah yeah and i mean i will say um something also very special about the indie game field is large aaa studios they need to make their money back and a big amount so they're like okay we have to we have to make sure we're doing these

kinds of mechanics because uh you know analytics they're tried and true analytics prove that an open world game where you have waypoints and you have uh all uh all of this stuff that's gonna sell uh copies as as an indie game you it's most likely it's just yourself or you and a couple other friends making a game the overhead for supporting yourself is so much smaller you don't need a big audience to make your money back you can do something very niche and very experimental yeah something that um i think is one of the biggest advantages to indie games and that's why people play them is because they want to experience something new yeah something cutting edge and even if it's just something as simple as a a a unique character or some kind of little mechanic that um nobody's ever really explored or or it's in a different it's in a different way yeah

yeah just the i i think that is really important because you can't compete with aaa games if you're going to make a shooter game you can't compete with call of duty you're you're going to have to have some some kind of spice in there that makes people interested in playing that over call of duty i think that's such a good point daniel because instead of focusing on such a good point instead of and this is good for me to think about instead of focusing on having all the right ingredients that a triple a game might have yeah instead you're like no we're just making we're making a hot tamale of a game we're not making a meal it's a hot tamale that's all it is yeah it's that one little spicy thing um another way to think of it as your it's a tiny little diamond that's what you're making see i think my audience something i want my audience to understand is and this is something i'm still learning

you're selling a game for the price of a of a a big mac meal at mcdonald's yeah right so you're not selling a 50 game a 60 game you're selling something that most people are willing to spend to consume something like a hamburger and crap it out in the next two hours and it's trash or worse right and that's what we need to remember so don't overthink your game don't over value what your game is just make something small and it's not that hard maybe you guys correct me if i'm wrong i don't think it's that hard this might surprise my audience it's not that hard to make a hundred grand off of a game like over the course of a year or two you can you can make a decent game that's five ten dollars and it'll probably bring in a hundred grand over the course of its life and i know that sounds crazy to a lot of people in my audience but as long as you make a decent game it's not that hard yeah and for sure be honest and and make make something honest and

be true to something that interests you make something that is unique to you yeah don't just try to copy someone else because you saw it was successful or copy someone else because you thought it was cool make something unique to you that excites you and it's gonna it's one gonna help you keep the project going because it's something you personally are interested in but it's also going to have a unique voice because it's you talking about this making this thing that is you know special so absolutely by the way guys feel free to download my free 2d game kit below it's totally free it's my treat to you i used this exact 2d game kit to make a game for pewdiepie in 14 days and then i got to play it in front of his subscribers which was really awesome so download that use it however you want it's my treat to you yeah okay