Intro
Spoiler: I was successful with my first indie game because it got pirated.
But before we get into that, let me introduce myself. Hi! I’m Ed, and I survived making my first indie game by myself! Now that the shock of achieving this miracle has worn off, I’d like to give something back.
I have so much to share that I had to split the article into 3 parts:
The story of the game’s development and how I made it.
The key lessons I learned.
Facts and data about the development process and the tools/plugins used.
Before reading this you will probably want to familiarise yourself with my game so you have some context. Hang Line is an extreme-physics climbing game where you swing up dangerous mountain peaks and rescue stranded survivors from avalanches and angry goats. You can watch the trailer below.
You can also download it here for free:
Download on Apple App Store:
https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/hang-line-mountain-climber/id1372005090?mt=8
Download on Google Play:
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.yodo1.hanglinerescue&hl=en_US
So with that out the way, let’s get started! This first part covers the emotionally turbulent and surprisingly unconventional journey of Hang Line’s development. It’s about how to find guidance through the near impossible challenge of launching your own indie game but also how to ignore advice and follow your own personal journey to success. And also how piracy can sometimes not be a bad thing...
What started it all
The main reason I decided to quit my job and become an indie developer was because I read an article written by a fake robot dinosaur.
No, really.
“SMART PEOPLE HATE DUMB IDEAS. ONLY THINK OF WAYS IDEA CAN’T WIN.”
The article basically explains how people turn down their own ideas because they think of all the reasons they won’t work. This is a huge reason why some people never start their own business.
“BE TOO STUPID FOR FEAR. TOO STUPID TO STOP. TOO STUPID TO FAIL.”
This really resonated with me. I was basically an expert at finding reasons that something was a dumb idea!
Also I was getting a bit fed up of the AAA console industry. I had worked at about 10 different game companies at this point, and in almost half those roles I had lost my job due to layoffs. Studios were collapsing left, right and centre, projects were getting bigger and bigger and everything was becoming sequels, prequels, remakes, reimaginings etc. This was a big motivation to get out and do my own thing.
A Mountain to Climb
So I had decided to take the plunge, but I was not in an ideal situation. At this point I had:
No team
No funding
No money for contractors
No art skills
Limited programming ability
I had spent the last 15 years working as a game design or design lead. The last thing I programmed was some crappy special effects for a football game in my first gamedev job. The memory leaking skid marks left by those football players still haunt me today…
And not only was I lacking in skills and resources, there was also the little matter of the Indiepocalypse.
Too many games being released, impossible discoverability etc… Every single article I read on Gamasutra was telling me I was doomed. It seemed like the worst possible time to ‘go indie’. But then I remembered the important words of that robot dinosaur:
“TOO STUPID FOR FEAR. TOO STUPID TO STOP. TOO STUPID TO FAIL.”
So I went about trying to figure out how this could actually work.
Preparations
I didn’t know anyone at the time that was dumb enough to take a chance working with me despite how many times I kept going on about wise robot dinosaurs. So I decided my only option was to keep my job for now and learn what I didn’t know in my free time.
I went and downloaded Blender and started an online tutorial. I mean how hard could it be to make 3D art?
Er.. yeah. Turns out it's pretty hard. That’s the first thing I built in Blender. It’s supposed to be a submarine...
But I stuck at it, a few hours every evening, and gradually, bit by bit, I started to improve…
Eventually I felt confident enough that I could make something in 3D, so the next thing I did was to get back into programming and try and build a super simple prototype in Unity. I ended up dedicating my evenings for the next few months to build a car parking game. Yep, it was about as exciting as it sounds.
Turns out that parking cars in a video game is pretty similar to parking them in real life - boring.
Anyway, it did what I needed. I felt confident enough to quit my job and get started.
Deciding on a concept
This was my initial plan:
Make a game in 3-6 months
Fail miserably
Do another one and make it way better
….. PROFIT!
This plan did not go to plan. At all. You see there was one fundamental flaw - I’m a perfectionist. No matter how much I would love to finish a game in 6 months, it just wasn’t going to happen. But I didn’t realise this yet...
The first big decision I made was to target mobile. This was mostly because it just felt more achievable. Every Thursday I would religiously download and play the latest free games on the Apple iOS Store that had got a front page feature. I felt like I had some chance of making something of similar quality.
So I decided to set some goals for the project:
Keep it small/achievable
Free to play with ads
Relatable theme, no fantasy/sci-fi
