By Grace Clift
Ever since Toby Fox developed Undertale almost entirely independently, the prestige of being an indie game developer has skyrocketed. Whether it’s being a solo dev like Fox, or being part of an indie team like Chucklefish, creating a successful indie game is the goal of many coders’ careers.
It’s not only developers who see indie gaming as the best of the best. Players have skyrocketed sales for games like Hades, which sold over 1 million copies in two years. GameMaker, the development tool company used to make Undertale, summarised the love for indie gaming over AAA perfectly: “It was Ben Franklin that famously said: “In this world, nothing is certain except death, taxes, and Activision releasing another bloody Call of Duty every year.””
The first thing that goes into developing a video game is making the idea. This may seem like the easiest stage, but with almost 19,000 games being released just in 2024, it’s difficult to find something that’s both original and doable. Free Code Camp makes some strong suggestions as to how to come up with an idea. Consider the hook, mechanics, story and mood – you’ve got to find something that makes it interesting to you.
“Join a game hackathon/jam. You and other participants’ll be tasked to make a game in a short amount of time. Throughout, and after, you’ll be met with support from other jammers. And the excitement and creativity during a jam? Infectious. Don’t know where to get started? Try Ludum Dare, one of the largest game jams.”
Once you’ve developed your idea, it’s time to develop a game. Some games, like Stardew Valley and Undertale, were developed almost entirely by one person. These are much more rare in the indie game world, though, compared to those made by indie developer teams. Some of the biggest teams are Supergiant Games (Hades), Studio MDHR (Cuphead), Extremely OK Games (Celeste), and Chucklefish (Witchbrook). The first decision is whether to work with a team, or on your own.
If you work with a team, the decisions on what engines, frameworks or libraries (more on this later) to use will be made with the guidance of the developing team. These are the base layers for game development, which provide basic functionality and code. Atomic Object suggests using engines like Unity or Godot if you haven’t got programming experience. “They provide many of their features via a graphical interface, which means that you can start making games without having full mastery of a certain programming language.”
A Minimum Viable Product (MVP) is a basic version of the game which showcases the core mechanics. For a shooter game, this is simply making a square that smoothly shoots out smaller squares with every click. This will range in ease depending on how complicated you’re intending the game to be – if your game has multiple basic functions, you need to be able to do these in your MVP. This allows you to perfect the player’s core interactions with the game, before getting distracted with design or sound.
Talking of design and sound, every game needs assets! These are the artworks, music and filters that make your game look and sound engaging. There are lots of styles of art that make a game distinctive. For example, Stardew Valley uses pixel art, which at the time of launch, was unique among attempts at realism. Your art style can capture an atmosphere for the world your game exists in – for ConcernedApe (the creator of Stardew Valley), pixel art “recapture[d] that special feeling that the old games [I played as a child] give me”.
Once the game is complete, it’s time to find some players. The easiest way to market your game is by promoting it on your own social media – upload progress updates throughout the development process to build up the excitement for the lunch. Local papers, as well as game-related social media accounts, are likely to promote your work for free. Friends and family are also a great way to spread the news, so pester them to post about it everywhere. Of course, this won’t mean much if they can’t access the game, so upload it to Steam or itch.io for easy online access.
It makes sense why it takes so long for independent game companies to produce games; there’s coders, artists, musicians, developers and even more workers involved. It’s expensive, time consuming and complicated, but offers rewards beyond the imagination. The pride of putting months, and more often years, of work into producing a digital universe is not unlike the feeling after running a marathon; dedication, pain and technique led to a result that few can lay claim to. Good luck to anyone hoping to develop their own game – anything is possible.
Surround Sound 