From a small group on a social network to a developing business with its first contracts. History and advice for indie developers.
The idea seemed to come a long time ago. I carried her from a fairly young age. The release of the first of four chapters of the indie horror The Nick is close, so I would like to share the most interesting moments with other developers to show how non-trivial games are being developed. No spoilers!
Spontaneous idea
The Nick is a horror RPG in an original style, where you play as a boy named Nick who finds himself in an abandoned mansion. You are faced with the task of unraveling all the secrets of this place and finding a way out...
Full description of the game
Initially there were two of us. Yes, I know that in this situation it was already easier for us than 90% of developers! We both loved playing games, especially indie ones. The dream of creating our own world, where everything would be according to our own rules, with its own history and dangers, never left both of us. At that time, I was already programming as a hobby, so in one of the many meetings I proposed to create a full-scale video game project... with zero experience in game development. She drew well and was very ambitious, so she quickly agreed and we already assigned our future roles. We decided to open our own game studio.
It took a long time to choose a name, and among such options as New Worlds, Cube Reality, Flat Worlds and many others, we settled on the option that is still the name of the studio - Flat Reality. The name should have directly indicated that we would make games in 2D (although in fact these names were already selected for our old project, but this was perfect for gaming activities).
So, we have 2 people in the team, in which I was recognized as the team lead, with a passion for creating a great horror game. We thought through the basics of the plot right away, because it had been in our heads for a long time. I already thought up the rest of the script myself, and only recently completed its full writing! Although more than a year and a half has passed since that moment. When you're making a game, you're definitely going to change things throughout development, and story is one of those variables. However, now this is a high-quality story without any plot holes or misunderstandings.
We immediately answered the main question for ourselves: what will be the main distinguishing feature of the game from thousands of similar ones? I wanted to fulfill my old dream, a fragment of which I saw in the game Doki Doki Literature Club! - first the player gets used to a certain behavior of the game world. But then the game gradually begins to “deteriorate,” breaking its own gaming patterns, introducing new game mechanics and completely changing. I wanted to create an adventure that was completely built around this. It's hard to talk about this when you don't want to spoil the plot, but I answer, the game is very unusual. The entire plot is built around this particular feature.
After a long choice of a game genre (besides Horror), inspired by our favorite games, we settled on Non-classical RPG, where the player will solve puzzles during battles and approach battles in a non-standard way, because the main character Nick has no weapons!
Unity was chosen as the engine, as it is the most accessible to master, and at the same time flexible (for our mechanics, we just needed something flexible). I started learning how to use C# for video games, and my partner learned how to draw in pixel art.
Initially we planned to rent an office somewhere in the Moscow region, but in the meantime we went to visit each other. But then we realized that the costs would be huge anyway, so we decided to hold off... And now we only have an online office with about 10 people! But about the appearance of the others a little later.
Development or... Burnout
For several months, we called each other on Discord every day, discussed some important moments, tasks for the day/week/10 years, chatted about each other’s personal matters, and quietly made the game. Okay, not quietly, but quite intensely. It was quite difficult. We had nothing organized. The Unity project was stored in the OneDrive cloud as a folder! I kept the tasks, plot and game design (for which I am responsible) only in my head. Yes, later we set up Git, Slack and Trello, but then it was a bit difficult, and there were only two of us. Honestly, at that moment it seemed to be especially difficult. It was hard to balance school/work, personal life and huge development tasks. Then I even wanted to freeze the project, because I didn’t see any particular results other than exhaustion and the volume of new complex technical information.
We created a small VKontakte group, but we didn’t really manage it or anything They didn't talk about the development. But then no one told us that you need to start promo IMMEDIATELY when you have something to show. It could be something small. But you have to show it. Now. The audience needs to be reached at the moment of the prototype or even at the finalized concept, because then it will be very difficult for you without it. It’s hard both mentally and quite physically.
And it was hard for us. Not only because of this. Everything was pressing. It turned out badly, and the first conflicts began to occur. And the hardest blow was when my partner, due to forced circumstances, left for a month. I was left alone with all the problems we had collected. There were errors in the code, the internal schedule was not arranged, and, of course, there was no funding (in particular, due to the Emergency situation in Ukraine). Then I decided to expand the team a little. Spoiler: it got better. At times.
Team as “the real beginning of development”
The search for a team was difficult, as it happens for everyone. I started with an assault on "enthusiastic jobs" thematic forum DevelTeam, where I managed to find one person who subsequently quickly left. In fact, as a developer, seriously think about your slogans and the meaning of joining you. Be objective, this is where it will help best. Nobody needs promises of mountains of gold and 99% royalties from sales on release. So why join you? Maybe this will help you gain experience in development and team activities? For a portfolio? Just have fun?! Answer this question, offer fair remuneration for teammates after the release and tell a very interesting story about your project. Never pour water! Believe me, this is immediately obvious and speaks of your game as a not very interesting product.
I found the rest after successfully wandering around LinkedIn (there are many who want to build a portfolio) and the group < u>indiemaker. At this chronological moment, we now have a sound designer, a localizer, a coder, and an artist. At this point, I became much more confident in the reason to continue working on the game. I told everyone about the game in great detail, and it seems I was hooked! Now the team has changed a little in its composition, but the essence remains the same.
I also want to give one important piece of advice about the legal side of assembling a team if you want to turn your studio into a real business: Be careful in choosing personnel. I understand that it is difficult to make excessive demands, but I witnessed a real case when all sorts of “bugs” sneaked into the team either to steal the source code (which is very dangerous, since your game is not yet patented!), or to carry out espionage for a variety of purposes. Therefore, I recommend entering into an NDA (Non-Disclosure Agreement). But only if the employee gains access to sensitive information, for example, GitHub or key pitch documents. Be sure that this may scare someone away, so be prepared to explain in a friendly manner and with smiles in the text why this is important and how you securely store signatures :) . Simplify the signing process using online services, where you can simply check a box and the document will already have legal force.
Our team has always been friendly and pleasant to be with. We often communicated with each other through calls and general chats. I really tried hard to make sure my students had fun working on the game. The risk of burnout in our field is high. Very tall. That's why I always motivated. He even gave designer merchandise to support the team’s corporate spirit!
Speaking of the spirit. This is probably the most important criterion of a team, on par with professionalism. Your team must have a common goal, the involvement of all team members, common foundations, equality and inclusion. It’s difficult to stop conflicts, it’s also difficult to prevent burnout without money... Being a leader is very difficult! You have to devote a lot of time to management and creating all the benefits for development. I can also recommend calling each other more often to discuss what has been done, for example, in a week, and what needs to be done next. Understanding progress counteracts burnout.
Improvement and first partnership
I am the happiest person on Earth! I now have a passionate team that includes both hobbyists and qualified professionals. We seriously upgraded our prototype, adding more features. We now have 3D lighting, UI, graphics.
50% of chapter 1 was already ready. I read somewhere that at this point you need to look for a publisher. I decided that the best thing for us would be self-publishing through the ID@Xbox program. It was not so easy, but in the end we were able to conclude an agreement with Microsoft Xbox, and this was a special reason for the team to party!
We also hired a professional French composer - Christophe Pereuil. He started writing music for the game, and... the game came to life. She became completely different in perception. It began to look even more like the story of The Nick that I had always imagined in my head. The addition of the composer to the team was a significant event, because before that I wrote the music for the game (I have knowledge of electronic and acoustic music), which means that I will be able to devote more time to game design and code.
At this stage, our team already had an official website and active social networks. We tried to make ourselves known, we even collected several donations, which I used to improve the team’s digital infrastructure. The studio also managed to expand, introducing new directions (for example, soundtrack publishing) and more devoting ourselves to market analysis - now we did it together with the guys from ID@Xbox.
The Nick announcement!
All this time, although we talked about ourselves, it seems that not everyone took us seriously. And the coverage was small. But recently we decided to release the first intriguing teaser (we did it ourselves), which shows the general set of the game. Be sure to watch before you continue reading!
The release of the first chapter will take place soon. In total, the game will have 4 chapters telling a single story. It is still too early to officially announce the date, but it is worth focusing on the second quarter of 2024. We still need to polish a lot and work out a promotion strategy. And then plunge headlong into development again on chapter 2, which should be completed faster than chapter 1.
We have social. Nick's network: nick.flatreality.online
And social Flat Reality studio networks: click.flatreality.online
And at the moment the team looks like this.
I will be glad if you see what we have next. We are now collecting donations for our Steam page and preparing to launch on Kickstater!
Making games is easy(?)
Hardly. But if you've dreamed about it, it's worth at least trying.
Thank you for reading this article to the end. I hope my advice, as an experienced small but practical experience, will help you form your team and develop a game. Share your endeavors and impressions in the comments - I will be interested in reading.
I also hope you were interested in learning more about The Nick game by opening the doors of the mansion.
Thank you for your attention!
