My best friend and I quit our jobs, raised $17,656, and worked 3 years to make our dream game! Ruin of the Reckless released on April 26th! AMA!

If the temperature for everything you drank and your shower/bath temperature had to be exactly the same for the rest of your life how hot or cold would you chose?

WOAH! Just blew my mind... Um... I guess I could go with 'Hot Tea' temperature... but I worry that when I get really old that will be too hot for me to shower... :( I guess i'll be a smelly old man!

What were you trying to make different with this game? ie: what were you trying to do that no other game has?

We wanted to make a rogue-lite game that focused a LOT less on vertical progression than others in the genre.

Basically what I mean by that is that we wanted our level-up system to work more like Zelda, where you get new abilities that expand your options, and less like Final Fantasy, where you get higher stats that make your 'numbers go higher.'

We also wanted to shift the focus away from the 'lite' persistent progression and more towards variety within specific runs. Chaos Cards are our only persistent progression mechanic. We never liked this idea of unlocking items that then become available for drop inside the 'main game.'

We also wanted to offer more of an opportunity for variety and experimentation earlier in the game so that the first few floors don't seem like such a flog...

We also just hate the 'pick three' level up system in most games in this genre so we got rid of that!

The intention, in a way, ended up being to make an almost real time version of Dungeon Crawl: Stone Soup if you have ever played that before.

Oh shit, your last sentence might have just sold me on the game. DCSS is incredible. Sometimes, though, I want to play something a little more fast paced that rewards play rather than just strategic planning (which DCSS can feel like from time to time).

Compared to DCSS, how deep is the game? DCSS has tons of stuff to do in endgame and extended runes. In Ruin of the Reckless, is level progression the same every time?

Well, DCSS is like the deepest game ever made! I won't pretend that our two man team created a real time experience with fully animations etc... that even comes CLOSE to comparing to the DCSS team of several hundred people working with tiles.

We tried to nail some of the fun and tone of that gameplay style though!

you released a game on my birthday! im forever linked to it now.

We are joined at the heart, like that Dragon from... Dragonheart and that douchey guy.

Trailer looks good, but why does the screen shake so much? It's giving me a headache just looking at it.

Screenshake is a very personal thing, like your sleep number or the angle of the chair in your car!

Screenshake is fully adjustable, so you can turn it down or off if you'd like.

Perhaps we should have capped the trailer footage with a lower screenshake factor...

Yeah the screen shake was VERY off-putting. I saw the review video and where you mentioned you can adjust it, but most people browsing the steam page will never know/see that. If I did not know that you can reduce it, I would never considered getting the game.

I would make another video highlighting some features of the game. Like adjusting the screen shake, chaos cards, upgrades, character differences/play-styles.

Yeah you're probably right! To be honest we were running very low on funds by the end so we didn't have the time or funding to do all the marketing related stuff that we wanted to do.

I do marketing for a major company...my advice, new trailer with less shake ASAP.

Thanks for the tip! I'll try to get it done soon but we have a lot on our plate atm, obviously...

related to /u/ScatStallion's question:

• two people quit their job 3 years ago
• ~17k were raised to continue "full time" development

do you guys live in your parent's basement? sell your firstborn? inherit a lot? how did you live for 3 years pretty much without income?

Sorry, there is a slight lack of clarity in my post here.

We worked on the game for about 2 years part-time BEFORE the Kickstarter. After the Kickstarter we worked for about 7 months before the game was released. ALL of our living expenses were paid out of our own finances/savings, Kickstarter money was only spent on game assets, contractor fees, etc...

We certainly didn't live for that entire time without any income!

okay, makes more sense... thanks for the clarification.

"quit our jobs and worked 3 years" sounds more click bate-y adventurous, i guess ;)

We are ALL about transparency. however, I struggled to come up with a title that was both 100% clear and also not like, incredibly annoyingly long to read.

If I failed you somehow, I apologize.

That's what I'm wondering too and why that decision was made. OP says now that if the game isn't a success he may go to making video games as a part time hobby and why that wasn't what they did in the first place.

To me it just seems like a compounding set of bad decisions and now OP is doing an AMA to try and boost sales to a game that has very little merit of its own.

Hi! Well I certainly didn't expect to end up on the front page. And I will freely admit the AMA was an attempt to build some publicity. I put a reply to fdemmer that hopefully explains things a bit more clearly.

Also, we have a really strong community and raised 17,000 on Kickstarter so it might be a little bit of a stretch to say the game has 'very little merit on its own' but you're entitled to your own opinion sir!

i'm self-employed as software developer, so i am hoping there is some "secret" :)

edit: oh no. no secret, just work and crowd funding and more work :(

Sorry... :(

Any details on the development process? In what language have you guys written the game?

Plenty of details! We wrote the game in Game Maker: Studio version 1.4

As far as other details well... there are a ton of things I could mention so you'd need to be more specific. :)

Gonna piggyback on this. What skills did you and Daniel have, and what did you decide to hire out for? Congrats on the game! :)

When Danny and I first started we had basically no skills! (We thought we were awesome though.) We each had taken about maybe a year of casual programming education through High School and College... I remember very early on in the process having to figure out what, exactly an 'array' was.

Over time I think we have become very good programmers, but there are still some GMS programmers that are much better than we are that we reference for some of the hardest problems. (luckily the community is very tight-knit and friendly.)

As for pixel-art, we're both HORRID so we had to contract out about 14 different pixel artists to help us with that.

Most of the sound design was done by yours truly, but there was too much to be done so we contracted some out to Wes Devore (I think he did a fine job.)

Of course the music... we didn't make that either! And the translation we had to contract out too.

I see a lot of small indie devs who either are artists themselves or work very closely with their artist(s). Can you talk about working on the game without knowing exactly where your art direction might go? What was it like having less total control? Did any issues arise from having so many artists and was it difficult to get your artists to match what you needed?

We were very selective about our artists. I would put out the APB on twitter for artists and generally get between 20-100 replies, usually we would narrow that down to one or two artists and then do a test with them to see if they could match the style.

If the artist couldn't match the style to our satisfaction, that was it. :/

Could you PM me some details of artists? Especially anyone that can do pixel art video. Our primary artist can no longer work for a long while (family problems). Our others just don't yet have the skills.

Sure, DM me on twitter @fauxoperative I have many talented pixel artists I would be happy to reference to you.

What was the learning curve like for game maker studio? Given your background was it easy to jump right in on the programming side?

Learning curve was pretty friendly I would say. Danny and I each had a small amount of programming education, but in a lot of ways we were basically working blind.

We made a lot of mistakes and were forced to re-write the code-base several times. Overall I can't complain though, within a week we were making 'real games' and at this point (after just over three years working with the tools) I am pretty confident I could make 'any thing I could imagine' at least as far as the coding part of it goes...

Edit: I should also note that we worked REALLY REALLY hard to develop our skills as quickly as possible. Especially at the beginning we were spending oftentimes 10+ hours a day researching code. I don't think there is a friendlier langauge out there than GMS, but it's still programming, and it's still plenty of work if you want to do it right.

Oh that's great to know. I guess like all things in life, you gotta work at it. My brother and I are trying to make a small game and we're trying to decide what game engine/platform builder to use. I do have quite a bit of programming experience so I think it should be fine! Thanks for the response and good luck on your game! Maybe I'll check it out :)

If you already have a lot of programming experience, based on my conversations with other indies, Unity may be the better choice.

In a similar situation, a brother and I have dabbled in GM:S (even buying the humble bundle license and some stuff) but it ultimately got put on the backburner.

In getting back into it again - the brother moves in tomorrow, and we start our hobby-but-still-serious, first actual project - I started looking into Unity and UE4. While IMO they are way more complex for a beginner (using C# and not a native 'easy' language like GML), the number of things you can kind of just do compared to GM:S is still blowing my mind every day. Lighting, texturing, even scripting is just so much more powerful it's crazy.

IMO, while GM:S is a fine option and excellent introduction into thinking like a programmer and tackling problems, I would heavily recommend at least looking into the idea of using Unity. Interestingly, it still carries a bit of the reputation of "for indie/new developers", which seems silly if you come from GM:S, which is like the "even more for indie/new developers" program.

Yes this is pretty much spot on based on my conversations with other indies.

Grats on the release! I'm curious if you've figured out how many copies you need to sell in order to make this whole endeavor "worth it" to you guys. How did that factor into your pricing decisions? And two days into launch, how are you currently feeling about hitting those goals.

If you don't hit those goals, will you be trying again with a new game project, or does the dream die here?

Hi PP! Good to see you sir!

For it to have been 'worth it', we do have a number of copies we need to sell. We haven't reached that goal quite yet but I don't think many games do so quickly!

I believe we will almost certainly hit our goal, but maybe not as quickly as I would have liked/hoped.

If things don't go great, I have several contingency plans... some of them involve continuing to work on games full time and others involve me doing other stuff and making games part time.

I won't know which avenue makes the most sense for at least a few months I would imagine.

I think it would be very foolish for us to completely throw away all of the goodwill and credibility we have built during our crowdfunding stage up to now by liquidating the company. It is very, very unlikely that RotR will be our last game.

Well, you're about to sell another copy, because that trailer I just watched had me hooked.

Thank you for your support, do not hesitate to contact us on the steam community page if you run in to any trouble or have any suggestions!

What would you say was your greatest struggle during the process?

Hard to say, in a lot of ways it has been a constant struggle (not to sound dramatic)

Perhaps the longest and most stressful stretch was during our Kickstarter campaign. If you've ever heard that running a Kickstarter campaign is a nightmare... BELIEVE THE HYPE

I've never actually heard that. What about running a Kickstarter campaign makes it a nightmare?

Alright let me try to explain it as maybe it is a little hard to understand. You have a limited time frame,30 days, to raise as much as you can. You are constantly refreshing dozens of different websites all day. You have NO free time, every minute you spend NOT paying attention to your Kickstarter is a minute you wasted (remember you just have the 30 days.) Every passing negative thought any one has is a devastating blow to your chances, and every waking moment must be spent minding your backers, sending out press releases, writing developer updates, investigating new communities to reach out to, creating gameplay GIFs... making trailers... literally every second you are not working you COULD have been working and it would have made you more money. For our case specifically we were also pushing updates to the game DURING the Kickstarter... so we were also programming, testing, etc... It was more than a fulltime job by a LOT. That's not even mentioning the pre-kickstarter work that you have to put in to get things ready beforehand...

Don't get me wrong, doing a Kickstarter is great. It's a wonderful way to build a community, gauge interest in your product, get feedback, interact with fans... we are incredibly grateful for the opportunity.

But people think a Kickstarter Campaign is just something you put up and then the money rolls in... that is not the case at all. Raising 17,656 on Kickstarter... A number that one of the other posters in this thread called a "pathetic" amount (I disagree strongly but...) took Danny, Me, and our PR team working constantly all day every day for 30 days straight.

People keep throwing money at you and you don't know what to do with it all.

Oh my god, that's terrible! Where do I sign up?

Hi I put up a more complete reply above...

Could you elaborate on that a little bit? What was so stressful about the Kickstarter campaign from the point of view of a developer?

I ask because I one day hope to follow in your footsteps (but it's a huge hurdle trying to o walk away from a cushy salary). My impression was always that Kickstarter was difficult because of how quickly you can be overwhelmed by more than you anticipated providing. When it comes to a video game, of course this adds pressure as more and more people want your game, but you don't really have the same issue of needing to make ten thousand more chairs than you thought you would have to :p.

So I'd be very curious as to how it was difficult and what moment-to-moment things you have to do to manage one. Although I'm sure there's a wealth of information out there I can read when it gets closer to 'the day', feel free to gloss over this response! And as I'll say in every response in this thread, congratulations on your accomplishment :)

Not OP, but I ran a KS in August. The highs and lows of that month are so extreme that it's really hard to handle. Our first day we raised $6k, so I was over the moon. But then it took two weeks to break $12K (our goal was $20k). I felt like that first day was a false positive and we were a complete failure. We had $1k days, and some days we actually went down from backers pulling out.

In addition to the rollercoaster of fundraising, you need to deal with all of the feedback. We had an amazing community that gave us a ton of positive reinforcement, but we also had lots of critical responses. This led to woulda, coulda, shouldas, and before I knew it I wanted to close the whole thing so I could work on development for another few months.

This part won't be true for everyone, but I was also glued to my updates. Every time someone backed us, I got a notification on my phone. Everytime someone commented, pulled their pledge, lowered it, increased, or messaged I'd get a notification. I'd regularly wake up in the middle of the night to check for updates, notifications, or to just stare at that fundraising number. It dominated my life in a very negative way.

Running a KS is intense, and in a lot of way damaging to your mental health. But it's also an amazing tool that lets indie devs get their ideas made.

Yes this is similar to how I remember it going... eerily similar actually....

Any plans for future content/features? Borderless window mode would be great!

We would love to add new content but it will really only be possible if our sales are good.

So far, things are looking good. If interest continues at this rate it should be possible.

That's really in reference to new content though, Borderless Windowed mode is a lot easier to implement so if enough people want it there's a good chance I can throw that in to an update.

I haven't even looked at screenshots or a trailer, only this AMA, and I want borderless window mode.

Noted. :)

Borderless window and you'll sell another copy

Same here :-)

Alright, I will try to put that in to... probbaly not the next patch but maybe the one after that, I will see what I can do for you fine fellows.

Do excuse the negative tone for the question. Do you have a plan in place should you and your partner in this venture fall out and your friendship is genuienly irreconcilable?

This sounds horrible, but I guess I'm thinking along the lines of a pre-nup. It's horrible to plan for your marriage breaking up, but sometimes you just gotta

Good Question! Faux-Operative Games is an incorporated Partnership (LLC)

If we fall out, we will each own 50% of the company and the game. In that case, it would still be in each of our best interests to work together at least professionally.

I don't foresee any conflict of that type though, we have an extremely good relationship both professionally and personally.

As a followup. Do you ever feel like you or your friend are not pulling their weight on the project and just using the other person's ability for profit?

I would liked to have asked both of you but only have one available.

I have considered going into business before with friends but am always scared it will mess up the friendship if one us is a slacker because we are working with friends rather than for a boss.

I'm sure each of us feels that way sometimes! However, we communicate very well and it has never been a problem. Every dispute we have had like that has ended in maybe five minutes of conversation.

Overall I was willing to embark on this project with Danny because I trust him fully! We have both been basically 100% committed from the moment we decided to do it 'for real.'

My guess is that 90% of the time it is a terrible idea to work so closely with a friend. However, if I may say so myself, Danny and I are special people with a special relationship. (Hope I don't sound too presumptuous there...)

So u don't have a plan

I think the downvotes you're getting are maybe unwarranted but... no, we do have a plan.

The company is an LLC partnership, if our personal relationship breaks down... then we will each own 50% of the company. What plan do we need from there sir? Obviously it would not be an ideal situation!

I'm not sure how much more security we could possibly have given the nature of our business.

Wasup Cape! This is Dylon I lived across from you our senior year at ucsb. I remember one time I had to take a shower at your house and I didn't have any clean underwear and you loaned me a pair of boxer briefs. Until then I had only worn regular boxers and hadn't realized how comfy boxer briefs are. I now exclusively wear boxer briefs. I guess my question is what kind of underwear do you wear no now? No homo.

YO DYLON! That's awesome man. That's so funny that you commented. I don't remember that underwear thing but it sounds pretty sick of me.

Did you hear about the gear wars?

Sorry I have no idea what that is...

How many people can play at a time?

2 people can play, local co-op only!

Any plans on implementing a way to play online? Sales permitting of course. Or is the local only simply a design you chose?

I wish we could have done online. Realistically I do not think it would be possible unless the game sells BANANAS-well.

There are many other things we would want to improve first.

It's not a design decision so much as accepting our limitations in terms of what is realistic for us to accomplish.

Did you have fun?

Yes.

Your YouTube link for the trailer isn't working for me. Maybe dead?

Fixed, thanks!

When will the Linux port be released?! :) No, really, unless it runs under wine, I won't be able to enjoy this awesome looking game.

If the Windows version sells well, we will be looking at other ports. Linux is definitely on the list!

Youre using gamemaker, theres nothing to port, you just set up your linux box to build it and it works.

Hi, you are correct, but that doesn't include whatever linux specific issues will arise when we build to it.

Although it technically should work, it is not something I can guarantee without beta-testing and QA. But yes, there is totally a chance that the linux build will end up being quite painless to implement. If that's the case it may happen quickly! Cross your fingers. :)

Need beta-testing?

Let me know and I'd help pro Bono. I've already got an environment set up for clean installs on several major distros (Ubuntu-based, RHEL/Fedora-Based, Arch-based, etc.)

But, I imagine if it works for Vanilla Ubuntu (and Ubuntu GNOME since they're dropping Unity and Mir, who knows?) then it'll be good enough for the rest of the community on one-off distros. They'll figure it out.

Gimme a message (:

First I need a Linux installation to build on! I appreciate the offer please heck my twitter I am sure I will be looking for Linux testers eventually.

When you go to our Tech issue forums and it's a ghost town, I willl start figuring out how to port.

The game Hyper-Light-Drifter looks quite similar to your game in art-style and gameplay. I was thinking about buying that, but now i have to choose between either that or your game. How would you convince me to choose your title?

I won't try to convince you! Hyper Light Drifter is a fantastic game. I would not try to compare what we have to HLD, it's apples and oranges.

HLD is a fantastic, polished, wonderful game with extremely good pixel art, a beautiful cohesive world, and great game-feel.

Personally, I got frustrated with HLD because I would just wander around these giant beautiful areas struggling to figure out what I was supposed to do or where I was supposed to go.

If you want something really fast paced and intense, that is constantly putting pressure on you forcing you to learn and improve, maybe check out RotR too!

Congratulations, but from what you said, you basically lived together with your friend, for 3 years, on $17K?

I posted a reply explaniing things a bit more clearly, here it is again

"Sorry, there is a slight lack of clarity in my post here. We worked on the game for about 2 years part-time BEFORE the Kickstarter. After the Kickstarter we worked for about 7 months before the game was released. ALL of our living expenses were paid out of our own finances/savings, Kickstarter money was only spent on game assets, contractor fees, etc... We certainly didn't leave for that entire time without any income!"

You've mentioned Gamemaker 1.4 was used to build the game - did you make use of any third party software like Tiled for designing levels or did you use Gamemaker's level editor exclusively? I like Gamemaker in general but have found the level editor tedious.

Fyrfoot got it but yeah... basically the built in editor in 1.4 is borderline unusable. (I have heard 2.0 is MUCH better) You either need to code your own editor or code a solution that does not require an editor.

Do you ever miss your old job?

Haha... Noooooooooooooooooo Tech support is NOT fun. But it was a good work environment so i'm not complaining.

/r/talesfromtechsupport will agree with you on that front all the way if my time lurking has taught me anything

Ironic i now I'm doing tech support again for the users running in to issues with RotR. So I guess it has all come full circle LOL.

What made you quit IT? What degree do you have?

I did IT for about 3 years, it was just really not rewarding for me. I found myself getting frustrated with the customers and that's just not cool to them. I was doing everything I could to get out of the office ASAP every day, it wasn't fair to my boss, the company, our customers, or myself... so I quit.

Oh, also my degree is in 'Communication' (Yes, I know...) Danny has tons of degrees! I think he even has one in forensics!

Any plans on releasing this for the Switch?

I think I replied to this somewhere else. We would love to do it, but currently, as far as I know, Game maker cannot export to the Switch. If such a function exists it is top secret and I haven't been told about it.

Cross your fingers!

Holy shit! I've actually met the drummer for slime girls, and even shared some venues with him in some of his previous musical endeavors. I'm also super hyped to see a melee based rougelike. What was the biggest "oh shit I have to learn this now" moment when developing the game?

Yes Slime Girls is Fing AWESOME...

As for your other question... there was a moment during development where we realized that our object based collision system had to be replaced with a grid based collision system. That was a BIG overhaul that required re-writing a huge amount of the code.

What's your favorite gear combo?

Honestly I pretty much pick up every piece of gear and orb that I see, as I see them. Just makes it easier to test that way.

If I was a 'normal' player... I would probably go with slash-soul + lightning bolt along with super jump boots and go from there.

Lightning Spellbook + super jump boots + slash-soul is really strong, people are sleeping on that combo for sure!

Do you envision a console release if RotR becomes successful enough?

Yes. :)

What's your take on kickstarter games becoming more and more prevalent in the industry? I'm particularly excited about Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night, a game that otherwise probably wouldn't have happened.

Bloodstained looks awesome! But my take is honestly that Kickstarter is almost a dead platform for video games. It seems to me like it is getting harder and harder to convince people that you're not some kind of scammer... mainly because there are a lot of scammers.

I think the chances that we will return to Kickstarter for the next project are quite low!

How old were you when you did this? I'm asking for someone else who says he's too old to follow his dream and quit his job like you guys did. He also has a game he wants to build out. I don't think you're ever too old but I'm just curious. Thanks for posting :-)

I'll be 30 in May. I don't think it's ever too late but I hesitate to encourage people to do what we did.

Overall we are pretty dumb to have done this but i'm crossing my fingers that it works out anyway! @_@

Do you have any advice to somebody who is considering game development as a career?

Hi,

This is a really tough one! I don't want to give bad advice, and i'm not sure what good advice I can actually give. We followed our own path and ignored a LOT of the advice we were getting from indie-devs. We were just... really stubborn.

Overall even at the beginning I thought we were just being insane. I dont know if I can recommend our path to someone else, especially with how much harder crowd funding gets every day that goes by. It remains to be seen whether we will even actually make enough money to 'pay ourselves' for the three years of work we did.

I guess I don't feel qualified to give such advice yet.

Your story is similar to the developers of No Man's Sky. I wish you a lot of luck mate, I hope it turns out to be a great game.

If you had to choose between going deaf or going mute, which would you choose?

Oh dang, that's tough...

I guess mute, although it would make it a lot harder to win in Overwatch!

Hey there, congrats on the release. One question I always love to ask developers is "why should I buy your game? / what makes your game great?". :) I just really like to get the perspective from the devs. Thanks!

Well, maybe you shouldn't buy it, necessarily!

You should buy it IF you like games with horizontal progression like Zelda, AND you like rogue-lite games like Nuclear Throne or Binding of Isaac, AND you want to challenge yourself with something really crazy difficult AND you want something really fast, frenetic, and intense.

The last thing in the world I would want is for people to purchase the game expecting something different than what they get!

If you want to play a game like Ooblets or something (which looks great by the way) you should buy that instead.

If I were a game developer who wanted free advertising, how would I go about getting a front page AMA on Reddit?

I honestly have no idea how this happened, I just expected this to get a few hundred upvotes within the AMA community.

What part of the game are you most excited for people to experience?

Besides the Kickstarter, what has been the most difficult part of this project?

What advice would you give to anyone looking to follow your path and possibly quit their job to make their own game?

Lastly, would you rather fight 100 duck sized horses, or one horse sized duck?

What part of the game am I most excited for people to experience? Probably the endings! I spent a long time making these really cute animatic cut-scenes for when you beat the game...

The truth is the game is pretty dang hard so not many people will see them I guess...

Any plans for your next game?

We have some ideas but it's too early to say. I want to support Ruin for at least a few months and if it sells we we'd like to do a free update adding some new content too before we start working on anything new!

Hi! I have also used Gamemaker Studio 1.4 to make a game! My question is, with no source of income, what kept you motivated to keep making the game?

We just really, really wanted to do it!

That and after the Kickstarter we had a responsibility to our backers. Failing to make the game we promised was never an option.

Why oh, why is the full price of the game 14,99 and not a clean 15,00?

That's what Steam recommends... as well as our other platforms like GOG where we wanted to match prices.

I'm fascinated by gaming communities, and how some of them (LoL, Dota 2) can be so toxic and some (like the one you seem to've assembled) are wonderfully giving and supportive and, well, nice. What, in your mind, is the difference between these kinds of communities? How do some become nasty while others just don't?

In my game, other peoples dont' screw you over. Sharing information and helping each other helps everyone succeed. The community is also small, so everyone knows everyone else... you can't afford to treat peoply badly... There are lots of little hidden interactions and synergies that are hard to figure out but useful to know, it's the perfect recipe for a helpful community to grow.

In LoL or DotA games take 20 minutes to an hour, your teammates are directly responsible for your success, but the game is hard and unforgiving. If someone on your team screws up, they just wasted maybe an hour of your life, if you were doing well... that's REALLY frustrating. It's also HUGE, so chances are if you chew someone out you will never even see them again. It's also highly competitive, other players (in general) improving at the game will tend to LOWER your success rate since you have to play against one more 'random players' than you have on your team. It's the opposite of what we have, the perfect recipe for a toxic community.

Another top-down 2d indie rouge-like?

Yes. We started working on it three years ago, maybe we would have chosen a diff genre if we knew how crowded it was going to get!

What's with the occultic symbolism (pyramid and all-seeing eye) in your game?

Well, it's tied to the lore of the game and the whole 'prison of the afterlife' theming... that and our primary artist at the beginning really liked Gorrillaz and They Might be Giants so he borrowed a lot of elements from their theming.

What games would you say inspired Ruin of the Reckless?

Dungeon Crawl: Stone Soup, Nuclear Throne, Binding of Isaac, Vagante, Zelda Link to the Past, Samurai Gunn.

growing up what was your favorite game?

Castlevania 3, hands down.

These days I can't play it though, too much nostalgia!

Advice for future game developers? I'm 18 as of right now. My friend and I are working on a gaming app.

I would probably advise NOT to do what we did, and to make way smaller projects to test the waters.

I dunno! I don't want to steer you down the wrong patch sir.

How did you come up with the idea for the game? What I mean is the actual writing, lore and the like. Everything made has some kind of idea behind it, I would like to know what yours was/is and how you came up with it.

We must have spent hundreds of hours brainstorming ideas and thinking up theming and titles for the game.

In the original script of the game, you played as the last living humans on a planet of undead. The undead were having the ultimate awesome party and they didn't invite you... so your goal was to go tot he party, kill all of the undead and steal their presents...

I still think that's pretty funny maybe we will revisit it sometime.

How often did you guys find yourselves saying, "okay we're in over our heads"? Did you want to quit the quitting, if you will.

I dunno, we're both really stubborn.

We wouldn't think "we're in over our heads" (even it it was probably true at times) instead we would think "We have to solve this NOW!" often followed by many hours of panicked programming. :p

Hey! Congrats on all you've done so far, it's certainly a huge risk!

My question is that we see a lot of AMAs of this type nowadays: "I'm x and I quit my dream job to make video games with nothing more than a kickstarter/low funding etc." Some, and I would argue most, are unsuccessful "I gave it my best" attempts with many never making it out of beta.

Do you think the indie game market is over saturated, especially with how many "early access" games there are now? How do you overcome this marketing hurdle? Thoughts on the indie vs professional market in general?

I guess if you wanted to frame it, if I were Johnny Football from your high school and I only have played Call of Duty, and we passed by each other on the street, how would you sell this game to me?

Yes, the indie market is oversaturated.

Not just with early access, shovelware, and bad games... but also with really great games. Too many people know how to make great games now. The industry may never be the same as it once was! (just my opinion.)

I like indie games better than AAA games... but I do love me some Overwatch...

And I wouldn't even try to sell this game to Johnny Football, the game is not for him. I'm sure he'd give us a bad review on Steam. :)

Hello! I'm a fellow game developer in training. I want to ask if you guys had any background before in development or this is your first time as game devs. Also any advice for game developers specifically indie?

We didn't have any official background working with big companies or anything, we each had a small amount of programming experience.

I do not feel really qualified to give advice. There was actually a really interesting GDC talk recently about how even the BEST guys like Rami aren't really qualified to give 'real' advice.

This is an unfriendly industry and no one has the answers. You just have to try your best and hope for some luck. Also... watch this video...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AJdEqssNZ-U

Can you help me with calculus homework ?

Maybe someone in our community discord can? https://discord.gg/DxZuRtE