Overhype_Rap

Digital publishing in general, and Steam in particular, are to a large part what made the current indie wave possible. It wasn't really possible when developers needed their games to be present in brick & mortar stores - and usually needed a publisher for that. Steam, therefore, is elementary for our success as indie developers.

These questions need to be asked. It is a consideration of what you have the most experience in, what the project actually requires and what new solutions could offer in advantages to offset any risks. Paul, our artist, is a 2d artist by trade, and I had previously worked on 2d rendering quite a bit, so we decided to go the 2d route. We had the most experience in C++ and wanted as much control as possible, so we decided to build our own 2d technology. For us, it wasn't much of a gamble, because we knew what we were doing and what we wanted. The same doesn't have to apply for our next project, though, and we may well go another route with an established engine depending on the project requirements.

We have a game concept that would've worked 20 years ago as it works now. Unlike some contemporary indie games, our game isn't based on a single innovative game mechanic with little else to back it up. Our aim is to create the best possible game based on our experience as players and developers, the game that we wanted to play for years and will want to play for years to come. It is a complex game with a lot of attention to detail; we don't just take established designs, but we ask why, how it fits into our game and if it can be improved on. We don't innovate just for the sake of innovation, but we think carefully about anything that gets added.

To add to this, the most important thing, especially if you're inexperienced in game development, is to have a playable prototype as soon as possible, in my opinion. It's a huge boost in motivation for everyone, it let's you gauge whether you are on the right track and your aims are realistic, and many things just fall into place by themselves from there on.

We had previously built a library of code from working on several hobby projects and prototypes which we could draw on for Battle Brothers, so creating the necessary technology wasn't all from scratch. We invested several months, about a quarter of the development time, into creating the engine. This may sound like much, but in my experience it really isn't, as you often spend as much time trying to work around limitations of existing engines otherwise.

Our C++ experience is from working on a lot of hobby projects in the past, a commercial mobile game, as well as in my case some contract work in game programming for about 2 years.