Small Indie Teams Making Big Waves With ID@Xbox – The Indie Informer
If you’re an indie fan, you should be watching Xbox closely. With ID@Xbox — an initiative helping independent developers self-publish on Microsoft’s console — offering opportunities like the empowering Developer Acceleration Program and recently announced spotlight Indie Selects, Team Green has been building an impressive ecosystem for gaming’s greatest smaller-scale gems. In its more than ten-year run, ID@Xbox has collaborated with a mind-boggling lineup of indie creators — some of the most astounding being developers making spectacular games with limited teams.
To salute and highlight these mighty-but-tiny developers, I present Xbox’s take on a 30 under 30 list. It’s a celebration of thirty teams accomplishing a Herculean task: producing phenomenal experiences with less than thirty developers. Below, you’ll find some of the indie scene’s top-tier creators sharing their thoughts on the struggles, advantages, impactful reflections, and lessons learned while working with a small team to build something larger than life.
There is no particular order to this list, but I have to start somewhere. And what better place to begin than Tunic’s creator, now taking the name Isometricorp Games? The leader of this studio, Andrew Shouldice, is mostly content to sidestep the spotlight. Whenever I’ve had the opportunity to talk to him, he’s extolled the efforts of his fellow developers. This go-around was no different.
The Team
Although we’re not actually a studio, the TUNIC team is made up of some world-class folks. Kevin Regamey was the Audio Director, crafting the game’s soundscape along with the rest of his team at Power Up Audio. Terence Lee (Lifeformed) and Janice Kwan wrote and performed the soundtrack. Eric Billingsley was brought on as a level artist, but ended up working on everything from coding fish behaviour to implementing keyboard controls. Beyond that core team, we also worked closely with our publisher, Finji, as well as Felix Kramer, who helped with early business development and production.
Beginnings
When I quit my job in 2015 to start working on what would become TUNIC, I knew that I would need help with sound and music. I had no idea if I’d be able to support myself long enough to finish a game, so I certainly didn’t have the confidence to formally start a game studio. Instead, I partnered with collaborators on a rev share basis.
Challenges
There’s a lot of problem-solving! Instead of there being an established way something is done (like there might be in a large studio), every task is a new puzzle to solve. That could be a piece of tech that you need to research or write, or it could be some sort of organizational method. How should you handle build distribution? Websites? Scheduling meetings? Going to a conference/show? A lot of this was helped by working with a publisher who had systems or wisdom for that sort of thing.
Benefits
Any time I hear tales from people working in larger studios, the story is usually that everything takes a lot longer and needs to endure some amount of administrative rigour. A small team can experiment much more quickly, relatively speaking.
Memories
There are a few. The Microsoft E3 press conference in 2018 was a big one. The team was sitting in the audience in Microsoft Theatre and got to see our trailer run, larger than life. It was thrilling and surreal.
Launch day was also very weird. In the stress and logistics of getting everything ready, pressing all the right buttons at the right time, etc., I had sort of forgotten that this was the moment of truth. Hearing that people liked it and that it connected with them was a wave of catharsis I was not expecting.
Advice
Hard to say! TUNIC took a long time to make, and that was in large part due to repeated iteration – some of that iteration (most, I hope) was legitimate and served to make the game better. Some of it was just me second-guessing myself. I wish I was better at knowing the difference, but I don’t know if that counts as advice!
More practically: Starting in 2017, I logged all of my development time. If I could go back to 2015, when I started working on the game, I might tell myself to start that logging right away. I might also suggest more rigorous note-taking. I used a combination of paper and digital notes during development, but never fully adopted the habit of a daily devlog. That might have been useful!
Going Under, Another Crab’s Treasure
Aggro Crab
This studio’s upcoming, aquatically-themed Soulslike has been topping my most anticipated charts since it was announced. What you might not know is my fixation on Aggro Crab’s serious-but-cheeky work goes back to its first title, Going Under. So, when I met studio head Nick Kaman, who is acting as the voice for his team, we got to share a fun moment of excitement when I recognized parts of the first game’s world showing up in Another Crab’s Treasure.
The Team
Our team is the best. We’re 13 strong now, with 11 of us full-time wrapping up Another Crab’s Treasure and two new folks spearheading the prototype for Game 3. Most of us work in person at our office in Seattle, but there’s been more working from home as the days get colder and darker.
Beginnings
Our studio started as the result of two nerds with the privilege to be able to try their luck making video games instead of getting a real job straight out of college. Enough of a safety net, in fact, for Aggro Crab to be the third game studio I “founded” in my early twenties. Caelan and I met in the University of Washington Game Development Club, and to make a long story short, we turned out to be a good match. Nothing really took off, though, until we got our real big break, landing a publishing deal for Aggro Crab’s first game, Going Under. With a strong concept of “cursed tech startups” and a publishing deal to go with it, that game ended up propelling us into something today that kiiiinda looks like a legitimate indie game studio.
Challenges
As a small studio, you gotta do a bit of everything. We bit off a bit more than we could chew on this game – Another Crab’s Treasure is a big project we hope can be worth your time – in the Souls genre where masterpieces like Elden Ring exist. So, as we approach the finish line, we’re definitely feeling the pressure.
On top of that, for everyone on the team who didn’t work on Going Under, this is their first time releasing a commercial project. It’s a team of juniors, and honestly, I wouldn’t have it any other way! Everyone has risen to the occasion and should be immensely proud of themselves for what we’re about to put out.
Benefits
Small teams are fun! We try not to use the word “family” but to steal a term from One Piece, “nakama” feels appropriate. It’s like a pirate crew, right? It’s a journey we’re all in together in search of this huge potential success. Unlike on AAA teams, everyone’s individual contributions and personal tastes make up such a large percentage of the final result. I think there’s a sense of pride that comes with that. Plus, with a smaller team, you can take bigger risks. You don’t need to make a blockbuster that’s guaranteed to sell a billion copies. It’s okay to appeal to a more niche audience. We like to take an already popular genre and put our weird twist on it, and with a smaller team, that’s pretty doable.
Advice
Read contracts carefully!
Memories
Part of game development is the early phases where the whole thing has to be kept in the dark. It’s tough because you don’t know how people will react; you have no sense of whether what you’re making will resonate with other people or if it’s…stupid. So when we got that opportunity to announce, and I saw our trailer with our team at the office at like 7 AM, I was shaking (crying, throwing up, etc). All day, we watched as positivity and excitement flooded in for a game we’d been toiling on in secret for over a year, and, fun fact, a game I had the idea of seven years prior. What used to be a half-assed concept from college for a hermit crab that could wear trash as shells to get powers like Kirby or something was now real. I had reached a point in my career where this pipe dream had funding, a team, and freaking Nintendo behind it, and there was no better feeling.
Imagine a rainy, grey, and overcast afternoon. Cold and struggling with an umbrella, you walk through a doorway to find a world of glittering sunlight, stately rooms, and blooming flowers. This was my most recent experience with Botany Manor and my first meeting with its creative director, Laure De Mey. I heard many of her answers for this article from her own lips and, happily, get to share them as Ballon Studios claims a spot on this list.
The Team
We haven’t launched Botany Manor just yet, but the main team we’ve had throughout production consists of 5 people. I started the game wearing many hats, though my primary job is programming and design, which then grew into the role of Creative Director once I assembled my team. I was really lucky to find some very talented people who wanted to join the project: Thomas Williams (Audio Designer), Tim Steer (3D Artist), Jim Bending (Animator), and Kitt Byrne (2D Artist and Designer).
Beginnings
I started working on Botany Manor in my spare time. I’ve always loved the Tomb Raider games, and the part I enjoyed the most was walking around in Croft Manor, Lara Croft’s house. When I moved to the UK from Belgium, I was beyond excited to see that you can actually visit places like that in real life. All of that led to the idea of a game where you can just explore a beautiful manor without any pressure or combat. I also love nature and science, so adding plant growing and researching as a main gameplay mechanic tied those two ideas together.
The biggest reason I created my own project and studio is because I want to create the kinds of games I would love to play, but no one seems to be making. Whenever manors are depicted in games, they tend to be creepy or scary, and I wanted to share with the world how beautiful and interesting they really are. I’m very grateful Whitethorn Games believed in this vision and eventually signed the game that allowed me to realize my goal!
Challenges
Because we don’t have a physical studio and we’re all living in different parts of the UK, I’d say a big challenge for me was learning how to efficiently work remotely. There’s a fine balance between trusting each other, communication, having meetings, and, at the same time, giving each other space.
When you have limited time and limited budget, you want to make sure you’re all on the same page and check in with each other regularly, but you also want to allow people to do their own thing and decide their own schedules.
One thing that really helped our team was having a call every morning where we didn’t talk about work. It allowed us to become friends and joke around with each other, and it made sure we always gave each other the benefit of the doubt. We also met up in person a few times, where we’d play through the whole game to see everyone’s work put together, and then we’d go out for a nice dinner together.
Benefits
So many! First of all, it allows you to do many parts of game development, and you don’t have to stick to one discipline. In our team, everyone would chip in ideas for puzzles, plants, and art. If you have a cool idea, sometimes it’s quicker to just go ahead and try it rather than having to convince and pitch it to everyone above. Keeping the project ‘loose’ like that allowed us to make decisions very quickly, which was especially helpful when we needed to cut down on scope or change puzzles that weren’t working so well. Being a small team, we all carried a lot of responsibility and ownership for our own work but also cared just as much about everyone else’s. As a result, a lot of love and passion went into this game.
Advice
This may seem like an obvious one, but always trust your gut! There were times where the original vision of the game was slipping, and it took me a while to understand why I wasn’t happy with the current state. I was a little apprehensive to make big design decisions and change things, but eventually, I did, and I’m really happy how things worked out and wish I did it sooner. I guess that’s maybe another piece of advice, to not worry as much as I did and trust the process!
Memories
Generally, the happiest memories are from becoming friends with my team and us all hanging out together. But one more specific one is when I went to GDC and was able to showcase Botany Manor for the first time. Seeing it up on a big screen and enjoyed by people was an amazing experience, but it was also a little bit nerve-wracking!
The Artful Escape
Beethoven & Dinosaur
Johnny Galvatron, creative director at Beethoven & Dinosaur, is pretty much what you’d expect from a rockstar-turned-indie-dev. Read his answers in a tone of voice blending enthusiasm, irreverence, and candor, and you’ve pretty much got it.
The Team
There were eight of us at launch! Only a couple of us had even worked in the industry before. We were fresh meat. We were illustrators, musicians, VFX artists, teachers, shelf-stackers and Woolies, goblins. We had a lot to learn. Making The Artful Escape with this talented band of misfits was an unbelievable journey.
Beginnings
I had been touring the world in a rock band for around five years. I’d barely been home in that time. Touring had lost its glamor; I was tired, and I never wanted to leave the house again. I wanted to cocoon myself away. Lacking the proper mandibles for a cocoon, I started working on a video game about rock ‘n’ roll. This became The Artful Escape. I was joined by Sean Slevin and Justin Blackwell, and we launched a small Kickstarter for the game. Over this period, we were contacted by a few publishers, one of them being Annapurna Interactive. During the Kickstarter, they called me and said, “Will you be showing the game at PAX Melbourne?” “Yes,” I lied. We quickly got a table organized and had three months to complete a playable demo of the build. Annapurna arrived at 11 AM on the first day, played the demo, took me out to lunch, and that’s how the studio was born.
Challenges
Upskilling. Having a handful of team members means everyone’s creativity and technical skill must be spread over multiple disciplines. You’re always learning, you’re always dipping your toes in strange ponds. It’s challenging, exciting, and, I think, another great aspect of being on a small team.
Benefits
Every team member can contribute to meaningful creative decisions, from shaders to character arcs. There’s something great about collaborating on a piece where every team member feels they own it. Team members’ styles and idioms can come across in ways that might get ironed out in larger productions.
Advice
Not everyone likes Led Zeppelin, and they’re the greatest of all time. Don’t worry about the audience. Make what you wanna make.
Memories
Sitting in a stadium in LA at the Xbox Games Showcase and seeing my game premiere on the cinema screen in front of a crowd of thousands. Blew my mind tank.
Cococucumber, besides being one of the most fun names to say on this list, can boast of creating two titles with ID@Xbox that vary wildly from each other. So, I found it surprising when director and producer Vanessa Chia explained the projects’ productions were actually sandwiched between each other.
The Team
Hello! We’re Cococucumber, a definitely under thirty people studio based in Canada. Although our team size tends to vary during production, we shipped Ravenlok with ten people full-time, filling multiple roles. It’s a formula that has worked for us on our previous game, Echo Generation, and it allows some flexibility for the team to try different roles depending on the project’s needs. We hope to grow our team on future projects and would love to retain the special feeling that comes with being part of a tight-knit team.
Beginnings
Cococucumber began in 2014, and it was our vision to develop original games with the freedom to express ourselves creatively. Before we started the studio, Martin Gauvreau (co-founder) and I wanted to work on projects that inspired us, and so this was our way of taking a chance on ourselves. It’s important for us to create original games since we are able to take more creative risks and explore a different way of making games with a small team.
Challenges
One of the most significant challenges for a small studio like Cococucumber is resource management. With a limited team size, each person often wears multiple hats, juggling between creative work and the logistical aspects of game development. This means balancing time between working on production and the administrative tasks that are essential to keep the studio running. For instance, while focusing on the creative aspects of Ravenlok, we also had to manage budgets, marketing strategies, and partnership negotiations.
Another challenge is staying competitive in an industry dominated by larger studios with bigger budgets and teams. This requires us to be innovative, not just in our game designs but also in how we market our games. We have to be more strategic in our decisions, often taking calculated risks to ensure our games stand out.
Benefits
Working in a small team means that everyone has a voice, something that would be impossible otherwise. We often have meetings with the whole team via video conference, talking through a broad range of subjects from storytelling, game design, animation, characters backstories, and level design to explore what the next game we’ll make should be. Each team member, regardless of their position or seniority, has a chance to speak, share their thoughts, and give feedback.
As our team size grows, we may find that there needs to be more hierarchy and structure; however, the upside of a larger team is that we will be able to tackle more ambitious projects.
Memories
The reception for Ravenlok by players of all ages and across the world was certainly the most impactful memory. As we had not experienced this level of success before, it was a validation of our efforts and the multitude of decisions we took in the long development of Ravenlok. We’re grateful to everyone that took the time to explore the world we created, and all the kind words we received. We’re excited to keep working on a new free update coming soon that will let players experience the enchanting world of Dunia like they never had before.
Advice
My advice: “Finish one game before making another one!” It took over four years to complete Ravenlok because we made another game in between. We completed a prototype for Ravenlok in 2019 and started production later that year, but when the pandemic hit in early 2020, we put a hold to Ravenlok to make Echo Generation.
It would have been much faster to just stay focused on Ravenlok and get it done before moving on to a new game. But then, if I had to listen to this advice, the game would not be what it is today! This break in production allowed us to gain more experience and a fresh perspective when we began Ravenlok the second time. We all love how the game turned out in the end, so perhaps this was what this project needed to find its identity.
Little Kitty, Big City
Double Dagger Studio
Day of the Devs 2022 was a memorable event, in part because I got to go hands-on with Little Kitty, Big City. Then, as now in his thoughts on the studio, lead game developer and director Matt Wood’s passion for the project and its adorable protagonist is obvious.
The Team
It started with a team of just one! Little Kitty, Big City began with me and my kids. I was brainstorming with them on a little game, teaching them programming. One of the ideas they wanted to explore was just the simple concept of, what if…you played as a cat? So, I guess you could say the studio started with me, plus my kids!
In the past two years, though, the team has grown to a core group of three to five people, with a handful of others helping out here and there. I’ve also hired a studio to handle sound and music and another studio to help me with marketing, PR, and publisher-like services.
Beginnings
When the studio started four years ago, I’d been working on games for a solid twenty-two years. It was time for a change and a good time for me to finally set out on my own. I felt like I had the skill set to work on my own game, and I was ready for new and different challenges. I also just wanted to make games that a wider range of people would be interested in playing.
One of the ways I wanted to challenge myself was by making a game that didn’t rely so much on conflict. I’m a dad. I play games with my kids, and I wanted to make a game that people could happily play with THEIR kids, something that brings joy, connection, humor, and maybe a little light-hearted mischief. That was really important to me.
Challenges
I think one really unique aspect about the studio is that it is made up of contractors who live all over the world. This game is a global effort. Along with a global team comes challenges with time zones but also diverse cultural viewpoints, which is a total benefit!
There’s also the obvious stuff, like the fact that since we’re so small and we don’t have a huge budget, we need to work very efficiently and always be making smart decisions.
But the biggest challenge is time. My wife jokes that my team needs to clone me. There are so many working parts as a small studio, so many aspects to manage, direct, communicate, coordinate, unexpected and crucial investigations and side projects, in addition to the actual game-making work that needs to be done. Wearing so many hats usually means that I end up being the bottleneck most of the time. People are always waiting on me.
Benefits
Small teams are agile and adaptable. Decisions can be made quicker. We have practically zero overhead. We can pivot fast, explore new ideas, and discard quickly if it’s not working out and do it all in a short timespan. People on the team also have the opportunity to take on new challenges and grow. There are so many more opportunities for new learning and self-development.
Advice
Don’t overscope the design. Seriously. Cut it back. More. Now do half of that. And be ready to trim even more. Also, buy a better chair earlier and keep going to the gym.
Memories
The first time everyone working on the game came together to help with the first trailer. It was very much a group effort, and it really helped put things into focus for us all. Then, showing that trailer to my family and watching their delight and excitement at the potential of the game. Such a great memory!
Celeste
Extremely OK Games/
Maddy Makes Games
Noel Berry, in working with me for this list, gave his title as game developer. However, I suspect this is just about as understated as the studio’s name: Extremely OK Games. Its flagship title, Celeste, is widely acknowledged to be one of the best indie games of all time.
The Team
We’re a small tight-knit team of friends based in Vancouver, Canada, although during the development of Celeste a lot of the team was working remotely from Brazil and Seattle. After finishing Celeste in 2018, the rest of the team moved up to Vancouver to work in person full-time. The core team is under ten people!
Beginnings
Forming the Celeste team felt very organic to me and was based around finding friends to collaborate with and make something cool. It was less about “starting a studio” and more around “We want to make this game. Who can we ask to work on it with us?” The team itself started with TowerFall, Maddy’s previous game, where she worked with Amora (our Artist) and Pedro (our Pixel Artist). When Maddy and I started on Celeste together, it felt very natural to invite them to collaborate on it as well, along with Power Up Audio (our Sound Designers), Lena Raine (our Composer), and Heidy (our Operations Manager).
Challenges
When you’re a small team every individual ends up taking on a lot of varied roles, which is both really fun but also can be very challenging. It’s a bit of a balancing act, where you need to learn a lot of different things to get a game out the door, but don’t want to stretch yourself too thin. One day you might be programming some cool-looking clouds, the next day fighting weird issues with the save system, and the day after, in a meeting trying to figure out how a trailer announcement might work.
Benefits
I’ve only ever worked in small teams (or entirely solo), so I don’t have the experience of a larger production to contrast with. That said, I’ve always really enjoyed the atmosphere and creative freedom smaller teams bring. We make every decision and we’re in full control over the art we’re creating, and I really appreciate that aspect of what we do.
Advice
Not to crunch!!! We worked too hard at the end, and I think we should have just given ourselves a little more time. At the time, it felt like there was an urgency to get the game out the door, but in retrospect, I think we could have taken more breathing room and been better off for it. When you work for yourself, it can be easy to accidentally be always working.
Memories
For a long time during development, we weren’t really sure how the game would be received, or if there was much there besides a “tough platformer.” There was a point where that shifted, though, around the end of Chapter 6 — once the boss fight with Badeline was in — where everything “clicked” for the entire team. This moment really helped us gain perspective on what the game was and how it had all come together. Before that, nothing really felt certain.
Techtonica
Fire Hose Games
The president and founder of Fire Hose Games, Eitan, places the number of the studio’s devs at just below the 30 mark, making it one of the larger teams gracing this collection. Still, as his responses highlight, there was more than enough work to go around for the employee-owned enterprise.
The Team
Fire Hose Games had twenty-two people at launch. We’ve grown a little since then, and we’re at twenty-four now!
Beginnings
I started Fire Hose coming out of grad school at the MIT Game Lab. The first two people to join were friends I knew from MIT, and the name itself is an MIT reference (“learning at MIT is like drinking from a fire hose”). Our first office space was in a basement office off campus that happened to be the same place that Ms. Pac-Man was made some 27 years prior (and which has an interesting story itself).
Prior to starting Fire Hose, I had been the first employee hired at a small French biotech start-up, and while working there, I saw that anyone can start their own company. It just takes an unbelievable amount of hard work and determination. Starting my own studio was a combination of that experience, MIT’s pro-start-up culture, the birth of modern indie development in 2005 thanks to the rise of downloadable games, and my own naivete (“how hard can it really be?” — pretty hard, it turns out).
Challenges
Fire Hose never took on investment money and is entirely employee-owned (we’re very proud of this). But we needed money so we could buy burritos and pay rent. So, we wound up doing a lot of contract work for other games over the years, which was an interesting way for us to build up experience and get to work on some fun projects. We got to do early design and prototyping for Harmonix’s Dance Central, we got to do the Games for Windows Live port of Twisted Pixel’s Ms. Splosion Man, and we got to work with Harmonix again on Rock Band Blitz. It’s difficult switching between working on games for other people and making your own IP.
Benefits
The best benefit, in my opinion, is how much input everyone gets. It’s really motivating to be able to own entire systems/features, and the folks on our team are super talented and creative developers who want that level of input. You wind up seeing a lot of pride going into the game.
The other benefit is a sort of clarity when it comes to feature prioritization. Because we know we have limited bandwidth, we have to be very smart about which features to support and which to ignore. We apply lots of polish to the ones we choose to tackle and treat the ones we ignore as design constraints to work around.
Advice
Probably to make Kerbal Space Program instead of my first game! But maybe some better advice would be to make sure there is an audience for your game before making it. It’s easy to fall into the trap of making a game you’re passionate about without first looking to see if anyone will want to buy it.
Memories
Nothing beats releasing a game, watching fans have fun playing, and seeing the creative ways people overcome the challenges you set out for them. The first day releasing Techtonica to our fans was definitely my most impactful memory from development. It was incredible seeing how quickly they built huge factories (bigger than anything we had built), and the whole team had a blast hanging out in our Discord and sharing in the excitement. It was a big moment for us.
Bright Memory: Infinite hit the gaming scene like a tidal wave. The previously unknown studio, FYQD, blew away fans and critics alike with the first glimpse of the game’s vivid detail and frenetic action. That the game began its life as a solo project was even more startling.
The Team
When I was developing the Bright Memory games, the FYQD-Studio office was just me and myself. When I ran into problems during game development, I would sometimes outsource temporary staff to help me out.
Beginnings
To tell the truth, when I first set up the studio, I originally just wanted a brand to promote the game with instead of my own name so that the game and studio would have a nice official brand effect.
Challenges
Usually, I’m in charge of writing the story, designing the gameplay, balancing in-game numbers, level design, background art, and all the gameplay-related programming in the game. Most of everything else was made using online commercial assets and/or outsourcing and then implemented into the game. This is a huge workload, but I really enjoy it because I can control the direction of game development however I want. Although it’s pretty time-consuming, I have a better grasp and control over the quality of the game.
Benefits
A small team makes it easier to quickly decide on the direction to take during game development. If your team has a lot of people in charge of the same thing, then you might need to spend a few hours to communicate the main points of the task to the whole team, and you’d have to make sure that all of them can produce the expected results within the set timeframe.
This is a time-consuming process for many teams. I used to work in a large-scale game development company, and at the time we were developing a relatively simple game mechanic. From writing the proposals to communicating through the right channels to actually implementing the feature in-game, and then the final debugging process, this took around five whole days. When I do it myself, I don’t have to write any documents or communicate my ideas to anyone, so I can make something similar in just one to two days.
Advice
I might tell myself that when I’m making my very first game, I don’t always need to make a game that’s so complicated and so grand in scale. The most important part in game development is how to use your limited time and resources to emphasize and strengthen the most interesting parts of the game.
Memories
Right now, the only thing I can think of is how much I enjoyed the process. I was super engrossed in it and spent ten to twelve hours every day on game development. Of course, it was really tiring, and I almost forgot how to live a normal life. But even though game development is such a complicated process and there are parts I simply can’t make something of top-notch quality due to my own limitations, life is a continuous process of overcoming your limits over and over again, and I believe that one day I’ll be able to make an even better game to show everyone.
The creators behind one of the biggest indie hits in recent memory hardly need an introduction. Instead, I’ll let co-founder (also artist, animator, composer, and game designer!) Marcus Bromander speak for himself and the Among Us studio.
The Team
We were three people by the time the game launched — one programmer (Forest W.) and two artists (me and Amy L). But we all wore a lot of different hats, of course.
Beginnings
I’ve always wanted to make games. I grew up in the perfect time where programs like RPGMaker and Flash were just becoming easy to access. At the time, I was heavily involved in Newgrounds, and I started off learning how to make animations and uploading them. From then on, I started making basic games on my own and kept learning from there, uploading it for the Newgrounds community. My biggest project at the time was a series called Henry Stickmin, which was a choose-your-own-path adventure with multiple endings.
Eventually, I hit a limit where I couldn’t program the ideas I had. Luckily, in college, I met Forest, who would eventually be the other co-founder at Innersloth. We might have met at a party or through a mutual friend. I can’t exactly recall. Either way, we became really good friends due to our shared interests. He was a strong programmer, and we worked really well together, plus filled each other’s weak spots. After a few years, we teamed up to make Innersloth so that we could finally start making games together.
Challenges
One thing that’s been really tough is balancing the live game aspect of development with such a small team. We have quality of life improvements that are needed, as well as adding new content. Everything feels like it wants to be done at once, but we have to prioritize and balance all those things. With so many players, there’s a lot of pressure, especially if things go wrong and players experience bugs. It wasn’t like before when there weren’t as many eyes on us, and we could fix it as we went.
Benefits
I would say the biggest benefit is being able to be involved with many different aspects of the game and influence the direction it goes in or have your personality be in it. It’s easier to see the bigger picture when there’s only so many people you need to communicate with, and people can feel like they can have a real impact on the game they work on. It’s a real sense of ownership you don’t necessarily get in bigger teams.
Advice
Make the codebase more flexible! A big struggle during most of the development has been adding features that the game hadn’t planned to have in the first place.
Memories
We would have weekly meetings at one of our houses while working on Among Us. I have fond memories of brainstorming and discussing different designs we were working on. Sorting out problems. Naming the game. (Fun fact: “Alien Among Us” led to just calling it “Among Us”.) It was nice to have a focused space where we could hash things out and throw it into the game without having to jump through a lot of hoops.
Iron Gate Studio’s Valheim ignited players’ love of the survival genre by offering them the chance to sail into the world beyond death as a Viking and conquer its fantastical creatures and plentiful landscape. Richard Svensson, Iron Gate’s CEO, explains how the mega-hit kicked off with an initial group of four developers.
The Team
Today, there are thirteen people in our team, not counting external parties. When we launched Valheim as an early access title in 2021, we were just four people (one programmer, one designer, one artist, and one community manager). Most of the game, however, at that point was made by only one person (me).
Beginnings
I had been in the gaming industry working as a programmer for roughly ten years and was starting to become increasingly bored with my everyday tasks at the time. Meanwhile, I had this idea and an early prototype for a game that started to become interesting. I talked with my fiancée about it and our economic situation (she could support us both at least for a year) and figured if I was ever going to do something like this, the time was now. So I did. And after working on the project at home for about a year, I got my old colleague Henrik Törnqvist to join me, and we started the company. We also got a publishing deal with Coffee Stain publishing and thus, we had some economic backing to continue working on the game. That’s a very simplified version of our origin story.
Challenges
Well, the obvious one is to design our game in a way to enable us to actually complete it with a small team. The art style in Valheim was chosen to be unique and at the same time be something that I myself, as a non-3D-artist, could work with and create assets for.
Another challenge was using free/open-source software wherever possible. For me being a Linux user for as long as I can remember, this was, however, not a hard choice to make.
Benefits
[Being a small studio] makes it easy to navigate the waters of game design. We can quickly make decisions and iterate on our game. With a larger team, this becomes gradually harder as planning needs to be done way in advance to work efficiently, etc.
Advice
Keep following your vision and your intuition.
Memories
Actually taking the step and sending in my resignation letter to my former employer. This was probably the hardest choice in my life.
Astrea: Six Sided Oracles
Little Leo Games
With native Portuguese speaker Juliana Oliveira Hamdeh dictating answers to her fellow co-founder Leonardo Castanho Barbosa, Little Leo Games’ story began to emerge. Their first game, a dice-focused, deck-building roguelike, was released just months ago, so the duo’s path to the 30 under 30 list is fresh in their mind.
The Team
Two people were at the start of the development: the founders of the studio, Leonardo and Juliana, and the development started in April 2020.
The first prototype of the game was a physical one, and the base didn’t change that much; the health bar, purification vs. corruption mechanic, and dice are there from the first physical prototype. A few weeks later, we ended up with our first digital prototype, and we started sending it to all of our friends to test out the game. One of our friends, André, got interested in the game and joined the team as Lead Artist and Game Designer.
We hired our Art Director, Doug, in January 2021, and with his unique art style, he brought Astrea to a whole new level. After ending a mockup using Doug’s art, we started looking for a publisher with the new mockup in the pitch deck, and while we were negotiating with publishers, we hired Bianca, our UI/UX artist and VFX artist, the person responsible for the hundreds of icons in the game.
She entered the team in May 2021, and later, our second programmer, Felipe, joined the team because I wasn’t able to take care of all the programming. He entered to rescue me in September 2022, and we ended up with six members on the team.
Beginnings
We are actually a civil engineer (Leonardo) and a lawyer (Juliana), but during college, we met some developers at an indie dev event (BIG Festival) in 2012 here in São Paulo, Brazil. Talking with indie devs that were already making games made us realize the possibility of making a living out of games.
After graduating, we worked on our fields for a while, but a crisis came, and we lost our jobs. We were really lost and didn’t know what to do. Then, the perfect opportunity to try out starting our own studio came about, and that is what we did. In the end, we opened our studio in 2018 and then finally started Astrea in April 2020.
Challenges
The amount of work and the need to wear too many hats. This definitely doesn’t help with productivity, and when you have more than one role, your stress levels increase.
Benefits
Easier communication definitely. We don’t need to have a whole chain of people to make some decisions. We just hop on a call and make the decision without needing a supervisor or something like that. Another good thing is that making everyone aligned is much easier – we didn’t have to make fixed daily meetings or even weekly meetings to keep everyone on the right direction. We simply communicate on a daily basis, and when necessary, we just hop on a call.
Advice
Trust your gut – what will make your game stand out will come from inside your heart and from your gut feeling. It is important to research references, but be careful not to end up copying the references. Find out what makes your game unique, and with that in mind, you can use the references to make your game better and more consistent.
Memories
Definitely seeing all the things come together when our beta testers tested the game with all the mechanics and art/music assets in place. We felt the game was working as we planned – the engine was working, the players were doing exactly what we wanted, and they were having fun!
I’ve never met anyone who has played Luis Antonio’s game, Twelve Minutes, who didn’t have an opinion on it, which made it interesting to be able to dive into the creator’s opinions in turn and see how the star-studded title came to be.
The Team
The team was organically built throughout the development process. Initially, it was just myself for about two years. At the peak of production, we had around ten people, and by the time of release, the team consisted of about six to seven members.
Beginnings
I had a couple of concepts I wanted to explore but never found a studio willing to bet on them. These were risky and experimental ideas not designed for everyone. So, eventually, I decided to pursue them myself, leading to the creation of Twelve Minutes.
Challenges
Specifically for Twelve Minutes, the biggest challenge was role overlap. Being solo for a significant duration at the beginning meant that, later in development, I found myself wearing too many hats. I was responsible for all the game’s programming, which became a bottleneck as the team expanded.
Benefits
Working with a smaller team allows for greater creative freedom and flexibility. Decisions are made quickly, and changes can be implemented without the need for extensive bureaucratic processes.
Advice
I would tell myself that a project will always cost 2x or 3x more and take at least twice as long as you initially think it will.
Memories
The most impactful memory was seeing players genuinely captivated by the game during early demos at events. Transitioning from something merely interesting to having people line up to play it was extremely gratifying.
Mexico, 1921: A Deep Slumber
Mácula Interactive
“Immerse yourself in post-revolutionary Mexico City with: Mexico, 1921: A Deep Slumber. An emotional and intriguing narrative adventure video game about the awakening of a country,” exclaims the currently unreleased game’s Steam page, which helps to cut through the title’s enigmatic look. Luckily, Paola Vera, general director at Mácula Interactive, was able to clear up even more about both the game and the studio making it.
The Team
It all started with me, a programmer, an artist, an animator, and a really big idea. It’s been three years since that, and Mácula has since turned into a big family. The team has, of course, fluctuated in size during the development, but right now, we’re a group of 12 colleagues, friends, fans of our own history and culture. We have different profiles ranging from cultural management, history, cinema, animation, philosophy, photography, digital art, programming, teaching, illustration, and audiovisual production. We have been working together for over two years now in 1921, and it’s been an incredible experience. I’m very proud of the commitment, talent, and hard work poured into this project by every single one of the people that’s helped us.
Beginnings
Mácula was born in the middle of the COVID pandemic. My partners and I used to work making TV commercials, documentaries, behind the scenes for TV, movies, etc. And when the pandemic hit, every single project we were on was cancelled or indefinitely postponed, so we had a lot of free time. One of my partners pulled out this incredible thing he had written. It wasn’t a story, it wasn’t a book, it wasn’t exactly a script… but it was moving and exciting and honestly captivating. So, when he said he wrote that for a video game, I understood why it wasn’t really a script, and it wasn’t really a book. We had never written a video game, let alone made one, but that feeling of captivation, the need we felt to share that story, is what pushed us to give it a try. And here we are three years later with a great team working on a video game to tell that story.
Benefits
The best part is the closeness, the warmth of it. I think smaller teams can not only communicate better but it also encourages empathy towards the other’s work. I think the chain of how our work influences others’ is so clear with smaller teams that it is very hard not to always do your best, not only for you, but for you friend and the project.
Advice
Don’t be afraid to showcase early, to test early, to show the game early. I think being open about the process can sometimes be very beneficial for projects and teams. Learn to listen, and always trust your gut. When it doesn’t feel right, it’s not right.
Memories
Recently, an acquaintance reached out because our game had made him want to learn more about his grandfather’s past since he came to México from Korea in the 1920s, exactly the decade we’re exploring in the game. It’s really exciting to know that what we always wanted to spark people’s interest in history is actually working… and the game isn’t even out yet!
Birth, like its developer Madison Karrh, is singular. There really isn’t anything else like the game, even in a scene known for its creative and unique titles. ID@Xbox’s horde of small indie creators is dazzling, in part because titles like this shine through the program.
The Team
I am a solo developer inspired by libraries, bones, and bugs.
Beginnings
I am a programmer by trade and spent my early twenties writing software at companies while making games on the side. I have SO MUCH FUN with every aspect of development – I am just obsessed with sitting at my desk and making things. After releasing a few small games, I pitched Birth to WINGS and received funding from them, so I was able to quit my job and work on it full-time, which is just a dream.
Challenges
As someone who makes personal games, any negative reviews I get can feel especially hurtful. I have tried to build up a tough skin, but I am still very, very soft inside. Also, marketing a game is very hard, especially something niche like Birth. If I was to bring someone on in the future, it would for sure be someone that could handle the PR and marketing full-time.
Benefits
As a solo developer, I have full control over what I make. I can think of an idea while walking my dog in the morning and implement it that morning if I want.
I think making something by yourself and showing it to someone is a really vulnerable experience. Small teams have the ability to depict smaller, more personal stories than larger teams that need to make more money to sustain themselves.
Advice
I would go back and tell myself to use Monogame! I have switched from Unity to Monogame for my next game, and I am having so much fun with it. There are a lot of learning curves, but it is a very joyful way to work.
Memories
I took Birth to several different showcases during the last year of development, and I got to meet so many other developers that I have looked up to and made so many sweet friends. Making games, like any craft, can be a very lonely experience, so it is comforting to hang out with people who are equally as obsessed with making games as I am.
Dungeons of Hinterberg
Microbird Games
I had the remarkable opportunity to meet with the team behind Dungeons of Hinterberg for a hands-off preview when the game was revealed last summer. Leading the presentation were studio founders Regina Reisinger and Philipp Seifried, who were gracious enough to dive even deeper into their game’s creation here.
The Team
When we started working on Dungeons of Hinterberg in early 2020, it was just Philipp and Regina doing a prototype. In autumn of 2021, we started hiring, and since then, our studio has grown to ten people. We also have a lovely dog that’s part of our team and provides everyone with emotional support and motivation.
Beginnings
We’re a couple and have actually worked together at two other game companies before. When we both found ourselves out of a job at the beginning of 2020 (as well as stuck at home due to the pandemic), we decided that it was the perfect moment to make a long-standing dream come true and work on our own project. We came up with the idea and concept for Dungeons of Hinterberg and immediately felt that this could be something special that we really wanted to do.
Our goal was always to build a studio that is small but can pull off impressive and fun games, and we think we’ve built a great team for that.
Challenges
With a team as small as ours, it’s great to have people who are good at several things and can work very flexibly throughout the project. On the flip side, that can mean that sometimes we lack specialized skills or knowledge for specific tasks, for example, a technical animator for more complex animation work. Usually, we compensate for that by hiring specialized freelancers to support us in those specific areas when needed.
Another thing is neither of us are full-time managers. Both Philipp and Regina do a lot of studio management, go to events, do press and marketing work, but at the same time, also work on the game. We do have a dedicated producer who is in charge of planning and managing the team, but even she does some work on the actual game, like additional writing. Juggling these responsibilities can be challenging at times.
Benefits
As mentioned above, having a small team of generalists allows us to be quite flexible and get work done without too much overhead and dependencies. We come to the office a lot in person, which means that creative exchange – giving feedback or solving problems – can take place via personal communication, something that we value a lot.
We founded this studio because we love working on games, so one of our goals is to always stay at a size where everyone can be hands-on with any project that we do.
Advice
It’s probably the typical takeaway that everyone warns you of, and yet you always underestimate it until you experience it yourself: Most things take longer than planned. Even if you planned for a buffer. And that does not only go for art or code for the game. It’s also applicable to things like hiring – if you really want to get something right, expect it to take a while.
Memories
In the very beginning, while working on the prototype for Dungeons of Hinterberg, we used to tweet about the project and show gifs online, and it got us a lot of attention and great feedback, which we really enjoyed. After we signed deals with our partners in 2021, we had to stay silent for quite a while, up until the official announcement. We were incredibly honored to have our announcement trailer be part of the Xbox Games Showcase in June 2023! After such a long silence, seeing our first official trailer shown on the big screen in LA and online, together with so many other amazing games, was an absolute highlight for the whole team and a milestone we are incredibly proud of.
An indie fan favorite, there’s no way to put together a list of Xbox’s biggest little teams without throwing Slime Rancher creators Monomi Park on it. Among the interesting tidbits co-founder and CEO Nick Popovich shared about the studio is the fact that the group grew from a duo of developers to nearly three score by the time the sequel was released.
The Team
We launched the original Slime Rancher with only two full-time staff (myself and Monomi Park’s other co-founder, Mike Thomas) with some additional help from a couple of our friends. This seems almost impossible in hindsight, and by the time we launched Slime Rancher 2 we had twenty-seven full-time staff at Monomi Park.
Beginnings
After running a game at SEGA, I felt confident enough to start a studio and make my own games. But I’ve wanted to run a game studio for as long as I can remember. It was hand in hand with my wanting to design my own games. And I think that’s crucial to running a successful studio: You need to make running the studio part of the dream, not just making the games. Otherwise, you’re much better off hiring someone to run the business, as you will lose sight of all that while making the games. A bakery is so much more than just the cake.
Challenges
Everyone wears a lot of hats. Almost everyone at the studio is responsible for multiple different aspects of the project or works across multiple departments. So much of this is because you often don’t have the specific discipline or sometimes even the right department yet for the task at hand, and you simply need to figure it out with what you’ve got. But that also leads to trying a bunch of new things all the time, and it can certainly keep the week exciting.
Benefits
For me, I really enjoy being able to picture exactly who would be working on what at any given time. It means that when we’re coming up with new things we can tweak them to complement the specific skills an individual may have, and it makes the projects feel more personal or more like someone is expressing their individual talents.
Advice
I think I would go back to the original Slime Rancher development and say, stop trying to make procedural generation work. We spent a bunch of time trying to get a randomly generated world working, and it was an early lesson in what I call “That’s the Whole Game,” where you don’t realize the single feature you’re developing could easily devour all the resources you have for the entire project. Avoid those features if you can.
And then I would hand myself a 2023 Sports Almanac.
Memories
When Slime Rancher originally shipped, it changed the lives of Mike and I – that felt great because, more than anything, it made life feel secure. But then when we shipped the sequel and the team was nearly 30 people and I saw them all with their loved ones at our launch party, I felt incredibly proud that 30 families were being sustained through the very silly game that we make here. I believe a company should be responsible for the well-being of its people, and I am happy with every passing day that Monomi Park delivers on that.
Treachery in Beatdown City
NuChallenger
Shawn Alexander Allen, director at NuChallenger sat down to look over the studio’s journey and its partnership with Microsoft’s indie-focused program. As he started thinking about making games in his early teenage years, the road to Treachery in Beatdown City was a long one.
The Team
NuChallenger has always been a small team of folks. Like many independent studios, our team has grown and shrunk over the years. It has gone from being just me to seven-plus people and back down again. Treachery in Beatdown City started with some art made by me and music made by Inverse Phase, our musician. It was a thought experiment and not necessarily a game when I was first working on it.
Beginnings
NuChallenger was born out of my eagerness to make my own games. In some respects, it was born when I was 15, and I first decided making games was absolutely my future. I was enthralled with the indie games movement of the Aughts, and I had met some awesome devs at some parties and then eventually GDC. These folks were making the future, and I was already a fan of many of them and their work.
I left Rockstar Games back in June of 2012, and we were able to sign an initial deal with Sony for PlayStation Mobile soon after. We needed an LLC, and for years I had believed I would call my studio “NuChallenger,” and so it was born after some LegalZoom paperwork and a bunch of money for filing. (Don’t found your LLC in NY!)
Challenges
The biggest challenge is stability. Teams in the US typically don’t get any funding from the government, so everything we worked with was earned from somewhere else. And any hiccups can and will affect who you can keep on.
My goal is to make sure we have health insurance and reliable pay for everyone, even with a potential six months to a year delay – but it takes a lot of work to get to a funding level where your company is capable of providing that.
Other challenges arise from when anyone with certain knowledge needs to dip for whatever reason – as I said in a GDC talk (called surviving going from AAA to indie, funny enough). If you’re a team of two, you’re two bricks stacked up to make a faux wall. Take away one brick, and you’re just a lone brick, unable to do much.
Benefits
The biggest benefit is autonomy. You don’t have a massive company’s future on your back, so you can, I guess, be more unconventional and just follow your gut more. I was going to say, “Take more risks,” but I really dislike the idea that sticking to big-budget formulas isn’t risky in its own right… Besides indie dev, I’ve worked in smaller and bigger teams in corporate, and I’ve seen how hard it can be to move the needle in a bigger team. In a smaller team, everyone can be heard, and you have the ability to just be a lot more flexible.
I don’t think it’s as easy to list the benefits as much as the challenges, but I believe the benefits, in some ways, far outweigh the challenges.
Advice
There’s a lot, but if I had to pick one, it would be “promise less and try to over-deliver when you can.”
At the end of the 2020 release, we had a card promising more, and I hadn’t really seen if the game would even perform on the market, so it was foolish to promise anything at that point.
Memories
It’s not just ONE memory. It’s every time I see someone’s eyes light up when they realize what we’re doing. When I see folks laughing at my writing. When people see the game for what it’s really trying to do instead of wanting it to be something else. Treachery in Beatdown City is the thing I am most proud of and most embarrassed by, so when people bounce off it, it feels personal. When people love it, it’s also personal.
The team’s latest release might be the last case of the titular protagonist, but this 30 under 30 studio is far from finished. However, they might have trouble making it on the list in the future, considering creative director Bartłomiej Lesiakowski was leading a group of a category-pushing twenty-nine people when the game was released.
The Team
Hi, we’re Plot Twist, a compact team based in Kraków, Poland. At the time of The Last Case of Benedict Fox’s launch, our team consisted of twenty-nine dedicated individuals that are pure game enthusiasts and love board games!
Beginnings
Plot Twist has a rich history spanning fourteen years but under another company name. Originally operating as Awesome Industries, we initially focused on work-for-hire games before transitioning into software development. The core mission, though, has always been to craft narrative-driven, bold, and innovative games. With the conception of Benedict Fox, we felt the time was right to fully commit to our creative vision. It was our first game, and because of that, we created the Plot Twist brand, starting a new beginning for our team!
Challenges
Operating as a small studio presents a myriad of challenges, with multitasking being a significant hurdle. Team members often find themselves juggling roles, switching from writing to producing or quality assurance, level design to tool creation, game design to working with voice actors, and so on. The ability to contribute across various domains is both a challenge and a testament to our team’s versatility.
Benefits
The advantage lies in the intimate connection between challenges and benefits. With each team member involved in diverse aspects of a project, there’s a profound sense of responsibility and influence. Working in a smaller team allows individuals to leave a lasting mark on the game, shaping it in a deeply personal way. Benedict Fox is truly our game with a lot of heart in it.
Advice
A valuable lesson we’ve learned is to “cut more, cut early.” Detach from specific solutions and actively seek the core essence of your game. By trimming early in the development process, you expedite the discovery of your game’s true nature. If you know exactly how your game will look at the end of the development process… guess again.
Memories
The most memorable moments were the initial playtests following the implementation of all of the features. Witnessing people engage with the game in its entirety after working for some time after specific parts was heartwarming. It reinforced the team’s efforts and provided clarity on the next steps in development. It provided a much-needed boost to the team’s morale in the middle of the development cycle. Working on a game for two to three years is a task you need full commitment and, because of that, lots of motivation. The role of morale is not to be ignored, especially in a small startup studio.
Skábma – Snowfall
Red Stage Entertainment
Chair and co-owner of Marjaana Auranen eagerly explored Red Stage Entertainment’s origins and the development of Skábma – Snowfall for this feature. One of her biggest senses of accomplishments came from being able to share parts of the indigenous Sámi culture with a broad audience.
The Team
There were nine people on the team when we launched Skábma. Our core team has pretty much stayed the same since.
Beginnings
Me and my colleague Sahin Cengiz studied scriptwriting, producing, and directing for Film and Television in the University of Applied Sciences. We worked together on projects and noticed we actually fit pretty well together! We shared the same ambitious dreams of working on our own projects – and telling stories we had to tell or they would never be told.
We both liked creating stories for film and TV but quite often ended up talking about our favorite stories in video games. Games felt like the best platform to tell diverse stories in diverse ways.
At the end of the day, it was a mixture of coincidence and luck that led us to actually start our game company. We were still thinking: films, games, something else? But then, our concept for the world’s first console game inspired by indigenous Sámi got funded. That settled it.
Challenges
On top of the challenges that all small studios have (AKA trying to make gourmet dinner from a carrot, a potato, campfire, and a stick when the bigger studios have the whole food market and fully equipped modern kitchen to work with), our unique challenge was simply the game’s thematics: there weren’t any games about indigenous Sámi when we started this journey, and only a few people had even heard about the Sámi.
So, how can we ever translate that into a game?! And do it so that it has the right balance of authenticity and accessibility. It was not easy to transform a whole culture into a game; we had to pick and choose what parts to address and what to leave out.
Benefits
Communication is much easier. Almost everyone is working in the same room, and the dangers of misunderstandings and errors are smaller. We also have to be more efficient, and we don’t have the luxury of taking too many detours, so we get things done fast.
The whole team knows each other and cares about each other. That creates a workplace where people want to come to, even on cold and dark Monday mornings. It’s also easier to manage a small team’s well-being. When the team enjoys working together, shares their challenges, seeks answers together, and supports one another, there isn’t much more we need to do. People work better in small teams, and it is easier for individuals to excel in what they do.
Advice
Rest every once in a while. It’s easy to drown yourself with work when you’re doing what you love, but as the project continues, the workload does not decrease but only increases. So make sure you rest, make room for that in your schedule, and take a moment for your own wellbeing.
Memories
My most impactful memory is when we began the recording sessions with our Sámi voice actors. After months in my writer’s dungeon alone, trying to transfer characters who lived in my head into a script, it was rewarding to see them really come to life. The characters I saw and heard in my head were finally speaking, and not only that but speaking one of my peoples’ languages: Northern Sámi. Hearing my favorite character, Nana, speak was an emotional moment. I recognized that voice right away, that, yes, this is definitely Nana who was speaking, the character I learned to care for and love so much during my writing process.
While the game is not out yet, a demo for Psychroma is now available for those attracted to its mind-altering, cybernetic style. But while we can’t experience the full title, co-founder of Rocket Adrift, Lindsay Rollins, lifts the veil on what’s been happening at the studio behind the story.
The Team
We are Rocket Adrift, a three-person team made up of myself, Sloane Smith, and Titus McNally. We have been making games since 2018. Our Mission as a developer is to tell personal narratives that highlight the perspectives of LGBTQIA2S+ and BIPOC experiences while also showcasing an outsider lens to Canadian culture. We began development on Psychroma in 2021, a few months after the release of our first game, Raptor Boyfriend: A High School Romance.
Beginnings
Rocket Adrift actually began as an animation studio in 2017, producing animated web series on YouTube such as The Infringers, Catra from HR, and finally, the Rocket Adrift Animated Series.
Our first game, Raptor Boyfriend, was initially pitched as a web series. But we decided to pivot to games instead, as the animated web series format failed to reach new opportunities for growth on YouTube.
Challenges
We all wear many hats. Along with being executive producers, founders, and managers, we also have to work within our own specializations, including programming, design, asset production, composing, and marketing. Another challenge is maintaining a flat structure, with all of us at the decision-making table, from the overall studio operations to the level design of Psychroma.
Benefits
Having the ability to pivot quickly when plans change or when we are inspired by new ideas has been very crucial to our ability to finish projects. Communication between us is also key, and it helps having a small team with the ability to hop on a video call or meet in person regularly for anything from day-to-day to important business decisions. One of our core values as a team is that despite everything, we are friends first. We strive to support each other in myriad ways, and having that support and friendly atmosphere really allows us to flourish and create our best work.
Advice
For one, I would tell myself not to sweat the small stuff and that it is our ability to collaborate and our determination that got us here today. I would also urge us to believe in our abilities as developers; even if we are new to this, we can still teach ourselves what we need to know in order to succeed. Lastly, we should understand that we have a lot on our shoulders and that we can reach out for and accept help outside of ourselves. Being a part of a larger community is hugely impactful to your ability to achieve your goals.
Memories
When we realized the kind of game we wanted to make would allow us to explore things that we were going through in our personal lives, it was terrifying but also exciting. Being able to open up and explore what it means to be transgender, black, queer, or neurodivergent in a dystopian future not unlike our own was like unearthing a story that we had been waiting to tell before we even knew ourselves.
Sea of Stars
Sabotage Studio
Sea of Stars is one of last year’s most decorated games, earning nominations and awards at everything from Geoff Keighley’s The Game Awards to the Golden Joysticks. What’s one more accolade to throw on the shelf? In honor of the occasion, Thierry Boulanger, who acts as Sabotage Studio’s creative director and CEO, gives us a behind-the-scenes tour of the studio.
The Team
Twenty-five [people were at the studio when Sea of Stars launched]! One key thing about our team is that we don’t have managers, easily one of the best reasons to maintain a relatively small size moving forward.
Beginnings
After eight years in the industry as a gameplay coder, I felt ready to transition over to design. When it became clear that it would not happen with my then-employer, I pitched the idea of a small studio modernizing retro genres to some friends I had made along the way. And one thing leading to another, we’ve been working together on our terms ever since!
Challenges
As a small team, we can’t afford to have people in full-time positions for certain things like negotiating opportunities, doing PR, legal, and finances. This means we have to wear many hats and that sometimes there can be a time of need for more than one hat at a time. We’ve been sailing fairly smoothly, but we are keeping in mind that it could become overwhelming if we don’t keep an eye on what’s coming on all fronts.
Benefits
Definitely how fast we can move and try ideas, along with no one above us to ask approval from before pursuing our creative instincts. It’s also great having everyone together on one common production floor. A CEO without an office is the only CEO I care to be!
Advice
Definitely trusting the process more. It was a lot being a startup on top of directing my first game, but in hindsight, a lot of the worrying provided little value.
Memories
Hearing Mitsuda’s first guest track for the project. The backstory here is that his music made me sort of awaken to wanting to be a creator back when I was ten. It was already surreal that he accepted to contribute to the game we were making, but it didn’t really sink in emotionally until I heard some notes from him. That’s when I was able to picture him working at his station, applying his craft at bringing to life the imaginary world I had the honor of trying to paint for him (using words). It felt like we were both putting efforts towards the same goal, a feeling that’s hard to express, but I will definitely say is a career highlight!
Truly, this list holds a litany of my favorite developers of all time. However, there are a few names that touch my life personally. Shedwork’s Sable was one of the first games I had the privilege to review at Game Informer, making the chance to understand it better through director Daniel Fineberg all the more exciting.
The Team
Shedworks is a two-person company, run by myself and my business partner Gregorios Kythreotis. I was the lead programmer on Sable, and Greg was the art director and game designer. Though being a small team, we both wore many other hats as well. For the development of Sable, we brought on freelance contractors at different stages of development to help with the roles that we couldn’t handle between us, such as audio and animation. By the time Sable launched, the team was about a dozen people, including me and Greg.
Beginnings
Greg and I started the studio in 2014. We both graduated from university that year and thought of it mostly as a way to teach ourselves the skills we’d need to go and get ‘real’ jobs in the industry. Nine years later, and here we are – still no proper jobs! We spent the first few years releasing small free-to-play mobile games and doing contract work to pay the bills. Eventually, we had enough saved up to start working on a demo for Sable, and in 2017, we were able to secure a publishing deal with Raw Fury, which allowed us to concentrate on Sable full-time.
Challenges
I think one of the biggest challenges is that because you have so few staff, every team member has to take care of multiple different jobs. Besides what you might think of as your regular day job, there’s always a million other things like managing production schedules, doing payroll, handling social media comms – the list goes on. You will always find yourself doing things you probably didn’t have in mind when you dreamt of starting your own studio.
Benefits
I think the biggest advantage for us is that it keeps the cost of making games relatively low. It obviously means we are limited in the kind of games that we can make with such a small team, but it also reduces the need for those games to be mega-hits that have to make enough in sales to pay for hundreds of people’s salaries. We can choose to make more niche, experimental games that mean a lot to us personally.
Advice
I would tell myself to think carefully about an open-world game! I’m pretty proud of how Sable turned out, but it’s a hugely ambitious undertaking. Because of this, it’s rare to find indie games in the genre – instead, we’re going up against massive studios making games like Assassin’s Creed and The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. I guess that ambition is part of what made Sable stand out though – I wouldn’t want past me to get too disheartened.
Memories
We did a little team retreat to a cabin in Norway mid-way through production, which was pretty magical! It was a chance to hang out and spend some time together, and also to talk through our ideas and collaborate closely with people. Most of our team worked remotely around the world, so getting to meet up like that was really special.
Studio MDHR hit like a bolt from the blue with its first reveal of the unbelievably stunning Cuphead. The team’s art is as heavenly as the game’s challenge level is devilish. If you are looking to offer praise or plees regarding either of those aspects of the game, co-directors Chad and Maja Moldenhauer would be the people to look for. They were happy to fill me in on the impactful studio.
The Team
Maja Moldenhauer: As I’m sure you’ve heard from so many independent developers, studio size can be deceptive! So, I first want to acknowledge that we would never have made it across the finish line when launching Cuphead without the tireless efforts of dozens and dozens of contract and part-time team members in departments ranging from localization to quality assurance to sound effects and music performance. And this doesn’t even begin to touch on the wonderful folks working alongside us at platform partners like Xbox, whose own internal teams were integral to helping bring Cuphead to fans. With all of that said, we were a core team of approximately fifteen to twenty by the time we shipped!
Beginnings
Chad Moldenhauer: Something that makes our studio unique is the fact that, in many ways, we started decades ago before we even knew it! My brother Jared and I – both co-founders of Studio MDHR – grew up doing almost everything together, from watching vintage cartoons to spending hours beating classic games with one another.
As adults, we went into different career paths, but ultimately, we could never stop thinking about the prospect of one day making a game together that embodied all the titles we loved so much as kids. So, in our limited spare time (evenings, weekends, etc.), we began tinkering away at possible game ideas – heavily inspired by the recent successes of indie developers like Team Meat and Jonathan Blow. We experimented with many different ideas, even taking some projects through to the solid prototype stage, but it wasn’t until we landed on the early vision for a character with a cup for a head that we really felt that special spark!
Challenges
Maja Moldenhauer: I imagine that these challenges aren’t completely unique to our team, but the need to “wear many hats at once” is something I think a lot of independent developers and small teams deal with. In a larger studio with hundreds (or thousands) of employees, every discipline you can imagine – from art and animation to business, marketing, and event planning – all have departments of their very own, filled with people whose sole job it is to handle those aspects of a game’s development. On a small team of twenty or less people, those critical tasks end up spread across a much smaller number of people, and you often find yourself having to take on the equivalent of several jobs at once throughout a game’s production! Don’t get me wrong: this can be exciting and fulfilling, too, but time is a finite resource, and you have to think much more carefully on a smaller team about the ramifications of taking time out of core development to handle other things – even though it might be necessary to do so in the end!
Benefits
Chad Moldenhauer: To add to Maja’s answer, I think the other side of the coin as a small team is that while people often have to spin many plates, there is also much less bureaucracy and administrative process! Rather than sending a message to a manager, who forwards it to a department head, who weighs in on a decision with a large group, you’re almost always just reaching out directly to a colleague and sharing a fun idea or interesting concept. The speed of decision-making ends up being much quicker as a result, as there are less “stakeholders” necessary to get on board before moving forward, and it’s easier to get consensus by jumping on a quick call with a few team members. This sense of nimbleness allows us to move really quickly when we think of something we want to test out or change!
Advice
Maja Moldenhauer: We set out to make Cuphead because it was the kind of game we knew we would play, and that love for the concept drove us through the development process. However, amidst the harder and more grueling parts of development, I think it can be easy to feel that this private project that no one has really seen yet only exists as a success in your mind and worry that it won’t do well enough to give you a chance to stay together as a team and make something else you love. So, with all of that said, I think if I could go back in time and impart one lesson during development, it would be to “stay the course” and believe fully in the idea we had as a team, and lose less time (and sleep!) to worry!
Memories
Chad Moldenhauer: This is a hard one to pick, but I think it has to be launch day. After many of the hardest months of development with our distributed team, we flew out to LA and saw one another in person to celebrate this thing we had all made together. Better still, we got to see others play the game and begin reading reviews and stories online of fans experiencing Cuphead for the very first time. To say that it was a whirlwind would be a massive understatement, but it was a surreal moment that I don’t think any of us will ever forget.
Murder, music, and magic blend together in last year’s melodic release, Stray Gods. But what was it like for the developers crafting this new take on the Greek pantheon’s tales? I turned to managing director Liam Esler to find out.
The Team
We had twenty-two excellent humans on our team when we launched Stray Gods with our publisher, Humble Games. Summerfall is a team of people from very different backgrounds and experience, many of whom have come from other industries, paired with some experienced senior talent and incredible junior talent! We’re very passionate about growing our team in the right ways and trying to give opportunities to the people who work for us whenever we can.
Beginnings
We started Summerfall because we wanted to create a place we’d never had the opportunity to work at – a company that made narrative-driven titles where people were prioritized over the games that they make.
Elie Young, David Gaider, and I began discussing the idea of working together in 2017 and formally started the company in 2018. We started by sitting down and grilling each other about what we cared about, what our strengths and weaknesses were, what our biggest fears were – kind of like the ultimate terrifying speed date. We quickly realized we worked well as a team, and we complemented each other in unique ways, and that was that – Summerfall was born.
Challenges
Budgets and resourcing are always very difficult but often become constraints that force us to be creative in clever ways. So much of Stray Gods was born from the inherent challenges of being a small studio, and while those constraints are always very difficult to deal with, they often lead to the most interesting results.
Ultimately, though, keeping a small team afloat, especially when we refuse to crunch and try to treat everyone the best we can, is tough! Money – and, therefore, stability – is always a huge factor.
Benefits
Being in a smaller team means you can be a lot more communicative, collaborative, and agile; everyone can be involved easily, and everyone can have ownership over their part of the project. You get to build close bonds with everyone on the team, which makes working together so much easier and more fun.
Advice
Take the time to enjoy it more! You’re working with some of the most talented people you ever have on one of the most unique projects you’ll likely ever get to work on. Take a breath and enjoy that experience rather than being so stressed about making sure everything is running smoothly! Trust that the team can handle things, and you don’t need to fix every problem yourself.
Memories
There are so many amazing memories! One of my favorites was sitting in the El Rey Theatre in Los Angeles in April 2023, preparing for our live-streamed Myth & Music show. We’d been planning it for months, and it had been a wild ride – we had so many things go wrong, but the team at our publisher, Humble Games, did an incredible job helping us pull it together and put on an awesome show. Listening to Laura Bailey, Mary Elizabeth McGlynn, Anjali Bhimani, and Troy Baker rehearse. Being in a room of people who were so passionate about what we were doing and with an audience who were so excited for us. It was very special.
Coffee Talk
Toge Productions
You didn’t think I was going to leave Coffee Talk creator Toge Productions off a top developer’s list, did you? The coffee-making, deep-talking sim series is a mood like no other, offering players the chance to share in and help resolve the struggles of its relatable, though fanciful, characters. Here’s the tea on the studio from AJ Sitompul, audio director and project manager.
The Team
There were six team members while launching the first Coffee Talk, and most of the members had their first experience leading their roles, e.g., me as the project manager. When we continued developing the second episode, the team was nearly similar, with the exception of the main writer, as the previous main writer and designer, the late Fahmi (who passed away years after the release of Coffee Talk), was no longer part of the team, and we had to find another member to fill the role. There were five core members, with several important supporting members helping the development.
Beginnings
To put it simply, the origins of the studio can be traced back to the time when the original members who founded the studio were still international undergraduate students studying abroad at a university in Australia. They were majoring in game technology, and as part of the final assignment, the group made a simple game project. Since then, Toge was born. CEO Kris Antoni Hadiputra is exceptionally passionate about making games, so after they graduated, he carried on and kept pursuing his dream of creating games and also helping other people reach that same dream together.
Challenges
One of the unique challenges was, as we’re quite a small team, sometimes the members of the team experienced development issues or creativity blocks, but they didn’t know where to share or to ask for a solution. But we all believed in the vision and kept going, pushing more to find the solution themselves. I realized that the smaller the team, the more you need to be able to trust and support one another because there are only a few of us. We got lost once in a while, and miscommunication often happened, especially when the team worked remotely, but we learned a lot from that experience.
Benefits
Maybe we’re not bothered by complex communication flow and hierarchy, so we have a simpler way to communicate every piece of the designs, technical parts, every issue coming up, etc. It should be easier to share the vision and direction of the game with everyone involved in the development.
Advice
I learned a lot of things as a project manager, and I would tell myself that I should be more active in bridging the communication between the game director and the development members as it is utterly important to not only keep clear game direction and identify problems ASAP while in development, but also to keep everyone on the same page and working in one direction so that they won’t get lost or clueless and frustrated. We realized that understanding each other, including our personal condition when working as a team, is also important. Sometimes, we forgot about that, especially when we were too focused on getting the game done.
Memories
While developing Coffee Talk 2, though Fahmi was no longer part of the development team, some members were still in contact with him and asked for any suggestions and insights, as we also wanted to keep the soul from the first Coffee Talk. Hearing that he passed away suddenly, we were truly devastated and feeling a heavy loss. He’s the main reason why Coffee Talk exists, and we needed to adjust the stories to leave remembrance of Fahmi as the original creator. We agree that that’s the most impactful one.
What is it like to reach for the skies as a development studio of one and make it onto Xbox’s 30 under 30? What does it take to make that kind of migration? How many bird references can I fit into one intro? Well, the answer to the last question is about two. But you’ll have to read Tomas Sala’s take below to quench your curiosity about the rest.
The Team
For the majority of development, just me, and legally, it’s a studio of one. But I work with Benedict Nichols, who’s an award-winning composer, for all things audio, and Wired Productions has teamed me up with Stefan Wijnker for porting during the final phases. Beyond the marketing and QA folks at Wired Productions, that’s all.
Beginnings
I started in the industry by founding a small studio that still exists, and I mostly did work for hire (including for Little Chicken Game Company), but I left them after fifteen years because I ended up in an extended burnout. Turns out I’m not a great leader or manager, which is the role you are supposed to grow into, but something that isn’t a fit for the more chaotic artist types like me. Luckily, I discovered I enjoy working on more artistic projects mostly by myself, which allows me to work at a pace and pressure that fits my temperament. Literally, with the support of ID@Xbox, I was able to step away from that studio fully and take the two years I needed to complete The Falconeer without any distractions and start my career as what’s mostly a solo dev.
Challenges
Well, besides the regular challenges of getting any game out the door and finding sufficient success to make another one, my main challenges are maintaining a healthy mode of working, especially toward the release of a game. I found it easier to release a game with a team as some of the burden gets shared when things go wrong, which inevitably is the case. When you are by yourself, there is no one to share with, the good or the bad. I find myself working with my publisher to map out alternative launch strategies and roadmaps. For my new game, Bulwark: Falconeer Chronicles, this led to an “evolving demo,” basically shaping and updating the game while people play it – it’s an open development strategy intended to prevent some of the launch anxiety by giving folks a taste of the game at very early stages.
Benefits
The most efficient meetings on Earth. Basically, for me there is some truth in not having to discuss and find consensus – everything is done right in the flow of things. This really gives my wings during development as I can just focus on what needs to be done and get to it. I also get to experiment and get lost in creative diversions, which are both a lot of fun and something I need to keep my wits up. The risk here is of course getting lost in your own mental maze, as reflecting by yourself is something that’s quite a bit harder. But again, adapting your processes and strategies to make sure that if you do not reflect, your players and audience will do it for you, actually works in keeping things from going off the rails entirely.
Advice
“You cannot please everyone.” I think the smaller your team, the closer you get to personal expression. I think it becomes inescapable that some form of anxiety around the opinion of your audience starts to form. For me, that becomes fairly extreme at times, and I find it isn’t a great basis for making good design decisions. You start to add features or make choices that are geared to alleviating your fear of failure. Choices that you consider safe but might turn off the audience that naturally fit what you are making. In a field where the player is king, it is also good to realize you cannot please everyone all of the time, and that’s perfectly fine.
Memories
I think my most powerful good memory (there are also less pleasant ones; coming down with COVID close to release is one) is that I was able to have a conversation with players on the game’s Discord about the game and its emotional themes/how it resonated with them. To find some of what you put into a game reflected back, changed by the unique perspectives of the players, was truly a wonderful first for me.
Solace State
Vivid Foundry
Tanya Kan holds the dual titles of director and executive producer for Vivid Foundry’s recent release, Solace State. The game’s website hosts an impressive slew of indie awards and, after landing on this list, can now add one more prize to its digital trophy case.
The Team
All of us are drawn together by a passion for telling emotional and reflexive game narratives! We’re a distributed team with many developers based in Ontario, Canada. We are a team of 23 developers and collaborators, including folks who contributed cultural and narrative consultation. This is especially important to the Vivid Foundry team because we want the stories to be informed and inspired by real, lived experiences, especially bringing a voice to those from marginalized communities!
Beginnings
I knew that I always wished to tell video game stories about the challenge of fighting for democracy from the civilians’ perspective. There are so many riveting tales that can come from philosophical questions of freedom and justice, and I am excited to explore this in gameplay and narrative choices. I came from a political science and cinema studies background in university, so I’ve always had this desire to make philosophies and theories feel fascinating and entertaining. Starting a game studio meant the ultimate challenge of exploring different roles while working on such heady themes with amazing and talented people.
Challenges
One of the biggest challenges is not having the resources for the substantial market research that a studio with a publisher or a larger studio may have. Even when I am fortunate enough to connect with industry mentors and studio owners who share their knowledge and expertise, the marketplace can change within months because it’s so fast-paced. Since I must balance my time between development, marketing, administration, and business planning, it’s easy for a more “unknown quantity” like market analysis and marketing to fall behind. It’s also difficult to release games that’s on-trend. Even though we’re very proud of how polished our core game mechanics are and how timeless our storytelling is, there’s a lot more luck involved when we have so little market analysis to guide our marketing strategies.
Benefits
Really unique ideas get quickly floated to the top at our dev team! And everyone has such a major impact on the game and how it’s perceived. For example, Seamus Ly, our Lead Developer, has put such an indelible mark on the game with the scenes that he did camera work on, notably a car chase scene and a hostage scene, and he also worked on numerous backend tools that made the level design possible. Additionally, since we’re looking at our progress together during sprint meetings, it feels great to validate together how elements of the game feel!
Advice
I’d give myself the advice to take care of my health better. I wrote so much in Solace State’s fictional game story itself about the characters’ mental health while they grow in their character arcs, but I barely gave myself that space to be compassionate to myself when I am stressed and under pressure. I’m my own worst critic, though. Overcoming this is a progress, and it takes some real, hard work.
Memories
Going to both in-person events and streaming events and chatting with folks who are excited about our game is just the best.
Another deeply impactful memory is the process of interviewing protesters and advocates for human rights to help the game narrative be much more resonant and lived in. Those are some memories that I won’t ever forget because they matter to me on such a human level.
Another studio making an appearance on this list with a game set to release in the near future, Vivid Foundry’s CEO and creative director Allan Cudicio, saw his debut title hit early access in December of last year. While the team is still in the midst of development, Cudicio was able to slip away long enough to give me some insight into his studio.
The Team
We were just about five people, and we are now more than double that. Twin Drums, on top of being a black and queer owned studio, has always been a majority women and non-binary company.
Beginnings
Twin Drums was born from my desire to tell more Black and Afrocentric stories in games. After attempting with varying degrees of success to tell such stories in larger organizations, I realized that starting my own studio was the best way forward.
Challenges
Fundraising can be very challenging, as well as finding the right balance between senior and junior folks (which is especially important if you want to hire more diverse teams)
Benefits
Agility is one – things can be pivoted and discussed quickly. Company culture is also easier to maintain when everyone knows each other.
Advice
Never ever compromise on your company values. Things will get tough, but eventually, they always get better. Trust me.
Memories
It’s hard to pick one, but probably some of the feedback of underrepresented folks (Blacks, Queers, Plus-sized folks) saying how they felt seen through our game.
33 Immortals
Thunder Lotus
In all honesty, I was in shock when Thunder Lotus’ name popped up in Microsoft’s summer showcase last year. And then I almost fell over when I saw the one-time Spiritfarer developer was making an action game set in hell. Stephan Logier, creative director at Thunder Lotus, has a lot of explaining to do. Thankfully, he came prepared.
The Team
Twenty people are working on the 33 Immortals dev team. The team was built from the ground up over time since 2018, with the goal of developing an online multiplayer game. It’s a charming collective of talented individuals who share a passion for creating beautiful and distinctive online games with a soul.
There are actually two development teams working in parallel within the Thunder Lotus studio. The founding dev team has been working together since 2014 and most recently produced the cozy management game Spiritfarer. We actively share knowledge and expertise across teams, drawing constant inspiration from the incredible work happening here.
Challenges
We are developing a game designed for 33 players, but our team is not large enough to conduct comprehensive testing with the full player count. Initially, we looped in the studio’s second dev team for play sessions, but during the first year, even that didn’t amount to 33 players, making it insufficient for comprehensive testing. Consequently, we focused our testing efforts on specific aspects of the game. Over time, the Thunder Lotus team scaled beyond 33 members, allowing us to finally playtest the game with the intended player count.
Being a small team, we face limitations in dedicating ample time and resources to every aspect of game development. Our goal is to create the best possible game, emphasizing what truly matters to the player and striving for uniqueness and high quality. The decision of which features to prioritize is challenging, as we aim to ensure that every addition to the game has a significant impact on the player experience. Fortunately, the 33 Immortals team is highly agile, with members possessing diverse technical and artistic skill sets. We collaborate closely to find innovative solutions for creating content and implementing features.
Beginnings
William Dubé, CEO of Thunder Lotus: In 2014, I quit my job as a mobile game designer to put a game on Kickstarter.
At the time, I had no idea what the game was, just that I wanted to make a PC indie game. I had been watching all these projects achieve huge success on the crowdfunding platform and was playing all these great indie games, like Rogue Legacy, Hotline Miami, Super Meat Boy, Binding of Isaac, Minecraft, etc., and I thought to myself, “Why not me?”
Luckily, I had a bunch of friends who could help with the campaign, with art, animation, music and putting the actual Kickstarter video together. After 6 months of work (I spent 3 planning), the campaign went live! Thanks to support from friends and family, we were able to get a solid first 24 hours and the rest was history.
Looking back, I was in a quite fortunate position: the job I had had previously was for a social game start-up that had been founded by AAA veterans. I had so many people with tons of experience to learn from. Working in a start-up was immensely beneficial as well, as I was able to absorb learnings from the ups and down of the entrepreneurial life (though it was as an employee). I had tremendous support from my parents, who both had entrepreneurial families, so lots to learn from there. My father still works with me as our accountant and financial advisor. And finally, a wonderful girlfriend, now fiancée and mother of my children, who was with me every step of the way.
Benefits
One significant advantage of working with a smaller team is the ability to foster an agile decision-making process. In my experience, having previously been part of teams exceeding eight hundred people spread across different studios worldwide, coordinating efforts to create a single game often led to complex and lengthy decision processes. In contrast, with 33 Immortals being a smaller team, it enables swift decision-making across all facets of game development. Each team member’s contribution holds importance for the game’s success, and we emphasize both craftsmanship and ownership. Efficient communication and quick decision-making prove to be invaluable assets when tackling the challenges associated with developing our “pick-up and raid” approach to the roguelike genre.
Another significant advantage of working with a small team, in my opinion, is the ability to listen and reflect on direct feedback from anyone on the team. It provides a more human-centric approach to collaboration. As a Creative Director, I am committed to ensuring that all good ideas find their way into the game. The smaller team size allows me to engage with and learn from every team member’s perspective on the game. This approach provides me with a deeper understanding of the diverse viewpoints regarding the game’s dynamics, a crucial element, in my opinion, for developing multiplayer cooperative experiences that facilitate unexpected situations and player-driven narratives.
Advice
The advice I would give to my past self would be: “Hey! Creating a fun, stable, and visually appealing multiplayer game while simultaneously building a team is a process that requires time!”
Memories
The world premiere reveal at the Xbox Games Showcase in June 2023 was an amazing moment for us. 33 Immortals was finally revealed to the world after being in development for several years. Part of the team was in the Microsoft Theater in Los Angeles, and another part was in Montreal. We all watched the summer showcase live, and we were elated to witness our game being introduced by Sarah Bond, President of Xbox, and hear the audience cheering when seeing the thirty-three-player co-op feature in our reveal trailer.
