Have you ever thought about creating your own game? If your answer is yes, then this article is definitely for you.

The Basics

It doesn’t matter who you are: an experienced developer in a studio, a student, or just a gamer. Each of us has at least once in our life thought, “What if I make my own game.” But more often than not, this thought quickly faded, and if you did remember it, you probably dismissed it as just another silly idea and went back to your daily routine. But today you are reading this article, so at least a tiny bit of interest is there, and I will tell you why you should try to make your own game at least once in your life. I will also tell you what difficulties you may encounter.

So what makes indie game development different from regular work? Yes, we make games, but huge studios like EA, Ubisoft, Sony, and others also make games. That means there are reasons why people leave such studios and start their own game. I will list the main reasons, but remember that they may vary for each person.

• Creative freedom. One of the main advantages of indie development is the freedom in thoughts and ideas. You can create a game that you have always dreamed of, even if it’s a game about pink pigs flying fighter jets. You can make your game however you want, using tools that are convenient for you. And of course, you can spend weeks fussing over some insignificant detail just because you like it, and no one will tell you anything.
• Skill development. Indie games are often developed by just a few people, or even just one person (you). Because of this, no matter what you want, you will have to deal with a variety of things, from code and graphics to sound and artificial intelligence. And by the end of developing your first game, you will be much more experienced in these things than at the beginning.
• Financial opportunities. It is understood that not every indie game becomes a successful and famous hit, but when such an opportunity arises, it is hard to resist. There are enough examples of games created by small groups of people bringing in a lot of money, for example Undertale, Hollow Knight, Valheim, or Manor Lords.
• Personal story. Sometimes, game development is an opportunity to tell a personal story or express your feelings and experiences. Such games often resonate with players and create a strong emotional connection.

Before you go and start making a game, you need to come up with the main idea. What will your game be about? Will it be scary or fun, a shooter or a platformer, centered around which hero? Or maybe it will be without a hero at all? If you already have answers to these questions, then congratulations. If not, try to remember what games you enjoy playing. If you don’t play games that often, try to think about movies or books. Very often developers draw inspiration from other media sources and games should not limit your knowledge base. I will give you just one piece of advice – don’t make a dream game with MMO elements. Of course, everyone would like to create their own WoW, but know that this game was made and is being made by hundreds of people and for developers in the range of 1-10, the chances are approximately 1:1000000.

How to Make a Game?

So, you are already motivated and ready to begin. But what exactly should you start with?

• Find a team. I’m sure that there are many wonderful people around you who would not mind trying to make a game with you. It could be a spouse, a friend, or just a colleague from work. Approach them and tell them about your brilliant idea. Then think about who will be responsible for writing the story, creating graphics, writing code, and so on. Of course, you can make a game on your own, but it’s more fun and likely that each of you will motivate each other not to give up and keep moving forward.
• Choose an engine. There are a lot of discussions about which engine to choose, Unity or Unreal Engine. But I won’t discuss that here. If you want, search “Unity vs UE” on Google or YouTube and see for yourself. I can also recommend looking at Godot (completely free and just as good as Unity), RPG Maker, Game Maker, or Ren’Py if you want to create a visual novel. It doesn’t matter if you can program or not, there is a tool for everyone!
• Create a prototype. I suggest trying to quickly implement your main idea using cubes to see if it’s interesting to play or not. But if you have the same problem as me and want to start working with some graphics already, you can download 3D characters from Mixamo and look for 3D models on sites like Sketchfab or free3d. If your game is 2D, use neural networks, like DALLE-3. Just promise that you will draw everything yourself later.
• Keep going. If your prototype seems even slightly interesting, continue developing it and sooner or later, you will have a full-fledged game. If not, don’t give up and try again. You can change the camera view, art style, speed, or difficulty of your game and then it may reveal unexpected aspects.

Sooner or later, you may have questions similar to “How do I do X thing?” Do not worry if you do not know the answer. Many forums (forum.unity or forums.unrealengine), YouTube channels, or thematic chats on Reddit can come to your aid. And if you are very brave, you can find an experienced developer on X (Twitter) or LinkedIn and send them your question in private messages. But I didn’t tell you that. The main thing is not to forget that you are not alone and indie development is a huge community of people united by one idea – making games.

Let the World Know

Who would have thought, but creating a game is only half the battle. Now you need to make other people want to play your game, and how to do that is not so obvious. And here you have 2 options: find a publisher, which we will talk about shortly, or do it yourself.

As soon as you have some gameplay or have drawn a cool picture for the game, urgently run to Reddit or X to show it to people. You may think “but my game is not ready to show to anyone yet” and I will tell you “you are wrong!”. There are several reasons to do this. One of them is theory testing – if your mechanics or picture really look interesting, then people will like it too and they will leave their opinion in the comments. This way you will get timely feedback from your target audience and get a boost of motivation to continue making the game. The second reason is visibility. As I mentioned earlier, we are not huge well-known companies to enchant millions of people with just one trailer and make everyone talk about our game. We are a small and unknown team. Therefore, the more often and the sooner we start showing our game, the more potential buyers we will have at release.

If posting a few screenshots and gifs is not enough for you, you can go further and create a channel on YouTube or TikTok specifically for your game. On this channel, you can conduct development DevBlogs, release trailers of your game, or some separate videos that are relevant to the theme of your game. By the way, about trailers, don’t worry that they don’t look as high quality as those from large studios. It is worth noting that trailers are made by separate studios with dozens of professional CG artists, producers, and managers. In fact, players will even be happy to see real, non-CGI gameplay of the game, as they will definitely understand whether they want to play your game or not. Otherwise, they may feel deceived.

You Need a Publisher

If you think about it, in order to promote a game, you need to spend almost all of your free time. Not everyone may like this, because “hey, I still have to make the game”. And when you are making a game, it may suddenly turn out that you and your team do not know everything and you need to ask other people to help you. And people want to be rewarded for their work, and yes, we are talking about money. So what to do and where to find the time and money to spend on the game?

And there is a way out – publishers. Publishers are companies that sign a contract with you and can provide you with both financial assistance and marketing, in exchange for a percentage of the revenue from the sales of your game. Sometimes a publisher may obtain full rights to your game, including the brand. If you do not want to find yourself in such a situation, I advise you to carefully read the contract before signing it. There are also investors, but I advise not to confuse them with publishers, even though both help you in development. An investor is a person or company that gives you X amount of money, and expects you to pay them back that X amount plus a % after a certain period of time.

What are the types of publishers? There are major publishers who expect your game to bring in multi-million dollar profits: Sony, Microsoft, Paradox, or Gearbox Publishing. And there are more indie-friendly publishers who will gladly publish your indie game: Team17, 11 bit Studios, TinyBuild, Devolver Digital. If you want, you can visit this link, where most of the publishers are listed and divided into various categories.

A Confident Victory

And then, one day, the moment comes when your game is ready, you publish the game on Steam (hopefully you have already prepared the page in advance), people play it and leave reviews about whether they like your game or not. So what’s next, is that all?

Not everything. Now you need to start reading reviews of your game very carefully and react to them. You will have to fix bugs that players find, and if everything is going very badly, then you may have to redo even individual parts of your game. If you are lucky, you can release DLC or just new content to motivate old players to return to the game and new ones to buy it. And as soon as you are ready to let go of your creation, you can start a new game. It could be a sequel or something completely new. In any case, it will be another interesting episode in your life that you will remember with a smile.

Well, I hope I have motivated you a little and you will at least try to make your own little game. I will be happy to wait for them on the expanses of Steam, Playstation, Xbox or Nintendo. Good luck to you!