Tiny Glade is out!

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Guys,

This kind of news sometimes make me think about taking a 90° turn toward being 100% full time on Game-Dev :grin: . Let me set up the context :

  • As some of you know, I’m a huge fan of procedural modeling, using Houdini Engine
  • Anastasia Opara is a funny and nice coding friend who calls herself on Tweeter a “procedural art nerd”
    image
  • During the last years, she has been proposing some nice Houdini procedural content on gumroad, as well as posting a few videos on her very modest youtube channel (only 5k subscribers, as of today)

Now, here is the crazy thing : During the last years, she has been has well working on a relaxing building procedural game : Tiny Glade

  • Released yesterday on Steam (Monday 23)
  • Sales after 2 days : 791 000 € :grin:

Yup ^^

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1 more picture that may help you taking such a decision: :smiley:

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I know :joy:
That’s why I’m still not 100% full time on GameDev :grin:

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I would not necessarily count on Operational Research but rather on marketing :wink:

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I’ve been seeing coverage of Tiny Glade - it looks awesome!

Yes, it’s tempting to take a risk and “pursue your passion”, especially when we see people we know personally who succeed big time, despite the astronomical odds. I too have a friend who did very well with a Steam game release, Forts, and it’s still being bought and played and generating good income, even 7 years after release - a “long tail” which is also exceedingly rare for any game, let alone an indie game released on Windows only.

From what I can tell, even though many more people are making and releasing games (a lower bar to entry), when you drill down into the data, it’s still all about creating a good game - there’s still about the same number of quality games being released, and just a whole lot more junk. So, make a good game - no amount of marketing can save a bad game.

Life is short. Who dares, wins. If it inspires you, and you are prepared to sacrifice and put in the effort, then go for it!

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Not necessarily. If you make a game that you, as the developer, likes, then probably. But that is a choice you have made - knowingly or not.

The alternative is you produce a product for a market.

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Tiny Glade really does look fantastic, and it’s great to hear about success stories like Forts 2. It highlights how crucial it is to focus on quality over quantity in game development. With so many games out there, standing out requires genuine creativity and hard work.

I agree that pursuing our passions can be a leap of faith, but the potential rewards make it worthwhile. Let’s keep encouraging each other to create meaningful games and share our experiences along the way.

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WoW. Luv it. Not really my type of game but one would be a fool to not detect the amazing quality in creating an immersive and seamless user experience/interface. I bet many gamedevs could learn from this. This is absolutely top notch. You can send her my congrats :champagne: :heart_eyes:

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I’m quite aligned with what was said : to do a successful game, one needs :

  • A nice and creative idea (something “new”)
  • Quality over quantity
  • Passion put in it

To put a new thought on the table, here is my point of view : my main concern is to be able to combine two things which are hard to combine :

  • Having a new and unique idea
  • Sharing this idea “for free” with the entire world

Let me explain :
Let’s say Minecraft didn’t exist, and let’s say I had the “idea” of creating Minecraft. And let’s say on top of this, I can technically do it.

Would I succeed ?

Honeslty, most likely, not. Because I would do it on my own. I would be afraid of being stolen my “new and unique idea”. I would code the stuff on my own, getting rid of any ideas and features the (future) users would love to see in my game.

And guess what, that’s exactly NOT what Notch did. Notch (the creator of Minecraft) was giving everything for free. He has built a community where he was sharing ALL he had. People was trying his game, commenting, proposing ideas, reporting bugs, etc, etc… Months after months, thanks to this community, he shaped his game to what would become Minecraft 1.0
And when it was officially launched, well then we all know the success story.

What I mean is that, what Notch did (and MANY others who succedded, like for Tiny Glade) I struggle a lot to do.

But I’m trying to evolve :slight_smile: and that’s part of the reason why I’m very active on this community, and going a lot toward open sourcing stuffs, by the way. I’m working on accepting the fact that any of my code or ideas can be stolen, and trying to convince myself than, like an older friend of mine once said : “Nobody leaves his work and creates a company based on a stolen idea”.

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Here for my two-cents on this. Ideas cannot be stolen. If you have an idea, it’s likely a number of people on this earth have the same or a very similar one. The good idea is the one that’s worked into a project. Having an idea requires little. Working a project to completion requires A LOT.

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Disagree :wink:

“Nice” and “creative” is determined by users. You do have limited agency over them. “New”, like it or not (I don’t btw), is something old with a new colour. Therefore marketing in the sense that your target market detertimes (to a large extent) the features of your product: if they want blue, you don’t produce red. Obviously, the game you create might coincidentally align with a target market. But if you want to count on luck…

Quality over quantity: I think, eventually, quantity wins: produce lots of low effort shit games (with ads, micro transaction, all that). Spread the risk. If you only have one “quality” flag ship, if it sinks, you are done. Ok, unless you have a multi-million budget, then you can make lots of quality AAA shit games :smiley:

Passion: Then you are emotionally attached. Makes it, e.g., super hard to pull the plug if you have burnt too much money.

FYI: What I have written above I only mean in the context of profit-driven projects. The game I currently make is for the dumb reason “because I always wanted to make a game” :flushed:

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That should in my opinion be the only good reason to actually wanting to make a first game (not being an employee). That’s also why I have finally decided to try initiate my game project. But I will never want to do it alone. My goal is simply to translate the idea into a pilot that’s good enough to have others project themselves into building something based on this idea. Eventually, together, we’ll make a game (eventually not). As you say, there’s no guarantee for success. Creating ‘new’ (gameplay, user interaction) 95% of the time results in a failure. Gamers are mostly happy with what they are used to (unless they are not :dizzy_face: :wink:) Is it safer to reproduce over and over again the same gameplay and the same pattern? One could think it is but by now I would have thought that i.e. Ubisoft has the answer :rofl: :joy: Given all the efforts, time and resources needed to create a game, I think you shouldn’t do if you are not passionate. At least, if it doesn’t sell or commit… you will have worked your passion :smiley:

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We should have a place with links toward all the WIP games of people in this community :slight_smile:

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I believe this has been attempted before. I kind of recall it. But it changes all the time and maintaining this reference would be a struggle.

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Game dev is fun! Go for it if you really love it, but… every time something less positive shows up on the horizon don’t be like…

Make sure you have a solid plan, do not under evaluate efforts and avoid shortcuts :innocent:
The gaming industry is no walk in the park. It’s brutal!

Long story short:

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Especially useful for risk planning: FMEA

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The steam reviewers seemed enchanted. She hit a vein for sure.