5 tips for no-bull indie game design
Game Developer
OCTOBER 24, 2024
Solo VR dev Zander Dejah, formerly gameplay programmer on Vader Immortal, explores finding the fun with Vendetta Forever.
This site uses cookies to improve your experience. By viewing our content, you are accepting the use of cookies. To help us insure we adhere to various privacy regulations, please select your country/region of residence. If you do not select a country we will assume you are from the United States. View our privacy policy and terms of use.
Game Developer
OCTOBER 24, 2024
Solo VR dev Zander Dejah, formerly gameplay programmer on Vader Immortal, explores finding the fun with Vendetta Forever.
Game Developer
NOVEMBER 1, 2023
Indie designers and artists discuss different ways to make sexuality and intimacy more common in game design.
This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.
Game Dev Unchained
MAY 9, 2023
The Transformative Landscape of Game Development: A Deep Dive with Willem Delventhal As a digital ecosystem thrives and transforms at a rapid pace, a recent conversation with game designer and educator Willem Delventhal offered insights into the evolving realm of game development.
PreMortem.Games
JANUARY 10, 2024
Some publishers now accept games that have undergone Kickstarter campaigns, emphasizing a focus on future collaboration and development potential. Some even engage in Kickstarter campaigns for indie games or support them financially. Kickstarter is viewed as a proof of concept and demand, offering valuable insights”, says Liebe.
Game Wisdom
MAY 25, 2023
The Clash of Choices in Game Design Josh Bycer josh@game-wisdom.com One of the many balancing acts of game design is the act of creating cool, interesting, unique, abilities for the player to use, and then balancing said abilities within the scope and design of your game.
PreMortem.Games
OCTOBER 2, 2023
Midnight Girl , from indie studio Italic , oozes French cool. Funny then that the game is made in Copenhagen, Denmark. Pedersen is the programmer and CEO of the company and Ryder takes on the roles of game director, graphics artist, musician and game designer.
PreMortem.Games
OCTOBER 25, 2024
If there ever was a fitting metaphor for the trials and tribulations that indie developers face while creating their debut game, it’s Ascending Inferno , the upcoming release by Australian developer Oppolyon Studio. As first-time indie developers, their journey mirrors the very game they’ve crafted.
GamesIndustry.biz
JULY 8, 2024
Jennifer and Bjorn Pankratz – who previously served Piranha Bytes as story and game designer and creative director, respectively – hope to "develop immersive and fantastic indie games " at their new start-up, Pithead, which was formed on July 4, 2024.
Ask a Game Dev
AUGUST 5, 2024
I think you have the wrong idea about what game designers do. We're not project leads that pitch entire games, we're [ content creators ] that build the bits of specific content in games - the spells, the monsters, the fights, the classes, the races, the quests, the environments, the stats, the companions, and so on.
PreMortem.Games
OCTOBER 28, 2024
Set in a beautiful, Slavic-inspired world, Selfloss by Kazakhstan-based indie studio Goodwin Games is an adventure that explores themes of grief, healing, and resilience. ” Epic MegaGrant Developing a game in Kazakhstan poses its own set of challenges, as Khoroshavin explains.
Game Development News
JUNE 20, 2023
Sophie Artemigi tells us what it’s like being a video game design master that works outside of the big companies to make weird and entertaining art that connects with people
PreMortem.Games
SEPTEMBER 26, 2024
Small teams and solo developers often produce some of the most unique and personal games, and this holds true for Rablo Games, an indie studio led by founder Pablo Coma. Six months into development, Coma accepted a job at Appeal Studios as a game designer, eventually becoming a game director.
PreMortem.Games
APRIL 24, 2024
If Triple-A games are the equivalent of Hollywood blockbuster movies and indie games are comparable to independent films, then you could call Indika by Odd Meter an arthouse experience. The game, centered on a nun grappling with the voice of the devil within her, deviates from the standard in almost every aspect.
PreMortem.Games
OCTOBER 11, 2023
The game immerses players in a captivating odyssey across worlds within worlds, beckoning them to master the art of world-leaping mechanics to uncover a cosmic mystery. Cocoon is the first venture of Geometric Interactive , a Danish indie studio founded by Carlsen and his ex-Playdead colleague, Jakob Schmid.
PreMortem.Games
AUGUST 21, 2023
What began as a casual endeavor gradually evolved into a fully-fledged studio as the game’s success solidified their path. Now, with the new game A Void Hope coming up on almost 3 years of development, Forslind finds himself juggling his roles as both CEO and Game Designer of his company called Elden Pixels.
PreMortem.Games
SEPTEMBER 23, 2024
In the indie game dev scene, the use of AI is often met with suspicion and disdain. Grandmother of ChatGPT Her vision for 1001 Nights started during a game design course in 2020 at Goldsmiths , where she thought about making something based on natural language interactions, using a story everyone knows. “I
PreMortem.Games
AUGUST 16, 2023
“We as a team learned from The Ancients to pace our enthusiasm and scale the game to the size of the studio. There are plenty of indie developers that say this and it’s possibly the most crucial part of game design and development.
PreMortem.Games
SEPTEMBER 17, 2024
The game immerses players in a captivating odyssey across worlds within worlds, beckoning them to master the art of world-leaping mechanics to uncover a cosmic mystery. Cocoon is the first venture of Geometric Interactive , a Danish indie studio founded by Carlsen and his ex-Playdead colleague, Jakob Schmid.
PreMortem.Games
JULY 8, 2024
His turning point came in 2019 at Comic Con Africa, where he discovered a Game Design degree at Wits University’s stand. “I However, it still took a nudge from a dreadful experience in an Applied Mathematics class to propel him to switch from Computer Science to Game Design. It was great! I had so much fun with it.
PreMortem.Games
SEPTEMBER 6, 2024
Midnight Girl , from indie studio Italic , oozes French cool. Funny then that the game is made in Copenhagen, Denmark. Pedersen is the programmer and CEO of the company and Ryder takes on the roles of game director, graphics artist, musician and game designer.
PreMortem.Games
MARCH 15, 2024
In Guntouchables by Danish indie developer Game Swing , enemies randomly power up from the upgrades that a team of four players can’t lift out of the levels. This leads to some unexpected and quite frankly, explosive situations as the game progresses. Game Swing was founded in 2013 by five Danish game design students.
PreMortem.Games
SEPTEMBER 30, 2024
Welcome to the unsettling world of Zoochosis by indie game studio Clapperheads. The teaser trailer of the game, which featured a heavily mutated giraffe scurrying over the enclosure, received over 10 million views across YouTube. The game has since gathered well over 200.000 wishlists on Steam.
The Bottom Feeder
AUGUST 9, 2023
Way back in February, I wrote a big article about indie phenomenon Vampire Survivors. It was a fun cheap game that is still fun and cheap. It's also a charming, scruffy take on the classic Twin-Stick Shooter genre, great for mindless gaming, with a price that is effectively zero. Brotato has a great design. A great idea.
PreMortem.Games
OCTOBER 30, 2024
I have a lot of respect for solo indie developers, but I often struggle with the limitations and it is not what I want to be doing long-term. On one hand, I get to do what I love to do, especially game design, storytelling, and art. Will you ever work in a team or is it only solo for you? How do you deal with that? “
PreMortem.Games
JANUARY 24, 2024
Physics-based 2D platformer Bionic Bay is a collaboration between the Finnish one-man-studio Mureena and Taiwanese indie game company Psychoflow Studio. The game started as a demo shown on Reddit, but picked up momentum when Badland art director Juhana Myllys offered to mix and match his distinct artwork with the gameplay.
PreMortem.Games
APRIL 22, 2024
Welcome to the unsettling world of Zoochosis by indie game studio Clapperheads. The teaser trailer of the game, which featured a heavily mutated giraffe scurrying over the enclosure, received over 10 million views across YouTube. The game has since gathered well over 200.000 wishlists on Steam.
PreMortem.Games
APRIL 12, 2023
Set in a storybook kingdom filled with magical creatures, kings and castles, the game gives players the opportunity to build their own kingdom and find their true love. First time game developers Max Nielsen and João Martinez form Grenaa Games , a Sweden based indie game studio. “We
PreMortem.Games
MAY 10, 2023
Canadian indie game development studio Excellent Rectangle just launched their debut title Tape to Tape on Steam Early Access. Combining the world of ice hockey with a roguelite may seem like an odd match, but for game designer Hugo Julien and his fellow co-founders Jean-Nicolas and Mathieu Fortin, it was a natural choice.
PreMortem.Games
MAY 21, 2024
Set in a storybook kingdom filled with magical creatures, kings and castles, the game gives players the opportunity to build their own kingdom and find their true love. First time game developers Max Nielsen and João Martinez form Grenaa Games , a Sweden based indie game studio. “We
Radiator Blog
OCTOBER 13, 2022
It takes good parts of other good games, and skilled talented people spent lots of time and money on it. But if you're already familiar with all the game design deities invoked here, there probably aren't enough design risks nor genuinely subversive ideas. The cult of the game industry is most powerful of all.
Game Wisdom
JULY 2, 2023
The Emergent Design of Scholar of the Arcane Arts Josh Bycer josh@game-wisdom.com width="560" height="314" allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen" For this developer interview on the Perceptive Podcast, I spoke with Endo who for their first indie dev game is working on Scholar of the Arcane Arts, a game that combines roguelike and emergent design.
PreMortem.Games
MAY 1, 2023
BitCake Studio , an indie game development studio based in Brazil, is celebrating its 10th year in the industry. Eduardo Lamhut, the company’s main Game Designer and Creative Director of the upcoming game Atomic Picnic , explains how the company started.
Game Designing
SEPTEMBER 21, 2023
Lesson 1: Game Designer vs Game Programmer Summary In this video, we’re breaking down the jobs of game designers and game programmers, showing you how sometimes, they wear each other’s hats, especially in small teams. Now in a game development team, there are lots of other roles as well.
CG Spectrum
NOVEMBER 24, 2022
He decided to start his own indie game development studio, Overwrite Interactive , and create a video game from scratch. For Alan's video game to come to fruition, he needed a team of capable artists to help him. Game Designer and second CG Spectrum recruit, Alexios, joined the team from Greece in February this year.
Game Dev Unchained
SEPTEMBER 18, 2023
“The community’s voice is invaluable; it helps shape the game,” he remarked. This iterative approach to game design – release, get feedback, improve, repeat – can be a pragmatic strategy for developers to bootstrap their way through the development process, all while nurturing a passionate player base. .
PreMortem.Games
FEBRUARY 15, 2023
The game is the debut of Swiss indie game studio Naraven Games. Co founder and writer Julia Jean found inspiration for the game in her fascination for the ordinary. Rubber duck “The puzzles and game design flowed naturally from narrative ideas like ‘we should be able to delete everything!’.
Game Wisdom
JUNE 15, 2023
How Poor Pacing Ruins Your Gameplay Josh Bycer josh@game-wisdom.com A unique advantage I have with covering so many indie games each week is that it gives me the chance to experience multiple intros and openings to titles.
iXie gaming
FEBRUARY 11, 2024
These adjustments touch upon various facets such as gameplay, user interface, and overall game design. While most of the decisions are made from within the confines of the development studio itself, developers place considerable importance on a specific form of game testing to gather invaluable insights.
PreMortem.Games
APRIL 10, 2023
Set in a storybook kingdom filled with magical creatures, kings and castles, the game gives players the opportunity to build their own kingdom and find their true love. First time game developers Max Nielsen and João Martinez form Grenaa Games , a Sweden based indie game studio. “We
PreMortem.Games
APRIL 5, 2023
Set in a storybook kingdom filled with magical creatures, kings and castles, the game gives players the opportunity to build their own kingdom and find their true love. First time game developers Max Nielsen and João Martinez form Grenaa Games , a Sweden based indie game studio. “We
Logic Simplified
OCTOBER 7, 2024
Today, with Cascadeur fully launched, I’m thrilled to have received a 2-year indie license as a reward for my early participation. Logic Simplified Logic Simplified is a leading game design and development company with 12+ years of experience in creating top-notch games.
The Bottom Feeder
APRIL 8, 2022
A title like Elden Ring is very useful for people who care about video games because it's a valuable reality check. Nobody has worse ideas about video game design than fussy video game designers (myself included), and people who write about games are generally free to say all kinds of nonsense without fear of contradiction.
PreMortem.Games
JANUARY 29, 2024
More and more South-Korean indie game developers take aim at the PC and console market. Set in a New York office building in the 1990’s, the game plays out as a action-filled mini series, including cutscenes that unravel the plot. “To Si-wooks’s deep passion for game development inspired Hee-sang to take a leap of faith.
PreMortem.Games
AUGUST 9, 2023
But the end is here, the game is out now on steam. Every man and his dog has made an indie game but no one has painted a game yet. A point of interest in the indie game sea.” Naoum calls himself a jack of all trades, a master of none, so going solo on game development made a lot of sense.
Expert insights. Personalized for you.
We have resent the email to
Are you sure you want to cancel your subscriptions?
Let's personalize your content