Show HN: I got laid off from Meta and created a minor hit on Steam | Hacker News Reader

Show HN: I got laid off from Meta and created a minor hit on Steam

1,581 pointsnewobj356 comments

I was at FB/Meta from late 2013 to early 2023, mostly working in the compiler/runtime spaces. I got hit in the spring 2023 layoff wave. I immediately started making games in my newfound free time (a lifelong interest, and I even worked in AA(A?) back ca. ~2000), and in October 2023 I stumbled upon the idea of a roguelike pachinko/plinko game inspired by Luck Be A Landlord. Things snowballed quickly, I started talking to publishers, then worked like crazy through all of 2024, almost the hardest I've ever worked in my career, and launched the game in December 2024. It's sold ~200,000 units in its first 10 weeks on Steam. So it's no Balatro, but I'd still say it did very well :) AMA?

(my game is Ballionaire: https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/2667120/view/5264614...)

View on HN

Incredible work, Brian! I'm in awe of what you've done in such a short amount of time. I started an indie game company (still working on our first title) and had a few related questions if that's OK?

1) If you didn't need a salary or marketing help, would you still have signed a publishing deal? My sense is most of the publisher value lies in getting paid before the game launches, and with marketing around launch, but curious if those are wrong assumptions?

2) Early Access vs. Straight Launch - any insights about why you chose to do a full launch vs. an early access beforehand? Was it something you and the publisher discussed in detail?

3) Outside of Steam's ecosystem, how much marketing, promotion, social media, YouTube, Discord, etc. stuff did you (or the publisher) do? Do you think that pre-launch work had a sizable impact on the launch and post-launch success? Or would you say it's mostly the Steam algo making the game more visible to the right buyers as the positive reviews rolled in?

Truly kind of you to share so openly here. Already sent some of your other replies to our game team

> My sense is most of the publisher value lies in getting paid before the game launches, and with marketing around launch, but curious if those are wrong assumptions?

Don't publishers pay you a cut AFTER sales start coming in?

Yes and some provide funding during development which they recoup later. Every deal is different. Raw Fury provides funding in advance for some.

Thanks Rand!

1) It obviously varies w/ each dev's situation, but I think your sense of the value prop is a fair default one w/o context. In my case, there were four reasons: 1) having a partner to help with (to me) "the unknown unknowns" (i'm only a dev and a novice designer, literally anything else would be my first time doing it, so i figured having an experienced partner there would be wise) 2) the advance was nice just from a "bird in the hand" mindset 3) they helped me connect with a really good artist (critical to the project's success imho) 4) having a big name behind you can't hurt, and bigger publishers do have more relationships with the ecosystem (streamers, platforms, etc) to help your game succeed.

2) EA is appropriate for certain kinds of games. But I knew exactly what Ballionaire was going to be, and felt it could be achieved in a year. I knew that this mechanical space was going to be rapidly saturated, once all the games inspired by LBAL (including Balatro!) started appearing. So I was determined to get the game out before that happened, which set a certain scope and pace, obviating EA.

3) The trailers were a really good promotional tool, very effective. But most of the paid promotion was sponsored streams, not traditional "marketing" (ads). I think the game has a natural tendency for organic spread, due to its fun/simple premise, watchability/streamability, low price point, and so on. It's just an easy game to see, and say "ooh, I wanna try!" because it's instantly understood how to play, and IMHO is very inviting aesthetically.

My takeaway: Make sure your hook is glowingly radioactively good. Don't overbalance. Leave in some jank. Scope down and finish quickly. And avoid tropes. Stand out. (Of course this only works for a certain kind of game!)

How far were you into building the game before you began to approach publishers? YC speaks frequently about investing in the founders, and not the idea---but then dives right into well you need to have revenue and/or users and it's a bit of a double-standard---so I'm curious what stage you were at when you started talking to publishers and what state your product was in when you finally signed a deal.

I'm curious about this as well so I took a look at the publisher's site and found some info: https://rawfury.com/talk/ under "Game Pitches". Would still like to hear from OP on any specifics though.

"Make sure your hook is glowingly radioactively good. Don't overbalance. Leave in some jank. Scope down and finish quickly. And avoid tropes. Stand out."

Sounds like outstanding advice. I hope we can follow in your footsteps! (and thanks for the kind and comprehensive answer)

Honestly sounds like good advice for almost anything new/creative :)

RE: "Make sure your hook is glowingly radioactively good. Don't overbalance. Leave in some jank. Scope down and finish quickly. And avoid tropes. Stand out."

For games with a limited run time is it possible to balance this against Steam's 2 hour return policy? Feel like we're now trapped in a position where you can make short little proof of concepts on itch but when it comes to trying to make something professional you have to bloat it in a way to minimise people abusing that.

This is very much personal opinion but if you can blast through all of a games content within 2 hours of purchase it wasn't finished / big enough to justify a financial transaction in the first place.

Two hours is about movie or novella worth of content. Both are priced at about the same rate. Not all games have to have 10s or 100s of hours of content. Today, I expect a big(ger) part of gamers are like me: older people who like games, but can only game a few hours a week. Last non-4X game I fully played was CoD2. That was 2005.

Honestly, that could go both ways. Like I'll happily pay cost-of-small-game to watch a movie that will be over in two hours, and there's a whole category now of single-sitting games like Journey, Minit, A Short Hike, etc, that are easily able to be completed in that timeframe but are obviously worth their modest purchase price.

To some of us adult gamers with actual lives and commitments, having something that can be completed in 1-4 sittings is a huge boon, like okay this is a thing I can do without abandoning my family for the next two weeks.

I literally started a company on that thesis. It failed, but I still believe in that mission.

Were you trying to make short games or offer some kind of abridging service?

Because I've wondered about that too. Like, right now there's a pretty big dichotomy between "purchase and play a game myself" and "watch someone else play it on youtube/twitch". But it would be interesting if there was a market for a kind of interactive guided tour, like for $10 let me play the best 4-6 hours of AC:Odyssey, and that's delivered as a mod that just trims all the fat, levels me up quickly enough to hustle through the main story beats and see the good boss encounters and action set pieces.

(Ubisoft themselves sort of do this with their paid XP boosters, but that doesn't actually cut content, it just lets you skip a few hours of grinding over what is otherwise still a 40hr+ experience for most people)

I love this idea; I can no longer justify 40-100 hour playthroughs. Lots of people rave about Elden Ring but the time investment is just really offputting. I'd buy a version of it at half the price and one quarter of the playtime.

That said, I'd imagine a fair chunk of the impact of major set pieces and end bosses is that you've spent many hours to get to that point. An abridged version would have to leave bough in to allow emotional investment in the story. This is still possible.

Gamers Digest? (For those of you who remember Reader's Digest).

Perhaps I'm an outlier. I expect to pay for my personal gaming experience. But if there's some necessary part of gameplay I don't like, that's negative experience that makes the game worse for me, reducing the value of the game to me. To skip that gameplay seems like something that shouldn't cost me anything, or even get me a discount because I'm not getting some of the experience I paid for. Like say if a side dish is so bad I send it back at a restaurant. I neither expect to pay for that nor a premium for someone else to eat it for me!

So I'm not willing to pay a premium for such a thing. I don't see why the game with the bad part missing should be worth more than with the bad part present. Rather, the inverse! I'll more likely skip the game entirely and find a different one that doesn't have such mandatory grinding.

As I say maybe that's an outlying opinion since making money from this kind of thing apparently works. It it helps, I'm in the adult with family demographic and my time (rather than game purchase levels of money) is what is at a premium.

I've never bought an XP booster myself, and I feel some of the same conflict. Although I can obviously afford it, I don't think I could stomach doing this for new releases. So at most it would be something where I'd be interested after 2-3 years when all the patches are in, bugs are fixed, and review consensus has settled.

So rather than pay US$70 today for a buggy, grindy new release experience, I pay $20 in two years for the base game + $10 for the "player's digest" mod.

I expect even then it would be a tough sell, particularly having to be on PC— a lot of the market for this kind of thing would more casual console/mobile/streaming players.

I was making short games. Specifically I was trying to make games that packed the same density of concentrated entertainment as other media.

The abridgement thing sounds like a smart approach, but ultimately I've gotten more enjoyment from shorter games that don't pack the fat in to begin with.

I'll happily spend $5 on a 2 hour game. That's a better return than a movie theater ticket.

My PM perspective on this is that games are dominating the media market primarily because they are a good value proposition in our tightening economy. I think a good thing to shoot for is around 2 hours of game play per dollar spent, e.g. make it so that it's an absolute no-brainer for a customer to buy your game vs going to a movie. Replayability is a major aspect of this, look at how many hours people spent on LBAL and Vampire Survivors despite both having relatively simple mechanics.

How many people really would abuse the return policy like that? I can't imagine it's that many.

I can't find the source now but I recall reading about some game that was heavily impacted by it. I don't think it was this one but here's an example I found just now https://kotaku.com/steams-two-hour-refund-policy-forces-horr...

A big part of the issue is that a lot of people do not consider it abuse. The value of games is so heavily burned into a lot of people's minds as being a dollars to hours ratio and Steam having this blanket policy could be perceived to be endorsing that perspective.

In your case, what do you think your glowing hook was?

"Don't overbalance" is an invitation for Spiffing Brit to play yet another perfectly balanced game :-)

> most of the publisher value lies in getting paid before the game launches, and with marketing around launch

Reading this, I'm wondering if there is something like a publisher for other types of Software than games? Looks a decent deal. No?

Isn't that exactly what vcs do?

Funny that, of all the questions to ask, you of all people ask marketing questions, Rand :)

200,000 units is a far cry from just a 'minor hit' - congratulations!

During the project, what was the biggest instinct you had that was ultimately validated by its success, but still surprised you? What was a lesson you learned that you didn't expect? How was working with a publisher? What did they do right and what did they do wrong?

Honest answer? Dancing stick figure guy on the title screen. I did it very early in the project, in a fugue state at 3am. It lingered and lingered there, with ppl wondering "Is this real? Is this the actual title screen?" and luckily by the end I think everyone had drank enough psychedelic koolaid to agree - stick figure man stays. The artist made some better art for his hands/feet, and that was that. He's divisive, but everybody at least remembers him :)

Lesson learned that I didn't expect - hmm. Ah, one good one: I spent a LOT of time worrying about stuff being "OP" or degenerately good. Well, turns out, people like OP stuff, or degenerately good stuff, at least in single player score attack games. My biggest lesson learned on the project: people experience your game individually. If they find something broken, in their head, they are the one to have found something broken, and it feels good. You don't have to design for the entire community at once. Don't over-balance your game. Embrace the jank.

> Embrace the jank

Love this! I wish you would be been involved with the release team for Helldivers II.

The minute I read “dancing stick figure” I knew exactly what game we’re talking about.

I’m not a stoner and am not really into stoner culture but I’ve watched that figure dance for like 10 mins once, entranced by it. I dunno what exactly it is, but it’s just an absolute home run.

I’m not joking, I’d pay for an app that’s literally just that guy dancing to some music.

Did the dancing stick is Meta AI applied to some stick like this research paper ?

https://ai.meta.com/blog/ai-dataset-animation-drawings/

It's a stock animation from mixamo :P

Stock assets: the first “AI”. Honestly still a better option than AI for most anything in game dev with a few workflow-oriented exceptions.

Stock assets were still made by humans, even if the effects of a poopular stock asset remain similar.

Stock assets are nothing to do with AI?

They both let you have assets in your game without making them.

That classification would mark things like libraries and packages as AI. Hell, that'd make my house AI.

It’s a metaphor.

Code libraries and your house do not fall in the category of "things that give you game assets without you having to make them" because they do not give you game assets without you having to make them. (Code is not considered a game asset.)

Asset packages are in the category of "things that give you game assets without you having to make them", because they give you game assets without you having to make them. The assets in the package are, by definition, stock assets.

Sure they do: stock assets are the most obvious market that AI is taking direct aim at in games development, and the AI tools on the game dev market were largely trained on stock assets. If you need anything from a sound library to a 3D model to an animation to an icon set to background music to network gameplay code… sure you can get it through stock asset marketplaces… but AI tool vendors have ingested many of these stock assets and hope game developers will buy their tools to generate assets rather than buying the stock assets they built their tools with.

Balanced games feel like a chore: you just sit through them, trying to avoid those mistakes that aren't balanced away and there's never any hope for some positive discovery. Decisions do not matter and the pro-balancing crowd even thinks that this is a feature, not a bug.

Yes, discovering the city-per-tile problem in Civ would ruin the game for you (I never did). That clearly is the bad kind of overpowered. But sending that single chariot to the edge of the known universe before it gets constrained by phalanxes? Awesome.

Agree. Over-balancing everything in single player games sucks out the fun.

"Single-player" here is key - minutely perfect balancing is often a necessity in multiplayer games, and I suspect sometimes that mentality is carried over to single-player experiences without stopping to question it.

The trouble with the internet is that it's hard to stop competitive mentality leaking in; the game may be single player, but there are lots of people playing it, and they can watch each other and show off.

(this basically killed puzzle / mystery box games, which survive only in a weird corner for not-very-online people playing on mobile)

I think that's a great lesson about art: trying to polish things into "objectively good" doesn't work, while human connection and weirdness and jank stay in the memory.

> Ah, one good one: I spent a LOT of time worrying about stuff being "OP" or degenerately good. Well, turns out, people like OP stuff, or degenerately good stuff, at least in single player score attack games.

One of the greatest joys in score-attack games like Ballionaire is discovering certain combos that feel brokenly good.

During one of my early playthroughs, I got some combo that would spawn a crazy number of balls on every drop. The game would seriously lag for about half a second while the playing field absolutely exploded with balls. It was incredibly entertaining!

https://youtu.be/blHxSe9I9WQ

Some developers see this happen and will nerf things into the ground to prevent them, but that's an absolute fun-destroying choice. In a PVP game, yeah, absolutely you should prevent broken builds like that. But a single-player score attack? Nah. Leave that in.

Was it your intention that the dancing stick figure gives people nightmares?

I suppose that when your previous employer has over 3B users (FB alone, not even counting IG and WA and whatever else they have going on), 200k might seem like a small number of people :P

But I agree. OP, 200k is a hugely respectable number for a game or any piece of software for that matter. I’d be happy if 200 people used any of mine, never mind the k :p Congrats! :)

Hey, Meta has something like 67k employees for those 3.35 billion users (for simple stats I could find), and thats. That's 50k users to an employee. I think this dev is doing quite well by those standards. :)

even with a publisher, 200k copies at launch for a very small indie team is easily on pace for the 1%.

https://intoindiegames.com/features/how-much-money-do-steam-...

TBH I forgot the 1% was so high, even for an indie. But network effects are crazy, so getting to 700k will eventually be a thing.

That article is 5 years old. Sadly the article lacks a date, but you can tell because it claims Steam is 15 years old, when it had its 22 anniversary last year.

Next that 7M number is for self-published games. Aka, games where the dev is listed as the publisher. OP has Raw Fury as his publisher. Next Raw Fury posted their contract publically a while ago: it is a pretty harsh contract. 50/50 split, but there is a profit ratio baked into the recoup which is super odd. If OP had held off, did his own marketing for a bit, then negotiated with publishers once he had traction, he might have gotten a better deal.

The challenge for Indie devs with publishers is how the good publishers ask a pretty high take. Meanwhile the good deals come from new publishers with poor or no track record. Personally we signed with Hooded Horse which publically offers better deals and is highly effective. The trade off being Hooded Horse is famously quite selective.

Thus honestly: self publishing is the default-best choice. We did that for our last game and effectively replaced a publisher by just spending a bunch on marketing.

Yeah I failed to find a date but figured it wouldn't be severely out of date. If anything, that would mean the thresholds would get lower and Steam games more games being submitted. It's a

>Next that 7M number is for self-published games. Aka, games where the dev is listed as the publisher.

That's fair, I can conflate "indie" in the colloquial sense with "indie" in the traditional one. I suppose 1% would be a sttretch if competing with any game with a publisher (indie label or AAA).

>it is a pretty harsh contract. 50/50 split, but there is a profit ratio baked into the recoup which is super odd. If OP had held off, did his own marketing for a bit, then negotiated with publishers once he had traction, he might have gotten a better deal.

Yeah, I figured the article was referring to gross revenue after steam's cut. Itd be nearly impossible to truly guess at all the other cuts taken out from publishers, tools, and labor. Money made =/= money in your pocket.

>Thus honestly: self publishing is the default-best choice. We did that for our last game and effectively replaced a publisher by just spending a bunch on marketing.

It's still a tough choice, and really comes down to the person. There's a lot of technical and artistic people out there that can make a high quality game but can't sell water in a desert. If money is your primary goal, it may still be worth giving up 50,70+% just so people know your game exists to begin with. From there, the momentum should either encourage to self-publish next time or lets you seek a better deal. MArketing also tends to be one of those areas where many people feel they can do it themselves and then completely corner themselves in the end (as a certain YC startup recently learned).

I think the true best choice is self-publish, but partner up with someone who knows how to sell (assuming you're getting great feedback on your game. Can't polish a turd). A singular media marketer shouldn't ask anything close to what a "good" publisher will offer.

You are correct:

    "datePublished":"2020-08-06T07:12:56+00:00"

If an article has no visible date, I often just check the source of the document, because most of these blogs use a generic CMS that puts the date in the code anyways.

He mentioned the publisher got him the artist, which is a very big component in the games success.

We had someone request a wiki on wiki.gg for Ballionaire, and it's at https://ballionaire.wiki.gg/wiki/Ballionaire_Wiki. Assuming you have structured data easily accessible, you can pretty easily use the MediaWiki API to create some automated pages for each of the items and any other entities that should have pages. Example repo: https://github.com/RheingoldRiver/sorcerer-update That repo is assuming that some "infobox" templates already exist, which you can find documentation about here: https://support.wiki.gg/wiki/DRUID_infoboxes or feel free to email me (address in bio) if you'd want to create the pages assuming that the infobox template already exists and have me make said template for you!

Thank you for saying what game everyone is talking about.

I have it on my wishlist already.

There's also a small subreddit for it if anyone is interested: https://www.reddit.com/r/Ballionaire

Bit of a tangent but nice seeing you here and offering support. I remember your name from my time when I admin'd one of Liquipedia's wikis (IIRC you were going through some hardship with one wiki provider or something at the time), happy to see you're still kicking in that area!

Not to get too personal, but how did working on a video game affect your personal life? If you worked from home, do you have a wife/kids? Was anyone upset or disappointed you were working on a game and not getting another job at a big tech company?

I don’t mean to be critical, but I’ve always faced pushback working on startups/side projects, and I’m wondering how that was for you?

It was discussed with my family (wife/kid) that this was going to be my near singular focus for a year, and it basically was. Luckily everyone was supportive because they knew how long I'd wanted to do this, and the fact that I already had a "good idea" with some proof on my hands certainly made it easier. Having traction helped convinced everyone, myself included, that it would be a worthwhile investment of time, and not just "fucking around in the basement." No one was disappointed that I was not getting another big tech job. I'd just spent 20 years in FAANG.

Honestly very impressive to plan a one-year game project and have it take one year!

How many planned features did you have to cut? ;)

None. What I delivered is what was in the contract.

Awesome!

What a concept. Like back in the cartridge game system era, where what the developers burned onto the ROM was the final game.

I think people doing gamedev who have/had a day job writing business software have a tendency to eschew all the boring scope/time management/actually shipping stuff because being able to just write the code you want and spend however long you want polishing it is so freeing.

Seeing someone come from the corporate world to gamedev and seemingly carry over all the right lessons and keep the discipline is pretty awesome, kudos.

It's really hard even with coporate experience. But given that OP:

1. already had gamedev experience on top of tech experience

2. kept his technical scope very low for his assumed skill level (2d game, Godot engine for fast iterations, full-time focus and scheduling)

3. Was relatively stress-free in terms of his personal situation

I can understand a pretty smooth development period.

Your partner stops you from working on startups and side projects? Come join the other 99% of us not working at a big tech company, life is still fulfilling, honest!

I've mostly worked in startups and on side-projects since I met my partner, so I'm fine there, but I think in many situaitons it's perfectly reasonable for a partner to push back on it. If your family relies on your income (and you don't have a decade of FAANG earnings saved) then it needs to be a family decision. Likewise if you have kids then anything that involves extremely long hours that prevents you from doing your share of childcare is also something that isn't an automatic yes.

There's a world between "big tech" and "startup", and between "startup" and "solo project that won't bring any money for a year (if ever)". What the OP did is much more less usual than working at big tech.

The most pushback you get while building it if there is no money coming in. They see you working a lot, being stressed, but still struggling financially, so from their side it's hard to see the benefit of doing it.

I mean video games are notoriously competitive, and very little money comes in until it launches after a year of building. It was not impossible OP was going to launch to 4000 customers.

I think OP’s story is inspiring, and I’m happy to hear he had support, but I could also see a wife being upset her previously highly paid husband is working on a video game, and presumably a low salary from a publisher (if any).

When I was working on my previous startup we had a couple customers and a small investment, but I got intense pushback from a female friend who would often come and live with me. She couldn’t stand the fact I was passing on a high salary to work on something I cared about, and we weren’t even dating. The 1.5 years+ she referred to me as unemployed lol

Again though I don’t mean to be critical of OP or his dream, I was just curious about the social dynamic he encountered.

he worked at facebook for 10 years, so there is a lack of distraction in relationships that don't have financial stress if this was managed only moderately well in those 10 years

A facebook compensation package for 10 years + the pandemic rally. any trade and speculation with a 6 figure account would be multiple seven figures

its important to put these things into perspective

although there are a lot of risk averse people in big tech, irrationally afraid of not having corporate salary coming in, there are far fewer partners that base their identity on their partner being employed when the partner is wealthy already

>It was not impossible OP was going to launch to 4000 customers.

Having a publisher helps a lot. But 4000 copies for many indies would be a rousing success (albeit, not a financial success). It is simply that competitive.

>I could also see a wife being upset her previously highly paid husband is working on a video game, and presumably a low salary from a publisher (if any).

Very true for 99.99% of indie devs. But I figure that OP's savings and RSU's (almost a deacade's worth) would easily put them in a situation everyone else can only dream of.

>When I was working on my previous startup...

I know startups are risky, but I really don't get this attitude. It might just be lack of knowledge, but once you can get a startup off its feet, the VC money from seeds easily makes up for that downtime. And unless you're the founder or are a near-founder being paid with future equity, startups can still pay very respectably. It's the time committment that you need to worry about.

> once you can get a startup off its feet, the VC money from seeds easily makes up for that downtime

The depends a lot on the startup. Many startups don't take VC money.

Of those that do, in my experience as first non-founder employee, the founders were paid very little compared with employees, on the hope of future success with their equity instead, even after the startup got decent pre-seed and seed investment. Both rounds of investment were enough to pay some key employees well, but not to pay everyone well for long enough. So the founders felt they has to continue with low pay for themselves.

Not only is VC funding very competitive, but it takes an enormous amount of time to raise. My first startup we spent months and months doing nothing but fundraising.

Recently, I didn't want to bother with that and just went straight to building product. In this case, I built product, got a couple customers, and saw zero growth. From there, no VC would touch us, because we had no growth, and in some cases they just made fun of us.

Like myself, OP was the founder/cofounder, and it's not uncommon for family to be very unsupportive of risky career moves. Unsuccessful startups lead to divorce all the time, it's very sad and a part of startups nobody talks about

Sounds like you need a better partner

Saying the quiet part out loud, but yeah this is a very weird relationship where you have a partner who wouldn't be outright enthusiastic about you pursuing something you really want to, so long as your family can still live comfortably.

Being a good father/husband requires a lot more than putting food on the table.

You shouldn't jump to judgement without knowing any of the details.

if op was working at Meta for 10 years and they started at 2013 they probably have more then enough money stashed away to not worry about bills for a few years.

highly likely they have millions from the stock alone, assuming they didnt sell

correct, the guy is not exactly strapped for cash after 10 sweet years at Facebook. He's 10M+ NW probably.

> but I’ve always faced pushback working on startups/side projects

You mean from your SO?

I think most sane people don't have issues with their SOs' side projects, but they have issues with that their SOs 1) not spending enough time with family and 2) being the main income source of the family but not making enough money.

Wow, I think you've just become iconic to dozens of us (self included). Congrats on taking life's lemons and turning them into sweet victory.

I saw in another comment you were able to make yourself work with complete focus (8 hour+ days 7 days a week). I have two questions --

In hindsight, if you had only worked 5 hour days for twice as many months do you think the project still could have succeeded? Or do you feel that there's some momentum or other factor at play here?

Nextly, are there any discords or other networking resources that you found crucial to the process? I saw you mentioned a publisher. Personally I'm more motivated when I have people depending on me (or eager to see what I'm making for example).

Congratulations! The game looks amazing—its quality is truly impressive.

I'm currently feeling burned out. I have an app idea and a prototype that I believe could turn into a viable project to support myself. However, I don't have the courage to quit my job—I’m afraid of the anxiety that comes with paying rent and insurance without a steady paycheck. I do have some savings to sustain me for a while, but I'm unsure if taking a break to recharge, learn new things, and build something I'm passionate about (which could potentially become profitable) is a good idea? I'm also worried about how a long gap on my resume might be perceived when I look for a job in the future.

I'm also interested in making video games, but I often get discouraged by the sheer amount of artwork required—something I struggle to handle and afford. How did you manage the artwork side of your project?

Thanks Bill :)

I can relate to the first thing you mentioned, and I never really took action. Layoff was thrust upon me, with the privilege of a severance, and I had been working for decades, so I figured "why not try now?" I'm not sure if I ever would have been brave enough to proactively try, but that's just me. Video games in particular are brutal, economically, and not something I would ever recommend someone take a risk on in hopes of a payday.

Regarding art: don't get distracted by art. The original prototype of Ballionaire was made using Twemoji -- you can see a video of it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CwIwcGewZME Later I switched from Twemoji to images sourced from https://www.flaticon.com/ When I signed a publisher, I was lucky enough for them to hook me up with an in-house artist. I knew the style I wanted (the style you see in the game) and luckily the artist Hanja absolutely nailed it.

I would recommend avoiding art as long as possible if it's not your strength. You will go much further on making something feel really fun then making art that's one click above terrible. If you get traction, the art can come later. For future prototypes I am working on straight up text mode (or near to it, in like stock Godot UI) right now.

Thank you for the helpful tips! How do you gain traction or test an early prototype? Is finding a publisher more like job hunting (where there is a standard application process) or pitching to a VC (where you need to be social and build up connections)?

btw this was the moodboard I put together for the artist -- https://www.canva.com/design/DAF1ZIStuTY/j66Hl6xPyMNU6cfRsw2...

imho even if you can't make art, it's good to have inspirations for a coherent vision that hopefully you'll be able to articulate to someone!

Adventure Time! No wonder the art style feels familiar and lovable.

Thanks for sharing this!

I haven't played the game haha but I was curious whats going on in that last moodboard slide.

Have you considered switching careers rather than quiting. I took a two year break from tech and did English teaching. The pay was low but it sustained me with my savings and I had tons of mental energy to work on my side projects. Any job that's easy to clock in and clock out, where the work gets done on the same day, no deadlines. Can do wonders for your mental energy.

When I returned to tech I had a pretty impressive portfolio of projects. Turns out unsurprisingly that not coding all day for work makes me want to code more for fun.

Thank you so much for the suggestion. I’ve thought about it, but I don’t feel like I have any strong skills outside of coding. I can draw decently as an amateur, but not at a professional level.

I genuinely love coding and often do it in my spare time. My burnout isn’t caused by coding itself but rather by poor management and working on assignments that feel meaningless.

I get that. Honestly I never thought I was skilled enough to teach until I tried it. There are a lot of jobs out there that are easy to learn and adapt to.

Before teaching I did a cleaning job which was satisfying. Headphones in and end my day with the satisfaction of a clean office for the workers tomorrow. City gardening jobs were also lovely. Being out in the sun does wonders for mood. Impossible to get stressed doing the job.

But yeah, it's always scary that bad management can ruin a good thing.

In that case, switching employers may be what's needed, rather than switching careers (I know, easier said than done but easier if you already have a job). But if you do switch careers or have a career break, you can still code! If you're not maintaining a big project, working on your own side-projects is more like a hobby than work for most coders I know, so it wouldn't necessarily be incompatible with a break from the industry.

Out of curiosity, what kind of margins do you get when you sell a game on Steam? Like, what percentage of a sale ends up in your bank account (pre-taxes). Also, how do Steam sales affect that?

Congrats on making a game to completion, and doubly so for making something that gets fairly popular. Making a real game has been on my bucket list for about as long as I've known how to program, and I haven't completely given up on it, but I would need to make friends with someone who knows how to do art and music.

Generic steam fee is 30%

Steam takes 30% and the publisher ( https://rawfury.com/developer-resources/ ) takes 50%, so the dev should end up with 35% of revenue (which then needs to be taxed etc.).

Maybe a dumb question but... in the age of Steam, what does the publisher do these days? Advance funding? What do those numbers look like?

Most of the marketing will come from the publisher. It's easy for a game not to be noticed, and to crater thanks to no audience. The publisher runs the early and mid ad campaigns.

Depends on the deal. Promotion and fronting of cash are the big ones (usually). They can usually also offer various development services (testing, translation, porting, getting special deals with platform holders). They can also act as a stakeholder for quality, advising on certain things that should be improved (as an editor would in book publishing).

Really depends on the deal, but porting, marketing, localization and cash advances are common ones (Porting for the switch for example is known to be a big one, even for experienced solo/indie devs)

Who is the publisher? Isn’t it steam or the author itself?

If you look on the Steam page it's Raw Fury.

Steam is just the storefront. A game publisher's role varies a lot - sometimes they're just financing the project, usually they handle stuff like PR and marketing, and sometimes they help quite a bit more with the development of the game (sounds like the case in this case based on his other answers) as in programming/art/sfx/whatever else.

You're right, but unfortunately you forgot that:

1 - Before Steam take it's cut there are taxes and refunds, 15-20% depend on geography of sales.

2 - Publisher need to recouperate spendings agreed in contract, but yeah then it's likely between 40 and 60%.

For 1., I had the taxes afterwards and since every factor is just multiplied, it doesn’t matter for the end result. And do refunds count into the final sales number?

For 2., I linked the page where you can find the document where the publisher claims to take 50%, if I didn’t miss something while skimming it.

Unfortunately when selling games on Steam you pay taxes twice. First of all Steam pay VAT all around the world. It's not included in their 30% cut. And then you pay corporate tax from your net profit after Steam or publisher sent royalties your way.

Refunds on Steam can happen after a while so it's important to keep them in mind. If you sold 100 copies of your game 5-10% will be refunded.

> I linked the page where you can find the document where the publisher claims to take 50%.

I havent worked with Raw Fury and wouldn't be able to talk about it then anyway, but:

1 - If a publisher funded your game they will recuperate expenses by taking 70-100% of net profit. After that it can be 50%

2 - Some publishers also include localization, QA, LQA and even marketing budget into recoup amount.

Game Maker’s Toolkit did a breakdown of publishing a game on steam for a general view of the expenses.

Starting around 6:35

https://youtu.be/5ycSvC0ZM0k?si=DM1V06BZ1Zxbqrzh

Between returns, taxes, and other stuff, I think you can model at ~55% of gross Steam sales. Then, whatever your split w/ your publisher is, on top of that. So I think it's easy for ppl to severely overestimate how much a dev is actually earning by just multiplying units times price :)

I think in general the uptick of sales volume more than offsets the discount during a Steam sale. There's a reason Steam sales have a cooldown, they generate marketing emails to your wishlists. So sales are always good, from what I can tell.

Thanks for the congrats, and all I can say is: don't give up, I'm an old-ass man and made it happen. Don't get stuck on art or music either, IMHO. Total distraction. You can make a game fun without that stuff. At least, fun enough to be sure the investment into the next stage is wise.

What factors made you choose to go with a publisher vs. self-publish?

One major benefit of publishers is a salary while the game is being developed. The other major benefit is marketing, the linked Steam page is titled:

> 200K Ballionaires!

> Where do you all keep coming from?!

A good portion of those came from the publisher's efforts.

Related to this: is there any kind of contractual language that keeps Steam creators from saying how much money they made on the platform? Please note that I'm not asking how much you made on this game, that's none of my business! Just wondering if there's an NDA or something like that. I've been curious about it for a while.

I don't think there is such a legal obligation, because videos like this one exist where devs do share the exact financials of their Steam releases: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mPMfcaUulYU

Steam dont do anything like that, but 99% of contracts with game publishes will include NDA on financial information.

What is your opinion about the top bad review on Steam? Have you addressed those issues or perhaps you disagree with them? Posted here for reference

> Really fun game at first, and it has a lot of potential. Unfortunately you are very strongly incentivized to NOT UNLOCK ANYTHING (i.e. the meta-progression).... because after you unlock many additional items and get to the higher difficulties, the vast majority of runs become impossible since there are way, way too many items in the pool and way, way too few rerolls (and no ban feature for some reason), so you end up with random unrelated crap almost every run and auto-lose because of it, as strong synergies are mandatory to win on the higher difficulties. It feels really bad having to fish RNG over and over again just to get a run that's actually winnable. They could easily fix this with many solutions, like: stronger reroll tag affinities, more choices per round, item bans, 10x the amount of rerolls, builds/profiles with more limited pools, map-specific limited pools, etc. etc. If they fix this massive roadblock then this game has the potential to be a amazingly fun.

It was intentional that the game got harder by broadening the pool of drafts. The design goal was that you need to develop your skill to build more flexible boards, that don't rely on just forcing a single synergy to materialize.

Unfortunately, I don't think the game communicates this goal well, AND prevailing design trends (rogueliTe, which this game is NOT) I think have trained players to expect that games should get artificially EASIER over time by increasing the player's power level.

It's a point of the design I'm willing to concede, so it's something I do hope to address. But not increasing the power level as in a roguelite, just by preserving the density of drafts and taming dilution a bit.

The widening of the pool of drafts doesn't work because it is not fun. When you find something that works you want to use it as much as possible because as the player all I want to see is the numbers get higher and higher. This is where the fun is. Most of the additional drafts aren't fun. Some I never use. When I play I don't even care about the forces that make it harder at the start anymore because most of the gameplay comes from what cards show which is heavy random number generator. There should be a continue play button when you fail the run though just so you can keep playing and see the numbers go higher and higher.

From my experience of messing around with cheats in other games, things like this are a great way to permanently ruin the fun for yourself.

You should make a youtube series or a long series of blog posts explaining your journey from a personal perspective, the emotional ups and downs on working on this instead of getting a new job, from a technical perspective, and from a business perspective. What types of skills did you have to learn, what were the technical challenges, what pieces of code are you particularly proud of. What was your marketing strategy?

That might be challenging as large companies tend to hit people with strong NDAs which means that any reference to time at $company would need to be approved by $company. IF you don't do this then you might be rinsed by the court.

That’s not a thing. I’m not sure where you heard that. Large companies definitely don’t try to prohibit you from telling people you worked there.

> Large companies definitely don’t try to prohibit you from telling people you worked there.

They don't. But they do sometimes prohibit talking/writing about their work, the nature of it or anything remotely connected to it.

My current employer explicitly prohibits us from blogging about technical topics, creating learning material or even teaching anyone on technical subjects(e.g. on weekends at nearby school) outside the job for free/money.

That’s not very common either. I’ve never signed anything like that in 20 years in the industry (worked everywhere from tiny startups to very large tech companies).

In the case where your company does have a policy that that prohibits you from discussing the nature of your work, it’s likely completely unenforceable beyond them firing firing you.

The prohibition from teaching or blogging is definitely unenforceable.

That starts to sound like a non-compete, and those were recently ruled illegal unless you know some trade secrets or something (very few people do)

https://www.whitecase.com/insight-tool/white-case-global-non...

Of course, that was the FTC in 2024. Who knows what the administration will change this year?

Sure, I can't talk much about company games I worked on outside of "I worked on this", even after release. But they sure as heck can't prevent me from making a tutorial on C++ in my free time.

Is that enforceable?

That's the only thing they tend t answer when background calls come in. They will answer if you worked there and no what dates unless it's your working under clearance. Even then I thiink you can mention most companies in a vague matter.

> Large companies definitely don’t try to prohibit you from telling people you worked there.

no, thats not what I said.

Large companies that pay generous severance generally want a non disparagement agreement in return. This means that yes you can say you worked there, you might even be able to say what department you worked in.

What you can't say is that you worked on x,y or z, your opinion on the company direction or anything else that might be related to the company or is actions.

If you even speak of this NDA/non disparagement agreement to anyone other than the listed highly limited number of people, you'll have to pay back all the severance, plus legal costs.

So OP might want to tell you about their time, but they don't want to because it'll cost them a house worth of cash.

If I'm understanding this correctly, the game was nothing to do with Meta, and done as a solo dev effort? So no NDA applies.

A certain amount of talk about previous projects is routine in interviews. As long as it doesn't get too detailed or makes the previous employer look bad in public nobody will complain.

Appreciate the thought but that's a full time job. I have to conserve whatever energy I have to actually work on the game.

(Seriously, I think a lot of devs distract themselves with this stuff. Just make your damn game.)

That type of content is extremely useful for younger developers and the publicity probably has other benefits, but it's not for everyone.

If you’re looking for this type of content, have you heard of the making of Prince of Persia [1]?

[1] https://press.stripe.com/the-making-of-prince-of-persia

[flagged]

That’s how you know wasn’t an LLM.

Sarcasm?

>why should young developers matter at all?

Well you clearly don't care for society's survival, so Let's put it selfishly: I want more good games. I'm not going to make the next katamari or Baba is you or Papers Please or Orba Dinn. I accepted I do not have that kind of auteur mindset when I approach art.

But I do have technical skills and a lot of tech discourages a lot of would be artists. If I can make those parts easier, less buggy, and more performant while bringing in more people to make games, that's a win-win.

Is apathy toward society—which is, really, only your local community you're trying to defend and not something that is universally significant or even objectively capable of growth and sustainability—a dire crime I've committed? Because I do not in fact care about the "society" thing.

And claiming to have technical skill while also claiming that technology is stopping you from creating is a contradiction. An artist would have the technical skill to make something, by definition of the concept of an artist. If within your epistemology you're separating technical skill from an artist's creativity, then you have a perception of art and engineering that is tainted by something unrefined and harmful like liberal democratic society's lowest common denominator preference. In other words, there should not be a difference between an artist and a technical engineer.

Furthermore, it's strange that, with all the current software out there, you said you are at an impasse when it comes to game creation or game development. Everything already is easy, not error prone, and performance acceptable. What are you waiting for, exactly? An artificial intelligence aid that will do all the work for you?

And, lastly, an increase of the development population does not necessarily mean a good thing. Because, why should a bunch of people always be a good thing? Why not cull away those that are unfit for some task too? Unless realizing the philosophy of globalist liberal democracy is what you're aiming for? In which case I can see why you're repulsed at the idea of reality encroaching in on your fantastic ideals. Ethno-genetic Malthusian filters and reality should now be recognized as being synonymous with each other, or two faces of the same coin.

>Is apathy toward society—which is, really, only your local community you're trying to defend and not something that is universally significant or even objectively capable of growth and sustainability—a dire crime I've committed?

Not particularly. You're free to interpret and navigate as you see fit.

>And claiming to have technical skill while also claiming that technology is stopping you from creating is a contradiction

You misread my comment. I'm not held back by tech, I'm held back by artistic creativity. It's a lot easier to make tech more accessible to the creative than to figure out how to expand my creativity to comjour novel ideas. I'm helping the other with my knowledge.

>Everything already is easy, not error prone, and performance acceptable.

You have not seen modern games if that's your perspective. AAA games are buggier than ever (whom I'm not interested in assisting), and there are still some surprisingly unoptimal games. We're far from post-scarcity performance.

>Because, why should a bunch of people always be a good thing?

If you stagnate, you lose developers. If you lose developers, the odds of good games decrease. I like good games.

I'm not even convinced I'm making "more developers" so much as trying to slow down the decrease of developers. The youth of today are shifting from old media production to being self-made content creators. Playing video games is much more enjoyable than making them, after all. I've long given up on the western AAA development, so I still want to inspire future indies to potentially make more Hollow Knights or subnauticas or even Balartro.

>In which case I can see why you're repulsed at the idea of reality encroaching in on your fantastic ideals

Once again, you clearly misinterpreted something. I'm still working on games and planning on making my own mid-scale game. But making my own games is not my end goal, and I highly doubt I'm going to make anything close to profitable.

But making games is not the only way to succeed as a game developer. Just ask Valve, Epic Games, or the Blender Foundation.

If you are held back by a lack of artistic creativity, then you should simply expend the effort to do a journey of self-improvement in the name of acquiring artistic creativity. Life is that simple, yes? Because game development without game development is what leads to consequences like the stagnation of the game development industry whose population decline you lament. Making tools for nobody or nobody in particular is aimless unproductivity. But the desire for quantity over quality is the fatal economic mistake you are making. Especially when you're not amiable toward the idea of filtering bad development skills out of your social industry you're envisioning. You only need one good game, made by one good developer, at the minimum. Any more enthusiasm than that is just silly post-scarcity arrogance and delusion which is very harmful to sensible progress.

What is more ambitious would be something like incubating or founding a small province of dedicated developers who aim to fulfill your wish. Exclusivity, selection, and culling ineffectiveness would definitely be essential here, rather than being tolerant to policies which would want to try to cram a bunch of diverse individuals into a melting pot of a future failed empire of creative ideas and technology that only serves as an ironic example of what not to do in building your own development industry and securing your own game production economics. Caring one bit about the ontological time of today and its youth, a mere phenomenological axiom which leads to concerns about some content creator crisis, is the tendency you need to abandon, if you want to start your theoretical project and see its successful completion.

>If you are held back by a lack of artistic creativity, then you should simply expend the effort to do a journey of self-improvement in the name of acquiring artistic creativity. Life is that simple, yes?

Not with bills to pay, and family to care for. It's not something I can do on the snap od a whim. I plan to take art classes to understand the fundamentals, but I'm not sure I can just "gain artistic creativity" the way I can "just learn 3d modeling and color theory". At this stage in life it's probably easier to help out other inspired creators with objective hoops.

>Making tools for nobody or nobody in particular is aimless unproductivity.

Sure, that's why evangelism has to be a part of this type of marketing. Help those who remain so far and have them inspire. If you get to advertise your tools on the way, it's 2 birds.

And yes, I worked at Unity at one point. I've seen firsthand the consequences of not dog fooding your own tools to make sure the pipeline fits with what an actual dev would do in production. I will still make games with such tools just to make sure I'm not disconnected from the audience. Something more than just a fancy tech demo with horribly mangled code that no one can learn from. A sub-goal is to encourage best practices and make sure my documentation is well covered (I'd say "better than Unreal/Unity", but that's a very low bar).

>What is more ambitious would be something like incubating or founding a small province of dedicated developers who aim to fulfill your wish.

I won't lie, I've thought about it. You're essentially saying to either found up a small studio or to make soke form of masterclass. To mold future students or employees to that vision. I'm not going to actively pursue such a dream, but steps in that direction does help with that mentality.

I need at least a decade more experience and a lot more capital before I could really pull thst off, though. So yes, that will still be a decade of me proving I can launch useful tools and well-made (not necessary profitable) games to gain that trust. I gotta do one to accomplish the other.

>Caring one bit about the ontological time of today and its youth, a mere phenomenological axiom which leads to concerns about some content creator crisis, is the tendency you need to abandon, if you want to start your theoretical project and see its successful completion.

Perhaps. I'm not claiming I can change an entire generation's mindset on what to pursue in life. I simply want to show the path for those may have been interested but are put off by entire avoidable factors of the industry. I was simply rejecting a notion thst somehow the industry of devs is becoming bloated.

Or even better, he should just come over to your place, crash in your garage and spend his days teaching you how to make a game, right?

I never felt more like a grandpa developer since having to google every word in the description of what this game is :)

These days grandpa developers (and many grandpas in general) grew up playing rogue/roguelikes and watching plinko played on TV while being reminded to help control the pet population by having their pets spayed or neutered. I don't know how popular pachinko is outside of japan though. All the pachinko video games I've played to date were old and intended for a Japanese audience.

My favorite is pachincremental but I have an unnatural affinity for those games. Number go up.

Someone called doom and quake boomer-shooters and that's funny to me.

This comment introduced me to pachinkremental. Thank you / goddamn you.

You're welcome and thank you ;-)

pachincremental really was a fun diversion! Too short though, so now I'm giving Universal Paperclips another go (never did finish it)

I'm helping an enthusiastic young adult family member write an indie game in a similar space. I'm a professional software engineer in the full stack/security space but I don't have much experience in graphics or games. We would be thrilled just to get it implemented, and we're close, on steam, and get a couple real players. Currently it's running in the browser and on android.

I think he has very good taste in games, and is learning to code very quickly, so I'm acting in a supporting technical role.

-- What are the crucial skills, technical or otherwise, that I should learn to be effective in this space?

-- We're currently using the Godot environment, which feels a bit limiting to me (easy to start but: IDE is just ok, config feels GUI dependent/doesn't facilitate committing atomic deployment or other project changes...) Is there a different stack, or other complimentary tools I could learn that might be a better fit for a more professional dev workflow?

Thank you for the inspiration. :)

Unity is kind of the default, worth trying out at least. I’ve been using it for 6+ years for money-making hobby projects. It’s not without its problems, but there are a lot of perks to using the same engine that all the pro gamedevs are using.

Use every sale period available to you and not as weekly sales. Make custom 14 day sales.

Add steam cards to the game asap. You should start doing this right after reading this comment really.

Also you should lobby steam for a daily deal sometime next month. If they say yes you should set that daily deal for the day the summer sale ends if you can.

Also you should push raw fury to do a publisher sale, those can really generate a lot of money.

I've been managing games on Steam for a long time and doing stuff like what I said will have a very large impact on your long tail revenue. I'm the game director of Kingmakers.

Also you should really have some kind of DLC asap, even if it is small or like an art book even. You are just leaving money on the table because there are gamers with lots of money on steam who just buy all the dlc when they buy games.

You, sir, are the devil. :)

Just kidding, or maybe not.

How will trading cards help the game? As a Steam user, they seem useless and badges, which they create, are also completely useless. Unless to target sales to those who buy up all the cards to get really high profile levels.

Do you think "diamond in the rough" games exist?

Some claim that there are games that are hidden gems that haven't received the recognition they deserve.

Other claim they have never seen a generally good game that didn't have generally good success.

What is your view?

I think some games are good within their niche, but their niche sucks. Something like a hardcore roguelike with ASCII graphics. Within the hardcore roguelike niche, the ASCII game might be "good" and have some interesting new mechanics, good execution, etc; but within the entire gaming industry, classic roguelikes with ASCII graphics are outdated, they "suck". Some will say the ASCII roguelike is underappreciated, but only because they over-appreciate the niche.

I'd like to believe that a generally good game guarantees at least some success.

I'm not sure if it counts, but I had a great time playing screencheat but it never really seemed to be very popular. I think part of the problem may be that it's only fun to play with friends, so you kind of had to buy copies for yourself and your friends which added a ton of friction.

Around 19,000 games are released on Steam in 2024 and platform itself give very little traction. You can't sell bad game with all marking in the world, but good games flop without marketing.

> I'd like to believe that a generally good game guarantees at least some success.

Many "good" games werent "good" in very beginning during early access or first release. If game dont get any traction at all there simply no resources for developer to keep refining it.

There are many, many, many great games that fail, while many mediocre games succeed. There's some correlation with fun, art style and polish, but more often it's down to marketing, exposure and luck.

I've heard it said that a fun game is the baseline, though. The game should be doing the heavy lifting, not the marketing. Marketing a bad game doesn't automatically lead to success, for sure.

Many breakaway hits are simply lucky by hitting the zeitgeist. Among Us is an example - without the covid hangover and some bored streamers randomly deciding to play it one day, you can imagine it not being the massive success that it is.

I've even played a version of the original Rogue. Nethack and Brogue are my preferred rogue-likes. The term rougelike has been watered down so much it means many different things to many different people.

I do however have a hard time nostalging over old games I used to love - mainly for screen resolution issues. Once you get the new space/bling its hard to go back. I do like some of the remasters though, but some have been done so poorly or so identically they're almost meaningless.

Its a bit of a quandry. I played the Command and Conquer remaster for a bit, and it looked nice/resized nice and played well until you realised it had the same @#%ing pathfinding bugs - which is authentic to the original, but to me an opportunity to improve so missed it made me lose interest in continuing playing the remaster.

I can't even comprehend how young people would view old games, there'd be a few hipster types into the equivalent of cassettes, but for the most part old games are the equivalent of phones that can only be used if they're attached to the wall of the house, though they are a few exceptions to this that seem universal such as Tetris.

I think there are some great games out there that aren't successful, and a lot of games that are more succesful than they deserve to be. A lot of longer lasting franchises from Diablo, to Call of Duty and recently Civilization are averaging down, not up.

As a 50+ year old, the OG posters pachinko type game has no attraction and seems way to ADHD for me to deal with, let alone associating it with rogue/rouge-likes.

I also tried to like Dwarf Fortress, but there's too much complexity too early (same is true for a lot of games coming out now). I miss the era of well designed tutorial levels that introduce and build on previous levels before you get to 'open, anything goes' levels of complexity. Even minecraft has (had?) this built-in by design originally.

The original rouge/rogue-like games all worked well because of the difficulty curve ramping up so nicely as you progress to deeper dungeon levels, although reading the source or alt.nethack was kind of spoilerish.

The world is different now. Because we're so connected, we follow online 'recipes' on how to play the game so we don't get 'left behind' rather than immerse our individual selves via experimentation.

Also what makes a game great is going to vary from individual to individual. Some love puzzle games, some hate them. Some like twitchy FPS games, some like strategical slow-play FPS games etc. etc.

> it had the same @#%ing pathfinding bugs - which is authentic to the original, but to me an opportunity to improve so missed it made me lose interest in continuing playing the remaster.

Remasters/Remakes are often a "damned if you do, damned if you don't" situation for the developers.

If they make the game function exactly like the old one, just with an updated skin, people complain that it's all they did.

If they fix bugs and update mechanics for a modern audience, people complain that it isn't the same game at all, just a similar story being told through a different game.

Especially with RTS games, some like the simulation, some like the interface to the simulation.

I never understood StarCraft 2. I thought "you know you can zoom out further in other games, and other games have better controls--you StarCraft players do know this, right?"

I now understand that StarCraft 2 is a game about interacting with an interface, and it's good at it, the interface feels good. It was never about the largest battles or the widest camera angle.

Nice one! Looks like peggle on mushrooms instead of coke.

I've done many games myself, including PS4 exclusive, and I haven't been able to afford anything else than 2 mins noodles for my effort. So I applaud you on "making it."

I should really talk to publishers. I don't really know how, how did you approach them? How did that initial aspect go?

Congratulations!

This is a huge achievement and work -- although I do not know the space.

What is the stack used? Did you end up substantially switching things in the stack during your journey?

It would be great if you follow up later with experiences like the maintenance journey post-launch. Also, what do you feel the publisher provided besides the artist and guidance?

Thanks! Godot 4.2 w/ C#. I started with Godot 3 and C#, but ported to Godot 4 a couple months into the project, because it was my understanding that would help console portability in the future. It was a bit of a pain, but not too bad. Maybe a week's worth of work.

Raw Fury I think also did a great job w/ marketing and promotion, e.g. connecting the game to streamers, and the trailer knocked it out of the park IMHO :)

How did you structure your work in the first year? Did you set specific goals or just follow what felt right? Where did your motivation and energy come from, and how did you keep momentum?

The game took one year to make and I am a severe workaholic, so, I found it easy to just put the pedal to the floor for exactly one year (and then simply die afterwards, lol)

but like it's a creative thing, you must have had moments where you weren't sure?

Amazing work! Questions:

- How/why did you decide to talk to a publisher? When in the process did you feel like you had a good enough prototype to do that?

- What have been the pros/cons of working with a publisher? When, in your opinion, should someone do that vs. self-publishing?

- What was your confidence level throughout various stages of the project? Was there a point before releasing the game where you maybe got a glimpse of the success you were going to have? (I guess probably Steam wishlists?)

- What's next?

Congrats again on the hit!

I worked with a publisher for a few reasons: 1) I didn't know what I didn't know, and didn't want to "find out" AND make the game at the same time. I needed a partner for the business/marketing end. 2) An advance (funding) helped de-risk things for me. 3) I needed help to find an artist. I was having no luck on my own. Even with the traction the game had!

Publishers actually came to me. In a weird coincidence, I happened to show the game in a Discord where localthunk, the Balatro dev, was hanging out, and he shared it with a few big streamers. The prototype was streamed to thousands of people like ~5 weeks into its development, and the publishers started showing up immediately. Not normal. Very lucky.

I started very confident, and stayed relatively confident, for myself, but there were some weird days where you'd get a paranoid feeling: "Wait, all you do is drop a ball in this game. Why do people like it? Are they just blowing smoke up my ass? Am I having a manic break, thinking the gmae is good? It really can't possibly be good enough, right? Making successful indie games is something other people do, not me." Needless to say the demo getting reception in October 2024 Steam Nextfest (before being released in December) was hugely validating and was like the "pinch" I needed to prove it wasn't a dream.

Next is healing and recovery ... and supporting Ballionaire. Working on a creative project intensely for a year at the exclusion of almost everything else in your life, esp. at my age -- doesn't leave you in a great state when it's over. It was self-imposed crunch mode. It's not easy to be bounce back creatively or energetically.

Thanks :)

Appreciate your vulnerability. Awesome to hear your good fortune along the way, receiving positive feedback. Working a year heads-down even with that though does sound quite difficult. I think about all the time how one doesn't have to deal with these kinds of doubts when at FAANG-style jobs. I think that, moreso even than the EV on compensation, is the reason FAANG can be so sticky.

Thanks for the in depth answer! Good luck with the recovery - hopefully the game has left your financials in a good enough spot that you don’t have to worry about the next project for a bit, at least.

Very cool!

- What choices did you make to give yourself more time to work on this project?

- At what point did you begin getting feedback of some sort?

- Were there clearly things you wished to include in the game but had to cut out in the interest of time? How did you decide what would be "good enough"?

I very explicitly, with my family's support, set up the expectation that the game was my #1 priority in 2024. I only took one small vacation, during which I still worked. My wife and I would watch one 30 minute tv show at night, and do the crossword in the morning, and other than that, aside from meal time, the expectation was that I would be working on the game by default (not that I worked non-stop, just that the default was "the game"). It was fully 7 days a week for like 30% of the project. Involuntarily, I sacrificed exercise and diet too :( I just couldn't manage the discipline. I also absolutely annihilated the quality of my sleep.

I got feedback from my wife within a few days, the first time she saw the game. Even she, a non-gamer, could tell that there was something compelling about the idea. And if you look at an above response, you'll see that I explained that the prototype, about a month into dev, go streamed to thousands of people. The feedback was VERY early and very positive. I wouldn't have been brave enough to keep at it otherwise, knowing myself.

I wish meta progression was better, what shipped was a compromise with respect to time. "Good enough" was just purely just vibes and an editorial eye. No articulable criteria. Just a lot of vibes and trusting my intuition (a skill I gained verrrrrrry late in life)

Have you considered porting to mobile? Looks like it could do well, either independent or part of something like Apple Arcade or Netflix Games.

Strong Peggle[1] vibes from the video on the store page, which is a good thing IMO, since I enjoyed Peggle quite a bit. Maybe I'll take a look at this.

1: https://store.steampowered.com/app/3480/Peggle_Deluxe/

What did you like/dislike about Godot?

How did you find your graphics artist? Sound?

In hindsight (or for your next game), what would you do differently?

Looks awesome, congrats on your success 200k sales is a huge achievement!

What factors led you to seeking out a publisher, was it mostly getting art for the game or did the publisher bring more to the table that made you decide it was worth it?

What advice would you have given yourself just starting out knowing what you do now?

What did you get stuck on the most when making the game? I know a lot of people who have great ideas for games but a lot of the ideas don't translate well into being able to realistically do them in the game because of complexity. Did you ever have ideas that you thought would be really cool to do but it ended up being too hard / time consuming to do?

How close was the functionality of the game when you released it to what you had envisioned at the start? Did you go through any major design changes while developing it?

One of the OG devs from Netpanzer in the late 90s went on to do AAA games and then compiler stuff at FAANG, is that you?

Not me

First of all congrats on the success of your game. I've been mulling over taking a break from my corporate engineering job and making a game. Would it be possible to send you an email in about two weeks or so with some retrospective questions of your game dev journey? I'm currently in a crunch mode for a work trip then going to be with limited internet access while on the trip so wanted a chance to get my thoughts/questions together before asking.

If you don't have time, totally understand and congrats on all your success.

Congratulations, that is a roaring success I daydream about all the time!

I think you've already answered a lot about your development journey, so I want to ask about the post-release experience.

- How were the weeks immediately after release? Hectically shipping out patches 3 times a day?

- Now that we're months out after release, what are you doing now? Are you still spending a lot of time on this game (ports, updates), or are you thinking of another game or returning to office work?

Frankly I bought it on release but couldn't get into it because the meta progression (unlocking triggers that dilute the trigger pool for little perceivable gain) didn't feel as good as Luck be a Landlord or Balatro. I hope later updates address that.

Congratulations! Looks fantastic. I'm curious about marketing and your relationship with the publisher.

There's a LOT of games launching on Steam all the time, some solid games go largely unnoticed. How did you get word out about your game? Did you build an audience during development? How much assistance did the publisher provide? Additionally, did you have contacts that introduced you to publishers? If not, what got their attention? Fanbase, demo, you personally?

How did you reach publishers? Did you have any previous contact/connection to get to them?

I love the animated stickman!

building myself html games myself[1] with my own game engine. Getting players is really hard. I was betting on SEO, but results will take a long time. do you think getting a publisher worth it? I was reluctant putting the game on steam too since I think the target players wont be there

Happy to hear recommendations!

https://pixelbrawlgames.com/game/blast

1v1.lol is fun! The mouse movement gets janky at times but I had a blast

We should thank Meta for laying off a talented engineer.

Can you get it out on Geforce NOW too please so us mac users can also partake? (Also curious on the process behind enabling it on Geforce NOW actually)

Apologies for my ignorance, and I’m asking this because no one in this thread has done this:

This looks basically like a slot machine

Asking what?

How much impact to you think internet influencers had on your sales? I recall seeing it being played there first.

100%, it was really the only form of promotion the game had, besides the demo itself, and the trailer. Ballionaire was accidentally designed to be verrrrrrrry streamable.

Man, what a wild ride! From getting laid off at Meta to pulling off a 200k-unit hit on Steam—talk about turning things around in style. That’s seriously inspiring.

Ballionaire sounds like an absolute blast—roguelike pachinko? That’s a combo I didn’t know I needed! Must have been a crazy year grinding to get it out, but totally worth it. Any unexpected lessons or ‘oh crap’ moments along the way? Wishing you even bigger wins ahead!

I'm been fascinated to make games but never truly jumped into it. I'd love to pick it as a hobby but quiet unable to balance this hobby when always worrying about to put time into 'doing certification' or doing 'LC'. To get an idea on your situation and compare it with mine,

1) did you have any formal game development experience in the past? say in school? 2) since you made it into FAANG, did you LC before or time during FAANG to find another FAANG job? 3) does anyone in your personal circle does game development? 4) so instead of first developing the game, you already were in talking with publishers? what kind of background did you have for publisher to 'ok' you which i'm guessing supported you financially?

I bought ballionaire a couple weeks back. So funny that I see the creator on HN. Congrats on your win!

I had to stop playing for a while because the music really got stuck in my head. What a fantastic game though, it really is so fun. The "Woooow" at some upgrades always make me chuckle. I'll definitely come back to it soon.

haha the "wooow" was very last second, and meant to kind of be ... "snide" ... watching streamers play it and saw "wooow" along with him every time absolutely delights me to no end.

I realise you can make games in any language/engine. But could you explain the language/system/engine you used?

How did you go about validating the game is fun? Did you end up having an intuitive sense for it, or did you need external feedback to refine the mechanics?

My steam deck might as well be a billionaire/balatro machine.

Godot 4.2 / C#. Godot is an amazing engine and I highly recommend it for indie devs. The iteration cycle is a few seconds. IMHO, using Unity will absolutely slow you down, as a designer/programmer. I can't comment on the reality of a 3d game with a complicated art pipeline, however. But for a game like Ballionaire, Unity or Unreal would have been a mistake.

Ballionaire was fun by day 3, the first time a ball dropped and hit a trigger that caused an effect. It was luck a bolt of lightning to me. I am a VERY pessimistic person. So the fact that it felt compelling that early, and like, anyone who saw it could understand it and felt the fun, was a huge sign to me. Unfortunately, not every game has a premise that allows for that. I don't think you could hope for the same kind of feeling while making a 4X for example.

But if you're making a game that ultimately should feel fun from moment to moment, like these kind of quick-play games are, well, I think you can get there quickly and with little work, if the idea is solid. And if you can't get it to feel fun, I would be wondering if the idea is solid, versus it needing more time/polish etc.

>I can't comment on the reality of a 3d game with a complicated art pipeline, however. But for a game like Ballionaire, Unity or Unreal would have been a mistake.

Going from Zero to Working 3d Game is very quick in Unity as long as you do everything the Unity way.

Going from Zero to Working 3d Game if you need to create functionality from scratch in Unity is a heartbreaker.

I am actually planning to take one of my old projects and rebuild it from scratch in Godot, for exactly this reason.

A fellow Godot enthusiast here. Love to see Godot being used in commercially successful indie game like this. In 2021-22 time, I tried (unsuccessfully!) building educational video games for maths using Godot and I have fond memories of being in the flow state while working with Godot. IMO Godot fits well with programmer's brain much better than Unity etc.

> I realise you can make games in any language/engine

It's actually a bit more constrained than people realize ... Well, for desktop, you can literally use anything. But for mobile it's a bit harder because of specific platform quirks, i.e. on iOS you can't make a language that relies on a JIT compiler, so for a Java/libGDX game the best option is https://github.com/MobiVM/robovm which compiles the JVM bytecode to LLVM IR and then to native machine code.

And then for consoles (switch/xbox/ps5) it's way worse because you're relying on commercial stuff, and the only support you get is from the engine makers themselves (Nintendo/Microsoft/Sony) so there's a lot less open source options. Basically you're stuck with C++ at that point (which Unity actually compiles your C# to under the hood for non-desktop platforms).

Not what you asked, but I found out this stuff a while back and find it interesting, hopefully it's interesting to you too :)

Technically you can ship an FNA-based game with a commercial fork of .NET's NativeAOT that works on Nintendo Switch: https://viridiansoftware.com/blog/csharp-on-game-consoles Of course Xbox can just ship C#-written game normally AFAIK. So it's not like you're stuck with just C++ but yes, mobile platforms usually are highly constraining.

My question is: how did you manage all that the refined art in such a small amount of time? I can see the coding but I always assume art takes forever unless you have a partner who handles the art

OP has mentioned that they worked with an artist in other threads

Omg! the creator of Ballionaire is a laidoff metamate?! That's so inspirational. I'm sure this will make it on Meta blind sometime.

I'm at Meta still and working on my own take on the roguelike game inspired by Balatro/Luck be a landlord and Ballionaire too. Any advice for myself and others on how to balance work/life/game?

If you're interested, I bet people would love to have you back for a tech talk. I think we should at least link this to your badge post haha.

How much time did you spend on tweaking the tutorial?

Do you use analytics to balance your game? (So Meta right?)

Congrats on your success! Making games is what got me into programming and while I'm currently doing the same big tech stuff you were, I would love to become an indie game dev after this phase of my career ends.

The biggest challenge I've had in my various personal projects is the art, for sure. I may have programming skills but I certainly have no art or animation skills. How did you get over this hurdle? I've made so many cool prototypes for games that I end up having to shelve due to hitting a progress wall when it comes to art or 3d modeling.

How hard was it to get in touch with publishers? I've always imagined that without prior contacts, cold calling a game publisher is as promising as sending your screenplay to Hollywood.

Not author, but fellow indie gamedev company founder. Getting in touch is not hard at all and there are several avenues:

1 - Majority of publishers do have public submission forms and they do look though what you send. There is a few existing lists that you can use [1].

2 - Industry is generally very friendly so often you can also reach out to publisher game scouts on Linkedin and even ask for what kind of projects they looking for.

3 - And obviously there are industry events where again it's totally okay to pitch to people, get their contacts, etc. If you're good at followups you'll easily be able to reach right people.

4 - Also fellow gamedevs will happily made an introduction if you have worthy project.

There of course some requirement what you need at very least is:

* Prototype for 5-15 minutes of gameplay. Prototype must be playable and fun, not just tech demo. There is no way to make any deal without one.

* Short and very juicy gif or video representing core loop that sells.

* Pitch deck. The farther your build is from final game the better pitch you must have. There are some examples of game pitches you can find on internet, but if you curious reach me I'll share ours.

Whatever you will actually sign with publisher will depend heavily on how close is your game to release. If it's something nearly complete you'll have more chances than with prototype.

Actually getting funded though can be very tough and for small game it's hard to find budget over $300,000. Yes you read this right - whole games are being made by teams with only publisher budget of one FAANG SWE annual salary.

  [1] https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/15AN1I1mB67AJkpMuUUfM5ZUALkQmrvrznnPYO5QbqD0/edit?usp=sharing

Thanks for this, mate. This is very informative!

I bought your game a few weeks ago; and out of everything I've fired up on my bravia...

I had the biggest smile watching all those smooth vibrant animations roll around like a dopamine factory.

This is an amazing story, nice work, and congrats on the hit! Looks like a lot of fun. I've always wanted to buckle down and make the RPG of my dreams, but working full-time just doesn't make that feasible, and I care very deeply about balance (i.e. not "working" outside of work) unless I have an idea that's achievable in a short amount of time and won't burn me out.

Looks like the hard work paid off for you! Maybe if I can retire early I'll finally realize a similar dream.

Why did you go with a publisher rather than publishing it yourself?

Great work! My game has some features inspired by Ballionaire. I also used Godot, i need to dissect your pck file to see how you organized things. https://store.steampowered.com/app/3499470/Rogue_Bricks_Demo...

Although i should caution poeple, most indie games fail. They fail hard. #1 tip: your game must be good looking to sell copies.

> your game must be good looking to sell copies

Nah, vampire survivors and balatro look like crap by modern standards, yet are breakout hits.

My god, you’re the creator of Ballionaire!!

I dont know what I was expecting clicking on this article but it wasn’t that.

Magnificent game, I watched Northernlion play this after he beat Balatro.

Good lord that Steam page and the trailer have a ton of appeal. It’s no wonder you’ve got a hit on your hands! Reviews are very good too. Congratulations!

Hi, I enjoyed playing Ballionaire. I do like this style of rogue-likes where things can maybe break the game itself (infinity, slow down the game completely when too many eggs are spawned).

I was curious in your platform choice of windows only. Was this due to the framework/programming language you're using? Or was this more of a time savings of trying to support more than one system at a time? Or maybe both?

FWIW, it works on the Steamdeck, natively, without Proton -- so it's a native Linux game in other words. Apparently a lot of folks are playing it on desktop Linux, as a result. It's just not "officially supported".

I'm a one-man dev operation, so it's strictly a matter of opportunity costs of my time. Linux and Mac are miniscule gaming markets, like 1% of Windows, but could potentially generate a significantly proportionately greater burden of support. So I have to be careful there.

I am playing it on the linux desktop. It's super nice.

I'm also curious about the changes required between linux and windows, is it quite a bit? Or is that just abstracted mostly by the framework?

How do you get it to run? The first time I clicked the [Play] button it installed Vulkan shaders, but it doesn't do anything on subsequent launches.

EDIT: Ah, a re-install fixed it!

Godot makes it easy to export to Linux and I'm sure it's still true that feedback from Linux users is better even in terms of finding bugs as mentioned in this interview with Croteam in 2015:

> The feedback from Linux gamers is great – they seem really happy that we’re supporting the platform and they are a huge help in finding bugs. Often, bugs that are initially reported as Linux specific turn out to be issues in all version of the game, it just sometimes happens that it’s easier to reproduce on some platforms. So, yeah – we’ll definitely keep on supporting Linux in the future.

[1] https://www.marcosbox.com/2015/02/13/interview-with-croteam-...

It's from 2023 but the last Godot community survey showed a marketshare of 27% for Linux amongst the developer's primary development platform and 55% for exports to Linux[1]. That's quite massive compared to the 2.06% Linux and 1.4% OSX have amongst gamers[2]. So, if you need help getting your game to those 3.4%, there should be plenty of helping developers on the usual godot forums.

[1] https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSeXRE1nF64PUilO6fA7... [2] https://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/Steam-Hardware-Softw...

Here’s the ProtonDB entry: https://www.protondb.com/app/2667120

Congratulations. Looks fun and one of those "omg, I've spent so much time on this" kind of game.

Can you expand in the part of talking to publishers. How did you approach it, how much previous context did you have, how did you evaluate what was good vs not. I know what mobile game publishers ask for but not desktop/steam ones.

Any advice? (Not that I'm making games but just curious what form it actually takes)

Not author, but fellow indie gamedev founder. Already answered one similar question in comments, but here is usual process of choosing publishers:

  1 - You need to decide whatever you looking for a funding and how much you need. No matter where you're located majority of indie publishers operate with budgets under $300,000. AFAIK there is under 30-50 companies that can even provide funding over $1,000,000.
  2 - Even big publishers dont like to take risks. So if you're self-funded or have investor your chances to sign publishing agreement are much higher since then publisher risks almost nothing.
  3 - You go and check what games each publisher release on Steam and check how much marketing there are for their titles. "Good" publishers usually only release 1 game a month or less since marketing is both time consuming and costly. So obviously it's much harder to get selected.
  4 - There are "spray and pray" publishers that can even give you some money easier than others, but they sometimes release 3-10 titles a month and just look what sticks. They mostly dont do marketing before release whatsoever so it's not exactly an optimal choice unless you working on a games that can be built cheap and under 6 month.
  5 - When you start any negotiations normal net revenue split after budget recouperation is around 50/50 (with 40 / 60 both ways also possible). So you can filter out those who try to pray on inexperienced people.
  6 - Also unless you getting serious funding (not $300,000) publishers usually only get exclusive distribution license on your specific title for 3-5 years, but they dont get your IP. If some small publisher ask for full IP transfer it's not a good deal.

And yeah to reach out you only need at playable and fun prototype for 5-15 minutes of gameplay, but if your game is closer to release it's will drastically increase your chances for a deal. Everyone loves to publish games with no funding needed and no one loves to fund development with risk it will never be completed.

Getting published by likes of Raw Fury is a huge success though, very small percent or projects get such a chance.

PS: If you wish feel free to reach me, will happily share my experience.

Congrats on the launch and success so far!! The game seems really cool and I relate a lot to the desire of working with gamedev.

I think local prices/discounts can get you another 200k+ purchases worldwide. In Brazil current prices shows as ~R$42, which is quite a lot for a game for a big chunk of brazilians. Thor from PirateSoftware has some good tips on this.

I don’t really play any games but the game play demo video looked like something that might entertain my 4 and 1 year olds for a few minutes at least (just watching, I doubt they could really play it), so I bought it. Congrats on your success. Sometimes getting laid off can be a blessing, but only if you handle it constructively like you did.

Congratulations on both the launch and the success!

Never having been in the video game industry, nor knowing anyone that has, I've never really understood what the role of a publisher is now that games are distributed digitally.

What were the benefits for you of having a publisher, could you have gone without one and maybe finally how does one go about finding a publisher?

Good for you. I've always thought one of the reasons the tech companies would hoard talent is so that talent won't become a disruptive competitor. Though there is a lot of pain involved, I hope the silver lining is that we get more tech innovation from people who aren't vested in the status quo, like the tech companies.

Beautiful and really appropriate artwork. You mentioned in another thread that the publisher connected you with an artist. Can you share, in vagaries if contractually necessary, the literal cost of this? Was it percent of revenue, fixed rate, a mix. Substantial (given you two would be the team), or more like a typical contracting affair?

Oh neat! I wishlisted it when it came out but was heavy into balatro, slay the spire and the diceomancer demo but I will pick it up soon.

Curious if you would be up for recording a podcast about the project? I love to pick people's brains about stuff like this. I recorded one with Ange the Great about his creation of Engine Simulator, for example.

Yeah, I'm open to podcasts! I did one with openindie already: https://creators.spotify.com/pod/show/openindie/episodes/33-... (dm me on bsky: https://bsky.app/profile/newobject.bsky.social)

The amount of genius talent that is being wasted making addictive products for Meta is borderline criminal.

Congrats on shipping a huge hit

Congratulations! I've been working on a browser-based MMORPG inspired by OSRS (https://news.reconquer.online/)

What method did you use to reach out to streamers for sponsorship? Was it through email or through some other platform?

Oh yes, I've played that actually. The mechanics weren't my jam, but the art and level of polish are great.

You need to put this on the Nintendo Switch

Absolutely not my type of game. But man, kudos to you! I wish you at least 2x the sales you got until now!

Love your game.

Is there any plans for expansions? I find the different maps to be less interesting. I want some kind of harder progression, higher levels of difficulties and of course more of everything that exists.

I found myself out of stuff to do at ~20 hours (which is awesome and beats a lot of games I've tried to buy.).

Can you compile your game to target Mac? Why/why not? (Like is it a technical or business decision?)

Yes, curious about this. Looks like Mac and Linux support are available with Godot…

Not op, but: .https://youtu.be/qRQX9fgrI4s

I bought it day one. The marketing was great and I had I ton of fun with the game! Congrats on the success.

How much is left after steam takes their cut, taxes, etc?

Heard it's about 30-40% which is really demoralizing

Then ask yourself this: How much in sales do you lose if you don’t launch on Steam?

If your game funded by publisher your company will get like 30%.

Then it's depend on location of company, corporate tax, etc.

So 25-30% of net profit for game development studio.

Now that you have some reputation, and insight into what the publisher does to get your game out there.

Do you think your next game will be managed completely on your own and reap all of the profits (—steam cut)? Do you still see value of using current or another publisher?

I've been eyeing up this game. Looks fantastic. The trailers are very well done, really capture the vibe. 200k units is a huge success. No questions, just want to say congrats. I'd love to try making a game one day!

Congratulations! I saw Yahtzee playing this a few weeks ago — seems like a fun time. The market is notoriously saturated right now, any wisdom on how you broke through with marketing/outreach? (Or was that entirely on the publisher?)

I crunched myself to get the game out by the end of 2024 before the saturation I knew was coming took place. I think the simple premise, watchability, humor, and presentation of the game helped it stand out.

My advice: Have a super solid hook, that's marketing. Everything else is promotion and is far less effective.

What would be good resources for me to learn about the (digital) gaming world from an entrepreneur's perspective? I am a general developer, otherwise am a complete newbie to gaming (played Mario once with my son). Thanks.

Thanks for sharing this, I was first struck by the fact being laid off from Meta, I mean 10yrs of service and then laid off. I'm glad you did well and recovered after that.

I'm curious to know about the technology behind, did you use a framework?

This article has a link to the steam page, at the end. https://godotengine.org/article/2024-cherry-picks/

So my guess is Godot.

Thanks!

1. What are your plans now? 2. Your style seems unique, and even your mood board that you shared with the designer has a particular style; did you always gravitate towards that type of art? If not, how did you come upon it?

Thank you so much! Me and my friend played your Beta, and we found it to be a really fun and a good lecture game: a game to play during boring lectures. I also love the animations and the satisfying feel of it, really cool!!

I haven't played your game but I've watched a ton of Real Civil Engineer's videos on it. It looks like a blast and I love watching his videos. How did you get into game development? Congratulations on the success!

I started trying to make games as soon as I got an Apple //c when I was like 9 years old. I went to MSFT out of college but quit to work on games like a year into it. My first games job was at Monolith (RIP as of yesterday) and was there for ~4 years, then I helped S2 Games ship "Savage: Battle for Newerth, but then went into FAANG for like 20 years. I always wanted to come back to gamedev. Glad I got the chance :)

No questions but congratulations on your game and success! It's a great idea.

Congrats on the game! Did you ever do game jams at all with the original idea or was this a larger project from the start?

And a more realistic-adult question lol: how did you handle not having insurance from your workplace after severance?

Thank you! I absolutely suck at game jams. Like, really bad. Ballionaire is the one time a gamejam (https://itch.io/jam/eggjam-20) went right for me (good idea, microscopic scope) - you can see a video from about ~10 days into development here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CwIwcGewZME

Normally I either scope way too big, or scope small and lose motivation because the idea is too itty bitty to maintain motivation. I have no idea how to hit the sweet spot more frequently. Some people are just really good at this, but not me.

For insurance: private insurance via ACA/Obamacare. I had savings.

I’m sorry I don’t have any questions about the game. to me the most shocking part of your post is how you were let go after 10 years at the company.

Do you know why Facebook let you and/or your team go?

congrats to the author!

i haven't had (enough?) opportunities to say this but - being laid off from a company that i thought was probably the best place to work at was actually likely the best thing to happen to my career. while things were real cushy at this job, my career was not going anywhere, and there was no way i would have taken the opportunities that have presented themselves after i was ejected.

so, while being laid off is never a good feeling, i hope that other folks affected by the tough market can find the silver lining and motivation that i did

Well , I think there is a big opportunity to make some marketing tools: develop marketing tools specifically for indie games to help developers promote their games more effectively

My friend Joe from the Anime Sickos podcast talked Ballionaire up a lot and I'm looking forward to playing it, which would happen sooner if it were available on switch. Congrats on your success!

How much of a cut does the publisher and steam take from a $20 purchase?

In gamedev we usually count it like this:

* Refunds and VAT 16% overall

* Steam cut 30% below $10,000,000 sales

* Publisher cut from net profit after recouperation is around 50%

So developer get around $5.88, but obviously for some countries it's can be better because there is no VAT or lower VAT, but price there would be like $5-15.

PS: And yeah from $5.88 you still owe some corporate tax.

Damn! Thank you very much for the info. Quite interesting - and unfortunately, more of a cut than I expected.

Unfortunately games that did not succeed never make it to the point where publisher recouperated it's investments so it's actually worse. If the publisher fully funded the game they will take 80%, 90% or everything.

why are refunds so commonly counted against sales in this way? Wouldn't a refund cost essentially nothing?

To be honest it's just a thing from financial models inside industry. When you plan how much copies you suppose to sell to turn profit you must consider refund rate as well.

Another reason is that games on Steam can and are often refunded after quite long time has passed. E.g people buy lots of games on holidays or sales and then refund them when they decide not to play it. Sometimes refunds can happen even after a year if e.g player can't get your game to run on their device, etc.

But yeah it make sense not to include it in math for single sale that was not refunded.

Ah, I see - thank you for the context! If you don't mind one more question - do you have to leave a substantial amount of cash in the Steam account in case of very late refunds? Or does Steam just send you an invoice or something?

As developer you don't have "cash on Steam account". Valve just do automatic payouts to a bank with a delay around ~1 month.

As for refunds AFAIK if you have bunch of refunds later they will just be substracted from future sales. But games I worked on didnt have refund spikes so no clue how Valve handle situations with mass refunds.

Congrats, great to hear a success story. I wish I had the time to do this too. How did you pitch to the publisher so they would find you during development? How did you find a publisher?

Been following this game! Congrats! Please bring us an MacOS port!

You do the art yourself or did you hire someone? How did that go?

I wish I could draw like that! The artist is Hanja Grgičević and she works for a sister dev company of the publisher Raw Fury. I gave Hanja my mood board (https://www.canva.com/design/DAF1ZIStuTY/j66Hl6xPyMNU6cfRsw2...) and we iterated from there. I'm so happy with her work :)

Your game reminds me of a ketamine trip. So many symbols, emoji things, spites. It's so colorful and creative. Maybe it was a good thing Meta laid you off.

Myself and my 6yo son watch a youtube channel Real Civil Engineer as he plays cool games like this. We saw the Ballionaire video and instantly got it we play it a lot.

I guess Meta did you a service since you're a creator and the company stopped creating. I barely used FB at all since the beginning, but I like rogue games.

Oh god, I love watching RCE playing it. I'll steer clear off it though, pachinko games are a bad idea for my ADHD :-) Congratulations on the success.

How did you go about choosing a publisher? What stood out about Raw Fury? If you were making another game now do you think you would go with a publisher again?

You mentioned that 2024 was one of the hardest years of your life. What kept you going during the toughest moments? Were there times you felt like giving up?

Man I bought this game for me and my kids are we love it. I am also trying to make a game/app on the side for my kids. Your story is inspiring!

Congratulations! How did you get the process started for distributing your game? Were there any early channels for marketing you found particularly effective?

Congratulations! Given the results, I'd say your time was well invested.

Did the project start as a hobby or did you intend it to be a source of income eventually?

Again, well done!

Congratulations! As a non-gamer I have absolutely zero idea what this game is about or how to play it, but you've got a big audience!

What does roguelike mean? I've played the original Rogue, but haven't been a gamer for decades now. I'm not seeing how this is connected?

Sorry, but you said ask anything lol.

My understanding is that roguelike means that when you die you start over from the beginning.

There are a lot of interpretations, but it's roguelike in the sense that:

1) It's permadeath 2) It's random 3) It's systemic

The term is used quite broadly these days. Only the "Berlin interpretation" is quite strict about the sense of it you might be thinking of.

Thanks. TIL.

Is there a term that people who don't use the Berlin interpretation call games that fit in the Berlin interpretation? Or are they just called "Berlin interpretation roguelikes"?

(I'm asking both out of curiosity and out of utility, since I'm a fan of the Berlin interpretation roguelikes (and have been since before the modern overly-broad interpretation came into use), so I used to be able to count on "roguelike" meaning it was one style of game, and I miss those days. I'd like to be able to know how to specifically find those games again.)

Also, congrats on the success of the game! I'm looking forward to trying it out sometime. It's on my wishlist, despite my quibbles with calling it a roguelike. :)

I think I've heard of "old school roguelike" or "traditional roguelike" being used to refer to those games. (googling seems to show that the latter naming seems to be more common.)

Hardcore players generally use "traditional roguelike" for things that are like rogue and "roguelite" for everything else.

As far as finding traditional roguelikes, a few big-name commercial ones are Caves of Qud, Cogmind, Jupiter Hell, and Rift Wizard. The r/roguelikes subreddit and discord can point you at a bunch of other ones both paid and free.

I first saw it on Second Wind's "Bytesized" review and it looked so good I instantly wishlisted it. Will try it out soon.

Congratulations!

> I even worked in AA(A?) back ca. ~2000

Cool, can you say what titles? Just curious. (congrats! they clearly laid off the wrong person :)

How was the process of talking to a publisher? Did they find the development? How did they help? What was the pitch process like?

Damn nice. Love seeing indies make it! I hope for a small fraction of your level of success when I finally ship Tentacle Typer.

Wishlisted! I love the premise and the look of your game! Good luck!!

Thank you!

How did you determine the price of the game?

Since this game both have a publisher and at least partially funded by them (by author comments here) most likely it was publisher decision on pricing.

Played the demo of this a few months back on our living room tv + controller and my u5 y/o kids were quite taken with it.

Congrats!

Looks like a fun game, I love the art style and that it’s Verified on Steam Deck. Just bought a copy to try it out!

Wow congratulations. The game presentation is awesome.

When working on this how long did it take before the game felt fun to you?

Honestly it felt fun on day 3, the first time you could drop a ball and there were a couple triggers that did things. As a verrrrrrry pessimistic person, the fact that I actually thought it felt fun was like a huge flashing light above my head that there was something to the idea.

Awesome! Especially as a pessimistic person being able to find that and break through.

Thanks for sharing!

from itchio to 200K+ on steam. Fantastic work. I have loved every minute of playing, and am astounded by the amount of work you've put into the game. Wild to see it a year+ ago vs today. But also still rage inducing when a drop misses every one of my triggers (gg). <3

I've seen this game played on YouTube a LOT and really want to give it a go.. Any chance of a Mac port?

"There's always a chance" ..

People have had luck playing it via Whiskey/WINE, but I would hate for you to spend money and find out it's not a great solution, so I can't encourage it.

Hey Brian, so happy to see this! I always knew you'd knock it out of the park with one of your games!

Oh hey Matt! Thanks!!!

Great work! I picked Ballionaire up during the winter sale I think? Hope it keeps crushing

Is the music in the first clip on Steam inspired by I Love You So by Junko Ohashi?

what engine did you use? anything you would you have done differently in hindsight?

Godot 4.2 with C#. Done differently? Hmm. It was an intense duration of work and I set a firm deadline for myself of EOY 2024 to avoid it dragging out into a longer-than-it-should-be project. Gaining design skills along the way, I could make better use of the same amount of time now, just by being a better designer. But that's not hindsight. There were trade-offs in that aggressive schedule, and a lot of triaging. One of the things that probably could have used a little more time in the oven, perhaps trading off against content, was the meta progression. I wasn't in love with what shipped, and it seems to be the main criticism of the game, besides RNG. It's something I may still potentially address in a patch though.

Animations and artworks is what make this game special. Thanks for inspiration.

Well done Brian! What would you say to Zuck if you met him on the street now?

Did your work at meta help a lot with this project. Tell us about it if so!

Congrats on the game! Saw the trailer and instantly brought it on steam :D

Congratulations! That's a huge accomplishment, and not something I'd call "minor."

When I think about game development, these are the skills and types of work that come to mind:

- software development

- game design

- graphical art

- musical composition

- writing

- marketing and promotion

and I'm sure there's more that I'm missing. I'd be very curious to know how you navigated through all of that...like did you start on one end, like with a game engine, and then fill in the rest, or was it more of a holistic iterative process? I hope that's not too broad of a question, but frankly I'd appreciate any insights you can share.

Congratulations, I've heard so many good things about your game.

This reminds me of the high quality, addicting PopCap games. Very nice!

I just bought your game :)

I still don't really get the appeal of roguelike games, to me it always just comes off either repetitive/boring/frustrating/etc. Could someone explain why they prefer it over just a "normal" game progression?

Maybe this will help a bit. I'm a drummer. Drums are literally all about doing the exact same thing for hours and hours on end, but with the goal of perfection. What's perfection? That's all in the eyes of the player. Been doing it 15+ years and don't plan on stopping.

I can do repetitive stuff like that for hours on end. A roguelike takes that and makes it a game with some slight variation to keep it interesting (kind of how a drum beat is the same thing, and then you change it to add some variation).

I definitely get wanting to perfect something, but for me it's frustrating because a roguelite forces you to do so vs just you deciding to redo something to perfect it.

What kind of up-skilling did you have to do when you started?

Congrats, I've seen a few people playing this lately :)

I wonder if I worked with you. I was a compiler guy myself.

Just put in a request for a cheat on WeMod :)

Very inspiring story! Thanks for posting.

How and when did you hook up with Raw Fury?

rouguelike is such a fun genre, congratulations

the only genre that made gaming fun for me after my childhood attachment faded.

Who did the art work? You?

Which engine have you used?

Also, congratulations!

Godot 4.2 w/ C#

The artist is Hanja Grgičević.

Thanks!

Love the red tomato and balloon faces :)

The trailer is hell good!! I love it!!

what engine did you use? what's the best advice if someone wants to go down the same route?

Godot

So I'm here practicing writing small apps in 40 mins, leetcoding medium and hard. I think I should rethink my next plans.

Congrats! This game looks amazing.

Thank you! :)

Wow, what an inspiring journey!

Congrats!

Outstanding!!! Spent some time in the valley in the 90's. Tom Perkins was our Chairman and Ceo so I learnt a LOT. One of the takeaways was that innovation starts with an itch you want to scratch, to KNOW that your idea is better than the others. Doesn't matter if you are delusional, the market will set you right either way. WELL DONE!!! taking this step and I wish you all the best for the future. I'll pass the message onto my chums.

Good trick is also sell steam keys in bulk. But you need a reason for steam support :)

The main menu is awesome

How is it roguelike?

Did you like Peglin?

woooo when is this coming to console?

inspiring story. thanks for sharing

keep it up brain! great game tho

Cool stuff!

Congratulations on the game! It looks great and I kinda want it. :)

I'm going to be that guy... Native Linux build when? I assume your game stack supports exporting native Linux builds. :)

Dude I love your game. Been playing it on steam deck, thanks for putting good controller support in!

Love the quality of the marketing videos did you produce those or work with another entity?

Billionaire is great.

I am also working on a project after being laid off, though I got hired elsewhere. Any suggestions on how to promote your work? I am fairly far away from that but it will be a harder thing for me I think

Reply on news.ycombinator.com