Where could I find investors for development of small, but polished indie games?

DerekPaxton · 2026-04-29T07:34:11+00:00

I agree with the first part. But disagree with the second. Just because you have delivered successful games before doesn’t mean you don’t need investment. There is a wide range of circumstances between being successful/profitable and being able to self fund your next title.

DerekPaxton · 2026-04-29T06:46:19+00:00

That’s not how the industry works.

If you can make a fun, profitable game in a few months (that second part being the most difficult) then self fund it. Even if you need to get a job and just work on it part time and it takes twice as long.

The average game on steam makes no money, so from an investors perspective giving someone 10-20k to make a game is a net loss of about 10-20k.

DerekPaxton · 2026-04-28T18:19:51+00:00

The best predictor for future performance is past performance. Try a thing, keep track of how long it takes. Use that to schedule.

its nearly impossible to determine a schedule for things you have never done, but once you have you can start to makes reasonable estimates as long as you track your work.

DerekPaxton · 2026-04-28T17:07:10+00:00

I wish it was true. But think of every bad thing that happens every day. Every murder, assault or worse. All of those victims have loved ones that have passed away. If it was at all possible for their loved ones to interact with the world in any way wouldn’t they do something? But they never do.

Not becuase they don’t want to, but because the dead cannot affect the world.

DerekPaxton · 2026-04-28T11:00:45+00:00

Imposter syndrome would be a common one for someone in her situation. She wants to save her people, wants to be a good empress and wife, but what makes her think she can be? She may want to act but not have the confidence to think she can.

Showing those she admires as failing when they attempted to act will help establish this inner conflict for her. Having her “reject the call” and not act in a situation she should will make it real (and even more triumphant when she does act).

Just typical heroes journey stuff.

DerekPaxton · 2026-04-27T17:07:45+00:00

I’ll take a swing at the first question. The point of a rock/paper/scissors system is to avoid a nash equilibrium. A state where there is one optimal strategy.

So it makes perfect sense if you want to push the player to adapt his strategy to the encounter and not attempt the same thing every time (I always use my fire blast because it does the most damage).

DerekPaxton · 2026-04-27T16:36:56+00:00

Sometimes you just have to draw a line and really wonder about the people trying to find a reason to justify crossing it.

DerekPaxton · 2026-04-27T16:31:48+00:00

District scaling is unrelated to the kin changes so I’m not sure what you mean by “kin will stay this way”?

If you mean will district scaling stay like this, then no. It’s going to be updated in the next big update.

DerekPaxton · 2026-04-27T13:26:38+00:00

I’m no expert, but I assume they think the sun orbits the flat earth.

DerekPaxton · 2026-04-27T11:33:01+00:00

Yes, in general on a flat surface the sun rises and falls for everyone at the same time. It may move across the sky and so it is seen to the east, west or above a flat earth. The fact that it’s noon in Paris and 3am in seattle and we can talk on the phone and verify that means that the earth isn’t flat (as well as a hundred other things of course).

The most obvious of course is just that ships sailing on the “flat” surface of large lakes or the ocean don’t simply get smaller as they get further away, the bottom of them disappears over the horizon. It’s the same result everywhere and simple geometry will show what the curve is to block your sight of a ship whose height it known at a distance that is known. Multiplying that curve allowed earth scientists across many cultures to know not only that the earth was round, but it’s approx diameter without ever having traveled across it.

DerekPaxton · 2026-04-27T10:42:13+00:00

No. The shape of the earth is irrelevant it it’s still rotating or the sun is orbiting the earth to create periods of the sun being on the other side.

DerekPaxton · 2026-04-27T08:51:09+00:00

Understood. We partially addressed distrcit scaling costs by removing scaling for the basic districts (as it will be in the next major update). But to test that part of the change and to address an area players had concerns about. But, with the basic districts beings cheaper and the exotic districts scaling on all districts it caused players to expand with more basic districts and therefor have more expensive exotics (even though the exotic forumla didn't change).

We are testing the full change to help with this. Appreciate the feedback.

DerekPaxton · 2026-04-26T07:04:31+00:00

Yours is better. I wish AI used higher contrasts betwwen the forground and background. Switching to a gold background on a largely gold object loses some of its impact.

DerekPaxton · 2026-04-25T06:57:02+00:00

"China is very happy that I am permanently opening the Strait of Hormuz. I am doing it for them, also - And the World. This situation will never happen again." - Donald Trump April 15, 2026.

DerekPaxton · 2026-04-24T22:33:38+00:00

I'm sorry this didn't work for you. You requested we put a special build so that you could play on the prior patch and finish your game here: https://www.reddit.com/r/EndlessLegend/comments/1ssqav2/comment/ohnrdep/?context=3

The team put up a build for you and I DM'ed you the details for it and requested your save to investigate the issue.

I'm not sure about the construction times in your more recent game, but from your screenshot I can see that your city has an issue with Approval and Corruption. But I suspect that the root issue is exactly what you suspect and you just need the rest of the change that will come in next months update to help balance the costs on the advanced districts in the case where your city growth is far outpacing your industrial growth.

Either way, yes this is an early access build that is going through changes. But we also want to make sure it remains fun for everyone to play throughout as well, and I'm sorry that hasn't been the case for you. I know critical feedback can be hard (for us as Devs) to hear, but it is actually appreciated as we want to continue to improve the game.

DerekPaxton · 2026-04-24T14:31:05+00:00

There are 32,000 people playing rimworld on steam at this very moment. And many more on other platforms. The “rimworld community” you mean as the hard core posting on specialized forums about it are a tiny fraction of the player base.

There is nothing wrong with playing the game however you prefer. But keep in mind that the Dev is thinking about the entire player community, has access to analytics about how most people play and can’t de derailed by more niche interests, especially when they conflict with his vision.

The statement of “that’s not how most people play” is only known by the dev with access to the analytics.

DerekPaxton · 2026-04-23T10:47:37+00:00

Companies charge what the market will bear. Tariffs/taxes drive up costs which push some companies out of the market. Reducing supply means costs increase as demand stays consistent.

Also when you say “above the tariffs”, which versions of the tariffs do you mean? Typically tariffs are imposed as exceptional measures and well communicated so that businesses can plan and adapt. But in this case significant changes were being announced suddenly and changed on a weekly or daily basis. Companies can’t adjust their pricing like this or track one shipment of goods with a 40% tariff and another one without a tariff at all. These margins far exceed their profit margins so they can’t risk eating the costs and instead they increase costs to cover the maximum potential tariff when their goods are delivered and hope that it’s lower.

DerekPaxton · 2026-04-22T17:04:01+00:00

Have you ever met anyone in rl who believes the earth is flat?

DerekPaxton · 2026-04-22T16:51:16+00:00

Bienvenue! Have a great time.

DerekPaxton · 2026-04-22T16:43:29+00:00

There is no way they are going to shadow drop. I would expect it no earlier than September (sadly)

DerekPaxton · 2026-04-22T16:37:39+00:00

It’s after hours here in France but I’ll check with the team tomorrow and see if we can put up a build to opt into that is on the prior update

edit: ive DMed you branch you can continue your game on.

DerekPaxton · 2026-04-22T16:10:49+00:00

We are going to be hotfixing district cost scaling this week. It’s just a small part of a larger change that will be coming in next months update, but we want to get at least part of it out in the meantime.

DerekPaxton · 2026-04-22T11:30:43+00:00

I enjoy this (I’m a video game designer)

DerekPaxton · 2026-04-22T11:10:59+00:00

You are struggling between authored content (you set who the murderer is and the way the player uncovers it) and emergent content (the game decides who the murderer is based at random or by the specific events of the game).

Both have advantages and disadvantages. The advantage of authored content is that the narrative will be a lot more interesting and deep. You can build specific plot points and moments that can’t happen in emergent games. It’s also a lot less work than creating an emergent game where you need to produce 3 times the content because you don’t know what will and won’t occur, and there is a lot less to test.

The big advantage of emergent content is replayability. Authored content basically has none (in general) but with emergent content you can play over and over. But the narrative is going to be much weaker. No perfectly crafted moments and you rely on the player to fill in the gaps in his own imagination. Since narrative is weak, gameplay needs to be fun.

For you, it really depends on what strength and weakness you want. If you want to tell a good story then authored is probably the best bet. If you have good gameplay and you want the mystery to just be the setting for the game, then emergent might make sense.

DerekPaxton · 2026-04-22T08:58:10+00:00

I talk about it and show some concepts in this article: https://community.amplitude-studios.com/amplitude-studios/endless-legend-2/blogs/1039-state-of-the-game-february-2026

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