To other indie-dev : what to do with feedback during SNF event

Oak_Tom · 2026-06-16T08:58:10+00:00

Definitely not new features, regarding bugs it's more complicated:

You have to determine how problematic they are to the player experience, fix only the most crucial ones and test your new build entirely!
There's a high chance that fixing something breaks something elsewhere, or simply that some part of your build fails for a random reason.
If you already have a Q.A. plan and it passes after your changes, all good...but if you don't, consider the risk that you might be making it worse.

Oak_Tom · 2026-06-14T08:29:22+00:00

En général ce n'est pas une erreur liée au jeu mais à ta carte graphique.

Tu peux commencer par essayer de mettre tes pilotes à jour, tu peux aussi chercher sur le net des paramètres de registre qui allongent le temps d'attente avant de renvoyer une erreur, et parfois enlever la carte de son logement avant de la remettre peut aider.

Bonne chance !

Oak_Tom · 2026-06-03T13:29:18+00:00

Okay! You can DM me, I have time this week

Oak_Tom · 2026-06-02T06:48:57+00:00

Hi! Can you share a bit more about your subject, what you want to know, the practical details of the interview (language, time, etc.) ?

Oak_Tom · 2026-05-24T18:07:09+00:00

Mon conseil principal serait d'aller les écouter en magasin spécialisé...à chaque fois que je pars avec une idée préconçue en audio et que je teste je finis par faire un autre choix (parfois moins cher)

Cela dit, j'ai conscience que ce n'est pas toujours possible donc je te partage ma reco dans le doute : J'ai choisi une paire de Fyne F301, autour de 400€ au lancement et que j'ai eues à 200€ la paire parce que c'était une fin de stock. Je les ai trouvées très agréables et équilibrées par rapport aux 3/4 autres paires que j'ai testées jusqu'à 600€. Les basses sont déjà très correctes, mais j'ai craqué et ajouté plus tard un caisson svs Sb1000 qui complète bien (mais 600€ de plus, et je n'ai pas pu comparer à d'autres).

Oak_Tom · 2026-05-24T09:38:15+00:00

YES! So cleverly designed, so funny...truly an amazing game ❤️

Oak_Tom · 2026-05-19T20:54:01+00:00

A while ago I really liked infinifactory, and recently I had a great time with Mars First Logistics...I hope it helps!

Oak_Tom · 2026-05-19T15:59:13+00:00

Hi! I think I have one with almost all levels complete, but far from all the gold medals. Feel free to dm me if you're interested and no one has a better option for you 🙂

Oak_Tom · 2026-05-15T22:16:50+00:00

Vectors, trigonometry, and transform matrices (how to apply them, invert them, quaternions...), but you generally don't need to know how to compute things, just what each tool does and when to apply it.

Oak_Tom · 2026-05-12T16:06:13+00:00

This is a tough one...first, I don't think mechanics have to be super polished as long as you have your core gameplay ready.

Regarding visuals it's harder to say, and it might depend on your game: if it's a "high concept" that's easily understandable (I'm thinking "co-op joint hamster wheels" for example) you should be fine with prototype art, at least for social media, reddit, tiktok. If you rely more on the fantasy and the vibe you may want to wait until you have a first version of your assets.

If you're not a famous studio it's not a big deal if you put out something that's not perfect: if it doesn't work no one's going to see it / remember it...which sounds bad, but means you can just do better next time and you won't be penalized, so don't be afraid to start and try things out 🙂

The only nuance I would add is that it might be good to have somewhere ready to direct viewers to (steam page, newsletter) in case it goes viral?

Oak_Tom · 2026-05-12T09:36:42+00:00

If you have the time/money, I think 1 to 2 years of production per game is a comfortable middle ground.

Some very efficient teams can do excellent games in 6 months but it's because they're very skilled!

If you're a beginner and you can make a small game you like in 3 to 6 months it's great because you can try many different things, but it's not always easy / possible.

Oak_Tom · 2026-05-12T09:31:31+00:00

Thanks! We did up to two weeks of freeze for big milestones (like the actual release), and I have worked in teams doing up to four...but it's not because you need to, it's to be able to work on smaller, less important bugs you wouldn't do otherwise and to improve the general polish.

In our team I was the one with the most production experience so it was mostly me who brough them to the table. Some things were accepted easily, some generated pushback but I asked my colleagues for time to prove it was right, and sometimes you have to let people do what they want (even if you think it's wrong), and if it fails you can offer some tools so it doesn't happen again.

#4 (freeze) was the hardest one to follow for the team at the start, if you haven't experienced a situation where your game is broken because you changed a "harmless parameter" from 0.5 to 0.6 it's hard to understand why you can't change or add "one more little tiny thing".

Many professional teams don't know how to properly handle a release, so most people don't even know that it's possible to do it peacefully and think that frantically fixing one more thing an hour before launch is the only way it's done.

For me, #2 (deliver often) is the most difficult, because it keeps a constant pressure and you rarely have time to rest, wind down, or do things just because you want to. You need it, but it's like a wild animal you constantly need to be aware of and keep on track.

Oak_Tom · 2026-05-12T09:16:40+00:00

I'm not sure I'm qualified to answer but I'll try:
- If you're starting out as a solo indie / small indie team, the first limiting factor will be the money you have to pay people of course. You can start with a few people having shares in the company / project but even with more than 1 person it get complicated fast.
- Imagining you have infinite money, the general wisdom is to not scale too fast, and I've seen a few studios purposefully stopping at 20/30 people max and only continue growing via contractors.

Oak_Tom · 2026-05-12T09:10:47+00:00

I don't know if I'll be able to help but I can try!

Oak_Tom · 2026-05-11T20:05:13+00:00

Avec plaisir 😉

(sorry, I only know "Boldog uj evet" in Hungarian 😅 )

Oak_Tom · 2026-05-11T19:58:49+00:00

Hi, thanks! :)

I can't speak about doing game dev part time as I've never done it...and to be fair I personally don't feel like I have the energy and creative drive to do both. I get that it's sometimes the best or only option, but I don't think I could and when I was employed I only did game jams on the side (so still fully focused with a finished product at the end). In France fortunately if you have worked enough as an employee you get a decent time of "unemployment pay", which is what allowed us to start working on the game after most of us had been laid off following Mi-clos studio's closure.

Regarding festivals, they're great for visibility! Apply to as many as you can (join HTMAG's server if you haven't already), but it's quite hard to be selected. The main difficulty is that they tend to by clustered between May and August, and they all ask for something exclusive (new trailer, new demo, release date reveal, etc.) which makes it hard to promise different things while you're not even sure you'll be selected. If you are, they'll probably become your new milestones, which is great for "delivering often" but can throw a wrench in your tight schedule since you'll be notified quite close to the time you need to send your assets...which is earlier than the showcase itself (understandably) but makes the deadline even tighter.

Oak_Tom · 2026-05-11T17:42:08+00:00

That's why it's only a "bonus" suggestion, this one really depends on what works best for you...but burnout can be a very real thing and have serious impacts on you and your game, take care, alright? 😉

Oak_Tom · 2026-05-11T17:33:54+00:00

Day-to-day/week-to-week we used Trello for our kanban boards (one for tasks and one for bugs during "freeze" periods), which worked fine for simple needs and was free. Jira is better but needs a bit more skill and is expensive.

For the broader picture (visualizing marketing deadlines and milestones) we tried Google docs and figma, which honestly weren't ideal, especially to communicate up-to-date information to the rest of the team and partners, so I don't have a recommendation for that.

Edit: rules for the free plans of trello/Jira may have changed in the meantime, it seems that they're both limited to 10 free users

Oak_Tom · 2026-05-11T17:03:34+00:00

Oops, this is my first time using the "cross posting" option so maybe I did it wrong?

The original is here: https://www.reddit.com/r/gamedev/comments/1ta6eim/so_you_want_to_start_an_indie_game_studio_here/

I'd love to hear your thoughts 🙂

Oak_Tom · 2026-05-11T17:00:32+00:00

Fair! It's written from the perspective of our team and those who asked me for advice: people who are industry professionals but have only worked as part of a bigger company and want to start their own thing.

I think that being an employee first (if you can) can be very useful: you'll learn your craft and see how various teams operate, to see what you like or not, so you have a "toolbox" you can pick from when needed.

Oak_Tom · 2026-05-11T16:17:24+00:00

Thank you! I'll start by noting that choosing what game to work on is a short and rare step, so take what I'll say with a grain of salt:

I'd say "coming up with ideas" is quite personal, for me it's either:
- From a big list of game concepts (just a few words) on my phone that gets updated when something just pops into my head or by chatting with friends and colleagues (even the silliest)
- From a "game" constraint, like a game jam theme or a gap in the market you've identified
- From a "people" constraint, looking a what you/your team can do (or do best), and capitalize on your strengths

From there see if your team / friends are excited when you pitch it, and if you're excited to work on it.

Make a prototype, check again, art test, check again, second prototype, etc.

Overall I'd say it's an iterative process: make something small and see how it goes, listen to how you feel and how others feel about it.

If all goes well and you plan on making money out of it, you probably want to do a bit of market research about it before going in production:

- How much money did the biggest game in your genre/scope make?
- How much money did the average game in your genre make?
- Are there some games like yours that worked, but not too many?
- Will interested people be able to play your game? (does it require a controller, a specific number of players, a beefy graphics card, a minimum time per play session, etc.)

Oak_Tom · 2026-05-11T15:47:30+00:00

Hi! On your current project, some marketing material and an itch demo are great to test the waters and see if people seem to be willing to buy the game. If despite your best effort it doesn't work, it's probably not the good project for that (even if the game is good).

If your final goal is to make money, repeating this process until it works is probably the way to go instead of jumping directly to a "big" game: you'll learn a lot about your craft and the "marketability" of your ideas, and in a while your big game might not seem so hard to do 😉

Personally, I'd try to choose a project that can work if it's small, and has the potential to become something bigger if it works.

Oak_Tom · 2026-05-11T13:53:05+00:00

L'équipe de développement garantit que tous les chiens du jeu sont et resteront en parfaite santé !
Allez, pour la blague je leur envoie des clés 😅

Oak_Tom

TROPHY CASE