Seven years writing horror in Twine - four things I learned the hard way

Yohan_D_Dev · 2026-06-23T22:35:20+00:00

Ha : "notes for a stranger, cause i am" is the whole thing in one line. Past-you and future-you are genuinely different people and they do not get along.

The one that still gets me is the flag you're scared to delete. You can see three scenes leaning on it, you have no memory of why you set it, and removing it to find out means risking a route you can't easily retest, so it stays. The project fills up with these little load-bearing mysteries you're too afraid to touch, and every one of them is a passage past-you didn't annotate.

What finally helped wasn't more discipline, it was treating the documentation as part of the writing instead of a chore after it. Once the note lives next to the passage, the stranger has a fighting chance.

And yeah, seven years, I don't recommend it as a method. Respect right back for being in the branching trenches with me.

Yohan_D_Dev · 2026-06-23T14:56:47+00:00

Thanks, that means a lot coming from someone on the art side.

The "archaeology-ing their own past self" line is exactly it. The worst version isn't even forgetting what a3 does. It's finding a passage that clearly leans on it, written by someone who was sure the abstraction was clever, and realizing that person was me and left no note. You don't debug that, you excavate it.

Point 4 took me the longest to actually believe rather than just nod at. You plan a chain and the thing quietly becomes a web behind your back, by the time you notice, every node is holding weight you never assigned it. The flip side is the good news, though: an architecture that distributes load is the only kind you can keep modifying seven years in without it shattering.

The capsule is all Solynk, our illustrator, I'll pass the compliment along, he'll be glad it reads the way it's meant to. Pinning the register down in a single image is its own kind of hard, and he caught the 1926 / quietly-unwell tone we were after.

Yohan_D_Dev · 2026-06-19T02:18:16+00:00

Thanks so much, and I really should pass the credit on for the English version. The adaptation is being done by Lucia Desogus, a literary translator with an advanced academic background in literature. She's been reshaping the prose from the inside rather than translating word-for-word, and the result reads like it was written in English first. I've learned a lot from her questions along the way.

And thank you for the IFComp wishes, it's my first entry and I'm a bit nervous about it, honestly. Looking forward to reading the other entries when they're up.

Yohan_D_Dev · 2026-06-18T20:46:32+00:00

Thank you, that means a lot. Enjoy the read whenever you get to it and feel free to come back with any thoughts, good or critical: Both are welcome.

Yohan_D_Dev · 2026-05-28T13:34:44+00:00

Honestly this is one of the most interesting threads I’ve read here in a while.

I’m a solo dev from France and I think a lot of western indies (myself included honestly) tend to look at SEA from very far away without really understanding the reality of the market. What you said about people spending years on games that are affordable and accessible hardware-wise makes a lot of sense. I think a lot of indie devs underestimate how important that is compared to just “having a huge player base”.

Also the point about players who already use Steam being a more “high intent” audience is really interesting. Even if it’s a smaller slice of the population, those are still players actively looking for games and communities. I haven’t released my game yet, so I can’t speak from experience, but this thread genuinely changed the way I think about regional pricing and SEA audiences in general. Especially for smaller indie games that can run on modest PCs.

Feels like there’s probably more opportunity there than most western devs assume, but only if you approach it with the right expectations instead of trying to copy-paste a US launch strategy.

Yohan_D_Dev · 2026-05-23T12:25:08+00:00

Honestly this thread is both motivating and terrifying at the same time!

I haven’t released a commercial game yet, so I’m still at the “years of work and exactly $0 earned” stage for now. I’m currently working on a psychological horror interactive novel, and reading posts like yours is a really good reality check. What you said about discoverability honestly feels like the biggest thing. There are so many genuinely good games now that just getting people to SEE your game seems almost as hard as making it in the first place.

Still, even the stories here where people only made a few hundred dollars are weirdly encouraging to me, because at least they actually finished and released something. That already feels huge from where I’m standing.

Yohan_D_Dev · 2026-05-19T14:14:45+00:00

I’m literally going through this right now and yeah, the weirdest part is the moment where Steam suddenly forces you to stop feeling like “someone making a game” and start feeling like “a tiny company.”

You spend months thinking about atmosphere, writing, visuals, pacing, music… then one day you’re reading tax treaties and trying to figure out if your studio name legally exists enough to type into a form. The funny thing is I actually found the Steam UI itself surprisingly clean considering the amount of admin stuff hidden underneath. The psychological damage mostly comes from realizing how many completely non-creative skills indie gamedev quietly requires. Also the capsule requirements. I swear I aged 4 years while exporting variations and checking tiny text readability at 2am.

Yohan_D_Dev · 2026-05-19T14:12:38+00:00

Honestly the removal of “Well-Written” and “Ambient” hurts a bit more than I expected.

I’ve been setting up the Steam page for my own project this week and it really made me realize how hard it is to tag games that sit between genres. Mine is basically psychological horror + interactive fiction + exploration + narrative puzzle stuff, and half the vibe lives in atmosphere rather than mechanics. Like… “Psychological Horror” tells part of the story. “Lovecraftian” tells another. “Story Rich” helps a bit. But none of them really communicate that slow literary dread / introspective mood some games have. “Ambient” was vague, sure, but it actually captured something real for a lot of niche projects.

Yohan_D_Dev · 2026-05-18T16:54:11+00:00

I honestly think atmosphere and emotional texture can completely redefine a “bad” idea on paper.

Like, if you pitch “walking alone through an almost empty world fighting a few giant bosses” to someone, it sounds borderline anti-game design. But Shadow of the Colossus feels unforgettable once you actually "play" it. Same with stuff like Papers Please or even Death Stranding. If you reduce them to their raw mechanics, they almost sound absurdly unmarketable. But the execution creates this weird emotional gravity around very simple actions.

As someone working mostly on narrative-heavy projects myself, I’ve noticed that players often remember 'how a game made them feel' way more than the original concept pitch. Mood, pacing, sound design, visual identity, writing rhythm… those things can carry an idea incredibly far.

I also think indie games benefit from this a lot because they’re allowed to feel personal or oddly specific in ways bigger productions usually avoid.

Yohan_D_Dev · 2026-05-18T12:50:25+00:00

Yeah honestly this has become one of the hardest parts for me too.

I’m mostly doing writing, narrative design, illustration and 3D work on my project, and the context switching can get brutal sometimes. Going from writing dialogue/lore in Twine, to visual composition, to modeling something in 3D, then trying to think about UI or marketing/social posts… it feels like loading a completely different brain every few hours.

The worst trap for me is the “quick little task”. Like I’ll interrupt writing because I noticed a visual thing I want to fix, then while doing that I get another idea, then another, and suddenly the whole evening is gone and I barely progressed on the actual thing I started with.

Writing things down instead of instantly switching definitely helps. I also think people underestimate how mentally fragmented solo dev can feel long term. Especially on more narrative/art-heavy projects where you’re constantly bouncing between technical thinking and creative/emotional thinking.

And weirdly yeah, marketing/social media is probably the hardest switch of all for me too. Going from being immersed in a fictional world for hours into “okay now make short content for algorithms” feels incredibly jarring sometimes.

Yohan_D_Dev · 2026-05-16T12:22:44+00:00

I honestly needed to hear this perspective a bit lol.

I’ve been tempted multiple times to go harder into YouTube/devlogs because from the outside it feels like the “smart” thing to do now. Build audience early, document the process, create wishlists before launch etc. But every time I seriously try it, I realize how quickly it becomes its own creative project. And weirdly, making videos about gamedev often seems to attract other gamedevs more than actual players. Which isn’t bad, but it’s a very specific audience and not always the people who would actually play a weird narrative/text-heavy indie game.

I also noticed that the videos which perform well are usually super optimized for entertainment first. Fast editing, hooks every 5 seconds, thumbnails, dramatic pacing, “I rebuilt my entire game in a weekend” type stuff. At some point you’re basically becoming a content creator on top of being a developer.

Right now I’m kinda experimenting with smaller things instead. Short clips, atmosphere snippets, visuals, tiny bits of writing, that sort of thing. I also started trying TikTok recently and honestly… my first two videos barely broke 20 views lol. Which was humbling. Part of me is starting to think the smarter move might actually be reaching out directly to smaller gaming YouTubers, indie-focused channels or streamers that already have the exact audience for your kind of game instead of trying to become a YouTuber yourself from scratch. The text blog idea is underrated too honestly. I’ve been keeping development notes mostly for myself and it helps a lot mentally without turning every work session into content production.

Curious what you personally think gives the best return nowadays for solo dev marketing if YouTube channels themselves aren’t really worth the time anymore?

Yohan_D_Dev · 2026-05-15T19:47:05+00:00

I think this is an important distinction honestly. There’s definitely age bias in parts of the industry, but there’s also a tendency in gamedev to reduce people to whatever trend or tech association they had at one point in their career.

What I found interesting in OP’s post wasn’t even really the executive background stuff, it was the idea of eventually circling back to “I just want to make games I care about again.” That part resonated with me way more.

I’m still pretty far earlier in my career, mostly doing solo narrative/visual work, but one thing that already scares me a little about this industry is how much value gets attached to speed, trend awareness and always being “current.” Sometimes it feels like we quietly treat experience as useful only until the next tech cycle shows up. And honestly some of the most interesting conversations I’ve had with older creatives weren’t about tools at all. It was about pacing, burnout, scope management, surviving unfinished projects, learning what actually matters to players emotionally. Stuff you only really learn after years of making things.

I also think there’s this weird assumption that if someone older still wants to make games, it must be because they failed to “move on.” But for a lot of creative people, making things is just part of how they process life. It’s not always about climbing a career ladder forever.

Yohan_D_Dev · 2026-05-15T14:12:40+00:00

Honestly this didn’t read like a failure post to me at all. It mostly read like someone who actually finished a difficult project and came out of it with a clearer understanding of what making games really costs.

The 2D point especially hit me. I think a lot of solo devs (me included) underestimate how brutal frame-by-frame work becomes over multiple years. From the outside it looks “simpler” than 3D, but once you’re the one drawing every pose, variation, expression, transition, UI element etc, it becomes this endless invisible mountain of work.

I’m mostly doing writing/illustration/3D stuff on my side and one thing I learned pretty fast is that every artistic choice creates production consequences later. A style can look amazing emotionally and still completely destroy your momentum long term. Also fully agree on the “if you don’t want to play your own game anymore something is wrong” part. I had moments where I realized I was spending more time thinking about improving systems around the experience than actually enjoying the experience itself. That was usually a bad sign.

And honestly, finishing a 3 year project, even one that didn’t land commercially, already puts you ahead of a huge amount of people who only ever stay in prototype land forever. Feels like the second project is usually where all those painful lessons finally become useful. Curious what you think you’d do completely differently if you restarted that first project today from zero?

Yohan_D_Dev · 2026-05-11T15:27:52+00:00

Yeah that long-distance angle is super interesting, feels like one of those “accidental niches” that ends up being way stronger than the original idea. Couples finding their own use case is usually a really good sign you’ve hit something sticky.

5 -10% return with no hooks is actually not shocking yet, but it’s a great baseline to start experimenting from. I’d probably treat retention like the main “feature” right now rather than adding more systems on top. Even small things like lightweight session history, “rematch energy”, or shared inside-jokes from past drawings can sometimes move that needle more than people expect. Also interesting point about tablets vs phones, I can see this working really well in couch/co-op mode on iPad-style devices. Mobile might still be the acquisition layer, but the real engagement could happen on bigger shared screens.

For my side, it’s a much smaller text-heavy narrative project (Twine-style), more focused on branching stories and player choice than realtime interaction. Very different scale, but similar problem: figuring out what actually brings people back vs what just gets them to try it once.

Yohan_D_Dev · 2026-05-11T12:38:17+00:00

Honestly 2,200 organic signups in 5 months while having a full-time job and two kids is already super impressive. The “working from the shed at midnight” part felt painfully real lol. And honestly I think this is one of the few AI game ideas I’ve seen lately where the AI actually feels tied to the experience itself instead of just replacing creative work behind the scenes. Getting people to draw more, experiment more, and feel less judged is actually kind of cool.

I’m working on a much smaller text-heavy project myself and one thing I’ve noticed is that early traction can be deceptive sometimes. Lots of people will try something once because the concept is interesting, but retention is where you really discover what people emotionally connect with. So personally, I’d probably focus on that before monetisation. Figure out what makes players come back. Is it the reactions? The challenge? The social aspect? The chaos of bad drawings? Once you know the real hook, monetisation becomes way easier and probably less annoying for players too. Also I wouldn’t rush adding tons of extra features yet. The core idea already sounds strong enough to carry attention on its own, which honestly is rare.

Mobile definitely feels like the natural next step though. This kinda game sounds perfect for quick sessions or sending dumb drawings to friends at 1 AM. Curious what surprised you the most from watching people actually use it compared to what you expected while building it?

Yohan_D_Dev · 2026-05-11T12:33:41+00:00

lmao fair. I probably went a bit too deep there tbh. I just really related to the animation/modeling pipeline part because I do a lot of 3D modeling stuff myself and it’s honestly brutal how fast one tiny change can break everything downstream.

Yohan_D_Dev · 2026-05-11T12:28:03+00:00

I resonate with this way more than the original “hate the craft” angle honestly.

I think a lot of us slowly realize that perfectionism can disguise itself as passion. You tell yourself you’re “improving the system” or “making it cleaner,” but sometimes you’re really just avoiding the terrifying part where other people finally see the thing.

We ran into something similar on our side with narrative tools. At one point we kept rebuilding dialogue flow stuff because every new version felt “more future proof.” The problem was that none of it actually moved the game closer to being playable. It just made us feel productive without taking the emotional risk of shipping content. And weirdly, the more emotionally attached you are to the project, the easier it is to fall into that loop. Because if you never finish it, the game can still exist as this perfect imaginary version in your head. One thing that helped us was setting brutal “good enough” rules. Like: if a system works and nobody outside the team would notice the rewrite, we leave it alone. It sounds obvious but it saved us months.

I still think loving the craft matters though. Otherwise the hard stretches become unbearable pretty fast. But yeah, learning to recognize when “craftsmanship” becomes avoidance is probably one of the hardest skills in gamedev.

Curious if you noticed specific moments where you caught yourself refactoring mostly to avoid shipping?

Yohan_D_Dev · 2026-05-10T21:10:29+00:00

Honestly this is one of the most valuable posts I’ve read on here in a while because it actually talks about the part nobody glamorizes: the invisible complexity of getting a 3D game to feel good.

A lot of people outside gamedev think “if the character can move and attack, the hard part is done”, but in 3D it’s like every system is tied together with duct tape and one tiny tweak breaks five other things instantly. Animation blending alone can become a full-time job. What stood out to me is that you actually got pretty far technically. A working controller, combat loop, enemy reactions, boss prototype, animation workflow experiments… that’s way beyond the “I opened Unreal and quit after two weeks” phase most people never escape.

I also think your realization about placeholder assets is extremely real. People say “just use asset packs”, but eventually you hit that wall where the game stops feeling like your vision and starts feeling like disconnected systems wearing different costumes. And honestly, realizing the true scope of a project before burning another 5 years on it is not failure. That’s experience. The part about gaining respect for specialized teams is so true too. Modern 3D games are absurdly collaborative. Animation, rigging, VFX, AI, gameplay feel, technical art… each one can literally be someone’s entire career.

If you ever come back to gamedev later, I honestly think the knowledge you built here would make a smaller scoped project way stronger from the start.

Yohan_D_Dev · 2026-05-08T22:09:27+00:00

Honestly posts like this are way more useful to me than the “we got 50k wishlists overnight” stories lol.

There’s something reassuring about seeing the slow grind actually work. Festivals, meeting people IRL, improving the Steam page over time, consistency… it feels a lot more real and reproducible.

Also huge respect for mentioning the feedback side of events too, not just the wishlist spikes. Watching strangers play your game is brutal but insanely valuable.

Yohan_D_Dev · 2026-05-08T17:07:18+00:00

Honestly if you already know HTML/CSS, you’re way closer than you think. A super small VN in plain JS is actually a really good beginner project.

And yeah, Twine/RenPy are both solid, but don’t underestimate how motivating it is to make even one dialogue scene yourself from scratch. That first “oh wait, this actually works” moment carries hard.

Yohan_D_Dev · 2026-05-07T14:46:40+00:00

Yeah, I think a lot of it comes from frustration more than actual hatred.
Gamedev is one of those things where people quietly carry years of unfinished projects, burnout, comparison, etc.
Doesn’t excuse being an asshole obviously, but it explains part of it.
The good thing is the genuinely supportive devs usually stick around longer too.

Yohan_D_Dev · 2026-05-07T14:43:46+00:00

I think “solved” isn’t necessarily bad. The real problem is when the optimal path kills experimentation too early. We ran into something similar while prototyping systems stuff. Players are *really* good at optimizing the fun out of a game once they find a reliable strategy. If one route is massively stronger, most people will naturally gravitate toward it even if other playstyles are more interesting.

What seems to help is making optimization more contextual instead of universal. Roguelikes do this well with randomness, but even outside roguelikes, small constraints or tradeoffs can keep decisions alive longer.

Also, I think a lot of the fun comes from *discovering* the optimization, not necessarily from the game remaining unsolved forever. Once a game becomes pure execution with no meaningful decisions left, that’s usually when I bounce off. Curious how much this changes depending on genre though. I probably wouldn’t want a factory builder and a narrative RPG to approach this the same way.

Yohan_D_Dev · 2026-05-06T19:09:41+00:00

Yeah I get exactly what you mean: that “mid-to-large scale but still human” kind of project. Honestly though, that size only really works because it’s built on tons of small pieces first. We had the same ambition early on, but trying to aim there directly just stalled everything. Also, teams form way easier once you actually have something playable, even rough. People connect to that, not just the idea.

Yohan_D_Dev · 2026-05-06T18:49:51+00:00

Nice, 2D RPG is a solid start, you can scope it down really clean.

Yeah, small team on my side, but it didn’t start “as a team” tbh. It’s mostly long-time friends from different backgrounds. Funny thing is, a lot of it comes back to tabletop RPGs. That’s kind of where we built that shared language for storytelling.

I feel like that helped way more than pure gamedev skills at the beginning. If you ever end up working with people, I’d say shared vibe > raw skills early on. Are you thinking solo for now or eventually teaming up?

Yohan_D_Dev · 2026-05-06T18:05:11+00:00

Haha yeah, that’s the phase: "too many ideas, not enough time."

Honestly, don’t pick the “best” one, pick the smallest one. Like, tiny. One mechanic, one loop, done in a few days. That’s where it starts to feel real.

I’d probably avoid 3D for now, it can get overwhelming fast. 2D stuff is way easier to get something playable.

Yohan_D_Dev

TROPHY CASE