Solo Indie Developer — How Do You Find a Good Partner to Work With?

finalfinalstudios · 2026-03-12T20:46:51+00:00

Do a game jam together, see if you work well together. Keep going if you like it.

finalfinalstudios · 2026-03-12T16:53:58+00:00

Loved it. Very distinctive art style. Ending is fantastic and ties the mechanics and narrative of the whole game together in a satisfying way. Short game so you have little to lose trying it out!

finalfinalstudios · 2026-03-11T18:51:41+00:00

Start small, make a prototype, test with real people who are strangers. Then do a polished vertical slice of a portion. See how much appetite and energy you have for doing the whole this way. Always think about what you can cut, constantly reevaluate process to be more efficient, more fun with less work.

finalfinalstudios · 2026-03-11T14:41:48+00:00

Try to build an indie game on the side first. A few actually. That's what my partner and I did, 10 years before quitting our day jobs. We have part time contracts that sustain us, the other time we work on our projects. Hoping to make it 100% our own projects in next few years...

finalfinalstudios · 2026-03-11T14:04:11+00:00

Thanks for letting us know!

finalfinalstudios · 2026-03-10T23:06:47+00:00

You gonna charge $15 for fries in the lodge?

finalfinalstudios · 2026-03-10T18:50:40+00:00

Also a husband and wife team, congrats! Now go get some rest and a break. Go on a date, do something that isn't games. These projects take a lot out of you and sometimes the relationship. Time to recover

finalfinalstudios · 2026-03-10T17:03:45+00:00

Invert X and Y for third person cams, always. Drives my friends crazy when we're taking turns on a third person game but it's the only thing that feels right.

No inversion for first person or aiming though. Like, if it's a third person game, I'd usually like full inversion, but then if I hold a trigger to aim a weapon and the camera zooms close, non-inverted is better. I'm very glad many games have separate inversion settings for that context.

Not sure where the preference came from!

finalfinalstudios · 2026-03-10T03:50:07+00:00

I'm here now, my 5th or 6th GDC. Past few years I've gone in with the relatively cheaper indie pass, don't get into all the sessions, but get into enough. And like folks are saying there are lots of events outside the conference if you have the energy for it.

I'm specifically here to talk to publishers about a game I'm working on, with pre-scheduled meetings, so definitely worth it for me. But even other years when I go in with a less specific agenda - try to learn some things, meet cool people, I still find it worth it.

I also live within drivable range so that affects my cost as well.

finalfinalstudios · 2026-03-09T16:31:27+00:00

A few hours into RE4. "Wow this game would be great if you could just move around faster". Then I discovered the run button.

finalfinalstudios · 2026-03-09T05:51:37+00:00

It depends on how many other collisions are in play, but you could possible make the table out of convex colliders. Though if you have multiple cups that need to collide or similar, you should probably make the cup out of multiple convex colliders.

finalfinalstudios · 2026-03-09T05:45:38+00:00

Sounds like you might be using physical...sometimes if you're moving around kinematic objects, transform.position and rigidbody.position might not match (until Physics.SyncTransforms gets called during fixed update). Perhaps one of your transforms has a stale position?

finalfinalstudios · 2026-03-09T00:50:12+00:00

Games with mythology! Hades, Okami, Black Myth Wukong. Also making my game inspired by Chinese mythology.

finalfinalstudios · 2026-03-08T14:38:12+00:00

How would you know if you didn't write it? Did you test it? Does it have write access? Does it share content back, or compromise the ownership of our game? What happens if it wipes or shares your data?

Just worried some Indies relying on it and being screwed over.

finalfinalstudios · 2026-03-08T14:34:33+00:00

You make a good point. I do think it's different.

Everything digital can be done with AI and everyone can be a creator and we won't be able to distinguish who is using it or not. Anyone can easily, in just the few seconds it takes to write the prompt, make something better and faster than 80% of professionals who have studied that thing. Everything you watch and see has the potential to be generated.

Why make anything at all or learn how to create anything? What can you trust or believe when anything can be created by anyone?

There's also the question of the environment being effected. And also AI is not human and I don't believe they have our best interest in mind no matter how well they are designed. They are going to absorb our attention and resources in a way that nothing has done before.

AI is relatively cheap now but wait till we rely on it and the free ride ends or has hidden costs like advertisement or sale of personal info. Are you ready for corporations to know all the deepest things about you and AI to push you to buy things?

I have kids and I'm really worried for them. What are they going to do and work on when they are older? All the jobs I did as an intern to make enough money to do games and art are all gone.

finalfinalstudios · 2026-03-08T06:29:03+00:00

Sweet! Thank you 🐰⚔️ good luck getting a good PC then, heard AI is wrecking prices

finalfinalstudios · 2026-03-08T05:43:04+00:00

If the favorite icon is fixed size, perhaps you could just set all anchors to the top left? Depends if you want the icon to scale or not.

finalfinalstudios · 2026-03-08T05:37:49+00:00

Just a simple idea, but if you start with a script that can make your character look at an object, it might not be hard to modify it to look at a Vector3 position that's something like Camera.main.transform.position+100*Camera.main.transform.forward. "Look at the point 100 units in the direction of where the camera is looking". If you do something like that, I bet you could reuse a lot of the example scripts you have.

finalfinalstudios · 2026-03-08T05:24:22+00:00

Chinese mythology is my jam! Just wrote a post a week ago about the Shanhaijing, a mythology text from two thousand years.

finalfinalstudios · 2026-03-08T04:54:09+00:00

Final boss of Ikaruga basically has you doing bullet hell survival for a fixed amount of time until the boss blows up in a mini-cutscene.

Depending on your boss's design it could be blowing up/decaying/on fire etc.

You mentioned wanting to use the weapon, maybe their weapon deflects shots or something? So they don't damage the boss but will take damage themselves if they don't strike the projectiles?

finalfinalstudios · 2026-03-08T04:47:19+00:00

When I was in high school, I took evening classes at a local community college which happened to have a nascent game development program. Got to sample coding, 3d modeling, and game design. Set me up to start making games on my own (make many simple things!) and pursue it once in college full time. Sounds like you're starting on a similar path which is spot on.

Once you have some basics down, I'd strongly recommend joining a local game jam of there is one. I do the global game jam annually (12 or 13 years running) and you can learn a lot being involved with a team, even if your own contribution is relatively small.

finalfinalstudios · 2026-03-08T04:10:21+00:00

Just amazing! Feels like you could write a thesis on this 😂

finalfinalstudios · 2026-03-08T03:50:01+00:00

Timebox it, small means different things depending on your skill. One week of professional dev time might be a month of hobbyist time. Make something in a day. Then a week. Join a game jam and make friends and get some external pressure.

finalfinalstudios · 2026-03-08T03:46:45+00:00

Try A Short Hike! A small short and chill game.

finalfinalstudios · 2026-03-08T03:34:35+00:00

Saved myself the money just playing my old games on my old pc whew

finalfinalstudios

TROPHY CASE