Making an indie game today is harder than 5 years ago, when you could get away with a lot more things. For a while mobile was really hot and then got very crowded and nowadays it’s basically a nightmare and we’re seeing PC going through the same route. But honestly, we also feel like it’s the way it’s supposed to be.

The market is crowded, which means you can’t just make another metroidvania game and sell. It’s gonna be a very tough competition for innovation and/or production quality and that’s gonna thin the herd and in the end, when the dust will settle, hopefully give us overall better games. We’re planning our production in the “safest” and “smartest” way possible. We don’t plan to have a single player campaign, for example. At least for now.

We have 6 completely unique civilizations, but to further improve diversity of gameplay we’re creating 2 variants of each one that you can pick. Our 3D pipeline is all in Blender and we employ a lot of Open Source software. We don’t have a marketing budget, so we announced the game extremely early and we gather fans in an organic way every day by posting screenshots, being active on social media, streaming three times a week. It’s tough but you have to scratch and claw if you want to make it in this industry.

Marketing an Indie Title

Like I said, it’s tougher than 5 years ago but you can still make it and there are more possibilities in some ways than 5 years ago. Press has lost a lot of its power in terms of promoting a game while YouTube and Twitch have seen a huge boom. You can make a very silly and fun game and all it takes is one YouTuber to pick it up to make sales skyrocket. You really have to make a games that stands out in a way or the other in order to make it and that’s the way it’s supposed to be.

Getting your hands on Unity or UE4 is now easier than ever. Publishing on consoles is also more accessible than before and there are a lot of small publishers out there who focus on specific niches, making your life easier if you’re looking for a financing or distribution partner. You gotta know what you’re doing before you start. You gotta look at the market and find the right niche and the right way to promote your game.

Open development has helped us a lot in that regard. We’re a pretty unknown studio, we can’t come out of the blue one day and expect all the eyes to be on us. We much rather be honest about what we’re doing, showing our hard work everyday to fans and build an audience of fans over time that can’t wait to get their hands on Empires Apart.

Gian Paolo Vernocchi, DESTINYbit