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[poleaxegames]

My name is Kevin Jenkins. I'm the author of RakNet, which was sold to Oculus, and later bought by Facebook. Working in a corporate job is not a good fit for me, so four years ago I started Poleaxe Games, using money from the sale.

I loved building Lego castles growing up. Lego archers would defend the walls, soldiers would hold the gates, and catapults would lay siege. But plastic siege boulders hitting the walls would just bounce off. I've always wanted to play a game where the player could actually blow a hole through enemy walls, and lead his soldiers through the breach. Additionally, I wanted a story where the player could actually feel like the ruler of a kingdom.

So I started my first game Empire of Ember. Recently released on Steam as early access (no link per the rules but you can find it if you want).

Things I did right:
1. Never cut down my design goal. People say the game has a lot of potential and are intrigued by the scope of the idea. It took 4 years, but it's all there.
2. Self-developed. While I spent a lot of money and time, most of it is in salary I just didn't earn working from home. I could have spent that same amount of money just hiring a large team, to fail, and end up with nothing to show for it. As it is, I can continue early access as long as I need to until the game gains a following.
3. Used a lot of asset store assets, saving 90% on art budget. First person full fidelity RPGs cost millions to tens of millions these days, mostly in art. I was selective in what assets I used, and to date nobody has called me out on it.

Things I did wrong:
1. Hired too cheaply. People know what they are worth, and if they are really cheap there's a reason for that. Countless times I'd hire the cheapest guy, struggle with him, then throw away his work and restart it myself or hire someone qualified anyway. I had an AI programmer for 9 months and threw away all his work.
2. Didn't have an artist with me from the start. I started with a partner, who was interested in talking about the project but never doing any work. After 6 months of struggling with him I went it alone, and made many costly art mistakes as a result. I'm fixing many of them now at additional cost but some will remain.
3. Didn't test professionally prior to launching early access. Some people really take exception to every little bug, so things I thought was not important, like floating decals, still got called out.

[Jason.M]

Names Jason, I enjoy banging things together in hope of creating something interesting, AKA a Sound Designer (Sound Wizard  )

Originally was doing music here and there for games, but decided to head in the sound design route recently as i found I only enjoyed writing music for fun, not for work unfortunately. So rebuilding my portfolio and practicing the art of recording sounds normal people would cry hearing.

First discovered games randomly on the PC in the days of Dial-Up when I was about 6 or 7. I knew I was hooked when I was waking up in the early hours just to play and getting drop kicked by my dad for even being on at 3 AM. Got my first console not long after as they didn't like me using the computer for games, which was a Sega Megadrive with Sonic The Hedgehog and it went down hill from there.

Big into mostly any genre of games, but MMORPGs are near and dear to my heart, so looking forward to New World and Ashes Of Creations.

So that's me, hope to talk to some of you soon 

[abyssos]

Hello, i am Avyssos and i'm a solo developer from Crete, Greece. I'm currently working on my debut game, "Only The Strong".



I'm excited to join this forum and looking forward to share my progress. Important for me is to get advice from this community.

[LuckyCloverGames]

Hi we're Lucky Clover Studios, a team of 5 students from the university of Michigan. We're currently working on a game called MotorQuest, a motorcycle racing/combat game in a (loosely) western setting (more wilderness desert area than civilization) We hope to learn a lot from this community and share our progress!

[Savvu the GameDevel]

Hey devs and gamers,

I am Savvu, student and solo indie game developer from Greece.
Currently I am working on my new pixel art game called "Slimeland Evolution", an Idle/Incremental game that will soon enter alpha testing! A game where you can fuse slimes,  discover new forms, upgrade your island, gather huuuge amounts of jelly and defeat the evil slime spiritis that make their home in hostile island. Their habitat currently consists of 7 biomes: Grass, Desert, Snow, Jungle, Vulcano, Corruption and Crimson.
I also upload Devlogs on my Youtube channel where you can see the progress and state of the game or throw in your own idea to make it even better

If that sounds interesting I will definitely see you there! Click here to be part of the journey  : https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC8lklUvWC76lYn1PI6QK32Q

[Tatti]

i'm Alessio a level designer 

[miroz]

Hi everyone!

Name's Miroslav. I'm a software developer from Croatia, working in enterprise IT for a living but the gamedev bug is constantly with me.

In my free time I'm always creating and testing simulations and game prototypes, ranging from economy simulators and artificial life sandboxes to trying to recreate a Civilization IV terrain engine or XCOM's strategy layer. Unfortunately, fiddling with prototypes and running from experiment to experiment had never produced a playable game, just a bunch of old code.

Things changed when I ran into Damjan of the Croteam fame, with whom I finally started making real games under a Shot Second name. After exploring different prototypes, we designed a local multiplayer, turn-based game which we released as Battle Bolts.

Making Battle Bolts was so laborious that after it I took a break and thought that that was it for my gamedev aspirations, but a year later I have another game in mind which I'm dying to prototype and show off. The bug's back.

[Willytron3000]

Hi! My name is William, I'm making little games since 2008, but I'm not too active in forums, but Im trying to changue that.
I want to made my games more famous

[spdp]

Hi.

I'm a web developer who's exploring gamedev in a hobby capacity.

I have experience with Phaser, Game Maker Studio 2 and more recently Unity. I've been taking some game design courses too.

Nice to meet y'all 

[BrumaDev]

Hello! I'm a brazilian artist that has since decided to start a game project.

Ever since I began to learn how to draw, one of my goals was to have my art be featured in a game, since games were the inspiration that got me in this life path in the first place, it'd be only fair to contribute to the community at large, and hopefully inspire other people in the process as well. I figured that a good place to start was to make my own indie game, so here we are!

[DrMaxKurt]

My name's Lucas. I live in France, near Angers.

I like games in many forms. I recent years, I've been back to tabletop role playing games, sometimes even writing some short ones.

I'm a programmer and I love the Python language.

My favorite game is probably Broken Sword: The Shadow of the Templars.

10 years ago, I used to come by often on this website.
Nowadays I'm mostly visiting warpdoor.com to get my dose of original indie games.

Also, I have a blog: https://chezsoi.org/lucas/blog/

[jarmick]

Name is Martin!  Making a game project called The Pulpit, in super early development.  

Looking forward to getting feedback and learning from all of you fabulous folks here.  

What a great resource for an indie artist / developer like myself.  Will have a couple of levels/scenes ready for testing by July.

Until then, will browse around and learn the language and mechanics of the TIG Universe.

-Mj

[porchman]

Hi There,

I'm Porchman. I make games and other fun interactive software. Like many people, I started making games in RPG Maker many years ago, then moved on through BGE, Armory, and Unity.

I'd love to share some of my games with you - and of course check out some of yours and join in on the discussion!

Nice to meet you all! 

[Nyles]

Hello There!

My Name is Nils, 36 years old from germany!

I always had a vision of a mobile game i could play while being outside, i tend to go for walks alot, but i always wanted something to do er experience while being outside, something not too distracting from the outside world.

As a avid Dungeons and Dragons player, i thought, what if there was a game, that is like dungeons and dragons but you play it in real life on your phone, your movement moves the player character, with encounters and dungeons in the real world.
You know, something like Dungeons and Dragons, Diablo and PokemonGO combined.

So this is what i am doing with a small team, we are creating a game called LootQuest, a walking augmented reality RPG.

Really looking forward to get your feedback on this.

Best
Nils

[Salemir]

Hi! my name is Amir H Salemi, 18yo. I'm a solo indie game developer. I love creating games. I intended to become a successful game developer and build my own game studio in the future. currently working on a 2D RPG game named Parasight.
Glad I'm here between you awesome indie developers, I wish you luck!

[jcs_hivedefender]

Hey guys.

New here. I made some games in high school back in the day, etc. (and even wrote a full 3D engine in ADA by hard porting over stuff from openGL), but never picked a project and brought it to completion.

Now I'm a bit more mature with the projects I work on, am doing a PhD in nonlinear / quantum optics, speak a few languages, have lived in 4 countries around the world, and in 22 days I'll have 6 years sober after battling opiate addiction for many years.

Here to learn from you guys and maybe contribute in any way I can.

[CuddlyCreeps]

Heyho,

we're a small indiestudio from Germany called Cuddly Creeps.
And by small I mean it's me and my wife right now :D
We love to dev games in our free time and would like to become a real comercial studio one day.
It's fun to learn new techniques, find helpful talents in your circle of friends and then put something together you're proud of.

I'm the programmer and she is the graphic Artist and like this we did our first "comercial"-project SAM - Virtual Pet Dog. You can find it in the townhall.

And there will be a lot more to come.

[Okcode]

Hello, My name is Kirill. I'm from Belarus

I develop games in my spare time.

On December 5, 2020, I started developing the game "Terral".
Now I spend a lot of time on its development. 

[Black Indie DEV]

Hello,

I'm also an African American male who is frustrated by the lack representation. Whenever there is its usually a black women and through an agenda. Very odd. I decided to use my skill sets (graphic design) to develop indie games for my community. I have YT channel. I don't have any finished games just concepts. I'm using UE4.

[pixel_turkey]

Hello!  Hi, I'm Chloe.  I'm making pixel art✨ and learning to program to make a game.  I go by pixel_turkey.