A game dev podcast for (aspiring) indie game developers, hosted by a "professional". (I am behind the Steam titles Thronefall, ISLANDERS, and Will You Snail.) Because I don’t rely on the show for income, the vibe is relaxed with minimal monetization. We focus on hands-on indie development and occasionally branch into broader game-dev topics. Episodes are also available in video on YouTube.
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This is a conversation with my game dev friend and former collegue Friedemann Allmenröder. We created ISLANDERS together, he then went on to make many more fantastic indie games such as Pizza Possum, Summer House and recently Slots & Daggers. In this conversation with dive into the philosophy of game dev creativity and I try to understand more about how Fridemman's process for making hit games looks like these days.
This is a conversation with Danny Weinbaum from @EastshadeStudios, the creators of one of my favorite roleplaying games, Eastshade, currently working on a new game called "Songs of Glimmerwick". How do you make successful adventure game? What makes for good quests? How to write peaceful games and bring them to satisfying conlcusion? How to craft beautiful environments?
11:13 - Appeal vs fun; discovering the painting loop
15:43 - The “walking sim” problem
18:06 - Explainer trailers
19:50 - Grizzly Games team size and roles
21:20 - Market research, scraping Steam
27:32 - Eastshade sales and budget breakdown
28:55 - Full voice acting
This Young Solo Dev Built a Steam Hit in 4 Months
Thursday, November 13, 2025 • Duration 01:37:11
This is a conversation with @zoroarts8930, a young solo dev who managed to land an indie hit with his co-op game Paddle Paddle Paddle. We talk about that success, how to potentially replicate it and also about the role of luck.
20:21 - Two-Week Demo, Streamers, and Early Momentum
21:39 - Publisher Deal, IGN Feature, and Wishlist Velocity
24:00 - Shipping in 4 Months; Reviews and Netcode
25:21 - Graphics vs Gameplay: Stylized Jank
Grow Your Game Dev Success Gradually
Thursday, November 6, 2025 • Duration 02:06:31
This is a conversation with Stephen Huang from @isto_inc. They made games such as "Get to Work" and "Atrio: The Dark Wild", each game more successful than the last. Sptephen tells his story and shares his best advice on how to grow your game dev success long term.
10:45 - Starting Isto Inc; choosing automation-survival (Atrio)
13:50 - Why picking a good idea is so hard
15:29 - Atrio architecture (Zenject)
17:58 - COVID, starting the YouTube
19:56 - Early Access launch
21:54 - A lucky break: Atrioc and the Xbox exclusive deal
23:58 - 1.0 goes a bit better
Their Second Game Did Worse, Now What?
Thursday, October 30, 2025 • Duration 02:12:43
This is a conversation with Julian Colbus from DigiTales Interactive, the creators of Lacuna and Between Horizons. We talk about regrets from their last game, how to succeed with story based games and how to make it as an indie game developer.
This is a conversation with Kathrin Radtke from Spellgarden Games, the tiny development team behind Sticky Business and Ritual of Raven. We talk about making successful cozy games, scope, marketing and more.
This is a conversation with Timo Falcke and Zwi Zausch, two of the devs at Toukana Interactive, the developers of Dorfromantik and Star Birds. This is a game dev success story with some theory crafting about how to potentially reproduce an outcome like this.
1:28 - Founding the studio and shipping Dorfromantik in a year
4:17 - Early Access launch: Next Fest momentum, streamers, and the Steam algorithm
7:46 - The itch prototype and Ludum Dare origins
8:27 - Expectations vs reality on launch day
11:45 - Prototyping many ideas and choosing Dorfromantik
16:49 - Building a unique look: trees, outlines, and shader tricks
18:44 - Visual inspirations and tips for finding your art style
21:31 - Iterating the rules: rotation, edges, lakes, and quests
27:15 - Performance war stories: PC instancing to Switch optimization
Min-Maxing Your Steam Launch
Thursday, October 2, 2025 • Duration 01:44:31
This is a Game Dev Podcast with my guest Cory Darby, a indie games strategist / profissional min-maxer and the co-creator of Click & Conquer, a game that with just 400 hours of work managed to turn over 100K in profits. We talk about how to optimize your Steam launch for maximum visibility and where the indie games industry on Steam is going.
3:35 - Conversion is king: Steam’s fair-shot test and early thresholds
6:56 - Designing for conversion: page, trailer, and pricing
8:41 - Launch discounts and price psychology (40% for two weeks)
10:35 - The controversial post-launch price drop and “is it sleazy?”
13:38 - Pricing pitfalls: overpricing kills and you can’t A/B test
Build an Online Game In a Simple Database
Friday, September 26, 2025 • Duration 01:42:53
This is a Game Dev Podcast with my guest Tyler F. Cloutier, co-founder and head of Clockwork Labs, who are building their MMO, Bitcraft Online, entirely in a database. They are making this database available for other developers under the name SpacetimeDB. It's a real time relational database that promises to massively simplify infrastructure required for both applications and games alike, almost like an operating system for the cloud. I'm very on board with their vision. Can it actually hold up? Let's have a look.
15:55 - How it works: modules, reducers, transactions
19:34 - Publishing and hot-swapping server code
20:21 - Client model: reducers for writes; live queries and permissions
25:52 - Scaling and memory
28:40 - Per-match databases and the actor model
31:21 - Performance: reducer duration, locks vs MVCC, and offloading work
37:48 - Starter projects and analytics; community dashboards
Marketing Indie Games as a Developer vs. Publisher
Thursday, September 18, 2025 • Duration 01:45:51
This is a Game Dev Podcast with my guest Phiomena Schwab, co-founder/CEO of Stray Fawn Studio, the creators of The Wandering Village, Dungeon Clawler, Nimbatus and Niche. She's the head of Stray Fawn's new publishing branch and she co-founded the Swiss Game Hub, a co-working space for game developers. We talk about what it takes to make successful games, community building, early access, publishing and women in game dev.
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