How To Make A Game Alone (In 2024)

in this video me and my buddy Gavin the creator of choo choo Charles discuss his secrets to making an indie game completely alone we're not only going to discuss the tools he used but also some major mistakes and misconceptions game developers make and why frankly they end up failing and if you stick around through the entire video You're Going to Come Away with top tier advice from frankly one of the most successful indie game developers alive today I hate you man I'm sorry Thomas and by the way guys the Christmas slne year sale for fulltime Game Dev is officially live that means you're going to get 50% off my massive program dedicated to showing you how to go full-time Indie join Over 4,000 students for the New Year by clicking below 14 days left see there when I watch your Dev vogs or when I just observe you from a distance it seems so easy how you make games like you're so you're so fast and you're a solo developer yet you basically made a double A looking game so let's go all the way back to the beginning of production I would love it to be a more technical conversation about the tools used and how you made this game cuz I look at it and I'm like I was pretty frustrated to be completely honest with you when I first saw it cuz I was thinking how did he do this I mean I think you started it when you were 19 right um uh yeah yeah that was like when I first kind of came up with the concept so yeah take me back to the beginning and just tell me the story of making this thing yeah so I guess I'll just quickly go over the tools that I use just for for reference for everybody so I use Unreal Engine 4 for Chu Charles I'm now on Unreal Engine 5 which basically the same thing for anybody wondering I use for all of my 2D art and then I use blender for any custom 3D stuff that I what's your 2D art by the way just just for clarity yeah yeah so uh 2D art that's going to be anything like marketing materials poster art stuff like that or Texture art what I did with a lot of choo choo Charles in order to kind of set apart the style because I think that you know just having just a unique art style is it's good for your branding and it's good for a game's recognizability so what I do is when I download assets which is something that I do a lot in order to speed up development I'll take the textures throw them into and I'll draw over the textures just real quick it's kind of a nice scribbly style kind of helps feed into the horror aspect so it's it's a little rougher around the edges and makes it a little bit quicker to to actually execute mhm but um in any case so that's like kind of what the the 2D side of stuff looks like from a production stpoint I think one of the main things was the pre-production on chuchi Charles was very fast it was was very very fast uh rushed even I spent probably about 2 weeks concepting the game trying to think of unique characters that I could throw in there uh some fun gameplay with like an easy easy enough to make gameplay Loop and so after 2 weeks I had a pretty solid idea of like kind of the kind of the foundation of the game like I didn't know I didn't have a full list of all the missions that I wanted for example I didn't have a full list of all the different guns that I wanted but I knew that I should have have a handful of different guns that you could get from missions I knew that I should have a couple of required missions mhm and I knew that there should be a spider train now I hope you don't gloss over that because that's why this game is wild I mean I don't want to I I don't want to discredit your ability to create a great game that looks beautiful but the spider train is why it correct me from wrong but that's why the game was wildly successful that's why it was viral yeah which yeah for sure which was needed right I mean you you do you need that virality crucial okay absolutely if you don't have that then you get no marketing and that's a problem well I mean did did you just you don't have to tell me where you came up with the idea maybe you found it on Creepy Pasta on Reddit I don't know or did you just wake up one night and like spider train I was trying to think of ways cuz I was seeing kind of this trend and it's become a a very popular Trend in in horror these days to the point where a lot of people are actually pretty sick of it but at the time this trend didn't really exist it wasn't a widespread thing that people knew about so I had noticed that games like Five Nights at Freddy's or fendy and the ink machine were taking characters that were kind of nostalgic and then they would put them in a horror context and so I was trying to think of things that most people would have been familiar with as kids that I could turn into a spooky character right and so I was realizing you know there's really not that many horror games based on um kids TV shows and so for me my favorite TV show when I was growing up was Thomas the Tank Engine what I did was I was like well well I'll just take Thomas take Thomas make him spooky make him scary make him evil so that was really what I kind of based the game around so when I knew that okay spooky trains were going to be involved I figured well it'd be fun to drive around on a train so I was like okay well I have to have a train that you can drive around in and then in order to make that more engaging and feel like a more personal experience I was like okay well I'll throw in some upgrades throw in some custom weapons Maybe you can uh color your train yeah so just kind of figuring out what all the game mechanics like all the foundational mechanics should be so pretty much I decided okay these are the confines that I'm going to work within and I'm going to stick to this cuz I think this is really solid and all the you know figuring out how the individual missions are going to work figuring out specifically how the AI is going to function exactly how the game is going to end things like that I'll figure out as I go over time throughout development rather than trying to spend three months in pre-production just you know kind of wasting time walking around figuring out how this stuff is going to work in the first month of development my goal was to create a trailer and screenshots and a description of the game that I could use to launch a steam page and the game trailer and kind of gauge interest to start gaining wish list so I could start um taking part in online events and stuff like that and so that blew up got a lot of traction and then from that point it was it's just production time it's just time to really focus in on building out all of the systems you said earlier I figured that I needed weapons I needed a train I needed to be able to color my train was this all just written down or was it a prototype yeah so this is just written down um g in the first couple yes yeah absolutely you need a gdd everyone watching you need a gdd if you're working on any project larger than a game Jam game you need a game design document you know organize your thoughts organize your ideas um keep track of what you're doing and make notes when I look at choo choo Charles I look at a game that has a very unique flavor it just looks like it's handcrafted despite the fact that you used assets and I'm curious by the way why did you choose to do a custom model for for the train when you could have probably just downloaded something from Turbo squid partially I had a specific kind of some specific look and Design needs for that train specifically you know like I knew that I needed um like a walkable perch on the back of the train where the guns would be mounted right so that that was a very specific thing that I needed I needed a small interior that you could walk around I needed a little dashboard with three levers on it to you know to control it um and I had a specific kind of look that was similar to you know like the trains in Thomas the Tank Engine and stuff like that so that was one of those things that I just felt would be best to do custom so that it would really fit The Branding that I was going for and the design needs so that was that was the main thing there which which things in your game were assets it'd probably be easier to start with the things that aren't assets honestly so all of the wooden buildings are modular pieces that I put together or that I created so I created kind of a modular wooden building pack for myself nice and I use that for all the wooden structures the trains I made the trains myself I made the guns myself I think that's it I think that's it I think everything else is based on an asset let's move on to unless I'm missing something here can we move on to sound cuz the sound is great in the [Music] game can can you break down what you used for sound including where you're sourcing some sounds if you did Source them yes pretty much all the sounds used in the game are based off of sounds I got on freesound.org and then the music I have in the game is it's mostly custom music um from a musician I hire Tom Bellingham he's he's awesome he's really good so for the sound effects what I'll do is I'll have a sound in mind like let's say I've got um a drawbridge that falls down in a mission and it and it hits some wood planks and I want to have a a loud echoing sound as as that drops down so what I'll do is I'll do a screen recording of that action in game first thing I do is you know I create the the scenario I record it and then I put that into a video editor so I I'll use either Premiere or sometimes I'll use wondershare for my audio editing and so then what I'll do is I'll go on to free sound and I'll look around for you know maybe a wood hit sound effect or you know maybe as the drawbridge is coming downwards I'll have like a creaking wood and then I'll just kind of splice them all together uh you know do whatever pitch adjustments Reverb adjustments things did you mention the tool you're using for that yeah so I use usually just wondershare or wondershare I got you okay I wasn't sure what one sure was okay so that's yeah it's a film editing software ah okay yeah so so what I do is I'll I'll take the recording of the gam playay and I'll edit the audio right underneath that so I can see a live preview of how cuz sometimes you can create a sound that sounds good but then when you match it up with the with the visuals it's just off it just sounds really off like that's my biggest trick when it when it comes to audio editing let's move on to launch we don't have to talk about specific numbers but I just love to hear how launch went for you yeah so I was definitely nervous I think the biggest thing that I was worried about leading up to launch was just the player reception it had gotten enough attention prior to launch I I launched with 550,000 wish list so crap it's like I knew that people were going to buy it um I just was really worried as to whether or not they would like it and if they would be pleased with their purchase so that was the biggest thing that I was nervous about going into It ultimately I think the launch was about as as chill as it could have been um pretty much I I am a big fan of like tools down like a month before launch like have a solid build that's completely done the build that I'm going to publish and sit on it for one month now that doesn't mean I'm just sitting around for a month that means that last month there is spent just strictly doing tons of marketing stuff making trailers making videos writing up press releases getting uh lists of influencers to send keys to it's a busy time leading up to launch just getting just that hype machine rolling and being able to do that without having to worry about the game at all that's very important to me but uh yeah so the the reception ended up being better than I expected you know from like a a review user review side of things the game got I think like 100 million views across social media on launch day which was incredible I it was 50 million I know 50 million on Tik Tok and then I don't know the exact figure on on YouTube but it was quite a few um I hate you man I'm sorry so I'm so jealous no I'm kidding I think that's it's just amazing what you've done that's so cool are you willing to disclose copies sold um I'm not okay it peaked at over 4,000 just over 4,000 concurrent players that's public info um you see that on Steam DB it yeah so it it was it was good it was good for sure thanks for watching guys and just remember if you want to join my massive full-time Game Dev program for 50% off there's just 14 days left and 100 seats total available you're also going to get my 2D and 3D art programs completely free and also my brand new gdau and unreal course and also my Unity courses whichever engine you want to learn it's yours to choose and these are completely free with the program here's the thing I think this is the most comprehensive course out there and even better it's taught by an actual indie game developer actually making indie games that's yours truly I'm published by 3D Realms and I've also been published by several other Publishers from my previous games and I'm working on my third commercial title so you can trust I know my chops join Over 4,000 students worldwide hey it's the new year it's a great time to jump into Game Dev and learn how to make Indie Games fulltime click below

Channel: Thomas Brush

Views: 291,725

Keywords: unity vs ue4, unity vs unreal engine 4, unity or unreal engine, how to get into game development, unity vs unreal engine, unity vs ue, unity game engine, unreal, game, engine, better, ue4, school, beginner, study, program, game development beginner, unreal engine graphics, choo choo charles

Id: 8wYTDjQxxa8

Length: 13min 11sec (791 seconds)

Published: Wed Dec 27 2023