Building a best-selling game with a tiny team – with Jonas Tyroller

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In today’s episode of The Pragmatic Engineer, I’m joined by Jonas Tyroller, one of the developers behind Thronefall, a minimalist indie strategy game that blends tower defense and kingdom-building, now available on Steam.

Jonas takes us through the journey of creating Thronefall from start to finish, offering insights into the world of indie game development. We explore:

• Why indie developers often skip traditional testing and how they find bugs

• The developer workflow using Unity, C# and Blender

• The two types of prototypes game developers build 

• Why Jonas spent months building game prototypes in 1-2 days

• How Jonas uses ChatGPT to build games

• Jonas’s tips on making games that sell

• And more!

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Timestamps

(00:00) Intro

(02:07) Building in Unity

(04:05) What the shader tool is used for 

(08:44) How a Unity build is structured

(11:01) How game developers write and debug code 

(16:21) Jonas’s Unity workflow

(18:13) Importing assets from Blender

(21:06) The size of Thronefall and how it can be so small

(24:04) Jonas’s thoughts on code review

(26:42) Why practices like code review and source control might not be relevant for all contexts

(30:40) How Jonas and Paul ensure the game is fun 

(32:25) How Jonas and Paul used beta testing feedback to improve their game

(35:14) The mini-games in Thronefall and why they are so difficult

(38:14) The struggle to find the right level of difficulty for the game

(41:43) Porting to Nintendo Switch

(45:11) The prototypes Jonas and Paul made to get to Thronefall

(46:59) The challenge of finding something you want to build that will sell

(47:20) Jonas’s ideation process and how they figure out what to build 

(49:35) How Thronefall evolved from a mini-game prototype

(51:50) How long you spend on prototyping 

(52:30) A lesson in failing fast

(53:50) The gameplay prototype vs. the art prototype

(55:53) How Jonas and Paul distribute work 

(57:35) Next steps after having the play prototype and art prototype

(59:36) How a launch on Steam works 

(1:01:18) Why pathfinding was the most challenging part of building Thronefall

(1:08:40) Gen AI tools for building indie games 

(1:09:50) How Jonas uses ChatGPT for editing code and as a translator 

(1:13:25) The pros and cons of being an indie developer 

(1:15:32) Jonas’s advice for software engineers looking to get into indie game development

(1:19:32) What to look for in a game design school

(1:22:46) How luck figures into success and Jonas’s tips for building a game that sells

(1:26:32) Rapid fire round

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The Pragmatic Engineer deepdives relevant for this episode:

• Game development basics https://newsletter.pragmaticengineer.com/p/game-development-basics 

• Building a simple game using Unity https://newsletter.pragmaticengineer.com/p/building-a-simple-game

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See the transcript and other references from the episode at ⁠⁠https://newsletter.pragmaticengineer.com/podcast⁠⁠

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