Greetings weary traveler. It’s my sincerest wish that you’re well, healthy, peaceful, and happy.

If you’re a fan of The Remainder, if you’re a fellow creator, or if you’re simply a voice inside my head, then you might be curious about how exactly a game like ours oozes out of the ethereal plane and attains tangibility in the mundane world.

Well, you’re in luck! This is a secret memo to you(and the internet). It’s also a love letter, in the sense that we want to share with you our love for creating and telling stories.

Now that the throat clearing is done, how do we go about this whole affair? 

How did we make our game?

The gist of it is this:

Just do it, don’t let your dreams be dreams.

Alright, that might be a touch simplistic, but there is beauty and truth in simplicity, no?

What’s that? You demand further exposition on the subject? Very well, I’ll tell you the long version of it.

From Work-for-hire to being our own Boss.

Until 2020, my partner Nim(who leads art production on The Remainder) and I had been making our livelihood doing work for hire. It is a blessing and a curse. The fact that we were sporadically employed and could keep a roof over our heads was nothing short of a blessing, it made us luckier than many, but it also left Nim feeling slightly unfulfilled, like having a thirst but with no water to quench it.  The thirst was this - Nim, like every human being, has a story to tell but wasn’t telling theirs. Instead, they’d contracted out their talent and energy to help other people tell their stories.  Stories that very much want to be told will wither and mold if neglected for too long. They weighted on you, made you feel heavy, damp, and inauthentic, like you weren’t really living your life but played a role on a stage, one that was assigned to you and you had to carry out until the curtains fell.  

We decided it was time to do away with the script and give the audience a spot of ad-lib, potentially to the dismay of the director. But they’ve had their way for a long time and enough is enough, yes?

We will make a game! Now, having never done that, two questions came rushing to the fore of our heart - “Can we do it?” and “How do we do it?”

Have A beginner’s mind.

The simple solution, when confronted with a fresh problem, is to go looking for answers like you don’t know anything. We began to scour the Seas for knowledge and answers, reading articles, blogs, essays and watching many videos and lectures on the subject of the how and the why of making games.

As luck would have it, both our questions would be answered by the same 1 hour video - a GDC talk by Jeff Vogel, whom we’d come to call Uncle Jeff out of respect and endearment. He made us laugh, made us think, and made us feel it is possible to follow our dream. And he gave concrete advice on how to do it. If you’re considering making a game or any other indie creative project, I highly recommend giving this lecture a listen. 

We gathered information over a half year period, let it gestate and ferment, and eventually synthesized it into the principle which guides our journey as indie devs now - the “follow your heart” method. It may sound airy and wishy-washy, but when it comes to putting desire into motion and producing results, you’d be hard pressed to find something better. Dreams may be intangible, but several very tangible things happen when you decide to do what you love.

When you do what you love, enthusiasm finds you.

There are no clients or bosses to whom I must answer to, I get to try things I’ve always wanted to but never had a chance because I wasn’t in charge, and to play with ideas that have nestled inside my skull for a lifetime, giving them a chance to see the light of day.  Many of these are just germs of stories - premises, gags, flashes of inspiration. They’re the little “what if”s and “how about”s that I’ve been asking. What if Harry Potter was a grizzled female noir detective? What if Howl turns to the dark side because he lost a bet? What if... what if... Now I can water these seeds with my attention, plant them in the soil of practical action, and see them grow into stories. I’m no longer a pair of hands toiling in someone else’s field but a gardener intent on making a tiny paradise to sustain myself.   I need to know what will happen next in my stories, and I can’t wait to make more of them in order to find out. That natural curiosity and playful drive, something every five-year-old knows like the inside of their cheeks but almost always forgets. It makes getting out of bed in the morning easier; it makes working through problems easier, because I know that on the other side of it is the fruit of my labor, the treasure of materialized dreams.

A problem that people have with dreams, however, is that it seems to clash with reality. One concern that people have asked about this kind of approach is how do you make money? How do you become popular? How do you do the nitty-gritties to make it all work? 

Find your voice, find your fans.

If I’m being honest, I’ll have to say that I don’t know. I’m still learning. But both my intuition and limited experience tell me that each person is unique, and has a set of skills, qualities and stories within them that are unlike anyone else’s. If you make something following your heart, truly following your best intuitions and intentions, allowing your voice to be transmitted out, then it will be a sound that’s not quite like any other. If enough people are exposed to it and given a chance to appreciate it, some of them somewhere will become your fan, and some will be your biggest fan. As in, they’ll sing your praises, throw money and you and tell all their friends about you. I wouldn’t have believed it either until it started to happen to me, and it didn’t happen until I made that decision and took those steps to follow my heart.

There are thousands of games, books, videos, and other works being released every month. How can you stand out? Do you collect and research every possible property and factor of all the creative works in your field and mathematically derive a result that has the highest chance of being unique and profitable? If that’s what you’re inclined to do, then go do that and don’t let anyone talk you out of it.

I’m inclined to tap into the experiences, qualities, and reactions to this incomprehensible, bewildering, fantastic ride called life that is unique to me, that no one else could replicate so that I can make something that only I can make. I’ll make it as well as I can, then show it to as many people as I’m comfortable with. There’re over 7 billion people in this world. If a minuscule percentage of them decide that what I do is of a shred of worth, then I’ll have a living. Of course, I intend to make it easy for them to find me, by being prudent and learning the ways of promoting and marketing games. Prudence, persistence, effort, these things are not antagonistic to dreams, they’re partners.

Making what you believe in removes the barrier to communication.

Marketing can be off-putting to many people. There can be a lot of doubt or fear or simply a lack of any drive to do marketing. It can feel tedious or even “fake” to try to sell your creation to strangers. I understand, I’ve been there. But if you make something that you genuinely love and believe in, then what do you do when you enter a room where your friends or acquaintances are gathered? Do you not naturally want to talk about it, show it, or share it with them? Is that not doubly true if you’ve made something with the intention of bringing some joy, happiness and inspiration to other people? Can you resist doing that if you tried? Following your heart helps to remove the barrier to communication. When you tell someone else, here’s what I did, this is who I am. You create a chance to connect in a way that small-talk and idle gossip never can. 

Make something you love, do it with wholesome intentions, make it to the best of your abilities, show it to as many people as you feel comfortable with, and learn, practice and experiment with techniques and knowledge of others whose conduct and experience you respect.

That is our “follow your hear” method.

I’m not here to say this is the right way, only that this is the way that works for us. If hearing about it gives you a spark of joy, inspiration, or motivation, then it’ll make my day. 

Are you a creator or thinking of becoming one? Want to share what do you think? How do you make it work for you? Leave us a comment. I want to learn from you. 

And finally, whoever you are, whatever you do, I hope you stay safe, healthy and happy out there.

-Ze