My name is Egor Kovalev. I’m the founder of a two-person indie team called GentFish. I'm the developer of The Devilry Reservation and currently seeking investors to support the full-time development of our next title, Emptiness.
It all started with a small prototype — a simple game where you walk between apartments and talk to a character. I really liked the concept, so we decided to expand it into a full game. Out of all our prototypes, this one felt the most compelling.
The main character is Igor, an agent of the Paranormal Security Bureau (PSB). He’s faceless, telepathic, and can leave his physical body. The story begins during a crisis: one of the organization's branches has been taken over by a necromancer who actively interferes with the hero’s mission.
We originally started a different project but had to abandon it due to inexperience and the unrealistic expectation that we could handle a complex game as just two people. On top of that, global events made it harder to publish on Steam.
We experimented with several engines — from the old Adventure Game Studio, which felt outdated, to Unity, which proved too difficult as neither of us had strong C# skills. But the bigger issue was hardware: our machines are very weak, and Unity’s load times were just unbearable.
We finally settled on Construct 3. It runs most of the heavy processing on the developer’s servers, which made it workable even with our limited hardware. All we need is an internet connection and a subscription.
Lack of funding. Without proper computers, development is slow and inefficient. Good hardware would significantly speed things up.
If you can not make games — don’t. It's incredibly hard work with no guarantee of success.
Don’t rely too much on unproven team members. 95% of people can’t stay motivated on passion projects for more than a week.
And focus on marketing. It’s crucial. I underestimated the importance of wishlists on Steam and launched our game as soon as we had a page — it made things much harder later.
Please add Emptiness to your wishlist on Steam!
-Egor
The Devilry Reservation on Steam
❤️
