PLEASE START US OFF BY INTRODUCING YOURSELF:
Hey, I'm Artur Smiarowski, an independent game developer from Poland creating the Soulash series.
TELL US ABOUT SOULASH.
Soulash is a traditional roguelike, where we play as a god who returns to the world to recover his soul by consuming every living being. The game was directly inspired by ADOM and UnReal World, my two favorite traditional roguelikes, and my passion for dark fantasy.
Soulash 2 is a direct continuation where we play as a mortal in a living, procedurally generated world that changes whether we choose to interact with it or not. It's currently being developed in Early Access and offers many gameplay options like trading, building, adventuring, and soon conquest. The idea for the sequel was mainly inspired by the player's feedback from the first game, Dwarf Fortress Adventure, and the Mount & Blade series.
HOW HAS THE DEVELOPMENT JOURNEY BEEN
The development has been long and ridden with challenges of various kinds. Soulash 1 started as a part-time project while I was working in webdev to provide for my family, and after 5 years, thanks to its success, I could begin making games full-time, invite my wife to work with me, and develop Soulash 2.
WHICH GAME ENGINE DID YOU CHOOSE AND WHY?
I've developed my own custom engine based on C++ and SDL 2. I spent years prototyping various tools and often discovered I hit the ceiling too soon for my ambitious ideas. I chose to have the highest ceiling for performance for procedural generation, history simulation, and AI for a larger number of units on the map. In hindsight, it was the right call. Unity didn't even have an ECS (Entity Component System) at the time, and that architectural pattern was tremendously beneficial for my projects.
WHAT'S BEEN YOUR BIGGEST DEVELOPMENT HURDLE SO FAR?
Getting review bombed by over 200 people because I didn't add gay marriage into the game when it would have been detrimental for gameplay was definitely the biggest hurdle I had to deal with in over a decade of making games. Customer support as an indie developer is always a challenge, especially when thousands of players start to play the game in a window of time like a release, but that one was on a completely different level of pain as it was an organized harassment attack on all platforms where we have a community.
There was a significant challenge in bringing the vision for Soulash 2 together because it took one and a half a year to even arrive at a prototype, so Soulash 2 was a pretty risky endeavor where I spent a long time worrying if the idea would pan out, but once I decided it was time for a demo, everything clicked very soon. Programming-wise, there were a few hurdles. I love how challenging procedural generation is, especially world generation and history simulation, and I could spend whole days glued to a screen expanding and solving it.
ADVICE FOR FELLOW DEVS?
If you wish to make a commercial project - take it very seriously. Making a hobby project and later deciding to release it and hoping for the best very often doesn't work. Most popular advice, like "reduce your scope," doesn't work anymore, with each year breaking the record of released games on Steam.
You have to do research about what's available in a niche you want to express yourself in and what fresh experience your game brings to the table, where your potential players may be, how to reach them with your idea and gather wishlists for Steam algorithm so it can start working its magic. A lot is required for a game to be made and noticed by enough players to make it a sustainable way of making games. Also, beware of publishers, as many try to scam beginners out of years of their hard work. Make sure to do market research on potential revenue for your game without a publisher and what kind of revenue the publisher made for their games before you make a deal.
ANY FINAL THOUGHTS?
Gamedev is very challenging, but if you can't shake the idea of your game out of your head, give it a go and bring that idea to life. I've been using X/Twitter to share my knowledge about gamedev alongside my passion for gaming, so if anyone needs help or advice at various stages of their journey, I'm available
@ArturSmiarowski
I hope to enjoy the work of your passion one day.
-Artur
❤️
