Hello! My name is Katie, or Kit, and I've been a game designer for a couple years now, working on both professional and personal games. I'm now the founder of Artificium Games, and am developing the studio's first game, ‘’Oops! You're the Hero!”
'Oops' is a story-driven, top-down adventure game where you get to play as a Thief who's unfortunately been dubbed as the “Hero of the Land” after stealing an artifact of a goddess. Now, every monster and villain is after you, until you figure out a way to get rid of the artifact, and your new title. It's currently a demo, with plans to be a full game in the future.
I originally had the idea for this game years ago, after wanting to make a short, silly game. It was supposed to be a tease at the ‘Chosen One’ trope, but it's changed more into how responsibility can be thrown onto you, and you sort of deal with it, and how your chosen ‘role’ doesn't have to define you. I still wanted to keep the silliness of the original idea, and I'm happy to say it's kept a lot of the original story and characters as the game itself has changed.
I think I can admit the development process has been wild, but fun! Just like it is with many projects I've done, it's had its ups and it's down. Some weeks it feels like it flew by, with everything working beautifully, then the next day it's like getting stuck in a bug that refuses to be fixed.
I will consider myself lucky though, I haven't had to do it completely alone. Artists and musicians have been added to it, and it's helped the process immensely. I tried to set a production schedule for the demo, and adding those people made it possible to hit them. I can't offer enough praise for what they did.
The game was originally started inside RPG Maker XP! It was going to be a turn-based RPG with a pixel style, like old arcade or handheld games that I would play as a kid. After I set the game aside for a bit, I came back to it after learning a lot more about the process of game design and how to program, so I restarted the game’s development inside of Unity, really in order to challenge myself in what I could do. The game then changed from its original design to the low-poly, adventure game that it is now, though the top-down aspect has stayed the same.
The biggest hurdle I've really had to face with development would have to be the balancing aspect of it all. This hasn't been a full time project for me, so I've had to go back and forth between a day job and running the project, all while starting up the studios itself. I feel like you hear a lot about other people who have done that, but you never realize how much work it actually takes until you're doing it yourself. Throughout this whole process, I've had to fight the burnout from it multiple times. Though, I'm glad to say I've met many people who have lent their talents to the game, and it's absolutely helped with the workload.
Advice is tough, everyone's dev journey is so different that trying to give a general statement that means something, it almost doesn't do it justice.
If I could offer it to those who are wanting to do their own thing, remember this: You don't have to rush yourself. You have time to make something that's important to you, and there's no deadline that's more important than taking care of yourself and your health. I know it's easier to say that to do, but your future self will thank you that you didn't sacrifice yourself. Whenever you get a project out, that's success in itself.
To those who are trying to get into games as a career, or back into the industry, remember that it's not you, it's the industry. Everyone knows it, and there are people who want to change it, and it will happen. The stuff that's going on now won't last forever, and it'll take a group effort from everyone to make sure that we don't make the same choices and get us right back to where we are right now. But if we have each other's backs, it will make it that much easier.
Thanks so much for letting me do this!
-Katie
❤️
