My Strange Game Development Journey

The internet is full of stories of people quitting their day job to make games full-time; I am not one of them, having left society behind long before becoming a game developer. To make my life story short: Having always been a misfit, I was eventually offered a spare room in the woods by friends and family, in which I've been living a frugal and secluded life ever since. Not surprisingly then, I have no work experience related to game development. And in terms of higher education, I am not technically a high-school dropout on account of never having started it in the first place.

However, I have been able to devote a lot of time to self-study, resulting in my becoming a decently well-rounded jack of all trades – with the first few years as a hermit having been spent honing or teaching myself many of the skills needed to make video games, such as programming, pixel art, music-making, and creative writing. And after my first few attempts at game development, predictably, began to suffer from unmaintainable spaghetti code, I spent even more time researching programming languages and software architecture, after which I felt ready to start working on my first “serious” project.

Thus began the development of my upcoming game, Twofold Tower – with the earliest design documents and pixel art relating to it dating back to fall of 2018, meaning that I have been working on it for over seven years now. And it has turned into an absurdly ambitious project, featuring 1000+ handcrafted puzzles, more than 100 mutually compatible game elements, and a sprawling narrative, totalling in at an estimated 50+ hours of playtime.

The scope of the game started out a lot more modest, however: I am an artist first and foremost, and so my primary source of motivation is the creative vision I have for a project, which is a double-edged sword: On the one hand, it lends me a clear sense of direction and purpose; but since my motivation is entirely contingent on the vision, it is ultimately in charge of development, more so than I am. And I'll admit that, for a while there, I was concerned that I would be making the same game forever.

However, eventually the scope naturally started to settle, and the game began to feel like it was living up to its true potential. And then it was only a matter of finishing up all of the half-finished levels that I had started, which went surprisingly smoothly all things considered – with Twofold Tower becoming complete in terms of content summer 2025.

As is to be expected, there were also a few hiccups along the way. For example, at one point I had to scrap all of the graphics that I had made so far, due to it having a rather amateurish art style, and not matching the atmosphere that was developing for the game. And at another point, I got a little too zealous about how the game ought to be programmed, and began looking for even more niche programming languages with even more advanced type systems, before coming to my senses and realizing that what I was already using – the functional programming language F# – was more than good enough from a pragmatic point of view.

However, by far the biggest hurdle during development has not been technical, but personal: As a hermit who has given up all hope of reentering society in any meaningful capacity, the making of this game also represents a last ditch effort at carving out a space for myself in this world, both economically and in terms of having a purpose. Which makes it hard not to take the whole thing far too seriously, sometimes resulting in feelings of anxiety and self-doubt. And learning to come to grip with these feelings has been an important part of the development process for me.

At the end of the day, with Twofold Tower being a niche game made by a solo developer without a prior reputation, industry contacts, or a marketing budget, luck will inevitably play a role in whether or not it will get noticed. And having poured my heart and soul into it, I obviously hope that it will – and if you agree, I would really appreciate it if you wishlist it on Steam. But in any case, I am grateful for having been able to spend these years developing it, and I hope to be able to make many more games in the years to come.