By Professor Jung Musik (Gachon University, Department of Game and Media Art)

Two indie developers are building platformers in the same genre with the same AI tools. A few days later, they’re looking at completely different results.

They had the same tools and the same amount of time. What differed was how they approached the AI, or more precisely, whether they handed the work off or directed it.

“Vibe Coding”: A Term That Aged in a Year

Andrej Karpathy coined the term “vibe coding” in February 2025. One year later, in early February 2026, he said the term had already become outdated, and that professionals prefer the name “agentic engineering.”

His explanation is worth noting. “Agentic” means developers now spend almost no time writing code themselves, and most of their time orchestrating and supervising agents. “Engineering” means that this, too, demands skill, science, and expertise. In other words, the era of going with the vibe and accepting whatever code the AI produced is over. What has become the default for development is orchestration — the art of directing — something you have to learn and practice.

For indie developers, this shift is both an opportunity and a trap. It’s an opportunity because a single person can now work like a team. But hand off the work wholesale without learning how to direct, and you get games that are made quickly and never played to the end.

Development Got Faster. Finishing Didn’t.

Working developers point to the same limitation again and again. With AI, you can build a mechanically functioning game astonishingly fast. Refining it into a genuinely fun final product is still as hard as ever.

The most common misconception is mistaking “development got faster” for “games got easier to finish.” The time spent writing code has shrunk, but the time it takes to define what’s fun, to play and judge, and to choose what to cut has not. If anything, now that you can make so much more, there’s also so much more to throw away.

Keep the Judgment. Delegate the Documentation.

The moment you tell an AI “make me a game in genre X,” you’ve handed over your design judgment along with it. What’s fun, how far to take it, what to leave out — the AI decides all of that. By then, the space where the developer controls the fun has already passed them by. Say instead, “Organize this analysis into a design document in this format,” and the judgment stays in your hands while the AI takes on the work of documentation.

That’s why I sum up the essence of working with AI in a single sentence: turn your criteria into a document first. If you have criteria, you can verify. If you can verify, you can fix only what’s wrong. If you can fix only what’s wrong, the final say stays with a human from start to finish. Without criteria, you keep making the AI start over until you’re satisfied, and every time, it gives you a slightly different game.

This is also the direction the entire software industry is heading. Applied to game development, the order goes like this. Don’t hand over the design document and immediately ask for implementation. First have the AI summarize the document and ask questions about anything ambiguous. Confirm it has understood correctly, then have it implement. Keep the verified skeleton intact, and vary and expand the content on top of it.

Decomposition: Translating the “Realm of Feel”

If you already have a proven design document and source code, AI can turn them into a game in no time. But what about developers trying to make a game for the first time? I recommend not starting from a blank page but reverse-engineering a defining game in your genre. Break down the two pillars of game design, core mechanics and level design, into numbers and data you can control yourself.

There’s an excellent textbook available. The developers of Celeste released its player class code, around 5,400 lines, and co-creator Maddy Thorson personally documented and shared the game’s “forgiveness” mechanics. Look at that list, and you can see exactly which mechanisms make up the vague sensation we call “game feel”:

• Coyote time — For a brief moment after you walk off a ledge, the game still accepts a jump.
• Jump buffer — A jump pressed just before landing is remembered and executed the instant you land.
• Reduced gravity at the apex — Holding the jump button halves gravity near the peak of the jump, giving you time to steer in midair.
• Corner correction — If you bump your head on a corner while jumping, or catch a corner while dashing, the game nudges you slightly sideways or upward.
• Generous wall-jump detection — Wall jumps are allowed even when you’re about two pixels away from the wall.

“The jump players expect” is the sum of named values like these. And the moment you name and decompose things this way, your conversation with the AI changes. “Make the controls feel better” is interpreted differently by the AI every time. “Turn on coyote time and expose its value as a slider” can only be interpreted one way.

There’s one more habit I strongly recommend: have the AI build the tuning panel before it builds the game.

Pull every jump, gravity, and dash value out into constants at the top,
and attach a debug panel that lets me change them with sliders during play.
Save and load tuning values as preset JSON files.

With that single instruction, the unit of collaboration with the AI drops from feel to values. “Better controls” becomes “widen the range on the gravity slider.” And finding the right feel — judging what’s fun — returns to human hands.

Levels Are Data, Not Code

Level design works on the same principle. Fortunately, you don’t have to reverse-engineer everything yourself from scratch. Fan communities for popular games have already built up wiki resources that break levels down room by room. Have the AI organize that material into tables, then play the game yourself to check whether the analysis holds up.

And the result must be saved as data files, not code. If levels are baked into the code, every change means asking the AI to modify the code, and every time there’s a risk of breaking something elsewhere. If levels are separated out as data, a person can edit them directly, and AI-generated levels can be checked automatically against the rules.

This brings designers a truly great gift: tools. In the past, getting a level editor for a designer meant asking a tools programmer and waiting your turn. Now, as long as the data format is defined in the design document, you can have the AI build a dedicated editor for you. That editor becomes a tool that makes the design document visible.

Closing: The Final Verdict Comes From Playing It Yourself

What vibe coding has given indie developers is the power to work like a team even when working alone. But that team doesn’t work on its own. Hand off the work, and the team builds the AI’s average, not your game. Direct the work clearly, and the team moves according to your criteria.

Becoming the one who directs ultimately means never letting go of three things: the judgment that decides what’s fun; the decomposition that translates that judgment into numbers, data, and documents; and the final verdict you reach by playing the result with your own hands. AI can write the code. But whether the game is fun is a question only a human can answer, all the way to the end.

Don’t hand your work off to AI. Direct it.

By Professor Jung Musik
Department of Game and Visual Studies, Gachon University / Doctor of Game Engineering
Founder of Indiegame.com

Professor Jung Musik is an Associate Professor in the Department of Game and Visual Art Studies at Gachon University and holds a doctorate in engineering. He was a founding member of Trigger Soft in 1994 and has since served as Director at NCSoft, outside director at NASDAQ-listed Gravity, and Vice President of Lunosoft. He organized Korea’s first indie game contest in 2003 and has supported the domestic indie game ecosystem for more than two decades. He currently serves as a member of the Korea Game Rating and Administration Committee under the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism, and as chair of the Content/Digital/Space division of Seongnam City’s Fourth Industrial Revolution Special Committee.

The Age of the Vibe-Coding Designer: What Should Indies Be Directing? - 인디게임닷컴.

What Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End teaches us about the real journey of making games

For most indie teams, the Demon King is money

Most indie teams set out like an adventuring party in a fantasy novel. The goal is to clear the monsters and slay the Demon King. In practice, that means getting noticed, landing a big hit, and in the end, making money.

To be fair, a company exists to turn a profit. And anyone who looks around the industry will find teams that struck it rich overnight, like lottery winners. So, like the wide-eyed parties of fantasy fiction, most indie teams go into development carrying the same hopes. They hope for a publishing deal and outside investment. Above all, they hope that this game, the one they’re making right now, will be the big one.

The map has changed

The reality looks very different. According to analytics firm Gamalytic, more than 60% of the roughly 13,000 games released on Steam in 2025 earned less than $1,000. Around 40% never even recouped the $100 Steam Direct fee. AI is driving an explosive rise in release volume, while the number of players actually willing to pay for games has barely moved.

In this environment, it is close to impossible for an indie team to make money from a rushed, half-finished launch. Even well-made games backed by serious money and effort are more likely to fail than succeed. To put it bluntly: for an indie, the moment money becomes the goal, most first projects become failed journeys.

So what is our game actually for?

Most fantasy stories race toward the moment the Demon King falls. The hero overcomes impossible odds, gathers companions, and finally stands before the last boss. That is the climax, and the end of the tale.

Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End goes the other way. It opens with the hero’s party returning to the royal capital after the Demon King has already been defeated. The first episode begins exactly where other stories would roll the end credits.

It follows Frieren, an elf mage who lives for more than a thousand years, as she retraces the journey she once shared with her old companions. The result is a grounded, realistic take on the hero’s tale. Above all, it is a fantasy masterpiece that shows, with lyrical and finely observed emotion, how precious the small adventures shared with the people beside you really are.

Game development works the same way. You don’t need to point to the many lottery winners whose windfall ruined their lives. An indie team should not let its goals sink into chasing publishing deals, investment, revenue, and aggressive monetization design.

Two reasons revenue shouldn’t be the goal

First, the odds. Indie development is about focus. Even if we pour everything into the simplest goals of content and fun, winning players over is extraordinarily hard. We are competing with major studios, highly sophisticated developers, and an endless catalog of proven classics and blockbusters. Everyone wants to make money, and everyone studies the market relentlessly. Only a handful get chosen. Just as amateurs rarely beat professionals, it is extremely difficult for an indie to post dramatic revenue in today’s mature market.

Second, the shackles. Publishing deals and investments signed while a game is still rough, before its value has been properly recognized, all turn into shackles over time. You get a lowballed valuation, unfavorable terms, and pressure to work to someone else’s schedule instead of your own game’s. In the rush to slay the Demon King quickly, the party loses its identity and its direction.

The adventure has meaning in itself

Every adventure means something because of the companions walking beside you.

Frieren will let a mimic swallow her whole rather than give up the grimoire inside a treasure chest. Her companions are often exasperated by how readily she takes risks to collect spells that seem completely useless.

Yet as the story unfolds, those “useless spells” create moments that connect people to one another. And above all, watching Frieren come to understand the value of her companions through the journey reveals a kind of worth that efficiency can never explain.

Indie development is the same. The things that look inefficient by market logic can become a team’s own unique magic. That could be a strange mechanic that’s yours alone, a devlog you keep posting, or a reply left for each individual player. This is exactly where the value of indie comes from, the value majors can’t imitate.

Find players before you find revenue

That is why an indie’s first goal should be building a player base for your game, not revenue. Players who enjoy your story, and players who talk with you. That is the starting point.

In the villages along the road Frieren walks again, traces of Himmel’s party remain from decades earlier. They aren’t grand, heroic battles. They’re small acts of kindness toward the townsfolk. The people they touched remember, and that memory is what keeps the hero’s story alive.

Early players and small communities work the same way. They are the people who will remember your game and wait for your next story. Once you give players a clear reason to enjoy your game, revenue can follow in any number of ways.

What does today’s development mean to us?

The advice I always give to the heads of mid-sized studios and to indie teams alike is this: make today’s development with your team meaningful. An indie team’s true happiness doesn’t arrive after the publishing deal, after the investment round, or after the revenue starts coming in.

So if you’re an indie, today’s work with your teammates should be enjoyable, or at the very least meaningful. And we should be able to enjoy the act of building a new world together with players through games. We may not slay the Demon King on this journey. But whether that journey ends as a failure ultimately depends on what we set out to achieve.

By Professor Jung Musik
Department of Game and Visual Studies, Gachon University / Doctor of Game Engineering
Founder of Indiegame.com

Professor Jung Musik is an Associate Professor in the Department of Game and Visual Art Studies at Gachon University and holds a doctorate in engineering. He was a founding member of Trigger Soft in 1994 and has since served as Director at NCSoft, outside director at NASDAQ-listed Gravity, and Vice President of Lunosoft. He organized Korea’s first indie game contest in 2003 and has supported the domestic indie game ecosystem for more than two decades. He currently serves as a member of the Korea Game Rating and Administration Committee under the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism, and as chair of the Content/Digital/Space division of Seongnam City’s Fourth Industrial Revolution Special Committee.

The Day After the Demon King Falls: Where the Indie Story Truly Begins - 인디게임닷컴.

The day Valve revamped the tag

May 18, 2026, was the day Valve extensively updated the Steam Tag system. 17 new tags were added, and 21 were removed. And if you take a close look at the update list, it clearly reveals what is currently happening in the PC gaming market.

Among the newly created tags is “Desktop Companion.” This signifies that software residing in a corner of the desktop—which lags behind the user and is difficult to categorize as “play” in the traditional sense—has now been officially recognized as a genre. With the introduction of “Bullet Heaven,” the Vampire Survivor genre has finally acquired an official name. Additionally, the existing ” Clicker” has been renamed “Incremental .” Conversely, subjective tags that evaluated the quality of a work, such as “Masterpiece,” “Cult Classic,” and “Well-Written,” have been eliminated.

What a platform names and what it erases is, in itself, a market report. In other words, Valve has now stopped classifying ‘masterpieces’ and started classifying based on how users consume games.

First Path: The Axis of Trend — Games Now Compete with Social Media

The competitor in a game is no longer a game.

Party games perfected with *Mecha Chameleon* and various Friendslop games that end with a laugh with friends. While their concepts and styles differ, they share one structure: short, light, instantly funny, and exhausting.

This is not because the game was poorly made. It is because the target of competition for games has changed. Today, it is not other games but short-form media and social media that are vying for a player’s two-hour evening. As long as they compete in an attention market like media that delivers rewards every 30 seconds, the rhythm of games is drawn in that direction. In other words, the shift toward short-form games driven by generational change is not a degradation of the game, but an adaptation to the times.

And the principle that applies to this axis is simple: stimulating, short and intense, faster and more enjoyable.

The key point is that the user base of this axis is mainstream and centered on youth . As a major force in social media, they lead trends, are sensitive to them, and do not stick with a single game for long. They are constantly looking for the next game to consume —in other words, the next source of material . Therefore, the channels they seek are not the Steam Store, but Shorts, TikTok, and streaming channels. They are the ones who create trends while also endlessly chasing them.

Large user base → Continuous game consumption → Social media trend → Re-expansion of the user base

Influencers are a group with the most sensitive antennas for popularity. They are uncanny at spotting material that is likely to take off and jump on board first. In other words, from this perspective, the essence of marketing is not ‘throwing keys to influencers,’ but rather creating the material that influencers will want to jump on in advance .

Design principles applicable to this axis

The entire game must be visible within the first 30 seconds. Tutorials, worldbuilding explanations, and gradually unfolding systems are all costs in this regard.

Scenes that become clips must be designed within the game. Moments when the player bursts into laughter or screams must be intentionally, repeatably, and placed at short intervals. The standard is not “fun to play,” but ” fun to watch .”

Development time and cost must be shorter than the half-life of a trend. An 18-month development plan within the trend axis is a failed design in itself. Now that AI-centric development has become a reality, if you cannot compress the cycle from trend detection to launch within 3 to 6 months, it is better not to stand on this axis.

Timing trumps quality. To be frank, in this regard, the 80-point product released two months earlier beats the 95-point product released two months later.

The trap of this axis

Trends have a half-life, and the graveyard for latecomers is always much larger than that of the leaders. Above all, since success in this field does not accumulate into the team’s identity, the next project must always start from scratch. This means that a single accidental blockbuster never guarantees the studio’s sustainability. Therefore, if you choose this path, you must design your development stamina not for a single hit, but with a creative sense rather than just technical skill, a challenging spirit that stays ahead of trends, and the determination to step up to the plate dozens of times .

The Second Path: The Axis of the Genre Niche — A Market Selling Trust

completely different consumers

On the opposite side of Steam buyers stands a completely different group. They carefully select the games they like and consume them steadily and slowly. Instead of reacting to trends, they open their wallets for verified and trustworthy content . And they wait for the next work from a developer they have once trusted.

CRPG, hardcore strategy, survival crafting, authentic Metroidvania, simulation, rhythm, shooting. The numbers may be smaller than those of the trend axis, but they do not fade. If the success curve of the trend axis is a spike that soars in a few days and vanishes in a month, the curve of this axis is a low, long-lasting plateau. And on that plateau, I communicate with the fanbase awaiting my work and create sequels.

Condition 1: The developer must be a core consumer of the genre.

The first condition for standing on this axis is neither technology nor capital.

The developer themselves must be the core consumer of that genre.

Users of niche genres can tell whether a creator truly loves the genre based on just a single concept art or demo composition. Games that merely superficially copy the genre’s grammar are the first and harshest filtered out by the community. In other words, on this level, ‘genre authenticity’ is an area that cannot be replaced by market research, and it is a developer’s pride and honor that transcends marketing techniques.

Understanding the mechanism determines the depth of the level design.

You must keenly target what appeals to users of that genre—what concepts, features, and moments they react to. To do this, you must clearly understand the core mechanisms of the genre.

Here, ‘understanding’ does not mean a mere listing of things like “Soulslikes have parrying” and “Roguelikes have permanent death. ” It means knowing why those mechanisms create fun and under what conditions they break . You must be able to explain why the entire nature of combat changes depending on how many frames the dodge invincibility frame is.

Without a complete understanding of the mechanics, proper game design cannot be constructed. The creativity of the play concept makes level design more difficult, which ultimately holds indie game developers back. What genre players expect from a game is not innovation and creativity, but proven and familiar fun disguised as innovation and creativity —in other words, a satisfying experience that exceeds the value paid for the genre game. Therefore, even if they approach it from a conceptual standpoint, niche players evaluate a game precisely based on the depth of its level design. It is about depth, not quantity.

Communicate before development begins.

Marketing for this axis does not start three months before launch. It starts even before development begins .

From the beginning, the direction of the art concept, game concept, and core mechanics must be exposed to the relevant community, and through dialogue, the team must persuade them why this game is being made. In this process, the team gains two things simultaneously: design validation and a customer base already secured before launch .

If trend-oriented marketing is about ‘being discovered,’ niche-oriented marketing is about ‘building trust in advance with users who will purchase my game.’ You must instill a justification for purchase, such as ‘I absolutely must buy this game,’ and trust in the payment process can never be built in a short period of time.

The worst choice is the middle ground.

Most of the games quietly disappearing from Steam are by no means poorly made games. They are games that do not fall into any category .

We spent three years developing the game seriously, pursuing the lightheartedness of recently trending games. Conversely, while claiming to follow the conventions of a niche genre, we actually lacked the depth and core recipe of that genre. It is too serious to go viral on social media, and too shallow to persuade core users. As a result, it becomes an ambiguous game that does not belong to any payment group .

The words of a few successful indie game developers—”If you make a good game, it will eventually be recognized”—are now closer to neglect than comfort amidst the countless slump games. There are many good games, and the masterpieces and blockbusters on wishlists are always sold first at drastically discounted prices. The key is not just making a good game, but clear targeting and a meticulous purchase inducement strategy regarding who will definitely buy your game and in what way .

Written by: Professor Moo-Sik Jeong (Associate Professor, Department of Game & Video, Gachon University / Ph.D. in Engineering)

Who is Professor Jeong Mu-sik?

He is a first-generation Korean game developer who started as a founding member of Trigger Soft in 1994 and served as a director at NCSoft, an outside director at NASDAQ-listed company Gravity, and a vice president at Runosoft. Since planning and hosting Korea’s first indie game contest in 2003, he has maintained a long-standing interest in and support for the nurturing of domestic indie games. Currently, he serves as a member and director of the Game Rating and Administration Committee under the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism, and as the head of the Content/Digital/Space subcommittee of the Seongnam City Special Committee on the 4th Industrial Revolution, striving for the development of the domestic game industry and the establishment of a sound culture.

[Column] The Two Paths of Steam Survival: Ride the Trend or Sell the Genre? - 인디게임닷컴.

The Day Valve Tore Up Its Own Tags

On May 18, 2026, Valve overhauled Steam’s tag system. Seventeen tags were added; twenty-one were removed. Read that list carefully, and it tells you exactly what is happening to the PC games market right now.

Among the new tags is Desktop Companion — recognition that software which simply lives in a corner of your desktop and keeps you company, software you can barely call “play” in the traditional sense, is now a genre in its own right. Bullet Heaven was added, finally giving the Vampire Survivors lineage an official name. And the old Clicker tag was renamed Incremental. Meanwhile, tags that rendered a verdict on a work’s stature — “Masterpiece,” “Cult Classic,” “Well-Written” — were swept away.

What a platform chooses to name, and what it chooses to delete, is a market report in itself. Valve has stopped sorting games by which ones are great, and started sorting them by how players consume them.

Road One: The Trend Axis — Games Now Compete With Social Media

Your competition is no longer other games

The party games that MECCHA CHAMELEON brought to full flower, and the ever-growing pile of friendslop titles built to make a group laugh for one evening and then be done. The concepts and the art styles differ wildly, but the underlying structure is identical: short, light, instantly funny, and spent.

This is not a failure of craft. It is that the competition has changed. What fights for a player’s two free evening hours is no longer another game — it is short-form video and social media. Once you are fighting for attention in the same market as a medium that lands a reward every thirty seconds, your game’s rhythm gets pulled in that direction too. Generational change has made games shorter, and that compression is not decay. It is adaptation.

The principle that works on this axis is simple: loud, short, and sharp; funny, faster.

What matters most is who these players are — mainstream, and skewing young. They drive the flow of social media; they are acutely sensitive to trends, and they do not stay with one game for long. They are constantly hunting for the next game to burn through — the next piece of raw material. Which is why the channel they search is not the Steam store. It is Shorts, TikTok, and streaming.

A deep player pool → relentless game consumption → a social-media trend → an even deeper pool

Influencers are the group with the most sensitive antenna for what is about to break. They sniff out the material that is going to land and get on it first. So on this axis, marketing is not “sending keys to streamers.” Marketing is building the material an influencer will want to ride.

Design principles that work on this axis

The whole game has to be visible in the first thirty seconds. Tutorials, lore, systems that unlock slowly — on this axis, every one of them is a cost.

The clippable moment has to be designed into the game. The instant a player bursts out laughing, or screams, has to be deliberate, repeatable, and spaced closely together. The standard is not “it’s fun to play.” It is “it’s fun to watch.“

Your development time and your price have to be shorter than the trend’s half-life. An eighteen-month plan on the trend axis is a failed design on day one. With AI-led development now the reality, if you cannot compress the cycle from spotting a trend to shipping into three to six months, you are better off not standing on this axis at all.

Timing beats quality. Bluntly: here, an 80-point game that arrives two months early beats a 95-point game that arrives two months late.

The trap on this axis

Trends have a half-life, and the graveyard of latecomers is always far bigger than the winners’ circle. More importantly, success on this axis does not accumulate into a studio identity — the next project starts from zero again. One lucky hit guarantees nothing about your studio’s survival. So if you choose this road, design your development stamina not around a single hit, but around sense that outruns technology, the nerve to get ahead of a trend, and the expectation of stepping up to bat dozens of times.

Road Two: The Genre Niche Axis — A Market That Sells Trust

An entirely different buyer

On the other side of Steam’s buying public sits a completely different group. They choose carefully among the games they love, and they consume them steadily, slowly. They do not react to trends — but they will open their wallets for content that is proven and trustworthy. And once a developer has earned that trust, they wait for the next game.

CRPGs, hardcore strategy, survival crafting, traditional Metroidvanias, simulation, rhythm, shmups. The numbers are smaller than on the trend axis, but they do not go out. If the trend axis produces a spike that shoots up in days and vanishes within a month, this axis produces a low, long plateau. And it is on that plateau that you talk to the fans waiting for your work and build the sequel.

Condition one: you have to be a core consumer of the genre yourself

The first requirement for standing on this axis is neither technology nor capital.

The developer has to be, personally, a core consumer of that genre.

Players in a niche genre can tell from a single concept sheet — from the shape of a demo alone — whether the person who made it actually loves the genre. A game that copies only the surface grammar gets filtered out by the community first and hardest. On this axis, genre authenticity is not something market research can substitute for. It is not a marketing technique. It is the developer’s own pride.

Depth of mechanical understanding sets the depth of level design

You have to aim precisely at what the players of that genre respond to — which concepts, which features, which moments. And to do that, you have to understand the genre’s core mechanics clearly.

“Understanding” here does not mean being able to list that Soulslikes have parrying and roguelikes have permadeath. It means knowing why that mechanic produces fun, and under what conditions it collapses. You should be able to explain why the character of an entire combat system changes depending on how many invincibility frames a dodge carries.

Without complete mechanical understanding, no sound game design can be assembled. A creative play concept makes level design harder, not easier — which is precisely where indie developers get their legs cut out from under them. What a genre player expects from your game is not innovation and creativity, but familiar, proven fun wearing the clothes of innovation and creativity — an experience in the genre they bought into that returns more than what they paid. So while a niche player may come in through the concept, they judge your game against the classics of the genre — the depth of its level design included. Not by volume. By depth.

Start talking before you start building

Marketing on this axis does not begin three months before launch. It begins before development starts.

Put the art concept, the game concept, and the direction of the core mechanics in front of that community early. Talk with them. Persuade them of why you are making this game. Doing so buys the team two things at once: design validation and a buying audience secured before launch.

If marketing on the trend axis is about being discovered, marketing on the niche axis is about building trust in advance with the players who will buy your game. You have to plant a reason — I have to own this one — and trust at the point of payment simply cannot be manufactured in a short window.

The Worst Choice Is the Middle

Most of the games quietly disappearing on Steam are not badly made games. They are games that belong to neither axis.

One chases the lightness of whatever is trending right now — and spends three earnest years building it. Another flies the flag of a niche genre without knowing the genre’s depth or its core recipe. Too serious to break out on social media, too shallow to convince the core. The result is an ambiguous game that belongs to no paying audience at all.

“Make a good game and eventually people will notice” — the line a handful of successful indie developers pass down — has become, amid an uncountable mass of slop, closer to neglect than to comfort. There are plenty of good games. The masterpieces and the blockbusters already sitting in wishlists get sold first, at brutal discounts. The point is not only to make a good game. It is precise targeting — who your game is for — and a meticulously built strategy that makes sure they buy it, and by what route.

By Professor Jung Musik
Department of Game and Visual Studies, Gachon University / Doctor of Game Engineering
Founder of Indiegame.com

Professor Jung Musik is an Associate Professor in the Department of Game and Visual Studies at Gachon University and holds a doctorate in engineering. He was a founding member of Trigger Soft in 1994 and has since served as Director at NCSoft, outside director at NASDAQ-listed Gravity, and Vice President of Lunosoft. He organized Korea’s first indie game contest in 2003 and has supported the domestic indie game ecosystem for more than two decades. He currently serves as a member of the Korea Game Rating and Administration Committee under the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism, and as chair of the Content/Digital/Space division of Seongnam City’s Fourth Industrial Revolution Special Committee.

Two Roads to Surviving Steam: Ride the Trend, or Dig the Genre - 인디게임닷컴.

The awards ceremony, held on the afternoon of the 24th local time, was hosted by Markus Wilding. Winners were selected in four categories—visuals, innovation, potential for growth, and sound design—from projects submitted to this year’s Gamescom Dev Indie Expo. Separately, two Speakers’ Choice winners, determined by pre-voting by speakers for Gamescom Dev 2025 and 2026, were also announced.

Indie Expo Awards

Visual Excellence Award: MUTTER — DeadlyCrow Games (Santiago, Chile)

A horror game set in rural Britain immediately after the outbreak of World War II. Nine-year-old Maddox Holloway’s father has gone to war, leaving him alone with his mother — who is slowly transforming into something monstrous. The distinguishing production element is the stop-motion visual technique that gives the game a tactile, handmade quality, reinforcing its specific kind of dread. The developers have explicitly stated that their priority is sustained suspense and emotional resonance over jump scares. A Steam demo is currently available; no release date has been announced.

The stop-motion aesthetic is the correct choice for this specific horror: the artificiality of stop-motion animation — the slight jerkiness, the material texture of models — creates a different uncanny quality than digital rendering, one that suits a horror about something familiar (a mother, a home) that is becoming fundamentally wrong.

[Go to Steam Store Page]

Most Innovative Game — powered by Epic Games: PRAVDA (concept25) — Floating Stone Studio (€3,000 prize)

A narrative stealth puzzle game about journalism under totalitarianism. Protagonist Saga — branded a liar by the regime — helps resistance forces. By night, she moves through curfewed streets collecting rumors, photographs, and traces of the disappeared. By day, she assembles that material into “constructed truth” — not lies, but shaped narratives. The game’s specific innovation is making the epistemological dilemma of resistance journalism — the gap between factual documentation and communicative effectiveness — into a game mechanic. Epic Games sponsored the award; Kyle Billings (Epic Games Portfolio and Strategy Director) presented it.

The PRAVDA premise is adjacent to this coverage’s ongoing tracking of document-review and institutional-complicity games (Papers, Please lineage, The Newspapers of the Day, Bureau of Hero Affairs, Selsoviet), but approaches it from a different angle: not the bureaucrat processing documents within a system but the journalist constructing narratives against one.

[Go to Steam Store Page]

Most Promising Game: Cards & Cannons — Flamehead Games (Berlin, 6-person debut studio)

A deck-building roguelite tower defense combining player-constructed world-building, deck-varied defensive placements, and monster wave escalation. The jury specifically cited the cartoon visual style with custom shaders and the game’s embedded humor and imagination alongside the design quality. Previously nominated for Best Prototype at the 2026 Deutscher Computerspielpreis (German Computer Game Award).

[Go to Steam Store Page]

Best Sound Design: INVASIA — Rocat Games

A third-person SF survival horror game based on an original 6-volume novel series. PMC contractor Frank Colton wakes from cryosleep aboard the research vessel Clausewitz to find the ship overrun by a parasitic infection. Developed with a small senior team on Unreal Engine 5.6, drawing from Dead Space, Resident Evil, The Callisto Protocol, John Carpenter’s The Thing, and H.R. Giger’s body horror aesthetic. No release date announced.

[Go to Steam Store Page]

Speakers’ Choice Awards

Game Design Excellence Award: Blue Prince — Dogubomb / Raw Fury

The Speakers’ Choice awards are determined by the gamescom dev speaker community — industry professionals who have presented at the conference — voting directly, making these peer recognitions rather than jury evaluations. Blue Prince (released April 2025), Dogubomb’s debut puzzle adventure about finding Mount Holly Mansion’s hidden 46th room through a constantly reconfiguring estate layout, has been a sustained 2025 critical reference point. Recognition from an industry peer community in mid-2026 confirms that the game’s design quality has continued to resonate well past its launch.

[Go to Steam Store Page]

Ambassador Award: Amir Satvat — Business Development Director, Tencent Games; Founder, ASGC

Amir Satvat founded A Support Group for Creatives (ASGC) as a free support network for game industry workers during a period of industry-wide turbulence and uncertainty. The speaker community vote recognizes sustained community support work — career assistance, practical networking, and consistent presence — during one of the industry’s more difficult periods. The ambassador category explicitly honors individual contribution to the broader developer community rather than game-specific achievement.

The Full Winner List

Gamescom dev Awards 2026: Six Winners Across Indie Expo and Speakers’ Choice — Stop-Motion WWII Horror, Totalitarian Press Puzzle, and Blue Prince Among Recipients - 인디게임닷컴.

Participating in an exhibition is certainly an exciting event for indie developers and a great opportunity to communicate with various developers and meet diverse users. However, for indie developers who participate with similar versions every time with the simplistic strategy that ” the exhibition is merely an opportunity to promote my game, ” the conclusion is likely that “this exhibition, too, yielded no significant gains, either commercially or in terms of promotion.”

BIC, G-Star, Beaver Rocks, Illusta Fest. Although these events differ in name, scale, and nature, the most valuable thing they can offer indie developers in common is neither media exposure nor publisher meetings. It is the reaction of real users encountering my game for the first time . And only a thoroughly prepared team can reap a proper response.

The distance between the game we developed and the users

How prepared and considerate is your game for users encountering it for the first time at an exhibition? They have no context, no patterns, and no intentions. All that exists are pixels on the screen and the user’s pure intuition reacting to them. Consequently, they click in the wrong places, fail to find obvious buttons, and stop to ponder over things you assumed they would naturally understand. — This is the reality.

And there are developers who are disappointed and unconvinced at that moment. “My game isn’t that difficult,” or “Do they not understand the parts I designed?” Conversely, a wise developer sees that moment as a gold mine. This is because it is the most honest and essential feedback that can be obtained from actual users for free before release.

Exhibition visitors do not go out of their way to tell the developer, “This part is difficult.” They simply leave my game and move on to another. They do not criticize the game. However, their facial expressions and actions already speak volumes about their evaluation of my game.

The 5-Minute Rule

Most visitors spend about 5 to 15 minutes per game. They have to visit multiple booths today, meet people, and are hungry. Die-hard fans who play a game for 60 minutes make up a tiny fraction of the total. Furthermore, the users we will encounter upon actual launch will leave our game much more ruthlessly and quickly. It is common for the average first play session in the market to be less than 5 minutes.

This is why you need to prepare a separate exhibition version. Bringing the full build as is yields completely different results compared to bringing a version with a meticulously designed early experience.

What we must first verify at an exhibition is not rich mid-game content or a touching ending, but precisely those first five minutes. If a user leaves the game before the first five minutes are fully realized, all subsequent content becomes meaningless. Therefore, the core of an offline exhibition is to create content that allows players to understand the game, find enjoyment, and want to continue playing within the first five minutes, and to have that verified by the users.

A tutorial is not required. However, there is a condition.

Many indie developers ask, “How much more should the tutorial be improved?” The answer is that the tutorial should be integrated into the game . Furthermore, the game should be structured to speak for itself without a tutorial.

Every icon, every color, every button placement—all of these must either induce or prevent the player from doing something. This is called affordance. Following UI syntax already proven within the genre is the fastest way. If you design a completely independent card selection system while creating a roguelike deck-building game, players will feel like they are learning a new language. Even for an indie game, no user will play if they have to endure such inconvenience.

UI/UX is not about uniqueness, but about familiarity.

One of the areas indie developers most frequently misunderstand is UI/UX. It is easy to think that creating a unique UI is necessary to make a game distinctive. However, the reality is the opposite. Users already have ‘expectations’ based on tens to hundreds of hours of gameplay in the genre. A UI that differs from those expectations is perceived as ‘inconvenience’ rather than ‘individuality’.

Analyze the UI/UX presentation of reference games frame by frame. Where is the HP bar located? How is the skill cooldown displayed? How many steps does it take for the menu to open? Detailed and precise presentation based on functions and actions—following this exactly is not a surrender by the developer, but a consideration for the user. Differentiation can be sufficiently achieved through mechanics, art, story, and narrative.

You must first decide what you want to get confirmation from the user.

Good test objectives in an exhibition must be observable and actionable. “Is it fun?” is not a test objective. “Does the player start the first battle within 3 minutes without a tutorial?”, “Does the player voluntarily choose to restart after the first death?”, “Does the player understand the shop UI within 5 minutes?” — these are the test objectives.

Three goals or fewer is sufficient. If there are more, you will not be able to properly verify anything. Relentlessly track those three things throughout the exhibition period. Record every single one of these three: the point where the player gets stuck, the moment they trigger something, and the moment they voluntarily restart.

“Quietly observing gameplay from the sidelines is sometimes more meaningful than conversing with the user. Recorded observations travel much longer and further than mere appreciation.”

Which exhibition you participate in is also a strategy.

Not all exhibitions bring in the same users. The choice must vary depending on the exhibition’s objectives. I recommend participating in smaller-scale events like Illusta Fest before major events. It is much better to familiarize yourself with the flow of on-site operations and gain experience making mistakes under low pressure. The real thing is always rougher than practice.

Do not be afraid to modify code in the field.

On the evening of the first day of the exhibition, there are developers in their hotel rooms who open their laptops and spread out their observation logs. If all players were stuck at the same point during the day—that night is the fastest time for fixes. They change button positions, add a hint effect, and clarify the text. The next morning, the improved version is put up at the booth.

This is the most powerful weapon of indie development. Large studios cannot do this. However, there is a prerequisite. You must secure a rollback point that can be reverted at any time. Preserve the build from three days prior to the exhibition as a ‘sanctuary’ that you must never touch. Only apply hotfixes on top of that.

After the exhibition ended

On the way home after the exhibition, my feet will be aching and my voice hoarse. However, my bag is filled with dozens of observation sheets, as well as the players’ facial expressions, utterances, and moments of frustration. That is the real gift the exhibition gave our team.

Organize your records within 72 hours. Memories fade quickly. Identify the most frequent roadblocks and the moments with the most positive responses—based on this, set the goals for the next milestone sprint. You must construct the next version of the destination using data, not sentiment.

And above all, remember the expression on the face of the person sitting in front of my game at the booth, engrossed. Remember the moment a stranger becomes immersed in the world I created. That alone is reason enough for the team to continue development. Therefore , the moment the exhibition ends is the very setting that motivates our team to set goals for developing the next version.

Text (Planning/Review): Professor Moo-Sik Jung (Associate Professor, Department of Game & Video, Gachon University / Ph.D. in Engineering)

Who is Professor Jeong Mu-sik?

He is a first-generation Korean game developer who started as a founding member of Trigger Soft in 1994 and served as a director at NCSoft, an outside director at NASDAQ-listed company Gravity, and a vice president at Runosoft. Since planning and hosting Korea’s first indie game contest in 2003, he has maintained a long-standing interest in and support for the nurturing of domestic indie games. Currently, he serves as a member and director of the Game Rating and Administration Committee under the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism, and as the head of the Content/Digital/Space subcommittee of the Seongnam City Special Committee on the 4th Industrial Revolution, striving for the development of the domestic game industry and the establishment of a sound culture.

[Column] How Indie Artists Should Utilize Offline Exhibitions - 인디게임닷컴.

An exhibition is, for most indie developers, an exciting event — a chance to meet other developers, interact with a wide variety of players, and show the world what you’ve been building. But for the developer who approaches it with the limited strategy of “this is just an opportunity to promote my game” and shows up with essentially the same build every time, the conclusion at the end is almost always the same: “This exhibition, like the last, produced no meaningful business or promotional results.”

IndieCade, BitSummit, Digital Dragons, Gamescom and PAX. These events differ in name, scale, and character. What they can all provide to indie developers — more valuably than media exposure or publisher meetings — is the authentic response of a player encountering your game for the first time. And only the team that has prepared thoroughly can harvest that response.

The Distance Between Your Game and the Player Who Doesn’t Know It

In the exhibition hall, how prepared is your game for a player who has never heard of it? How much does it consider it?

They have no context, no learned patterns, no understanding of your intentions. All they have is the pixels on the screen and their own pure instincts. They click in unexpected places. They can’t find the obvious button. They stop and deliberate in front of things you assumed anyone would understand. This is the reality.

Some developers watch this happen and feel disappointment or indignation. “My game isn’t that hard.” “How can someone not understand what I designed?”

The developer with wisdom sees something else in that moment: a gold mine. Before your commercial release, this is the most honest and necessary feedback you can receive from a real player — and it’s free.

Exhibition visitors don’t tell you, “This part is difficult.” They just leave your game and move to the next one. They don’t criticize your game. But their expressions and behavior are already delivering your game’s evaluation.

The Five-Minute Rule

Most visitors spend between five and fifteen minutes at any given game. They have multiple booths to visit, people to meet, and they’re hungry. The dedicated enthusiast who plays for thirty minutes is a tiny minority of the total. And the players you’ll encounter after your actual commercial launch will be far harsher and faster about leaving than even that.

Average session length at first play in a live market is often under five minutes.

This is why you need a dedicated exhibition build. Bringing your full build and designing a version specifically tuned for the opening experience are completely different things that produce completely different results.

The first thing you need to validate at an exhibition is not your rich mid-game content, not your moving ending — it’s those five minutes. If you haven’t mastered the opening five minutes and the player leaves, everything after is irrelevant. The core of an offline exhibition is to create an experience where players understand your game on their own, feel the fun, and want to keep playing within the first five minutes — and then confirm with players that you’ve achieved it.

You Don’t Need a Tutorial — With Conditions

Many indie developers ask: “Do I have to build a tutorial?” The answer is: not necessarily. The tutorial needs to be embedded in the game itself — and ideally, the game needs to speak for itself without explicit instruction.

An icon, a color choice, a button’s position — all of these must guide or prevent the player toward or away from action. This is called affordance. Following the UI conventions already validated by the genre is the fastest path. If you’re building a roguelite deckbuilder with a completely original card-selection system, players will feel like they’re learning a new language. No player — even of an indie game — will endure inconvenience to continue.

UI/UX Is Familiarity, Not Originality

One of the most common misconceptions among indie developers is about UI/UX. It’s easy to think that a unique UI creates a distinctive game. The reality is the opposite. Players arrive with expectations built from dozens or hundreds of hours in the genre. UI that deviates from those expectations isn’t experienced as personality — it’s experienced as inconvenience.

Analyze reference games frame by frame. Where is the HP bar? How is skill cooldown displayed? How many layers does the menu require to open? Following these conventions isn’t surrender — it’s consideration for the player. Differentiation is something you can do through mechanics, art, story, and narrative. That’s enough.

Define What You Want to Confirm Before You Arrive

A good test objective at an exhibition must be observable and measurable through behavior. “Is it fun?” is not a test objective. “Does the player start the first combat within three minutes without a tutorial?” “After the first death, do they choose to restart on their own?” “Do they understand the shop UI within five minutes?” — these are test objectives.

Keep it to three or fewer. More than that, and you’ll confirm nothing properly. Track those three things relentlessly throughout the event. The moment players get stuck, the moment they express something verbally, the moment they restart spontaneously — record all of these without exception.

Watching silently from behind is sometimes more meaningful than talking with the player. Recorded observation travels farther and lasts longer than impressions.

Which Exhibition You Go To Is Also Strategy

Not every exhibition attracts the same players. Your selection needs to match your objectives. I recommend participating in a smaller event — like Illustar Fest — before a major event. Get comfortable with the flow of on-site operations and experience your mistakes under lower stakes. Real conditions are always rougher than practice.

Don’t Fear Fixing Code On-Site

There are developers who, on the first evening of an exhibition, open their laptops in the hotel room and spread out their observation records. If every player that afternoon got stuck at the same point — that night is the fastest time to make the fix. Move a button. Add a hint effect. Clarify some text. The next morning, the improved version goes up at the booth.

This is indie development’s most powerful weapon. A large studio cannot do this. But the precondition is essential: maintain a rollback point you can always return to. The build from three days before the exhibition opens is a sacred artifact — never touch it. Apply hotfixes only on top of it.

After the Exhibition Ends

On the way home after the exhibition, your feet will ache, and your voice will be gone. But in your bag there are dozens of observation records — players’ expressions, their utterances, the moments they got stuck.

Organize the records within 72 hours. Memory fades quickly. Which stuck point appeared most frequently? Which moment generated the most positive reactions? From that, set the sprint objectives for your next milestone. Don’t compose the next version’s destination from impressions — compose it from data.

And above all, remember the expression on someone’s face as they sat at your game’s booth and concentrated. A stranger, absorbed in the world you made. That memory alone gives a team a reason to keep developing.

The moment the exhibition ends is the moment your team’s next development target is born.

By Professor Jung Musik
Department of Game and Visual Studies, Gachon University / Doctor of Game Engineering
Founder of Indiegame.com

Professor Jung Musik is an Associate Professor in the Department of Game and Visual Studies at Gachon University and holds a doctorate in engineering. He was a founding member of Trigger Soft in 1994 and has since served as Director at NCSoft, outside director at NASDAQ-listed Gravity, and Vice President of Lunosoft. He organized Korea’s first indie game contest in 2003 and has supported the domestic indie game ecosystem for more than two decades. He currently serves as a member of the Korea Game Rating and Administration Committee under the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism, and as chair of the Content/Digital/Space division of Seongnam City’s Fourth Industrial Revolution Special Committee.

How Indie Developers Should Use Offline Exhibitions — And What Most Are Getting Wrong - 인디게임닷컴.

Over the following months, the team worked with a journalist, collected 600+ records covering daily changes (weather patterns, when electricity failed, when ATMs stopped working), and read actual diaries from Mariupol residents. The characters in Hollow Home are fictional. The city and what happened there are not.

The game follows 14-year-old Maksym through the days of the Mariupol siege. There are no weapons. There is no combat. There is the daily question of how to spend limited time, who to trust, what to prioritize — and the knowledge that the choices compound into something that either sustains survival or doesn’t.

The Kickstarter runs through August 24, seeking $15,000 to fund final development before the H2 2026 release. Publishing is already secured through Berlin-based Crunchy Leaf Games — this campaign funds additional content and quality improvements rather than the core development budget.

What the Game Is Asking

The narrative survival RPG without combat is a genre that This War of Mine established and that Hollow Home is building toward in a specific way: a first-person child’s perspective, a historically documented siege, and the isometric painting-style aesthetic that makes Mariupol’s destruction beautiful and heartbreaking simultaneously.

The city changes as Maksym navigates it — zones become inaccessible, new dangers appear, opportunities open and close based on choices made and historical events that occurred. Crafting, cooking, and resource collection maintain Maksym’s morale. Relationships with other characters determine what options are available. The branching narrative and multiple endings mean different players experience different versions of what Mariupol’s siege felt like depending on how they respond to its pressures.

Developer Valerii Minenko’s stated intention is specific: “When war comes to your city, I want players to experience what survival looks like for ordinary people.” Not the strategic overview of conflict. Not the soldier’s experience of combat. The child’s experience of days that don’t know whether they’ll have electricity, of adults who don’t know what’s happening, of decisions made with inadequate information under conditions that shouldn’t be making these demands on a 14-year-old.

The Disco Elysium and Planescape: Torment comparison in the coverage reflects the dialogue-centered, portrait-driven narrative style rather than thematic equivalence. The structural ambition is closer to This War of Mine — documenting civilian survival in a specific real conflict — but the specific historical documentation that Twigames has done (the 600+ records, the resident diaries, the journalist consultation) is something This War of Mine‘s designers didn’t have: firsthand proximity to the events they were depicting.

The Developer’s Position

Twigames is a Ukrainian studio that started making this game while fleeing the conflict it depicts. This is not a studio that researched a distant historical event; it’s a team that was displaced while building a game about displacement. The gap between the developers’ position and the subject matter is different from most war games because it’s nearly closed.

This proximity creates specific responsibilities and specific credibility. The 600+ records and the journalist consultation aren’t due diligence on unfamiliar territory — they’re the systematic documentation of something the team lived alongside, the effort to ensure that the game’s representation of Mariupol’s specific siege is accurate to the Mariupol that residents actually experienced rather than a generalized war atmosphere.

The Award Recognition

Nordic Game 2024 Pitch Battle winner, Games Gathering 2024 double winner, IndieCup Ukraine 2023 double winner — this award trajectory confirms that the game’s pitch, its visual style, and its design ambitions have been evaluated by industry professionals across multiple contexts and found to be genuinely compelling. The 97% Very Positive demo rating from 42 players confirms that those evaluations are translating into actual player reception of the playable content.

The Kickstarter Context

A studio with a publishing deal and a 97% demo rating running a $15,000 Kickstarter is not a studio in commercial distress — it’s a studio using the Kickstarter platform for what it can offer beyond funding: community engagement with a project whose documentation and intention should be understood before it releases. The campaign page presumably tells the development story in ways that a Steam page cannot. Backing Hollow Home is also an act of acknowledging what the team made it through to make the game.

A Note for This Coverage

Hollow Home warrants direct engagement with what makes it emotionally and ethically significant rather than only the standard critical framing. This is a game made by Ukrainian developers while their country was under invasion, documenting a siege that destroyed a city most of the world watched in horror from a distance. Playing the demo and finding it 97% positive is a different kind of data point than most demo ratings carry.

That said, the coverage’s standard approach — assessing the game as a game, not only as a document — is also the right approach for respecting what the developers have actually built. Hollow Home has been designed to be genuinely playable and emotionally resonant as a game; treating it only as testimony would reduce it to its subject matter rather than honoring its craft.

Who This Is For

Strong fit for: This War of Mine players who want a specifically documented historical civilian survival experience; players who want to understand what the Mariupol siege felt like from a civilian child’s perspective; narrative RPG fans who specifically want choice-driven survival without combat; players who backed or support Ukrainian game development; anyone who followed the Mariupol siege and wants engagement with it through interactive narrative rather than news coverage.

This is not a game for: players who need combat to feel engaged with RPG mechanics; anyone who finds war subject matter too emotionally difficult to engage with in a game context; players seeking entertainment rather than a meaningful experience.

The Takeaway

Hollow Home is not primarily a game to evaluate. It’s a document of what it meant to be 14 years old in Mariupol during the siege, built by a team that started making it while fleeing the same country, documented against 600+ historical records, and designed with enough craft that 97% of demo players found it a positive experience rather than simply a difficult one.

The Kickstarter runs through August 24. The demo is available on Steam. The game releases H2 2026.

Maksym needs to get through another day. The choices about how are harder than any game should make its players work through — and that’s the point.

Information regarding ‘Hollow Home’

Hollow Home Preview: Ukrainian Studio Documents the Mariupol Siege Through a 14-Year-Old’s Eyes — Kickstarter Open Through August 24 - 인디게임닷컴.

“The fact that there is something you want to make while you are alive — that is enough.”

— Hayao Miyazaki, age 82

The title of the Miyazaki documentary is itself a question. Borrowed from Genzaburo Yoshino’s 1937 novel, it is the message an adult sends to a boy: whatever world comes, whatever era arrives — how will you live?

The Old Man Picked Up the Pencil Again

At a small desk in Studio Ghibli, Hayao Miyazaki — who had announced his retirement in 2013 — was showing up every morning. His back was bent, his hands not what they once were. He had returned anyway. And to those who asked why, he said simply:

“There is something I want to make.”

‘Hayao Miyazaki and The Heron‘, documented across seven years of filming, is not a record of a genius at work. It is a record of an aging man walking a painful creative path to prove he is still alive — sending off the comrades who surrounded him one by one, continuing through the grief. The camera captures him without embellishment: a master who had been doing this for decades, doubting himself, discarding work, exhausted, and sitting down again the next morning regardless.

What the documentary shows is not glory. It is suffering. And in this age of AI-driven creation — an age that we as creators have already entered whether we chose to or not — that suffering carries more meaning than it might once have.

The Romantic Lie About Creation

We have believed, for a long time, a comfortable fiction about how creativity works. The genius receives inspiration one morning, pours the work out in a torrent, and changes the world.

What the documentary captures is something else entirely. Miyazaki begins without knowing clearly what he wants to make. He stops mid-storyboard and mutters to his staff that something isn’t working. Some days, he spends the entire day at his desk and finishes not a single frame. A master with decades behind him, afraid every day like someone starting for the first time.

This is the truth about creation.

In the AI era, anyone can attempt production with relative ease. That is precisely why creation — as distinct from production — must become something more. Not the product of genius ideas, but the hard-won output of a human who has passed through difficulty. The daily confrontation with the gap between the perfect image in the mind and what the hands can actually produce. The process of narrowing that gap, slowly, imperfectly. The accumulated failures, doubts, and self-questioning that seep into the work — invisibly but permanently. When an audience is inexplicably moved by a particular scene, it is because someone’s suffering was transmitted through it in a language without words.

The Wrong Question

AI’s advancement is astonishing. Code, art, music, story — AI produces all of it faster than humans and, by certain measures, better. In game developer communities, new anxieties surface every day:

Will AI take my place? Can I make something better than AI? How much AI must I use to avoid falling behind?

These questions share an underlying premise: that we must win a competition against AI.

That premise is wrong.

When Miyazaki insisted on hand-drawn animation at the height of CGI’s dominance, it was not because he believed he could defeat CGI. In speed, efficiency, cost — digital had already won, and he knew it. He held the pencil for one reason: what he wanted to make could not be made by efficiency. It required the mark of a human who had carried something through.

The Footwork That Cannot Be Read

Wuxia fiction has a concept called bopbeop — footwork. Not simply fast movement, but a way of moving that the opponent cannot anticipate or read. The way to defeat a stronger enemy is not to become stronger than they are. It is to move in ways they cannot predict.

AI has absorbed everything humanity has made. Millions of games. Countless art styles. Validated game design patterns. AI is the most sophisticated synthesizer of what already exists. But that is simultaneously its power and its boundary.

AI can imitate sensibility, but it cannot carry emotion. It can construct narrative structure, but it cannot hold desire and suffering inside that structure.

The feeling of the first game you ever played. The handwritten letters exchanged with a first love. The faint familiar smell of your grandmother’s hands. The warmth of home after a long journey. The excitement of an unexpected encounter at a rain-soaked bus stop with someone whose face you liked. All of these, tangled together, have built the world that is specifically, irreducibly yours — a world that AI will never possess. Human feeling, human desire, human suffering — the desire produces the pain, and the pain produces the work.

This is the footwork we must claim as our own.

How Shall the Indie Developer Live?

Near the end of the documentary, Miyazaki says that The Boy and the Heron was made for himself. His sins and deficiencies. The memories of not being the father his son needed him to be. The memory of war. The guilt of a survivor. He tried to put all of it inside.

And at the end — after seven years, after the completion of the work he had poured himself into — he said:

“I still don’t know. Whether it turned out well.”

An 82-year-old master, making for the first time his most personal story. Knowing it might be his last. Quietly climbing a staircase of broken glass, day after day, until it was done.

I watched all of that, and then I found myself returning the question to myself — and to you, whoever is reading this.

How shall we, as indie developers, live? And how, precisely, are we living today?

By Professor Jung Musik
Department of Game and Visual Studies, Gachon University / Doctor of Game Engineering
Founder of Indiegame.com

Professor Jung Musik is an Associate Professor in the Department of Game and Visual Studies at Gachon University and holds a doctorate in engineering. He was a founding member of Trigger Soft in 1994 and has since served as Director at NCSoft, outside director at NASDAQ-listed Gravity, and Vice President of Lunosoft. He organized Korea’s first indie game contest in 2003 and has supported the domestic indie game ecosystem for more than two decades. He currently serves as a member of the Korea Game Rating and Administration Committee under the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism, and as chair of the Content/Digital/Space division of Seongnam City’s Fourth Industrial Revolution Special Committee.

[Comumn] How Shall We Indie Developers Live? Miyazaki, the Pencil, and the Question AI Cannot Answer - 인디게임닷컴.

Best friend development duo Zach Northrop and Mason Sabharwal At the indie game festival ‘Secret Sauce’ held on July 16, it was announced that the comedy job simulation game ‘Worming from Home’ would be officially released on Steam on September 4.

The game has garnered significant attention since its initial reveal, recording millions of views online thanks to its unique worldview and enjoyable physics-based action. In particular, the demo version released on Steam has also raised expectations for its success, recording a 98% positive rating.

Warming From Home is a comedy simulation game depicting the promotion challenge of a ‘worm’ working from home disguised as a financial analyst. With a body lacking limbs, the player must roll around on the desk to complete the extraordinary tasks of a financial expert(?), such as sending emails, answering phone calls, and investing in stocks.

Finishing a spreadsheet with a body slam… A day in the life of an earthworm office worker

The player handles tasks by crawling around on a desk with the body of a handless earthworm.

Not only do you have to write emails and complete spreadsheets by banging on the keyboard with your head, but you also have to handle all sorts of tasks with your whole body, such as answering phones and making coffee.

In particular, the wobbly ‘Ragdoll physics engine’ makes even simple movements like a flick of a finger difficult to execute. The non-stop quirky mistakes and mishaps that occur during this process are the game’s greatest highlight.

After work, you can enjoy your own ‘Worm-Life Balance’ by exercising, reading self-help books, shopping, or sending messages to a crush at the office.

By completing mini-games, you can acquire new abilities and upgrade various skills, and the ultimate goal of the game is to be promoted to the ‘Wall Street Worm,’ the best financial expert.

Comedy created by the Ragdoll physics engine… content is also steadily expanding

The game creates a unique comedic atmosphere by combining a charming office setting with an exaggerated ragdoll physics engine.

At Steam Next Fest last June, the platforming content ‘Wormhole,’ set in an alternate dimension, was added and received a great response.

Along with this, the introduction of a smartphone-based cosmetic item unlocking system and support for a macOS version has further enriched the content for players to enjoy.

A connection that began with a college graduation project: Jack Northrop and Mason Sabarwal

Warming From Home was created by Jack Northrop and Mason Sabbarwal. Jack Northrop unveiled his first major indie game with this title and has garnered significant attention by consistently sharing the development process on social media.

Mason Sabharwal made a name for himself with the stealth comedy cleaning game ‘The WereCleaner’, which he developed while in college.

This game was created as a graduation project for the University of Southern California (USC) Game Program and, after being released for free on Steam and iOS, recorded over 8,000 English reviews and an “overwhelmingly positive” rating. It has also surpassed 1 million cumulative downloads across all platforms and was nominated for “iPhone Game of the Year” at the 2024 App Store Awards.

98% Positive Demo Reviews… Media Calls It “The Bizarrest Game Ever”

The demo, released on January 30, currently maintains a ‘Very Positive’ rating on Steam with a 98% positive rating based on 265 reviews. It continues to maintain high satisfaction, recording a 97% positive rating (40 reviews) over the past 30 days.

Reactions from international media have also been favorable. GameSpew described it as “a game with a ridiculous premise that I want to play right away,” while Gameranx introduced it as “one of the most bizarre games I’ve seen in a long time.”

Community interest continues steadily. The development team recently expressed their gratitude to users through the Steam community, announcing that the wishlist had surpassed 25,000 items.

“Warming From Home,” which has been acclaimed for its unique gameplay rather than remaining a mere meme, is a work that exquisitely blends comedy and simulation. With its official release just around the corner, attention is focused on whether it can establish itself as a notable indie hit to shine in the second half of this year, based on the high level of polish proven in the demo version.

Information regarding ‘Worming from Home’

An earthworm investing in stocks?… Overwhelmingly acclaimed ‘Warming From Home’ officially launches on September 4th - 인디게임닷컴.