Moonlight Game Devs

Nathaniel Ayer moved to Egypt with his Family to build Himeko Sutori, to reduce his cost of living to the point where he can work fulltime on the JRPG tactics game he had been developing.
He shared what lead him to making this drastic decision and whether he would recommend the same to others. We also discussed his current approach to developing and marketing the game. It was a super interesting chat!

Get Himeko Sutori on Steam:
https://store.steampowered.com/app/669500/Himeko_Sutori/

Follow Nathaniel Ayer- Website: https://himekosutori.com/
- Steam: https://store.steampowered.com/search/?developer=Rockwell%20Studios%2C%20LLC
Follow Moonlight Game Devs:
- Website: https://moonlightgamedevs.com/
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/devs_moonlight
- Discord: https://discord.gg/rfcYJJB
- Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/MoonlightGameDevs
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Moonlight-Game-Devs-117297853384521
- YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCrGAw9i5HoaByeiQAV5FaLA
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/moonlightgamedev/

Greg Kurek is creative director at Mass Creation, an indie games studio that is known for its mobile games. They took the dive into premium Steam and Console titles with Shing!, an arcade Beat 'Em Up.

The developers took a big risk in mixing up the familiar control scheme for old school players. I wanted to find out if it paid off and what some of the lessons were from this! Hope you guys find it interesting.
Get Shing! on Steam:
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1103730/Shing/

Follow Mass Creation
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/mass_creation- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/shingthegame- YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/user/MassCreationGames- Website: https://mass-creation.com/
Follow Moonlight Game Devs:
- Website: https://moonlightgamedevs.com/
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/devs_moonlight
- Discord: https://discord.gg/rfcYJJB
- Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/MoonlightGameDevs
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Moonlight-Game-Devs-117297853384521
- YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCrGAw9i5HoaByeiQAV5FaLA
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/moonlightgamedev/

Ivan Panasenko is the creator of Ailment and Endurance, two mobile games with thousands of downloads on the Apple and Google App stores. He is also known for creating some popular YouTube videos on his channel, where he depicts his earnings in more detail - I really recommend checking it out!
In this episode he shares his thought process behind creating his titles, getting monetization advice from a huge chinese mobile games company and much more - it really was a fascinating story! I hope you guys enjoy it.

Get Ailment:
http://www.ivanpanasenko.com/ailment/
Get Endurance:
http://www.ivanpanasenko.com/endurance/

Follow Ivan
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/i_panasenko?lang=de - Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MiniYeti88- YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/channel/UCF9oIW4anDbuHK2eUqabeKw- Website: http://www.youtube.com/channel/UCF9oIW4anDbuHK2eUqabeKw 
Follow Moonlight Game Devs:
- Website: https://moonlightgamedevs.com/
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/devs_moonlight
- Discord: https://discord.gg/rfcYJJB
- Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/MoonlightGameDevs
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Moonlight-Game-Devs-117297853384521
- YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCrGAw9i5HoaByeiQAV5FaLA
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/moonlightgamedev/

Lowpoly Interactive is a games studio with a background in casual mobile games, whos founder has now decided to pursure the development of their dream game. That game is Viking Vengeance.

Since its his first time developing such an ambitious title, Bogdan shared the lessons learned and the challenges he faced, including how he overcame the all to well known challenge of needing to create a lot of content for an RPG to keep it engaging. He also talked remote work and how his team divides their workloads. It was a very interesting chat and I hope you guys enjoy!

Get Viking Vengeance On Steam:
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1082890/Viking_Vengeance/

Follow Low Poly Interactive:
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/lowpolyint- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lowpolyinteractive- Website: https://www.lowpolyinteractive.com/
- Steam: https://store.steampowered.com/developer/LowpolyInteractive
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/lowpolyinteractive

Follow Moonlight Game Devs:
- Website: https://moonlightgamedevs.com/
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/devs_moonlight
- Discord: https://discord.gg/rfcYJJB
- Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/MoonlightGameDevs
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Moonlight-Game-Devs-117297853384521
- YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCrGAw9i5HoaByeiQAV5FaLA
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/moonlightgamedev/

James Bernard is the founder of Springloaded Ltd., an indie games company with a background in free to play mobile. James shares how he founded his company, beginning as a solo developer until he was able to get a publisher to invest into one of his projects. 
In This episode, you will discover the story behind how James was able to raise money for his game and other advice on how to collaborate and network in the games industry. Another big topic we discussed is the recent development in the mobile free to play market, which is getting tougher for indie developers and why they are now porting games over to the premium platforms (Steam, consoles, etc.). 
Hope that you guys enjoy the episode and find it insightful!

Follow James and Springloaded Ltd.:
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/springloadeddev- Website: http://www.springloadedsoftware.com/Games.html
- Steam: https://store.steampowered.com/developer/springloaded

Follow Moonlight Game Devs:
- Website: https://moonlightgamedevs.com/
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/devs_moonlight
- Discord: https://discord.gg/rfcYJJB
- Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/MoonlightGameDevs
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Moonlight-Game-Devs-117297853384521
- YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCrGAw9i5HoaByeiQAV5FaLA
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/moonlightgamedev/

Richard East is the solo developer of Frontline Zed, a zombie defense game that is available on Steam and Nintendo Switch.

We had a discussion about his head first dive into indie game entrepeneurship, not necessarily even having any skills in the field and still succeeding. Another important aspect we addressed was the delegation of work to freelancers and how that is done effectively as a solo dev.

Get Frontline Zed On Steam:
https://store.steampowered.com/app/915490/Frontline_Zed/

Follow Volcanic Games:
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/Volcanic_Games- Discord: https://discord.gg/s3HjzhZ- Website: https://www.frontlinezed.com/
- Steam: https://store.steampowered.com/search/?publisher=Volcanic%20Games

Follow Moonlight Game Devs:
- Website: https://moonlightgamedevs.com/
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/devs_moonlight
- Discord: https://discord.gg/rfcYJJB
- Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/MoonlightGameDevs
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Moonlight-Game-Devs-117297853384521
- YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCrGAw9i5HoaByeiQAV5FaLA
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/moonlightgamedev/

The Postal series made its mark in the gaming space as the first game to allow players to attack and urinate on innocent bystanders. Now, Postal 4 is about to release and I had a chat with Mike Jaret (co-owner of the company) on how they went about developing it!
Not only did we discuss the development of Postal 4, but also the interesting backstory of the Postal series, including their "indexing" in Germany due to the amount of violence in the game. Mike shared the company's approach to hiring and building a company culture around the postal brand, to ensure candidates are a good fit.
It was a very fun and informative chat, Mike is a hilarious guy with lots of great information to share. Hope you enjoy the episode!

Follow Running with Scissors:
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/RWSbleeter- Discord: https://discord.gg/rws- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/gopostalrws- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/POSTAL.World- Website: https://runningwithscissors.com/games/postal4/
- Steam: https://store.steampowered.com/developer/RWS?snr=1_5_9__2000

Follow Moonlight Game Devs:
- Website: https://moonlightgamedevs.com/
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/devs_moonlight
- Discord: https://discord.gg/rfcYJJB
- Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/MoonlightGameDevs
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Moonlight-Game-Devs-117297853384521
- YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCrGAw9i5HoaByeiQAV5FaLA
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/moonlightgamedev/

Happy to present the first 4-person interview for the podcast! Matt and JeeDee, founders of Loopowl, as well as Moises from Mainleaf join me to share how the two companies started collaborating on making games.  Of course we focused on chatting about the development of both of their upcoming games, Fury and Rogue Masters. Both companies have a lot of very experienced folks working for them, so it was interesting to hear about the different insights that they had to share.
This discussion was very interesting, because the Loopowl founders are also involved in the publishing side of game development. Very interesting to hear what they look for in a game, so perhaps you might learn some lessons on how you can improve your game's pitch! 
Follow Loopowl:
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/loopowl- YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCH4N2URxBDnlZEgVdTLwf_Q/featured?view_as=subscriber- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/loopowlofficial/- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/loopowlofficial- Website: https://www.loopowl.com/

Follow Mainleaf
- Website: https://www.mainleaf.com/

Follow Moonlight Game Devs:
- Website: https://moonlightgamedevs.com/
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/devs_moonlight
- Discord: https://discord.gg/rfcYJJB
- Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/MoonlightGameDevs
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Moonlight-Game-Devs-117297853384521
- YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCrGAw9i5HoaByeiQAV5FaLA
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/moonlightgamedev/

Today, I had a chat with Matt Trobbiani on his hit game, a hacking simulator, and his upcoming sports title Wrestledunk Sports.
His first game, a result of a game jam that Matt held with his friends and he later iterated upon, became a massive success. We take a behind the scenes look on how it was developed and how he made realistic hacking simulator more accessible to non-technical folks.    Of course we also chat about his upcoming title, Wrestledunk Sports, and the super technical netcode which he built from scratch. Very interesting chat on how competitive games fix problems with latency in games.

Video of the Hacknet Game Jam:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CcAaE99tkuI

Get Wrestledunk Sports on Steam:
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1301520/Wrestledunk_Sports/?snr=1_1056_4_creator_1059&curator_clanid=38042151
Get Hacknet on Steam:
https://store.steampowered.com/app/365450/Hacknet/?snr=1_1056_4_creator_1059&curator_clanid=38042151

Follow Matt:
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/orann?lang=de
- Steam: https://store.steampowered.com/developer/TFA
Follow Moonlight Game Devs:
- Website: https://moonlightgamedevs.com/
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/devs_moonlight
- Discord: https://discord.gg/rfcYJJB
- Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/MoonlightGameDevs
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Moonlight-Game-Devs-117297853384521
- YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCrGAw9i5HoaByeiQAV5FaLA
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/moonlightgamedev/

Justin Scott is a fulltime software engineer, who works on his VR games at night. I checked in with him to find out more about the development of his latest game, Stacksquatch!
We had an interesting chat about VR, the capabilities of the technology and his background making novel plugins for different devices. We then transitioned into talking about how he got started with the game and the different challenges he had to face. One of the main focuses was making the VR game more accessible and less frustrating to play, as it can be quite challenging to the UX right.

Really fun chat, Justin is a great guy and I hope you have as much fun listening to his story as I had!

Get Stacksquatch on Steam:
https://store.steampowered.com/app/937090/Stacksquatch/

Follow Justin:
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/stacksquatch- Website: https://stacksquatch.com/
- Steam: https://store.steampowered.com/search/?developer=Stacksquatch%20Society&snr=1_5_9__2000
Follow Moonlight Game Devs:
- Website: https://moonlightgamedevs.com/
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/devs_moonlight
- Discord: https://discord.gg/rfcYJJB
- Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/MoonlightGameDevs
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Moonlight-Game-Devs-117297853384521
- YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCrGAw9i5HoaByeiQAV5FaLA
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/moonlightgamedev/