Hello everyone. Some of you may know me from Steam, I am Backhand, an indie game developer.
In less than twenty-four hours, "Refactor" will be officially launched on the Steam platform at March 29, 2022, 3PM CST.
I’m finding it hard to use the right words to properly mark the occasion, I guess that’s to be expected considering how excited I’ve waited for this moment.
It has been almost three years since I started utilizing Unity to make games and completed some small games one after another, most of which are for GAME JAM or other game design competitions in high school. As a result of that timing, these small games have trained my development skills, but they are only working at a basic level at that time.
One day I thought this phase of the journey should finally come to an end, I have to publish a game that was created with a "product" mindset to be a professional indie game developer in the future and make it my lifelong career.
Maybe a good way of starting this plan is from the strategy game, which is also my favorite game genre. I'm not sure players will find it fun if I chose other genres, but I have great confidence in making strategy games and can identify what's good or not good enough.
This allows me to test my games from the user perspective of the "user" that is critical to any product while developing the game. Therefore, I decided to choose a strategy game to start my "product" journey.
Another consideration is that the biggest advantage of developing an indie game is its flexibility to try out ideas without too many restrictions. But if an amount of time were spent on a project, I may lose the ability to test and iterate fast. So I set my sight on lightweight strategy games, such as Bad North, Variable, Into the Breach, etc. that I am fond to play. They all have abundant content, but the core gameplay is very simple, as long as it is completed it can be verified fast.
After the first version of the core gameplay was conceived in April last year, I wrote the first line of code for "Refactor" on May 1, and now it is about to officially meet with you! In the process of creating "Refactor", a lot of stories combined with a great deal of learning and valuable experiences. Also, I would like to express my appreciation for friends I met along the way that shared the same hobby, who contributed forward-thinking ideas, ad helped me to make the product better.