When I first came up with the idea for Dragon Fodder, it was supposed to be a small game – just a few months of development before moving on to something bigger. I wanted to finish a smaller project before committing to a larger one. I sat down and designed the core mechanics in a few days. The first prototype was done over a weekend. That was back in February. The plan was to have the game on Steam by June and release it by the end of the year.
What could go wrong, right?
Well, nothing really went wrong. On the contrary – everything went amazing. Within a few months I had a playable game, and it was fun. So much fun. And thanks to my wonderful wife, Daniela, the art was looking fantastic.
I was very strict about scope creep – I stuck to the design, swapped a few mechanics, added a few features here and there, but nothing out of proportion. The game was on the right track.
Then one night in June, around two in the morning, I finished a test run. “Oh, that was fun!” I completely forgot what I’d meant to test – I was just enjoying the gameplay. That’s when I realized it would be a shame to rush this. Let’s put in the work and properly polish it before going to Steam.
It took two more months. I worked on making the game juicy – nice clicky, thumpy, ringy sounds, tons of tiny details, and small animations. I wanted the game not just to be fun, but to feel good to play.
When September came, I put the Steam page up. Made a trailer, prepared a few social posts, and sent out some press emails. I didn’t really expect much – the game looked good, but without putting a playable version into people’s hands, there wasn’t much to show.
Then, things suddenly started moving much faster than I expected. People seemed genuinely interested just from a few social posts, and Dragon Fodder got more wishlists in a month than my previous game did in a year. I invited a few friends to test it, and the next morning I woke up to a message on Discord from 3 AM:
“F*ck! I wanted to go to sleep and instead I keep playing this!”
But most importantly, just two days after announcing the game, I got a reply to one of the press emails I’d sent out – the guys at Indieformer reached out with a publishing proposal.
Wait, what?
At that point I wasn’t even looking for a publisher. But Indieformer was just starting up their publishing branch, and they wanted Dragon Fodder to be the first game they released. “This wasn’t an offer I thought I’d be making so soon,” they said, “but sometimes a game hits you in the gut and you just have to ask.”
I didn’t think I’d get an offer like that so early, so I’m glad we were on the same page. We talked for a few weeks, and it just clicked. We came to an agreement – and Dragon Fodder officially got its publisher.
And here we are – two months since the initial announcement and about eight months of focused development. Things are moving fast, and there’s a lot in the oven getting nice and crispy golden. Next year is going to be big!
