Here is a nice interview from Sean Young the guy behind the making of Littlewood!
Tell us more about Littlewood, what is it about?
Littlewood is a peaceful RPG that takes place after you’ve already saved the world. You get to relax, master new hobbies, make new friends, get married, and customize your town! It takes great inspiration from Animal Crossing, Runescape, and Dark Cloud.
Which platforms did you target?
PC, MAC, & LINUX on Steam and Nintendo Switch.
How much did it cost to make the game?
3 years of my time and a couple thousand dollars for music.
Skills
What kind of skills did you already have when you started working on the project?
I have experience with programming in C# in Unity and with Photoshop.
Do you have any past experience in the game dev industries?
Yes! I made 10 mobile games and 4 other games on Steam.
Tools
Which software tools did you use to make this game?
Unity and Photoshop!
Have you found out any plugins or tools absolutely amazing to speed up your workflow?
The Unity game engine in general is just amazing!
Organization
Tell us more about your studio,when was founded and how many people are working in the studio?
I created SmashGames in 2014 and it is just me. For Kindergarten 1 & 2 I collaborated with another developer at Con Man Games, and I was just the artist for those projects. Otherwise, all other SmashGames titles have been just me.
When did you start to develop your game?
In 2017!
How long did it take?
3 Years!
What was the most difficult part you faced during the development time and how did you overcome these difficulties?
Writing dialogue was actually the toughest part for me. To prevent writer’s block I began reading more and also watching let’s plays of RPGs on Youtube.
Do you receive any external help? If yes, how do you find collaborators and which criteria do you use to find the best ones?
Other than paying BashiBoizu to compose all of the songs, I didn’t collaborate with anyone else!
How did you organize your work/daily tasks?
I should be more organized. Each day I just worked on whatever I thought needed to be completed.
Did you have other jobs or did you work full time on the game?
I do not have other jobs!
Opinions
Do you have any tools, software, or books you want to recommend?
Unity and Photoshop!
Which marketing strategy did you use and do you have any special tips to share?
Reach out to youtubers and twitch streamers. Post often on Twitter, Instagram, and Reddit!
Going back to day one of the development, is there anything you would have done differently?
I would have considered not confining player movement to a grid.
Now you have launched this game, what do you think about the future, would you continue to make games or “you’ve had enough?”
My next goal is to fulfill Kickstarter backers with their extra rewards, then port Littlewood to Nintendo Switch! After that, I don’t know! I have a million game ideas, that’s for sure.
Feel free to add whatever you think is relevant or important for our readers.
If you are a game developer just starting out, please don’t wait! Start making games right NOW! I went to college for Computer Science for 2 years before dropping out, and learning everything that I needed to know with Youtube tutorials. Anyone can make a game, it just requires hard work and diligence. It is better to start a project and complete it than to start 100 projects and finish none of them.
A game made by Sean Young.
