Alex 13 interview - EN

Q: Hello. Tell us about yourself.

A: Hello, I'm Alex, and I've been creating games for almost 20 years. In my career, I've had the chance to work on some major intellectual properties (IPs) and hold quite senior positions, such as executive producer and studio head at a large international company.

As an indie developer, I've released five games, and I'm proud to say that before starting my current indie project, I was "net-positive"—meaning I earned more money from my games than I spent on them.

Most importantly, I'm a person who loves creating games. So much so that I absolutely can't imagine my life without it.

Q: Tell us about DDG, a little bit of its history, and whether there's a special idea behind DDG or if it’s just an indie project.

A: DDG stands for Devil’s Dozen Games—it’s the general name for my indie game development activities. DDG is an allusion to the ‘baker's dozen’, but I found that too boring, so I freely paraphrased it, and that's how Devil's Dozen was born. The name comes from my nickname, "13."

It first appeared in 2012 for a project that never got released. The team fell apart, as many do. But since then, all the indie games I’ve been in a leading role on have been released under this name. We've released five games, done several small outsourcing projects, and a number of contest projects.

It's not a studio per se just yet. That’s actually a future goal—to create a studio.

What sets us apart from most indie teams is our professional leadership. At the head of DDG, it was just me before, but now it's me and Eugene—my friend, colleague, and partner. We are both professionals in our field, with over 10 years of experience creating commercial games. Trained by corporate realities, we understand processes, toolsets, and pipelines. Overall, the main difference is that we try to do things "like adults, but without the bullshit."

We use artifacts like a roadmap, milestones, sprints, and weekly syncs—one mandatory call a week for the entire or a majority of the team. We don’t create "documents for the sake of documents." We try to calculate the commitment of each team member so that it is realistic and can be delivered on time.

We are a group of like-minded people who are here for the idea, but we don't let it turn into chaos and uncontrolled development. We know what we're doing, and we know how we're doing it

Q: Statistics show that many game developers are working on pet projects. So, how does the "indie in the evenings" concept actually work? How do you distinguish between "indie in the evenings" and a pet project?

A: Yes, it’s true that more than half of commercial game developers are also creating their own games. Call it whatever you want—indie or pet projects—but the fact remains.

The past year, which I spent looking for a job, I can't call this activity "indie in the evenings" or a pet project. It has been my full-time job, and I'm very, very happy about that. Of course, I'd like to get paid for it, but for now, I'm the one paying. /Laughs/

However, Eugene and I started development back when I still had a job. It was an indie project during my free and non-working hours. Because of how I usually structure my processes, my work and free time are broken up into chunks throughout the day. So I usually communicate with the team when needed, and I genuinely complete my tasks either in the evenings or on weekends.

For me, this project is more like a second job, just not a full-time one. I define it this way: my free time starts only after I've worked my main job, and only after I've fulfilled my commitment to DDG—that's when my real free time begins.

Accordingly, it’s less time and effort than I would like, but I’ve managed to set it up so that it's systematic and consistent. This means not going into crunch mode once a month for a few sleepless nights, but dedicating at least two hours a day, plus a bit more on weekends.

I’ve believed for a very long time, and have seen from my own experience, that this concept (at least for me) works. For example, my previous game, "Album Corvus," which I made in four months of daily, non-stop dedication. I made a little progress every day.

I had a "15-minute rule"—"spend at least 15 minutes on the product every day." It works like a trap—15 minutes is only enough to get started. You’re already sitting there, the engine is running, and you want to do more. In the end, I often dedicated several hours to it. It was summer, I was working two part-time jobs, and this was essentially a third.

And so, in four months, I had a fully finished product, released it, and sold it for a whopping $400.

Q: That's a real success.

A: Exactly! /Laughs/

But I want to take this opportunity to add a bit of a negative point. To touch on a topic you can expect me to write another blog post or article about. A topic many people are already talking about. I spent all but 11 days of the whole year looking for a job. And the situation with recruiters and hiring processes in the Ukrainian industry right now is disgusting, immoral, and just plain stupid. I can share many examples of completely unprofessional and poor behavior on the part of the employer. And, folks, I apologize, but you just can't do that! Right now, it's an "employer's market," not a "candidate's market." But the market is cyclical, and what you're doing now is simply ruining relationships. My personal blacklist of companies has grown by at least three. Let's maintain professionalism even when you think it's not necessary! 

Q: That's a truly unfortunate situation, but let's get back to DDG and more pleasant topics. The team recently launched a demo for a new game called Titans of the Past. Tell us about the game, who it's for, and what the idea behind it is.

A: Titans of the Past is a game for me and Eugene, and for other crazy geeks like us. It's for people who are nostalgic for games from the '90s and early 2000s. For people who don't have a lot of time and energy to play. It's for the "gamer dad" and for many others who just want to get lost in what that feels like a "game from their childhood."

It's a Dungeon Crawler RPG that stands on the shoulders of the titans of the past, which is reflected in the name. These are games like Might and Magic, The Bard's Tale, Stone Keep, Eye of the Beholder, and The Legend of Grimrock (a more modern one, but still quite old now). It's a game for those who love wandering through dungeons, killing monsters, and leveling up their parties. For those who love deep, combinable RPG elements. And for those who love spending hundreds of hours not just playing the game, but also theory-crafting the perfect party composition and individual character builds.

To support this, we’re adding not only 35 classes to the full release of the game, but also a class-builder, so that geeks like us have somewhere to spend their hours in search of perfection.

Q: So, is it a game about nostalgia, or is it a modern game?

A: It's a "modern game about nostalgia" /Laughs again/. As we've been saying recently, it's a "modernized love letter to the classics of '90s dungeon crawlers." We took what we love and what we know the audience loves in what are called "blobbers"—games where the player sees the world from a first-person perspective but controls multiple characters at the same time.

Our game plays similarly, and it's all about nostalgia. But for our own convenience and greater commercial potential, we tried to implement a modern UX, although not everything is as perfect as we'd like. Nevertheless, from a gameplay perspective, we succeeded in making a nostalgic dungeon crawler that plays in a modern way—with WASD controls, free mouse-look, without turn-based combat, and without grid-based movement. This duality is our USP (Unique Selling Proposition).

Also, at the beginning, Eugene and I agreed on a design constraint: "We don't want to make a turn-based game and/or a game with grid-based movement." We spent a long time thinking about how to make free movement, free mouse-look, and a first-person party-based control scheme feel comfortable. We finally came up with the concept of a kind of managed but inverted pause. In our game, like in the cult classic Superhot, time in the world moves only when the player moves. As soon as the player lets go of the input keys, the game world freezes. I made a prototype in two days, we played around with it, and we all liked it. Later, our developer made it work properly, and it all took off.

On pause the player is free to rotate the camera to look around. The interface is available, with information on mobs, how much mana everyone has, and which abilities have come off cooldown. At this moment, the player can switch between their characters, assess the situation, and press action buttons. Each action button disables the pause for half a second for more dynamism. But overall, when you're not pressing any buttons, the game is paused.

Q: And during that time, you can go make coffee, check on your kids, etc.

A: Exactly! That's the level of comfort we wanted to achieve, just like in turn-based games. From the feedback on our recently launched demo, we're seeing that people who enjoy turn-based games also like our game. At the same time, Titans is not a turn-based game. But it allows you to step away at literally any moment, at any point in the game—if, for example, there's an air raid and you need to go to a shelter, or if you need to give attention to your children or cats. And we have confirmation—it is convenient and it does work well. 

Q: Is this your favorite mechanic in the game, or is there something else you've grown to love during development?

A: The thing is, as a player, I can spend hundreds of hours outside of the game thinking about ideal or just interesting, "gimmicky," or cool builds. And our game is all about that. So the feature I'm most excited about is one that was only recently implemented: the class-builder. The classes themselves are quite diverse—we have 35 of them. That's awesome! But I wasn't truly enjoying our game until Eugene and I decided to give players the ability to assemble custom classes. This opens up so much space for theorizing about builds that I myself have already spent more than one sleepless night thinking about them.

As for something that's been ready for a while, I also love how the replayability turned out, thanks to the layers of randomization built into the game's design. Usually games say that every "run" is a unique adventure, but few manage to achieve that. In my opinion, Titans plays quite a lot differently each time, offering many surprises and multifaceted emotions. That's probably the best answer to what I love most about the game. 

Q: I also want to ask about development: Tell me how you ended up doing an RPG. Everyone, and I mean everyone advises against making an RPG, so why did you start?

A: I absolutely and completely support the advice not to make an RPG. Even if it's not your first game, but it's the first for the team you've assembled, it's better not to. It really is very painful and difficult, and it's easy to get stuck in a quagmire.

We're moving the game successfully toward release; it's already more than 85% complete according to our internal tracker. This is thanks to two main factors. The first is an absolutely "crazy" team that just wants to make this game and loves these kinds of products. These are wonderful, great people. The second is experience—mine and Eugene's. This might sound like bragging, but I truly believe that if we hadn't been through all the crap we have in our careers, we simply wouldn't have been able to do this.

My friend, colleague, and ultimately partner—Eugene—has been nurturing the idea for a Dungeon Crawler similar to Might & Magic for over 20 years. It’s the game he dreamed of making. And for me, the RPG elements are what's truly important. I love fantasy settings, and the more classic and overused they are, the better. I'm talking about orcs, elves, dwarves, goblins, and magic. So Eugene and I brainstormed, and we came up with a concept that we both love. Overall, it was a business partnership compromise. 

Q: Tell us about the problems in developing RPGs.

A: I somehow thought we needed to make the mobs and their RPG system exactly the same as the player's RPG system. Where their final stats, such as attack, chance to hit, or damage, would be calculated just like the player characters'—that is, through skills, stats, and gear with affixes...

We did it that way, and it even worked. But it immediately turned into a savage balancing pit. It was so long, difficult, and painful to balance that if we hadn't created a simplified stat-scaling system for the mobs (completely different from the player's), we'd still be balancing our first combat encounter. Well, maybe the second one.

That was my personal design mistake. But we quickly realized it wasn't working and recovered from it. In large teams, there are special game designers who only deal with balance. Someone handles weapons, someone handles mobs, someone handles encounter balance, which is more from a level design perspective. We don't have that luxury, and it required a mandatory simplification.

Q: How did you assemble the team, and how does it work in general?

A: The team came together very chaotically, sporadically, and randomly. I believe I "rolled a 20 on the dice," and I'm very happy about that.

Eugene and I started the project together. And as mature people and experienced developers, we immediately understood that to bring Titans to release, or at least to a demo like we have now, we needed a full-time programmer. Eugene and I would cover game design, level design, and work with assets. Because we both have capable hands and a decent knowledge of Unreal Engine.

So, while still working on a commercial project, we agreed to allocate a budget from our salaries and hire a programmer. I had similar experience with one of my first games, Star Tactics, which I made the same way. I hired a student and paid him a salary that was low by market standards but good for a young, aspiring developer. In the end, everyone was satisfied.

Due to our limited budget for Titans, this person had to be young, not yet experienced enough to earn more, and have a fire in their eyes. For him: stable money, experience, knowledge, and a product for his portfolio. For us: a full-time developer.

And we didn't even get a chance to start searching when circumstances aligned so that one of the guys we used to play Vermintide 2 with got interested in the fact that we were making games and asked, "How can I join?" After consulting with Eugene and seeing his Vermintide combat prototype, we brought him on as our main programmer. Leon is an amazing person; he's incredibly promising and learns very quickly as a programmer, and he also has a certain game design vision. He's reliable, he's skilled, and most importantly, he also enjoys working with us.

That hire, through a game we all played together, is how our team officially began. And it went well.

Q: Okay, who else can you tell us about?

A: The rest of the team works for free. Everyone who has joined us—and there are 13 of us now!—joined in some equally "random" way. And everyone is here to make the game. Each person has their own reasons. Mostly, it's a team of young specialists who are just starting their journey in gamedev. Our QA, for example, is primarily an entrepreneur with his own small business that's doing quite well. But he’s interested in working with us and making games.

And then there’s our technical game designer, whom I met a long time ago in a hookah bar in Kharkiv. We exchanged contacts, and a few years later, this person wrote to me on Telegram: "Remember me? I want to make games." Of course, I didn't remember, but I replied that we had work, but no money. And he also joined the team. He also joined for the experience, for the products in his portfolio, and for the cool, fun development. And this person has made the majority of the spells in our game. This is one of our main content types, our "heavy hitter"—Titans will have over 200 spells at launch. He created the logic, the balance, the accompanying peripherals like descriptions and icons, and found and implemented the sounds. And he hammered out a ton of amazing VFX.

I could talk a lot about the rest of the team too, but maybe that's best for next time.

Q: Okay. What about the technology on the project? What are you using?

A: We use Unreal Engine 5 because a lot of people on the team know it quite well. Most importantly, Eugene and I know the engine pretty well.

Regarding the version control system: we use Perforce, which is running on a server at one of my friends' places in Dnipro. It's a physical box, quite large, proudly sitting on a chair, and our server is in there. /It is the most beautiful and great box!/

We use almost no third-party plugins. We tried, but one of the guys wrote us more convenient replacements. For example, a very handy string table search, which significantly improves work on the game's localization.

And inside Unreal, I'll say something controversial—we are mainly a Blueprint-based project. We have little C++ code; we mainly do gameplay, game logic, and UI with Blueprints.

Q: And what about process organization?

A: We use free Google Sheets and Confluence. We use a lot of Google Sheets, in reality, because it's an RPG. And a lot of your documentation when you make an RPG is tables... and more tables, and more tables, so many tables. They have haunted my dreams a few times, actually. /There are as many of them as there is butter in a Classic's dish./ Our main balance doc with tables currently has over fifty tabs.

And for planning, task distribution—priorities, assignments, statuses, deadlines—we also use a Google Sheet. It's a template that I'm constantly improving, and it has reached a very good state.

We keep our documentation (like GDD and TDD) in the free version of Confluence. As far as I remember, we don't use any other tools. We had two Miro boards, but they have already served their purpose and were proudly deleted; we don't use them anymore.

We don't pay for any tools at the moment. Maybe I'm forgetting something, but as far as I can recall, we don't have any subscriptions. We've been thinking about paid AI for some tasks, but for now, it's just an intention.

Q: Tell us about the scope. You said that an RPG is painful. How much does the current scope differ from the original?

A: The number of calendar months hasn't actually increased that much: it's about 25-35%. We originally planned to make the game in a year and a half, but it looks like it will most likely take us two years, and definitely not two and a half or three. This is precisely because we increased the scope during development.

Yes, we fell into the same trap that many indie developers fall into—overscoping. But we did it more professionally and carefully—in a more controlled way. And it's more about "making it better" than "making it bigger."

For example, we're giving the visual fidelity and detail of the maps a several-fold increase compared to what I originally planned. I expected us to have a very low level of detail, more like a 3D roguelike: a room, a corridor, a room, a corridor, a few props, and materials thrown on the walls—that's it. At the moment, our maps are full-fledged pieces of the world. They're low-poly, mostly using Synty assets, but the maps have started to look much higher quality and more polished. This has definitely benefited the game. The same goes for the user interface, and the same for the number of sounds in the game. But we didn't plan any of this from the beginning.

So, all in all, the idea is this: the team has spent a lot of time, effort, and a huge part of their soul to make something good. So, where we have an insufficient level of quality, we try to raise it to an even level so there are no major imbalances. Hence the scope creep.

Q: A big problem for all indies is getting noticed. What do you see as the promotion strategy for Titans? Have you approached any publishers?

A: I really didn't want to deal with marketing, like most indie developers. But I realized that if I didn't do it, no one would. And again, I felt very disappointed that the game could just "die on the table" because no one would see it. I went to publishers, and we received only one offer, which was generous but not interesting enough for us. I calculated that I could do roughly the same thing myself without giving away a percentage of the sales.

From what I see now, to get a deal, you either have to have a truly custom look—that is, not use purchased assets or AI-generated assets—or you have to be a unicorn, an absolutely unique game that appeals (and this is important!) to a broad audience, making everyone not care that your art is not your own or not unique. That's not our situation. Titans is a niche game from the very beginning and was designed for a fairly narrow niche. And it looks the way it does because Synty and low-poly were the only things that almost completely met our needs while allowing us to maintain a coherent visual style.

That's how I see the reasons for the lack of interest from publishers in our game.

Q: So, what marketing strategy did you ultimately land on?

A: I'll still do a round with publishers once we reach 5,000 wishlists. We plan to hit that mark before release, but it's unlikely we'll significantly exceed it. I believe in 5K, but not so much in 10K, for example. So I'll go to publishers again, but more to clear my conscience and check a box on the checklist. I don't expect we'll get a serious offer. Therefore, we'll continue to handle marketing ourselves.

The main efforts we've already put in, and what I can recommend to other indies, is a focus on streamers. For this, you need to contact them and get them interested. I spent a lot of time and effort learning how to do this correctly, and our current results are above average. This is based on what indies say in various Discord servers, what they write on Reddit, etc. I'm happy to share what I've learned, because I believe indies should help each other more.

Our strategy was very simple: gather a list of potentially interested YouTubers, send them a press kit, and then ping them two more times. I sent out 300 emails. The average conversion is very low—about 2%, which means from 300 emails, people get an average of 6 videos. We got 18 as of mid-July. So our conversion rate here is much higher than average. However, "quality" is more important than quantity, because one YouTuber or streamer with a million followers would get us more wishlists than all our videos combined. The largest channel that covered us had 200,000 subscribers, and all the others had even fewer. These are guys with an average of around 5,000 subscribers. Nevertheless, implementing this strategy allowed us to increase our wishlists in 2 months from 800 to 3,500, and there wasn't a lot of organic growth there. We have now passed 4K.

And not all of this is from streamers; some is from paid advertising on Reddit. We spent $600 there and got about 1,200 wishlists from that ad. So it can be a good boost if you have at least some money for paid marketing.

Q: Tell us about Steam Next Fest in June 2025, please.

A: We got about 1,000 wishlists from the festival, which is a significantly above-average result right now. A few years ago, Steam Next Fest could give you 5,000 to 7,000 wishlists just for participating. And there's still information circulating that if you have 2,000 wishlists at the start of Next Fest, you can confidently expect a plus 5,000. But that's not working now, and not just for us. It’s not that our game is exclusively for a niche user; the numbers are just completely different now. I talked to colleagues in the indie dev community and looked at the statistics—80% of indies who participated in the February or June Next Fest didn't break 200 wishlists for the entire festival. We got about a thousand, which is considered a good number.

I attribute this decline in results to two factors. I'll start with the second one—it’s smaller. It's just the sheer number of games: there were 2,643 demos in the June Next Fest. That's a lot. And factor number one is that this Next Fest took place immediately after Geoff Keighley's Summer Game Fest. That event showcases large AA+ and AAA titles that also entered the Steam Next Fest. For example, Stellar Blade was at the top of all the festival's charts. A game of our size, budget, scope, quality, and marketing can in no way compete with Stellar Blade. Previously, Steam Next Fest was primarily only for indies like us. Now, all of us indies have to compete with triple-A titles, and it's completely unclear why they even need a demo at an indie festival.

I think the decrease in results from Steam Next Fest is primarily related to this.

Q: The tool works well. The AAA comes and eats away at it from indies. Is this the first time?

A: Yes... It's still hard to get your game seen. I think we achieved above-average results. But this is by no means enough to build a sustainable business from it. And we're not counting on it. This is a step in that direction, but Titans won't sell enough for us to put the team on a salary for at least half a year. Not to mention anything about a full cycle production. I'd just like to pay back the debts from that money, at least a part of them...

So, my advice for those who want to make game development their main source of income: try it, but don't expect to succeed the first, second, or third time. And by "time," I mean a fully released game.

Q: You said you're releasing your fifth game and you're still not reaching a "great result?"

A: Yes, I'm releasing my fifth game. Each subsequent release should be easier and bring more results. But many factors influence this. For example, my last game was released five years ago. That means I haven't had any releases for five years, and accordingly, my previous audience simply doesn't exist. Everyone has already forgotten about the existence of DDG. And no one really knew in the first place...

So, when releasing game after game, you need to keep up the pace. The strategy I've chosen for the future is to try to make the next game smaller and faster, ideally releasing it six months after starting development, or maybe nine months. Then do another small game, and so on. The more games you make, the more chances you have that something will go viral and take off. Although those chances are still very slim. It's just that then you'll build your player base faster—your audience of people who love your signature style. When one or two people lead the development and design of several games in a row, they project their personality into those games and their game mechanics. And accordingly, some of that can be repeated and eventually lead to the formation of a unique style. I would be very happy, and I will be very happy, when at least one person tells me: "Devils Dozen Games, you have your style, and I love it."

Q: How are players, in general, perceiving Titans right now?

A: The feedback is good. I could be more satisfied with the quantity, but I'm completely satisfied with the quality. People who tend to play these kinds of games like our game. We even had a profile website write an article about us that I can only describe as a "love letter" or an "ode to our game." And that was damn cool because the people there play exactly these types of games. They're saying that our game is awesome, that it combines classic elements with very fresh and interesting innovation, and that it's great to play. All in all—super! This is getting printed, laminated, and hung on the wall, for sure. The feedback from players is also predominantly positive. I'd say that 90% of everything people tell us is good points. And people have significantly fewer "wants" than I expected. This allows me to conclude that we've generally hit our target audience. If they aren't demanding completely different game modes or a totally different UI, or saying "make the game turn-based," or "make the game fully real-time," it means our core works. The main pain points in our game for players are UI/UX, and I agree with that—it's not perfect, and we're still working on it.

So, all in all, the feedback is good.

But we did catch two waves of hate. The first was on Reddit from the average Western user who is fundamentally against developers using AI-generated content. We have very little of it—it's some character portraits and icons for spells and abilities, and that's it. But we still got hate...

And the second wave was in Ukraine, where we're being hated on for using purchased art packs instead of making all our own art. Guys, we'd love to, but we don't have the money. If you want us or any other Ukrainian game to have custom art, please, fund it. And if you don't want to fund it, then stop whining; you're not doing anyone any good and you're making yourselves look undignified.

Q: A funny story or a meme from the project?

A: Nothing comes to mind right away. Although... The weakest default enemy in our game is the rat. They're small, and you can't always see them well in the dark dungeons, which is more by design than a problem. There are quite a lot of rats, and if I had to pick the most popular phrase players say about our game, it's "fucking rats! i hate fucking rats!" So yes, the rat can be considered our mascot. I even catch myself—I was streaming the game to our audience on the Steam page yesterday, and I was cursing the rats quite a bit myself. (laughs) Rats are wonderful. And they can also unpleasantly surprise you, and you won't like it. So play our demo and you'll be able to experience a true Ratpocalypse for yourself! 

Q: How do you see the future for Titans? Do you plan to do DLC? And what is the future for DDG? Are these things connected?

A: Yes, the future of the DDG team is either the next game or, ideally, the development of Titans. I would really like everyone who is currently on the team to stay with us. But it will all depend on the team's mood and on sales. Because the way we work now, we don't need sales to keep working. But if Titans sells acceptably or above, then we'll make a full-fledged DLC. If the game is a complete commercial failure—by indie standards, that's probably less than $4,000 gross in the first month—then we'll likely understand that this game is "done" and we'll go make the next one. DDG will continue to exist as long as I continue to exist. With a high probability, Eugene will be right there with me, and I hope the team will be too.

We're going to keep making games. We're going to make games for hardcore players, for geeks, for people who aren't so young anymore. For those who love complex mechanics, for those who love thinking about builds, for those who love strategizing.

For those who remember "true gaming."