I got the chance to meet the developer behind Exodition. A indie game made by only one single person. The development of Exodition started in 2019 and the Early Access was released on may 1st 2024. The developer said that Exodition is 85% complete. He shared many tips for other indie devs to help with the workflow or just start with a project.
"The hardest part is finishing a game."
Who is the dev?
Exodition is a game made by Fabrice Magdanz. Hes been working on Exodition for the past four years. He studied game design at a university in germany and is now working as a solo indie dev, freelance digital artist and digital art teacher at the music and art school Bielefeld.
How did he get into game dev?
Fabrice started drawing in highschool. In college he took a few digital art classes.
A friend asked him to make some concept art for their game. Over the time they needed help with their pixel art due to them being a small team with only one pixel artist. Again, he took on the challange and found fun in learning pixel art.
Not only was it the first time he shared his art with others but also the first time he was getting payed for his art. This convinced him to make his passion his dream job.
After working on a few games as an artist he decided to make his own idea into a game and tried it with “Aztec Empire” with the help of a programmer he met on a game-dev forum.
Old projects
Cross Code
Fabrice got invited to make concept art for Cross Code. This was his first time getting payed for his art and first step into the game dev world. Because the development team behind Cross Code was so small he was asked to help out with the pixel art too. He said that he liked it alot and learned alot about sowing detail in many different ways.
Aztec Empire
Aztec Empire is the project before Exodition. The development started in 2018 and lasted 2 years. Sadly the project was canceled after a difference of opinion between Fabrice and the programmer about the kickstarter. The project was well recieved and even had a german youtube try it. When being asked Fabrice said that he still had all the assets, files, music and art for Aztec Empire so there may be a revive in the future.
Exodition
Exodition is the first game where Fabrice would do everything. From the art and modeling to coding. He had no experiance in game development. So he chose the Unreal Engine for his project.
Exodition is a 3D plattformer puzzle game. It has many different levels and worlds and even its own alphabet.
After hearing the story from Fabrice at the Game Dev Hannover meetup im definetly gonna try Exodition myself.
Prototype
Fabrice had a good reason to use the Unreal Engine.
The Unreal Engine has “Blueprints” which is a good help for people that dont really know how to write code or are just not comfortable in writing code by hand.
At first he only followed some tutorials on YouTube and started modeling a few objects that he imported into Unreal Engine. He didnt really have an idea what his next game should be. So he just started building with his objects.
The pictures on the side are screenshots of his prototype.
No coding experience
You dont need to be a coding god or have any experience in programming anymore for game development.
There are many game engines or features that take care of that for you. Unreal Engine has Blueprints and even Unity has Visual Scripts even though its not working as well as Blueprints do.
Blueprints and Visual Scripts are just building blocks that you can connect like a diagram to manage your logic. You can do anything you can code by hand with these coding blocks.
Its a easy and clean way to start with a project. But after some weeks or months of work even this will look complicated and confusing. Just take a look at the Character controller for Exodition.
3 Tips for Indie Developers
1#
Strategy
Build your project for fast itteration. Try not to make system dependent on each other.
2#
1st Day
Dont get stuck in the details. Details are for later or you wont be able to include new ideas without rebuilding key systems.
3#
Reusing
Just reuse old models, SFX or VFX in other areas of the game. When used consistantly the player wont notice and dont judge. It helps you with time saving and game size.
