I didn’t get into game development because I had a grand plan. I got into it because everything else had broken me. After two years in a toxic work environment that left me needing therapy just to put myself back together, I realised how much of myself I’d lost. I’d been close to people who didn’t have my best interests at heart, and it shook me. But I’d spent years studying human behaviour, customer experience, and game mechanics, and I’d always been creative. Game development became a natural outlet for all of that – somewhere I could rebuild myself while building worlds.
I told my wife this was important to me and Hannah and I decided to take it seriously and create Raguthra Studios. We actually had a strong business plan from day one. What we brought to the table wasn’t just creativity, but structure – project management, strategy, and real-world experience. It wasn’t a leap of faith so much as a calculated risk.
At first, I thought being an indie dev meant freedom – and in some ways, it is. But it’s also standing on a cliff edge every day, hoping the wind doesn’t change. The timelines are long, the money is slow, and the pressure never stops. Most days, it feels like an episode of Alone – seeing how long you can last before the cold gets to you. There’s a strange mix of fear and exhilaration in that.
Financially, I live on a threadbare budget. I couldn’t do it without my wife’s support. Every dollar matters. Every subscription or tool has to justify its place. Our plan is simple – to build small, story-driven adventure games often enough to keep going and eventually make it sustainable. It’s not a bad plan. It’s just a long trudge through deep snow to get there.
The biggest gut punch came when life hit someone on the team harder than expected. About a year in, we expanded the team and brought Michelle on board. She’s incredible – just good people through and through. For six months, it felt like things were really building, we were ironing out the workflow and communication. But then life happened, as it tends to, and it became clear how fragile everything was. If I got sick, if something hit my family hard, everything would stop. That’s just how thin the line is sometimes. For Michelle, stepping down was the right thing, pretty much the only thing to do as she looks after herself, her partner and their family. But yeah, a heart breaking gut punch to all three of us. It made the limits of what we’re doing painfully real.
That’s what most people don’t see – the single-point-failure problem. I’m the main developer. If I can’t build, nothing moves. It’s that simple. You can plan all you like, but you’re still one broken computer, one corrupted file, or one bad week away from disaster. I’ve lost work before. I’ve had to rebuild things I swore I’d never touch again. I said if I ever had to redo the cryo-bay in Spaceship Down, I’d quit. Well, I did redo it.
Burnout for me isn’t emotional anymore. It’s physical. I crash, sleep for a day or two, and then get back up again. I dream in code – vivid, exhausting dreams that feel like debugging in my sleep. But I love it. It’s the kind of work that fits my brain perfectly – all the problem-solving, pattern-finding, and creative thinking that keeps me balanced.
Whilst there’s an incredibly supportive inner circle, I’m often left to work on my own. The odd thing is that when I used to be surrounded by people, I felt incredibly isolated, and yet now I’m rarely lonely. I feel connected – to the work, to the story, to the world we’re building.
The highs make it all worth it. Seeing a player notice something small – like the rock stairs in Fractured Library that were never meant to stand out – that’s everything. Those moments where someone catches a detail you obsessed over, or a joke lands exactly as intended, they make the long nights worthwhile.
What keeps me going is control. I finally get to make the decisions. If I’m going to follow an idiot, I’d rather it be myself. I own my choices, my mistakes, my successes. That’s real freedom.
If you’re thinking about getting into indie game development, here’s my brutal truth: don’t hurt yourself or your family chasing it. Keep your day job if you can. Give yourself space to learn. But when you do step into it, don’t half-arse it. Be brave, not reckless. If you can afford a few months to go all in, go all in. If you’ve got someone in your life who believes in you enough to give you that chance, make it count.
And if you’ve got kids, think about what you want them to see – someone who stayed safe in their box, or someone who tried. Being “practical” is too often a neat way of saying “I gave up.” Don’t be a coward about what you love. Just don’t be stupid about it either.
Indie development gets romanticised a lot. It’s not a dreamy artist’s life – it’s work. Hard work. It’s math, logistics, and endless trial and error. It’s fixing systems that shouldn’t have broken and building new ones from scratch when they do.
Success, for me, isn’t about money. It’s about sustainability. It’s about getting to keep doing this – creating something people enjoy and being proud of it.
This is my brutal truth: indie game development is survival mode. But it’s also the most alive I’ve ever felt. Every line of code, every world, every story is part of rebuilding myself into something stronger.
If you’ve read this far and believe in what we’re doing – games like Fractured Library and Spaceship Down – supporting our Kickstarter or Patreon isn’t just about funding a project. It’s helping a small team of people keep creating, learning, and pushing through the snow.
One story at a time.
The header image is made with the asset pack Snowy Forest by edermunizz (currently on sale over on itch)
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