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Development

Surviving As An Indie Studio

Indie game development is tough. It’s unpredictable, underfunded, and deeply personal. But it’s also creative, thrilling, and full of potential—if you can find a way to survive. At Triangular Pixels, we’ve been navigating the indie world since 2014, and while it’s never been easy, it has been sustainable.

Here’s how we’ve made it work—not through overnight success, but by staying smart, flexible, and grounded.

Starting Out: Big Decisions, Small Beginnings

We started in 2014 with ambition and a prototype—like many others. We continued to work at other studios though until we had most of a game and felt like we could finish it in 6 months as well as having potential funding, we only then made a bold decision to move somewhere much cheaper to live.

That one decision gave us breathing room. Living costs in Cornwall are far lower than in traditional tech hubs, and that freedom allowed us to keep developing without burning out or going broke.

So the tip is here is that if you can mange work, even if part time, then keep working, create your game part time, and look to reduce your outgoing costs in other ways. 

Tiny Games, Big Ripples

Rather than try to make our magnum opus from day one, we did a few game jams. Some of them went viral, and that momentum acted as a calling card for our capabilities and style. It showed what we could do—even on tight budgets and timelines.

Smaller projects meant quicker turnarounds, lower risk, and more room to experiment. These experiences laid the groundwork for larger projects down the line.

Staying Sustainable, with Work for Hire too

We’ve always kept the studio small and agile, working in a micro-team with clearly defined goals and boundaries. We’ve been open with collaborators about limited contracts and short-term commitments. That honesty builds trust—and keeps things manageable.

When needed, we take on work-for-hire, but with a key rule: we charge enough not just to pay the bills, but to sustain our developers and keep momentum on our internal projects. If a contract doesn’t support the team, it’s not worth the cost.

Think Beyond the Industry

Another thing that helped us survive? Looking beyond traditional game work. We started exploring non-game industries—businesses that might not know they need games, but do.

We went to generic local business events, met people from other sectors, and pitched ideas they hadn’t considered: interactive training tools, gamified experiences, VR storytelling. That work helped us diversify and grow without relying solely on the games industry.

Smarter Tools, Lower Costs

Subscriptions can kill a small studio. That’s why we made a conscious effort to cut or reduce ongoing monthly costs and use open-source or one-off payment tools wherever possible.

We use:

  • Blender for 3D work — professional-grade and completely free.
  • DaVinci Resolve for video editing — a powerful alternative to subscription-based suites.
  • Affinity for image editing and design — a one-time purchase instead of an ongoing cost.

We’ve also built our own self-hosted infrastructure, including:

  • An in-house build server, Jenkins, tailored to our needs and under our control running on a spare PC.
  • NextCloudPi, a replacement for Google Drive, using large, scalable storage solutions that give us freedom and ownership without creeping monthly costs, running on a Pi5
  • Self-hosted SVN rather than any ‘cloud’ or subscriptions.

This kind of digital self-reliance keeps our overheads low and helps us retain control over our tools, data, and pipeline.

And Selling Tools

Another way we’ve supported ourselves is by creating internal tools and assets for our own games, and then taking the extra step to polish, document, and package them for release to other developers. What starts as something bespoke for our workflow—whether it’s a shader, a level design tool, or a VR interaction system—often has wider value. By making these tools publicly available, we’ve created a steady supplementary income stream that helps fund future development while also giving back to the dev community. These are Technie Tools which can be found on the Unity Asset Store. 

Building Local, Together

Being in Cornwall, we realised we weren’t alone. There were other studios here—each facing the same pressures. That’s why we helped form and support Cornwall Games, a community where local developers share opportunities, tips, and connections.

It’s not just about survival—it’s about lifting each other up.

Often you can also share work – you do a bit of code for someone’s project and they can do a bit of art for yours!

Small Grants, Big Impact

Over the years, we’ve secured small local grants, including funding from Cornwall-based organisations. These micro-grants have helped bridge the gap between ideas and prototypes, giving us just enough support to get to the next stage.

They might not be headline-grabbing amounts, but they matter. And they’ve helped keep us moving forward. They led to a polished pitch for our current project, Unseen Diplomacy 2, which then unlocked UK Games Fund grants for us, which then unlocked Meta funding for us and our full dev budget. 

Keep It Tight, Keep It Yours

One of the biggest lessons we’ve learned: you don’t need to wait for a publisher to tell your story.

We’ve learned how to self-publish, and to keep our games tight and focused. That focus allows us to make something polished and compelling without overstretching our resources.

Be aware of the “publeecher” – the publisher that says “oh, it’s too soon, come back later”, and many are just not worth your time. Find out who funds games like your own, who funds games from pitches rather than waiting for them to be released, who have funded teams like yours (i.e. for our studio, funding out which publishers had yet to actually fund a woman-led game! Which meant finding out which to avoid). Ultimately that’s because it can be a very wasted effort at times if they are just not going to fund early enough, or a team make-up like yours. Through them a pitch, sure, but don’t wait for anyone, work on making a game!

Keep Event Attendance Limited and Keep Making Your Game! 

One of the biggest lessons we’ve learned over 11 years is to be highly selective about events and conferences. It’s easy to feel like you have to show your game everywhere, but the truth is: if you go to every event, you won’t have time to actually make your game. Even if every person who plays your game at a show ends up buying it, that still rarely covers the cost of travel, accommodation, time away from development, and stand fees. That’s why we focus only on events that offer a clear benefit—whether that’s reaching the right audience, meeting key press, or securing business opportunities. We’ve shown at major UK events like Develop, Rezzed, EGX, and Insomnia, but we’ve never paid for a stand. Some of our most effective showings have been at small pub meetups, where a few journalists or influencers happened to be there and word-of-mouth did the rest. Time is one of your most valuable resources—spend it wisely on making your game and choose events that genuinely amplify your impact.

In Summary: It’s About Strategy

It’s not glamorous, and it’s not always easy—but it can be possible.

If you’re an indie dev trying to find your way: you don’t have to follow the traditional path. You just need to find a sustainable one. For us, diversifying income and slashing costs, that’s made all the difference.

Categories
Development Production

The Pratical Guide to Working from Home

More studios and individuals are having to move to remote working. We’ve been distributed since 2014 so thought we would share our years of advice!

Categories
Development

Smash Hit Plunder: Smash together!

Smash Hit Plunder is out in the EU this Friday! You can play the game single player – but you can also play together with friends and family with local co-op and vs. multiplayer gameplay using the TV screen. Today’s post is all about our different game modes. Let’s #SmashTogether !

Categories
Development

Smash Hit Plunder: A super-sized plundering!

We’ve very nearly completed development of Smash Hit Plunder. What have we been doing for so long? Making a rather big game! This week’s blog will and show you how…

Categories
Development

Smash Hit Plunder: Getting physical

Code is nearly done after over four years of development! So we’re sharing what we’ve been doing and how it’s been done over a series of blogs. Last week was concept, this is looking at how we make the world feel so real and physical.

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Development

Smash Hit Plunder: Behind the Idea

Smash Hit Plunder is very close to being ready for you, after over four years of development! So we’re sharing what we’ve been doing and how it’s been done over a series of blogs, and hopefully you will learn as well as get excited about what’s coming out shortly. Let’s start with the concept.

Categories
Development Games

Smash Hit Plunder: The Story So Far!

Triangular Pixels began life as a company in 2014, when Creative Director Katie Goode and Technical Director John Campbell fulfilled their dream of shifting from AAA studio game creation to making their own independent games. Thanks to clever business decisions and saved funds the partners moved to Bude, Cornwall, to concentrate on making exciting virtual reality games suitable for all players and ages.

 

Smash Hit Plunder, which is due for release this year, has had an interesting development history. The story started in 2014 when Katie and John realised that their dream for Triangular Pixels was to make a truly social VR game – the kind of game that couch friends could get in on. We wanted to make a game that would feel tactile (smashing!) and immersive (plundering!) with a medieval pixel-art arcade theme. The story behind the game is that the player is a VR Mage on a magical quest to unlock their ancestral home, which has been locked down by a devious debt collector, Mordred – and the only way to pay him back is to loot your own castle for treasure!

 

Here’s a very early image of the game in development….

Early Stage

 

After 3 weeks of crunch prototyping and development Smash Hit Plunder was first trialed at LadyCade on 18th July 2014. Initially, the game was intended for release on the Gear VR, using a 2D shared screen to draw in external players and viewers. We had a great showing at GameCity in Nottingham that year, too. Here you can see the VR player using the Gear and the social screen demonstrating their actions for everyone to enjoy. At this point, the 2D screen was essentially a map screen showing what the VR player was doing:

 

GameCity

 

 

By May 2015, the game was really beginning to expand and push at the limits of VR capabilities and the platform we were targeting, so we started trying to find a platform and a partner that really fit with the game. We saw the possibilities with PlayStation VR: how it was a system designed for the living room with sofa multiplayer in mind – fitting exactly with our passions for the game. We made the big step to change platforms and focus only on PSVR. We were then very proud and excited to receive support from Sony! So in October that year, development shifted to PSVR – a great business move as the PSVR is the highest selling VR HMD at the moment!

 

Holidays were hard to take, and every day off we had from full time positions at other studios were used on development for Smash Hit Plunder. However in September 2015 we justified a ‘game dev holiday’ where we had a month off Smash Hit Plunder to work on a new platform, HTC Vive, and project – Unseen Diplomacy. The game went on to be a huge success – being nominated and winning multiple awards for our first ever release, which raised the company profile.

 

2016 was spent porting, designing and developing the game into a fully-fledged adventure game specifically designed for PSVR. Going from a Mobile VR prototype to a console VR game also meant a change in direction and scale. We added story, dungeons, spirits to either make friends with or fight, and the 2D TV screen (social screen) became a whole new area we were finally able to focus on.

 

The social screen now shows what’s happening with the VR Mage in real time:

Social Screen

 

Not only that, but multiplayer modes were added – these were then properly refined in 2017 and include 2 player co-op, and 2 manic versus modes which means friends can play along as a Goblin using a PS4 pad and viewing the social screen. We added three more game modes: scavenger hunt and treasure rush set you the challenge of finding enough items within a specific time limit, or of finding that one piece of very special treasure, and free play which lets the player explore (and smash!) at their leisure.

 

Smash Hit Plunder has a full cast of spiritual characters – both friend and foe – and the player’s Grandma is always about to help guide the VR Mage to success.

 

Grandma (2)

 

 

2017 was a whirlwind of development and business growth and we announced the game at Paris Games Week in November. Thanks to local funding support from Cultivator Cornwall and students from Cornwall College we created our very own trailer from scratch:

 

 

And now it’s 2018! We have a full team working on the game – design, code, art, audio, production and music, and we’re looking forward to releasing this year!

 

 

Categories
Development Games Production

The Macro Producer: What do indie studios think about producers?

The role of the producer within a game studio can be pretty contentious. Where big studios utilise product owners to hold budgets and manage the development time of medium to large games, the need for a production role in indie studios is less established.

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Development

The Dyslexic Games Designer – How my hidden disability gives me my designer abilities.

Many of you will not know that I carry a hidden learning disability – Dyslexia. It can affect my daily life, it affected my education, and has shaped me as a person. I wanted to write up this blog post so I can share with you that having this disability isn’t necessarily a negative, and if you are affected – to give you reason to keep pushing and show you you can still be a successful designer.

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Development

World’s First VR Tracked Cat! Vive Tracker VR Pet Hacking

We’re starting a little side project, thanks to the trackers HTC have sent us!

 

The VR tracked pet! (/small child)