Is It Still Possible To Be A Solo Dev In 2024?

Matt Young is a Solo Dev that's gone full time. After following his dream through a failed kickstarter, we sit down with him again to reflect on the changes he made, that's lead him to find the successes he’s found today. With only a short time before his game The Feathered Serpent is released We talk about what going full time looks like, the sacrifices and successes along the way, and how that journey can look different for everyone.
The Feather Serpent (Steam Page)
store.steampowered.com/app/18...
Tsundown Twitch
/ tsundown
Use our link to purchase Unity assets and support the studio!
assetstore.unity.com/top-asse...
Timestamps:
00:00 Intro
00:35 Who is Matt Young
01:00 Where it all began
02:00 College and Game Dev
03:00 First Kickstarter
04:00 Kickstarter Failed
05:00 Trying to move on
06:00 Deciding How to move Forward
07:00 Going all in on Game Dev
08:00 The start of Streaming
09:00 Success on Kickstarter
10:00 Twitch: The secret weapon
11:00 You can do this
12:00 FINDING your luck
13:00 Finding your WHY
14:00 Fixing your WHY
15:00 The Feathered Serpent
🔴FOLLOW us on TH-cam
/ @soulenginedev
🔵 FOLLOW us on Twitter:
/ soul_enginede
🟠FOLLOW us on Instagram:
/ soul.engine.studios
To Learn More!
Unity Partner Courses:
prf.hn/click/camref:1100lwfjJ...
Unity Plus:
prf.hn/click/camref:1100lwfjJ...
Important: This post may contain affiliate links, which means we may receive a commission if you decide to click a link and purchase something that we have recommended. While clicking these links won't cost you any money, they will help fund and support the families of our studio while recommending great assets!
Music by:
@Vida_Zen

[@MrOnosa]

Hey so this is amazing. I've only recently heard of Tsundown. I caught their stream because of a raid and was immediately impressed. It felt like they were a well seasoned solo developer who was about to achieve their goals. To hear the full story from the first failed Kickstarter to building treehouses for rich folk and then finally decided to stream full time.. I tell ya, I was blown away! What a cool story! I can't wait to see how it unfolds.

[@Elistios]

Very humbling and motivating to see your dev parkour. I think you should path you in the back for all the progress you make all those years to where you are today at the very end of a long and hard road that will definitely get you to success! So much respect for the human behind the dev and so great to have success stories like your that show every next generation of indie dev that want to get in but got the exact same human flaws as we all have or in other words, us being human make it easy for everyone trying their luck being a full time dev to hit those same walls you did. @Soul Engine Studio Thank you so much to give a voice and an extra reach to that project and show the full hardship and process of creating a game and showing that's it's not always easy and that you will try and sometime fail then it's all about how you stand back and go for it. Thanks for that great video :)

[@Skeffles]

Great video. I watched Tsundowns youtube but it's been a while. I should check out what he's up to now.

[@therealchrisnorton]

This was a great watch! Lots of good stuff in there. Start With Why is one of those books that keeps popping up in my periphery so I'll have to give it a go. Persevering through slumps financially and emotionally makes those moments of success even greater, and ultimately will make your work better. Thanks for sharing this!

[@Tbjbu2]

damn awesome vid, good luck with your launch!

[@NutTapper]

So much respect for that bro, great video 💯

[@SoulEngineDev]

Seriously! It's really inspiring!

[@christophernoneya4635]

It's important to remember that most successful kickstarters begin with fans and are really just an advertising campaign. You need to come in with a community or you will fail.

[@SoulEngineDev]

100%. A community isn't required, but it GREATLY increases your chances of finding success.

[@raimondolle5707]

Nice vid ❤

[@SoulEngineDev]

Thank you!

[@GrandeGio95]

Maaan, the music is so high on volume during the intro !

[@SoulEngineDev]

Thanks for the feedback! For some reason it’s tricky for me to get right.

[@andygeers]

Really interesting interview, thanks for sharing. I think the thing about “finding your why” is SO important

[@SoulEngineDev]

Absolutely! Couldn’t agree more!

[@BornToTroll-it5ju]

Some of the strategies he recommends are valuable, such as setting self-imposed deadlines, doing the occasional dev log, and alternating periods of intense work with brief breaks. However, others are a bit hit-or-miss. Take streaming, for example-it can be a significant distraction. While you might log the req 8 hours, I'll bet a substantial portion of that time gets squandered on chit-chat. Multitasking, whether it's on Reddit, Discord, or Facebook, inevitably dilutes focus away from the work.
About the topic though - embarking on a solo endeavor may seem enticing at first, but it's often a recipe for failure. Many starter devs, fueled by overconfidence, give it a shot only to fall flat on their face a year or two later, realizing the work is too much to handle alone. It's better to team up whenever possible, and although this will lead to another set of struggles, mostly involving not seeing eye-to-eye with others, collaborating with like-minded individuals who share your passion, dedication, and vision is where true success lies. Witnessing team members eagerly contributing-be it completing a coding task or designing a new interface-can be incredibly invigorating. The synergy that arises from bouncing ideas off one another, offering constructive criticism, and collectively problem-solving adds incredible momentum to a project and increases the chance of it being finished exponentially.
And contrary to popular belief, attracting team members solely on the promise of rev share isn't as insurmountable a challenge as people like to make it sound. If the GDD demonstrates enough genuine commitment and foundation collaborators are often eager to join the journey. Furthermore, there's a vastly under utilized pool of developers who, while not seeking fame or fortune, relish the opportunity to tinker and contribute their expertise. Most of those types are mid-40's, with families and jobs in IT, and some of them have simply mind-blowing skills to add.
And one final tip towards Matt would be, pls come up with something original. You might make some $$ to scrape by with what you've got going there, but you're not going to get a million dollar hit by doing what essentially looks like a CodeMonkey tutorial with dinosaurs expanded into a full game. It doesn't matter how pretty the pixels look - that's just window dressing and people won't pay for that.
Stop production for a while, Ask yourself "Ok, what does my game have that almost NO other game on the planet has?" if you can come up with something that makes the consumer go 'wow, never seen that before!' the game's popularity will rocket.

[@SoulEngineDev]

I could not agree more that teaming up with like-minded people is one of the best things you can do for the game dev career. If you watch some of Matt’s streams, you’ll see that he does a pretty good job staying focused, which is no small feat lol, but even he has said that he could see teaming up in his future.
Unfortunatly MANY solo dev hate the idea of teaming up, and it really only hurts them in the long run. The benefits of a real team are limitless really. Finding one is the hardest part honestly.

[@lollertoaster]

So to summarise:
1. Commute to work
2. Work 9-5
3. Commute back home
4. Do your daily chores
5. Spend time with family
6. Stream video games on Twitch
7. ???
8. Game is done
Best advice for people who don't like making games. Sorry but I have code to write and assets to make. I used to waste time on those useless things like "building a community" and all it ever did was waste the precious scraps of time I had to actually make the game.

[@christophernoneya4635]

Community building is priming a project for success, it doesn't guarantee success and can't then a failure to a win, but it helps get you those vital early statistics that set you apart from 90% of steam releases which are garbage shovelware. But of course none of this matters if you never finish your game and this should always be the priority

[@gameboardgames]

There's 'making a game' and 'selling a game', two different topics. A terrible fate for any game would be that is amazing but no one even notices it with the 40-odd steam games that are released every day.

[@Tsundown]

Close! 6. Stream **game development** on Twitch. If I’m going to be working on the game anyways might as well stream it. Streaming that built my community which ultimately funded my project and got me beta testers and feedback, which made my game infinitely better than it ever would have been.