How Splendid Forge Began: 8 Friends Making Indie Games
· Splendid Forge Team
We Should Actually Make Something
Simply put, Splendid Forge started with a group of friends and colleagues - all with 20+ years of loving games, movies, and music behind us - saying “We should start making something...”. You know, the kind of conversation almost everyone has because of the spread of hustle culture and feeling like you’re not doing enough.
Usually, nothing happens afterward. We just continue drinking and arguing about world politics.
Well, this time something did happen afterward.
How the 8 of us came together and why we just went and registered a company
It just so happened that in that group of people there were a few graphic and motion designers getting bored at their corporate jobs, a few devs looking to create something of their own, a boring finance guy, and an unhinged customer service guy. Several times, the conversation had strayed towards how cool it would be to make games.
One of the graphic designers has always been a “just do it” kind of guy, and he was the one who said “Fu*k it, we’re opening a company on Monday. I want to make indie games.”
And we went and registered a company and informed everyone that we’re actually doing this.
Why the name “Splendid Forge”?
The name is a simple story. The just-do-it guy’s parents owned a small bookshop named ‘Splendid Plus’. So, to keep the tradition going, he kept “Splendid” and added “Forge” because that’s essentially what we wanted to do: make things, test them, break them, and rebuild them.
That idea also made its way into how we think about the games themselves. The habits (not values) that we’re trying to stick to are:
- one verb is plenty - you should be able to describe your game idea with just one verb.
- ten seconds to learn - the game should be easy to learn and accessible to everyone.
- ugly first - if the game isn’t fun with just grey boxes and placeholder bleeps, we probably can’t save it by adding colours.
- delight beats features - “I fear not the man who has practiced 10,000 kicks once, but I fear the man who has practiced one kick 10,000 times.” Why do we have a Bruce Lee quote here? Because we try to make one move look and feel perfect, instead of adding a bunch of half-assed mechanics.
- say where it’s at - we’re transparent about where our games are. When it’s just a concept, it stays a concept. We won’t promise anything until it’s actually in the works.
They’re less a manifesto and more a reminder of how we want to make things.
Where the studio is now
Now, we’re actually somehow approaching the point where three actual games are nearly ready to ship.
We’re aiming to launch three small mobile games before December, and we’re quite confident that we’re going to make it.
We’ve been learning how to actually publish games on Google Play, while in parallel learning anything and everything regarding game development. And also realizing that having a “cushy” corporate job is not all that bad.
A few months ago, we were eight people talking about making games. By this December, if everything goes according to plan, we’ll have released three of them. This blog is where we’ll document what happens before, after, and in between.