 Hey what's up guys this is Chris Pike my friends call me Big C. Back in action today I got a cool video for you that I want to show you some of the best parts using the heartbeat tool in particular we're going to look at a guy who built a video game by himself his name is Gavin he's with two star games and he didn't just build a regular video game he built a highly popular game called Choo Choo Charles this game made tons of sales in 2022 2023 it was a viral hit there was a hundred million views on on launch day across social media platforms youtube etc and just an amazing story and in this video he's going to talk about how he came up with the idea where he got his assets from you know where did he how did he create the backgrounds the music all that stuff but without going into like extreme technical detail I wanted to share the these moments with you because if you're thinking about getting into something like this this is a great video for you guys to get inspired by so here we go let's kick into it all right so if you're following along with me here we are I'm on the home page of heartbeat or h.ki I'll put a link in the description below of course and then when I click on moments here let's just go ahead click on moments you're going to see here I've got tons of moments but I've got about 20 22 from this video alone this has a ton of great information about creating a video game especially if you're a one man or one woman or one person team so here we go let's click on it let's start it off the first one is called secrets to creating a game alone in this video me and my buddy Gavin the creator of tutu charles discuss his secrets to making an indie game completely alone look at that here on the right side you'll see here that I've got all the moments here and they're all kind of uh chronological here so let's skip forward here through the introduction here they do a little intro we don't really want to see that let's get to the first good moment or the big moment which is day number one this is the first thing you do day one game so let's go all the way back to the beginning of production I would love it to be a more technical conversation about the tools you used and how you made this game because I look at it and I'm like I was pretty frustrated to be completely honest with you when I first saw it because I was thinking how did he do this and that's fair he also sold who knows how many thousands of copies he had 550 thousand wish lists on steam I think even before it launched pretty amazing stuff so let's go ahead and take a look at how did he come up with the backstory for this game yeah so I guess I'll just quickly go over the tools that I use just for for reference for everybody so I use Unreal Engine 4 for Tutu Charles I'm now on Unreal Engine 5 it's basically the same thing for anybody wondering I use gimp for all of my 2d art and that I use blender for any custom 3d stuff that so I'll stop it there just to make a quick note gimp is a free tool most people use photoshop or illustrator or something like that he uses gimp and gimp's free so keep that in mind blender is also a free tool so if you're thinking about getting into gaming and making a game but you know you don't have the tools well a lot of these tools just like these ones are completely free what's your 2d art by the way just just for clarity yeah so 2d art that's going to be anything like marketing materials poster art stuff like that or texture art what I did with a lot of Tutu Charles in order to kind of set apart the style because I think that you know just having a just a unique art style is it's good for your branding and it's good for a game's recognizability so what I do is when I download assets which is something that I do a lot in order to speed up development I'll take the textures throw them into gimp and I'll draw over the textures so there you heard it there so he's putting into gimp gimp's free you can download packs either paid for packs if you you know if you've got the money and you want to you know save some time or you can download free packs and work with them and then you just modify them or augment them with your own art to give it that unique style it's a pretty cool idea and it saves you a lot of money a lot of time so let's get forward now to pre-production let's take a look at what he went through for on the pre-production side of things a production standpoint I think one of the main things was the pre-production on Shuji Charles was very fast it was very very fast rushed even I spent probably about two weeks concepting the game trying to think of unique characters that I could throw in there some fun gameplay with like an easy easy enough to make gameplay loop and so after two weeks I had a pretty solid idea of like kind of the foundation there you heard it there it took him about two weeks to come up with the idea and to flesh it out and to be fair he used pen and paper right like he wrote it down and yeah it went into his uh his gaming document so that's pretty cool there in terms of the spider train let's listen to how he came up with that idea the spider train which is basically what really sold the game was this cool viral train going around doing spidery things so here we go let's click forward to three minutes and six seconds and I knew that there should be a spider train now I hope you don't gloss over that because that's why this game is wild I mean I don't want to I don't want to discredit your ability to create a great game that looks beautiful but the spider train is why it made correct me from wrong but that's why the game was wildly successful that's why it was viral yeah which yeah for sure which was needed right I mean you you do you need that virality it's crucial okay right so there you go that's uh another important point there uh let's keep he goes in a few seconds he's gonna talk about how he came up with the idea and and make special note of this because there's nothing too crazy about this you we all have ideas his was was was pretty simple just went back to his childhood here we go wake up one night in like spider train I was trying to think of ways because I was seeing kind of this trend and it's become a very popular trend in in horror these days to the it's too popular now by the way they overdid it but he was in before all that so he gets a good pass on this one only where a lot of people are actually pretty sick of it but at the time this trend didn't really exist it wasn't a widespread thing that people knew about so I had noticed that games like Five Nights at Freddy's or Fendi and the Ink Machine were taking characters that were kind of nostalgic and then they would put them in a horror context and so I was trying to think of things that most people would have been familiar with as kids so if you think about this Winnie the Pooh uh just when out of copyright protection because it's over a hundred years old or whatever so Winnie the Pooh is no longer owned by Disney or whoever owned it so there's an idea in there think about it guys that I could turn into a spooky character right and so I was realizing you know there's really not that many horror games based on um kids tv shows and so for me my favorite tv show when I was growing up was Thomas the Tank Engine what I did I was like well well let's take Thomas take Thomas make him spooky make him scary make him evil so that was really what I kind of based the game around and that's really the whole thing guys that's how easy it is to come up with ideas now ideas are a dime a dozen it's the execution of course that really matters but if you're hung up on hey I don't have any ideas as simple as thinking about something from your childhood that's all it took to get this one going so something definitely to keep in the back of your mind uh let's skip forward a little bit here we're gonna go to five minutes here uh and he's gonna talk about how we how he produced it in particular how he came up with the idea and then he sort of created it as he went here we go pretty much I decided okay these are the confines that I'm going to work within and I'm gonna stick to this because I think this is really solid and all the you know figuring out how the individual missions are gonna work figuring out specifically how the AI is gonna function exactly how the game is gonna end things like that I'll figure out as I go so this actually prevents something developers and project managers and stuff like that call analysis paralysis where you can get stuck just thinking over things and thinking and thinking and thinking and then not doing it a lot of times you just have to take the jump and then you know just know that as you go you'll come up with new ideas and new paths and new doors will open so there you go there's a quick overview here let's skip forward a little bit more he's gonna talk about the launch and the first month and what he did in the first month his production time and stuff like that so let's take forward to month one the first month of development my goal was to create a trailer and screenshots and a description of the game that I could use to launch a steam page and the game trailer and kind of gauge interest to start gaining wish list so so there you go his first month he had a very clear goal create the trailer created description get some screenshots get some stuff going try and get on some steam wish list that was it that's what he charged out for let's go now to the six minute mark where he talks about the actual production time production time it's just time to really focus in on building out all of the systems you said earlier I figured that I needed weapons I needed a train I needed to be able to color my train was this all just written down or was it a prototype yeah so this is just written down in the first couple yes yeah absolutely you needed GDD it's not a GED because you know I don't have one of those oh hell no this is a GDD game design document everyone watching you need a G if you're working on any project larger than a game jam game you need a game design document you know organize your thoughts organize your ideas keep track of what you're doing and make notes when I look at so there you go there's another really interesting point that he brings up there we're gonna skip forward here and let's talk about how he does his sound design we're going to focus on more of the sound effects but I will note up front here that he has a friend of his that he got to help out with the sound uh like the sound of background music he's a very good musician and he brought a friend in on this so let's get forward to sound design let's move on to unless I'm missing something here can we move on to sound because the sound is great in the game can you break down what you used for sound including where you're sourcing some sounds if you did source them yes pretty much all the sounds used in the game are based off of sounds I got on freesound.org and freesound.org I got to look that one up because I don't think I've used that or I did use it a few years ago but I sort of let that lap so freesound.org get a lot a whole bunch of great sounds there didn't know that so you learned something here at least I learned something in this one uh so there we go free sound is the other one and then finally I want to skip forward to the end here and let's talk about his launch the player reception and what he was afraid of what went well etc and then we'll wrap it up launch we don't have to talk about specific numbers but I just love to hear how launch went for you yeah so I was definitely nervous I think the biggest thing that I was worried about leading up to launch was just the player reception it had gotten enough attention prior to launch I launched with 550,000 wish lists so that's a lot for an indie game by the way oh crap it's like I knew that people were gonna buy it I just was really worried as to whether or not they would like it and if they would be pleased with their purchase so that was the biggest thing that I was nervous about going into it ultimately I think the launch was about as as chill as it could have been pretty much I am a big fan of like tools down like a month before launch like have a solid build that's completely done the build that I'm going to publish and sit on it for one month now that doesn't mean I'm just sitting around for a month yeah that means that last month there is spent just strictly doing tons of marketing stuff making trailers good making videos writing up press releases getting lists of influencers to send keys to it's a bit so there you go you heard it there so that's what he does well this last month he's it's basically locked down and then he switches back into marketing now in a lot of worlds you think well why doesn't your marketer do that but keep in mind he's a one man team if you're a video creator watching this there's a good chance that you are a one person team you create the videos you create the thumbnails you create the audio or you download the audio you edit it you do all of that and he did all of that for this game and that's why I like this video so much I learned a lot in it guys if you like this video of course give it a like subscribe do all that good stuff I've got a ton more stuff coming up stay tuned