How to make an MVP of a video game - the Choo-Choo Charles Case Study
Gamedev Dairy #84
TL;DR
Intro
Most of the reasons to be in awe
How to build a game’s MVP?
How to market your Indie Game like a Boss?
Recommendations
Intro
If you’re a gamer you might’ve heard about Choo-Choo Charles.
It’s a horror game, so I will never play it (lack of good quality adult diapers, I’m afraid) because the first jump scare will give me a heart attack, or worse.
Most of the reasons to be in awe
But the more I learn about this game, the more astounded I am. Although I did watch an interview with its creator - Gavin Eisenbeisz - on Thomas Brush’s channel (I think), it wasn’t before No Clip’s documentary (below) that I was mind blown…
I have a soft spot for solo developers, obviously. But what I really admire about them is their resourcefulness. So when I heard a dialogue like this one…
[Danny] - …when did you start learning a language? And what was it?
[Gavin] - Never. I just used Blueprint.
I was blown away…
Blueprint, if you’re not aware, is Unreal Engine’s visual scripting tool. I was shocked that you can achieve THIS MUCH using a no-code solution.
Not to mention he knew Unreal for 6 or 7 years. That is actually impressive for someone who made 5 games before this one. As I understood, Gavin started making games when he was 14 and started making Choo-Choo Charles when he was 19. He made 5 games in 5 years. One game a year sounds like a very good manifesto! Wonder if all the games were made in Unreal Engine…
How to build a game MVP?
Gavin is also a model game creator when it comes to iterating over a project.
As it is not stated exactly in the NoClip documentary I might get the dates wrong (it’s still impressive though). As I understood the game took 15 months to make. Premiered on December 9th, 2022. Which would point that the work started at the beginning of September 2021.
As Gavin said first he made as many features of the game to make the trailer:
And the trailer went live on October 2nd, 2021. ONE MONTH AFTER!
It’s actually fun to see what wasn’t there in the MVP. Check it out for yourselves by comparing the two trailers :-)
The gameplay loop was designed before he started no-coding. The basic open world was done in a few weeks. The script was done 6 months before the premiere (gameplay over script!).
How did he prioritize the other features?
the island
train tracks system
points of interest
basic three missions
weapons
side-quests
AI (won’t spoil this one here, watch the clip!)
How to market your Indie Game like a Boss?
What is very educating is Gavin’s approach to marketing/building community.
He started by making an MVP which resulted in the announcement trailer.
Shared it via Twitter, Youtube, and Reddit (this trio seemed to give him 1k wishlists, which after a month resulted in 100k wishlists).
Regularly, he streamed his work on the game, always at the same time. This part would be hard for me, as my lack of focus would end up in streaming procrastination. And when I’m productive, I’m only because I’m doing most of the stuff on a piece of paper 😉
One month before the launch he sent e-mails to content creators. Result? All the people he wanted to play the game, did.
One thing he didn’t do well were playtests, as he started them during the last 3 months. He mentioned that he did not know whether the game was good or bad, because not many people actually played it.
Many topics to be finished appeared when learning from Gavin.
Recommendations
Mark Darrah on why your game should be data-driven!
Alan Moore on why you should read terrible books. And who knows… maybe even play terrible games?