This is Redacted the Safehouse, which

Ben Anderson, aka Heartbeast, shipped on

Steam in just about 4 months. To me,

that's very fast. So, I asked Ben, "How

did you do it?" So, let's hear some of

the smart decisions that Ben made during

development. Then, I'll summarize the

points at the end of the video. Let's

jump in.

>> The first decision was just the initial

scope for the game was so tiny, so tiny

that the game has probably quadrupled in

size from the initial scope, and that's

still small. There was almost an

inherent limit with how big the game

could be based on where I started.

Before I actually started production for

the project, I made a lot of prototypes.

I actually made a Substack post about

this, but I made like six different

small prototypes. One of them was kind

of like the core gameplay loop, and then

a bunch of visual prototypes, and then

one more prototype that was like some of

the core mechanics that I needed. And I

decided to move forward with the game

right after the gameplay loop was

validated. Like, once I found the search

mechanic and added the redaction system

to that, I that's kind of when I was

like, "I think I want to move forward

with this game, but I had to prototype a

bunch of stuff with the visuals and a

few of the mechanics after. I actually

started production on the project

Christmas break and built, I would say,

80% of the game over the course of 2

weeks. It was really quick. There was

like this longer, maybe a month leading

up to that where I was doing all these

prototypes, and then there was like a

2-week, almost game jam style, I'm

pushing really hard, I made all these

milestones and goals, and I'm going to

get these done, and then I'm going to

release an alpha by this date. And then

the last 3 months or so has been

playtesting, iterating, feedback,

polishing, bug removal, like adding

saving and loading cuz the product the

first alpha didn't have saving and

loading, getting the Steam page ready,

getting the marketing materials ready,

doing the trailer. It's been like a

little bit less about actually making

the game and more focused on like just

polishing it. And I have added new

content since the alpha, like the whole

case report was new. I did some visual

updates over that period of time as

well. I added like an outdoor scene with

the jump scare. There's definitely a lot

more stuff that I added to it. So,

that's kind of the timeline for it. And

again, I think one of the biggest

contributing factors was just starting

with an idea that was so small that it

almost couldn't grow into anything too

big. And realizing that it was okay to

make a small game. I was a lot more

careful with pricing and stuff like that

in this one. I asked playtesters what

they thought a fair price for the game

would be like after they played it. I

was like, "What would you expect this to

be priced at on Steam?" And I got a lot

of answers that ranged between the three

to five dollar range. My takeaway was

that that seemed like a pretty fair

price to players and what they might

expect it to be priced at on Steam. And

I also took inspiration from Voyager 19,

which is a game by Mizzles. That was a

very quick development cycle for his

game as well. And it's done quite well,

and he priced it at $3.99. And so, I

stole the price point because I his game

is about an hour as well and has a

little jump scare at the end and it

seemed kind of similar in scope and I

don't know, general feel. And so, I uh

stole his price point. [laughter]

And it seemed to have worked out well

for me. The thing I will say is that

Steam users in the reviews, most of them

seem to be very positive about the

price. And I've heard before if all your

users like your price that you maybe

actually underpriced it a little bit.

So, you still always want to make sure

that your pricing is fair, but I may

have ended up on the lower end of fair,

and I potentially could have and should

have priced it at the slightly higher

end of fair, like $4.99 instead of

$3.99. But, I wanted to be safe because

I messed up pricing with End Hall, and

so I wanted to make sure that

um I did more market research and did a

better job. The other thing that I think

helped a lot was I did a lot of

kitbashing. I used a lot more public

domain assets, reworked them, like I

edited a bunch of the public domain

assets with new textures, and even

modified the vertices to make them more

modular, so I could piece them together

when building the apartment. There was a

lot of that. I used a shader, um a

public domain shader that did a lot of

work for me on the for the visuals,

which made it a lot easier to to make

the different assets kind of match each

other.

>> So, if you want to ship a game fast,

here are four things that might help.

One, start small. Two, prototype

components separately.

Three, embrace that you're making a

short game. And four,

leverage pre-made assets. Not all advice

is suitable for everyone, of course, but

you can embrace the parts you like,

ignore what you don't, and make changes

to fit your own development style. In

the description, I'll put a link to my

newsletter, where I wrote even more

about all of these steps. If you'd like

to support Ben, pick up a copy of

Redacted: The Safe House, and his game

dev book Production Point, which I have

uh somewhere around here. Here it is.

And if you'd like to support me,

wishlist my game Pixel Washer, and pick

up a copy of my book, How to Make a

Video Game All by Yourself. That's it.

Thanks for watching, and good luck with

your game.