Continued developing the style for our game today. Thinking of combining inked outlines & structures (similiar to Kay Nielsen) with watery aquarelle colors. Besides that I worked on some thumbnails for places. Thinking of using a shabby lighthouse as home of the main characters family.

Tweaked the light and composition of and older gamelevel, to prepare it for my portfolio.

While I'm still a student, I heard from quite some people how much of a struggle it can be to earn a living as an indie developer.

As I'm also considering this as an option, I want to come up with alternate ideas about getting an income, besides the regular selling games as product and filling the gaps with contract work (not that there would be anything wrong with that).

1. Sell (physical) merch of your game - this is still a topic not thoroughly explored. Could be especially applicable if the game has strong, memorable characters. Options could include plushies, artprints, 3D prints, artbook
2. Create tools/plugins (for gamedev) - might be an interesting additional income, but may require quite some maintenance work
3. Host local gaming events with entry fee or paid by venue (e.g. local multiplayer, make/play game with audience)
4. Not an income per se .. but one can benefit in many ways from a good network of indie friends and colleagues
5. Non-intrusive, optional Micro-transactions (see e.g. Viridi)
6. Interesting idea in "Meadow" -> unlock special skins, sounds, characters if owning other games by the developer
7. Offer paid gamedev tutorial videos/ebooks
8. Sell game assets
9. Teach making game workshops at schools or other venues
10. Sell soundtrack separately

Ideas to make game worlds more coherent and atmospheric

1. Try to get a feeling for "standing" in the world as player, while making it (Sauerbraten/Tesseract does this really well)
2. Pick up a laptop and go to the kind of places you make for the game
3. Try to understand how things work together and keep it in mind while making the world (e.g. species in nature; how did the hole get in the roof; why is this thing here and what is it doing?)
4. Have animals/NPC not only interact with player, but have a life on their own
5. Possible experiment: capture all 3D models (using photogrammetry) and Sounds on one spot -> create a digital representation of it, that comes very close to the original
6. Implement findings from Geology, Biology, Physics, Architecture, etc when making game worlds (e.g. erosion, earth history, species behavior)
7. Connect the gameworld to the narrative & game design (e.g. with color, light, elements, composition)
8. Besides understanding how things work, experience/knowledge in Color Theory, Composition and Light (Drawing Fundamentals) is immensely helpful
9. Travel to places, make experiences & studies, try to understand how a place feels and works
10. Make game worlds, ship them. Gather feedback and criticism of players.

This is a screenshot of a game we're working on, world design and textures by me :)

Explore a tiny, remote island filled with a wonderful forest and crazy characters.
http://www.kelgar.org/

A generator of cute planets - every planet is unique! Create your own tiny planet.

CLICK TO PLAY

View and *play* my top 3 game jam games out of 17 entries!

http://www.tinyworlds.org/blog/gamejam-top-3