Hi everyone,
We are a small indie team, making Faraway Galaxy for Steam and (at least we hope so) later for consoles. It got almost like a joke and now we see passion in the player's eyes and it helps us to move forward.
Rose: For someone who has never heard of your game, how would you describe it without using the usual genre labels?
Your Dungeon Master is a veteran space pirate. He narrates the whole thing, drops satirical comments about your progress, and leaves room for curious encounters between tactical battles with tons of cool action cards, dice rolls, and dozens of ridiculous enemies.
Rose: Where did the idea for this game come from?
The team adores tabletop gameplay but wanted it to be suitable even for a solo player, set it in some bizarre setting, and see how far we can push the visuals. A few friends gathered some ideas, made a very simple game on paper, played it in the bar, and then assembled a digital version through 2026.
Rose: What makes your game different from other games in the same space?
The word SPACE works perfectly for our case! But beyond the space setting it has a lot of new features that help more fans to enjoy deck building: the Force is the only value to look after (it combines mana, health, and all that into one), your upgrades are also powering up your enemies for this run so they must be picked wisely. And we are making the game way more narrative: you can even see some vibes of Disco Elysium if you compare Faraway Galaxy to a typical Deckbuilder game.
Rose: Was there anything you had to cut that you still secretly wish you could put back?
The game is still very minimalistic. Instead, we are trying to give a bit more hints and improve UX, so we add more on every iteration. But we’ve had to cut some of the narration and texts: we hired a nice actor to voice over the lines and it was a huge pain to take any of them out. Though, eventually it turned out to be much better with quick bits of dialogues!
Rose: What is something players probably won't realize took an absurd amount of work?
It's easy to make one cartoonish art, it's fine to make three. We have dozens of units across five races. They are armed with a variety of weapons, so can do fire damage, some zap our brave captain. And every single piece is carefully animated in Spine and Unity.
Rose: What is the weirdest bug you've encountered that you almost wanted to keep?
Probably none yet. But we posted about the most annoying bug recently and a lot of people said they experienced something similar: if two cards are close to each other, the game is not sure which are you aiming at and it used to shift between with a buzzing sound. A bit funny, a bit annoying!
Rose: Is there a particular emotion you wanted players to walk away with from your game?
We want them to chill after a hard day. Times have been rough recently and we even picked reggae as the main soundtrack.
Rose: What's one piece of advice you wish you'd had before starting?
Playtest early! We did it before Next Fest but it was literally two weeks in advance. It made us all work twice harder to fix the balance, clarity, shorten our dialogues to improve the flow and dynamics, and such.
Rose: Five years from now, what do you hope people remember about this game?
We wish it will be about the merge of all the stats into Force and how it made the whole genre more appealing to casual players. But as of now we are definitely praised as a huge love letter to cartoons made in the last 20 years or so. There are tons of perfectly crafted cartoonish games and not enough dorky ones, that's for sure.
Rose: Why should someone reading/watching this go play your game today?
Even with the demo they will have an hour of chill gameplay: a bit of tactical battles, a few funny stories from the captain, and nice music in the background.
Rose: How has previous experience in making games in a large scale setting prepared you for a solo or small indie team game making?
Every person in the team worked for the biggest corporations you can imagine. And it helps a lot to keep the boundaries of our roles, keep the scope of the project and deliver in time. Indies often treat the development plan as optional, we document stuff and overworked a lot to make it to Next Fest. And believe that it pays off.
Rose: From your previous employment at a larger studio, what is one thing indie devs would learn that would break them out into the modern algorithm?
Games are a business mixed with art. Indies often treat business as a hiccup in their artistic way but appreciation and a few likes rarely pays your rent. We try to respect the business side, we have unit economics in mind, and advise others to do so as well.
Rose: What’s a common mistake you see across all size developers you would warn new or current devs about?
The industry shows a lot of underperforming releases recently. Very often it's possible to prevent by early testing, community-driven development, bold experimental ideas, and such. Learn how to be in touch with your players or you will most likely make a very niche game. Now check the previous answer about unit economy!
Rose: Finally, the question we ask every developer: After everything you’ve told us, can you officially confirm that your game is, in fact, probably a game? Why should we believe you?
It's a great question! Recently it has been challenged: is Mixtape a game if it has no failure condition? Is Disco Elysium a game if it has so much reading? We are definitely a game in that sense: you fight, you can lose, you read only in between battles. And it’s even a tabletop game within the game! But we still have a lot to do with the onboarding, with an overall sense of progression.