Meet Olle, Creator of Infinity Trials - A Game Developers Journey

At Playground, we're always in the front seat supporting our colleagues that works with their own side-projects. And today, want to present our senior backend engineer Olle, who has a great passion for game development and has just released his indie game, Infinity Trials. Let's deep dive into his journey, from idea to launch!

The Inspiration Of The Game

Olle's not just working with enterprise solutions, he spends his nights and weekends developing his newly launched indie game Infinity Trials.

A retro 2D, top-down Rouge-like one-hit-kills indie game. What inspired him? A mix of 90's Super Nintendo nostalgia and indie gaming.

It's been a decade since Olle got his feeling to start developing a game. However, life happened - first a lot of Dota gaming, then parenthood, and when the pandemic kicked in, he felt that it's time to make the game development a reality.

Dream Big, Start Small

The sky-high ambitions of creating the dream-game began and the backlog was getting longer and longer. Juggling a full time job, family and this new found passion wasn't easy as imagined.

He took a step back, and made a smart choice scaling back his larger ideas and focusing on attainable goals. The aim was to get a game on Steam and sell it to at least one person - which he proudly achieved last week. ??

Except of working with the game during late nights and weekends, Olle found a chance to take a month of between jobs to get his project from a PoC to a complete game.

All the technical puzzles and bugs was huge, compared to the day job. He even found the "Aha" ideas, while pushing the stroller around.

Community and Feedback

He had support from his friends and colleagues at Playground who's been very supportive. After a hosted game night at Playground HQ, he found invaluable insights after that many colleagues tried out the game. ??

The feedback accelerated the process of finishing the game with a top-quality delivery. So far, the game "Infinity Trials" has been purchased from dozens of players and the reviews are great.

All the games that Olle's been developing to this day, have been single-player offline games, all in Unity. He feels that it's just the beginning of his game development journey and now it's time for him to merge his two skills, backend engineering and game development, and dive into more complex server management for multiplayer games.

This is just the beginning for Olles Game Development journey

Advice for Other Developers

Olle has one piece of advice for aspiring game devs: start small and execute. He says that hands-on learning over consuming youtube-tutorials. And don't focus on the sales, focus on personal satisfaction and taking pride in your creating.

Don't hesitate to get in touch with Olle for questions and tips how to become a game developer yourself!

It's more than just a game, it's a testament to what can happen when you stick to what you love. So, give it a try and find your own inspo!

Try it out!