So I've been trying to teach myself how to draw by embarking on a challenge to draw something every day for 30 days. I have never been good at visual art, and though 30 days is not enough time to become a good artist, I'm confident this challenge will get me to a level of "good enough" to draw decent concepts for my games.

This community serves a few purposes. What I get out of this This community serves as a support system, not just for others, but myself as well as I continue my own journey in building my indie studio. It forces me to think more deeply about the systems I’m building to get the most out of my efforts and articulate the ideas more clearly so that they can be valuable to others. What I hope you get out of this A sense of community, support, and strength that increases the odds you succeed in building your own indie game studio/making your own game. Insight into others’ mistakes and successes so that you can learn from them. Structured, repeatable systems that allow you to build skills faster and make better, more fun games that we can all share and enjoy.

My name is Joe Kaul and I have been building and operating my own indie game studio from scratch since the start of 2025. This community exists as a way to hold myself and others accountable to the dream of building an Indie Game studio from nothing. When I first started, I had grand dreams of completely reshaping what people thought of when they heard the phrase “educational video game.” Leveraging what I learned about adult learning and development while completing my Psychology degree, I was confident I could revolutionize the industry with games that allow you to learn through discovery rather than lectures. I had some ideas that I still believe are really good and could achieve that goal, but I’ve faced so many unforeseen challenges as I’ve been learning game development that have shown me just how difficult those games really are to make. I haven’t given up on those ideas. But I am shifting my focus toward building the systems that make successful game development consistently achievable. Building and maintaining this community will force me to deeply consider everything that goes into those systems, and give me a place to share lessons learned from all of the mistakes I’ve made and successes I’ve had.

Making games is a lot more than programming. It requires A LOT of sub-skills, many of which you probably haven’t even considered yet. I know I didn’t. And creating successful games, as a solo or small indie studio, without each and every one of these sub-skills is virtually impossible. The only way around it is really to outsource it to someone who already has the skills you lack, and that gets expensive very quickly. It also puts you in a permanent position of reliance on outsourcing that work, as it will only become more critical and more challenging the further you go without doing it yourself. It also becomes increasingly difficult to judge how well you’re getting value for the money you’re paying, as you don’t really understand what’s going on beneath the surface to create the results you’re seeing. This is exceptionally true for marketing, unfortunately. To consistently build good, successful games, you’ll need to learn art, audio, programming, storywriting, level design/world building, and marketing (usually social media these days). Now that list might seem really long and intimidating, especially if you’re brand new to all of them, but the truth is that most people can get good enough at all of them to be successful with enough practice and patience. And if you have friends or connections with those skills who want to build games with you, that’s even better! But you can absolutely learn to do this on your own, and I would strongly encourage you to do it even if you’re going into this alone.